King of Thorns be-2 Page 19

  “A red day,” I said. I dipped two fingers into something that lived and laughed just hours ago and drew a crimson line down my left cheek then the right.

  As we made our way back down the valley I fiddled with the copper box in its leather sack on my hip. All day I had felt Sageous trespassing through the edge of my imaginations, the half-dreams and daydreams to which he could find paths. My own sources, a spy network far less sophisticated than most of the Hundred maintained, told me the Prince of Arrow had a second army, far smaller than the one at my gates, headed for Ancrath and the Tall Castle, presumably to ensure my father kept his troops indoors. There seemed no reason for Sageous to be haunting my dreams unless he had joined Arrow when the balance of power became clear and now served as the Prince’s advisor, seeking of course to own his mind rather than merely guide it.

  Then again, the dream-witch might be keeping himself at the Tall Castle. It might be that Sageous sought to know my plans in order to sell them to Arrow and buy Ancrath’s independence for my father. Either way, I wasn’t going to show them to him.

  I snagged the thread of memory that I’d been fishing for and pulled at it. The pre-laid plans that I stored in the box always emerged as sudden inspiration, moments of epiphany where disparate facts connected. I drew on the thread of my schemes but this time something went wrong. This time, despite my care, the box cracked open, a hair’s breadth, and I saw in my mind’s eye a dark light bleeding from beneath the lid. I hammered it down in an instant and it closed with a schnick.

  For the longest moment I thought that nothing had escaped.

  Then the memory lifted me.

  “Hello, Jorg,” she says, and my clever words desert me.

  “Hello, Katherine.”

  And we stand among the graves with the stone girl and the stone dog between us, and blossom swirls like pink snow as the wind picks up, and I think of a snow-globe broken long ago and wonder how all this will settle.

  “You shouldn’t be out here alone,” I say. “I’m told there are bandits in these woods.”

  “You broke my vase,” she says, and I’m pleased that her tongue has turned traitor too.

  Her fingers return to the spot where I hit her, where the vase shattered and she fell.

  I have put her loved ones in the ground, but she talks about a vase. Sometimes a hurt is too big and we skirt around the edge of it, looking for our way in.

  “To be fair, you were about to kill me,” I say.

  She frowns at that.

  “I buried my dog here,” I tell her. She has me saying foolish things already, telling her secrets she has no right to know. She’s like that knock on the head I took from Orrin of Arrow. She steals the sense from me.

  “Hanna is buried there.” She points. Her hand is very white and steady.

  “Hanna?” I ask.

  Thunder on her brow, green eyes flash.

  “The old woman who tried to throttle me?” I ask. An image of a purple face floats before me, framed with grey wisps, my hands locked beneath her chin.

  “She. Did. Not!” Katherine says, but each word is more quiet than the one before and the conviction runs from her. “She wouldn’t.”

  But she knows she did.

  “You killed Galen,” she says, still glaring.

  “It’s true,” I say. “But he was a heartbeat away from stabbing his sword through my back.”

  She can’t deny it. “Damn you,” she says.

  “You’ve missed me then?” I say and I grin because I’m just pleased to see her, to breathe the same air.

  “No.” But her lips twitch and I know she has thought of me. I know it and I’m ridiculously glad.

  She tosses her head and turns, stepping slowly as if hunting her thoughts. I watch the line of her neck. She wears a riding dress of leather and suede, browns and muted greens. The sun finds a hundred reds in her coiled hair. “I hate you,” she says.

  Better than indifference. I step after her, moving close.

  “Lord but you stink,” she says.

  “You said that the first time we met,” I say. “At least it’s an honest stink from the road. Horse and sweat. It smells better than court intrigue. At least to me.”

  She smells of spring. I’m close now and she has stopped walking from me. I’m close and there’s a force between us, tingling on my skin, under my cheekbones, trembling in my fingers. It’s hard to breathe. I want her.

  “You don’t want me, Jorg,” she says as if I had spoken it. “And I don’t want you. You’re just a boy and a vicious one at that.” The line of her mouth is firm, her lips pressed to a line but still full.

  I can see the angles of her body and I want her more than I have wanted anything. And I am built of wants. I can’t speak. I find my hands moving toward her and force them still.

  “Why would you be interested in the sister of a ‘Scorron whore’ in any case?” she asks, her frown returning.

  That makes me smile and I can speak again. “What? I have to be reasonable now? Is that the price for growing up? It’s too high. If I can’t take against the woman who replaced my own mother…can’t make childish insults…it’s too high a price, I tell you.”

  Again the twitch of her lips, the quick hint of a smile. “Is my sister a whore?”

  “In truth, I have no evidence either way,” I say.

  She smiles a tight smile and wipes her hands on her skirts, glancing at the trees as if looking for friends or for foes.

  “You wouldn’t want me reasonable,” I say.

  “I don’t want you at all,” she says.

  “The world isn’t shaped by reasonable men,” I say. “The world is a thief, a cheat, a murderer. Set a thief to catch a thief they say.”

  “I should hate you for Hanna,” she says.

  “She was trying to kill me.” I walk to the grave Katherine pointed out. “Should I apologize to her? I can speak to the dead, you know.”

  I stoop to pick a bluebell, a flower for Hanna’s grave, but the stem wilts in my hand, the blue darkening toward black.

  “You should be dead,” she says. “I saw the wound.”

  I pull up my shirt and show her. The dark line where Father’s knife drove in, the black roots spreading from it, threading my flesh, diving in toward the heart.

  She crosses her own chest, a protection quickly sketched. “There’s evil in you, Jorg,” she says.

  “Perhaps,” I say. “There’s evil in a lot of men. Women too. Maybe I just wear it more plainly.”

  I wonder though. First Corion, then the necromancer’s heart. I could blame them for my excesses, but something tells me that my failings are my own.

  She bites her lip, steps away, then straightens. “In any case, I have my heart set on a good man.”

  For all my cleverness I hadn’t thought of this. I hadn’t thought of Katherine’s eyes on other men.

  “Who?” is all I can find to say.

  “Prince Orrin,” she says. “The Prince of Arrow.”

  And I’m falling.

  I hit the rocks with a curse and skinned a palm, saving my face. Makin pulled me to my feet sharp enough. “Kings fall in battle,” he said, “not tripping up on the way.”

  It took me a moment to shake the memory off. Still, there’s little better than a hard reunion with the ground and blood on your hands to haul a man back into the here and now. The mountains, impending snow, and an enemy many thousands strong. Real problems, not rogue memories best forgotten.

  “I’m fine.” I patted the sack on my hip. The box was still there. “Let’s break this Arrow.”

  24

  Wedding day

  From the heights even Arrow’s many thousands looked small, arrayed across the slopes before the Haunt and along the ridges to the east. The sight might have given me heart had not my castle looked smaller still, swamped on three sides by men and more men, the winter sun picking glimmers from spear and helm.

  Whether the Prince of Arrow’s plans were in line with my pr
ediction of an overwhelming assault or with Makin and Coddin’s siege wasn’t yet clear. What was clear was that our second attack would cost us. On our line of approach the Prince’s troops spread out before the main body of his army in a scattered buffer zone, foot-soldiers under the best cover the slopes could offer, with additional defences hastily cobbled from overturned carts and heaped supplies. They kept under cover whilst the Watch picked whatever targets they could. Our arrows were killing or wounding men in their scores but all the time the archer columns ordered down from the eastern ridges drew closer. Perhaps a thousand of the Prince’s four thousand archers would be returning fire within five minutes.

  “They’re not happy,” Makin said. He didn’t look too happy himself.

  “No,” I said. The roar from the Prince’s army waxed and waned as the wind rose and fell. No true warrior holds any love for archers or archery. Death wings in unseen from a distance and there is little that skill or training can do to save you. I remembered four years back, Maical sliding from the grey as if he’d just forgotten how to ride. I didn’t relish the arrival of the Prince’s archers myself. My little tale of wickedness and gambles could be cut short easily enough by the sudden arrival of the right arrow in the wrong place.

  “We should leave now,” Coddin said.

  “They won’t follow us until the archers join them,” I said.

  “And why do we want them to follow us? The rockslides, well that was impressive, I won’t deny that, but it can’t happen again,” Coddin said.

  “Can it?” Hobbs at my right, hopeful.

  “No,” I said. “But we need to draw as many men from the fight as we can. The castle can work for us, but not with these odds. And remember, gentlemen, the beautiful Queen…Mi-something?”

  “Miana,” Coddin said.

  “Yes, her. Queen Miana. Remind the men who we’re fighting for, Hobbs.”

  And that was Coddin for you. He watched and he remembered. The man had a mixture of decency and reserve in him that struck a chord with me, qualities I would never own but could appreciate none the less. He’d been the first man of Ancrath I met on my return four years back. I’d thought him tall back then, though now I overtopped him. I’d thought him old, though now he had grey amid the black and I thought him in his prime. I’d elevated him from a guard captain to Watch-master of the Forest Watch because something in him told me he wouldn’t let me down. That same quality put the chamberlain’s robe around his shoulders a year later.

  Across the slope old Keppen had his archers lofting their flights high into the air, passing over the scattered foot-soldiers to rain down unaimed in the midst of the Prince’s forces.

  I could see the first of the archers emerging from the ranks, men of Belpan with their tall bows, and the Prince’s own levies with the dragons of Arrow painted red on their leather tabards.

  “Time to go.” I slipped the purple ribbon over the end of my shortbow and held it high for the Watch to see.

  In retrospect it would have been better to have somebody else do it. Somebody unimportant. Fortunately the Prince’s archers were still finding clear ground to shoot from and the shafts aimed at me went wide, at least wide enough to miss me. A man ten yards ahead of us jerked back with an arrow jutting from under his collarbone.

  “Damn,” said Coddin.

  I turned sharp enough toward him. Something down the slope held his gaze but I couldn’t tell what.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  Coddin held up scarlet fingers. It didn’t make sense at first. I tried to see where he was cut.

  “Easy.” Makin moved to support him as he staggered.

  At last I saw the arrow, just the flights showing, black against the dark leather over his guts. “Ah, hell.”

  A gut-shot man doesn’t live. Everyone knows that. Even with silks under the leathers to twist and wrap the arrow so it pulls out easy and clean, you don’t live past a gut shot.

  “Carry him,” I said.

  The others just looked at me. For a moment I saw the Norse witch, felt the intensity of her single eye and the mockery in her withered smile. “Even a gut-shot man has a fool’s hope,” she’d said. Had she been looking past me, at this day?

  “Damn prophecy and damn prediction!” I spat and the wind carried it away.

  “Sorry?” Makin looked at me, even Coddin stared.

  “Get some men here, pick him up, and carry him,” I said.

  “Jorg-” Makin started.

  “I’ll stay here,” Coddin said. “It’s a good view.”

  I liked Coddin from the start. Four years with him at the Haunt just scored the feeling deeper. I liked him for his quick mind, for his curious honesty, and for his courage in the face of hard choices. Mostly though I liked him because he liked me. “It’s a better view from up there.” I gestured up the slope.

  “This will kill me, Jorg.” He looked me in the eyes. I didn’t like that. It put a strange kind of hurt on me.

  Arrows in the guts don’t kill quick, but the wound sours. You bloat and sweat and scream, then die. Two days, maybe four. Had a Brother once that lasted a week and then some. I never once met a man who could show me a scar on his belly and tell how it hurt like a bastard when they pulled the arrow out.

  “You owe me, Coddin,” I said. “Your duty to your king is the least of it. That arrow probably will kill you, but not today. And if you think I’ve a sentimental side that will give you a quick death here and lose several days of useful advice when I need it most, you’re wrong.”

  I’d never met a man who lived after that kind of hurt. But I heard of one. It did happen.

  “We carry him up to the rock fall. We send men ahead to make a hidey-hole in the loose stone. We put him there and cover him up. If he’s lucky we come back for him later. If not, he’s ready buried,” I said.

  Already men of the Watch were crowding around, linking arms to lift Coddin. No complaints. They liked him too.

  25

  Wedding day

  None of the men who carried Coddin up the mountain breathed a word of complaint. They had no breath for it, but if they had still they would have held their peace. Coddin led men by example. Somehow he made you want to do it right.

  “I love you, Jorg, as my king, but also as a father loves his son, or should.”

  There are some things two men can only say to each other when arrows are raining down and one of them lies mortally wounded, walled away in a rough void amid a mass of fallen rock, and thousands of enemy troops are closing in. Even then it’s uncomfortable.

  We carried Coddin, Captain Lore Coddin, formerly of Ancrath, High Chancellor of the Renar Highlands. We carried him ahead of the fresh and surging army of Arrow, fuelled as they were by the desire to avenge the thousands crushed beneath our rockslides. The archers of the Watch held every ridge until the last moment, loosing flight after flight into the oncoming soldiers, making them climb their dead as well as the mountain. And tired as they were, the men of my Watch still opened a lead on the enemy, even bearing Coddin in their arms.

  The troops sent ahead to the loose rubble of the morning’s rockslides found a suitable cavity between two large boulders freed amongst the general fall. They enlarged the void and set aside rocks suitable for sealing and hiding the space.

  By the time we reached the cave, the men carrying Coddin were scarlet with his blood and he groaned at each jolt of their advance. Captains Keppen and Harold massed their commands at separate points across the slope and shot the last of their arrows to hold our enemies’ attention. And to kill them.

  With the narrow neck of the valley ahead of us, and the snowline glistening high above that, and the wind picking up, filching warmth with quick sharp fingers, and the men of Arrow panting and gasping as they closed the last few hundred yards, I lay on the rock and spoke through gaps to the dying man below.

  “You shut your mouth, old man,” I said.

  “You’d need to dig me out to stop me,” he gasped. “Or run away. And I�
��ve a mind you’re not running, not just yet.” He coughed and tried to hide a groan. “You need to hear such words, Jorg. You need to know that you are loved, not just feared. You need to know it to ease what poisons you.”

  “Don’t.”

  “You need to hear.” Again the cough.

  “I’m coming back for you when this is done, Coddin. So don’t say anything you’ll regret, because I will hold it against you.”

  “I love you for no good reason, Jorg. I’ve no sons, but if I did I wouldn’t want them to be like you. You’re a vicious bastard at the best of times.”

  “Careful, old man. I can still stick a sword through this crack and put you out of my misery.”

  A Watch man screamed and fell to my left, an arrow through his neck. Just like Maical, but louder. Another shaft hit the rock behind me and shattered.

  “I love thee for no good reason,” Coddin said, falling back into some accent from wherever he was born, his voice weak now.

  I could hear the thud of boots. Steel on steel. Shouts.

  “…but I do love thee well.”

  I looked up, blinking. Down the slope Makin cut into the first of the enemy to reach us, an expert sword against exhausted common swords. No contest. At least until the odds mounted.

  “Do something about that girl.” Coddin’s voice with new strength.

  “Miana?” I asked. She should be safe in the castle. For now at least.

  “Katherine of Scorron.” Another cough. “These things seem terribly important when you’re young. Matters of the heart and groin. They fill your world at eighteen. But believe me. When you’re the wrong side of forty-five and the past is a bright haze…they’re more important still. Do something. You’re haunted by many ghosts. I know that, though you hide it well.”

  The men of the Watch massed before our position now, in full melee against the first few dozen of the enemy, with more pressing in moment by moment. They knew the bow like lovers know each other, but they could fight hand to hand too. Fighting on a steep slope of broken rock is not a skill you want to learn for the first time when somebody is trying to kill you, and the Watch had had years to learn the art, so for now they held.