The Crimson Shield by Nathan Hawke

Author:Nathan Hawke
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780575115088
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2013-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

26

LOYALTY

Gallow pulled them apart. Jyrdas took his axe off his belt and hefted it. He aimed at the sentry on the closer tower. Gallow caught his wrist. ‘Even the Screambreaker couldn’t fell a man from this distance, One-Eye.’

‘In my prime I would have split his skull.’

‘In your prime you had more eyes!’ hissed Tolvis.

Jyrdas glowered, but he lowered the axe and crept toward the tower instead. Gallow watched him go and then turned his eyes to the one on the other side of the rauk. With Tolvis close behind, he sidled along the wall until he could see the gates past the dark bulk of the monastery. Torches lit the yard around them and he could see men moving there, maybe a dozen or so split between the yard and the walls. The shouting had died down, as though the Lhosir outside had given up and gone to their beds.

When he pushed gently at the tower door it swung open onto a spiral stair. Gallow climbed in silence to a small round room, empty except for a handful of crossbows hung from pegs and a ladder to the roof. He put a finger to his lips and handed Tolvis the sword and axe from his belt, then inched up the ladder until the cool sea breeze touched his head and his eyes emerged back into the night. The sentry was looking the other way and Gallow didn’t hesitate: he grabbed the islander’s ankles and pulled hard, falling down the ladder and into the guardroom and taking the sentry with him. The islander let out a squawk. His arms flew out as the rest of him flew back, his face smacked into the stone roof, he fell down the ladder and the back of his head hit the floor below. He might have been dead from that, but in case he wasn’t, Tolvis jumped on him and twisted his neck until it snapped.

Gallow climbed up again. From the tower roof he could see the gates clearly, the bridge and Medrin’s bonfire dying slowly. There was no gatehouse, just the two squat stone columns that held the gates. The gates themselves were barred, the sort of bars that would take two men to lift. And he was right: there were a dozen or so men in the yard and on the battlements, too many for even Jyrdas to hold at bay while he and Tolvis opened the way for Medrin and the others.

He went back down and took a crossbow. ‘What we need is Gorrin or Durlak.’ They were a Marroc thing, crossbows, brought across the mountains by Aulian traders before they’d vanished when their empire collapsed. The Screambreaker had looked down his nose at anyone who tried to learn the use of one; Medrin doubtless saw them differently.

Tolvis spat. ‘Nioingr weapons.’ Arrows were bad enough.

On the south side Jyrdas had silenced the other sentry. They watched across the darkness, waiting until they saw him slipping back along the wall. Tolvis’s lips twitched.

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