Prince of Thorns tbe-1 Read online

  Iron knuckles crunched into Rike’s bull-throat. I may not have been thinking with my head, but thankfully some part of me hadn’t abandoned all sense. Punching Rike’s blunt face would have probably broken my fist and just tickled him a little.

  He gave a kind of grunt and stood there, looking slightly bewildered. I supposed the idea that I’d just committed suicide in such grand style took some getting used to.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind it dawned on me that I’d made a very big mistake. The rest of me didn’t much care. I think blind rage, and the pure enjoyment of using Rike as a punch-bag, figured in equal measure.

  Since I’d been offered a second free blow, I took two. An iron-clad knee driven accurately into the groin will give pause for thought even to a seven-foot maniac who’s twice your weight. Rike folded up obligingly and I brought both fists down together on the back of his neck.

  I studied the fighting arts of the Nippon with Tutor Lundist. He brought a book on the subject with him from the Utter East. Page upon rice-paper page of fighting stances, kata moves, and anatomical diagrams to show the pressure points. I’m sure I hit the two stun points on the back of Rike’s neck, and I know I hit hard.

  I blame him for being too stupid to know how they work.

  Rike swung at me. A lucky thing, because if he’d grappled me he’d have twisted my head off in no time. His vambrace caught my ribcage. I guess if I’d not been wearing that breastplate all my ribs would have broken, rather than just the two. The force took me off my feet and sent me sliding among the bones. I fetched up against one of those pillars with a painful little clang.

  I could have drawn my sword then. It would have been the only sensible decision. Against all the unwritten rules, of course. I started it with a punch and that was the way the thing should have ended. But when you weigh a loss of face with the brothers against having Rike actually rip your face off, well, it’s not a hard decision.

  I picked myself up. “Come here, you fat bastard.”

  The words emerged without a by-your-leave. The anger spoke for me. Anger at having lost control, more that now than anger at him calling the Nuban a coward. The Nuban didn’t need Rike beaten bloody to prove his courage. Angry at being angry—there’s a worm that will eat its tail and no mistake. I should have Oroborus on my family crest.

  Rike rushed me with that wordless howl of his. He reached a fair clip. Not many castle doors would stop Little Rikey at that speed. Pretty scary, unless you know he can’t turn corners.

  I stepped aside nice and sharp, cursing at my ribs. Rike hit the pillar and bounced off. To his credit several bits of stone came loose. I picked up a good stout thighbone and smacked him around the head with it as he tried to get up. The thing cracked almost in two, so I finished the job and had myself two knob-ended clubs.

  The single most depressing thing about fighting Rike would have to be the way he’d never stay down. He came at me, a bit woozy now, but snarling dire threats and meaning every one of them.

  “Gonna feed you your own eyeballs, boy.” He spat out a tooth.

  I danced back and hit him in the face with the longer of my two clubs. He spat out another tooth at that. I had to laugh. The anger left me and it felt good.

  So Rike lumbered after me, and I kept my distance, clouting him a good one when I could. The closest thing I can think of is bear-baiting. Whack! Growl. Clang! Snarl! I had the giggles, which was a bad thing, because one slip and he really would have me. If he got just one of those paws of his on me and got a grip . . . well, I would be eating my own eyeballs. He did things like that.

  The brothers started to lay bets and clap the sport.

  “I’ll pull your guts out.” Rike seemed to have an endless supply of threats.

  Unfortunately he seemed to have an endless supply of energy too, and my dancing days were coming to an end, my footwork getting a little clumsy.

  “Break every little bone in that pretty face o’ yours, Jorgy.”

  Our circle took us back to where I threw the first blow.

  “Pull those skinny arms out of their sockets.” He looked an evil sight with blood spilling down his chin.

  I saw my chance. I ran straight at him, taking him by surprise yet again. In the long run it promised to be a pushing contest as unequal as Rike against the pillar, but he gave a step. A step gave me all I’d hoped for. He hit Makin’s legs, stumbled and went over backward. I scooped up the Nuban’s bow, and before Rike could get up I was over him. I had the snout of the bow, a heavy iron falcon, poised above Rike’s face.

  “What’s it going to be, Little Rikey?” I asked. “I think I can crush your skull like an egg before you get your hands on me. Should we try it and see? Or do you want to take that back?”

  He gave me a blank look.

  “About the Nuban,” I said. Rike had genuinely forgotten what he’d said.

  “Uh.” Doubt crinkled his brow. He tried to focus on the bow. “I take it back.”

  “Christ bleeding!” I sagged, exhausted, clothed in sweat. The brothers surged round us then, a new life in them, paying their bets, reliving the moment when Rike charged the pillar. I made note of who backed me: Burlow, Liar, Grumlow, Kent, the older men who could look past youth. Makin even went so far as to get up off the floor. He clapped a hand to my shoulder. “You and the Nuban, you caught her?”

  I nodded.

  “I hope she went to Hell screaming,” Makin said.

  “She died hard,” I said. An easy lie.

  “The Nuban . . .” Makin had to hunt for the words. “He was better than the rest of us.”

  I didn’t have to hunt. “Yes.”

  Gorgoth hadn’t stirred while I fought Rike. He sat on the cold stone, legs crossed under him. Here and there the ghost-flesh of skeletal fingers had marked his hide with dead spots, little white fingerprints where the flesh had died. He didn’t move, but he watched me with those cat’s eyes of his.

  A yard or two from Gorgoth I could make out a small dark huddle, Gog and Magog clutched one to another.

  “A fine fight, lad,” I called to Gog. “You were as good as your word.”

  Gog lifted his face to me. Magog’s head flopped back, rolling on a neck scored by white lines, dead white lines across his tiger stripes.

  I found myself kneeling beside them. Gog snarled when I touched his brother, but he didn’t stop me. Magog felt so light in my hands, a curious mix of bony starvation and child softness.

  “Your brother,” I said. For the longest moment I had nothing else to say, as though my throat closed away all my words. “So little.” I remembered him scampering up those endless stairs. In the end I had to press on my broken ribs to let the pain sharpen me and chase out the stupidity.

  I set the dead child down, and stood. “You fought for him, Gog. Stupid, but maybe you’ll find comfort in it.” Maybe his reproach won’t follow you the length of your days.

  “We have a new mascot!” I announced to the brothers. “Gog here is now part of our merry band.”

  Gorgoth started up at that. “The necromancers—”

  I stepped in before he rose to his feet, the iron face of the Nuban’s crossbow three inches from his ridged forehead. “What’s it going to be, Gorgoth?” I asked. He sat himself back down.

  I turned away. “We burn the dead. I’m not having them come back to say hello.”

  “Burn ’em with what?” Red Kent wanted to know.

  “Bones is poor kindling, Jorth.” Elban hawked a wad of phlegm into the nearest pile as if to prove his point.

  “We’ll have us a bone-fire even so,” I said. “I saw a tar drip on my way back.”

  So we took the bones to where the black stuff leaked slow and stinking from a crack in the Builder-stone and daubed them one by one. We made a heap for Roddat and the others, and a little pyre for the leucrota. Elban built it like the ones they fashion for kings in the Teuton lands.

  I set the fire with Makin’s torch. “Goodnight, lads,” I said. “Thieves an
d road-scum the lot of you. Tell the Devil I said to take good care of you.”

  I gave the torch to Gog. “Light it up, you don’t want the necromancers playing with his bones.” A heat came off the boy, as if a fire banked inside him had woken. Any hotter and he might light the pyre without the torch.

  He set the flame and we backed off before the billowing smoke. Tar never burns clean, but I wasn’t sorry for the veil it gave us. Gog gave me the torch back. The inky pools of his eyes held their secrets even tighter than the Nuban’s did, but I could see something in there. A kind of pride.

  We made our way on. I let Burlow carry the Nuban’s bow. A prince must exercise some privilege after all. We walked with our tar-bone torches smoking, and Gorgoth at the fore to find the path.

  He showed us mile after mile of dull box-chamber, square corridor, and low gallery. I guess when the Builders bought their hellfire from Lucifer they must have paid for it with their imaginations.

  The Great Stair took me by surprise.

  “Here.” Gorgoth halted at a spot where a natural tunnel undercut the passage.

  The Great Stair proved to be less grand than I had imagined. No more than ten yards across in any place I could see, and a squeeze at the entrance. At least it was natural though. My eyes had ached for a curved line, and here I could rest them. Some ancient stream had carved a path down a fault-line, stepping by leaps and bounds into the deep places. The waters, long since reduced to a trickle, dripped in a rocky gullet as steep and twisting as a man could hope for.

  “Seems we have a climb ahead of us,” I said.

  “These stairs are not for the living.” A necromancer insinuated himself into the narrow entrance, pulling himself from the shadows as though they clung like webs. He could have been a twin to the bitch that took the Nuban.

  “For Christ’s sake!” I drew my sword and swung on a rising arc in the same motion. His head came off clean. I let the momentum carry me round, and brought the blade down with all my strength, overhand on the pulsing stump of his neck. The blow caught him before he could fall and cut deep, splitting his sternum.

  “I’m not interested!” I shouted the words at his corpse as I let its weight pull me to the ground. As with so many things in life, the bringing of death is simply a matter of timing. I made the mistake of giving Chella a moment and she took it. Jane should have told me just to attack her, nothing else, just attack her. Forget running. I had in mind that if my reply to Chella’s first words had been a well-judged sword blow, the Nuban might yet be standing with me.

  A savage twist on my sword hilt opened the necromancer’s chest. I keep a little dagger in my boot, wicked sharp. I took it out, and whilst the brothers watched in silence I cut out the necromancer’s heart. The thing pulsed in my hand, warmish, lacking the heat of the living or the cold of the dead. His blood lacked a certain vitality too. When cutting out a heart—and I speak from experience here—expect to be crimson head to toe. The necromancer’s blood looked purple in the torchlight and barely reached past my elbows.

  “If any more of you bastards want to waste my time with stupid melodrama, please form an orderly queue.” I let my voice echo down the corridors.

  The Nuban once told me about a tribe in Nuba that ate the heart and the brains of their enemies. They thought it gave them their foes’ strength and cunning. I never saw the Nuban do it, but he didn’t dismiss the idea.

  I held the heart up to my mouth.

  “Prince!” Makin stepped toward me. “That’s evil meat.”

  “There is no evil, Makin,” I said. “There’s the love of things, power, comfort, sex, and there’s what men are willing to do to satisfy those lusts.” I kicked the ruin of the necromancer’s corpse. “You think these sad creatures are evil? You think we should fear them?”

  I took a bite, as big as I could manage. Raw flesh is chewy, but the necromancer’s heart had some give in it, like a game bird hung until it’s ready to drop off the hook. The bitter gall of the blood scoured my throat. I swallowed my mouthful and it slid down, slow and sour.

  I think for the first time Burlow watched me eat without the green eyes of jealousy. I threw the rest of it down. The brothers stood mute, eyes watering from the torch-smoke. That’s the problem with tar-torches, you have to keep moving. I felt a touch odd. I had the feeling you get when you know you really should be somewhere else, as if you’d promised a duel that morning or some such but couldn’t quite remember what it was. Chills ran up my back and along my arms, as if ghosts trailed their fingers over me.

  I opened my mouth, then closed it, interrupted by a whisper. I looked around. Whispers came from every corner, just at that maddening level where you can hear the words but not understand them. The brothers started to look around too, nervous.

  “Do you hear it?” I asked.

  “Hear what?” Makin said.

  The voices came louder, angry but indistinct, louder, a multitude advancing, louder. A faint breeze disturbed the air.

  “Time to climb, gentlemen.” I wiped my hand across my mouth, scraping away purple muck on the back of my gauntlet. “Let’s see how fast we can do this.”

  I picked the necromancer’s head from the floor, half-expecting the eyes to roll down and fix me with a glare. “I think our heartless foe has friends coming,” I said. “Lots of friends.”

  Everyone likes to eat. One man marches on his stomach as much as an army does. Only Fat Burlow didn’t much take to marching, and took too much to munching. And some of the brothers were apt to hold that against a man. Still, I had more time for old Burlow than I did for most of my road-kin. Of all of them, save Makin, he was the only one who owned to reading. Of course he bore watching for that. There’s a saying on the road, “Never trust a lettered man.”

  32

  We ascended the Great Stair with the screams of ghosts rising beneath us. They say fear lends a man wings. None of the brothers flew up the Stair, but the way they scrambled over the slickness of that rocky throat would teach a lizard plenty about climbing.

  I let them lead the way. It was as good a means as any to test the footing. Grumlow first, then Liar and young Sim. Gog scrambled behind them, followed by Gorgoth. I guessed the leucrotas’ accord with the necromancers might be somewhat broken.

  Makin was the last of them. He could feel the dead coming. I saw it in the pallor of his skin. He looked like a dead thing himself.

  “Jorg! Get up here! Climb!” He grabbed at my arm as he passed.

  I shook him off. I could see ghosts boiling along the tunnel toward us, others stepping from the walls.

  “Jorg!” Makin took my shoulders and pulled me toward the Stair.

  He couldn’t see them. I knew from the wild sweep of his gaze. His eyes never touched them. The closest of them looked to me like chalk drawings half-erased, hanging in the air. Sketches of corpses, some naked, some clad in rags, or pieces of broken armour. A coldness came from them, reaching for my flesh, stealing warmth with invisible fingers.

  I laughed at them. Not because I thought they had no power to harm me, but because they had. I laughed to show them what I cared for their threat. I laughed to hurt them. And they suffered for it. The taste of dead heart-meat lingered at the back of my throat, and a dark power ran through me.

  “Die!” I shouted at them, spitting away the laughter. “A man should at least know how to stay dead!”

  And they did. I think. As if my words held them to obey. Makin had me dragged away, nearly round the corner, but I saw the spirits stop. I saw pale flames light upon their limbs, the ghost of fire. And, oh, the screaming. Even Makin heard it, like the scrape of nails on slate, cold wind on a migraine. We both ran then, close enough to flying.

  It was hours before we stopped, a thousand feet or more up the Stair. The downward tumble of the long-vanished river paused here to scour out a bowl, set about with smaller sinkholes and decorated with the frozen tracery of stone that graces the deep places of the world.

  “Fuckit.” Fat Bur
low collapsed in a boneless heap and lay motionless.

  Red Kent sat back against a stalagmite, his face coloured to match his name.

  Close by, Elban spat into a sinkhole pool, then turned, wiping mucus from his wizened lips. “Heh! You looks like one o’ them Blushers, Kent.”

  Kent just gave him mean eyes.

  “So.” Makin hauled in a huge breath and tried again. “So, Prince, we’re climbing up. Well and good. But if we keep on up we’re just going to reach the Castle Red.” Another breath. A long climb in armour will do that for you. “We might surprise the hell out of them, coming up out of their vaults, but we’re still twice a dozen men against nine hundred.”

  I smiled. “It’s a dilemma ain’t it, Brother Makin? Can Jorg work the magic one more time?”

  The brothers all had an eye on me now. All save Burlow, after that climb he wouldn’t turn his head for anything less than the Second Coming.

  I pulled myself to my feet and gave a little bow. “That Jorg, that Prince Jorg, he’s got a madness in him. A stranger to reason, a little in love with death perhaps?”

  Makin had a frown on him, worried, wanting me to shut up.

  I strode around them. “Young Jorg, he’s apt to throw it all away on a whim, gamble the brotherhood on wild chance . . . but somehow, just somehow, it keeps turning out a-right!”

  I clapped a hand to Rike’s greasy head and he gave me a bruise-faced scowl.

  “Is it luck?” I asked. “Or some sort of royal magic?”

  “Nine hundred o’ them Blushers up there in the Castle Red, Jorth.” Elban gestured at the ceiling with his thumb. “No way we can turn them out of there. Not if we were ten times the number.”

  “The wisdom of age!” And I crossed to Elban and threw an arm around his shoulders. “Oh my brothers! I may have given our priest away, but it sorrows me that your faith departs so swiftly on his heels.”