Free The Crimson Shield by Nathan Hawke Page A

save them. He’d left a trail that anyone could find so far. Later he’d take that trail into the Crackmarsh. They’d disappear – almost impossible not to
in the marsh – but the Vathen would know by then exactly where they were going. Andhun. He had a two-day start, at least, given how long it would take for the Vathen to find reinforcements.
Easy enough.
    ‘Why did you face them in the field, Screambreaker?’ he asked when the Screambreaker was awake again. ‘Why make your stand on Lostring Hill? They were five times our numbers,
maybe ten.’
    ‘More than ten,’ Corvin said. ‘But Fedderhun has no walls, bare-beard. The battle would have destroyed the town and the Vathen would have won all the same.’
    ‘They’re only Marroc. Isn’t that what you used to say?’
    ‘I did, and there’s little enough glory in hiding behind Marroc soldiers on the battlefield, never mind their women too.’
    ‘Little enough glory in riding your enemy down from the back of a horse or slaughtering them with arrows from far away,’ muttered Gallow, ‘but the Nightmare of the North did
both in his time.’
    ‘The Marroc got too good at running.’ The Screambreaker spat. ‘They wouldn’t face us any more. As soon as a man runs, he’s no longer a man. Makes him the same as an
animal and there’s neither honour nor dishonour in killing an animal, it’s simply a chore. A bear or a boar, they’re a different matter, but they won’t run if you fight them
one against one and don’t hide behind an army of spears and shields.’ He turned away. ‘Yurlak kept falling ill. See how his strength came back when he returned across the sea to
his home? These Marroc sapped the life out of him. The fighting had to end. We needed to go home.’ A thin smile settled on his lips. ‘Andhun will be different. Andhun has walls and even
the Marroc can fight if you give them a wall to hide behind. Varyxhun showed us that. The Vathen won’t get past Andhun. We’ll smash them in the field and the Marroc will hold the
walls.’
    Gallow helped him onto his horse. That was the Screambreaker. He’d let the Marroc hold the walls of Andhun because he didn’t trust them in the field, but give him a few thousand
Lhosir and he’d face the Vathen in the open no matter how great their numbers. Five thousand Lhosir had beaten an army of Marroc said to be thirty thousand strong. That had been the height of
the war before Sithhun fell, before Gallow had crossed the sea, and so all he’d heard were the stories. Corvin had earned his names that day. Widowmaker to the Marroc, Screambreaker to the
Lhosir.
    They reached the edges of the Crackmarsh. In the distance mountains darkened the southern horizon. Varyxhun nestled somewhere on their edges where the River Isset emerged into the hills. A
canyon channelled the water, funnelling its energy, and then spat it into a great flat plain two score miles wide and circled by hills. The Crackmarsh, and here it was. Water everywhere.
    It rained that night and they rose stiff and miserable in the morning. Corvin’s face was glassy-pale. He didn’t complain but then he wouldn’t, not until he fell off his horse
stone dead and probably not even then. As soon as they set off, Gallow steered their course deeper into the water meadows. The changes came slowly. The ground became wetter, the undergrowth darker
and denser and more tangled. Their horses’ hooves began to sink into the earth. By the middle of the day they were walking through ankle-deep water that stretched ahead as far as either of
them could see. Islands hunched out of it – hundreds of them – some bare, most clustered with dense stands of trees. Here and there some grew out of the water itself. They stood on
thick tangles of roots and their branches were twisted and ancient. They looked sickly.
    ‘That Vathan who escaped, he’ll have reached Fedderhun by now.’ In the distance, away from the mountains, Gallow could see the hills