Gallow by Nathan Hawke Read Free Book Online Page A

Modris! If he’d seen how she’d squirmed inside when he’d told her he was going to fight the Vathen . . . The thought of losing him, that
had
scared her, and it had turned out to be a far deeper fear than she’d thought it would be. She’d never admit it though, just as she’d never admit she was pleased to see him back. It all turned to anger instead.
    ‘Off with you!’ She shooed him out of the house and then went to look for her bone needles and some thread. She wouldn’t be too careful, stitching this unwanted forkbeard back together. It would hurt and he’d have a scar. Both would please her, but she’d keep her promise. He wouldn’t die.

 
     
     
     
7
     
NIOINGR
     
     
     
     
    G allow saddled one of the horses and rode it out to the Crackmarsh. In spring when the streams ran fast off the mountains and the Isset was deep and strong the Crackmarsh was fifty miles of water meadow criss-crossed with swamp paths and pocked with smooth bare boulders and little hillocks crowned by stands of stunted trees, a thousand tiny islands breaching the shallow water like the backs of petrified whales. Later in the year it dried out to a huge flat swathe of soft boggy soil between the litter of giant stones and the tufts of trees. Fine growing land if it hadn’t been for the ghuldogs.
    Around its eastern edge rose a line of low hills scattered with crags and thick groves of trees, guiding the Isset and the Crackmarsh westward out of the Varyxhun valley and the pass that led to the old Aulian Way across the mountains. There were caves here, lots of them. Whispers told stories that the deeper ones ran right across to the mountains, but the deeper ones were always flooded so no one really knew. Gallow found the rest of the villagers there, as Arda had said and he had guessed, bored and fractious and already arguing among themselves about whether they should go back. None of them was pleased to see him. Even Nadric was barely civil. Old wounds had opened with the coming of the Vathen.
    It was almost dark by the time he got back to the forge. Arda had finished with Corvin. Her face was furious.
    ‘You said he was a soldier.’
    ‘He is.’
    ‘I saw his sword. He’s not just
a
soldier.’
    He could have lied. Men picked up whatever they could find after a battle, after all, but sooner or later she’d find out. The old man would tell her if she ever asked. He shrugged. Better to hear it from him. ‘He’s Corvin Screambreaker.’
    Arda hissed at him, bearing her teeth. ‘The Widowmaker himself? Are you mad? You bring the Widowmaker into
my
house?’
    ‘I bring a man who is hurt, woman!’ For a moment he almost lost his temper. Arda was good at that. ‘Should I leave him to die?’
    ‘The Nightmare of the North? Yes, you surely should! If I’d known who he was before I stitched his eye . . . Get him out of here!’
    ‘When he’s well enough to travel on his own.’
    ‘No! Now! What if the Vathen come?’
    ‘I told you, woman! The Vathen have moved on Fedderhun. And why would they come here? Unless someone told them of a very good reason.’
    ‘Don’t you
woman
me, foxborn!’ She leaned into him, red with rage. ‘Never mind the Vathen then – what if anyone else finds out who you’ve got here? The rest of the village. They’ll burn the place down around us!’
    He met her gaze, eye to eye. ‘Then you’d best not tell them.’
    She stormed away out to the workshop and Nadric. In a while Nadric would come inside and tell Gallow that the Screambreaker had to go, and Gallow would say no, and then they’d argue and drink and drink and argue, and eventually Nadric would give in, just like he always did, and Arda would storm away and disappear into the fields just like
she
always did when they argued and she lost, and then she’d come back in the middle of the night and tear the furs off him and they’d make love like dragons. For a moment, after they were done, he’d see the gentleness that was buried