King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

“Can it?” Hobbs at my right, hopeful.

“No,” I said. “But we need to draw as many men from the fight as we can. The castle can work for us, but not with these odds. And remember, gentlemen, the beautiful Queen…Mi-something?”

“Miana,” Coddin said.

“Yes, her. Queen Miana. Remind the men who we’re fighting for, Hobbs.”

And that was Coddin for you. He watched and he remembered. The man had a mixture of decency and reserve in him that struck a chord with me, qualities I would never own but could appreciate none the less. He’d been the first man of Ancrath I met on my return four years back. I’d thought him tall back then, though now I overtopped him. I’d thought him old, though now he had grey amid the black and I thought him in his prime. I’d elevated him from a guard captain to Watch-master of the Forest Watch because something in him told me he wouldn’t let me down. That same quality put the chamberlain’s robe around his shoulders a year later.

Across the slope old Keppen had his archers lofting their flights high into the air, passing over the scattered foot-soldiers to rain down unaimed in the midst of the Prince’s forces.

I could see the first of the archers emerging from the ranks, men of Belpan with their tall bows, and the Prince’s own levies with the dragons of Arrow painted red on their leather tabards.

“Time to go.” I slipped the purple ribbon over the end of my shortbow and held it high for the Watch to see.

In retrospect it would have been better to have somebody else do it. Somebody unimportant. Fortunately the Prince’s archers were still finding clear ground to shoot from and the shafts aimed at me went wide, at least wide enough to miss me. A man ten yards ahead of us jerked back with an arrow jutting from under his collarbone.

“Damn,” said Coddin.

I turned sharp enough toward him. Something down the slope held his gaze but I couldn’t tell what.

“Problem?” I asked.

Coddin held up scarlet fingers. It didn’t make sense at first. I tried to see where he was cut.

“Easy.” Makin moved to support him as he staggered.

At last I saw the arrow, just the flights showing, black against the dark leather over his guts. “Ah, hell.”

A gut-shot man doesn’t live. Everyone knows that. Even with silks under the leathers to twist and wrap the arrow so it pulls out easy and clean, you don’t live past a gut shot.

“Carry him,” I said.

The others just looked at me. For a moment I saw the Norse witch, felt the intensity of her single eye and the mockery in her withered smile. “Even a gut-shot man has a fool’s hope,” she’d said. Had she been looking past me, at this day?

“Damn prophecy and damn prediction!” I spat and the wind carried it away.

“Sorry?” Makin looked at me, even Coddin stared.

“Get some men here, pick him up, and carry him,” I said.

“Jorg—” Makin started.

“I’ll stay here,” Coddin said. “It’s a good view.”

I liked Coddin from the start. Four years with him at the Haunt just scored the feeling deeper. I liked him for his quick mind, for his curious honesty, and for his courage in the face of hard choices. Mostly though I liked him because he liked me. “It’s a better view from up there.” I gestured up the slope.

“This will kill me, Jorg.” He looked me in the eyes. I didn’t like that. It put a strange kind of hurt on me.

Arrows in the guts don’t kill quick, but the wound sours. You bloat and sweat and scream, then die. Two days, maybe four. Had a Brother once that lasted a week and then some. I never once met a man who could show me a scar on his belly and tell how it hurt like a bastard when they pulled the arrow out.

“You owe me, Coddin,” I said. “Your duty to your king is the least of it. That arrow probably will kill you, but not today. And if you think I’ve a sentimental side that will give you a quick death here and lose several days of useful advice when I need it most, you’re wrong.”

I’d never met a man who lived after that kind of hurt. But I heard of one. It did happen.

“We carry him up to the rock fall. We send men ahead to make a hidey-hole in the loose stone. We put him there and cover him up. If he’s lucky we come back for him later. If not, he’s ready buried,” I said.

Already men of the Watch were crowding around, linking arms to lift Coddin. No complaints. They liked him too.

25

Wedding day

None of the men who carried Coddin up the mountain breathed a word of complaint. They had no breath for it, but if they had still they would have held their peace. Coddin led men by example. Somehow he made you want to do it right.

“I love you, Jorg, as my king, but also as a father loves his son, or should.”

There are some things two men can only say to each other when arrows are raining down and one of them lies mortally wounded, walled away in a rough void amid a mass of fallen rock, and thousands of enemy troops are closing in. Even then it’s uncomfortable.

We carried Coddin, Captain Lore Coddin, formerly of Ancrath, High Chancellor of the Renar Highlands. We carried him ahead of the fresh and surging army of Arrow, fuelled as they were by the desire to avenge the thousands crushed beneath our rockslides. The archers of the Watch held every ridge until the last moment, loosing flight after flight into the oncoming soldiers, making them climb their dead as well as the mountain. And tired as they were, the men of my Watch still opened a lead on the enemy, even bearing Coddin in their arms.

The troops sent ahead to the loose rubble of the morning’s rockslides found a suitable cavity between two large boulders freed amongst the general fall. They enlarged the void and set aside rocks suitable for sealing and hiding the space.

By the time we reached the cave, the men carrying Coddin were scarlet with his blood and he groaned at each jolt of their advance. Captains Keppen and Harold massed their commands at separate points across the slope and shot the last of their arrows to hold our enemies’ attention. And to kill them.

With the narrow neck of the valley ahead of us, and the snowline glistening high above that, and the wind picking up, filching warmth with quick sharp fingers, and the men of Arrow panting and gasping as they closed the last few hundred yards, I lay on the rock and spoke through gaps to the dying man below.

“You shut your mouth, old man,” I said.

“You’d need to dig me out to stop me,” he gasped. “Or run away. And I’ve a mind you’re not running, not just yet.” He coughed and tried to hide a groan. “You need to hear such words, Jorg. You need to know that you are loved, not just feared. You need to know it to ease what poisons you.”

“Don’t.”

“You need to hear.” Again the cough.

“I’m coming back for you when this is done, Coddin. So don’t say anything you’ll regret, because I will hold it against you.”

“I love you for no good reason, Jorg. I’ve no sons, but if I did I wouldn’t want them to be like you. You’re a vicious bastard at the best of times.”

“Careful, old man. I can still stick a sword through this crack and put you out of my misery.”