Prince of Thorns tbe-1 Page 24

  At the far end of the field, in the shadow of the castle walls, five tiers of seating, and in the centre, a high-backed chair draped in the purple of empire. Count Renar rose to his feet. Beside him on the common bench, Corion, an unremarkable figure that drew on the eye as the lodestone pulls iron.

  At two hundred paces I could see nothing of Renar’s face save the glint of eyes beneath a gold circlet and a dark fall of hair.

  “Fight!” Renar lifted his arm, and let it drop.

  A knight spurred his horse toward mine. I’d not taken his name to heart. I only listened to the introductions after mine.

  All around us men fell to battling. I saw William of Brond take a man from the saddle with a swing of his flail.

  My attacker had a flanged mace, clutched tight, the steel of his gauntlet polished to dazzling silver. He shouted a war-cry as he came at me, trailing the mace for an overhead swing.

  I stood in my stirrups and leaned toward him, arm fully extended. Alain’s sword found its way through the perforated grille of the knight’s helm.

  “Yield?”

  He wouldn’t say, so I let him slip from his horse.

  Another knight came my way, sidestepping his horse skilfully away from Sir William’s frenzy. He wasn’t even looking at me.

  Around the back of the breastplate there’s a gap just below the kidneys. A decent suit of plate will have chainmail to cover whatever vitals are exposed between breastplate and saddle. And his did. But Builder-steel with a little muscle behind it will cut through chain. The man fell with a vague expression of surprise, and left me facing William.

  “Alain!” He sounded as if all his Christmases had come at once.

  “I know, I hate him too.” I flipped my visor.

  The thing about flails is you’ve got to keep them moving. An important point that Sir William forgot when he found himself staring into an unfamiliar face. I took the opportunity to urge Alain’s horse forward, and to its credit the beast was fast enough to let me put four foot of razor-edged sword past Sir William’s guard.

  It’s not the done thing to set to bloody slaughter at tourney. There’s rarely a Grand Mêlée in which somebody doesn’t die, but it’s normally a day later under the knives of the chirurgeons. The foe is generally unhorsed, or stunned in the saddle. A few fractures and a lot of bruising are the normal consolation prizes distributed among the entrants who don’t win. When a knight gets too thirsty for blood, he often finds himself meeting his opponent’s friends and family in unpleasant circumstances shortly after.

  I of course had a rather different view of things. The fewer armed men left able-bodied after the tourney, the better. Besides, a broadsword isn’t the weapon to batter out submissions. It’s for killing, pure and simple.

  Sir Arkle charged me, galloping nearly the full length of the field, a felled knight in his wake. As he closed the gap, he set to swinging his mace in a tight pattern just out of kilter with his horse’s gait. It looked worryingly well-practised.

  If the sight of a heavy warhorse thundering toward you doesn’t make at least part of you want to up and run, then you’re a corpse. There’s no stopping a thing like that. A thousand pounds of muscle and bone, sweating and panting as it hurtles your way.

  I rolled out of the saddle as Sir Arkle arrived. I didn’t just duck. He was ready for that. I fell. And yes it hurt. But not so much that it stopped me sticking old Alain’s sword into that blur of thrashing legs as Arkle hurtled past.

  That’s another thing that isn’t done in tourney. You go for the man, not the horse. A trained warhorse is frighteningly expensive, and be assured that when you break one, the owner is going to come after you for the price of a replacement.

  I levered myself up, cursing, splattered with horse blood.

  Sir Arkle lay under his steed, deathly quiet and still, in contrast to the horse’s screaming and thrashing.

  A lot of animals will suffer horrific injury in silence, but when they decide to complain, there’s no holds barred. If you’ve heard the screams of rabbits as they’re put to the knife, you’ll know what racket even such small creatures can make. It took two swings to fully silence Arkle’s horse. Another two for good measure to take its head off.

  By the time I’d finished, I’d become the archetypal Red Knight, my armour bright with arterial blood. I had the stink of battle in my nose now, blood and shit, the taste of it on my lips, salt with sweat.

  There weren’t many of us left standing in the tourney ring. Sir James stood amid a scatter of fallen knights at the far end, battling a man in fire-bronzed armour. Closer to hand an unhorsed knight with a war-hammer had just laid out his opponent. And that was it.

  The hammer-man limped toward me, the iron plates around his knee buckled and grating.

  “Yield.” I didn’t move. Didn’t so much as raise my sword.

  A moment of silence. Nothing but the distant clash of weapons as Sir James of Hay put down his man. Nothing but the faint pitter-pat of blood dripping from my plate-mail.

  Hammer-man let his hammer fall. “You’re not Alain Kennick.” He turned and limped toward the white tent where the healers waited.

  Half of me wanted the fight. More than half of me wondered if a hammer between the eyes wasn’t a whole lot more appetizing than meeting with Corion again. It seemed impossible that he didn’t already know I was here, that those empty eyes hadn’t seen through Alain’s armour at the first moment. I glanced toward the stands, closer now. He watched me, they all did, but this was the man who’d given me the power to fell Brother Price, the man who whispered from the hook-briar, who poisoned my every move, pulling the strings toward hidden ends. Had he drawn me here, to this moment, tugging on his puppet lines?

  Sir James of Hay put an end to my speculation. He dismounted, presumably having noted my lack of respect for horseflesh, and advanced with purpose in his stride. The sunlight coaxed few glimmers from the scarred plates of his armour. His heavy axe had done good work today. I saw blood on the armour spike.

  “You’re a scary one,” I said.

  He came on, stepping around Arkle’s horse.

  “Not a talker?” I asked.

  “Yield, boy,” he said. “One chance.”

  “I’m not sure we even have choices, James, let alone chances. You should read—”

  He charged, dragging that axe of his through the air in a blur. I managed a block, but my sword flew free, leaving my right hand numb to the wrist. He reverse-swung, his strength tremendous, and nearly took my head. I swayed aside, clear by half an inch, and staggered back.

  Sir James readied himself. I knew then how the cow feels before the slaughterman. I may have been guilty of fine words about fear and the edges of knives, but empty-handed before a competent butcher like Sir James I found a sudden and healthy terror. I didn’t want it all to end here, broken apart before a cheering crowd, cut down before strangers who didn’t even know my name.

  “Wait!”

  But of course he didn’t. He came on apace, swinging for me. If I hadn’t tripped as I backed, I’d have been cut in two, or as near as makes no difference. The fall left me flat on my back with the air knocked out and Sir James carried two strides past me by his momentum. My right hand, grasping for purchase, found the haft of the discarded war-hammer. The old luck hadn’t deserted me.

  I swung and made contact with the back of Sir James’ knee. It made a satisfying crunch, and he went down, discovering his voice on the way. Unfortunately the brute hadn’t the grace to know he was supposed to be beaten. He twisted onto his good knee and raised his axe over my head. I could see it black against the blue sky. At least the sun was out. A blank visor hid his face, but I could hear the rattle of his breath behind it, see the flecks of foam around the perforations.

  “Time to die.”

  He was right. There’s not much to be done with a war-hammer at close quarters. Especially when you’re spread-eagled on your back.

  ChooOm!

  Sir James’ hea
d jerked from my field of view leaving nothing but blue heaven.

  “Gods but you’ve got to love that crossbow!” I said.

  I sat up. Sir James lay beside me, a neat hole punched through his faceplate, and blood pooling behind his head.

  I couldn’t see who had taken the shot. Probably Makin, having regained the Nuban’s crossbow from one of the brothers. He must have loosed his bolt from the commons where the rabble stands. Renar would have men stationed where anyone might get a clear shot at the royal seating area, but targeting the combatants on the field was a far easier proposition.

  I recovered my sword before the crowd really took in what had happened. A scuffle of some kind had broken out in the commons, a large figure in the midst of it all. Rike breaking heads perhaps.

  I scooped up Sir James’s axe and caught Alain’s horse again. Once in the saddle I took axe and sword in hand. Townsfolk began to stream onto the field with some kind of riot in mind. It wasn’t entirely clear where their anger lay, but I felt sure a whole lot of it rested on Sir Alain of Kennick.

  A line of men-at-arms had positioned themselves in front of the royal stand. A squad of six soldiers in castle livery were angling toward me from their station by the casualty tent.

  I lifted axe and sword out to shoulder height. The axe weighed like an anvil; it’d take a man like Rike to wield it as lightly as Sir James had.

  From the corner of my eye I could see guards leaving their posts at the castle gates to help calm the disturbance and come to their lord’s aid.

  Corion found his feet, oddly reminiscent of a scarecrow, standing just below Count Renar’s seat. The Count himself remained in his chair, motionless, hands in his lap, fingers steepled.

  Did Corion know it was me? He had to, surely? When I’d broken his spell, when I’d woken from dark dreams after Father’s tender stab, and finally remembered how he’d turned me from my vengeance, how he’d made me his pawn in the hidden game of empire, hadn’t he known?

  Time to find out.

  I urged Alain’s horse into a canter and aimed him straight at Renar, axe and sword in outstretched hands. I hoped I looked like Hell risen, like Death riding for the Count. I could taste blood, and I wanted more.

  There really is something about a heavy warhorse coming your way. The stand began to empty at speed, the gentry climbing over each other to get clear. A space opened up around Renar’s high-backed chair, just him, Corion, and the two chosen men flanking. A ripple even ran through the line of soldiers before the seating, but they held their ground. At least until I really picked up speed.

  47

  Alain’s horse carried me through the soldiers, up the stands, like climbing a giant staircase, right to Count Renar’s chair, and through it.

  Had the Count not been hauled from his seat moments before, it could have all ended there.

  “Get him away!” Corion said to the quick-handed bodyguard.

  The other chosen man came straight for me as the horse beneath me panicked at the strange footing. I couldn’t control the beast, and I didn’t want it to land on me when it fell, so I leapt from the saddle. Or got as close to a leap as a man in full plate can, which is to say that I chose where I fell. I trusted to my armour and dropped onto Renar’s bodyguard.

  The man cushioned my fall, and in exchange got most of his ribs broken. I heard them crack like sappy branches. I clambered up, with the horse whinnying behind me, hooves flying in all directions as it turned and bucked, threatening to fall at every moment.

  I threw Sir James’ axe at Renar’s back, but the thing proved too heavy and ill-weighted for a clean throw. It hit his second bodyguard between the shoulder blades and felled him. Renar himself managed to reach the soldiers I’d scattered in my charge, and they circled around to escort him toward the castle.

  I took my sword in two hands and made to follow.

  “No.”

  Corion stepped into my path, one hand raised, a single finger lifted.

  I felt a giant nail skewer me to the spot, struck through the top of my head, driven into the bedrock far beneath my feet. The world seemed to spin around me, slow revolutions, measured by heartbeats. My arms fell, limp, hands numb, losing their grip on the sword hilt.

  “Jorg.” I wouldn’t meet his eyes. “How could you think you might defy me?”

  “How could you think I wouldn’t?” My voice sounded far off, as if somebody else were speaking. I managed to fumble the dagger from my hip.

  “Stop.” And my arms lost all remaining strength.

  Corion moved closer. My eyes struggled to keep with him as the world turned. Behind me the sounds of the thrashing horse, muffled and distant.

  “You’re a child,” he said. “You gamble everything on each throw, no bet hedged, no reserve. That’s a strategy that always ends in defeat.”

  He took a small knife from his robe, three gleaming inches of cut-throat.

  “Gelleth, though! That took us all by surprise. You exceeded all expectations there. Sageous even left your father’s side rather than face you on your return. He’s back there now, of course.”

  Corion put the blade to the side of my neck, angled between helm and gorget. His face held no emotion, his eyes empty wells that seemed to suck me in.

  “Sageous was right to run,” I said. My voice reached up from a chasm.

  I had no plan, but I’d had my moment of fear with Sir James and I wasn’t about to reward Corion with any more.

  I reached for whatever power the necromancer’s heart had given me. I let my eyes look where the ghosts walk, and a cold thrill burned across my skin.

  “Necromancy won’t save you, Jorg.” I felt the bite of the knife at my neck. “Even Chella doesn’t trust in her death magic enough to face me. And whatever you stole beneath that mountain is just a shadow of her skill.”

  It’s will. In the end it always comes down to will. Corion held me, nailed within a treacherous body, because he willed it, because his want had over-written mine.

  Hot blood trickled down my neck. I felt it run beneath my armour.

  I threw everything I had against him. All my pride, my anger, an ocean of it, the rage, the hurt. I reached back across the years. I counted my dead. I reached into the briar and touched the bloodless child who hung there. I took it all, and made a hammer of it.

  Nothing! All I managed was to flop my head forward so I no longer saw his face. He laughed. I felt the vibration of it in the knife. He wanted my death to be slow.

  I could see my arms, metal clad, dagger held in loose fingers. Life pulsed through those arms, driven with each beat of my heart, mixed with the dark magic that had kept me from death at the King’s hand. I saw Father’s face again, in the moment of the blow, the bristle of his beard, the tight line of his mouth. I saw Katherine’s face, the light in her eyes as she nursed me. And I reached with all of it, the bitter and the sweet, just to move the arms that lay before me. I put the whole of my life behind that plea.

  It accomplished nothing but to turn the point of my dagger toward Corion.

  “They’re dying, Jorg,” he said. “See with my eyes.”

  And I was the hawk. Part of me stayed on the stands, being bled like a pig, and the rest flew, wild and free across the tourney field.

  I saw Elban defending Rike’s back amid the common crowd, Renar’s soldiers closing on them from all angles, like hunting dogs knifing through the tall grass. A spear got him in the stomach. He looked surprised. Old all of a sudden, wearing all his years. I saw him shout, and spit blood over those toothless gums of his. But I couldn’t hear him. A glimpse of Elban cutting down the man who speared him, and we moved on.

  Liar stood out on the edge of the tourney field, a mean streak of gristle, bow in hand, arrows planted at his feet. He took the castle-soldiers down as they streamed toward the royal stands. Quick but unhurried, each arrow finding a mark, a tight smile on his lips. They got him from behind. The first soldier to reach him drove a spear through his back.

 
; We swept closer to the gates. A tinker’s cart. The sack covering shrugged aside, and Gorgoth rolled out, reaching the ground on two hands and one knee. He ran for The Haunt. The castle folk scattered before him, some screaming. Even soldiers turned aside, all of a sudden finding their duty to be on the tourney field. Two men discovered their courage and barred his way, spears levelled. Gorgoth didn’t slow. He caught a spear in each hand, snapped the last foot off, and drove the broken ends through their owners’ necks. He ran through the men before they fell. Three arrows hit him as he left my view.

  Corion drew our sight back. On the cart the sacking twitched again. Something quick and mottled slipped out. Gog. The leucrota child ran in the direction Gorgoth had taken.

  Our sight drew back. Across the tourney field where a score of soldiers closed on the royal stand. Burlow stood guard. A lone man between Renar’s spears and the young Prince of Ancrath, yours truly. How he’d got there I didn’t know. Or why. But he had nowhere to run, and he was too fat to win free in any case.

  Burlow took the first man down with an axe blow that sliced head from shoulders. A reverse swing put the blade between the next man’s eyes. Then they were all over him. A single arrow looped in from somewhere and found a Renar neck.

  Our sight drew back. I saw myself on the stand, face to face with Corion. Bleeding. Alain’s horse still thrashing, as if it had been seconds rather than a lifetime since I rode up.

  And we parted. I saw with my own eyes again. The knife in my hand, raised but impotent, the splintered boards beneath my feet. The sounds of Burlow dying. The scream of horse. I thought of Gog, chasing Gorgoth toward the gates, of Elban’s toothless shout, of Makin out there somewhere, fighting and dying.

  None of it made any difference. I couldn’t move.

  “It’s over, Jorg. Goodbye.” The magus placed his knife for the final cut.

  You’d think there was never a good time to get kicked by a horse.