King of Thorns be-2 Read online

None of us spoke. Not one of us reached for a bow. The necromancer had a magic to work on the living as well as the dead. Or at least a magic to work on men. The mire had tainted the flesh that I remembered so well, leaving it dark but still firm. The slime that ran from her, that dripped and clung, seemed to guide the eye, to gild each dark curve and point.

  “Hello, Jorg,” she said.

  She used Katherine’s words from the graveyard. Maybe what is spoken in such places is always heard by those who have married Death.

  “You remember me.” I wondered how long she had been leading me to this point. I had no doubt now that her creatures had torn down the bridge we hoped to cross.

  “I remember you,” she said. “And the marsh remembers you. Marshes have long memories, Jorg, they suck down secrets and hold them close, but in the end, in the end, all things surface.”

  I thought of the box at my hip and of the memories it held. “I suppose you’ve come to tell me not to stand against the Prince of Arrow?”

  “Why? Do you think I have my hooks in him?”

  I shook my head. “I would have smelled you on him.”

  “You didn’t smell me here and this place reeks of death,” she said, always moving, slow gyrations and stretches, demanding the eye.

  “To be fair, it reeks of so much more beside.”

  “The Prince of Arrow has enough defenders, enough champions, he doesn’t need me. In any case, you don’t want to believe everything you read, and the older a book is the less reliable its stories.”

  There were written prophecies too? That made me snarl. It was bad enough that every turn of the tarot card and toss of the rune sticks put Arrow on the throne. Now books, my oldest friends, had turned traitor. “So why are we here?” I asked. I knew, but I asked in any case.

  “I’m here for you, Jorg,” she said, husky and seductive.

  “Come and take me, Chella,” I said. I didn’t lift my sword but I turned it so the reflected light slid across her face. I didn’t ask what it was she wanted. Revenge doesn’t need explanation. “And how are you here?” A mountain had fallen on her in Gelleth and buried her deeper than deep.

  She frowned at that. “The Dead King came for me.” And for a moment, just a moment, I swear I saw her shudder.

  “The Dead King.” This was new. I had thought I understood-that she was after revenge, pure and simple, emotions I could appreciate. After all, I had dropped Mount Honas on her. “Did he send you?”

  “I would have come anyway, Jorg. We have unfinished business.” Again the seduction, stilling the Brothers who had started to move.

  “So who wants me more, Chella? You or this king of yours?”

  A hint of a snarl in Chella now, the Brothers starting to shake her influence as irritation wore it thin.

  “Or did he want me more than he wanted you, Chella? Is that it? Your new king only dug you up to find me for him?” I showed her my best smile. I had the truth of it: she couldn’t hide the annoyance that flickered across her brow. All to the good, an angry enemy is the best kind to have, but why this Dead King should have taken against me so I’d no idea.

  “Come and take me.” I invited her again, beckoning, hoping to goad her into range. With my free hand I shoved Makin. “I know there’s a naked woman and everything, but if you could point the Brothers in more useful directions then we’re less likely to be eaten by her friends.”

  “Come and take you?” Chella smiled, composure returned. She wiped her hand across her mouth, flicking mud aside, her lips blood-red. “I do want you. I do. But not for breaking. I know your heart, Jorg. Join with me. We can be more than flesh.”

  The creature put an ache in my groin, true enough, as if that line between lust and revulsion had been erased as completely as the village. Part of me wanted to take her dare. Embrace what you fear, I had told Gog. Hunt your fears. And what is death if not the ultimate of fears, the final enemy? I had eaten the cold heart of a necromancer. Perhaps I should take Chella, take death by the throat, and make it serve me. I thought of the women burning in their house. “You are less than flesh,” I said.

  “Cruel words.” She smiled. She stepped closer. The fluid motion of her held my eyes. The jounce of breasts, the jut of hips, the redness of her mouth. “There’s a magic between us, Jorg. Surely you must have felt it? Does it not echo in your chest? Doesn’t it underwrite the very beating of your heart, dear one? We were meant to be together. The Dead King has told me I can have you. Told me to bring you to him. And I will.”

  “You’ll have a long wait for me in hell,” I said. “Because I intend to send you there right now.” A weak line perhaps but mention of the Dead King knocked me out of my stride.

  She smiled and made a kiss with crimson lips. “Are you angry because I showed you your ghosts? It wasn’t me who made them, Jorg.”

  That stole the certainty from me. I saw Ruth again, and her mother, scalded by the hot light of the Builders’ Sun. “I didn’t know-”

  “You didn’t know a sun would burn them. You thought a cloud of poison would roll out and devastate the land. Isn’t that right? So, if Ruth and her mother and her child were choking on their own intestines, bleeding from eyes and anus, screaming different screams, that would be all right? That would be fine because that was the plan?” Chella stepped closer. Relentless.

  I couldn’t answer that. I had thought to poison the Castle Red, and I had known it would be everyone in it, not just the warriors. And if the toxins had spread? I had no idea how far they might go. And I hadn’t cared.

  “You know what men are really afraid of, Chella?” I asked.

  “Tell me.” She ran her hands up her thighs, across her belly, smearing dark skin with darker mud.

  Makin pressed the Nuban’s bow into my palm. I grasped it. The thing nearly too heavy to hold in one hand.

  “Men are afraid of dying. Not of death. Men want it to be quick, clean. That’s the worst thing, the wound that lets you linger. Ain’t that right, Makin?”

  “Yes,” he said. Makin isn’t a man of few words, but it’s difficult to break into a necromancer’s spell.

  “Linger,” I said. “That’s a word that frightens the Brothers. Don’t let me linger, they say. And you know what undeath is, Chella? It’s the ultimate in lingering. A coward dies a thousand times, the Bard told us. And what about you? You’ve died just once but you’ve lingered a thousand times longer than you should.”

  “Don’t mock me, child,” Chella said. Her ribs stood out now, her cheeks hollowed. “I hold more power-”

  “You can show me my ghosts, Chella. You can try to scare me with death and with dead things, so that I’ll choose your path. But I have my own road to follow. My ghosts are my own and I will deal with them alone. You are a thing of rot and fear and you should find a grave that will take you.”

  The time when nothing could put fear in me had passed. It seems terror is a companion in the soft years when everything is new, and returns to us with age, as we acquire things to lose. Perhaps I didn’t have my full share of old man’s cowardice just yet, but Gelleth’s ghosts and knowing how many dead things swam beneath the mud, ready for the necromancer’s call, had set a coldness in my bones. I had a prince to defeat, perhaps Katherine to woo, a comfortable throne to warm. Being drowned in slime by dead men didn’t fit into those plans.

  “It wasn’t just ghosts I brought with me from Gelleth, Jorg.” Chella raised her arms high, a languid motion.

  Other forms started to emerge from the mire, human forms.

  I stuck my sword into the ground and lifted the Nuban’s bow.

  “I’ve been collecting,” Chella said.

  The shape rising in front of her held familiar lines, a broad and powerful build, darkest in the places where the mud lay thin. A hole in his chest.

  “I think he wants his bow back,” Chella said.

  To her left a bloated form, guts hanging like black sausage from his slit belly. Others around us, clawing and shaking the mud from their
faces. One stood head and shoulders above the rest, flesh hanging from his bones in tatters.

  “I’ve walked where you walked, Jorg, taken what you tried to burn, and dug where you buried. Even in the shadow of your walls.”

  I knew them all. The Nuban between Chella and my bow…his bow, Fat Burlow to her left. Gemt with patches of dull red hair showing through the muck, head stitched back on, Brother Gains, Brother Jobe, Brother Roddat. Old Elban who always prayed for a quiet grave, Liar whose body we never found to bury even though he fell at the Haunt, and Brother Price all bones and tatters from four years in the ground. And more rising in the deep mire or hauling themselves onto firmer ground from the standing pools.

  Chella watched me over the Nuban’s shoulder, using him as her shield. Another lesson in the value of attacking without hesitation.

  “Join with me.” Her voice fluttered from corrupt lungs. Her eyes glittered, sunken in their sockets as if lifting my Brothers from the depths had sucked vitality from her. “My brother’s strength runs in you, all but unused, fading, wasted.”

  Brother? The necromancer I cut down was her brother?

  “My thanks, lady, but I’ve had my fill of necromancers.” I fired both bolts from the Nuban’s bow. One punched a hole in his shoulder. The other passed through Chella’s neck just to one side of her throat.

  The Nuban, almost turned around by the impact, straightened and faced me again, no expression on his grey lips. Chella put a hand to her neck and twisted her head with a noise like popping cartilage.

  “We’re family, Jorg. Families argue. But I forgive you, and when I’ve taken you down into the marsh with me…when we’re together in the cold deep places…embracing like family do…you’ll forgive me too.”

  Brother Sim holds himself close and you will never know him no matter what words pass between you. He whispers something to each man he kills. If he could speak it to a man and let him live, then I might have lost a killer.

  32

  Four years earlier

  In the hot and endless swamp of the Cantanlona many things are lost, secrets swallowed, lives drawn down into blackness. And sometimes, slow currents return what was better kept hidden.

  It’s never a good idea to run in a bog. Slow steps are called for when a place is littered with sucking pools, deep mire, and tufted hummocks perfect for the breaking of ankles. However, there are times when a bad idea is the best you have.

  “Follow me!” I shouted, and I ran out between the pools and the tussock-grass to my left. Chella let herself slide under the mud whilst the Nuban moved to intercept.

  Whatever necromancy I’d gained from Chella’s brother would have made only a drop in the ocean of Chella’s strength. However, secrets hold power. The secret I had in mind had slipped from Dr. Taproot’s lips, and he would never have given the information away for free if he thought it still held value.

  “I release you, Kashta!” I slapped my palm to the wound in his chest, careless of his grasping hands.

  When a name is held secret its power multiplies. The Nuban toppled without hesitation and I felt that he would never rise again. As he fell my anger rose.

  I splashed on with the live Brothers behind me and the dead Brothers behind them. Back and to my right, Fat Burlow moved to block Rike. I raced on, finding a low ridge of firmer ground. Turning, I saw Rike’s broadsword shear through Burlow’s arm. Burlow grabbed him with his remaining hand, but Makin cut that off and both men charged on, slowing as they hit softer ground and starting to wade. Makin lost a boot to the sucking mud but he made it to my side. Our panicked horses ran in various directions; some cantered after us, Brath among them, but I saw two horses hit the mud and start to sink, rearing and plunging as if they thought they might win through.

  Some yards away a mud-pit began to boil with activity. Corpse after corpse clambered from it as if they had been stacked fathoms deep and with unsettling intimacy.

  I led on. It seemed that whilst the undead lacked fear and would literally need to be hacked apart before they stopped trying to kill us, they were at least slow. On an open field we would have left them in our dust. In the swamp the match turned out to be more even. A pervasive aura of lingering death infects the mud in the Cantanlona bogs. Somehow the mire itself is half-alive, or half-dead depending on your perspective, and it supported the undead, vomiting them up, keeping them from sinking.

  The corpses from the mud-pit managed to intercept us when the firm ground swung to the left.

  “Keep moving!” I shouted.

  Makin sliced one across the chest, his training misleading him for once. The creature didn’t notice the wound and grappled him with muddy arms. Rike didn’t bother with his sword. He set his boot to the stomach of the corpse-man in his path with such force that he threw it yards back, felling another before it reached us. Of all the Brothers, Red Kent proved best suited to the work. His Norse axe sheared off grasping limbs, weaving a savage pattern that left the bog scattered with hands, arms, and heads.

  We raced on with the creatures at our heels, silent in their determination to catch and dismember us, just the noise of their splashing and our panting. At one point a mud-grey army of undead hunted our trail, but each mile left them farther behind us until at last they dropped from sight.

  I called a halt on a low mound that offered a firm footing and an elevated view of the bogs. A ring of weathered stone indicated the place had once been a burial, some local chieftain perhaps, but the grave looked to have been emptied years ago and I felt no more death there than in any of the surrounding mire. My anger had kept pace with me during the long chase. Chella had kept the Nuban’s corpse as her plaything for more than half a year. I didn’t know if anything of the man remains when necromancy animates his flesh, but the possibility of his suffering, and the horror of it if he did, made me swear revenge. I had only made one such vow before and then as now I made it without words and with every intention to tear the world apart if that were needed to see it through.

  “I don’t want to spend another night in this place,” Makin said.

  “Really?” Rike growled, sitting on the largest of the stones. I’d never heard him use sarcasm before. I guessed he must have been saving it for extreme circumstances.

  “Stand a moment, Rike,” I said.

  And he did. I lifted the point of my sword to his side. With a stab and a twist I took Burlow’s severed hand away, tearing off the patch of tunic it had a grip on, and flicked it into the swamp.

  “We’ve wandered into hell,” Grumlow said with conviction. “We got lost and now we’re in hell.” He had mud plastered up one side of his face and blood clotting in his moustache, trickles of it making crimson trails from nose to lip.

  “Hell smells better,” I said.

  With the horses around us the mound was crowded and our sightlines blocked. I pushed the grey aside, slapping her rump. Of the five horses left to us she was the only one relaxed enough to crop at the short grass.

  “We should go,” Makin said.

  We should, but where to? The horizon offered nothing. Except, perhaps…

  “Is that the sea?” I pointed. To the east a hint of black or blue lined the farthest reaches of the marsh.

  A sharp cry cut off anyone inclined to answer. I spun toward the sound. Just behind us, thigh-deep in water, chest-deep in rushes, Chella held Young Sim by the throat and head. She took another step back away from the mound, dragging Sim. It seemed that she had done something to him, to his neck maybe, for his arms hung limp at his side though he watched us with wild eyes. We called him Young Sim and he had perhaps sixteen years, but when it came to killing he was an old hand and he would not have gone easy without good reason.

  “Jorg, you shouldn’t run from me,” Chella said. The water had washed away the mud though it couldn’t take the bog-stain from her skin, the colour of old teak. The Celtic patterns scrolling across her were deep-set too, not the paint I had once thought them. A needle must have placed those swirls and
knots along her arms, reaching across her sides.

  “I don’t want any part of you, necromancer.” I still held the Nuban’s bow, though I hadn’t reloaded it. I aimed at her, assuming she wouldn’t pay close attention to the number of bolts in place. “Whatever power I consumed is fading from me. Slower than I would like it to fade, but it will be gone and I won’t be sorry. I want no part of you or your dirty trade.”

  She smiled. “The Dead King won’t let you go, Jorg. He’s gathering all our kind to him. Black ships wait to take us to the Drowned Isles.”

  I made no reply. My anger had subsided once I vowed to destroy Chella. Vengeance is patient when it needs to be and she sought to use the Brothers against me to enrage me, to set me chasing her into the drowning pools. I didn’t let her know how deep her hooks had sunk.

  “You’re not going to ask me to release your brother, Jorg?” She dragged Sim a yard farther back.

  Row had an arrow trained on her and Grumlow looked ready to throw his knife this time. Grumlow had a soft spot for Sim: fear wouldn’t stay his hand.

  “So, you have my brother. Eat his heart and we will be even. Back to where we started,” I said. I knew she wouldn’t be letting go of Sim. She just wanted me to ask.

  “Oh, you can’t go back, Jorg. You should know that. You can never go back. Not even if every trace of necromancy left you. Look!” She made a quick change of grip and jerked Sim’s head to the right. Far too far to the right. The grating of bone set my teeth on edge. “Annnnnd…” She rotated his head slowly back to face us. “He’s back. But he’s not the same now, is he?”

  “Bitch!” Row released his arrow. Whether his hand trembled or Chella moved faster than I could see I don’t know, but the arrow ended up jutting from Sim’s eye.

  “Now see what you’ve done.” Her red mouth smiling, her eyes seductive, and she whispered in Sim’s ear.

  Grumlow threw his knife but Chella was already falling. It may have cut her, but the waters closed over her before I could tell.

  Sim, despite his arrow and his broken neck, remained standing. And then he took an uncertain step toward us. The clear water between the rushes clouded as the mud below began to stir.