Cold Redemption by Nathan Hawke

as they will. Two men came here some days ago. One of them may have been hurt.’ He paused, watching their
eyes, all of them. There was always one face to give the truth away; and yes, they knew the men he meant. His eyes settled on the one who gave away most. A boy a few years short of being a man.
‘They had an unusual sword. Long and with a touch of red to its blade.’ Yes. Solace had come here. ‘And was one of them perhaps a stranger? A foreigner? A darkskin?’ Yes to
that too, but something was wrong. There were no glances towards the bodies as he asked his questions. The men and the sword had been here, that was clear, but now they were gone?
    There was only so far they could answer with their faces. He walked to the fire and pulled out a burning branch. The flames licked over his iron gauntlet as he reached into the blaze but he
never felt the heat, only ever cold. Between them the Marroc told him everything with an honesty born of fear. The bandit Addic had come with a half-dead Aulian he’d found on the road and,
yes, the red sword too. They’d stayed a few days and then gone with another to hunt a shadewalker. Beyard took a while to believe that, but in the end he did. As for the sword, none of them
knew. The men had taken it with them when they’d gone, or else they’d hidden it in the barns perhaps. The burning branch never left Beyard’s hands. It never once touched their
skin.
    Fear gives birth to truth
. He rose when he was done, oblivious until then to the other Lhosir moving around him, tearing the house apart, helping themselves to food and mead or else
simply standing, watching.
    ‘The men we’re looking for will return,’ Beyard told them. ‘We wait for them. These ones are not to be touched.’ The Lhosir didn’t like that but they could
live with it. The Fateguard were joyless souls. He looked about, missing something. ‘Where’s Gallow? Where’s the other woman? Where’s Niflas?’
    But it was a while longer before Niflas came back and when he did he held up a handful of tangled rope and dropped it at Beyard’s feet. ‘Bordas and Torjik are still looking,
Fateguard, but they’re gone. Both of them. Gone and taken our horses too.’

 
     
     
     
10
ACHISTA
     
     
     
     
    I n the failing light Gallow struggled with the ropes around him. He tried to bunch his legs to pull his hands in front of him, to bring the bonds
to where his teeth could work on them, but Beyard had tied them too tight, and so he lay in the snow, rolling helplessly back and forth. Shouts and screams echoed from the farmhouse and then one of
the shutters slammed open with a crack of wood and firelight spilled out into the night. A figure struggled from the snowdrift beneath the window.
    ‘Marroc!’ he cried. ‘Marroc, here!’
    The figure glanced his way, turned a moment, hesitated and then turned back. ‘Who’s there?’
    A woman’s voice. Gallow answered, ‘I can lead you to the forkbeard horses.’
    The figure ran towards him, arms and legs flailing through the deep snow. Yes, a woman. She stopped when she saw him though. ‘You’re one of them!’ She turned away and started
to run.
    ‘Have you seen an Aulian? His name is Oribas!’
    He couldn’t think of anything else to say but that was enough. She stopped again. ‘What’s
your
name?’
    ‘Gallow.’
    The woman came back. She had a knife in her hand. She looked him over, face filled with indecision while the rest of her twitched with the desire to run far and fast before the Lhosir came after
her.
    ‘I can take you to their horses!’
    ‘You’re the one who saved Addic?’
    The Marroc on the road?
Gallow shook his head. ‘I never knew his name.’ He rolled and turned his ropes towards her. ‘Quickly!’
    ‘Addic brought your Aulian friend here. He spoke of you. Fine words.’ The woman knelt beside him and took her knife to the ropes that hobbled him. She’d seen Oribas! Somehow
he’d been thrown off a cliff and