Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire 1)

1

Ravens! Always the ravens. They settled on the gables of the church even before the injured became the dead. Even before Rike had finished taking fingers from hands, and rings from fingers. I leaned back against the gallowspost and nodded to the birds, a dozen of them in a black line, wise-eyed and watching.

The town-square ran red. Blood in the gutters, blood on the flagstones, blood in the fountain. The corpses posed as corpses do. Some comical, reaching for the sky with missing fingers, some peaceful, coiled about their wounds. Flies rose above the wounded as they struggled. This way and that, some blind, some sly, all betrayed by their buzzing entourage.

“Water! Water!” It’s always water with the dying. Strange, it’s killing that gives me a thirst.

And that was Mabberton. Two hundred dead farmers lying with their scythes and axes. You know, I warned them that we do this for a living. I said it to their leader, Bovid Tor. I gave them that chance, I always do. But no. They wanted blood and slaughter. And they got it.

War, my friends, is a thing of beauty. Those as says otherwise are losing. If I’d bothered to go over to old Bovid, propped up against the fountain with his guts in his lap, he’d probably take a contrary view. But look where disagreeing got him.

“Shit-poor farm maggots.” Rike discarded a handful of fingers over Bovid’s open belly. He came to me, holding out his takings, as if it was my fault. “Look! One gold ring. One! A whole village and one fecking gold ring. I’d like to set the bastards up and knock ’em down again. Fecking bog-farmers.”

He would too: he was an evil bastard, and greedy with it. I held his eye. “Settle down, Brother Rike. There’s more than one kind of gold in Mabberton.”

I gave him my warning look. His cursing stole the magic from the scene; besides, I had to be stern with him. Rike was always on the edge after a battle, wanting more. I gave him a look that told him I had more. More than he could handle. He grumbled, stowed his bloody ring, and thrust his knife back in his belt.

Makin came up then and flung an arm about each of us, clapping gauntlet to shoulder-plate. If Makin had a skill, then smoothing things over was it.

“Brother Jorg is right, Little Rikey. There’s treasure aplenty to be found.” He was wont to call Rike “Little Rikey,” on account of him being a head taller than any of us and twice as wide. Makin always told jokes. He’d tell them to those as he killed, if they gave him time. Liked to see them go out with a smile.

“What treasure?” Rike wanted to know, still surly.

“When you get farmers, what else do you always get, Little Rikey?” Makin raised his eyebrows all suggestive.

Rike lifted his visor, treating us to his ugly face. Well, brutal more than ugly. I think the scars improved him. “Cows?”

Makin pursed his lips. I never liked his lips, too thick and fleshy, but I forgave him that, for his joking and his deathly work with that flail of his. “Well, you can have the cows, Little Rikey. Me, I’m going to find a farmer’s daughter or three, before the others use them all up.”

They went off then, Rike doing that laugh of his, “hur, hur, hur,” as if he was trying to cough a fishbone out.

I watched them force the door to Bovid’s place opposite the church, a fine house, high roofed with wooden slates and a little flower garden in front. Bovid followed them with his eyes, but he couldn’t turn his head.

I looked at the ravens, I watched Gemt and his half-wit brother, Maical, taking heads, Maical with the cart and Gemt with the axe. A thing of beauty, I tell you. At least to look at. I’ll agree war smells bad. But we’d torch the place soon enough and the stink would all turn to wood-smoke. Gold rings? I needed no more payment.

“Boy!” Bovid called out, his voice all hollow like, and weak.

I went to stand before him, leaning on my sword, tired in my arms and legs all of a sudden. “Best speak your piece quickly, farmer. Brother Gemt’s a-coming with his axe. Chop-chop.”

He didn’t seem too worried. It’s hard to worry a man so close to the worm-feast. Still, it irked me that he held me so lightly and called me “boy.” “Do you have daughters, farmer? Hiding in the cellar maybe? Old Rike will sniff them out.”

Bovid looked up sharp at that, pained and sharp. “H-how old are you, boy?”

Again the “boy.” “Old enough to slit you open like a fat purse,” I said, getting angry now. I don’t like to get angry. It makes me angry. I don’t think he caught even that. I don’t think he even knew it was me that opened him up not half an hour before.

“Fifteen summers, no more. Couldn’t be more . . .” His words came slow, from blue lips in a white face.

Out by two, I would have told him, but he’d gone past hearing. The cart creaked up behind me, and Gemt came along with his axe dripping.

“Take his head,” I told them. “Leave his fat belly for the ravens.”

Fifteen! I’d hardly be fifteen and rousting villages.

By the time fifteen came around, I’d be King!

Some people are born to rub you the wrong way. Brother Gemt was born to rub the world the wrong way.

2

Mabberton burned well. All the villages burned well that summer. Makin called it a hot bastard of a summer, too mean to give out rain, and he wasn’t wrong. Dust rose behind us when we rode in; smoke when we rode out.

“Who’d be a farmer?” Makin liked to ask questions.

“Who’d be a farmer’s daughter?” I nodded toward Rike, rolling in his saddle, almost tired enough to fall out, wearing a stupid grin and a bolt of samite cloth over his half-plate. Where he found samite in Mabberton I never did get to know.

“Brother Rike does enjoy his simple pleasures,” Makin said.

He did. Rike had a hunger for it. Hungry like the fire.

The flames fair ate up Mabberton. I put the torch to the thatched inn, and the fire chased us out. Just one more bloody day in the years’ long death throes of our broken empire.

Makin wiped at his sweat, smearing himself all over with sootstripes. He had a talent for getting dirty, did Makin. “You weren’t above those simple pleasures yourself, Brother Jorg.”

I couldn’t argue there. “How old are you?” that fat farmer had wanted to know. Old enough to pay a call on his daughters. The fat girl had a lot to say, just like her father. Screeched like a barn owl: hurt my ears with it. I liked the older one better. She was quiet enough. So quiet you’d give a twist here or there just to check she hadn’t died of fright. Though I don’t suppose either of them was quiet when the fire reached them . . .

Gemt rode up and spoiled my imaginings.

“The Baron’s men will see that smoke from ten miles. You shouldn’ta burned it.” He shook his head, his stupid mane of ginger hair bobbing this way and that.

“Shouldn’ta,” his idiot brother joined in, calling from the old grey. We let him ride the old grey with the cart hitched up. The grey wouldn’t leave the road. That horse was cleverer than Maical.

Gemt always wanted to point stuff out. “You shouldn’ta put them bodies down the well, we’ll go thirsty now.” “You shouldn’ta killed that priest, we’ll have bad luck now.” “If we’d gone easy on her, we’d have a ransom from Baron Kennick.” I just ached to put my knife through his throat. Right then. Just to lean out and plant it in his neck. “What’s that? What say you, Brother Gemt? Bubble, bubble? Shouldn’ta stabbed your bulgy old Adam’s apple?”