Cold Redemption Read Online Free PDF Page B

could call a sorcerer, just so they could hang him in Varyxhun square.’ He walked slowly to the corner of the room and picked up the Edge of Sorrows from
where it stood, propped against the wall. They had no scabbard for it – that was still hanging from Gallow’s belt, or perhaps some other Lhosir now. The thin-faced one lifted the sword
and swung it a few times. The air whistled and moaned as it parted before the rust-red steel. He looked at Oribas. ‘So you came over the mountains with a Lhosir with no beard who fought some
of his own on the Aulian Way and saved Addic’s life. That right? Addic says you called him a name: Gallow. What was his deed name, Aulian?’
    ‘His what?’
    Addic stepped between them. ‘Forkbeards give themselves names. What was the rest of his name?’
    Oribas blinked, confused. ‘He said he was Gallow Foxbeard among his own.’
    The thin-faced Marroc turned to the other two. He brandished the sword and his face had a greedy gleam to it. ‘The Foxbeard. Then you know what this is, Addic? You know . . .’
    Addic held up a hand but his eyes had a hungry glitter to them too. Yes, he knew all right. He crouched down beside Oribas. ‘The forkbeards came here hunting one they called Gallow the
Foxbeard three summers ago after Andhun fell to the Vathen. They were after a sword. Did he ever call this sword by a name?’
    Oribas shook his head. He felt weak and stiff but his wits were back where they should be now and they were saying that they didn’t much like the looks on any of these Marroc faces right
now. They knew the red sword for what it was, or they thought they did. The Edge of Sorrows if you were Aulian. Other names to others.
    Addic smiled but the glitter in his eyes was made of daggers, not of laughter. ‘I’ll tell you what I’ve heard of Gallow the Foxbeard, Aulian, and then you can tell me if this
is the man who kept me from falling into the Isset and stood and fought four of Cithjan’s bastards. He was a forkbeard who never went back across the sea after old Tane died. When the Vathen
swept out of the east with the Sword of the Weeping God, he was there when the forkbeards met them outside Andhun and they slaughtered each other. The forkbeards say the Widowmaker slew the Weeping
Giant and took his sword, and that Gallow was at his side when he fell and that he stole it for himself. They say it was because of him that Andhun fell to the Vathen and that he’s why their
king is Medrin Sixfingers where once he had twelve. Most tales say Gallow drowned in the seas below Andhun’s cliffs, but others whisper he came this way, looking for the Marroc family
he’d left behind. Either way, neither his body nor the sword were ever found.’ Addic bared his teeth. ‘Is this the Gallow who crossed the mountains with you, Aulian? Because if he
is then we’ve all heard a great deal of his deeds, good and ill. And this sword is Solace, the red sword of the Vathen, taken by the Widowmaker and whose edge our forkbeard king greatly
desires.’
    Oribas licked his lips. ‘I’ll tell you of the Gallow I knew. Decide for yourself if he’s the same Gallow Foxbeard of whom you speak, for I cannot say, and he never called his
sword by any name that I recall. I come from a desert at the far edge of what was once the Aulian Empire—’
    ‘You speak our tongue,’ interrupted the thin-faced one.
    ‘Where I came from I was a scholar. I learned many tongues. Many years ago a monster came to my town. It wore the guise of a man, though it was not, and we didn’t know it for what it
was, not for many weeks. It brought ruin and murder and much worse. You speak of the ghosts of the old empire, of the shadewalkers. This creature was a thousand times more terrible. Rakshasa, it
was once named. When finally it was revealed, it left us all but destroyed. I followed its trail but I could never find it, nor find a way to destroy it. In my despair I prayed to the old gods in a
place we