Prince of Thorns (The Broken Empire 1)

The pause grew into a silence.

“Rike!” I said. Not a shout, but loud enough to reach him. “Put Fat Burlow down, or I’ll have to kill you.”

Rike let go, and Burlow hit the ground like the three-hundred-pound lump of lard that he was. I guess that of the two, Burlow looked slightly more purple in the face, but only a little. Rike came toward us with his hands out before him, twisting as though he already had them around my neck. “You!”

No sign of Makin, and Father Gomst would be as useful as a fart in the wind against Little Rikey with a rage on him.

“You! Where’s the fecking gold you promised us?” A score of heads popped out of windows and doors at that. Even Fat Burlow looked up, sucking in a breath as if it came through a straw.

I let my hand slip from the pommel of my sword. It doesn’t do to sacrifice too many pawns. Rike had only a dozen yards to go. I swung off Gerrod’s saddle and patted his nose, my back to the town.

“There’s more than one kind of gold in Norwood,” I said. Loud enough but not too loud. Then I turned and walked past Rike. I didn’t look at him. Give a man like Rike a moment, and he’ll take it.

“Don’t you be telling me about no farmers’ daughters this time, you little bastard!” He followed me roaring, but I’d let the heat out of him. He just had wind and noise now. “That fecker of a count staked them all out to burn already.”

I made for Midway Street, leading up to the burgermeister’s house from the market field. As we passed him, Brother Gains looked up from the cook-fire he’d started. He clambered to his feet to follow and watch the fun.

The grain-store tower had never looked like much. It looked less impressive now, all scorched, the stones split in the heat. Before they burned them all away, the grain sacks would have hidden the trapdoor. I found it with a little prodding. Rike huffed and puffed behind me all the time.

“Open it up.” I pointed to the ring set in the stone slab.

Rike didn’t need telling twice. He got down and heaved the slab up as if it weighed nothing. And there they were, barrel after barrel, all huddled up in the dusty dark.

“The old burgermeister kept the festival beer under the grain-tower. Every local knows that. A little stream runs down there to keep it all nice and cool-like. Looks like, what, twenty? Twenty barrels of golden festival beer.” I smiled.

Rike didn’t smile back. He stayed on his hands and knees, and let his eye wander up the blade of my sword. I imagined how it must tickle against his throat.

“See now, Jorg, Brother Jorg, I didn’t mean . . .” he started. Even with my sword at his neck he had a mean look to him.

Makin clattered up and came to stand at my shoulder. I kept the blade at Rike’s throat.

“I may be little, Little Rikey, but I ain’t a bastard,” I said, soft, in my killing voice. “Isn’t that right, Father Gomst? If I was a bastard, you wouldn’t have to risk life and limb to search the dead for me, now would you?”

“Prince Jorg, let Captain Bortha kill this savage.” Gomst must have found his composure somewhere. “We’ll ride on to the Tall Castle and your father—”

“My father can damn well wait!” I shouted. I bit back the rest, angry at being angry.

Rike forgot about the sword for a moment. “What the feck is all this ‘prince’ shit? What the feck is all this ‘Captain Bortha’ shit? And when do I get to drink the fecking beer?”

We had ourselves as full an audience then as we’d get, all the brothers about us in a circle.

“Well,” I said. “Since you ask so nice, Brother Rike, I’ll tell you.”

Makin raised his brows at me and he took a grip on his sword. I waved him down.

“The Captain Bortha shit is Makin being Captain Makin Bortha of the Ancrath Imperial Guard. The prince shit is me being the beloved son and heir of King Olidan of the House of Ancrath. And we can drink the beer now, because today is my fourteenth birthday, and how else would you toast my health?”

Every brotherhood has a pecking order. With brothers like mine you don’t want to be at the bottom of that order. You’re liable to get pecked to death. Brother Jobe had just the right mix of whipped cur and rabies to stay alive there.

8

So we sat on the tumbled stones of the burgermeister’s house and drank beer. The brothers drank deep and called out my name. Some had it “Brother Jorg,” some had it “Prince Jorg,” but all of them saw me with new eyes. Rike watched me, beer-foam in his stubbled beard, the line of my sword across his neck. I could see him weighing the odds, a slow ballet of possibilities working their way across his low forehead. I didn’t wait for the word “ransom” to bubble to the surface.

“He wants me dead, Little Rikey,” I said. “He sent Gomsty out to find proof I was dead, not to find me. He’s got a new queen now.”

Rike gave a grin that had more scowl than grin in it, then belched mightily. “You ran from a castle with gold and women, to ride with us? What idiot would do that?”

I sipped my beer. It tasted sour, but that seemed right somehow. “An idiot who knows he won’t win the war with the King’s guard at his side,” I said.

“What war, Jorg?” The Nuban sat close by, not drinking. He always spoke slow and serious. “You want to beat the Count? Baron Kennick?”

“The War,” I said. “All of it.”

Red Kent came over from the barrels, his helm brimming with ale. “Never happen,” he said. He lifted the helm and half-drained it in four swallows. “So you’re Prince of Ancrath? A copper-crown kingdom. Must be dozens with as good a claim on the high throne. Each of them with their own army.”

“More like fifty,” Rike growled.

“Closer to a hundred,” I said. “I’ve counted.”

A hundred fragments of empire grinding away at each other in a never-ending cycle of little wars, feuds, skirmishes, kingdoms waxing, waning, waxing again, lifetimes spent in conflict and nothing changing. Mine to change, to end, to win.

I finished my beer and got up to find Makin.

I didn’t have to look far. I found him with the horses, checking his stallion, Firejump.

“What did you find?” I asked him.

Makin pursed his lips. “I found the pyre. About two hundred, all dead. They didn’t light it though—probably scared off.” He waved toward the west. “They came in on foot, up the marsh road, and over the ridge yonder. Had about twenty archers in the thicket by the stream, to pick off folks that tried to run.”

“How many men altogether?” I asked.

“Probably a hundred. Foot soldiers most of them.” He yawned and ran a hand from forehead to chin. “Two days gone now. We’re safe enough.”

I felt invisible thorns scratching at me, sharp hooks in my skin. “Come with me,” I told him.

Makin followed me back to the steps and fallen pillars at the burgermeister’s doors. The brothers had Maical staving in a second barrel.

“What ho, Captain!” Burlow called out at Makin, his voice still hoarse from Rike’s strangling. A laugh went up at that, and I let it run its course. I felt the thorns again, sharp and deep. Sharpening me up for something. Two hundred bodies in a heap. All dead.