King of Thorns (53 page)

I remember only light and heat. The boom was heard as far away as Gutting, but I heard nothing. A hot fist knocked the air from me. I saw Miana thrown back toward the fireplace. The burn on my face ignited as if it were on fire again and I howled. A moment before nothing had mattered, but we are made of flesh before we are made of dreams, and flesh cares about pain.

When I rolled to my hands and knees I could smell my own charred skin, as if the burn really had reignited. I crawled to the hole and looked out. For long moments I saw only smoke. There was no sound, none at all. Then the mountain wind hauled the smoke off-stage and the ruination lay before me. The front walls of the Haunt were gone. All the tanneries, taverns, abattoirs, animal pens before them…gone. Just smoking rubble. And out beyond that, the Prince’s huge army, tattered, wide avenues of destruction carved through it by chunks of masonry the size of wagons tumbling down the slope.

The damage appeared to have been wrought by the walls exploding. Although most of the force seemed to have been directed away from us, the heat and fire had been confined within the courtyard. Rank upon rank of blackened corpses radiated from the spot where the ruby broke and released, in one moment, the flame magics hoarded inside it over many years. The bodies closest to the release looked crisp. Those farther back still burned. The dead where Lord Jost and his men had fought looked red and melted. Farther back still and men rolled in horrific agony. Back farther their lungs hadn’t been seared and they could scream. And back farther still, closer to the base of the keep, survivors struggled up from under the dead who had shielded them.

The timbers supporting the walkways for the archers burned. The shutters on the windows facing the courtyard burned. The remnants of my scorpions burned. Something lodged in the bone of my cheek burned
with its own heat and in every flame possibilities danced. I could see them. As if the fire were a window into hot new worlds.

I guessed I had lost three hundred of my remaining eight hundred men. In two heartbeats a twelve-year-old girl had destroyed the prime fighting men of Renar.

I looked out across the slopes. The Prince of Arrow had lost five thousand, maybe seven thousand. In two heartbeats the Queen of the Highlands had cut her foe in half.

I shouted down into the courtyard. I could barely hear myself over the ringing in my ears. I tried again. “Into the keep! Into the keep.”

My face hurt, my lungs hurt, everything hurt, the air was full of smoke and the screams of the dying, and suddenly I wanted to win again. Very much.

I went over to the fireplace and picked Miana out of the rubble. Dust fell from her hair as I hauled her onto my shoulder, but she coughed, and that was good enough.

I laid Miana on my bed and left her there. She had proved tougher than expected so far and it looked as if she’d just been knocked out. Habit put the lidless box back in my hip pocket.

Although I couldn’t see the fires in the courtyard, I could feel them. When I woke the Builders’ Sun beneath Mount Honas its power had ignited Gog’s talent. It seemed that releasing the ruby’s fire-magic in one blast had woken in me what echoes of Gog and his skills had lodged in my flesh when he died beneath Halradra. I pushed back against the feeling. I remembered Ferrakind. I would not become such a thing.

The Haunt’s keep has four towers, my bedchamber being at the top of the eastmost one. I went to the roof. A young guardsman sat hunched on the top steps just below the trapdoor. A new recruit by the look of him, his chainmail shirt too big for his slight frame.

“Waiting here in case giant birds land on my roof and try to force an entry?” I asked.

“Your Majesty!” He leapt to his feet. If he weren’t so short he’d have brained himself on the trapdoor. He looked terrified.

“You can escort me up,” I said. He would have plenty of time to die
on my behalf later on. No point chasing him down the stairs myself. “Rodrick is it?” I had no idea what the coward’s name was but “Rodrick” was popular in the Highlands.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” A relieved grin spread over his face.

He unbolted the door and heaved it open. I let him walk out first. Nobody shot him, so I followed.

From the tower battlements I could see the Prince’s army on the slopes, in even more disarray than my own troops. It would be an hour and more before his captains imposed order, the units reformed and merged, before the dead were heaped, the injured carted to the rear. A haze of smoke hung across the remains of the shantytown that had stood before the Haunt’s walls. The brisk wind could do little to shift it.

Despite the fires in the courtyard below, it felt cold on the tower. The wind had teeth up there and carried the edged threat of winter. I crept to the east wall and looked out toward the ridge where the Prince had the bulk of his archers positioned. They seemed to be in some confusion. Trolls had emerged from several still-undiscovered exits and were busy parting the lightly-armoured bowmen from their heads again.

I ducked down. I’d had my head up for two heartbeats. It took an arrow three beats to fly from the ridge to the keep. And sure enough, several shafts hissed overhead. They all missed Rodrick, who hadn’t had the wit to get behind cover. I knocked him flat. “Stay there.”

I took the Builders’ view-ring from inside my breastplate and held it to one eye. Making the image zoom in to one area still made me feel as if I were falling, plunging from unimaginable heights. I knew it must be a matter of moving lenses, as Lundist had shown me in my father’s observatory, but it felt as if I rode the back of an angel falling from heaven.

“Jorg! Jorg!” Makin’s voice from down below. He sounded worried.

“We’re up here,” I called.

A moment later Makin’s head poked into view. At least I assumed it was him in the helmet.

“You didn’t burn up then,” I said.

“Damn near! I couldn’t find Kent. I think he’s gone.”

“Watch this.” I waved him over to my side. “It should be good. But don’t stick your head up too high.”

I took Makin’s shield from him and held it over my head for extra cover. We peered over the battlements. The battlefield had fallen almost silent after the explosion, still with the screaming of course, but without the crash of weapons, the war-cries, the twangs and thuds of siege machinery. The drums were voiceless too—Uncle’s six great battle-drums, brass and ebony, wider than barrels, ox-skinned, now burned-out and smouldering among the corpses in the yard. Beneath it all though I could hear a new drumming, a faint thunder. Makin cocked his head. He could hear it too. It sounded almost like another avalanche.

“That’s cavalry! Arrow’s brung up his cavalry, Jorg.” Makin started to crawl for the wall overlooking the Haunt’s ruined front.

I pulled him back. “There’s only one place for miles a horse can charge, Sir Makin.”

And they came, in a rushing stream of blue and violet cloaks, silver mail, thundering past Marten’s hidden troops, the foremost with their lances lowered for the kill.

“What?” Makin almost stood up.

“I once told Sim about Hannibal taking elephants across the Aups. Well, my uncle has brought heavy horses across the Matteracks in the jaws of winter.”

“How?”

I made quick circles with my hand, as if trying to spin the cogs of Makin’s mind a little faster.

“The Blue Moon Pass!” Makin grinned, showing more teeth than a man should have.

“Even so,” I said. “I emptied it out for him. And Lord Jost must have signalled that the marriage was sealed…and here they are.”

The cavalry of the House Morrow sliced through the ranks of foot-soldiers
sent up to hunt out Gorgoth’s trolls. It helped that most of Arrow’s troops had their backs to the Runyard, since they’d found rather more trolls than they had wanted to. In fact the trolls were making an impressive hole in Arrow’s ranks all by themselves. They moved like wild dogs on the attack, hurling themselves into knots of men and leaving scattered limbs in their wake. Whoever bred them for war had surpassed themselves.

Riding onto the archers’ ridge required that the cavalry slow, but they could traverse the whole length five and eight abreast at the canter, killing as they went. The archers were no match for armoured knights. Most broke and ran, tumbling back down the mountainside.

There were perhaps five hundred of my grandfather’s cavalry. Gorgoth withdrew his trolls as agreed and left the men to fight each other. I couldn’t tell what losses the trolls had suffered but they were not insignificant and I knew that Gorgoth would not permit them to rejoin the battle. He had wanted a homeland for his new-found subjects and they had paid the price I asked of them.

“Incredible!” Makin shouted. He kept shaking his head.

“It’s not enough,” I said.

The charge left bloody slaughter trampled into the grit, hundreds upon hundreds died before the momentum broke. And even without the cohesion of the charge, the knights wrought havoc, striking down with axe and sword at the heads of running bowmen. But you can’t run five hundred men into four thousand and not expect to pay. The knights were wheeling now, finding their way down the back slope of the ridge and turning toward the Runyard again. Perhaps half of them survived.

“They were magnificent!” Makin surged to his feet. “Weren’t you looking?”

“They were magnificent. And when they join us, we will have a little over seven hundred men in this broken castle. Depending on how many of the troops routed in that charge can be rallied and reformed, the Prince of Arrow will have somewhere between five and seven thousand men.”

I went to look out over the Prince’s main army. On the battlefield losses of the sort I’d inflicted would have set any army running long ago. But I’d been cutting away whole chunks of Arrow’s force, one at a time, separating them, drawing them away, destroying them. I had whittled at his numbers, carved them to the bone, but I hadn’t thinned his ranks in the way that erodes an army’s morale. Not until Miana’s explosion had the main bulk of Arrow’s troops even felt the battle.

Now the explosion; that could have set them running, but it didn’t, and that just told me the Prince’s men were every bit as loyal and well trained as reported.

A glance toward the Runyard told me the Horse Coast knights were beginning to enter the sally port. A small number of men remained to lead the horses back up into the mountain passes. Marten and his troops would bring up the rear.

“Let’s go meet them,” I said. “By the way, this is Guardsman Rodrick. Guardsman Rodrick, Lord Makin of Ken.”

“Lord now is it?” Makin grinned. “And what would I be wanting with the Ken Marshes, not that they’re yours to give?”

I led the way down. “Well, if we don’t win, it won’t matter that your elevation is a hollow gesture. And if we do win—well the Prince of Arrow has taken a lot of land recently so I’ll have plenty to hand out.”

“And I get the squishy bit?” Makin said behind me.

“Come meet my uncle,” I said. “He’s got lots of good recipes for frog.”

I looked into my chamber as we passed. Miana sat on my bed, rubbing her head slowly with both hands as if she were afraid it might fall off.

“Lord Robert has arrived,” I said. “Stay here. Guardsman Rodrick will protect you. He’s one of my best.” I turned to the guard. “Keep her here, Rodrick. Unless she comes up with a plan to destroy the remainder of the enemy. In which case you’re to let her do it.”

Makin and I carried on down. I caught hold of one of my knights, nursing a wounded shoulder and burned whiskers. “You! Hekom is it?
Go to the cellar beneath the armoury. The one with the fecking big barrels. You’ll find our southern allies coming out of one of them. Send Lord Robert, and any captains he wants to bring, up to the throne-room.”

Hekom—if it was Hekom—looked confused, but nodded and absented himself, so we headed for the throne-room. I caught hold of another man as we pushed past the wounded in the corridors. “Have my armour brought up to the throne-room. The good stuff. Quick about it.”

Uncle Robert arrived with two of his captains as three pageboys set about strapping me into my armour. Several of my own captains preceded him, Watch-master Hobbs among them.

“There are rather more of the enemy than I was led to believe, Nephew!” Uncle Robert didn’t wait on formality. In fact he only just waited to get through the doors.

“There are many thousands fewer than there were this morning,” I said.

“And your castle appears to be broken,” Uncle Robert said.

“You can blame your god-daughter for that. But it was a dowry well spent,” I said.

“Good Lord!” Robert took off his helm. “The ruby did that?” He shook his head. “They told us to be careful with it. I didn’t realize the danger though!”

“Rubies are hard to break,” I said. “It’s not the sort of thing that you’re likely to do by accident.”

He pursed his lips at that. “So, Nephew, I’ve come for you. Where do we stand?”

I still liked him. It had been four years since I saw him last but it felt like little more than a lull in the conversation. And he had come for me, just as a skinny boy had dreamed before he ran betrayed from the Tall Castle. Uncle Robert had come, with the cavalry behind him. That drained some poison from the wound.