King of Thorns

“Shouldn’t ride so high, Little Rikey,” I told him.

Makin came up, behind him Kent and Row, chuckling over some joke he’d left them with. “We’ll be walking soon then?” He ducked under low-hanging greenery.

I pulled up at a stream crossed by a small clapper bridge that must have been old when Christ first learned to walk. I remembered the bridge, possibly the farthest I’d ever ventured alone before I left the Tall Castle for good. “We’ll leave the horses here,” I said. “You can watch them, Grumlow, you being the man with the sharp eyes today.”

And that wasn’t all that was sharp about Grumlow. That moustache might make him look stupid but he had a clever way with daggers, and a clever number of them stashed about his person.

I thought about leaving Gog and Gorgoth. Especially Gorgoth, for he wasn’t one to be taken places unobserved. When I first brought him into the Haunt, after sitting my arse on the throne for a day or two, he caused quite a stir. Even lame, from the arrows he’d taken for me holding open that gate, he looked like a monster to reckon with. I had Coddin bring him up through the west-yard on a market day. You’d have thought someone dropped a hornets’ nest for all the commotion. One old biddy screamed, clutched her chest, and fell over. That made me laugh. And when they told me she never did get back up…well that seemed funny too at the time. Maybe I’m getting too old, for it doesn’t strike me quite so merrily any more. Let truth be told though, she did fall funny.

In the end I took them both. Gorgoth is the kind you need in a tough spot, and Gog, well he makes lighting the campfire less of a chore.

Making your way through the greenwood without people seeing you isn’t too hard if you know your way and don’t count charcoal burners as people. They’re a lonely breed and not wont to gossip. So Rike didn’t have to kill them.

And so we sliced into Ancrath easily enough, tramping along the deer paths. Even hard kingdoms have their fault lines.

“It shouldn’t be this easy,” Makin said. “It wasn’t in my day. Damned if Coddin and his fellows would have let bandits wander so carelessly.” He shook his head, though it seemed an odd thing to complain about.

“Your father’s army has grown weak?” Gorgoth asked, demolishing the undergrowth as he walked.

I shrugged. “Half his forces are out in the marsh or barracked in the bog towns. Dead things keep hauling themselves out of the muck these days. There’s others having similar problems. I had a merchant at court telling me the Drowned Isles have fallen to the Dead King. All of them. Given over to corpse men, marsh ghouls, necromancers, lich-kin.”

Makin just crossed his chest and picked up the pace.

We travelled light, locating good shelter in the woods, and good eating. Young Sim had a way with the finding of rabbits, and I could knock the odd squirrel or wood-pigeon off its branch with a handy stone. Animals in spring are easy, too full of the new warmth, too taken with new possibilities, and not enough of watching for rocks winging their way out of the shadows.

Ancrath casts a spell on you, and nowhere more so than in the greenwood where the day trickles like honey and the sun falls golden amid pools of shade. We walked in single file with the song of the thrush and sparrow, and the scent of may and wild onions. The day set me dreaming as I walked and my nose led me back through the years to memories of William. There was a night when my brother lay sick, when my mother wept, and the table-knights would not turn their stern faces to me. I remembered the prayers I had whispered in the dark chapel when all the holy men were in their beds, the promises I made. No threats back then. I barely even bargained with the Almighty in those days. And when I crept back to our chambers I climbed in beside William and held his head. The friar had given him bitter potions and cut his leg to release the bad blood. My mother had set an ointment of honey and onion on his chest. That at least seemed to ease his breathing a little. We lay with the night sounds, William’s dry wheeze, our hound Justice snoring by the doors, the click of the maid’s needles in the hall, and the cry of bats, almost too high for hearing as they swung around the Tall Castle in the moonless dark.

“A penny for them,” Makin said.

I snapped my head up with a start, almost tripping. “My thoughts are worth less than that today.” I had been a foolish child.

Sometimes I wished I could cut away old memories and let the wind take them. If a sharp knife could pare away the weakness of those days, I would slice until nothing but the hard lessons remained.