King of Thorns

All that was true enough, but more than any move in the game of empire, I quite wanted to find a member of my family who didn’t yearn to kill me. Blood runs thick they say, but what I have from my father is thin stuff. As I got older, as I started to examine the parts from which I’m made, I felt a need to see my mother’s kin, if only to convince myself not all of me was bad.

We passed among the roots of Aups, mountains that put the Matteracks to shame both in size and number. Legion upon legion of white peaks marching east to west across nations—the great wall of Roma. Young Sim found them a fascination, watching so hard you might think he’d fall off his mare at any moment.

“A man could never climb those,” he said.

“Hannibal took elephants across them,” I told him.

A frown crossed him then passed. “Oh, elephants,” he said.

Until that moment it hadn’t occurred to me he hadn’t the least clue what an elephant was. Even Dr. Taproot’s circus didn’t have elephants. Sim probably thought they climbed like monkeys.

For weeks we rode along the lawless margins of minor kingdoms, along the less worn routes. Seven is a dangerous number of men for travelling. Not so few that you can pass unnoticed. Not so many that safety is assured. Still, we looked hard-bitten. Perhaps not as hard-bitten as we were, but enough to dissuade any bandits who might have watched us pass. Looking poor helps too. We had horses, weapons, armour, true enough, but nothing that promised a rich prize, certainly not a rich enough one for taking on Rike and Makin.

The foothills of the Aups roll out along the margins of Teutonia in long barren valleys divided by high ridges of broken stone. Bad things happened here in the distant long ago. The Interdiction they called it, and little grows in the sour dust, even now. Amid the emptiness of those valleys, a week’s march from anywhere you might want to be, we passed the loneliest house in the world. I have read that in the white north, beyond a frozen sea, men live in ice houses, sewn in their furs, huddled from a wind that can cut you in half. But this stone hut, dwarfed amongst abandoned boulders, its empty windows like dark eyes, it seemed worse. A woman came out of it and three children lined up before her to watch as we rode past. No words were spoken. In that dry valley with just the whisper of the wind, without crow call or the high song of larks, it felt as if words would be a sin, as if they might wake something better left sleeping.

The woman watched us from a face that looked too white, too smooth, like a dead child’s face. And the children crouched around her in their grey rags.

Riding north, we had paced the spring. Now it seemed we galloped into summer. Mud dried to hardpan, blossoms melted away, the flies came. Rike turned red as he does in any hint of summer, even the dirt won’t keep him from it, and the sunburn improved his temper not a bit.

We left the mountains and their grim foothills, finding our way across wild heathlands and into the great forests of the south.

At the end of a hot day when my face hurt less, not healed but no longer weeping, I drew my sword. We had set camp on the edge of a forest clearing. Row found us a deer and had a haunch spitting over the fire.

“Have at ye, Sir Makin of Trent!”

“If you’re sure you’ve not forgotten how to use that thing.” He grinned and drew. “My liege.”

We sparred a while, parrying and feinting, stretching our limbs and practising our strokes. Without warning, Makin picked up the pace, the point of his blade questing for me.

“Time for another lesson?” he asked, still grinning, but fierce now.

I let my sword-arm guide me, watching only the plot of the fight, the advances and retreats, not the details of every cut and thrust. Behind Makin the sun reached through the forest canopy in golden shafts like the strings of a harp, and beneath the rustle of leaves, above the birds’ calls, I caught the strains of the sword-song. The tempo of our blades increased, sharp harsh cries of steel on steel, the rasp of breath—faster. The burn on my face seemed to reignite. The old pain ran in me, acid and lightning, as if Gog’s fragments were lodged in my bones, still burning. Faster. I saw Makin’s grin falter, the sweat running on his forehead. Faster—the flicker of reflected light in his eyes. Faster. A moment of desperation and then—“Enough!” And he let the sword fly from his fingers. “Jesu!” he cried, shaking his hand. “Nobody fights like that.”

The Brothers had stopped their various tasks and watched as if unsure what they had seen.

I shrugged. “Perhaps you’re not such a bad teacher?”

My arms trembled now and I used my free hand to steer the point of my blade home into its scabbard. “Ouch!” For a moment I thought I had cut myself and raised my fingertips to my mouth. But there was no blood, only blistering where the hot metal scorched me.