King of Thorns (The Broken Empire 2)

In the Haunt the cooks would honey-glaze venison and garnish it with baked, rosemary-sprinkled dormice just to tempt my palate. After days in the saddle I find that in order for food to tempt me it must be either hot or cold and preferably, though not essentially, if it is animal, that it should not be moving and should once have possessed a backbone.

Around the fire at camp on that first evening we made a subdued huddle, somehow more reduced by the absence of our smallest companion than by that of our largest. I stared at the flames and imagined a sympathetic tingling in the bones of my jaw, even under the deadening effect of the ointment.

“I miss the little fellow.” Grumlow surprised me.

“Aye.” Sim spat.

Red Kent looked up from the polishing of his axe. “Did he give good account of himself, Jorg?”

“He saved me and Gorgoth both,” I said. “And he finished the fire-mage before he died.”

“Sounds about right,” Row said. “He were a godless bastard, that one, but he had a fire in him, God did he.”

“Makin,” I said.

He looked up, the flames reflected in his eyes.

“Since Coddin is at home…” I paused then, realizing that I’d called the Haunt “home” for the first time. “Since Coddin is at home, and the Nuban isn’t with us…”

“Yes?” he said.

“I’m saying, if I set on a path that’s…maybe a little too harsh. Just let me know. All right?”

He pursed those too-fleshy lips of his then sucked air in through his teeth. “I’ll try,” he said. He’d been trying all these years, I knew that, but now I gave him permission.

For a week we skirted villages, circled towns, and picked our way through the soft edges of the kingdoms we had passed on our journey north. We came to the settlement of Rye, too big to be a village, too recent and too random to be a town. On our trip out we had purchased provisions there and with our saddlebags flapping empty we rode in to resupply. Paying for goods still feels odd to me, but it’s a good habit to get into when you’ve the coin to spare. Of course you should steal every now and then, take something by force just for the wickedness of it, or how else will you keep your hand in the game? But aside from that, paying is recommended, especially if you’re a king with a pocketful of gold.

The main square in Rye isn’t square and it’s only just about “main” as there are other markets and clearings in Rye almost as large. Rike had loaded the last sack of oats onto that great carthorse of his and Makin was trying to strap his saddlebag over four gutted hares in their fur when the crowd flowing around us seemed to part like the Red Sea for an old man. I had been leaning against Brath feeling rather faint. Summer had decided to give us a preview and the sun came beating down out of a faded sky. My face ached like a bastard and a fever had got its claws into me.

“Prince of Thorns!” the old fellow cried as he homed in on me, loud enough to turn heads.

“That’d be ‘king’ if it’s anything,” I muttered. “And if there’s a Thorns on the map then I must have missed it.”

He stopped about a yard in front of me, and drew himself up tall. A skinny fellow, dried like a prune, with white hair fluffing at the sides of a bald head. His eyes were milky, though not like cataracts but somehow pearly with a hint of rainbows. “Prince of Thorns!” Louder this time. People started to close in.

“Go away.” I used my quiet voice, the one that recommends you listen.

“The Gilden Gate will open for the Prince of Arrow.” Something electric crackled in the air around us, the white fluff stood out from the sides of his head. “You can only—”

There’s an art to the quick drawing of a sword. Providing the scabbard strap is undone, and I always keep mine so, you can propel the whole blade several feet into the air just by hooking a hand loosely under one side of the cross-guard and literally throwing it upward. With good timing and a quick turn of the body you can snatch the hilt at the apex of the throw and as the sword falls you can turn that momentum into a sudden thrust into whatever is beside you.

I looked back over my shoulder. The man’s eyes still had their milky sheen but he’d stopped prophesying on me. By stepping away I drew the blade from his chest. He looked down at the scarlet wound but, oddly, did not fall.

I waited a moment, then another. The crowd kept their silence and the old man kept standing, making a close study of the blood pumping down his stomach.

“Hey,” I said.

He looked up at that, which helped. His chin had been in the way. I took his head with one clean blow. I’m not one to boast but it’s not easy to decapitate a man in one swing. I’ve seen expert axemen take three blows to do it at an execution when their victim’s neck is laid out for them on a block.

The seer had enough grace to let his body topple after his head landed by his feet. He kept looking at me though, with those pearly eyes. There’s no magic in it, a severed head can watch you for close on a minute if you let it, but they say it’s bad luck to be the last thing it sees.

I picked the head up by its tufts of hair and held it facing me at eye level. “Seriously? You can tell me what I am and am not going to sit on in years to come and you didn’t see that one coming?” I kept my voice loud for the crowd. “This fake has been living off your misery and the misery of folk like you for years.”

And in a quiet voice, just for the seer and any who watched me through his eyes, for all those who watched this moment across the span of years before I was born. “I will make my own future. Being dead doesn’t make you right. Everybody dies.”

The lips smiled. They writhed. “Dead King,” they said, without sound, and where I touched him my skin crawled, as if a spider unfolded itself in my palm.

I dropped the head and kicked it into the crowd. I say “kicked” but in truth it’s a bad idea to kick a head. I learned that years ago, a lesson that cost me two broken toes. What you want to do is shove the head with the side of your foot, like you’re throwing it. It’s going to roll anyhow so you don’t need that much force. See, the thing about severed heads is the owner no longer has any interest in minimizing the force of the blow, or any ability to do so for that matter. When you kick somebody in the head as you do from time to time, they tend to be actively trying to move themselves out of the way and the contact is lessened. A severed head is a dead weight, even if it’s watching you.

And that exhausts my insights into the kicking of severed heads. Admittedly it’s more than most people have to offer on the subject but there were Mayans who knew a lot more than I do. That of course is a whole different ball-game.

Makin finished with his straps and stepped beside me. “That was probably too harsh,” he said. “You did ask me to point these things out.”

“Fuck off,” I said.

I waved to the Brothers. “Let’s ride.”

For close on a hundred miles we retraced our path along the North Way, down through the duchies of Parquat and Bavar where most travellers are welcome so long as they don’t plan to stay, and even our sort are tolerated so long as we don’t get off our horses.

The town of Hanver greeted us with bunting. Among those peaceful huddles of thatched cottages that I had remarked upon whilst travelling north, Hanver lay equally untouched and unspoiled, a place not visited by war and cradled amidst idyllic farmland divided into tiny fertile fields.