King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

I squeezed the rain from my hair. Makin sat in a chair a step below the Duke’s dais. He’d just passed a flagon up to Maladon, and sipped small beer from his own as I approached. You could believe they had sat like this every morning for ten years.

“King Jorg,” the Duke said. To his credit he didn’t hesitate to call me king though I stood dripping in my road-rags.

The hall lay in shadow, despite the grey morning fingering its way through high windows and the lamps still burning on every other pillar. On his throne Alaric Maladon cut an impressive figure. He could have been drawn from the legends out of dawn-time.

“I hope Makin hasn’t been boring you with his tales. He is given to some outrageous lies,” I said.

“So you didn’t push your father’s Watch-master over a waterfall?” the Duke asked.

“I may—”

“Or behead a necromancer and eat his heart?”

Makin wiped foam from his moustache and watched one of the hounds gnaw a bone. All the Brothers seemed to be hard at work on facial hair. I think the Danes made them feel inadequate.

“Not everything he says is a lie. But watch him,” I said.

“So did Ekatri have warm words for you?” the Duke asked. No dancing around the issue with these northmen.

“Isn’t that supposed to be between me and her? Isn’t it bad luck to tell?”

Alaric shrugged. “How would we know if she was any use if nobody ever told what she said?”

“I think she passed on a hundred-year-old message telling me to lie down and let the Prince of Arrow have his way with my arse.”

Makin snorted into his beer at that and some of the northmen grinned, though it’s hard to tell behind a serious beard.

“I’ve heard something similar,” Alaric said. “A soothsayer from the fjords, ice in his veins and a way with the reading of warm entrails. Told me the old gods and the white Christ all agreed. The time for a new emperor has come and he will spring from the seed of the old. The whisper among the Hundred is that these signs point to Arrow.”

“The Prince of Arrow can kiss my axe,” Sindri said. I’d not seen him in the shadows behind his father’s guards.

“You’ve not met him, son,” Alaric said. “I’m told he makes an impression.”

“So how will your doors stand, Duke of Maladon, if the Prince comes north?” I asked.

The Duke grinned. “I like you, boy.”

I let the “boy” slide.

“I’ve always thought that the blood of empire pooled in the north,” Alaric said. “I always thought that a Dane-man should take the empire throne, by axe and fire, and that I might be the man to do it.” He took a long draft from his flagon and raised a bushy brow at me. “How would your gates stand if the Prince came calling one fine morning?”

“That, my friend, would depend on quite how fine a morning it was. But I’ve never liked to be pushed, especially not by soothsayers and witches, not by the words of dead men, not by predictions based on the invisible swing of planets, scratched out on number slates or teased from the spilled guts of an unfortunate sheep,” I said.

“On the other hand,” Alaric said, “these predictions are very old. The new emperor’s path has been prepared for a hundred years and more. Perhaps this Prince of Arrow is the one they speak of.”

“Old men make old words holy. I say old words are worn out and should be set aside. Take a new bride to bed, not a hag,” I said, thinking of Ekatri. “A fool may scrawl on a slate and if no one has the wit to wipe it clean for a thousand years, the scrawl becomes the wisdom of ages.”

Nodding among the warriors, more grins. “Ekatri’s message came from Skilfar in the north.” That wiped the smiles away quick enough.

Alaric spat into the rushes. “An ice witch in the north, a fire-mage on our doorstep. Vikings were born in the land of ice and fire, and found their strength opposing both. Write your own story, Jorg.”

I liked the man. Let the hidden players reach to move the Duke of Maladon across the board and they might find themselves short of several fingers.

The floor shook, a vibration that put a buzz in my teeth and held us all silent until it had passed. The lamps didn’t swing but jittered on their hooks and the shadows blurred.

“And how did you find the Heimrift?” Alaric asked.

“I liked it well enough,” I said. “Mountains have always pleased me.”

In the wide hearth beside us the heaped ash of last night’s fire smoked gently. It reminded me of Mount Vallas with the fumes rising from its flanks.

“And are you ready to seek out Ferrakind?” Alaric asked.

“I am,” I said. I had the feeling that Ferrakind would be seeking me out soon enough if I didn’t go to him.

“Tell me about the trolls,” Alaric said. He surprised me this duke, with his dawn-time ways, his old gods, his axes and furs, so that you’d think him a blunt instrument built for war and little else, and yet his thoughts ran so quick that his mouth had to leap from one subject to the next just to keep up. “The trolls and your strange companions,” he said. And as if on cue the great doors opened at the far end of the hall to admit Gorgoth, his bulk black against the rain.

The Duke’s warriors took tighter hold of their axes as Gorgoth advanced toward us, the hall silent but for the heavy fall of his feet. Gog hurried on behind him, the rain steaming off him and each lamp burning brighter as he passed.

The ground shook. This time it jolted as if a giant’s hammer had fallen close by. Outside something groaned and fell with a crash. And beside me a lamp slipped its hook and smashed on the flagstones, splashing burning oil in a wide bright circle. Several splatters caught my leggings and flamed there though the cloth lay too wet to catch. Gog moved fast. He threw one clawed hand toward me and the other at the hearth. He made a brief, high cry and the lamp oil guttered out. In the hearth a new fire burned with merry flames as if it were dry wood heaped there instead of grey ash.

Oaths from the men around us. Because of the fierceness of the tremor, or the business with the fallen lamp, or just to release the tension built as Gorgoth advanced through the shadowed hall, I didn’t know.

“Now that was a clever trick.” I crouched to be on a level with Gog and waved him to me. “How did you do that?” My fingers tested where the fire had burned, leggings and floor, and came away cold and oily.

“Do what?” Gog asked, his voice high, his eyes on the Duke and the glitter of the axes held around him.

“Put the fire out,” I said. I glanced at the hearth. “Move the fire.” I corrected myself.

Gog didn’t look away from the Alaric in his high chair. “There’s only one fire, silly,” he said, forgetting any business of kings and dukes. “I just squeezed it.”

I frowned. I had the edge of understanding him, but it kept slipping my grasp. I hate that. “Tell me.” I steered him by the shoulders until our eyes met.

“There’s only one fire,” he said. His eyes were dark, their usual all-black, but his gaze held something hot, something uncomfortable, as if it might light you up like a tallow wick.

“One fire,” I said. “And all these…” I waved a hand at the lamps. “Windows onto it?”