Prince of Thorns

30

I cleared scabbard and followed the arc of my family blade to face the necromancer. It’s one of those swords they say can make the wind bleed. Appropriately the edge found only empty air, which hissed as if cut.

The necromancer fell back too swiftly for me to reach. The skull had taken her by surprise, but I didn’t think I’d catch her again so easily.

I guess the skull hit her in the bridge of the nose, because that’s where the mess was. No blood, but a dark stain and a writhing of the flesh as though a hundred worms wriggled, one over another.

For the most part the brothers still stood in the daze that had held me. The Nuban worked to load another bolt into his crossbow. Makin half-drew his sword. Gorgoth let go of Gog.

The necromancer took a breath, like a rasp drawn over ironwork, rattling in her throat. “That,” she said, “was a mistake.”

“So sorry!” I kept my voice cheerful and lunged at her. She slipped around the pillar, leaving me to skewer the stonework.

Gog hurled himself bodily at Magog, and tore his little brother from the skeleton’s one-handed grip. I caught a glimpse of pale finger-marks on the child’s neck.

I moved around the pillar with a little caution, only to find the necromancer had somehow slipped back to a further pillar, five yards off.

“I’m very particular about who I allow to place spells on me,” I said, turning and aiming a swift kick at Rike. He’s hard to miss. “Come on, Rikey! Up and at ’em!”

Rike came to with a wordless howl of complaint, somewhere between disturbed walrus and bear-prodded-out-of-hibernation. Just in front of him the two skeletons bent to reach for the leucrota brothers, still a tangle of limbs on the dusty floor. Rike loomed over both of the undead, and took a skull in each hand. He wrenched them together in a clap that reduced the pair to shards.

Roaring unintelligibly, he shook his hands. “Cold!” He graduated to words. “Fecking freezing!”

I turned to the necromancer, some witticism ready on my tongue. The taunt died where it sat. Her whole face writhed now. The flesh lay shrunken on her limbs, pulsing sporadically. The body that seduced my eyes now held all the allure of a famine-corpse. She held me with a dark gaze, glittering in rotting slaughter. She laughed and her laughter came as the sound of wet rags flapping at the wind.

The brothers stood with me now. Gorgoth made no move, keeping his place. The little leucrotas crouched together in the shadows.

“We’re many, and you’re one, my lady. And a damned ugly one at that. So you’d best step aside and let us past,” I said. Somehow I didn’t think she was going to, but nothing ventured nothing gained, as they say.

That worm-flesh of hers crawled into a smile so wide I could see her jawbones past the hinge-point. For a second her face rippled and we saw Gains there, screaming as he fell.

“The dead are many, child,” she said. “I’ll let you pass-into their realm.”

The temperature fell, and kept falling, like there was no bottom for it to hit. It went from uncomfortable, to painful, to plain stupid in no time at all. And the noise. The awful grinding as the skeletons built themselves from pieces and wrapped themselves in the spirit-mist that rose around us. A sound to make you want to pull your teeth out. The torch in Makin’s hand gave up its struggle against the cold and guttered out.

The mist hid all but our nearest neighbours. The skeletons came at us slowly, as if in a dream. If not for the fire of Gorgoth’s torch, we’d have been left in utter darkness.

I swung my sword at the first attacker. The hilt felt frozen onto my hand, but I wasn’t inclined to drop it in any case. I needed the exercise to keep warm. The skeleton disintegrated into a shower of brittle bone. I had no time to cheer before the next came lurching out of the fog.

We fell to the fight, and time left us. We hung in a freezing limbo where only the shattering of bone and the rise and fall of swords held meaning. Every time I cut ghost-flesh it seemed that the cold bit a little deeper into me. The sword grew heavy in my hand until it felt as if they’d fashioned it from lead.

I saw Roddat die. A skeleton caught him with his guard down. Bony fingers found either side of his head and a whiteness spread from them; the living flesh dying where the ghost flesh touched. He was a weasel, was Roddat, but I took a pleasure in cutting in half the dead thing that killed him. Behind me someone screamed. Sounded like Brother Jobe. It wasn’t the kind of scream you get up from.

Makin found his way to my side, frost on his breastplate, blue in his lips. “They just keep coming.”

I could hear a roaring behind us. The mist seemed to swallow sound, but the roaring ripped on through.

“Rike?” I had to shout to be heard above it.

“Gorgoth! You want to see him fight. He’s a monster!” Makin shouted.

I had to smile at that.

They just kept coming. More and more, rank by rank, out of the dark. Somebody died beside me. I couldn’t tell you who.

We must have smashed two hundred of the bastards and still they kept coming.

My sword got caught in the ribs of the skeleton I’d swung at. Not enough force in the blow. Makin shattered its neck with a flat swing.

“Thanks.” The word came out blunt, through numb lips.

I’m not going to die here. I kept running the thought through my head. It held less conviction each time. I’m not going to die here. I felt too cold to think. Not going to die here. Swing low to cut off those reaching hands. These bastards don’t even feel it. The bitch felt it though, when I broke her face.

The bitch.

When in doubt, let your hate lead you. Normally I’d reject that advice. It makes a man predictable. But there, in that miserable hall of bones, I was past caring. Hate was all I had to keep me warm. I cut a skeleton down and lunged past.

“Jorg!” I heard Makin’s startled shout behind me, then the darkness took my sight and the mist threw a thick blanket over the crash of battle.

Oh, it was black out there. So dark as to reach inside you and rip out all memory of colour. I swung my sword a few times, broke some bones, carved air for a while, then hit a pillar which shook the damn thing out of my frozen grip. I hunted my sword frantically, with hands too numb to find my face. Gradually it came to me that I was free of the skeletons. No bone fingers sought me in the night. Without sword or direction I stumbled on.

The bitch. She’d be somewhere near. Surely. Waiting to trap our souls as we died. Waiting to feed.

I stopped and stood as still as my shivering would let me. The necromancer had lifted the veil. Just like the Nuban said, she had lifted the veil between the worlds and the dead were coming through. If I stopped her, they’d stop coming. I listened, listened deep, to a silence as velvet as the dark. I held more still, straining for her, tight and focused.

“Cloves.” My lips formed the word. I wrinkled my nose. Oil of cloves? The scent drew me on. It hung fainter than faint but, with nothing to fight against, it held me. I let it carry me forward, swaying, turning, seeking the source.

My hands found a narrow doorway and I stepped through into a chamber lit by the flickers of a dropped torch.

I understood the scent. The Nuban’s crossbow lay a foot from the torch, dropped carelessly, the cable drawn but the bolt spilled to the stones. He’d broken from the brothers to hunt her. Beaten me to the chase.

“Necromancer,” I said.

She stood at the mouth of one of the Builders’ shafts. The square maw filled the rear of the chamber behind her and the feeble light could not plumb its depths. She held the Nuban before her, holding his head to one side and her mouth to the straining cables of his neck. I could see the tension in his thick arms, but his fingers curled useless by his sides and his broadsword lay at his feet, hilt jutting into space over the edge of the shaft.

The necromancer lifted her face from the Nuban’s neck. Blood dripped from her teeth. Whatever strength she gleaned from it had restored her looks. The blood ran over full lips and down a perfect throat.

“You sent such a fresh one to hunt me down, Prince Jorg,” she said. “Mmmm, flavoured with heathen spices. I thank you.”

I knelt and picked up the Nuban’s bow. The weight of it always surprised me. I set the bolt in place. She moved to use him as a shield, her heels to the pit.

“You’re cold, my prince,” she said. The sudden music of her voice caught me off guard. It ran deep, rich with complexity. “I could warm you.”

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?