Prince of Thorns

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.”

Gorgoth had told me the changes would come too quickly to Gog and his little brother. Too quickly and too dangerous to be borne.

“Bring this mad dog down.” The voice rang out behind me. It sounded familiar. It sounded like my father.

“Shoot him.”

It wasn’t a voice to be disobeyed. But nobody had shot at me yet, so I turned from Gorgoth, and faced The Haunt.

Count Renar stood before the great keep, flanked by two dozen men-at-arms. To the left and right, bands of spearmen, a score in each. Other guards were coming down from the battlements above the gates.

I sketched a bow. “Hello, Uncle.”

I’d only seen Renar in portrait before taking to the tourney field, and this was the best look I’d had at him so far. His face was rather thinner, his hair longer and less grey, but all in all he was the spitting image of his elder brother, and in truth, not that different from yours truly. Though far less handsome, of course.

“I am Honorous Jorg Ancrath.” I pulled my helm clear and addressed the men before me. “Heir to the throne of Renar.” Not strictly true, but it would be once I’d killed the Count’s remaining son. Wherever Cousin Jarco might be, he surely wasn’t at home or I’d have seen his colours on the tourney field. So I let them think him dead. I let them picture him in the same pyre I’d set his brother Marclos on.

“You.” The Count singled out a man at his side. “Put a hole in this bastard’s head, or I’m going to cut yours from your shoulders!”

“This matter is between my uncle and me.” I set my gaze on the bowman. “When it is done, you will be my soldiers, my victory will be yours. There will be no more blood.”

The man raised his crossbow. I felt a wave of heat sear my neck, as if a furnace door had opened behind me. Blisters rose across the man’s face, like bubbles in boiling soup. He fell, screaming, and his hair burst into flame before he hit the ground. The men around him fell back in horror.

I saw the ghost leave him as he writhed, burning, clots of his flesh sticking to the flagstones. I saw his ghost, and I reached out to it. I reached with my hands, and I reached with the bitter power of the necromancers. I felt their dark energy pulse across my chest, running out from the wound I took from Father’s knife.

I gave the dead man’s ghost a voice, and I gave voice to the ghosts that hung smoke-like around the corpses at my feet.

The soldiers before me paled and shook. Swords dropped and terror leapt from man to man like wildfire.

With the screams of burned men echoing around me from beyond the grave, I took my sword in two hands and ran at Count Renar, my uncle, the man who sent killers after his brother’s wife and sons. And I added my own scream, because Corion or no Corion, the need to kill him ate at me like acid.