Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire 1)

When you meet her, run.

“Well met, my lady.” I sketched her a court bow.

Just run.

“Gorgoth, you bring us guests as well as tribute!” Her laughter set a tingling in my groin.

Nothing else. Just run.

She offered her hand. For a moment I hesitated.

“And you would be?” Her eyes, that had held only the reflection of fire, now stole the green I remembered from a distant throne-room.

“Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath.” I took her hand, cool and heavy, and kissed it. “At your service.” And I was.

“Chella.” A dark fire ran in my veins. She smiled and I felt the same smile cross my face. She stepped closer. My skin sang with the thrill of her. I breathed her in, the bitter scent of old tombs, cut with the hot tang of blood.

“The little one first, Gorgoth,” she said, without taking her eyes from mine.

From the corner of my eye I saw Gorgoth take Gog in the hugeness of his hand.

The air became suddenly icy. The sound came of rock grinding on rock, setting my teeth on edge. The hall itself seemed to let forth a sigh of release, and with that exhalation mists swirled up among us, wraiths finding momentary form in the pale coils. I felt my finger freeze in the muck within the skull that dangled in my grasp.

The scraping ceased as bones found their partners. First one skeleton rose in a complex ballet of inter-articulation, then the next. The mists bound each bone in a spectral mockery of flesh.

I saw Gog explode into a fit of thrashing and writhing within Gorgoth’s implacable grip. Little Magog stood his ground as the first skeleton advanced on him. Gog was too far gone in his rage to demand release. The roar that came from him sounded comical, so high-pitched and thick with fury.

The necromancer slipped her arm around me. I can’t tell you how it felt. We turned to watch Magog fight.

The leucrota child reached up to the skeleton’s knee, no higher. He saw his moment, or rather, thought he did, and threw himself forward. You can’t expect much from a five-year-old. The undead caught him in bony fingers and threw him carelessly against a pillar. Magog hit hard, leaving it bloody. He didn’t cry though. He struggled to get up as the second skeleton stepped toward him. A flap of the child’s pretty skin hung away from the red flesh of his shoulder.

I looked away. Even with Chella’s softness pressed to me, this sport tasted sour in ways I didn’t understand. My eyes found Gog, still fighting in Gorgoth’s fists. Gorgoth had both hands on the child now, though I doubted even I could fight out of his single grip. I hadn’t imagined strength like that could lie in so small a thing.

The skeleton had Magog in one hand, two bone fingers of the other hand ready to drive through his eyes.

It seemed to me that a storm rose, though maybe it rose just in me, a storm lashing a moonless night and showing the world in lightning slices. A child’s voice howled in my head and would not quiet though I cursed it to silence. Every fibre of me strained to move—and no part of me so much as twitched. Hooks held me. There in the cradle of the necromancer’s arms I watched the skeletal fingers plunge toward the black pools of the leucrota’s eyes.

When the hand exploded I was as surprised as anyone. A big crossbow bolt will do that to a hand. The Nuban turned his face toward me, away from the sights of his bow. I saw the white crescent of his smile and my limbs were free. I swung my arm up, sharp and hard. The skull in my hand hit the necromancer’s face with a most satisfying crunch.

Whoever made the Nuban must have fashioned him from bedrock. I never knew a man more solid. He held his words close. Few among the brothers sought his counsel, men upon the road have little use for conscience, and although he never judged, the Nuban carried judgement with him.

30

I cleared scabbard and followed the arc of my family blade to face the necromancer. It’s one of those swords they say can make the wind bleed. Appropriately the edge found only empty air, which hissed as if cut.

The necromancer fell back too swiftly for me to reach. The skull had taken her by surprise, but I didn’t think I’d catch her again so easily.

I guess the skull hit her in the bridge of the nose, because that’s where the mess was. No blood, but a dark stain and a writhing of the flesh as though a hundred worms wriggled, one over another.

For the most part the brothers still stood in the daze that had held me. The Nuban worked to load another bolt into his crossbow. Makin half-drew his sword. Gorgoth let go of Gog.

The necromancer took a breath, like a rasp drawn over ironwork, rattling in her throat. “That,” she said, “was a mistake.”

“So sorry!” I kept my voice cheerful and lunged at her. She slipped around the pillar, leaving me to skewer the stonework.

Gog hurled himself bodily at Magog, and tore his little brother from the skeleton’s one-handed grip. I caught a glimpse of pale finger-marks on the child’s neck.

I moved around the pillar with a little caution, only to find the necromancer had somehow slipped back to a further pillar, five yards off.

“I’m very particular about who I allow to place spells on me,” I said, turning and aiming a swift kick at Rike. He’s hard to miss. “Come on, Rikey! Up and at ’em!”

Rike came to with a wordless howl of complaint, somewhere between disturbed walrus and bear-prodded-out-of-hibernation. Just in front of him the two skeletons bent to reach for the leucrota brothers, still a tangle of limbs on the dusty floor. Rike loomed over both of the undead, and took a skull in each hand. He wrenched them together in a clap that reduced the pair to shards.

Roaring unintelligibly, he shook his hands. “Cold!” He graduated to words. “Fecking freezing!”

I turned to the necromancer, some witticism ready on my tongue. The taunt died where it sat. Her whole face writhed now. The flesh lay shrunken on her limbs, pulsing sporadically. The body that seduced my eyes now held all the allure of a famine-corpse. She held me with a dark gaze, glittering in rotting slaughter. She laughed and her laughter came as the sound of wet rags flapping at the wind.

The brothers stood with me now. Gorgoth made no move, keeping his place. The little leucrotas crouched together in the shadows.

“We’re many, and you’re one, my lady. And a damned ugly one at that. So you’d best step aside and let us past,” I said. Somehow I didn’t think she was going to, but nothing ventured nothing gained, as they say.

That worm-flesh of hers crawled into a smile so wide I could see her jawbones past the hinge-point. For a second her face rippled and we saw Gains there, screaming as he fell.

“The dead are many, child,” she said. “I’ll let you pass—into their realm.”

The temperature fell, and kept falling, like there was no bottom for it to hit. It went from uncomfortable, to painful, to plain stupid in no time at all. And the noise. The awful grinding as the skeletons built themselves from pieces and wrapped themselves in the spirit-mist that rose around us. A sound to make you want to pull your teeth out. The torch in Makin’s hand gave up its struggle against the cold and guttered out.

The mist hid all but our nearest neighbours. The skeletons came at us slowly, as if in a dream. If not for the fire of Gorgoth’s torch, we’d have been left in utter darkness.