King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

My face hurt, my lungs hurt, everything hurt, the air was full of smoke and the screams of the dying, and suddenly I wanted to win again. Very much.

I went over to the fireplace and picked Miana out of the rubble. Dust fell from her hair as I hauled her onto my shoulder, but she coughed, and that was good enough.

47

Wedding day

I laid Miana on my bed and left her there. She had proved tougher than expected so far and it looked as if she’d just been knocked out. Habit put the lidless box back in my hip pocket.

Although I couldn’t see the fires in the courtyard, I could feel them. When I woke the Builders’ Sun beneath Mount Honas its power had ignited Gog’s talent. It seemed that releasing the ruby’s fire-magic in one blast had woken in me what echoes of Gog and his skills had lodged in my flesh when he died beneath Halradra. I pushed back against the feeling. I remembered Ferrakind. I would not become such a thing.

The Haunt’s keep has four towers, my bedchamber being at the top of the eastmost one. I went to the roof. A young guardsman sat hunched on the top steps just below the trapdoor. A new recruit by the look of him, his chainmail shirt too big for his slight frame.

“Waiting here in case giant birds land on my roof and try to force an entry?” I asked.

“Your Majesty!” He leapt to his feet. If he weren’t so short he’d have brained himself on the trapdoor. He looked terrified.

“You can escort me up,” I said. He would have plenty of time to die on my behalf later on. No point chasing him down the stairs myself. “Rodrick is it?” I had no idea what the coward’s name was but “Rodrick” was popular in the Highlands.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” A relieved grin spread over his face.

He unbolted the door and heaved it open. I let him walk out first. Nobody shot him, so I followed.

From the tower battlements I could see the Prince’s army on the slopes, in even more disarray than my own troops. It would be an hour and more before his captains imposed order, the units reformed and merged, before the dead were heaped, the injured carted to the rear. A haze of smoke hung across the remains of the shantytown that had stood before the Haunt’s walls. The brisk wind could do little to shift it.

Despite the fires in the courtyard below, it felt cold on the tower. The wind had teeth up there and carried the edged threat of winter. I crept to the east wall and looked out toward the ridge where the Prince had the bulk of his archers positioned. They seemed to be in some confusion. Trolls had emerged from several still-undiscovered exits and were busy parting the lightly-armoured bowmen from their heads again.

I ducked down. I’d had my head up for two heartbeats. It took an arrow three beats to fly from the ridge to the keep. And sure enough, several shafts hissed overhead. They all missed Rodrick, who hadn’t had the wit to get behind cover. I knocked him flat. “Stay there.”

I took the Builders’ view-ring from inside my breastplate and held it to one eye. Making the image zoom in to one area still made me feel as if I were falling, plunging from unimaginable heights. I knew it must be a matter of moving lenses, as Lundist had shown me in my father’s observatory, but it felt as if I rode the back of an angel falling from heaven.

“Jorg! Jorg!” Makin’s voice from down below. He sounded worried.

“We’re up here,” I called.

A moment later Makin’s head poked into view. At least I assumed it was him in the helmet.

“You didn’t burn up then,” I said.

“Damn near! I couldn’t find Kent. I think he’s gone.”

“Watch this.” I waved him over to my side. “It should be good. But don’t stick your head up too high.”

I took Makin’s shield from him and held it over my head for extra cover. We peered over the battlements. The battlefield had fallen almost silent after the explosion, still with the screaming of course, but without the crash of weapons, the war-cries, the twangs and thuds of siege machinery. The drums were voiceless too—Uncle’s six great battle-drums, brass and ebony, wider than barrels, ox-skinned, now burned-out and smouldering among the corpses in the yard. Beneath it all though I could hear a new drumming, a faint thunder. Makin cocked his head. He could hear it too. It sounded almost like another avalanche.

“That’s cavalry! Arrow’s brung up his cavalry, Jorg.” Makin started to crawl for the wall overlooking the Haunt’s ruined front.

I pulled him back. “There’s only one place for miles a horse can charge, Sir Makin.”

And they came, in a rushing stream of blue and violet cloaks, silver mail, thundering past Marten’s hidden troops, the foremost with their lances lowered for the kill.

“What?” Makin almost stood up.

“I once told Sim about Hannibal taking elephants across the Aups. Well, my uncle has brought heavy horses across the Matteracks in the jaws of winter.”

“How?”

I made quick circles with my hand, as if trying to spin the cogs of Makin’s mind a little faster.

“The Blue Moon Pass!” Makin grinned, showing more teeth than a man should have.

“Even so,” I said. “I emptied it out for him. And Lord Jost must have signalled that the marriage was sealed…and here they are.”

The cavalry of the House Morrow sliced through the ranks of foot-soldiers sent up to hunt out Gorgoth’s trolls. It helped that most of Arrow’s troops had their backs to the Runyard, since they’d found rather more trolls than they had wanted to. In fact the trolls were making an impressive hole in Arrow’s ranks all by themselves. They moved like wild dogs on the attack, hurling themselves into knots of men and leaving scattered limbs in their wake. Whoever bred them for war had surpassed themselves.

Riding onto the archers’ ridge required that the cavalry slow, but they could traverse the whole length five and eight abreast at the canter, killing as they went. The archers were no match for armoured knights. Most broke and ran, tumbling back down the mountainside.

There were perhaps five hundred of my grandfather’s cavalry. Gorgoth withdrew his trolls as agreed and left the men to fight each other. I couldn’t tell what losses the trolls had suffered but they were not insignificant and I knew that Gorgoth would not permit them to rejoin the battle. He had wanted a homeland for his new-found subjects and they had paid the price I asked of them.

“Incredible!” Makin shouted. He kept shaking his head.

“It’s not enough,” I said.

The charge left bloody slaughter trampled into the grit, hundreds upon hundreds died before the momentum broke. And even without the cohesion of the charge, the knights wrought havoc, striking down with axe and sword at the heads of running bowmen. But you can’t run five hundred men into four thousand and not expect to pay. The knights were wheeling now, finding their way down the back slope of the ridge and turning toward the Runyard again. Perhaps half of them survived.

“They were magnificent!” Makin surged to his feet. “Weren’t you looking?”

“They were magnificent. And when they join us, we will have a little over seven hundred men in this broken castle. Depending on how many of the troops routed in that charge can be rallied and reformed, the Prince of Arrow will have somewhere between five and seven thousand men.”