Prince of Thorns Read online

  I had my visor up already, so I used it to pull my helm off. “Father Gomst!” I called for the priest, and the brothers shuffled their horses aside with a few mutters to let the old fellow past. He wasn’t much to look at. He’d hacked off that beard he grew in the gibbet-cage, but grey tufts still decorated his face in random clusters, and his priestly robes seemed more mud than cloth.

  “Captain Coddin,” I said. “Do you know this priest, Father Gomst?”

  Coddin raised an eyebrow at that. He had a pale face, and now it went paler. His mouth took on a hard edge, like a man who knows he’s the butt of a joke that he hasn’t worked out yet. “Aye,” he said. “The King’s priest.” He snapped his heels together and inclined his head, as if he were in court. It seemed funny out there in the road, with the birds tweeting overhead and the stink of the cows washing over us.

  “Father Gomst,” I said. “Pray tell Captain Coddin who I am.”

  The old fellow puffed himself up a bit. He’d been listless and grey since Norwood, but now he tried to find a crumb or two of authority.

  “Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath sits before you, Captain. Lost and now returned, he is bound for his royal father’s court, and you would do well to see that he gets there with proper escort . . .” He glanced at me, screwing up what courage he had behind the foolish remnants of his beard. “And a bath.”

  A little snigger went up at that, on both sides of our standoff. It doesn’t pay to underestimate a cleric. They know the power of words and they’ll use them to their own ends. My palm ached for the hilt of my sword. I saw old Gomst’s head falling from his shoulders, bouncing once, twice, and rolling to a halt by the hooves of a black-and-white heifer. I pushed the vision away.

  “No bath. It’s about time for a little road-stink at court. Soft words and rose water may please the gentry, but those that fight the war live dirty. I return to my father as a man who has shared the soldier’s lot. Let him know the truth of it.” I let my words carry on the still air, and kept my eyes on Gomsty. He had the wit to look away.

  My speech earned no rousing cheer, but Coddin bowed his head and we had no further mention of baths. A shame, truth be told, because I’d been looking forward to a hot tub ever since I decided to turn for home.

  So Coddin left his second to command the garrison, and rode with us. His escort of two dozen riders swelled our numbers to nearly sixty. Makin carried a lance from the Ford armoury now, flying the Ancrath colours and royal crest. The garrison riders spread word through the villages as we passed. “Prince Jorg, Prince Jorg returned from the dead.” The news stole ahead of us, until each town presented a larger and better prepared reception. Captain Coddin sent a rider to the King before we left Chelny Ford, but even without his message, they would know of us in the Tall Castle well before we got there.

  At Bains Town the bunting stretched across Main Street, six minstrels, sporting lute and clavichord, played “The King’s Sword” with more gusto than skill, jugglers exchanged twirling fire-brands, and a bear danced before the mill pond. And the crowds! People packed in so tight we’d no hope of riding through. A fat woman in a tent of a dress which was striped like a tourney pavilion saw me amid the van. She pointed and gave a shriek that drowned the minstrels out, “Prince Jorg! The Stolen Prince!” The whole place went mad at that, cheering and crying. They surged forward like wild things. Coddin had his men in quick, though. I forgave him his earlier slight for that. If peasants had reached Rike, we’d have had red slaughter.

  On the Lich Road the brothers were more scared, but that’s the only time I’ve seen more fear in them than there at Bains Town. They none of them knew what to make of it. Grumlow’s left hand never left his dagger. Red Kent grinned like a maniac, terror in his eyes. Still, they’d learn fast enough. When they figured out the welcome that lay ahead. When they’d seen the taverns and the whores. Well, there’d be no dragging them out of Bains Town in a week.

  One of the minstrels found a horn, and a harsh note cut through the tumult. Guards, red-robed with black chain beneath, cleared a path, and no less a man than Lord Nossar of Elm emerged before us. I recognized the man from court. He looked slightly fatter in his gilded show-plate and velvets, rather more grey in the beard spilling down over his breastplate, but pretty much the same jolly old Nossar who rode me on his shoulders once upon a time.

  “Prince Jorg!” The old man’s voice broke for a moment. I could see tears shining in his eyes. It caught at me, that did. I felt it hook something in my chest. I didn’t like it.

  “Lord Nossar,” I gave back, and let a smile curl my lip. The same smile I gave Gemt before I let him have my knife. I saw a flicker in Nossar’s eyes then. Just a moment of doubt.

  He rallied himself. “Prince Jorg! Beyond all hope, you’ve returned to us. I cursed the messenger for a liar, but here you are.” He had the deepest voice, rich and golden. Old Nossar spoke and you knew it was truth, you knew he liked you, it wrapped you up all warm and safe, that voice did. “Will you honour my house, Prince Jorg, and stay a night?”

  I could see the brothers exchanging glances, eyeing women in the crowd. The mill pond burned crimson with the dying sun. North, above the dark line of Rennat Forest, the smoke of Crath City stained a darkening sky.

  “My lord, it’s a gracious invitation, but I mean to sleep in the Tall Castle tonight. I’ve been away too long,” I said.

  I could see the worry on him. It hung on every crag of the man’s face. He wanted to say more, but not here. I wondered if Father set him to detain me.

  “Prince . . .” He lifted a hand, his eyes seeking mine.

  I felt that hook in my chest again. He would set me down in his high hall and talk of old times in that golden voice. He’d speak of William, and Mother. If there was a man who could disarm me, Nossar was that man.

  “I thank you for the welcome, Lord Nossar.” I gave him court formality, curt and final.

  I had to haul on the reins to turn Gerrod. I think even horses liked Nossar. I led the brothers around by the river trail, trampling over some farmer’s autumn turnips. The peasants cheered on, not sure what was happening, but cheering all the same.

  We came to the Tall Castle by the cliff path, avoiding the sprawl of Crath City. The lights lay below us. Streets beaded with torchlight, the glow of fire and lamp rising from windows not yet shuttered against the cool of the night. The watchmen’s lanterns picked out the Old City wall, a skewed semicircle, tapering down to the river where the houses spilled out beyond the walls, into the valley, reaching out along the river. We came to the West Gate, the one place we could reach the High City without trailing up through the narrow streets of the Old City. The guards raised the portcullises for us, first one, then the next, then the next. Ten minutes of creaking windlass and clanking chain. I wondered why the three gates were down. Did our foes truly press so close we must triple-gate the High Wall?

  The gate captain came out whilst his men sweated to raise the last portcullis. Archers watched from the battlements high above. No bunting here. I recognized the man vaguely, as old as Gomst, salt-and-pepper hair. It was his sour expression I recalled best, pinched around the mouth as if he’d just that moment sucked a lemon.

  “Prince Jorg, we are told?” He peered up at me, raising his torch almost to my face. Evidently I had enough of the King’s look about me to satisfy his curiosity. He lowered the torch fast enough and took a step back. I’m told I have my father’s eyes. Maybe I do, though mine are darker. We could both give a stare that made men think again. I’ve always thought I look too girlish. My mouth too much the rosebud, my cheekbones too high and fine. It’s of no great consequence. I’ve learned to wear my face as a mask, and generally I can write what I choose on it.

  The captain nodded to Captain Coddin. He passed his gaze over Makin without a flicker, missed Father Gomst in the crowd, and lingered instead on the Nuban, before casting a dubious eye over Rike.

  “I can find accommodation for your men in the Low City, Prince Jo
rg,” he said. By the Low City he meant the sprawl beyond the walls of Old City.

  “My companions can board with me at the castle,” I said.

  “King Olidan requires only your presence, Prince Jorg,” the gate captain said. “And that of Father Gomst, and Captain Bortha if he is with you?”

  Makin raised a mailed hand. Both the gate captain’s eyebrows vanished up beneath his helm at that. “Makin Bortha? No . . . ?”

  “One and the same,” Makin said. He gave the man a broad grin, showing altogether too many teeth. “Been a while, Relkin, you old bastard.”

  “King Olidan requires” . . . no room for manoeuvre there. A polite little “get your road-scum down to the slums.” At least Relkin made it clear enough from the start, rather than letting me lose face by arguing the odds before over-ruling me with “King Olidan requires.”

  “Elban, take the brothers down to the river and find some rooms. There’s a tavern, The Falling Angel, should be big enough for you all,” I said.

  Elban looked surprised at having been chosen, surprised but pleased. He smacked his lips over his toothless gums and glared back at the rest of them. “You heard Jorth! Prince Jorth I mean. Move it out!”

  “Killing peasants is a hanging offence,” I said as they turned their horses. “Hear me, Little Rikey? Even one. So no killing, no pillage, and no raping. You want a woman, let the Count of Renar buy you one with his coin. Hell, let him buy you three.”

  All three gates stood open. “Captain Coddin, a pleasure. Enjoy your ride back to the Ford,” I said.

  Coddin bowed in the saddle and led his troops off. That left just me, Gomst, and Makin. “Lead on,” I said. And Gate Captain Relkin led us through the West Gate into the High City.

  We had no crowds to contend with. The hour was well past midnight and the moon rode high now. The wide streets of the High City lay deserted save for the occasional servant scurrying from one great house to the next. Maybe a merchant’s daughter or two watched us from behind the shutters, but in the main the noble houses slept sound and showed no interest in a returning prince.

  Gerrod’s hooves sounded too loud on the flagstones leading up to Tall Castle. Four years ago I left in velvet slippers, quieter than any mouse. The clatter of iron shoes on stone hurt my ears. Inside, a small voice still whispered that I’d wake Father. Be quiet, be quiet, don’t breathe, don’t even let your heart beat.

  Tall Castle is of course anything but tall. In four years on the road I had seen taller castles, even bigger castles, but never anything quite like Tall Castle. The place seemed at once familiar and strange. I remembered it as bigger. The castle may have shrunk from the unending vastness I’d carried with me in memory, but it still seemed huge. Tutor Lundist told me the whole place once served as foundations for a castle so tall it would scrape the sky. He said that when men first built this, all we see now lay under the ground. The Road-men didn’t build Tall Castle, but those who did had artifice almost to equal that of the Road-men. The walls weren’t quarry-hewn, but seemingly crushed rock that had once poured like water. Some magic set metal bars through the stone of the wall, twisted bars of a metal tougher even than the black iron from the East. So Tall Castle brooded squat and ancient, and the King sat within its metal-veined walls, watching over the High City, the Old City, the Low City. Watching over the city of Crath and all the dominions of his line. My line. My city. My castle.

  15

  Four years earlier

  We left the Tall Castle by the Brown Gate, a small door on the lower slopes of the mount, out past the High Wall. I came last, with the ache of all those steps in my legs.

  Faint red footprints marked the top stair. The owners of that blood were probably still bleeding, far behind us.

  For a moment I saw Lundist, lying as I’d left him.

  We’d climbed from the very bowels of the castle vaults, to the least ostentatious of all the castle’s exits. Dung men came this way a dozen times a day, carrying off the treasures of the privy. And I’ll tell you, royal shit stinks no less than any other.

  The brother ahead of me turned at the archway, and showed me his teeth by way of a grin. “Fresh air! Take a breath o’ that, Castle Boy.”

  I’d heard the Nuban call this one Row, a wire of a man, gristle and bone, old scars and a mean eye. “I’ll lick a leper’s neck before I take a lung-full o’ your stench, Brother Row.” I pushed past him. It’d take more than talking like a road-brother to earn a place with these men, and giving an inch wasn’t the way to start.

  Ancrath stretched out on our right. To the left, the smoke and spires of Crath City rose behind the Old Wall. A storm light covered it all. The kind that falls when thunderclouds gather in the day. A flat light that makes a stranger of even the most familiar landscape. It felt appropriate.

  “We travel fast and we travel hard,” Price said.

  Price and Rike, the only true brothers among us, stood shoulder to shoulder at the head of the column, Rike beetling his brow while Price told us how it would be. “We put as many miles between us and this shit-hole as it takes. The storm will hide our tracks. We’ll find horses as we go, roust a village or two if need be.”

  “You think the King’s hunters can’t track two dozen men through a bit of rain?” I wished my voice didn’t ring so pure and high as I said it.

  They all turned round at that. The Nuban flashed me a look, eyes wide, and patted down at the air as if to shut me up.

  I pointed to the sprawl of roofs edging toward the river where Father’s loving citizens had built beyond the safety of the city walls in their passion to be near him.

  “By ones and twos a brother could find his way to a warm hearth, bit of roast beef, and an ale maybe,” I said. “I hear there’s a tavern or three to be found down there. A brother could be toasting by a fire before the rain even got to washing his trail away.

  “The King’s men would be riding back and forth on those fine horses of theirs, getting wet, looking for the kind of rut that twenty men put in a road or across a field, looking for the kind of trouble a band of brothers stirs up. And we’d be sitting comfortable in the shadow of the Tall Castle, waiting for the weather to clear.

  “You think there’s a man we left behind who could tell the Criers what we look like? You think the good folk of Crath City will notice a score added to their thousands?”

  I could see I’d won them. I could see the light of that warm hearth reflecting in their eyes.

  “And how the feck are we to pay for roast beef and a roof to hide under?” Price shoved through the brothers, setting the redhead, Gemt, on his rear. “Start robbing in the shadow of the Tall Castle?”

  “Yeah, how we a-gonna pay, Castle Boy?” Gemt scrambled to his feet, finding me a better target than Price for his anger. “How we gonna?”

  I brought up two ducats from my purse, and rubbed them together.

  “I’ll take that!” A sharp-faced man to my left lunged for the purse, still fat with coin.

  I flipped the dagger from my belt and stuck it through his outstretched hand.

  “Liar,” I said. I shoved a little more, until the hilt slapped up against his palm, the blade glistening red behind.

  “Out the way, Liar.” Price grabbed him by the neck and tossed him down the slope.

  Price loomed over me. Any full-grown man loomed over me, but Price added a new dimension to it. He took a handful of my jerkin and hauled me up, eye to eye, careless of the bloody knife I still had hold of.

  “You’re not scared of me, are you, boy?” The stink of him was something awful. Dead dog comes close.

  I thought about stabbing him, but I knew there wasn’t a wound that would stop him breaking me in two before he died.

  “Are you scared of me?” I asked him.

  We had us a moment of understanding then. Price didn’t so much as twitch, but I saw it in him, and he saw it in me. He let me fall.

  “We’ll stay a day in the city,” Price said. “The drinks are on Brother Jor
g. Any of you whoresons start trouble before we leave, and I’ll hurt you, bad.”

  He held a hand out to me where I lay. I half-reached for it, before understanding. I tossed the purse to him.

  “I’ll go with the Nuban,” I said.

  Price nodded. A black face lost from the dungeons would be remembered. A black face found in a Crath tavern would be remarked on.

  The Nuban shrugged, and set off, east toward the open fields. I followed.

  It wasn’t until we’d lost ourselves in the maze of tracks and hedgerows that the Nuban spoke again.

  “You should be afraid of Price, boy.”

  The first breath of storm wind set the hawthorn rustling to either side. I could smell the electricity, mixed in with the richness of the earth.

  “Why?” I wondered if he thought I lacked the imagination for fear. Some men are too dull to feel what might happen. Others torture themselves with maybes and populate their dreams with horrors more terrible than their worst enemy could inflict upon them.

  “Why would the gods care what happens to a child who doesn’t care about himself?” the Nuban asked.

  He paused before a turn in the road and moved close to the hedge. The wind shook again and white petals fell among the thorns. He looked back along the way we’d come.

  “Maybe I’m not afraid of the gods either,” I said.

  Fat drops of rain began to land around us.

  The Nuban shook his head. Raindrops sparkled in the tight curls of his hair. “You’re a fool to make a fist at the gods, boy.” He flashed me a grin, and edged to the corner. “Who knows what they might send you?”

  Rain appeared to be the answer. It seemed to fall faster than normal, as if the sheer weight of water waiting to fall hurried the raindrops down. I moved in beside the Nuban. The hedge offered no shelter. The rain came through my tunic, cold enough to steal my breath. I thought then of the comforts I’d left behind, and wondered if perhaps I should have taken Lundist’s counsel after all.