King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

“How many of the enemy did you kill, and at what loss?” Miana asked. The men had been waiting for me to speak. She felt no such need. I would have asked the same question.

“About six thousand for the loss of two hundred,” I said.

“A thirty to one ratio. Better than the rate of twenty to one needed.” To hear her high sweet voice recite the statistics of our body count seemed wrong.

“True. But they were two hundred of my very best, and I have played the aces from my hand.”

“And Chancellor Coddin has not returned,” Miana said. She was remarkably well informed for a little girl.

A pang of something ran through me at that. I saw Coddin once more in the tomb we made for him. “He’s safer than we are,” I said. He would probably live longer too. He would linger.

I took a goblet of watered wine from a page and a plate with crusted bread and goat cheese.

“And your plans?” she asked.

I blew through my lips. “We will have to place our faith in stone and mortar, and hope that in the time they buy us, fortune decides to smile our way.” The wine tasted like heaven and made me dizzy after one sip.

“Perhaps my new father-in-law will send us aid?” Miana said, her smile faint and years too old for her.

“I was hoping something similar myself,” I said.

More than in muscle heaped on bone, Brother Rike’s strength springs from the ability to hate the inanimate.

39

Four years earlier

“She’s gone, yes?” Makin shaded his eyes against the sunrise and squinted back across the marsh. We stood on rolling scrubland now with yellow rock breaking through in sandy patches here and there.

“I hope so,” I said. Part of me wanted Chella to find destruction at my hands, the personal touch, but perhaps she ended there in the marsh amongst the burning dead. I hadn’t felt it. No sense of satisfaction, but my uncle’s death had taught me that revenge is far less sweet than it promises to be. An empty meal, however long you take over it.

We took to horse for the first time in what seemed an age. Rike on Row’s roan since his own plough-horse proved too heavy for its own good in the bogs. Kent and Makin on their horses. Grumlow riding double with me since he and I were the lightest of the Brothers and Brath the strongest of the nags.

The sour stink of the marshes followed us for miles. Black mud caking on our clothes, drying grey and flaking away. More persistent than stink or mud, the image of Chella as the flames rose around her, and the echo of her last words. The Dead King sails.

In three days we came by moorland and scrub, then by forgotten roads, and finally by country tracks, to the free port of Barlona. Rike made ceaseless complaint about his sunburn until I convinced him to smear pig-shit over the worst affected areas. For some reason it seemed to help though I hadn’t intended it to. Suggestion can be a powerful thing.

The ancient walls shimmered in the summer heat as we approached. They must have been impressive a thousand years ago. Now only the base of the walls remained, twenty foot high and just as thick, spilling black stone in great heaps for the peasants to raid to make huts and boundary walls for their fields.

I liked the city from the moment we rode in. The air held exotic scents, spices and cooking smoke that made my stomach growl. The people thronged, loud in voice and clothing, bright silks, garish jewellery made of glass and base metals, flesh of all colours on display in wide swathes. Men and women as light as me, as dark as the Nuban, and all shades in between. None as pale as Sindri and Duke Alaric though. Those, I think the sun would melt.

Music came from almost every corner in as many shades as the people. It seemed that the citizens walked in time to the beat and pulse of a thousand drums, horns, voices. I’d not heard such sounds before, so many strange melodies, some reminding me of the marching beats the Nuban used to slap against his thigh as we walked and which he elaborated on around the campfire. Others held remembrances of the curious atonal humming Tutor Lundist lapsed into in empty moments.

A port is an open ear to the world, a mouth ready for new flavours. Approaching my fifteenth year I felt more than ready to explore the wideness of the world that Barlona offered up.

“You know, Makin, you can take ship from here to almost any place you’ve ever heard of and a thousand that you haven’t,” I said.

“Ships make me hurl.” Makin looked as if he were remembering the taste.

“You don’t like them?”

“It’s the waves. I get seasick. I vomit from one shore to the next. I was nearly sick crossing the Rhyme.”

“Well, that’s good to know.” With Makin you can keep digging and find a new fact year on year. I hadn’t known he’d ever crossed an ocean, or even travelled under sail.

“How is that good to know?” He frowned.

“Well, the only way to get to the Horse Coast is by sea and I’m going alone. Knowing what a bad sailor you are just makes it easier to send you back to the Haunt.”

“We can ride there,” Makin said. “It’s less than a hundred miles.”

“Through the Duchy of Aramas and then the lands of King Philip the nine hundredth,” I said.

“Thirty-second,” Makin corrected.

“Whatever. The point is that those are not places men like us can pass unnoticed, whereas a ship will sail me right to my grandfather’s doorstep in a day or two.”

“So we take a ship and I coat the decks in vomit. What’s the problem?”

“The problem, dear Makin, is that I don’t want Rike there, or Grumlow, or Kent. I don’t even want you there. I want to make my own introductions in my own time. This is family business and I’ll do it my way.”

“That tends to mean everyone dies.” Makin grinned.

“Maybe, but I don’t need you there for that either. Just get them back to the Haunt. We’ve lost too many on this trip. I won’t say we’ve lost good men, but ones that I would rather have kept. Though if you misplace Rike on the way back, that would be fine.”

“This is a bad idea, Jorg.” Makin had that stubborn look of his, lips pressed tight, a vertical line between his brows.

“I need you in Renar,” I said. “I needed you there from the start. If you recall I did my damnedest not to have you come in the first place. Coddin’s a good man but how long can he hold a kingdom together for? Go back, crack any heads that need cracking, and let my people know I’ll be returning.”

“Oi!” Grumlow’s cry. A man running away through the crowd. I saw Grumlow’s arm flick back and throw. The man fell without a sound twenty yards off, shoving his way through the crowd.

I walked with Grumlow to where he lay. People got out of our way, except for the children who ran everywhere as if we were part of a show. Grumlow pulled his saddlebag from the man’s limp hands.

“Cut the bloody strap! That’ll cost!” he said.

“I told you to secure it better,” I said. The few bits and pieces Grumlow had managed to bring through the bogs were tied randomly around Brath’s tack.

Grumlow grunted and bent to retrieve his knife. It had hit the man hilt-first in the back of the head. A pool of blood glistened beneath the man’s face, but it must have come from his nose or mouth hitting the cobbles. We didn’t bother turning him over to find out.