King of Thorns (55 page)

October 28th, Year 102 Interregnum

I found Egan’s dreams but they were dark and closed to me. I sensed the heathen’s handiwork and worry at his plans. Has Orrin proved too difficult to steer? Egan would be easier, like a bull goaded this way and that by the fluttering of rags. It’s maddening to be closeted in this palace with all that matters unfolding three hundred miles away.

October 29th, Year 102 Interregnum

Still no word from Orrin or from Egan, but reports come in of tens of thousands on the move, men under arms, all converging on the Highlands, and of
Jorg Ancrath skulking in his single castle with less than a twentieth part of that force.

And still I worry. For Orrin with his cleverness and strength and patience and wisdom. Even for Egan with his fire and his skill. Because I remember Jorg of Ancrath and the look in his eye, and the scars he carries, and the echoes of his deeds that still vibrate through the dreamscape. I remember him, and I would worry if Orrin had ten times the number and Jorg stood alone.

November 1st, Year 102 Interregnum

I made a dream, a thing of light and shadows, and set it dancing in the head of Marcus Gohal, captain of the palace guard. It made it easier for him to agree with me when I demanded that he assemble a suitable force to guard me on my journey to my husband’s side. It made him forget all thoughts of arguing. Instead he nodded, clicked his heels in the way the men of Arrow do, and gathered four hundred lancers to escort me south.

We set off early, before the dawn stole shadow from the sky, and we rode out at a gentle pace, the horses’ breath puffing in clouds before them, the leaves golden and crimson on the trees as the first light found them.

And I felt watched, as if someone on high were paying close attention.

Brother Gog I miss. There is no sound more annoying than the chatter of a child, and none more sad than the silence they leave when they are gone.

“This is madness, Jorg. God made the Prince of Arrow to stand behind a sword. That’s what everyone says about him. He’s not like other men, not with a blade in hand. He’s not human.” Makin stood before the throne now, as if he were going to block my way.

“And it will turn out that he was born to die behind one too,” I said.

“I’ve seen him fight.” Makin shook his head. “I hope you’ve got something up your sleeve, Jorg.”

“Of course,” I said.

Makin’s shoulders fell as he relaxed a touch. Uncle Robert smiled.

“The best damn sword arm in history is what I’ve got up my sleeve.”

The protests started immediately, a chorus of them, as if my court had filled with disgruntled geese.

“Gentlemen!” I stood from my throne. “Your lack of faith dismays me. And you wouldn’t like me when I’m dismayed. If the Prince of Arrow accepts my challenge I will meet him on the field and find victory there.”

I pushed past Makin. “You!” I pointed to a random knight. “Get my herald here.” I felt reasonably sure I had a herald. I turned and
looked Makin in the eye. “I did tell you that I fought Sword-master Shimon, didn’t I?”

“A thousand times.” He sighed and glanced at Lord Robert.

“Shimon said you were good, Jorg,” Uncle Robert said. “One of the best he’s seen in forty years.”

“You see!” I cried. “You see?”

“But he met Orrin of Arrow two years later and judged him the better blade. And Orrin’s brother Egan is said to be the more deadly of the two by a considerable margin.”

“I was fourteen! I’m a man now. Full grown. I can beat Makin here with a chair leg. Trust me. I’ll have the Prince of Arrow down and bleeding before he even sees my sword.”

The levity was something made for show. I would fight the Prince. Win or lose, chance or no chance. The madness Sageous had set in me had been burned away and I would dare the odds against victory, however slim, but still—I had killed my brother. Flame could not consume that guilt. I would carry it with me to the battlefield and maybe they would bury it with me.

They found Red Kent trapped beneath the charred corpses of Lord Jost’s men. I had him brought to the throne-room when I heard.

“You’ve looked better, Sir Kent,” I said.

He nodded. Two of my guard had carried him in, bound to a chair so he wouldn’t fall from it. “And felt better, Brother.” His voice came as a hoarse whisper from lungs scorched by blistering air.

Even now, when neither of us knew if he would live or die, Kent kept his eyes lowered, humble amongst lords and knights, despite me elevating him to their rank. He would throw himself into the teeth of an army given but slight encouragement, but a throne-room full of men more used to silk than leather made him cower.

I stepped from my throne and crouched before him. “I would give you something for the pain, Brother Kent, but I want you to make a
battle of it. Fight these burns. Win. I’m offering no terms for surrender.” My own burn still screamed at me. Surely only an echo of Kent’s pain and that of others from the courtyard, but still, it gnawed at me, throbbing in my cheekbone and the orbit of my eye.

Something on the edge of vision caught my attention and I turned away from Kent, back toward the throne. Two oil lamps stood to either side of the dais, enamelled urns in black and red, set on wrought iron stands. The flame dancing on each wick within its glass cowl looked odd, too bright, too orange, taking on too many flame-shapes at once. I held my hand above the glass and could feel no heat, only a pulsing vital force that raced along my arm making me want to shout out.

Never open the box.

“Highness, the herald has returned.”

I snatched my hand back, almost guilty in the action. My herald stood at the doorway between two table-knights. He looked the part, handsome and tall in his livery, gold-spun and velvet.

“And what did the Prince of Arrow have to say to my offer?” I asked.

The herald paused, a gossip’s trick to draw in more listeners, though we could be no more intent.

“The Prince will meet you on the field of combat to decide the outcome of this battle,” he said.

I saw Makin shake his head.

“Well and good,” I said. “And did he name his ground, or accept my invitation to battle on the Runyard ridge?”

“The Prince felt the ridge to be constructed more from troll than from stone and has identified an area of flattish ground close to Rigden Rock, midway between the castle and the current position of his front line. He will bring five observers to watch from a distance of twenty yards and expects that you will do the same.”

“Tell him his choice is acceptable and I will join him there in an hour,” I said.

The herald bowed and set off to deliver my words.

“Makin, I’ll want you there. But first, get Olvin Green or if he’s dead
then somebody good with arrow wounds. I want him and six strong men to get up to Coddin. Have them treat his injury there if he’s still alive and bring him down as soon as it is safe to move him.”

Makin nodded and left the throne-room without a word, just setting a hand to Kent’s shoulder as he passed.

“I’ll want Lord Robert with me, also Rike, Captain Keppen, and Father Gomst.”

Uncle Robert lowered his head in agreement, then stepping onto the dais and bending close, “Why a priest? Good swords are what’s called for in case of treachery.”

“The Prince of Arrow will bring five good swords. I’m bringing three, plus an archer in case the bastard runs for it, and a priest so that in times to come the truth may be told concerning what occurred.”

I let them strap me into my armour, pieces of silvered steel, well crafted and without adornment. I carried no crest, no emblems on this mail. Decoration is for peacetime, for people playing games but not understanding that they do.

The Hundred War, you must know, is a game. And to win it you must play your pieces. The secret is to know that there is only one game and the only rules are your own. With the memory box gone I had all my plans in mind now. The trick was not to dwell on them—to give no edge of them for Sageous to take hold of. One slip and the game would be over.

Whilst the pageboys bolted and strapped and sweated, I held the Builders’ ring to my eye. For a moment I saw Miana through it, across the room, and wondered if she might fit her hand through the ring and wear it as a bracelet on that tiny wrist of hers. And then the image formed. The whole world before me as a jewel of blue and white. A canvas on which even all of empire would not look large.

A small motion of my fingertip along the ridged edge of the ring and the point of my perception fell to earth, faster than an arrow. Faster than a bullet even. Oh yes—I know of those.

The imaged blurred with speed for a heartbeat, two, three, and then
snapped into focus. However vast the telescope that must hang above us, it could offer no closer view than this, an image miles across in which the Haunt’s outline could be seen but the details lay hidden. The mass of the Prince’s army made a darker smear on the mountainside. I could see the shape of the larger siege engines, and the men around them like specks of dust. I moved my fingertip again and the image went black. By flickers I counted as it jumped through four voids where whatever eyes the Builders once had were now blind, and then, with my finger on the last of the ridges, a new scene. I could see the army and the smoking wreckage of my walls as if I stood on a nearby mountaintop. Stroking the metal side to side and moving my fingertip forward by hundredths of an inch I drove the view in closer, zeroing upon the ground by Rigden Rock.

In most places the Builders’ ring can see no closer than the miles- high bird’s-eye perspective I described, but in maybe one place in five there are other eyes it can use. By exploration and extrapolation I found the location of an eye that I now exploited. It sits on a high ridge in the Matteracks, entirely hidden from view when not in use. When I call upon it, a gleaming steel shaft rises from behind black doors set into the natural rock and lifts a black crystal dome into the air. I have stood below this dome and listened to the faint hum and whir as I change the ring’s view. Some mechanical eye must sit within and answer my needs. I left it as I found it. These eyes, in the vaults of heaven and down amongst us, burrowed into the living rock, are a work of genius. Even so, I wonder at a people who felt the need to be watched in every moment and at every place. Perhaps it was what drove them mad. I would not be spied upon so. I would blind such eyes.

Fexler Brews went mad. Fourteen years after his echo was captured and held in that machine, he took a gun and shot himself. A Colt four-and-five they called that gun, though it looks no more like a horse than the Horse Coast does. I found Fexler, but it wasn’t easy. I found him on my long and wandering return to the Renar Highlands and it cost me pain and lives. Lives I valued. A rare commodity. Fexler had put a bullet
through his brain but even then the machines wouldn’t let him go. They held him trapped between fractions of a second. I pushed away the thought, the image of the weapon in his time-frozen hand, rubies of blood motionless in the air about the exit wound. I forgot about the stasis chamber…before Sageous saw my remembering.

They say God watches us in every moment. But I think, in some moments, when some deeds are done, he turns his face away.

“What do you see, Jorg?” Miana at my side now.

“That the killing ground is clear.” I took the ring from my eye.

“Can you win, Jorg?” she asked. “Against this prince? They say he is very good.”

I felt Sageous. I smelled him, picking at the edges of my thoughts, trying to filch my secrets.

“He is very good. And I…I am very bad. Let’s see what comes of that, shall we?” I made a wall of my imagination and kept my mind from wandering forward to what would happen. My hands knew what to do—I did not need to think of it.

There is a strong-box built into the base of my throne at the Haunt. Before they set my helm in place, I knelt in front of the throne and set the heavy key into the lock-plate. I lowered the side and reached in with my right hand, slipping it into the straps of the small iron buckler within, then drawing it out. I closed my fingers around the curious grip of the object that the buckler hid, and smiled. Imagine Fexler Brews thinking I would take “no” as an answer. I left the box open and stood, stepping off the dais so that the pageboys could reach to strap my helmet on.