Cold Redemption by Nathan Hawke

Author:Nathan Hawke [Hawke, Nathan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orion Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

26

THE IRON MAN

Middislet was still miles away when the sun set but Gallow kept walking. Perhaps there was shelter to be found in the hills that edged the Crackmarsh but he wasn’t looking for it, not now. He knew how close he was and he knew this land, and besides there were Marroc in the woods and caves here. He’d seen them. Bandits or thieves, he didn’t know which, but it didn’t matter. He was a forkbeard alone and so he kept on going. He could almost have walked these last miles blindfold and still found his way home.

Snow started to fall, muffling the darkness and silencing the wind. The night was black as ink when he reached the forge and the house was still. Everyone inside would be sleeping. He listened at the door and heard nothing, no snores, no snuffles, no wheezes. But this was home, still the way he remembered it, and his heart was beating fast. Three years. Anything could have happened. He didn’t know whether to knock or simply open the door and creep inside.

He was still standing there when he heard movement, the scrape of wood across the floor and then the chink of metal and a footstep and the door opened, and in the night Gallow stared. There was a man. He was holding a candle. Not Nadric, not Arda, but . . .

‘Tolvis Loudmouth?’ Gallow stared. The side of Loudmouth’s face was a mass of scars from that last fight in Andhun. He looked fatter and his forked beard was gone. But most of all Gallow simply couldn’t understand what he was doing here. Here in Middislet at Nadric’s forge. It made no sense. Words started and then faltered.

‘Gallow?’ Tolvis couldn’t find anything to say either.

Gallow couldn’t think, couldn’t think of anything at all except that Tolvis had been a friend, one he’d never thought to see again. He offered his arm and Tolvis took it and they clasped each other. ‘Loudmouth?’ He shook his head in disbelief again. ‘Your beard . . .’

Tolvis was laughing, almost weeping with joy and surprise and dismay. ‘The silver I got you for those horses in Andhun. The Screambreaker.’ He shook his head. ‘There didn’t seem to be a particularly good moment for giving it back, what with the whole chopping Medrin’s hand off and being chased through the castle by a Vathan horde. And then you didn’t come . . . You held the Vathen long enough that we got away. I couldn’t keep all that silver if it wasn’t mine and so I went to Varyxhun after Andhun fell and I found her, and then I stayed in case you came back and weren’t dead after all, and then I never quite . . . left . . .’

‘Loudmouth.’ Gallow shook his head. Now he looked closer there were bruises and a bloody gash on Loudmouth’s face. Fresh, no more than a day old. ‘What’s wrong?’

Tolvis looked over his shoulder. He glanced at the night room.

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