King of Thorns

“Swing hard,” Father said. “Or you’ll just have to swing again.”


I looked at Justice’s leg, his long quick leg, the fur plastered down with oil over bone and tendon, the iron shackle, some kind of vice from the Question Chamber, biting into his ankle, blood on the metal.

“I’m sorry, Father, I won’t ever steal again.” And I meant it.

“Don’t try my patience, boy.” I saw the coldness in his eyes and wondered if he had always hated me.

I lifted the hammer, my arms almost too weak, shaking almost as much as the dog. I raised it slowly, waiting, waiting for Father to say it, to say: “Enough, you’ve proved yourself.”

The words never came. “Break or burn,” he said. And with a scream I let the hammer swing.

Justice’s leg broke with a loud snap. For a heartbeat there was no other sound. The limb looked wrong, upper and lower parts at sick-making angles, white bone in a slather of red blood and black fur. Then came the howling, the snarling fury, the straining at his bonds as he looked for something to fight, some battle to keep away the pain.

“One more, Jorg,” Father said. He spoke softly but I heard him above the howls. For the longest moment his words made no sense to me.

I said “No,” but I didn’t make him reach for the torch. If I made him reach again he wouldn’t draw back. I knew that much.

This time Justice understood the raising of the hammer. He whimpered, whined, begged as only dogs can beg. I swung hard and missed, blinded with tears. The cart rattled and Justice jumped and howled, bleeding from all his shackles now, the broken leg stretching with tendons exposed. I hit him on my second stroke and shattered his other foreleg.

Vomit took me by surprise, hot, sour, spurting from my mouth. I crawled in it, gagging and gasping. Almost not hearing Father’s: “One more.”

With his third leg smashed, Justice couldn’t stand. He flopped, broken in the cart, stinking in his own mess. Strangely he didn’t snarl or whine now. Instead as I lay wracked with sobs, heaving in the air in gulps, he nuzzled me as he used to nuzzle William when he cried with a grazed knee or thwarted ambition. That’s how stupid dogs are, my brothers. And that’s how stupid I was at six, letting weakness take hold of me, giving the world a lever with which to bend whatever iron lies in my soul.

“One more,” Father said. “He has a leg left to stand on, does he not, Sir Reilly?”

And for once Sir Reilly would not answer his king.

“One more, Jorg.”

I looked at Justice, broken and licking the tears and snot from my hand. “No.”

And with that Father took the torch and tossed it into the cart.

I rolled back from the sudden bloom of flame. Whatever my heart told me to do, my body remembered the lesson of the poker and would not let me stay. The howling from the cart made all that had gone before seem as nothing. I call it howling but it was screaming. Man, dog, horse. With enough hurt we all sound the same.

In that moment, rolling clear, even though I was six and my hands were unclever, I took the hammer that had seemed so heavy and threw it without effort, hard and straight. If my father had moved but a little more slowly I might be king of two lands now. Instead it touched his crown just enough to turn it a quarter circle, then hit the wall behind his chair and fell to the ground, leaving a shallow scar on the Builder-stone.

Father was right of course. There were lessons to be learned that night. The dog was a weakness and the Hundred War cannot be won by a man with such weaknesses. Nor can it be won by a man who yields to the lesser evil. Give an inch, give any single man any single inch and the next thing you hear will be, “One more, Jorg, one more.” And in the end what you love will burn. Father’s lesson was a true one, but knowing that can’t make me forgive the means by which he taught it.

For a time there on the road I followed Father’s teaching: strength in all things, no quarter. On the road I had known with the utter conviction of a child that the Empire throne would be mine only if I kept true to the hard lessons of Justice and the thorns. Weakness is a contagion, one breath of it can corrupt a man whole and entire. Now though, even with all the evil in me, I don’t know if I could teach such lessons to a son of mine.