Emperor of Thorns Page 14

  I had to laugh. What were they going to do if I laughed at them? Hurt me? In the shock of it I had bitten my tongue and I laughed now with the taste of blood filling my mouth and the warmth of it running crimson over my lips.

  ‘Idiot.’ Billan got up and pushed Rael out of his way. He caught my chin and jaw in a painful grip. ‘What did you do, boy?’

  ‘Boy?’ It hurt to get the word out with his fingers digging into my jaw muscles. I didn’t know what I’d done but I was glad of it. I suspected something in the fragments of Gog bedded in that scar had reacted to the touch of so much heat.

  ‘Answer me.’

  Even now Billan thought he had something to threaten me with. I spat blood into his face. He staggered away with a girlish shriek and that set me laughing all the more. Hysteria had me in its claws. Others among the Perros Viciosos got to their feet. One slab of muscle named Manwa, brother to Sancha who I killed in the pit, took Billan’s arm and tried to settle him. A dirty rag set to the blood didn’t seem able to wipe it off. Seconds later a better view showed that the skin itself had turned scarlet where the blood touched, and in his eyes the blood had scalded his cornea a milky white. It seemed the necromancy that lurked within me and would kill small things through just a touch of my fingers, really did run in my veins.

  ‘Get Old Mary back!’ Billan shouted it in his blindness. The effort to hold himself back, to deny the lust to choke the life out of me, made him tremble. ‘I want him to scream for a month.’

  ‘You won’t live a month, Billan. When your brothers understand that your sight isn’t coming back … how long before they tie you to this post do you think?’ I couldn’t stop smiling. Hysteria and bravado would be cut from me quick enough when the crone brought her knives, I knew that, but hell, laugh while you can, no?

  Manwa pulled out his sword, which turned out to be my sword. ‘He has a sword of the old-steel and he works magic.’ He turned the blade in his huge fist. He was a big man but his hands belonged to a giant. ‘Maybe we should ransom him? The other one said Earl Hansa would pay for them.’

  Rael spat, his face tight with suffering. A burned hand leaves a man no peace. ‘He dies. He dies hard.’

  Manwa shrugged and sat down, my sword across his knees.

  Two men led Old Mary back to the posts. I saw them first from the corner of my eye and watched so close that I almost didn’t notice the rope go slack around my ankles. Behind the complaints and curses of the Bad Dogs, behind the wet unnatural sobbing from Sunny, I heard a click and whir and a scrabbling like fingers clawing wood. Something fought a path up the post at my back, on the far side. Schnick. The rope around my knees fell away. Nobody noticed.

  Mary unrolled her tool-wrap out across the dust again. She gave me a mean look as if I was really going to get it now for disturbing her rest. Again the absurdity of it twitched at the corners of my mouth. She drew the sharpest of her blades, a small cutting edge on a cylindrical metal shaft, the sort of thing Grecko doctors might use for slicing out a canker. Three steps brought Mary to me, unsteady on her feet, sure of hand. She cut away the stained remnants of my shirt. The blade didn’t pull as the cloth parted before it.

  ‘That’s a very ugly wart you have there, Old Mary,’ I said.

  She paused and looked at me. She had mean old woman eyes, very dark.

  ‘Oh sorry. I mean the one down on your chin. Ugly thing. Couldn’t you just slice it off? With that nice sharp knife of yours? Trim some of those wattles too? We don’t want them calling you Ugly Old Mary now, do we?’

  Something dry and unpleasant scrambled over my bound hands. I shivered as hard little legs moved over my wrists. It took all my remaining composure not to twitch the thing off me.

  ‘Are you stupid?’ Mary asked after the longest pause. She hadn’t said a word to Sunny the whole time she worked on him.

  ‘Did I hurt your feelings, Old Mary?’ I smiled at her, my teeth crimson no doubt. ‘You know that however much I shout and beg, those words can’t go back in the box don’t you? You are ugly and old. There’s nothing we can do about it, Mary. I expect little Gretcha will be doing your work soon enough and you’ll be her journeyman piece. I wonder what shapes she’ll cut you into?’

  The Bad Dogs watched me now, their arguments forgotten. Even Rael and Billan gave up on their hurts for a moment to give me their attention. Victims threaten or plead. Old Mary didn’t know what to make of mockery.

  Schnick. My wrists were free. Blood started to flow into them. It hurt worse than anything I’d suffered on the torture pole thus far.

  Old Mary shook her head and brushed aside a lock of grey hair. She looked annoyed, less sure of herself. Here she was, ready to open me up piece by piece, and I’d made her self-conscious with throw-away commentary on her wartiness. I grinned wide enough to crack my face. I felt pretty sure they’d have to kill me once I got free. The prospect of attacking them rather than expiring on that pole just flooded me with joy. I couldn’t stop smiling.

  ‘Cracked, this one.’ Mary set the point of her knife at the extreme right of my lowest rib.

  I strained for the faint noise of my saviour crawling up the pole. If it cut the rope across my chest and upper arms everyone would notice it fall and I would still be secured by the head. They hadn’t set a rope around our necks, presumably to stop us choking when straining to get away from the pain.

  Mary made her cut. They say sharp knife, no tears. The cutting didn’t hurt, but an acid wash of pain followed in the knife’s wake. It took all my restraint to keep from kicking her away and betraying myself.

  ‘Ouch,’ I said. ‘That hurts.’

  Mary drew back to make a lower cut parallel to the first. Behind me the creature slipped and fell.

  ‘Oh crap!’ I shouted it. Amazingly Old Mary startled back and several of the Bad Dogs flinched. Somehow the creature caught on my hands, a bite or a grip, I didn’t know, but I did know it really hurt. ‘OUCH! Fuck it!’

  Mary blinked. I had one thin slice in me – she didn’t understand.

  ‘You’re going to do the same thing again?’ I demanded. The creature released its grip and climbed back over my hands to the pole. It felt like a giant crab, or spider. Jesu, I hate spiders. ‘You’re going to do the ribs all over again like you did on Sunny?’ I flicked my eyes his way. ‘You’re supposed to be good at this, to make it interesting to watch! No wonder they’ve got Gretcha ready to replace you.’

  ‘The ribs are boring,’ somebody called out behind her.

  ‘It’s good when she breaks them out.’ That was Rael.

  ‘We’ve got one ready for that.’

  ‘Something new!’

  Slight vibrations as the creature reached the chest rope. Shit. I tensed ready to struggle like hell when it came free. More vibration and the thing moved on, up, the rope intact.

  ‘Come on Ugly Mary, show us something new.’ A dark-skinned youth near the back.

  Mary didn’t like that at all. She scowled at me, showing yellow stumps of teeth. Muttering, she turned and bent for a thin hook.

  The creature moved behind my head. My hair pulled where strands were bound up in the leather. A claw slid under the strap that bound my forehead.

  Mary faced me, straightening as much as her back allowed. She kept the hook low as she advanced, at groin level, smiling for once.

  Schnick.

  I pressed forward and the rope around my chest gave. The creature must have sawed through, leaving just a strand to hold it.

  Conjurers will hold your attention where they want it and in doing so can leave you blind to what else is happening before your eyes. Mary’s hook held the Bad Dogs’ attention. The last rope on me dropped away and, like magic, nobody saw it fall.

  The madness in me, some virulent mix of terror and relief, put me in mind to scratch my nose then return my hand behind me. Sanity prevailed. I overcame the temptation to waste the moment by sinking Mary’s hook into one of her eyes. Instead I moved forward, very swift, and snatched my
sword from Manwa’s lap.

  I strode into the midst of them.

  To avoid grappling and capture it’s best to keep to the edge, but they had bows and somewhere, more of those darts. By striking to the middle I kept them disorganized, close. And as I moved through them I laid about me. Before the first of the Dogs gained their feet I had opened wounds on four men that would never close.

  There’s a freedom in being surrounded on all sides by enemies. In such circumstances, with a heavy blade that’s sharp enough to make the wind bleed, you can swing in grand and vicious circles and your only care need be to ensure the weapon isn’t locked into the corpse of your last victim. In many ways I had lived most of my life in exactly such a condition, swinging in all directions with no worry about who might die. Experience served me well on the edge of the Iberico Hills.

  The Bad Dogs died, parted from heads, from limbs, without time for one man to fall before the point of my sword ploughed a red furrow through the next. Not before or since have I taken such unadulterated joy in slaughter. Some cleared their weapons, swords, knives, sharp little hatchets, cleaver-axes, but none lasted more than two exchanges with me: a swift parry and they went down on the riposte. I got cut, in three places. I didn’t know about that until much later, until I found that some of the blood wouldn’t clean away.

  Once, with men advancing from many directions, I spun and found Manwa in front of me. Instinct wrapped my spare hand around his knife hand and twisted me to the side. Hatred drove my forehead into his nose. He was a tall man, powerful, but I had grown tall, and whether rage multiplied my strength or my muscle matched his I don’t know, but his knife didn’t find me. In fact I kept it for a dozen more bloody moments, cutting and thrusting, until I left it in Rael’s neck.

  It helped that many of them were drunk, some too intoxicated on blind-shine even to find their weapons, let alone swing them to good effect. It also helped that I hated them all with such purity, and that I had trained at swordplay for months, day in, day out, until my hands bled and the sword-song rang in my ears.

  A fat man fell away from me, guts vomiting in blue coils from his opened belly. Another man, already running, I cut down from behind. Turning, I saw two more Dogs running toward the valley. One I brought down at fifty paces with a hatchet scooped from the ground. The other escaped. The silence was sudden and complete.

  By the posts Mary stood with Gretcha at her side. The girl had one small hand knotted in the old woman’s skirts, the other holding her blowpipe, levelled at me. I walked toward them. Pfft. Gretcha’s dart hit my collarbone. I snatched the pipe from her and threw it behind me.

  ‘We’re very much alike, Gretcha, you and I.’

  I squatted to be level with the girl. The dart came out with a pull and I let it fall into the dust. She watched me with dark eyes. I saw a lot of Mary in her. A granddaughter perhaps.

  ‘I can help.’ I smiled, sad for her, sad for everything. ‘If someone had done this for me when I was a child it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.’

  Her mouth made an ‘oh’ of surprise as the sword passed through her, grating on thin bones. She slid off the blade as I stood.

  ‘Ugly. Old. Mary,’ I said.

  She still held the hook. I caught her around her scrawny neck but she didn’t try to stick me with it. Necromancy tingled in my fingertips, reacting to her age maybe. My fingers found the knobbles of her spine and I let death leak into her, enough to make her crumple to the floor.

  Sunny still lived. His gasping made the only sound in that silence that settles over carnage. Some of the Bad Dogs would be wounded but alive. If they were though they managed to stay quiet about it and sensibly keep themselves from my attention.

  Close up Sunny’s injuries screamed at me. I sensed the hurt coursing through him in red rivers. Necromancy knows about such things. With a hand against his chest it seemed I knew him blood to bone, that I knew the branching of his veins, the shape of his spine, the beat and flutter of his heart. I had no healing though, only death. Thick mucus, flecked with char, oozed from his eye sockets. His tongue lay scorched and swollen in a broken mouth.

  ‘I can’t help you, Greyson Landless.’

  The effort that raised his eyeless head to me tore through the necromantic threads between us and ripped a gasp from me. I cut his ropes and lowered him to the ground. I wouldn’t see him die bound.

  ‘Peace, brother.’ The point of my sword rested above his heart. ‘Peace.’ And I made an end of him.

  Greyson’s suffering still trembled in my hands. I knelt beside Old Mary, crumpled in the dirt, watching me with bright eyes, dust on the trail of drool across her cheek. With one hand on her scrawny neck and one atop her head I let Sunny’s pain free. It seems that a necromancer’s fingers can do in moments with strokes and pinches what all her sharp instruments took hours to achieve. Her heart couldn’t take it for long and death reached up for her. She died too easy.

  Lesha’s head lay in among the bodies. I retrieved it, killing one malingerer on the way. Most corpses echoed with some remnant of the person when I touched them. Row’s flesh had reeked of him. But Lesha’s head felt empty, not literally, not scooped out, but free of any trace of her, a shell. Somehow it pleased me, that she had gone beyond reach. Somewhere better I hoped.

  I set her head beside Sunny, ready to bury. First though, I walked around the posts. The scorpion, missing three legs on one side, some armour broken away from its back, clung motionless to the rear of the post I had been bound to. The leather strap that held my head still hung from its claw. The scorpion’s head lifted a fraction as I approached it, and once more the dark beads of its eyes glowed crimson.

  ‘Fexler?’ I asked.

  It twitched twice and fell from the post, landing on its back. One more convulsion and it wrapped tight with a loud crackling noise, its armoured plates seizing in permanent embrace.

  ‘Damn.’

  15

  Chella’s Story

  ‘Tell me again.’

  He’s chained and bleeding in a dungeon surrounded by walking dead, and up above there’s all manner of worse things, mire-ghouls and rag-a-mauls the least of them … and he keeps asking questions!

  ‘You’re an unusual man, Kai Summerson.’ Chella paced around the pillar once more. She couldn’t seem to keep her feet still. Too much life in them perhaps.

  ‘This from a necromancer with my woman’s corpse on the floor.’

  Chella leaned in close, the iron needle in her hand, but she knew the balance had slipped away from her. Somewhere along the line this unusual young man had deduced that she needed his cooperation. Maybe it had just been too obvious that she would have killed him if her need hadn’t been so great.

  ‘What is it that you didn’t understand?’ She whispered it into his ear. He couldn’t know how much she needed a success, anything to move her from the cold shadow of the Dead King’s disdain.

  ‘Sula’s in heaven … and also here?’

  A sigh escaped her, sharpened by frustration. Even clever men could be fools. ‘What will not pass into heaven may be returned to the body. How much is returned depends upon the person, and upon the call. It doesn’t take much to get a fresh corpse on its feet. A little hunger, greed, some anger maybe. Sula had plenty of greed.’

  ‘So not everyone can be returned. Some people pass on clean and whole?’

  ‘A saint maybe. I’ve never met one.’ Also children. But she didn’t say it. Whatever the road to hell is paved with, the key is to take one step at a time.

  ‘And having reminded me of heaven you expect me to damn myself to eternity in flames just to avoid a painful death?’ Kai spat blood onto the floor. He must have bitten his tongue. He didn’t seem nearly as scared as he should be. Probably it felt like a dream to him, a nightmare, too much strangeness too quickly. If she had time Chella would leave him a day or two. Fear seeps into a man. In a cold dark place, alone with nothing but imagination for company, terror would gather him in. But she
didn’t have two days, or even one.

  ‘Death is broken, Kai. Hell is rising. How long do you think heaven will keep you safe? The Dead King is putting an end to all of that. Eternity will be here, in this world, in this flesh. All you need to decide is whether to feed the fire or be the fuel.’

  16

  Perhaps the Engine of Wrong had found a new gear for nothing felt right after Kent brought news that my father’s carriage preceded us. I rode to the front of our column, Makin and Rike falling in around me. At Captain Harran’s side a few minutes later, cresting a low rise, I saw the dull gleam of the Ancrath column ahead. It takes more than a river of mud to keep the Gilden Guard from shining.

  I pulled up to stare at the carriage bumping along amidst the horsemen. I last rode in it when I was nine. The old bastard had salvaged it.

  ‘He scares me too,’ Makin said.

  ‘I’m not scared of my father.’ I showed him my scowl but he only grinned.

  ‘I don’t know how he puts the fright in a man,’ Makin said. ‘I mean, I swing the better sword, and yes he’s got a cold temper on him and harsh ways, but so have a lot of kings, and dukes, and earls, barons, lords – hell, any man you give command to is likely to put an edge on it just to keep hold. He’s not even given to torture: his brother, his nephews, all well known for it, but Olidan he’ll just have you hung and be done.’

  Rike snorted at that. He’d seen my father’s dungeons from the wrong side. Still, Makin had it right, there were plenty around who made Olidan Ancrath seem a reasonable man.

  ‘I said I wasn’t scared of him.’ My heartbeat told the lie but only I could hear it.