Prince of Thorns

My tired body thrilled with the dark melody of her. It took the memory of Gains’s face crawling across her worm-flesh to stop me rising to her call. I lifted the bow. I knew I couldn’t hold it for long.

“It’s grave-cold that’s in you.” Her voice became an angry hiss. “It will kill you.”

She smiled at me over the Nuban’s shoulder, enjoying his helplessness. “You’re trembling, Jorg. Put the bow down. You probably couldn’t even hit your friend here, let alone me.”

It felt so tempting. Put the bow down.

“He’s not my friend,” I said.

She shook her head. “He’d die for you. I can taste it in his blood.”

“You’re playing the wrong game with me, dead-thing.” I raised the bow and sighted it. The tremor in my arms kept the aim-point jumping. Any worse and the bolt would have shaken from its groove.

She laughed at me. “I can see the ties that bind the living. You only have two friends, Prince Jorg. You’re as bound to this sweet-blooded man as any son to his father.”

Sacrifice.

She set her fingers to the red holes in the Nuban’s neck. “Let me have the others. Let me take their life-juice, and you and him, you can stay with me. You can help me harvest the leucrota. There are several tribes, some of them quite fractious. There are other necromancers against whom a living ally, one as sharp as you, would be most useful.”

Play the game.

She smiled, and that dark fire lit in me again. “I like you, Prince. We can rule under the mountain, together.” Sex dripped off her words. Not that pallid roll in the sheets that Sally surrendered, but something potent, unseen, and consuming. She offered me a draw. Life, power, and command. But in her service.

Play to win.

The Nuban’s eyes were on mine. For the first time ever, I could read what he held there. I could have taken anything else. I could have taken hatred, or fear, or pleading. But he forgave me.

ChooOom!

The bolt hit the Nuban square in the chest. It put a hole through both of them and took them off the edge. Neither of them screamed, and it took forever before they hit the bottom.





Most men have at least one redeeming feature. Finding one for Brother Rike requires a stretch. Is “big” a redeeming feature?





31




I came back to find the brothers nursing their wounds among drifts of broken bone. Roddat, Jobe, Els, and Frenk lay stretched out, apart from the group. Death makes lepers of even the most popular men. I didn’t bother with them: any loot would be long gone.

“Thought you’d left us, Brother Jorg.” Red Kent spared me a glance from beneath lowered brows and returned to the business of whetstone and sword.

That “brother” held a note of reproach. A note at the least, perhaps a whole symphony. No “prince” for the runaway.

Makin watched me with dark speculation, sprawled on the floor, too spent to prop himself against a pillar.

Rike hefted himself to his feet. He came toward me slowly, polishing a ring against the leather padding of his breastplate. I recognized it as Roddat’s luck-ring, a nice piece of yellow gold.

“Thought you’d left us, Brother Jorgy,” he said. He loomed over me, a broad and brooding form.

There’s some, like Liar, that aren’t much to look at, and it’s a surprise for folks when they find out what a truly nasty bastard they’re dealing with. Rike never surprised anyone that way. The menace of him, the sheer brutality, his love of other people’s pain, well, Mother Nature wrote it in every line of him just to warn us.

“The Nuban is dead.” I ignored Rike and looked to Makin. I pulled the Nuban’s crossbow off my back and showed it. No doubt after that. The man was dead.

“Good,” said Rike. “Serves him right for running. Never did like that weasel coward.”

I hit Rike as hard as I could. In the throat. I made no conscious decision. If I’d given it the smallest moment’s consideration, I’d have held my blow. I might have stood a chance against him with a sword, but never with bare hands.

Actually “bare hands” is going too far. I had my gauntlets on, riveted iron. I stood six foot tall at fourteen, lean, but hard with muscle from swinging a sword and carting my armour around. I knew how to punch too. I put my whole weight behind that blow, and every ounce of my strength.

Iron knuckles crunched into Rike’s bull-throat. I may not have been thinking with my head, but thankfully some part of me hadn’t abandoned all sense. Punching Rike’s blunt face would have probably broken my fist and just tickled him a little.

He gave a kind of grunt and stood there, looking slightly bewildered. I supposed the idea that I’d just committed suicide in such grand style took some getting used to.