King of Thorns

“Were they armed?” I asked. Know thy enemy.

Makin shook his head. “Knives. Probably have their wood-axes to hand by now. Oh, and the short one, he had a bow. Likes to do a bit of hunting he said.”

My, my.

I threw the bundle of my blankets at Rike and made for the door. “Let’s be about it then. You too, Brother Sim, you’ll want to see this.”

I let Rike go first into the street and followed, watching the dark windows, the lines of the rooftops. Makin found the trail of blood drops again, black in the cold light of the moon, and we followed, past the church, past the well, along the alley between tannery and stables, the dull rumble of Gorgoth’s snore from within deeper than the snort of horses. Past a warehouse, a low wall, and out into the rough pasture between town and forest. We gathered with our backs to a barn, the last building before the woods took over. No one had to be told—your enemy has a bow, you keep a building at your back and don’t let the light silhouette you.

“They’re in the forest,” Grumlow said.

“They won’t be far in.” Makin set the lantern to one side, its light hidden.

“Why not?” Grumlow asked, eyes on the black line of the trees.

“The moon won’t reach in there. Not a place to walk blind.” I lifted my voice loud enough for the men in the woods. “Why don’t you come out? We only want to talk.”

An arrow hammered into the barn wall yards above my head; laughter followed. “Send your girlfriend in after us if she wants some more.”

Grumlow took a step forward at that, but he wasn’t dumb enough to take another. Rike on the other hand took two and would have taken more if I hadn’t barked his name. It was Rike’s true brother, Price, who took young Sim from that Belpan brothel in the long ago. Why he picked one child to save and made red slaughter of the rest, along with the grown whores and their master, none of the brothers could ever tell me, but it seemed to matter to Rike that he had. And there it is, proof if proof were needed, that though God may mould the clay and fashion some of us hale, some strong, some beautiful, inside we make ourselves, from foolish things, breakable, fragile things: the thorns, that dog, the hope that Katherine might make me better than I am. Even Rike’s blunt wants were born of losses he probably remembered only in dreams. All of us fractured, awkward collages of experience wrapped tight to present a defensible face to the world. And what makes us human is that sometimes we snap. And in that moment of release we’re closer to gods than we know. I told Rike no, but hardly a part of me didn’t want to charge those woods.

“It’ll have to keep for morning,” Makin said.

I didn’t like to admit it but he was right. I would have left it there save for Gorgoth coming along the alley beside the barn. A strange mix of clever and stupid, that one. He made a nice target with the moon bright behind him, a big one too. I heard the hiss of an arrow and then his deep grunt.

“Here, idiot!” I called out to him and he lumbered to my side, Gog scampering around his legs. Makin lifted the lantern but I kept him from opening the hood. “He’s not dead. He can wait.”

“Take more than an arrow,” Rike muttered.

Even so, light blossomed and we saw the shaft jutting from Gorgoth’s shoulder, the head buried only an inch deep or so, as if the leucrota’s flesh were oak.

“Makin! I said no—”

But it wasn’t Makin. The light bled from Gog’s eyes, hot and yellow.

I could have told Gog no, bundled him around a corner and left the woodsmen till morning, but the fire that burned in Gog at seeing Gorgoth harmed echoed a colder fire that lit in me when Sim hobbled through that door. I’d grown tired of saying no. Instead I took Gog’s hand, though the ghosts of flame whispered across his skin.

He looked up at me, eyes white like stars. “Let it burn,” I told him.

Something hot ran through me, up my arm, along the marrow of my bones, hot like a promise, anger made liquid and set running.

“What’s cooking?” The taunt rang out from the tree-line, somewhere out past an old cowshed sagging in its beams.

Gog and I walked toward the sound, slow footsteps, the ground sizzling where his bare feet touched wet grass.

“The hell?” Voices raised in concern in the dark of the woods. An arrow zipped through the night, wide of its mark, the glowing child a disconcerting target, fooling the eye.