Emperor of Thorns (The Broken Empire, Book 3) (32 page)

As Hool went down, the necromancer rose.

I may not have counted Robart Hool high in my esteem, but he died well. He took the sword from his trapped arm and rammed it left-handed through the neck of the corpse man falling to cover him.

Pinned by the one-armed corpse, grappled at the legs with the other dead man biting flesh from his thigh, Robart roared and fought to rise. The necromancer came in fast and touched cold fingers to the wrist of the hand straining to free the sword. All the fight left Robart. Not the pain, not the horror of the dead man’s teeth chewing at the tendon high on his thigh, but the fight. I knew what a necromancer’s touch could do.

The dead sailor kneeled then stood, its grin crimson, blood dripping from its chin. The eyes that watched us weren’t the eyes it first saw us with. Something looked through them. The necromancer kneeled, paler now, more pale than I thought a man could be.

‘My lord,’ he said, not lifting his gaze from the flagstones. ‘My king.’

‘My lord!’ Gomst’s shrill voice.

‘My king!’ Osser Gant.

‘Wake up you fool boy!’ A sharp slap and I found myself looking into Katherine’s eyes.

‘Damn you all!’ Miana said, and the baby started howling.

‘Hold the baby, Jorg.’

Miana thrust our son at me, red-faced in his swaddling cloths, drawing breath for a howl. She clambered onto the carriage bench and knelt up at the window to peer out. The walls of Honth made a dark line to the west.

Little William reached capacity and made the slight shudder that presaged a yell. He couldn’t manage much volume yet but the mewl of babies has been designed with great cunning to tear at an adult’s peace of mind, parents especially. I shoved the knuckle of my little finger into his mouth and let him forget the scream while he gave it a vicious gumming.

Katherine sat beside me watching my son with unreadable eyes. I hugged him close, my breastplate now strapped to Brath’s saddlebags in its wraps of lambskin and oilcloth. I’d found babies don’t appreciate armour. William spat my knuckle out and drew breath for another attempt at yelling. He’d come into the world red-faced, bald but for black straggles, skinny in the limbs, fat in the body, more of a little pink frog than a person, drooling, malodorous, demanding. Even so I wanted to hold him. That weakness that infects all men, that is part of how we are made, had found a way into me. And yet my own father had set it aside, if it ever once found purchase on him. Perhaps it became easier to set me aside as I grew.

The howl burst out of William’s little mouth, a sound too big for such small frame. I jiggled him quiet and wondered just how large a stick I’d given the world to beat me with.

I watched Katherine for a moment. We hadn’t spoken of the night’s dreaming. I had questions and more questions, but I would ask them without an audience and at a time when I could take a moment to settle around whatever answers she might have. She didn’t meet my gaze but studied my son instead. I had worried once that she might mean him harm but it seemed hard to imagine now, with him in my arms.

‘There’s someone close by who would kill that child given the slightest chance.’ Katherine looked away as she spoke, her voice low as if it were a small matter, almost lost in the rattle of the carriage.

‘What?’ Miana turned from the window grille, fast, eyes bright. I didn’t think she had been listening, but it seemed she paid close attention to whatever passed between my aunt and me.

‘If I explain, I want your word that this person will be safe from you and your men, Jorg,’ Katherine said.

‘Well that doesn’t sound like me, now does it?’ I made an effort not to let the tension in my arms crush William. Miana reached for her baby, but I held him closer. ‘Suppose you tell anyhow.’

‘Katherine!’ Miana reached across me for Katherine’s hand. ‘Please.’

For a moment I saw the red explosion of Miana’s firebomb in the Haunt’s courtyard. It would not go well if Katherine refused her.

‘The man rides under the Pax Gilden,’ Katherine said.

The guard would kill anyone who tried to attack him, hunt down anyone who succeeded in killing him. Just as they would intervene in, or avenge, any violence in our carriage.

‘You’re not Father’s only representative.’ I should have realized from the start, but finding Katherine in the Ancrath carriage threw off my game. ‘He found a replacement for Lord Nossar.’

She nodded. ‘Jarco Renar.’

‘Cousin Jarco.’ I leaned back in my seat and unclenched the fingers knotted in William’s cloths. I’d heard no report of the man since he escaped his failed rebellion in Hodd Town. That had been a year before the Prince of Arrow arrived at my door. We had us a murderous little struggle: civil wars are always brutal, old wounds left too long festering get to spill out their poison over new generations. The battles left the Highlands weakened, short on men, and empty-coffered. I had thought Jarco’s funds came from Arrow, but perhaps Father had been spending my inheritance.

Nothing would please Jarco more than getting his hands on my son. After all, I killed his brother at Norwood, took his father at the Haunt, and usurped his inheritance. And of course he had his fair share of the family flair for vengeance. I wondered if he were riding as one of the guard. Perhaps he convinced them it was the only way to keep him safe from me. Or they might have him hidden among the straggle of camp-followers reaching back behind us. Finding him would not be easy.

‘How could you not have mentioned this before?’ Miana asked, hands whitening around Katherine’s. ‘He could have attacked any of us.’

‘William is not under the guard’s protection,’ I said. Jarco wouldn’t sell his life just for a chance at mine, but he could kill my son and have the guard defend him. That might strike him as an opportunity too good to miss. Quite the joke.

‘Well put him under the guard’s protection!’ A certain shrillness entered Miana’s voice. Katherine winced, though whether from the volume or beneath Miana’s grip I didn’t know.

‘Children may not be advisors or representatives.’ She knew the rules as well as I. On the bench opposite the old men nodded their heads.

‘But—’ Miana hushed as I gave her back our child and went to the door. I hung half-out, over the mud and ruts, and hollered for Makin. He rode up sharp enough.

‘I want you all around the carriage – Jarco Renar is armoured in gold and looking for a way to reach Prince William.’

Makin glanced around at the nearest riders. ‘I’ll kill him myself.’

‘Don’t. He’s under the Pax.’ As I said it I wondered whose life I might be prepared to spend for Jarco’s death. I waved Makin closer and leaned in so only he would hear me. ‘On second thoughts, I always knew I kept Rike around for a reason. Tell him there’s a hundred gold ducets for him if he kills Jarco. He’d best be prepared to run afterward, though.’

Makin nodded and hauled on his reins.

I called after him. ‘A hundred gold and five Araby stallions.’ It seemed fitting somehow.

‘You!’ I shouted to the nearest guardsman. ‘Get Harran here.’

The man nodded his golden helm and spurred off toward the head of the column.

‘Give me Makin and Marten and we’ll ride home to the Highlands,’ Miana was saying behind me.

‘I would give you Rike and Kent and Gorgoth as well and you still wouldn’t be safe, Miana. We’re too far from home in lands that love us not.’

By the time Captain Harran drew level, flanked by two other troop captains, Katherine and Miana were arguing in fierce whispers with William interjecting the odd protest.

Harran lifted his visor. ‘King Jorg.’

‘I will speak with Jarco Renar,’ I said.

‘Jarco Renar is under my protection. I have advised him not to show himself to you, in order to avoid any unpleasantness.’

‘Oh I can assure you, Captain, there will be far more unpleasantness if you don’t bring him before me.’

Harran smiled. ‘Jorg, I have nearly five hundred of the emperor’s best soldiers here precisely to make sure that you can’t hurt Jarco Renar and Jarco Renar can’t hurt you. Getting our charges to Vyene is what we do. By my count you have four men with you capable of bearing arms. Best let us get on with our job, no?’

‘That’s King Jorg to you, Captain Harran,’ I said.

The four men he mentioned had joined us now. In truth I had three since Gorgoth was his own man and would be as likely to stand with the guard as with me.

A slap to the carriage’s side brought us to a halt. ‘Would you hand me that, Lord Makin?’ I pointed to the Nuban’s crossbow, tied to Brath’s saddle.

I took the bow, stepped down into the mud and crossed to the bank beside the road. The weight of their attention settled on me as I bent to wind the bow.

‘The guard here are assigned to protect myself, Lord Makin, and my advisors?’ I didn’t look up.

‘Yes,’ Harran said.

‘And they would offer me violence under what circumstances?’ I knew the rules. I wanted to hear Harran speak them.

‘Quarrel,’ I said, hand outstretched. Makin slapped an iron bolt into my palm.

‘If you attempted to harm any of the Hundred, their advisors, or delegates.’ Harran’s stallion gave a nervous whinny and stamped.

‘Makin, if you would be good enough to foreswear the need for any protection from me, as my banner-man. Just so there’s no confusion.’ I set the bolt in place.

‘I do so swear,’ he said.

I looked up, held Harran’s dark stare, took his measure one last time. ‘I like you well enough, Harran, but my son is in that carriage and Jarco Renar will like as not try to kill him since he is not under your protection. So, I need to speak with my cousin in order to reach some arrangement.’

‘I’ve explained King Jorg, that cannot—’

I shot Harran in the face. He half-lurched, half-leapt from the saddle, caught by his stirrups he came to rest at an odd angle, almost jutting from the side of his horse. The beast took flight, cantering back along the line, dragging Harran through the leafless hedges. His golden helm caught in the thorns and ripped free, blood dripping from it.

‘Quarrel,’ I said, hand out. Makin supplied one.

I started to wind the bow again.

‘Captain Rosson is it? And Captain Devers?’ My question caught them with blades half-drawn. ‘Why are you baring steel at me when your single most holy duty to the empire is my protection?’ All around me the guard were reaching for their swords, others urging their horses in closer to discover the cause of unrest.

‘You just shot Harran!’ Rosson, the man on the left, spat.

‘I did.’ I nodded. ‘I’m going to shoot you next. I figure I’ll be able to kill twenty of you before I need to start digging the bolts out of your corpses in order to continue. Now must I repeat my question? On what grounds are you drawing steel against me? I’m sure Captain Harran would not have approved. He at least knew his duty!’

‘I—’ Captain Rosson hesitated, his blade not yet clear of the scabbard.

‘Your duty, Captain, is to protect me. You can hardly do that by hacking at me with your sword now can you? The only circumstance that would permit you to attack me is if I threatened another of your charges. But I’m not doing that. I’m just going to kill the few hundred guard assigned to me.’

‘King Jorg – you— you can’t be serious,’ Captain Rosson said.

I failed to see how I could be more serious, but some men take time to adjust to unfamiliar circumstances.

ChooOOOooom.

Rosson hit the mud with a dull splat. At a range of two yards no breastplate, however fancy, is going to stop a crossbow bolt from a mechanism as heavy as the Nuban’s bow.

I set to winding again, starting to feel the ache in my bicep. ‘Captain Devers? Are you going to bring Jarco Renar to speak with me? Remember, if I try to kill him you can cut me to pieces.’

Rosson twitched in the mud. He tried to say something but only blood came out.

Miana and Katherine crowded the carriage door, Gomst peering over the pair. Osser Gant appeared to prefer his ledgers.

‘Jorg!’ Katherine’s hair fell around her in dark red curls, a heat in those eyes. ‘These are honourable men!’

‘And I am not.’ I held my hand out. ‘Quarrel.’

‘Men with families, lives to live …’

Miana said nothing, her face held tight against emotion, my son clasped to her breast.

I ignored Katherine and addressed the guard instead, lifting my voice to carry on the cold afternoon breeze. ‘I quite liked Captain Harran. You saw where that got him. The rest of you I hardly know. My newborn son is at risk. I hunted down a lichkin to ensure his safety. Do you think I will flinch at murdering each and every one of you?

‘I suggest Jarco Renar be brought before me, or this will not end well.’

Viewed along the length of my crossbow Captain Devers looked pale and unhappy. He had flipped up his visor to reveal a thin face decorated with scars and pockmarks, a short, dark beard hugging his chin.

‘Bring Renar here!’ he shouted.

While we waited I mounted Brath and backed him in a tight circle. He had been well trained and the smell of blood didn’t bother him. Captain Harran’s helm came free of the hedgerow thorns and I held it in one hand, the crossbow in the other, steering Brath with my knees.

Sir Kent clambered from his horse onto the top of the carriage. Choosing the right position had kept Kent alive more times than any armour or skill with a blade.

‘Bring me some more captains.’ I raised the crossbow toward Captain Devers again.

‘No wait!’ He put up his hands, as if that would stop a quarrel! ‘He’ll be here!’

‘But you will not.’ I squeezed the trigger, but before I’d applied sufficient pressure the guard ranks parted and Jarco Renar sat before me on a roan mare in golden armour. I turned the crossbow toward him.

‘I would have sent out someone else,’ I told him. ‘Just to see if I knew what you look like.’ It happened that I knew what he looked like, though we had never met.

Jarco hadn’t his brother’s chubbiness, or that deceiving amiability Marclos had. A taller man, broader in the shoulder, he had more of my uncle’s look about him, more of the Renar wolf.

I advanced Brath toward him. Hands tightened on sword hilts all around me.