King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

“You took from me, Jorg,” Father said. “You stole what was mine.”

I knew enough not to say that it was Mother’s.

“I’ve noticed that you love this dog,” Father said.

I wondered at that, even in my fear. I thought it more likely that he had been told.

“That’s a weakness, Jorg,” Father said. “Loving anything is a weakness. Loving a hound is stupidity.”

I said nothing.

“Shall I burn the dog?” Father reached for the nearest torch.

“No!” It burst from me, a horrified scream.

He sat back. “See how weak this dog has made you?” He glanced at Sir Reilly. “How will he rule Ancrath if he cannot rule himself?”

“Don’t burn him.” My voice trembled, pleading, but somehow it was a threat too, even if none of us recognized it.

“Perhaps there is another way?” Father said. “A middle ground.” He looked at the hammer.

I didn’t understand. I didn’t want to.

“Break the dog’s leg,” he said. “One quick blow and Justice will be served.”

“No,” I swallowed, almost choking, “I can’t.”

Father shrugged and leaned from his throne, reaching for the torch again.

I remembered the pain that poker had seared into me. Horror reached for me and I knew I could let it take me, down into hysteria, crying, raging, and I could stay there until the deed was done. I could run and hide in tears and leave Justice to burn.

I picked up the hammer before Father’s hand closed on the torch. It took effort just to lift it, heavy in too many ways. Justice just trembled and watched me, whining, his tail hooked between his legs, no understanding in him, only fear.

“Swing hard,” Father said. “Or you’ll just have to swing again.”

I looked at Justice’s leg, his long quick leg, the fur plastered down with oil over bone and tendon, the iron shackle, some kind of vice from the Question Chamber, biting into his ankle, blood on the metal.

“I’m sorry, Father, I won’t ever steal again.” And I meant it.

“Don’t try my patience, boy.” I saw the coldness in his eyes and wondered if he had always hated me.

I lifted the hammer, my arms almost too weak, shaking almost as much as the dog. I raised it slowly, waiting, waiting for Father to say it, to say: “Enough, you’ve proved yourself.”

The words never came. “Break or burn,” he said. And with a scream I let the hammer swing.

Justice’s leg broke with a loud snap. For a heartbeat there was no other sound. The limb looked wrong, upper and lower parts at sick-making angles, white bone in a slather of red blood and black fur. Then came the howling, the snarling fury, the straining at his bonds as he looked for something to fight, some battle to keep away the pain.

“One more, Jorg,” Father said. He spoke softly but I heard him above the howls. For the longest moment his words made no sense to me.

I said “No,” but I didn’t make him reach for the torch. If I made him reach again he wouldn’t draw back. I knew that much.

This time Justice understood the raising of the hammer. He whimpered, whined, begged as only dogs can beg. I swung hard and missed, blinded with tears. The cart rattled and Justice jumped and howled, bleeding from all his shackles now, the broken leg stretching with tendons exposed. I hit him on my second stroke and shattered his other foreleg.

Vomit took me by surprise, hot, sour, spurting from my mouth. I crawled in it, gagging and gasping. Almost not hearing Father’s: “One more.”

With his third leg smashed, Justice couldn’t stand. He flopped, broken in the cart, stinking in his own mess. Strangely he didn’t snarl or whine now. Instead as I lay wracked with sobs, heaving in the air in gulps, he nuzzled me as he used to nuzzle William when he cried with a grazed knee or thwarted ambition. That’s how stupid dogs are, my brothers. And that’s how stupid I was at six, letting weakness take hold of me, giving the world a lever with which to bend whatever iron lies in my soul.

“One more,” Father said. “He has a leg left to stand on, does he not, Sir Reilly?”

And for once Sir Reilly would not answer his king.

“One more, Jorg.”

I looked at Justice, broken and licking the tears and snot from my hand. “No.”

And with that Father took the torch and tossed it into the cart.

I rolled back from the sudden bloom of flame. Whatever my heart told me to do, my body remembered the lesson of the poker and would not let me stay. The howling from the cart made all that had gone before seem as nothing. I call it howling but it was screaming. Man, dog, horse. With enough hurt we all sound the same.

In that moment, rolling clear, even though I was six and my hands were unclever, I took the hammer that had seemed so heavy and threw it without effort, hard and straight. If my father had moved but a little more slowly I might be king of two lands now. Instead it touched his crown just enough to turn it a quarter circle, then hit the wall behind his chair and fell to the ground, leaving a shallow scar on the Builder-stone.

Father was right of course. There were lessons to be learned that night. The dog was a weakness and the Hundred War cannot be won by a man with such weaknesses. Nor can it be won by a man who yields to the lesser evil. Give an inch, give any single man any single inch and the next thing you hear will be, “One more, Jorg, one more.” And in the end what you love will burn. Father’s lesson was a true one, but knowing that can’t make me forgive the means by which he taught it.

For a time there on the road I followed Father’s teaching: strength in all things, no quarter. On the road I had known with the utter conviction of a child that the Empire throne would be mine only if I kept true to the hard lessons of Justice and the thorns. Weakness is a contagion, one breath of it can corrupt a man whole and entire. Now though, even with all the evil in me, I don’t know if I could teach such lessons to a son of mine.

William never needed such teaching. He had iron in him from the start, always the more clever, the more sure, the fiercest of us, despite my two extra years. He said I should have thrown the hammer as soon as I lifted it, and should not have missed. I would be king then, and we would still have our dog.

Two days later I stole away from both nurse and guard and found my way to the rubbish pits behind the table-knights’ stable. A north wind carried the last of winter, laced with rain that was almost ice. I found my dog’s remains, a reeking mess, black, dripping, limp but heavy. I had to drag him, but I had told William I would bury him, not leave him to rot on the pile. I dragged him two miles in the freezing rain, along the Roma Road, empty save for a merchant with his wagon lashed closed and his head down. I took Justice to the girl with the dog, and I buried him there beside her, in the mud, my hands numb and the rest of me wishing I were numb.

“Hello, Jorg,” Katherine said. And then nothing.

Nothing? If I could remember all that. If I could remember that dark path to the cemetery of Perechaise, and live with it these many years…what in hell lay in that box, and how could I ever want it back?

Many men do not look their part. Wisdom may wait behind a foolish smile, bravery can gaze from eyes that cry fright. Brother Rike however is that rarest of creatures, a man whose face tells the whole story. Blunt features beneath a heavy brow, the ugly puckering of old scar tissue, small black eyes that watch the world with impersonal malice, dark hair, short and thick with dirt, bristling across the thickest of skulls. And had God given him a smaller frame in place of a giant’s packed with unreasonable helpings of muscle, weakness in place of an ox team’s stamina, still Rike would be the meanest dwarf in Christendom.