Prince of Thorns (24 page)

47

Alain’s horse carried me through the soldiers, up the stands, like climbing a giant staircase, right to Count Renar’s chair, and through it.

Had the Count not been hauled from his seat moments before, it could have all ended there.

“Get him away!” Corion said to the quick-handed bodyguard.

The other chosen man came straight for me as the horse beneath me panicked at the strange footing. I couldn’t control the beast, and I didn’t want it to land on me when it fell, so I leapt from the saddle. Or got as close to a leap as a man in full plate can, which is to say that I chose where I fell. I trusted to my armour and dropped onto Renar’s bodyguard.

The man cushioned my fall, and in exchange got most of his ribs broken. I heard them crack like sappy branches. I clambered up, with the horse whinnying behind me, hooves flying in all directions as it turned and bucked, threatening to fall at every moment.

I threw Sir James’ axe at Renar’s back, but the thing proved too heavy and ill-weighted for a clean throw. It hit his second bodyguard between the shoulder blades and felled him. Renar himself managed to reach the soldiers I’d scattered in my charge, and they circled around to escort him toward the castle.

I took my sword in two hands and made to follow.

“No.”

Corion stepped into my path, one hand raised, a single finger lifted.

I felt a giant nail skewer me to the spot, struck through the top of my head, driven into the bedrock far beneath my feet. The world seemed to spin around me, slow revolutions, measured by heartbeats. My arms fell, limp, hands numb, losing their grip on the sword hilt.

“Jorg.” I wouldn’t meet his eyes. “How could you think you might defy me?”

“How could you think I wouldn’t?” My voice sounded far off, as if somebody else were speaking. I managed to fumble the dagger from my hip.

“Stop.” And my arms lost all remaining strength.

Corion moved closer. My eyes struggled to keep with him as the world turned. Behind me the sounds of the thrashing horse, muffled and distant.

“You’re a child,” he said. “You gamble everything on each throw, no bet hedged, no reserve. That’s a strategy that always ends in defeat.”

He took a small knife from his robe, three gleaming inches of cut-throat.

“Gelleth, though! That took us all by surprise. You exceeded all expectations there. Sageous even left your father’s side rather than face you on your return. He’s back there now, of course.”

Corion put the blade to the side of my neck, angled between helm and gorget. His face held no emotion, his eyes empty wells that seemed to suck me in.

“Sageous was right to run,” I said. My voice reached up from a chasm.

I had no plan, but I’d had my moment of fear with Sir James and I wasn’t about to reward Corion with any more.

I reached for whatever power the necromancer’s heart had given me. I let my eyes look where the ghosts walk, and a cold thrill burned across my skin.

“Necromancy won’t save you, Jorg.” I felt the bite of the knife at my neck. “Even Chella doesn’t trust in her death magic enough to face me. And whatever you stole beneath that mountain is just a shadow of her skill.”

It’s will. In the end it always comes down to will. Corion held me, nailed within a treacherous body, because he willed it, because his want had over-written mine.

Hot blood trickled down my neck. I felt it run beneath my armour.

I threw everything I had against him. All my pride, my anger, an ocean of it, the rage, the hurt. I reached back across the years. I counted my dead. I reached into the briar and touched the bloodless child who hung there. I took it all, and made a hammer of it.

Nothing! All I managed was to flop my head forward so I no longer saw his face. He laughed. I felt the vibration of it in the knife. He wanted my death to be slow.

I could see my arms, metal clad, dagger held in loose fingers. Life pulsed through those arms, driven with each beat of my heart, mixed with the dark magic that had kept me from death at the King’s hand. I saw Father’s face again, in the moment of the blow, the bristle of his beard, the tight line of his mouth. I saw Katherine’s face, the light in her eyes as she nursed me. And I reached with all of it, the bitter and the sweet, just to move the arms that lay before me. I put the whole of my life behind that plea.

It accomplished nothing but to turn the point of my dagger toward Corion.

“They’re dying, Jorg,” he said. “See with my eyes.”

And I was the hawk. Part of me stayed on the stands, being bled like a pig, and the rest flew, wild and free across the tourney field.

I saw Elban defending Rike’s back amid the common crowd, Renar’s soldiers closing on them from all angles, like hunting dogs knifing through the tall grass. A spear got him in the stomach. He looked surprised. Old all of a sudden, wearing all his years. I saw him shout, and spit blood over those toothless gums of his. But I couldn’t hear him. A glimpse of Elban cutting down the man who speared him, and we moved on.

Liar stood out on the edge of the tourney field, a mean streak of gristle, bow in hand, arrows planted at his feet. He took the castle-soldiers down as they streamed toward the royal stands. Quick but unhurried, each arrow finding a mark, a tight smile on his lips. They got him from behind. The first soldier to reach him drove a spear through his back.

We swept closer to the gates. A tinker’s cart. The sack covering shrugged aside, and Gorgoth rolled out, reaching the ground on two hands and one knee. He ran for The Haunt. The castle folk scattered before him, some screaming. Even soldiers turned aside, all of a sudden finding their duty to be on the tourney field. Two men discovered their courage and barred his way, spears levelled. Gorgoth didn’t slow. He caught a spear in each hand, snapped the last foot off, and drove the broken ends through their owners’ necks. He ran through the men before they fell. Three arrows hit him as he left my view.

Corion drew our sight back. On the cart the sacking twitched again. Something quick and mottled slipped out. Gog. The leucrota child ran in the direction Gorgoth had taken.

Our sight drew back. Across the tourney field where a score of soldiers closed on the royal stand. Burlow stood guard. A lone man between Renar’s spears and the young Prince of Ancrath, yours truly. How he’d got there I didn’t know. Or why. But he had nowhere to run, and he was too fat to win free in any case.

Burlow took the first man down with an axe blow that sliced head from shoulders. A reverse swing put the blade between the next man’s eyes. Then they were all over him. A single arrow looped in from somewhere and found a Renar neck.

Our sight drew back. I saw myself on the stand, face to face with Corion. Bleeding. Alain’s horse still thrashing, as if it had been seconds rather than a lifetime since I rode up.

And we parted. I saw with my own eyes again. The knife in my hand, raised but impotent, the splintered boards beneath my feet. The sounds of Burlow dying. The scream of horse. I thought of Gog, chasing Gorgoth toward the gates, of Elban’s toothless shout, of Makin out there somewhere, fighting and dying.

None of it made any difference. I couldn’t move.

“It’s over, Jorg. Goodbye.” The magus placed his knife for the final cut.

You’d think there was never a good time to get kicked by a horse.

The wild hoof hit me square in the back. I would probably have flown ten yards if I hadn’t crashed straight into Corion. As it was, we flew about five yards together. We landed on grass, at the side of the royal stand, clutched in an embrace, like lovers. The eyes that had held me were screwed shut in pain. I tried again to lift my dagger. It didn’t move. But this time there was a difference, I felt the strain and play of the muscles in my arm. With a grunt I pushed him from me. The hilt of my dagger jutted between his ribs. What all my will, all my rage and pain, had been unable to accomplish, a single kick from a panicked horse had achieved.

I twisted the dagger, digging it in. A last breath escaped him. His eyes rolled open, glassy and without power.

The Count’s bodyguard had fallen this way too, with the axe that had brought him down still bedded in his back. I wrenched it free. It’s a nasty sound that sharp iron makes in flesh. I took Corion’s head in two blows. I didn’t trust him to be dead.

The soldiers that had taken Burlow began to boil around the side of the stand. I held Corion’s head up before them.

There’s an unsettling weight to a severed head. It swung on the grey hair knotted between my fingers, and I tasted bile at the back of my throat.

“You know this man!” I shouted.

The first three soldiers coming into view halted, maybe from fear, maybe to let the numbers build before the charge.

“I am Honorous Jorg Ancrath! The blood of Empire flows through my veins. My business is with Count Renar.”

More soldiers came around the corner of the stand. Five, seven, twelve. No more. Burlow had given good account of himself.

“This is the man you have served.” I took a step toward them, Corion’s head held out before me. “He made Count Renar his puppet years ago. You know this to be true.”

I walked forward. No hesitation. Believe they will step aside, and they will.

They didn’t watch me. They watched the head. As if the fear he’d instilled in them ran so deep that they expected those dead eyes to swivel their way and draw them in with that hollow pull.

The soldiers parted for me, and I walked out across the tourney field toward The Haunt.

Other units broke from the left of the field where Rike and Elban had been fighting. They moved to intercept me. Two groups of five. They started to fall before they got within fifty yards. The Forest Watch were advancing along the Elm Road. I could see archers lining the ridge from which I’d first seen The Haunt.

I let Corion’s head drop. I just opened my fingers and let his hair slide through. It took an age to fall, as though it fell through cobwebs, or dreams. It should have hit the ground like a hammer against a gong, but it made no sound. Silent or roaring though, I heard it, I felt it. A weight lifted from me. More weight than I’d ever imagined I could carry.

I could see the gateway ahead. The Haunt’s great entrance arch. The portcullis had all but descended. A single figure stood beneath it, holding up an impossible mass of wood and iron. Gorgoth!

I started to run.

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.