King of Thorns

We made good time and each evening I fought Makin, learning at every turn and occasionally teaching him a new trick. I taught him a new trick the very first day I met him, training squires in the Tall Castle. Since then, though, the process had seen a slow reversal. Somewhere along the line Makin turned from my rescuer, sent out by Father to recover me, into a follower, and ever since he decided to follow my lead the man had been teaching me. Not with books and charts like Tutor Lundist but in that sneaky, indirect way the Nuban had, the kind of way that gets under your skin and turns you slowly by example.


Four days out from Remagen a storm found us on the plains, a fierce cold squall carrying all the cruelty that spring can muster. Lashed by rain we found our way to the town of Endless by tracks turned to swollen streams. Some lordling undoubtedly calls Endless his own but whatever men he set to watch over it had found better things to watch that night. We clattered unopposed along the cobbled main street and found a stable by the glow of a single lantern hung behind the torrent spilling from its eaves. The stable-keep allowed that Gog and Gorgoth could stay with the horses. Taking the pair among the good folk of Endless would be an invitation to carnage.

“We’ll be out of here at dawn,” I told the stable-keep, a lean fellow, pockmarked, but along one side only, as if the pox had found no foothold on his right half. “Let me return to find gawkers here staring at my monsters and I’ll have the big one twist your legs off. Understand?”

He understood.

We shed our sodden cloaks in some nameless tavern and sat steaming before a cold hearth while a serving girl fetched our ales. The place was packed with wet and sweating bodies, lumbermen in the main, some stinking drunk, others just stinking. We drew looks, not a few of them hostile, but none that lasted long when offered back.

Sim had his harp with him, a battered thing but quality, stolen from a very rich home once upon a time. He’d pulled it from his saddlebag and unwrapped it with the kind of care he usually reserved for weapons. As our drinks arrived he started to pluck a tune from it. He had quick fingers did Sim, quick and clever, and the notes rolled out fast enough to make a river.

By the time I left for my bed, in the inn across the road, the storm had passed. Sim and Makin had half the locals bawling out “Ten Kings,” and Sim’s voice, high and clear, followed me out of the door, rising over the deeper refrain and Makin’s enthusiastic baritone. Strains of “The Shallow Lady” reached up through the window as I poked my way in under crawling blankets and let the bugs set to. At least it was dry. I fell asleep to the faint sounds of the nonsense doggerel “Merican Pie.”

I woke much later in the calm dead hours of the night, still tangled in the song though all lay quiet save for the brothers’ snoring.

Chevylevy was dry.

Moonlight reached across the room and offered me two figures in the doorway, one supporting the other. Makin stopped to close the door behind him. Sim hobbled on, something broken about his walking.

“Trouble?” I sat up, the ale still spinning in me.

My, my, missamerican pie.

Why two drunk brothers staggering in should spell trouble I couldn’t have said, but I knew trouble was what we had.

Makin turned, pulling aside the hood on the lantern he’d brought up with him. “I found him in the street,” he said. “Left him an hour ago with five locals, the last in the tavern.”

Sim looked up. They’d given him a hell of a beating, lips split and swollen, half a tooth gone, one eye full of blood. From the way he moved I guessed he’d be pissing pink for a week. In fact something in the way he moved suggested other kinds of hurt had been done to him.

“They took my harp, Brother.” He turned out his empty hands. It had been a time and a half since Sim had called me Brother. I wondered what else had been taken.

I kicked Rike in the head. “Up!” Kent and Grumlow were already rising from the floor. “Get up,” I said again.

“Trouble?” Kent asked, echoing my own question. He sat still in the dark, moonlight making black pits of his eyes. Always ready for trouble was Red Kent, though he never sought it out.

Grumlow found his feet quick enough and took Sim’s arm. The boy flinched him off but Grumlow took firmer hold and led him to the window. “Bring the lantern, Makin, some stitches needed here.”

“Five of them?” I asked.

Sim nodded as he passed me.

“I can’t let this stand,” I said.

Makin let the lantern drop an inch or two at that. “Jorg—”

“They took the harp,” I said. “That’s an insult to the Brotherhood.” I let the pride of the Brotherhood take the slur: it would shame Sim to have this be for him.

Makin shrugged. “Sim cut at least one of them. There’s a trail of blood in the street.”