Prince of Thorns

15

Four years earlier

We left the Tall Castle by the Brown Gate, a small door on the lower slopes of the mount, out past the High Wall. I came last, with the ache of all those steps in my legs.

Faint red footprints marked the top stair. The owners of that blood were probably still bleeding, far behind us.

For a moment I saw Lundist, lying as I’d left him.

We’d climbed from the very bowels of the castle vaults, to the least ostentatious of all the castle’s exits. Dung men came this way a dozen times a day, carrying off the treasures of the privy. And I’ll tell you, royal shit stinks no less than any other.

The brother ahead of me turned at the archway, and showed me his teeth by way of a grin. “Fresh air! Take a breath o’ that, Castle Boy.”

I’d heard the Nuban call this one Row, a wire of a man, gristle and bone, old scars and a mean eye. “I’ll lick a leper’s neck before I take a lung-full o’ your stench, Brother Row.” I pushed past him. It’d take more than talking like a road-brother to earn a place with these men, and giving an inch wasn’t the way to start.

Ancrath stretched out on our right. To the left, the smoke and spires of Crath City rose behind the Old Wall. A storm light covered it all. The kind that falls when thunderclouds gather in the day. A flat light that makes a stranger of even the most familiar landscape. It felt appropriate.

“We travel fast and we travel hard,” Price said.

Price and Rike, the only true brothers among us, stood shoulder to shoulder at the head of the column, Rike beetling his brow while Price told us how it would be. “We put as many miles between us and this shit-hole as it takes. The storm will hide our tracks. We’ll find horses as we go, roust a village or two if need be.”

“You think the King’s hunters can’t track two dozen men through a bit of rain?” I wished my voice didn’t ring so pure and high as I said it.

They all turned round at that. The Nuban flashed me a look, eyes wide, and patted down at the air as if to shut me up.

I pointed to the sprawl of roofs edging toward the river where Father’s loving citizens had built beyond the safety of the city walls in their passion to be near him.

“By ones and twos a brother could find his way to a warm hearth, bit of roast beef, and an ale maybe,” I said. “I hear there’s a tavern or three to be found down there. A brother could be toasting by a fire before the rain even got to washing his trail away.

“The King’s men would be riding back and forth on those fine horses of theirs, getting wet, looking for the kind of rut that twenty men put in a road or across a field, looking for the kind of trouble a band of brothers stirs up. And we’d be sitting comfortable in the shadow of the Tall Castle, waiting for the weather to clear.

“You think there’s a man we left behind who could tell the Criers what we look like? You think the good folk of Crath City will notice a score added to their thousands?”

I could see I’d won them. I could see the light of that warm hearth reflecting in their eyes.

“And how the feck are we to pay for roast beef and a roof to hide under?” Price shoved through the brothers, setting the redhead, Gemt, on his rear. “Start robbing in the shadow of the Tall Castle?”

“Yeah, how we a-gonna pay, Castle Boy?” Gemt scrambled to his feet, finding me a better target than Price for his anger. “How we gonna?”

I brought up two ducats from my purse, and rubbed them together.

“I’ll take that!” A sharp-faced man to my left lunged for the purse, still fat with coin.

I flipped the dagger from my belt and stuck it through his outstretched hand.

“Liar,” I said. I shoved a little more, until the hilt slapped up against his palm, the blade glistening red behind.

“Out the way, Liar.” Price grabbed him by the neck and tossed him down the slope.

Price loomed over me. Any full-grown man loomed over me, but Price added a new dimension to it. He took a handful of my jerkin and hauled me up, eye to eye, careless of the bloody knife I still had hold of.

“You’re not scared of me, are you, boy?” The stink of him was something awful. Dead dog comes close.

I thought about stabbing him, but I knew there wasn’t a wound that would stop him breaking me in two before he died.

“Are you scared of me?” I asked him.

We had us a moment of understanding then. Price didn’t so much as twitch, but I saw it in him, and he saw it in me. He let me fall.

“We’ll stay a day in the city,” Price said. “The drinks are on Brother Jorg. Any of you whoresons start trouble before we leave, and I’ll hurt you, bad.”

He held a hand out to me where I lay. I half-reached for it, before understanding. I tossed the purse to him.

“I’ll go with the Nuban,” I said.

Price nodded. A black face lost from the dungeons would be remembered. A black face found in a Crath tavern would be remarked on.

The Nuban shrugged, and set off, east toward the open fields. I followed.

It wasn’t until we’d lost ourselves in the maze of tracks and hedgerows that the Nuban spoke again.

“You should be afraid of Price, boy.”

The first breath of storm wind set the hawthorn rustling to either side. I could smell the electricity, mixed in with the richness of the earth.

“Why?” I wondered if he thought I lacked the imagination for fear. Some men are too dull to feel what might happen. Others torture themselves with maybes and populate their dreams with horrors more terrible than their worst enemy could inflict upon them.

“Why would the gods care what happens to a child who doesn’t care about himself?” the Nuban asked.

He paused before a turn in the road and moved close to the hedge. The wind shook again and white petals fell among the thorns. He looked back along the way we’d come.

“Maybe I’m not afraid of the gods either,” I said.

Fat drops of rain began to land around us.

The Nuban shook his head. Raindrops sparkled in the tight curls of his hair. “You’re a fool to make a fist at the gods, boy.” He flashed me a grin, and edged to the corner. “Who knows what they might send you?”

Rain appeared to be the answer. It seemed to fall faster than normal, as if the sheer weight of water waiting to fall hurried the raindrops down. I moved in beside the Nuban. The hedge offered no shelter. The rain came through my tunic, cold enough to steal my breath. I thought then of the comforts I’d left behind, and wondered if perhaps I should have taken Lundist’s counsel after all.

“Why are we waiting?” I asked. I had to raise my voice above the roar of the rain.

The Nuban shrugged. “The road feels wrong.”

“Feels more like a river-but why are we waiting?”

He shrugged again. “Maybe I need a rest.” He touched a hand to his burns, and a wince showed me his teeth, very white where most of the brothers had a mouthful of grey rot.

Five minutes passed and I kept my peace. We couldn’t get wetter if we’d fallen down a well.

“How did you all get taken?” I asked. I thought of Price and Rike, and the notion of them surrendering to the King’s guard seemed somehow comical.

The Nuban shook his head.

“How?” I asked again, louder, above the rain.

The Nuban glanced back along the road, then bent in close. “A dream-witch.”

“A witch?” I made a face at him and spat water to the side.

“A dream-witch.” The Nuban nodded. “The witch came in our sleep and kept us tied in dreams while the King’s men took us.”

“Why?” I asked. If I took the witch seriously, and I didn’t, I knew for certain that my father didn’t employ any.

“I think he was seeking to please the King,” the Nuban said.

He stood without announcement and set off through the mud. I followed, but I held my tongue. I’d seen children tag after grown men throwing question after question, but I had put childhood aside. My questions could wait, at least until the rain stopped.

We sploshed along at a good pace for the best part of an hour before he stopped again. The rain had graduated from deluge to a steady soak that fell with the promise of lasting the night and through the next morning. This time our pause in the hedgerow proved well judged. Ten horsemen thundered by, kicking up mud left and right.

“Your king wants us back in his dungeons, Jorg.”

“He’s not my king any more,” I said. I made to stand, but the Nuban caught my shoulder.

“You left a rich life in the King’s own castle, and now you’re hiding in the rain.” He kept a close watch on me. He read too much with his eyes and I didn’t like it. “Your uncle sacrificed himself to keep you safe. A good man I think. Old, strong, wise. But you came.” He shook a clot of mud from his free hand. A silence stretched between us, the kind that invites you to fill it with confession.

“There’s a man I want dead.”

The Nuban frowned. “Children shouldn’t be this way.” The rain ran in trickles over the furrows on his brow. “Men shouldn’t be this way.”

I shook loose and set off. The Nuban fell in beside me and we covered another ten miles before the light failed entirely.

Our path took us by farmhouses and the occasional mill, but as night came we saw a cluster of lights below a wooded ridge a little south of us. From memory of Lundist’s maps I guessed it to be the village of Pineacre, until now nothing more to me than a small green dot on old parchment.

“A bit of dry would be nice.” I could smell the wood-smoke. All of a sudden I understood how easily I’d sold the brothers my plan on the strength of warmth and food.

“We should spend the night up there.” The Nuban pointed to the ridge.

The rain fell soft now. It wrapped us in a cold blanket that leeched my strength away. I cursed my weakness. A day on the road had left me dead on my feet.

“We could sneak into one of those barns,” I said. Two stood isolated, just below the treeline.

The Nuban started to shake his head. In the east thunder rumbled, low but sustained. The Nuban shrugged. “We could.” The gods loved me!

We made our way through fields turned half to swamp, stumbling in the darkness, me tripping over my exhaustion.

The door to the barn groaned a protest, then squealed open as the Nuban heaved on it. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, but I doubted any farmer would dare the rain on the strength of a hound’s opinion. We reeled in and fell into the hay. Each limb felt leaden, I would have sobbed with the tiredness if I’d let it have its way.

“You’re not worried the dream-witch will come after you again?” I asked. “She’s hardly going to be pleased if her present to the King has escaped.” I stifled a yawn.

“He,” said the Nuban. “I think it’s a he.”

I pursed my lips. In my dreams the witches were always women. They’d hide in a dark room I’d never noticed before. A room whose open doorway stood off the corridor I had to follow. I’d pass the entrance and the skin on my back would crawl, invisible worms would tingle their way across the backs of my arms. I’d see her, sketched by shadows, her pale hands like spiders writhing from black sleeves. In that moment, when I tried to run, I’d become mired, as if I ran through molasses. I’d struggle, trying to shout, vomiting silence, a fly in the web, and she would advance, slow, inevitable, her face inching into the light. I’d see her eyes… and wake screaming.

“So you’re not worried he’ll come after you again?” I asked.

Thunder came in a sudden clap, shaking the barn.

“He has to be close,” the Nuban said. “He has to know where you are.”

I let go of a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been keeping.

“He’ll send his hunter after us instead,” the Nuban said. I heard the rustle as he pulled the hay down on himself.

“That’s a pity,” I said. It had been a long time since I’d dreamed of my own dream-witch. I rather liked the idea that she might be chasing us here, to this barn, in the jaws of the storm. I settled back into the prickle of the hay. “I’ll see if I can dream a witch tonight, yours or mine, I don’t care. And if I do, this time I’m not running anywhere. I’m going to turn around and gut the bitch.”