King of Thorns

I took my place at the cave mouth, eager to cross swords with the men of Arrow. I had the timing wrong. Plain and true. I should have said what mattered to Coddin days ago, months ago. My timing had been off.

Tired men die easy, as if they relish the prospect of infinity. My legs had the trembles but my arms were ready enough. I held my blade two-handed and took the first man in the eye with its point. Makin came to fight beside me. Beyond the enemy I could see forever. I could see the wildness and wideness of the mountains. Beyond them, the day moon, white like the memory of bone. Faint strains of the sword-song reached me as I crossed blades again, shearing partway through a man’s neck. My sword felt lighter, twitching to the song as if it held a life of its own and pulsed with its own blood. Snicker-snack, snicker-snack, and men fell away in pieces. The sun flashed crimson on my uncle’s sword as if heliographing a message to the Prince of Arrow.

“I’m sorry!” I shouted, for Makin and the others.

Timing.

We weren’t far enough ahead. The men of Gutting would have lit the fires in their bowls as they saw us emerge from the neck of the valley onto the mountain’s shoulder. I had thought we would reach the caves with a clear margin. That we would dig in and rake the slope with bow-fire. I was wrong. Just a few minutes’ error but plenty long enough for the enemy to fill the caves with our corpses.

Makin gave an oath and fell back, throwing himself beyond a swinging blade.

I nearly said “Sorry” again—but a mountain is a good place to die. If you’re going to die, try to make it somewhere with a view.

For moments without time I fought, enfolded with a fierce joy, the heat rising in me until the burns on my face blazed and the wind had no hold on me. Each part of that fight played out to a secret score and the timing that had eluded me returned in the scream of steel against steel. A wildness infected me and I thought of Ferrakind incandescent and consumed, whatever made him human abandoned to the inferno.

A block, a sway, step to the side, the ring and scrape of my sword as it slid from the foe’s sheared flesh. When a heavy blade meets the head of a man who has discarded his helm in the long climb, a red ruin is wrought. Worse than the neat butchery of the slaughterman in his abattoir is this destruction. Brain, skull, and hair follow the swing of your sword in a wet arc of crimson, white, and grey. Pieces of a face hang for a frozen moment: an accusing eye, its juices leaking, then everything falls and the next man stumbles through to battle, wearing scraps of the last.

Fire wrapped me, or so it felt, hot lines of it snaking from Gog’s burn, scorching, fierce.

A swordpoint traced its path within a hair of my brow, whispering across the bridge of my nose as I jerked back. Lunging, I thrust out both arms, my blade a bar held at hilt and end, the point hard against the iron plate in the palm of my leather glove. The Builder-steel divided the man’s face horizontally between nose and lip. The grip of his bone tried to take the sword with him as he fell but I kept the hilt and let the motion swing the blade out right, catching a spear thrust and angling it over my shoulder. That man I kicked down the slope and the roar that burst from me rippled the air like a furnace breath. If I’d had the time to look down I would not have been surprised to see the snow shrink back from the heat pulsing off my skin.

Much of me, very nearly all of me perhaps, wanted to surrender to the battle-madness, to be consumed, to throw myself down among the foe and paint the mountain with their blood no matter the cost. But surrender of any kind comes hard to me. Instead I drew back and the fury left me, blown out as swiftly as it ignited. I had a plan to follow and I’d follow it even though all hope seemed lost. And following plans requires a clear head.

More men pressed at me. My arms started to feel as tired as my legs. We just needed a few more minutes, but sometimes you don’t get what you want, or what you need. My eyes flickered to the view. Time to die.

In the past I have been saved by a horse. Not borne to safety by a noble steed, but saved by the wild kick of a panicked horse. That had been unexpected. It probably surprised Corion even more. To be saved by a sheep’s weak bladder though…that takes the biscuit. It takes all the biscuits.

High above us slow fires burned, melting the snow in the pots, heating the inflated bladders now floating in the steaming water. The process gives the Highlanders time to retreat to a point of safety. You have to place the pots in the danger zone. You do it as high up as you can for your own preservation, but not so high that it won’t have the desired effect.