Prince of Thorns

I let Corion’s head drop. I just opened my fingers and let his hair slide through. It took an age to fall, as though it fell through cobwebs, or dreams. It should have hit the ground like a hammer against a gong, but it made no sound. Silent or roaring though, I heard it, I felt it. A weight lifted from me. More weight than I’d ever imagined I could carry.

I could see the gateway ahead. The Haunt’s great entrance arch. The portcullis had all but descended. A single figure stood beneath it, holding up an impossible mass of wood and iron. Gorgoth!

I started to run.





48




I ran for the castle gates. I had my armour on, save for the pieces I’d lost in the tourney, but it didn’t seem to weigh heavy. I heard the hiss of arrows about me. Other men fell. The Forest Watch’s finest archers kept my path clear.

I wondered where I was going, and why. I’d left Corion in the mud. When he died, it felt like an arrow being drawn from a wound, like shackles struck away, like the hangman’s noose worked free from a purpled neck.

A few shafts reached me from guards up in The Haunt’s ramparts. One shattered on my breastplate. But in the main they had too hard a time picking targets in the confusion of the tourney field to worry about one knight storming the castle single-handedly.

I let my feet carry me. The empty feeling wouldn’t leave me. Where there had been an inner voice to goad me on, I heard only the rasp of my breath.

I met more serious resistance in the street running up to the gates, out of sight from the watch’s positions. Soldiers had gathered, between the taverns and tanneries. They held the road I had passed when I first came to The Haunt with the Nuban, as a child seeking revenge.

Twenty men blocked the way, spearmen, with a captain in Renar finery, dull gleams from his chainmail. Behind them I could see Gorgoth holding up the portcullis. More soldiers milled in the courtyard beyond. There seemed to be no reason why they hadn’t cut the leucrota down, and sealed the gates.

I pulled up before the line of spearmen, and found I had no breath with which to address them. A cold bluster of wind swirled between us, laced with rain.

What to do? All of a sudden, impossible odds seemed . . . impossible.

I glanced back. Two figures were pounding up along the path I’d taken. The first was too big to be anyone but Rike. I could see the feathered end of an arrow jutting from the joint above his left shoulder. Too much mud and blood on the second man to identify him by his armour. But it was Makin. I knew it from the way he held his sword.

I looked at the soldiers, along the points of their spears, held in a steady row.

What’s it going to be then?

Another scatter of rain.

“House of Renar?” the captain called. He sounded uncertain.

They didn’t know! These men had come out of the castle, without a clue what kind of attack they were under. You’ve got to love the fog of war.

I scraped a gauntlet across my breastplate to show the coat of arms more clearly. “Sanctuary!”

“Alain Kennick, ally to the House of Renar, seeking sanctuary.” I pointed back toward Rike and Makin. “They’re trying to kill me!”

Perhaps Corion’s death hadn’t taken all of the wickedness from me. Not all of it.

I ran toward the line, and they parted for me.

“They won’t get past us, my lord.” The captain offered a brief bow.

“Make sure they don’t,” I said. And it didn’t seem likely that they would.

I hurried on, up to the gates, feeling the weight of my plate-mail now. The air held an odd stench, rich and meaty, bacon burning over the hearth. It put me in mind of Mabberton where we torched all those peasants, a lifetime ago.

I could see squads of soldiers assembling in the great courtyard beyond the gates. Half-armoured men, some with shields, some without, many of them full of tourney-day ale, no doubt.

Coming closer I saw the corpses. Charred things, smouldering in their own molten fats, like bodies from a pauper’s funeral with too little wood to make them ash.

Gorgoth stood with his back to me. Arrows pierced his arms and legs. At first I thought him a statue, but as I came closer I could see the quiver in those huge slabs of muscle across his back.

I moved past him, ducking under the portcullis. A hundred men in the courtyard watched me. Gorgoth’s eyes were screwed tight with strain. He observed me through the narrowest of slits. More arrows jutted from his chest, standing among the reaching claws of his deformed ribcage. Blood bubbled around the shafts as he released a breath, and sucked back as he drew the next.

I kicked a smouldering head. It rolled clear of the charred body.

“That’s one hell of a guardian angel you’ve got looking out for you, Gorgoth,” I said. Every soldier to have run at him lay in ashes.

The faintest shake of his head. “The boy. Up there.”

Above Gorgoth, crouched in one of the gaps between the portcullis’ timbers, Gog lurked. The inky voids that served him for eyes now burned like hot coals beneath the smith’s bellows. His thin body had folded tighter than I believed possible. A few arrows studded the woodwork around him.

“The little one did all this?” I blinked. “Damn.”