King of Thorns be-2 Page 11

  Gorgoth and I found the answer in the same moment, but he spoke first: “Sageous.”

  I nodded, slow as the realization of just how stupid I’d been crept over me. Coddin had been right: many hands would seek to wield a weapon like Gog. Twice now the dream-witch had turned that power against me. He might not be able to kill me with my own dreams, but he’d had a good try with Gog’s.

  “All the more reason to press on.” I might have said, Third time’s the charm, but there’s no point tempting the fates-unless you’ve got a big enough sword to kill them too.

  After breaking fast we rode on, closing now on Remagen. There’s a small fort on a ridge not far from the river as you come out of the Kentrow hills. It commands a view of the road approaching the town. We could see the Rhyme as a bright ribbon behind the fort, and a hint of the bridge towers.

  Kent and Maical flanked me at the front of our band and we approached the fort at a trot, Gog clutching my back, Gorgoth jogging close by. Makin and Rike rode behind, chuckling. Makin could even get a laugh out of Rike when he put his mind to it. Then Grumlow, then Sim and Row. I guess it could have been Gorgoth that spooked the fort-men, though at that distance they couldn’t have had a clear view of him. Either way, one moment I had Kent to my right and Maical to my left, and the next moment the grey had an empty saddle.

  I pulled Brath in a tight circle and jumped down quick-smart even as the others rode past in confusion. It had to be a lucky shot. At the range between us and the fort walls a good archer would be hard-pressed to hit a house using a longbow. But there it was, one feathered end hard against his neck, the sharp end red and dripping and jutting a foot from the other side. Maical looked at me with unusual focus as I dropped to one knee beside him.

  “Time to die, Brother Maical.” I didn’t want to lie to him. I took his hand.

  He watched me, holding my eyes as the others wheeled their horses and started to shout.

  “King Jorg,” he said, only without sound, blood running from the corners of his mouth. He looked strange with his helmet off to one side and a light in him, as if what had been broken all his life was fixed by a simple fall off his horse. He’d never called me “king” before, as if “brother” was all he could get hold of.

  “Brother Maical,” I said. I’ve lost a lot of brothers but not many while I watched their eyes. The strength went from his hand. He coughed blood and went his way.

  “What in hell?” Makin jumped down from his horse.

  The glistening arrowhead kept my attention. A bead of blood hung from the point, a baby’s reflection distorting across its curve. I saw a red knife and Katherine walking amongst the graves.

  “Hello, Jorg,” she had said.

  “He dead.” Kent joined me on his knees beside Maical. “How?” The arrow was plain enough but it didn’t seem to answer the question.

  I stood and walked past Makin’s horse, pulling the shield from over his saddlebags. I kept walking. A coldness crawled through me, tingling on my cheeks. I took the Nuban’s bow from its place on Brath’s back, checked its double load.

  “Jorg?” Kent clambered to his feet.

  “I’m going in,” I said. “Nobody gets out alive. Is that understood? Any man follows me, I’ll kill them.” Without waiting for answer I moved on.

  I walked a hundred yards before another arrow fell, sailing far to the left. The shot that killed Maical had to have been a freak, loosed with no real hope of hitting its target. I slung the Nuban’s crossbow over my shoulder. Thin ties held the bolts in their channels.

  I could see four men on the battlements now. Fifty yards on and they loosed a volley. I raised the shield. One arrow hit it, the point just visible on my side, the others clattered on the rocks.

  It wasn’t a big fort, more of a watch point. Thirty men would have filled it elbow to elbow, and it looked to have been many years since it was fully garrisoned.

  By the time I stood properly in range the men on the walls had found their courage. A single warrior approached them at a steady walk, and he didn’t look much above sixteen. Three more joined them behind the battlements, not soldiers, no uniform, just a ragtag bunch, more of them looking out through the portcullis.

  “You’re not going to let me in then?” I called to them.

  “How’s your friend?” a fat one called from the wall. The others laughed.

  “He’s fine,” I said. “Something spooked his horse and he fell. He’ll be up and about as soon as he gets his breath.” I peered over my shield and pulled the arrow from it. “Somebody want this back?” I felt utterly calm, serene, and yet at the same time with the sense of something rushing toward me like a squall racing across the grasslands beneath a darkening sky.

  “Surely.” One of the half dozen behind the gate snorted and started to turn the wheel, raising the portcullis notch by notch while the chain ratcheted through its housings. The thick muscle on his arms gleamed white through the dirt as he strained.

  I saw two of those on the wall exchange glances. I don’t think the arrow was all they planned to take from me. I started forward so that I would reach the gate just as it drew high enough for me to pass below without bending. The stink of the place after so many nights in the open made my eyes sting.

  The storm that had been racing toward me across some hidden wasteland in my mind hit as I entered the fort. I offered the arrow to the closest man, a thin fellow with, of all things, a headman’s axe in hand. He reached for it and I stuck it through his eye.

  There’s a still moment when something like that happens, when an arrow juts from a gleaming eyeball and the owner has yet to scream. The men who act in such still moments tend to live longer. Of the crowd behind the gate only one moved before the man’s scream, and I moved quicker. I caught his wrist as he reached for me and drove Makin’s shield against his elbow joint. With his arm held straight I pivoted him so his body struck another man before his head hit the wall. The quick men tend to live longer, but sometimes they just get themselves first in the queue.

  I stepped back, almost to the portcullis that had started to fall, and shrugged the Nuban’s bow from my shoulder, letting its weight swing it under my arm. Bringing it up I pulled both triggers without bothering to aim. Both bolts hit the same man, which was a bit of a waste, but of all of them he had the most armour on and the Nuban’s crossbow put two big holes in it.

  The portcullis slammed down behind me. The wind of it tickled on my neck as it sliced past. Four left in view. The big man at the gate-wheel hunting for his sword, another unhurt on the floor climbing to his feet. Two who could be brothers, both wide with straggly hair and rotting teeth, reaching for me. They made the right choice. When the numbers are on your side, grapple your foe before he gets his steel clear.

  I pushed off the gate, using it to accelerate my charge. The pair before me both had the weight advantage but if you hurl yourself hard behind a shield, especially if you ensure the iron edge of it hits somewhere useful, like the throat, you can get yourself a little advantage of your own, whatever you weigh.

  I had no fear in me, just the need to kill, just something crawling on me, in me, that might be washed away with enough blood.

  One of the two uglies went down beneath me, blood, spit, and teeth spattering my face. The other loomed above us as I pulled Grumlow’s knife from my boot.

  Knife-work is a red business, Brothers. With the knife you slice meat up close, lay it to the bone, and swim in what gushes out. The screams are in your ear, the hurting trembles through your short blade. I could say I remember all of it but I don’t. A fury took me, painting the world in scarlet, and I howled as I killed. I have a vision of the moment I left the gate-yard, drawing my sword for the first time as the remainder of the garrison hurried down two sets of narrow stairs to the right and left. The men coming into view first tried to back off, with the others crowding behind, pushing.

  It wasn’t for Maical that I killed those men, or for the joy of slaughter, or the proud legend of Ki
ng Jorg. Like Gog I have my own fires banked and burning, and on some days the right spark can set them blazing beyond my control. Perhaps that was the true reason I had come traipsing over half a dozen realms to find this fire-mage for my pet monster. Perhaps I wanted to know that such fires could be contained. That they didn’t have to kill us both.

  I survived my foolishness, though fourteen men did not, and I walked, half-drunk with exhaustion, from the gate once more. The Brothers left their posts on their perimeter around the fort and followed me back toward the horses.

  “Jorg,” Makin said.

  I turned and they stopped.

  “Red Jorg,” said Red Kent, and he clapped his hand across his chest.

  “Red Jorg,” Rike grunted. He stamped.

  Gorgoth stamped his great foot. Makin drew sword and clashed it against his breastplate. The others took up the chant. I looked down and saw that no part of me was without gore. I dripped with the blood of others, as red as Kent on the day we found him. And I knew then why he wouldn’t speak of it.

  I went to Maical and took his head-axe from the grey’s harness. “We’ll make him a cairn,” I said. “And put the heads of the fort-men around to watch over it.” I threw the axe to Rike. He caught it and set off for the fort without complaint. For once I believed the taking of loot was not at the front of his thinking.

  We built the cairn. Gorgoth brought rocks that no single man would be able to roll away. I don’t know that Maical would have wanted the heads, or cared, or have held any opinion on the matter, but we set them as his honour guard in any case. I don’t know what Maical would have wanted. I never really met him until those last seconds when he lay dying. It surprised me that I cared, but I found that I did.

  16

  Four years earlier

  You can cut seven shades from a man. Scarlet arterial blood, purple from the veins, bile like fresh-cut grass, browns from the gut, but it all dries to somewhere between rust and tar. Time for Red Jorg to take himself to a stream and clean off the fort-men. I watched the dirt swirl away, pinkish in the water.

  “So what was that about?” Makin asked, striding up behind.

  “They shot my idiot,” I said.

  A pause. It seemed that Makin always had that pause with me, as if I were a puzzle to him. “We told you he was dead back in Norwood and you didn’t spare him a moment,” Makin said. “So why now? The truth, Jorg.”

  “What is truth?” I asked, washing the last of the blood from my hands. “Pilate said that, you know? ‘What is truth?’”

  “Fine, don’t tell me then,” Makin said. “But we have to cross that bridge in a hurry now, before this gets out.”

  I stood, shaking water from my hair. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

  With the Brothers saddled and on the road I took a moment to revisit the cairn. Necromancy pulsed in my chest as I approached, an echo of the pain when Father’s knife cut in. An echo of all the flavours of pain that filled me in that moment, stabbed, betrayed, the strength running from me, hot and red. Ravens fluttered away from the heads as I drew close. I stood mute before the mound of dry rocks, mind empty, not knowing what I felt. My eye took in the spatters of yellowed lichen, a quartz vein through a large boulder, the black trickles of blood on stone. It seemed that the heads watched me, as if their raven-pecked eyes were turned toward me. And then, there was no “seemed” about it. As I made a slow circle of the cairn, each head in turn swivelled its gaze to follow me. I had killed the first man with an arrow in the eye. It twitched as he tried to turn that eye my way. I held the gaze of the single eye he could watch me with.

  “Jorg.” His lips formed my name.

  “Chella?” I asked. Who else could it be? “I thought I buried you deep enough.” For a moment I saw her toppling into that shaft, dragging the Nuban, after I’d shot them both with his bow.

  The same smile twisted each man’s lips.

  “I’ll find you, bitch,” I spoke low. She had enough ears to hear me.

  The heads broadened their smiles to show teeth. Lips moved. It looked like “Dead King” that they mouthed.

  I shrugged. “Enjoy the ravens.” And I left them. Whatever power worked here, I doubted it would trouble Maical under such a weight of stone.

  We moved on, resupplied from the fort, with replacements for what Gog had burned in the night. Remagen huddled around both shores of the Rhyme, a modest walled town, smoke rising from scores of chimneys lined along well-ordered streets. The bridge held my attention though. I’d not thought of bridges as graceful before, but this one hung glittering between two silver towers taller than the Haunt, suspended on what looked like gleaming wire but must have been cables thick as a man.

  Within half an hour we were lined at the town gates, waiting our turn behind pedlars, merchants with their wagons, farmers leading cows or carting ducks and hens. We stowed our weapons out of sight on the horses, but we still looked a rough crowd.

  Gorgoth drew looks aplenty, but none of the normal screaming and the running.

  “You’ll be with the circus then,” said the farmer with the ducks in wicker cages. He nodded as if agreeing with his statement.

  “So we are,” I said before Rike could grumble. “I juggle,” I added, and gave him my smile.

  The men at the gates were of the same rag-tag crowd that we found at the fort. The free-town had no soldiers, according to Row, just a loose militia drawn from the population, at the service of the mayor for a month or two then free to go back to their livelihoods.

  “Well met.” I clapped my hands to the shoulders of what should have been the gate captain in any decent town. I grinned as if we’d been best friends all our lives. “Jorg the Red and his travelling players, catching up with our colleagues at the circus. I juggle. Would you like to see?”

  “No,” he said, trying to shake free. A good answer in the main since I don’t juggle.

  “You’re sure?” I asked, finally letting him go. “My friend here does knife tricks. And Little Rikey is famously ugly?”

  “Move on,” he said and turned to the tinker behind us.

  I passed between the guardsmen-“Care to see some juggling? No?”-and through the gates.

  “The bridge is that way,” Makin said, pointing again as he did at the crossroads, as if it weren’t two hundred feet tall and glittering in the morning sunshine.

  “Indeed,” I said. “But we’re with the circus.” And I led off to the right, not pointing at the multi-coloured pavilion rising above the rooftops. “I juggle!”

  We had to start with the elbows to make a path before we got within clear sight of the pavilion. The people of Remagen were out in their hundreds, packing the streets around the circus, spilling from the taverns and crowding the smaller tents and stalls around the main attraction.

  “Must be Sunday,” Sim said, grinning like a boy, which I suppose he was by most accountings.

  Rike moved to the front, pushing his way toward the big top. Like Sim he had an eager look on him, the kind of light that toy clown put in him back at the Haunt. I wasn’t the only one who remembered.

  “It’s Taproot?” Makin asked, frowning.

  I nodded. “Got to be.”

  “Excellent,” said Kent. He’d swiped himself three sugar sticks from somewhere and was trying to get all of them in his mouth at once.

  We got to the pavilion entrance, laced up all the way down and staked, with the smaller entrance to the side also tagged down. A man and a boy sat in the dust before the door, bent over a wooden board with black and white markers arrayed across it in various depressions.

  “Show’s not until sundown,” the man said as my shadow fell across the board. He didn’t look up.

  “You’ve got mancala in three if you play from the end pit then the eye pit,” I said.

  He looked up sharp enough at that, lifting his bald head on the thickest of necks. “By Christ Jesu! It’s little Jorg!”

  He stood and took me under the arms, throwing me a yard in the air
before executing a neat catch.

  “Ron,” I said. “You used to be strong!”

  “Be fair.” He grinned. “You’ve doubled in height.”

  I shrugged. “The armour weighs a bit too. Saved my ribs though!” I waved the others forward. “You remember Little Rikey?”

  “Of course. Makin, good to see you. Grumlow.” Ron caught sight of Gorgoth. “And who’s the big fellow?”

  “Show him the thing,” said Rike, bubbling like a child, “show him the thing.”

  “Later.” Ron smiled. “The weights are all stowed now. Besides, looks like your friend could put me out of business.”

  Ron, or to do him justice, the amazing Ronaldo, did the circus strongman act. He earned Rike’s undying respect by the simple act of lifting a heavier weight than Rike could. It’s true that nature treated Ron to an unreasonable helping of muscle, but I think that Little Rike might be the stronger even so. Certainly I’d bet on Rike before Ron in a tavern brawl. But with the lifting of weights there’s grip and timing and commitment, and Rike faltered where Ron pressed on.

  “So, where might we find the good Dr. Taproot?” I asked.

  Ronaldo led us through the side flap, leaving the boy, who turned out to be a midget old enough to be going grey, to watch our horses. I took the Nuban’s bow. I didn’t trust the midget to be able to run down any thieves, and besides, I might want to shoot a circus clown or two. Just for laughs.

  We skirted around the centre ring, kicking sawdust and watching three acrobats practice their tumbles out where the sun struck down through the high opening. Toward the back of the big-top, canvas divisions spaced out several rooms. Here the heavy stink from the animal cages reached in and you could hear a growl or two above the thumps and shouts of the tumblers.

  Taproot had his back to me as I followed Ron in. Two of the dancer girls stood before him in slack poses, bored and rolling their eyes.

  “Watch me!” Taproot said. “Hips and tits. That sells seats. And look as if you’re enjoying it, for God’s sake. Watch me.”