King of Thorns

“Today,” I said. “We all become Highlanders.”


I took the whistle, held it high, and drove the piston home, not too hard because that spoils the tone. It’s a steady pressure gives the best results.

A goat-whistle will carry for miles across the mountains. It’s pitched to let the wind take it and to bounce from rock to rock. One long blast would reach almost back to the Haunt. Certainly far enough to reach each and every Highlander I had hidden on the high slopes overlooking our path up the mountain. And not just any Highlanders these, but the men who had held these particular slopes from generation to generation. The men who like their fathers and grandfathers would take a rock for a walk. They kept their secrets well, the men of Renar, but from the tip of God’s Finger, that day years before, it had all been revealed to me.

It took the blasts of seven trumpets to bring down the walls of Jericho, but they weren’t stacked to fall. One blast of a herder’s whistle set the mountainsides moving in the Renar Highlands. On both sides of the valley, along the full length, a dozen individual rockslides. The Highlanders know their slopes with an intimacy that puts lovers’ knowing of each other’s curves to shame. Big stones poised to fall, boulders on edge with levers set and ready, toppled with a shove and a grunt, rolling, colliding, cascading one into several into many into too many. We felt the ground tremble beneath our feet. The noise, like a millstone grinding, rattled teeth in loose sockets. In moments the whole valley had been set in motion and Arrow’s thousands vanished as the dust rose and stone churned flesh into bloody paste.

“Well, thank you, Coddin. Much appreciated.” I handed him back the whistle. “Hobbs,” I said. “When the dust clears enough for a good shot, if you could have the men knock down anyone still standing.”

“Christ Bleeding,” Makin said, staring into the valley below us. “How…”

“Topology,” I said. “It’s a kind of magic.”

“And what now, King Jorg?” Coddin asked, faith restored but still focused on the numbers, knowing our chances against seventeen or sixteen thousand were scarcely better than our chances against twenty thousand.

“Back down, of course!” I said. “We can’t attack from up here now, can we?”





23





Wedding day


The journey back to the Haunt took us over fresh territory, a new and broken surface, littered with dead men turned into ground meat, and here and there along the way the cries of live ones trapped beneath us. We moved on, the grey of the Watch’s tatter-robes renewed with rock dust, the men pale with powdered stone and with horror.

The Prince’s army encircled the Haunt now, archers on the heights, siege machinery being hauled into place. All my troops at the castle crowded within the walls, space or not. There was no standing against the foe on open ground.

I could see units of bowmen descending in long files, presumably ordered east to meet our advance in light of the recent massacre. The Prince looked to be a fast learner. He anticipated my renewed attack. It didn’t seem likely that he would consider my three hundred men a mere nuisance this time.

“He shouldn’t be in a hurry,” Makin said beside me.

“He’ll reduce the walls and thin the ranks first,” said Coddin.

“He doesn’t need to get inside until the snows come, the big snows,” said Hobbs. “Inside by the big snows. Winter by the fire. Over the passes when the spring clears them.”

“He wants in today,” I told them. “Tomorrow by the latest. He’ll go through the front gate.”

“Why?” Coddin asked. He didn’t argue, but he wanted to understand.

“Why waste a good castle?” I said. “A big push. A surrender. A dose of mercy and he has a new stronghold, a new garrison, and a small repair to make on the entrance. He doesn’t do half measures any more than I do. Go in hard, fast, get the job done.”

“A dose of mercy?” Makin asked. “You think that famous Arrow mercy has survived recent events?”

“Maybe not,” I said, my smile grim, “but I don’t intend to offer any either. Mark me, old friend, nobody gets out alive, not this time.”

“Red Jorg.” Makin clapped his hand to his chest as he had at Remagen Fort years before.