Cold Redemption by Nathan Hawke Page B

out but that doesn’t make us friends. I’ll fillet your liver if you even blink wrong.’
    Gallow almost smiled but then a bitterness welled up inside him. Arda might have said the same, the wife he’d left behind. She’d come from the mountains too. Did they make all Marroc
women like that up here? He missed her. Three years spending every day trying to find a way back to her, and now he’d come so far and was so close to what had once been home, and . . .
    But now wasn’t the time. He pushed the horse on and drove it as hard as he dared through the night, following the trail the Lhosir had made back to the ridge and winding down the other
side, back to the Aulian Way, the Varyxhun Road as the Marroc called it. The snow here was only a few inches thick. Older falls had been piled into embankments on either side and had half melted in
the afternoons and then frozen like granite each night, over and over until there were ice walls on either side of the road half as tall as a man. He pushed on and on down the gorge of the Isset
towards Varyxhun while the night grew ever colder. The woman stayed slumped against his back. He thought she was asleep until she suddenly shifted and poked him. ‘Here! Stop! Go up that trail
there.’ In the dark he could hardly see it, but when she pointed, there it was, a break in the ice wall beside the road and a narrow path up through the trees. The horse was close to the end
of its legs, breathing hard, fighting against the cold. His own hands and face were numb too.
    ‘Where are we going?’
    ‘Never you mind. It’s not far and that’s all you need to know.’
    The last ten minutes were slow. The black branches of the trees blotted out the sky and the stars and the moon flickered between them. The track wound back and forth, climbing up the slope. It
was hardly a track at all in places and Gallow had to stop more than once to see which way it led, but it ended at a tiny log hut, empty and with no door. The Marroc woman slipped out from under
their furs and went inside. Gallow blew on his hands and rubbed them together, trying to find some feeling in them again. The horse snickered and butted him as he got off. He patted its neck.
‘Sorry. No blankets.’ Likely as not the cold would kill it before the morning and then they’d be on foot and Beyard wouldn’t be far behind.
    The Marroc woman was building a fire. ‘Woodsman hut,’ she said as he came in. ‘No one comes here this time of year.’
    ‘Except Marroc hiding from forkbeards?’
    She gave him a sharp look. ‘I still have my knife. Don’t you try anything.’
    Gallow looked at the door, at the roof. Too small to coax their horse inside. He went back out and tied it as close to the door as he could, then stripped the saddle off its back and tied his
fur cloak around it instead.
    ‘What are you doing?’ The Marroc woman looked at him as though he was mad. ‘We’ll need that!’
    ‘How far is it to Varyxhun on foot?’
    She shrugged, striking sparks now at a little nest of tinder. ‘Three days, give or take. Depends how fast you walk.’
    ‘Beyard will catch us before then.’
    ‘Never heard of him,’ She cupped her hands over the first tiny flame and blew softly, fanning it.
    ‘The Fateguard.’ Which didn’t mean anything to her, so he added, ‘The one in the iron mask.’
That
did. She looked up sharply and made the sign of Modris
the Protector. ‘So we need the horse.’
    She snorted. ‘People see you riding a forkbeard horse in Varyxhun, they’ll have you off the back of it and hanging from a gibbet before you can blink.’
    ‘And why shouldn’t I ride a forkbeard horse? I’m a forkbeard.’
    She straightened and looked at him long and hard. ‘Yes.’ Her fingers tightened on the knife. ‘Yes, you are.’
    He helped her to build up the fire, careful to stay away from her as best he could in the cramped space of the hut. When it was done he curled up as close as he dared and let its