King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

The foothills of the Aups roll out along the margins of Teutonia in long barren valleys divided by high ridges of broken stone. Bad things happened here in the distant long ago. The Interdiction they called it, and little grows in the sour dust, even now. Amid the emptiness of those valleys, a week’s march from anywhere you might want to be, we passed the loneliest house in the world. I have read that in the white north, beyond a frozen sea, men live in ice houses, sewn in their furs, huddled from a wind that can cut you in half. But this stone hut, dwarfed amongst abandoned boulders, its empty windows like dark eyes, it seemed worse. A woman came out of it and three children lined up before her to watch as we rode past. No words were spoken. In that dry valley with just the whisper of the wind, without crow call or the high song of larks, it felt as if words would be a sin, as if they might wake something better left sleeping.

The woman watched us from a face that looked too white, too smooth, like a dead child’s face. And the children crouched around her in their grey rags.

Riding north, we had paced the spring. Now it seemed we galloped into summer. Mud dried to hardpan, blossoms melted away, the flies came. Rike turned red as he does in any hint of summer, even the dirt won’t keep him from it, and the sunburn improved his temper not a bit.

We left the mountains and their grim foothills, finding our way across wild heathlands and into the great forests of the south.

At the end of a hot day when my face hurt less, not healed but no longer weeping, I drew my sword. We had set camp on the edge of a forest clearing. Row found us a deer and had a haunch spitting over the fire.

“Have at ye, Sir Makin of Trent!”

“If you’re sure you’ve not forgotten how to use that thing.” He grinned and drew. “My liege.”

We sparred a while, parrying and feinting, stretching our limbs and practising our strokes. Without warning, Makin picked up the pace, the point of his blade questing for me.

“Time for another lesson?” he asked, still grinning, but fierce now.

I let my sword-arm guide me, watching only the plot of the fight, the advances and retreats, not the details of every cut and thrust. Behind Makin the sun reached through the forest canopy in golden shafts like the strings of a harp, and beneath the rustle of leaves, above the birds’ calls, I caught the strains of the sword-song. The tempo of our blades increased, sharp harsh cries of steel on steel, the rasp of breath—faster. The burn on my face seemed to reignite. The old pain ran in me, acid and lightning, as if Gog’s fragments were lodged in my bones, still burning. Faster. I saw Makin’s grin falter, the sweat running on his forehead. Faster—the flicker of reflected light in his eyes. Faster. A moment of desperation and then—“Enough!” And he let the sword fly from his fingers. “Jesu!” he cried, shaking his hand. “Nobody fights like that.”

The Brothers had stopped their various tasks and watched as if unsure what they had seen.

I shrugged. “Perhaps you’re not such a bad teacher?”

My arms trembled now and I used my free hand to steer the point of my blade home into its scabbard. “Ouch!” For a moment I thought I had cut myself and raised my fingertips to my mouth. But there was no blood, only blistering where the hot metal scorched me.

We followed the curve of the mountain range and the sweep of one great river then another. The maps had names for them, sometimes the locals had their own, not trusted to maps. Sometimes those upstream called a river one thing and those farther down named it differently. I didn’t much care as long as it led us where I chose to go. Lately though we had been blocked at each turn it seemed. Watchtowers, patrols, floods, rumours of plague, each of them turned us one way then another, as if funnelling us south along particular paths. I didn’t much like the feeling but it was, as Makin said, just a feeling.

“Dung on it!” I jumped from Brath’s saddle and approached the shattered bridge. On our side the stonework still held part of its original arc, spanning out across the white waters for several yards before ending like a broken tooth. I could see large chunks of the bridge just below the river’s surface, making waves and troughs in the flow. The damage looked fresh.

“So we trek east a bit. It’s not the end of the world,” Makin said.

Of all of us Makin held the best mind for finding a path. Maps stayed with me. I could close my eyes and see each detail on the map scroll, but Makin had an instinct for turning ink on hide into wise choices in the matter of this valley or that ridge.

I grunted. Crouched at the side of the bridge I could smell something, just a hint, beneath that fresh metallic tang of fast moving waters, something rotten. “East then,” I said. And we turned toward the trail leading east, a thin line of darker green amid the verdant woods, overhung with willow and choked by brambles. The thorns scratched at my boots as we rode.

The thing about the path less travelled is that it is often less travelled for a good reason. When that reason is not the dangers that haunt the road then it is the road itself. Sometimes it’s both. In Cantanlona the soft edge of civilization becomes very soft, so soft in fact that it will suck you down given a quarter-chance.

“We’re going through?” Red Kent stood in his stirrups frowning at the reed-dotted marshland stretching before us into a greenish brown infinity.

“Stinks.” Makin sniffed as if he weren’t getting quite enough of the stink that offended him.

Rike just spat and slapped at the mosquitoes. He seemed to draw them as if they just couldn’t tell how foul he was going to taste.

The Duchy of Cantanlona lies along what was once the border between two vast kingdoms, the bonding of which was the first step Philip took in forging the empire. It’s said Philip’s mother gave birth on that border, in Avinron, and being therefore a man of two lands he felt he had claim to both. It seemed fitting then that nothing remained of Avinron but a fetid swamp fed by a river aptly named “the Ooze.”

Our route lay through the marshland. Good reasons for it lay to either side. I led the way, on foot with Brath’s reins in hand. The Brothers and I had spent long enough in the Ken Marshes to develop a sense for uncertain ground. The vegetation tells the story. Watch for cotton grass, the first whisper of deep mud, black bog-rush where the ground will bear a man but a horse will sink, sedge for clean water, pimpernel for sour, bulrush where the water is deep but the mud below is firm. Sharp eyes you need, and watchful feet, and the hope that the warm swamps of Cantanlona are not too different from the cold marshes that border Ancrath.

Makin was right about the stink. The heat made it a high summer. An all-pervading rot encompassed us, the reek of putrid flesh and worse.

We made slow progress that day though we covered enough miles to make the way we had come look pretty much identical to the directions ahead, pathless, uniform, and without hope of end.

I found a place to camp where we might be sure of a full complement in the morning. A series of grassy hummocks connected by strands of firm ground offered sufficient room for the men and horses, though we would all be keeping closer quarters than perhaps we would like.

Grumlow set to cooking, using sticks and charcoal that he’d had the foresight to bring with him. He brought out his iron tripod and hung a pot over the little fire and crouched over it, trickling in barley atop strips of smoked venison, the steam rising all about him and dripping off his moustache and back into the stew.