Cold Redemption by Nathan Hawke Read Free Book Online

probably has another man. I suppose I hope for her that it’s so. And now I’ll never know, will I?’ He looked up
and touched his shirt. Beneath it, against his skin, an old locket hung on a worn chain. A little piece of Arda he’d taken with him into battle when the Vathen had come. The one thing over
all that time he’d never lost. That, his shield and the cursed red sword.
    ‘You should know better than to fight fate.’
    ‘Medrin is king now, is he?’
    ‘Yes. King Medrin One-Hand. Medrin Sixfingers. Medrin Ironhand, or Silverhand if you prefer. Yurlak scoured the world before he died for any who could make his son whole again. An Aulian
came, a dark one, but it was the Eyes of Time who gave Medrin the hand he has now, one of iron and silver. A poor substitute for flesh and bone. Yurlak lived long enough to see it and then he
died.’ Another wet laugh. ‘Yurlak scoured the world for you as well, Gallow Foxbeard. I swear it was his fury that kept him alive so long. But Ironhand? He means to cross the mountains
and rebuild Aulia itself. He sees himself an emperor.’ Beyard shook his head, a savage snarl on his face. ‘Medrin, eh? Fool he is, but he’s not the man either of us knew.
He’s a leader as his father was before him. A king with an iron hand.’ Beyard rose. He picked up his mask and crown. ‘I’m glad, Gallow, to have set my eyes on you one more
time. I’ll not tell Cithjan who you are. He’d send you to Medrin in chains and Medrin would bring down every world of pain that he knows upon you. He’d find this wife and these
sons of yours and make blood ravens of them while you watch. So no, I’ll not tell Cithjan. You were a better man than that. You will be Gellef Sheepstealer and you will merely hang for the
two men you killed.’
    ‘Two?’
    ‘The other will die in a few days. I am ironskin, so I know his fate.’
    ‘What of the Aulian who was with me?’
    Beyard put the mask and crown back over his head. ‘You should know how it is with our kind. They threw him into the gorge of the Isset.’
    Which left him with nothing. Gallow held his head in his hands. ‘All this way. I brought him all this way. I told him he didn’t have to follow.’
    ‘A man can’t escape his fate. I’d plead for you, for the sake of the friendship we once shared, but you turned on your kin, Gallow. You should not have done that.’ Beyard
stood in the door of the cell and turned, face hidden now behind bars of iron. ‘Does the red sword swim beneath the waves below the cliffs of Andhun? Did you lose it on the other side of the
world?’
    Gallow froze, head bowed and eyes filled with tears for those he’d never see again. The sword. Solace, the Comforter, the Peacebringer, all those names the Marroc and the Vathen had given
it, and it had done nothing but mock him from the moment he’d held it in his hand. Oribas called it by its Aulian name: the Edge of Sorrows, for the Aulians had always seen the truth of the
curse it carried. ‘I never lost it, Beyard,’ he said, slowly looking up as he did. ‘I carried it out of the sea of Andhun and I carried it across the world and back again. I
carried it across the ruins of Aulia and along the length of the Aulian Way. The men I killed? It tasted their blood.’
    Beyard stiffened. ‘It’s here? In Varyxhun?’
    ‘If the men I fought didn’t think to bring it back then it’s lying beside the Aulian Way. In a place where only I will find it.’
    The Fateguard stepped back inside and stood over Gallow, eyes boring down into him. ‘Where, old friend? Where is it?’
    Gallow shook his head. ‘I’ll not give it to Medrin. Not for nothing.’
    Beyard’s iron-gloved hands reached around Gallow’s neck and tore the locket with the snip of Arda’s hair away from him. ‘I will find them. Whoever they are. I will punish
them until you show me.’
    Gallow met his eyes, unflinching. ‘Will you? You were my friend once and a far better man than that.