King of Thorns

32

Four years earlier

In the hot and endless swamp of the Cantanlona many things are lost, secrets swallowed, lives drawn down into blackness. And sometimes, slow currents return what was better kept hidden.

It’s never a good idea to run in a bog. Slow steps are called for when a place is littered with sucking pools, deep mire, and tufted hummocks perfect for the breaking of ankles. However, there are times when a bad idea is the best you have.

“Follow me!” I shouted, and I ran out between the pools and the tussock-grass to my left. Chella let herself slide under the mud whilst the Nuban moved to intercept.

Whatever necromancy I’d gained from Chella’s brother would have made only a drop in the ocean of Chella’s strength. However, secrets hold power. The secret I had in mind had slipped from Dr. Taproot’s lips, and he would never have given the information away for free if he thought it still held value.

“I release you, Kashta!” I slapped my palm to the wound in his chest, careless of his grasping hands.

When a name is held secret its power multiplies. The Nuban toppled without hesitation and I felt that he would never rise again. As he fell my anger rose.

I splashed on with the live Brothers behind me and the dead Brothers behind them. Back and to my right, Fat Burlow moved to block Rike. I raced on, finding a low ridge of firmer ground. Turning, I saw Rike’s broadsword shear through Burlow’s arm. Burlow grabbed him with his remaining hand, but Makin cut that off and both men charged on, slowing as they hit softer ground and starting to wade. Makin lost a boot to the sucking mud but he made it to my side. Our panicked horses ran in various directions; some cantered after us, Brath among them, but I saw two horses hit the mud and start to sink, rearing and plunging as if they thought they might win through.

Some yards away a mud-pit began to boil with activity. Corpse after corpse clambered from it as if they had been stacked fathoms deep and with unsettling intimacy.

I led on. It seemed that whilst the undead lacked fear and would literally need to be hacked apart before they stopped trying to kill us, they were at least slow. On an open field we would have left them in our dust. In the swamp the match turned out to be more even. A pervasive aura of lingering death infects the mud in the Cantanlona bogs. Somehow the mire itself is half-alive, or half-dead depending on your perspective, and it supported the undead, vomiting them up, keeping them from sinking.

The corpses from the mud-pit managed to intercept us when the firm ground swung to the left.

“Keep moving!” I shouted.

Makin sliced one across the chest, his training misleading him for once. The creature didn’t notice the wound and grappled him with muddy arms. Rike didn’t bother with his sword. He set his boot to the stomach of the corpse-man in his path with such force that he threw it yards back, felling another before it reached us. Of all the Brothers, Red Kent proved best suited to the work. His Norse axe sheared off grasping limbs, weaving a savage pattern that left the bog scattered with hands, arms, and heads.

We raced on with the creatures at our heels, silent in their determination to catch and dismember us, just the noise of their splashing and our panting. At one point a mud-grey army of undead hunted our trail, but each mile left them farther behind us until at last they dropped from sight.

I called a halt on a low mound that offered a firm footing and an elevated view of the bogs. A ring of weathered stone indicated the place had once been a burial, some local chieftain perhaps, but the grave looked to have been emptied years ago and I felt no more death there than in any of the surrounding mire. My anger had kept pace with me during the long chase. Chella had kept the Nuban’s corpse as her plaything for more than half a year. I didn’t know if anything of the man remains when necromancy animates his flesh, but the possibility of his suffering, and the horror of it if he did, made me swear revenge. I had only made one such vow before and then as now I made it without words and with every intention to tear the world apart if that were needed to see it through.

“I don’t want to spend another night in this place,” Makin said.

“Really?” Rike growled, sitting on the largest of the stones. I’d never heard him use sarcasm before. I guessed he must have been saving it for extreme circumstances.

“Stand a moment, Rike,” I said.

And he did. I lifted the point of my sword to his side. With a stab and a twist I took Burlow’s severed hand away, tearing off the patch of tunic it had a grip on, and flicked it into the swamp.

“We’ve wandered into hell,” Grumlow said with conviction. “We got lost and now we’re in hell.” He had mud plastered up one side of his face and blood clotting in his moustache, trickles of it making crimson trails from nose to lip.

“Hell smells better,” I said.

With the horses around us the mound was crowded and our sightlines blocked. I pushed the grey aside, slapping her rump. Of the five horses left to us she was the only one relaxed enough to crop at the short grass.

“We should go,” Makin said.

We should, but where to? The horizon offered nothing. Except, perhaps…

“Is that the sea?” I pointed. To the east a hint of black or blue lined the farthest reaches of the marsh.

A sharp cry cut off anyone inclined to answer. I spun toward the sound. Just behind us, thigh-deep in water, chest-deep in rushes, Chella held Young Sim by the throat and head. She took another step back away from the mound, dragging Sim. It seemed that she had done something to him, to his neck maybe, for his arms hung limp at his side though he watched us with wild eyes. We called him Young Sim and he had perhaps sixteen years, but when it came to killing he was an old hand and he would not have gone easy without good reason.

“Jorg, you shouldn’t run from me,” Chella said. The water had washed away the mud though it couldn’t take the bog-stain from her skin, the colour of old teak. The Celtic patterns scrolling across her were deep-set too, not the paint I had once thought them. A needle must have placed those swirls and knots along her arms, reaching across her sides.

“I don’t want any part of you, necromancer.” I still held the Nuban’s bow, though I hadn’t reloaded it. I aimed at her, assuming she wouldn’t pay close attention to the number of bolts in place. “Whatever power I consumed is fading from me. Slower than I would like it to fade, but it will be gone and I won’t be sorry. I want no part of you or your dirty trade.”

She smiled. “The Dead King won’t let you go, Jorg. He’s gathering all our kind to him. Black ships wait to take us to the Drowned Isles.”

I made no reply. My anger had subsided once I vowed to destroy Chella. Vengeance is patient when it needs to be and she sought to use the Brothers against me to enrage me, to set me chasing her into the drowning pools. I didn’t let her know how deep her hooks had sunk.

“You’re not going to ask me to release your brother, Jorg?” She dragged Sim a yard farther back.

Row had an arrow trained on her and Grumlow looked ready to throw his knife this time. Grumlow had a soft spot for Sim: fear wouldn’t stay his hand.

“So, you have my brother. Eat his heart and we will be even. Back to where we started,” I said. I knew she wouldn’t be letting go of Sim. She just wanted me to ask.

“Oh, you can’t go back, Jorg. You should know that. You can never go back. Not even if every trace of necromancy left you. Look!” She made a quick change of grip and jerked Sim’s head to the right. Far too far to the right. The grating of bone set my teeth on edge. “Annnnnd…” She rotated his head slowly back to face us. “He’s back. But he’s not the same now, is he?”

“Bitch!” Row released his arrow. Whether his hand trembled or Chella moved faster than I could see I don’t know, but the arrow ended up jutting from Sim’s eye.

“Now see what you’ve done.” Her red mouth smiling, her eyes seductive, and she whispered in Sim’s ear.

Grumlow threw his knife but Chella was already falling. It may have cut her, but the waters closed over her before I could tell.

Sim, despite his arrow and his broken neck, remained standing. And then he took an uncertain step toward us. The clear water between the rushes clouded as the mud below began to stir.

“The sea,” I shouted. I pointed for good measure. The Prince of Arrow had advised me to see the ocean and it looked as though it might be the last thing I did. The Brothers needed no encouragement. We set off running, hoping that Brother Sim would prove as slow as the other dead men and not as fast as we remembered him.

Brother Row you can trust. Trust him to lie, trust him to cheat, perhaps to betray. Most of all trust him to be true to what he is, a weasel, a killer in the dark, handy in the fight. Trust in all that and he will not disappoint.