Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3) (18 page)

‘Oh crap!’ I shouted it. Amazingly Old Mary startled back and several of the Bad Dogs flinched. Somehow the creature caught on my hands, a bite or a grip, I didn’t know, but I did know it really hurt. ‘OUCH! Fuck it!’

Mary blinked. I had one thin slice in me – she didn’t understand.

‘You’re going to do the same thing again?’ I demanded. The creature released its grip and climbed back over my hands to the pole. It felt like a giant crab, or spider. Jesu, I hate spiders. ‘You’re going to do the ribs all over again like you did on Sunny?’ I flicked my eyes his way. ‘You’re supposed to be good at this, to make it interesting to watch! No wonder they’ve got Gretcha ready to replace you.’

‘The ribs are boring,’ somebody called out behind her.

‘It’s good when she breaks them out.’ That was Rael.

‘We’ve got one ready for that.’

‘Something new!’

Slight vibrations as the creature reached the chest rope. Shit. I tensed ready to struggle like hell when it came free. More vibration and the thing moved on, up, the rope intact.

‘Come on Ugly Mary, show us something new.’ A dark-skinned youth near the back.

Mary didn’t like that at all. She scowled at me, showing yellow stumps of teeth. Muttering, she turned and bent for a thin hook.

The creature moved behind my head. My hair pulled where strands were bound up in the leather. A claw slid under the strap that bound my forehead.

Mary faced me, straightening as much as her back allowed. She kept the hook low as she advanced, at groin level, smiling for once.

Schnick.

I pressed forward and the rope around my chest gave. The creature must have sawed through, leaving just a strand to hold it.

Conjurers will hold your attention where they want it and in doing so can leave you blind to what else is happening before your eyes. Mary’s hook held the Bad Dogs’ attention. The last rope on me dropped away and, like magic, nobody saw it fall.

The madness in me, some virulent mix of terror and relief, put me in mind to scratch my nose then return my hand behind me. Sanity prevailed. I overcame the temptation to waste the moment by sinking Mary’s hook into one of her eyes. Instead I moved forward, very swift, and snatched my sword from Manwa’s lap.

I strode into the midst of them.

To avoid grappling and capture it’s best to keep to the edge, but they had bows and somewhere, more of those darts. By striking to the middle I kept them disorganized, close. And as I moved through them I laid about me. Before the first of the Dogs gained their feet I had opened wounds on four men that would never close.

There’s a freedom in being surrounded on all sides by enemies. In such circumstances, with a heavy blade that’s sharp enough to make the wind bleed, you can swing in grand and vicious circles and your only care need be to ensure the weapon isn’t locked into the corpse of your last victim. In many ways I had lived most of my life in exactly such a condition, swinging in all directions with no worry about who might die. Experience served me well on the edge of the Iberico Hills.

The Bad Dogs died, parted from heads, from limbs, without time for one man to fall before the point of my sword ploughed a red furrow through the next. Not before or since have I taken such unadulterated joy in slaughter. Some cleared their weapons, swords, knives, sharp little hatchets, cleaver-axes, but none lasted more than two exchanges with me: a swift parry and they went down on the riposte. I got cut, in three places. I didn’t know about that until much later, until I found that some of the blood wouldn’t clean away.

Once, with men advancing from many directions, I spun and found Manwa in front of me. Instinct wrapped my spare hand around his knife hand and twisted me to the side. Hatred drove my forehead into his nose. He was a tall man, powerful, but I had grown tall, and whether rage multiplied my strength or my muscle matched his I don’t know, but his knife didn’t find me. In fact I kept it for a dozen more bloody moments, cutting and thrusting, until I left it in Rael’s neck.

It helped that many of them were drunk, some too intoxicated on blind-shine even to find their weapons, let alone swing them to good effect. It also helped that I hated them all with such purity, and that I had trained at swordplay for months, day in, day out, until my hands bled and the sword-song rang in my ears.

A fat man fell away from me, guts vomiting in blue coils from his opened belly. Another man, already running, I cut down from behind. Turning, I saw two more Dogs running toward the valley. One I brought down at fifty paces with a hatchet scooped from the ground. The other escaped. The silence was sudden and complete.

By the posts Mary stood with Gretcha at her side. The girl had one small hand knotted in the old woman’s skirts, the other holding her blowpipe, levelled at me. I walked toward them. Pfft. Gretcha’s dart hit my collarbone. I snatched the pipe from her and threw it behind me.

‘We’re very much alike, Gretcha, you and I.’

I squatted to be level with the girl. The dart came out with a pull and I let it fall into the dust. She watched me with dark eyes. I saw a lot of Mary in her. A granddaughter perhaps.

‘I can help.’ I smiled, sad for her, sad for everything. ‘If someone had done this for me when I was a child it would have saved everyone a lot of trouble.’

Her mouth made an ‘oh’ of surprise as the sword passed through her, grating on thin bones. She slid off the blade as I stood.

‘Ugly. Old. Mary,’ I said.

She still held the hook. I caught her around her scrawny neck but she didn’t try to stick me with it. Necromancy tingled in my fingertips, reacting to her age maybe. My fingers found the knobbles of her spine and I let death leak into her, enough to make her crumple to the floor.

Sunny still lived. His gasping made the only sound in that silence that settles over carnage. Some of the Bad Dogs would be wounded but alive. If they were though they managed to stay quiet about it and sensibly keep themselves from my attention.

Close up Sunny’s injuries screamed at me. I sensed the hurt coursing through him in red rivers. Necromancy knows about such things. With a hand against his chest it seemed I knew him blood to bone, that I knew the branching of his veins, the shape of his spine, the beat and flutter of his heart. I had no healing though, only death. Thick mucus, flecked with char, oozed from his eye sockets. His tongue lay scorched and swollen in a broken mouth.

‘I can’t help you, Greyson Landless.’

The effort that raised his eyeless head to me tore through the necromantic threads between us and ripped a gasp from me. I cut his ropes and lowered him to the ground. I wouldn’t see him die bound.

‘Peace, brother.’ The point of my sword rested above his heart. ‘Peace.’ And I made an end of him.

Greyson’s suffering still trembled in my hands. I knelt beside Old Mary, crumpled in the dirt, watching me with bright eyes, dust on the trail of drool across her cheek. With one hand on her scrawny neck and one atop her head I let Sunny’s pain free. It seems that a necromancer’s fingers can do in moments with strokes and pinches what all her sharp instruments took hours to achieve. Her heart couldn’t take it for long and death reached up for her. She died too easy.

Lesha’s head lay in among the bodies. I retrieved it, killing one malingerer on the way. Most corpses echoed with some remnant of the person when I touched them. Row’s flesh had reeked of him. But Lesha’s head felt empty, not literally, not scooped out, but free of any trace of her, a shell. Somehow it pleased me, that she had gone beyond reach. Somewhere better I hoped.

I set her head beside Sunny, ready to bury. First though, I walked around the posts. The scorpion, missing three legs on one side, some armour broken away from its back, clung motionless to the rear of the post I had been bound to. The leather strap that held my head still hung from its claw. The scorpion’s head lifted a fraction as I approached it, and once more the dark beads of its eyes glowed crimson.

‘Fexler?’ I asked.

It twitched twice and fell from the post, landing on its back. One more convulsion and it wrapped tight with a loud crackling noise, its armoured plates seizing in permanent embrace.

‘Damn.’

‘Tell me again.’

He’s chained and bleeding in a dungeon surrounded by walking dead, and up above there’s all manner of worse things, mire-ghouls and rag-a-mauls the least of them … and he keeps asking questions!

‘You’re an unusual man, Kai Summerson.’ Chella paced around the pillar once more. She couldn’t seem to keep her feet still. Too much life in them perhaps.

‘This from a necromancer with my woman’s corpse on the floor.’

Chella leaned in close, the iron needle in her hand, but she knew the balance had slipped away from her. Somewhere along the line this unusual young man had deduced that she needed his cooperation. Maybe it had just been too obvious that she would have killed him if her need hadn’t been so great.

‘What is it that you didn’t understand?’ She whispered it into his ear. He couldn’t know how much she needed a success, anything to move her from the cold shadow of the Dead King’s disdain.

‘Sula’s in heaven … and also here?’

A sigh escaped her, sharpened by frustration. Even clever men could be fools. ‘What will not pass into heaven may be returned to the body. How much is returned depends upon the person, and upon the call. It doesn’t take much to get a fresh corpse on its feet. A little hunger, greed, some anger maybe. Sula had plenty of greed.’

‘So not everyone can be returned. Some people pass on clean and whole?’

‘A saint maybe. I’ve never met one.’ Also children. But she didn’t say it. Whatever the road to hell is paved with, the key is to take one step at a time.

‘And having reminded me of heaven you expect me to damn myself to eternity in flames just to avoid a painful death?’ Kai spat blood onto the floor. He must have bitten his tongue. He didn’t seem nearly as scared as he should be. Probably it felt like a dream to him, a nightmare, too much strangeness too quickly. If she had time Chella would leave him a day or two. Fear seeps into a man. In a cold dark place, alone with nothing but imagination for company, terror would gather him in. But she didn’t have two days, or even one.

‘Death is broken, Kai. Hell is rising. How long do you think heaven will keep you safe? The Dead King is putting an end to all of that. Eternity will be here, in this world, in this flesh. All you need to decide is whether to feed the fire or be the fuel.’

Perhaps the Engine of Wrong had found a new gear for nothing felt right after Kent brought news that my father’s carriage preceded us. I rode to the front of our column, Makin and Rike falling in around me. At Captain Harran’s side a few minutes later, cresting a low rise, I saw the dull gleam of the Ancrath column ahead. It takes more than a river of mud to keep the Gilden Guard from shining.

I pulled up to stare at the carriage bumping along amidst the horsemen. I last rode in it when I was nine. The old bastard had salvaged it.

‘He scares me too,’ Makin said.

‘I’m not scared of my father.’ I showed him my scowl but he only grinned.

‘I don’t know how he puts the fright in a man,’ Makin said. ‘I mean, I swing the better sword, and yes he’s got a cold temper on him and harsh ways, but so have a lot of kings, and dukes, and earls, barons, lords – hell, any man you give command to is likely to put an edge on it just to keep hold. He’s not even given to torture: his brother, his nephews, all well known for it, but Olidan he’ll just have you hung and be done.’

Rike snorted at that. He’d seen my father’s dungeons from the wrong side. Still, Makin had it right, there were plenty around who made Olidan Ancrath seem a reasonable man.

‘I said I wasn’t scared of him.’ My heartbeat told the lie but only I could hear it.

Makin shrugged. ‘Everyone is. He puts the fright in you. He’s got the look. That’s what does it. Cold eyes. Makes you shiver.’

I’ve been known for bold moves at times, for daring the challenge even when I’ve known I shouldn’t. Under that grey sky though, with a cold wind blowing wet from the north, I felt no inclination to catch up to the carriage labouring ahead of us and demand an accounting for the past. My chest ached along the thin seam of that old scar and for once I found myself wanting to let something lie.

We rode without talking, the column moving around us, so many guardsmen in their fine armour, so sure in their purpose. The chill breeze nagged at me and all my yesterdays crowded at my shoulder, wanting their turn to rattle in my skull.

‘Cerys,’ I said.

Makin pushed back his helm and looked at me.

‘Killed when she had three years to her. Tell me.’ I had thought that if we ever spoke of Makin’s daughter it would be in maudlin drunkenness in the small hours before dawn, or perhaps as with Coddin it would take a mortal wound to turn our conversation to matters of consequence. That it might happen riding in the mud in the cold light of day surrounded by strangers had not occurred.

Still Makin watched me, jolting in the saddle, unaccustomed stiffness in that flexible face of his. For the longest moment I thought he wouldn’t speak.

‘My father had lands in Normardy, a small estate outside the town of Trent. I wasn’t the first son. I got married off to a rich man’s daughter. Her father and mine settled some acres on us and a house. The house came a couple of years after our official marriage. Something less than a mansion, more than a farmhouse. The sort of place you might have raided when you led the brothers on the road.’

‘It was outlaws?’ I asked.

‘No.’ His eyes glittered, bright with memory. ‘Some official dispute, but too petty to be called a war. Trent and Merca quarrelling over their boundaries. A hundred soldiers and men-at-arms on each side, no more. And they met in my wheatfield. We were both seventeen, Nessa and me, Cerys three. I had a few farmhands, two house servants, a maid, a wet-nurse.’

Even Rike had the sense to say nothing. Nothing but the clomp of hooves in mud, Gorgoth’s heavy footfalls, the creak of harness, dull chinks of metal on metal, the high sharp arguments of birds invisible against the sky.