King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

So I worked with Makin, day after day, building up the right kind of muscle, learning to feel the subtle differences through the blade even when it’s being pounded so hard all you want to do is let go. And every time I got a bit better, he turned on the skill a little more. I started to hate him, just a piece.

When you swing a sword enough, put yourself through enough fights, there’s a kind of rhythm you start to detect. Not the rhythm of your opponent, but a kind of necessary beat to the business of cut and thrust, as if your eyes read the very first hints of each action and lay it out as music to dance to. I heard just whispers of the refrain but every time I caught them it made Makin pay sudden attention and start to sweat to hold me back. I heard only murmured phrases of the song, but just knowing it was there at all was enough to keep me striving.

If you keep heading north and east from the Renar Highlands then eventually you have to cross the River Rhyme. Given that the river is at least four hundred yards across at all of the points where one might reach it without an invading army, the exercise of crossing it is one that normally requires a ferryman.

There is one alternative. A bridge at the free-town of Remagen. How any bridge could span such an expanse of water is a wonder and one that I decided to see for myself rather than dicker with the owner of some rickety barge farther upstream.

We closed on Remagen through the Kentrow hills, winding through endless narrow valleys—rock-choked gullies in the main of the kind where horses are apt to go lame. The boredom of the trail never bothered me when we used to range mile after mile in search of mischief or loot, or hopefully both. Since Thar though, I found the long silences a trial. My mind wandered along dark paths. I don’t know how many ways there are to put Katherine together with a missing knife and a dead baby but I think I must have considered most of them, and at length. I knew where the answer lay, and kept finding that I didn’t want to know it. At least not badly enough to open that box.

Brother Maical’s wisdom lies in knowing he is not clever and letting himself be led. The foolishness of mankind is that we do not do the same.

15

Four years earlier

Gog had a bad dream in the dry canyons of the Kentrow hills. So bad a dream that it chased us out of there, tripping over our smouldering blankets as the fire guttered and spat around us. While we hunted the horses in the dark, stumbling over every rock and bush, the far end of the canyon glowed with a fierce red heat.

“Going to find us a crispy little monster when we go back up there,” Rike said, the fire picking out the raw bones of his face in demonic tones.

“Never burned hisself before,” Grumlow said, tiny beside Rike.

Ahead of us, closer than we wanted to get to the heat, closer than we could get to it, Gorgoth waited to return. His silhouette against the glow had a disturbingly arachnid shape to it, the splayed ribs like legs reaching from his sides.

Young Sim came back leading Brath and his own nag. “Be more use on a winter trip.” He nodded toward the flames, shrugged, and led the horses off. Sim had a way with horses. He’d been a stable lad for some lord once upon a time. Spent time in a brothel too as a child, earning rather than spending.

We made a new camp and waited to see what was left of our old one.

When I went back with Gorgoth the sky had started shading into pearl. The rocks creaked as they cooled and I could feel the heat through the soles of my boots. Maical came with us. He seemed to like the leucrota.

We found Gog sleeping peacefully in a blackened area that resembled a burned-out campfire. I shone the only lantern we had left on the boy and he screwed his eyes tighter before rolling over. “Sorry to disturb.” I snorted and sat down, standing up again sharpish with a scorched arse.

“He’s changing,” Gorgoth said.

I’d noticed it too. The stippled red-and-black of his skin had taken on fiercer scarlet-on-grey tones and a more flame-like form, as if the fire had somehow frozen into his hide.

We slept then, us back at the new camp and Gorgoth with Gog in the ruins of the old. In the morning they joined us and Gog ran to the breakfast fire as though it were a new thing he’d not seen before. The flames flushed scarlet as he approached and the water in Row’s pots started to boil even though it was fresh in from the stream.

“Can’t you see them?” he asked as Gorgoth pulled him back.

“No,” I said, following them away from the camp. “And best you don’t see ‘them’ either. We’ll be meeting with a man who knows all about these things soon enough. Until then, just keep…cool.”

I sat with them farther down the canyon. We played throw-stones and cross-sticks. It seems that when you’re eight you can shake anything off, at least for the short term. Gog laughed when he won and smiled when he lost. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t play to win but I didn’t grate on him for his easy ways. When ambition gets its teeth into you it’s hard to know how to just enjoy what’s in front of you.

“Good boy.” Maical passed Gog the cross-sticks he’d gathered back up, a small bundle in his callused hand. “Bad dreams.”

I frowned at that. Gorgoth rumbled.

“We were all slow to wake…” I said. “Could have ended badly.” I remembered feeling the heat, the smell of char, and the slow struggle free of my own nightmares.

Gorgoth and I found the answer in the same moment, but he spoke first: “Sageous.”

I nodded, slow as the realization of just how stupid I’d been crept over me. Coddin had been right: many hands would seek to wield a weapon like Gog. Twice now the dream-witch had turned that power against me. He might not be able to kill me with my own dreams, but he’d had a good try with Gog’s.

“All the more reason to press on.” I might have said, Third time’s the charm, but there’s no point tempting the fates—unless you’ve got a big enough sword to kill them too.

After breaking fast we rode on, closing now on Remagen. There’s a small fort on a ridge not far from the river as you come out of the Kentrow hills. It commands a view of the road approaching the town. We could see the Rhyme as a bright ribbon behind the fort, and a hint of the bridge towers.

Kent and Maical flanked me at the front of our band and we approached the fort at a trot, Gog clutching my back, Gorgoth jogging close by. Makin and Rike rode behind, chuckling. Makin could even get a laugh out of Rike when he put his mind to it. Then Grumlow, then Sim and Row. I guess it could have been Gorgoth that spooked the fort-men, though at that distance they couldn’t have had a clear view of him. Either way, one moment I had Kent to my right and Maical to my left, and the next moment the grey had an empty saddle.

I pulled Brath in a tight circle and jumped down quick-smart even as the others rode past in confusion. It had to be a lucky shot. At the range between us and the fort walls a good archer would be hard-pressed to hit a house using a longbow. But there it was, one feathered end hard against his neck, the sharp end red and dripping and jutting a foot from the other side. Maical looked at me with unusual focus as I dropped to one knee beside him.

“Time to die, Brother Maical.” I didn’t want to lie to him. I took his hand.