Prince of Thorns

A knife is a scary thing right enough, held to your throat, sharp and cool. The fire too, and the rack. And an old ghost on the Lichway. All of them might give you pause. Until you realize what they are. They’re just ways to lose the game. You lose the game, and what have you lost? You’ve lost the game.

That’s the secret, and it amazes me that it’s mine and mine alone. I saw the game for what it was the night when Count Renar’s men caught our carriage. There was a storm that night too, I remember the din of rain on the carriage roof and the thunder beneath it.

Big Jan had fair hauled the door off its hinges to get us out. He only had time for me though. He threw me clear; into a briar patch so thick that the Count’s men persuaded themselves I’d run into the night. They didn’t want to search it. But I hadn’t run. I’d hung there in the thorns, and I saw them kill Big Jan. I saw it in the frozen moments the lightning gave me.

I saw what they did to Mother, and how long it took. They broke little William’s head against a milestone. Golden curls and blood. And I’ll admit that William was the first of my brothers, and he did have his hooks in me, with his chubby hands and laughing. Since then I’ve taken on many a brother, and evil ones at that, so I’d not miss one or three. But at the time, it did hurt to see little William broken like that, like a toy. Like something worthless.

When they killed him, Mother wouldn’t hold her peace, so they slit her throat. I was stupid then, being only nine, and I fought to save them both. But the thorns held me tight. I’ve learned to appreciate thorns since.

The thorns taught me the game. They let me understand what all those grim and serious men who’ve fought the Hundred War, have yet to learn. You can only win the game when you understand that it is a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him lose them all.

‘What have you got for me, dead thing?’ I asked.

It’s a game. I will play my pieces.

I felt him cold inside me. I saw his death. I saw his despair. And his hunger. And I gave it back. I’d expected more, but he was only dead.

I showed him the empty time where my memory won’t go. I let him look there.

He ran from me then. He ran, and I chased him. But only to the edge of the marsh. Because it’s a game. And I’m going to win.

Chapter 5

Four years earlier

For the longest time I studied revenge to the exclusion of all else. I built my first torture chamber in the dark vaults of imagination. Lying on bloody sheets in the Healing Hall I discovered doors within my mind that I’d not found before, doors that even a child of nine knows should not be opened. Doors that never close again.

I threw them wide.

Sir Reilly found me, hanging within the hook-briar, not ten yards from the smoking ruin of the carriage. They almost missed me. I saw them reach the bodies on the road. I watched them through the briar, silver glimpses of Sir Reilly’s armour, and flashes of red from the tabards of Ancrath foot-soldiers.

Mother was easy to find, in her silks.

‘Sweet Jesu! It’s the Queen!’ Sir Reilly had them turn her over. ‘Gently! Show some respect—’ He broke off with a gasp. The Count’s men hadn’t left her pretty.

‘Sir! Big Jan’s over here, Grem and Jassar too.’ I saw them heave Jan over, then turn to the other guardsmen.

‘They’d better be dead!’ Sir Reilly spat. ‘Look for the princes!’

I didn’t see them find Will, but I knew they had by the silence that spread across the men. I let my chin fall back to my chest and watched the dark patterning of blood on the dry leaves around my feet.

‘Ah, hell …’ One of the men spoke at last. ‘Get him on a horse. Easy with him,’ Sir Reilly said. A crack ran through his voice. ‘And find the heir!’ With more vigour, but no hope.

I tried to call to them, but the strength had run from me, I couldn’t even lift my head.

‘He’s not here, Sir Reilly.’

‘They’ve taken him as a hostage,’ Sir Reilly said.

He had part of it right, something held me against my will.

‘Set him by the Queen.’

‘Gentle! Gentle with him …’

‘Secure them,’ Sir Reilly said. ‘We ride hard for the Tall Castle.’

Part of me wanted to let them go. I felt no pain any more, just a dull ache, and even that was fading. A peace folded me with the promise of forgetting.

‘Sir!’ A shout went up from one of the men.

I heard the clank of armour as Sir Reilly strode across to see.

‘Piece of a shield?’ he asked.

‘Found it in the mud, the carriage wheel must have pushed it under.’ The soldier paused. I heard scraping. ‘Looks like a black wing to me …’

‘A crow. A crow on a red field. It’s Count Renar’s colours,’ Reilly said.

Count Renar? I had a name. A black crow on a red field. The insignia flashed across my eyes, seared deep by the lightning of last night’s storm. A fire lit within me, and the pain from a hundred hooks burned in every limb. A groan escaped me. My lips parted, dry skin tearing.

And Reilly found me.

‘There’s something here!’ I heard him curse as the hook-briar found every chink in his armour. ‘Quickly now! Pull this stuff apart.’

‘Dead.’ I heard the whisper from behind Sir Reilly as he cut me free.

‘He’s so white.’

I guess the briar near bled me dry.

So they fetched a cart and took me back. I didn’t sleep. I watched the sky turn black, and I thought.

In the Healing Hall Friar Glen and his helper, Inch, dug the hooks from my flesh. My tutor, Lundist, arrived while they had me on the table with their knives out. He had a book with him, the size of a Teuton shield, and three times as heavy by the look of it. Lundist had more strength in that wizened old stick of a body than anyone guessed.

‘Those are fire-cleaned knives I hope, Friar?’ Lundist carried the accent of his homelands in the Utter East, and a tendency to leave half of a word unspoken, as if an intelligent listener should be able to fill in the blanks.

‘It is purity of spirit that will keep corruption from the flesh, Tutor,’ Friar Glen said. He spared Lundist a disapproving glance, and returned to his digging.

‘Even so, clean the knives, Friar. Holy office will prove scant protection from the King’s ire if the Prince dies in your halls.’ Lundist set his book down on the table beside me, rattling a tray of vials at the far end. He lifted the cover and turned to a marked page.

‘“The thorns of the hook-briar are like to find the bone.’” He traced a wrinkled yellow finger down the lines. ‘“The points can break off and sour the wound.”’

Friar Glen gave a sharp jab at that, which made me cry out. He set his knife down and turned to face Lundist. I could see only the friar’s back, the brown cloth straining over his shoulders, dark with sweat over his spine.

‘Tutor Lundist,’ he said. ‘A man in your profession is wont to think all things may be learned from the pages of a book, or the right scroll. Learning has its place, sirrah, but do not think to lecture me on healing on the basis of an evening spent with an old tome!’

Well, Friar Glen won that argument. The sergeant-at-arms had to ‘help’ Tutor Lundist from the hall.

I guess even at nine I had a serious lack of spiritual purity, for my wounds soured within two days, and for nine weeks I lay in fever, chasing dark dreams along death’s borderlands.

They tell me I raged and howled. That I raved as the pus oozed from slices where the briar had held me. I remember the stink of corruption. It had a kind of sweetness to it, a sweetness that’d make you want to hurl.

Inch, the friar’s aide, grew tired of holding me down, though he had the arms of a lumberjack. In the end they tied me to my bed.

I learned from Tutor Lundist that the friar would not attend me after the first week. Friar Glen said a devil was in me. How else could a child speak such horror?

In the fourth week I slipped the bonds that held me to my pallet, and set a fire in the hall. I have no memory of the escape, or my capture in the woods. When they cleared the ruin, they found the remains of Inch, with the poker from the hearth lodged in his chest.

Many times I stood at the Door. I had seen my mother and brother thrown through that doorway, torn and broken, and in dreams my feet would take me to stand there, time and again. I lacked the courage to follow them, held on the barbs and hooks of cowardice.

Sometimes I saw the dead-lands across a black river, sometimes across a chasm spanned by a narrow bridge of stone. Once I saw the Door in the guise of the portals to my father’s throne room, but edged with frost and weeping pus from every join. I had but to set my hand upon the handle …

The Count of Renar kept me alive. The promise of his pain crushed my own under its heel. Hate will keep you alive where love fails.

And then one day my fever left me. My wounds remained angry and red, but they closed. They fed me chicken in soup, and my strength crept back, a stranger to me.

The spring came to paint the leaves back upon the trees. I had my strength, but I felt something else had been taken. Taken so completely I could no longer name it.

The sun returned, and, much to Friar Glen’s distaste, Lundist returned to instruct me once more.

The first time he came, I sat abed. I watched him set out his books upon the table.

‘Your father will see you on his return from Gelleth,’ Lundist said. His voice held a note of reproach, but not for me. ‘The death of the Queen and Prince William weigh heavy on him. When the pain eases he will surely come to speak with you.’

I didn’t understand why Lundist should feel the need to lie. I knew my father would not waste time on me whilst it seemed I would die. I knew he would see me when seeing me served some end.

‘Tell me, tutor,’ I said. ‘Is revenge a science, or an art?’

Chapter 6

The rain faltered when the spirits fled. I’d only broken the one, but the others ran too, back to whatever pools they haunted. Maybe my one had been their leader; maybe men become cowards in death. I don’t know.

As to my own cowards, they had nowhere to flee, and I found them easily enough. I found Makin first. He, at least, was headed back toward me.

‘So you found a pair then?’ I called to him.

He paused a moment and looked at me. The rain didn’t fall so heavy now, but he still looked like a drowned rat. The water ran in rivulets over his breastplate, in and out of the dents. He checked the marsh to either side, still nervy, and lowered his sword.

‘A man who’s got no fear is missing a friend, Jorg,’ he said, and a smile found its way onto those thick lips of his. ‘Running ain’t no bad thing. Leastways if you run in the right direction.’ He waved a hand toward where Rike wrestled with a clump of bulrushes, the mud up to his chest already. ‘Fear helps a man pick his fights. You’re fighting them all, my prince.’ And he bowed, there on the Lichway with the rain dripping off him.

I spared a glance for Rike. Maical had similar problems in a pool to the other side of the road. Only he’d got his problems up to the neck.

‘I’m going to fight them all in the end,’ I said to him. ‘Pick your fights,’ Makin said. ‘I’ll pick my ground,’ I said. ‘I’ll pick my ground, but I’m not running. Not ever. That’s been done, and we still have the war. I’m going to win it, Brother Makin, it’s going to end with me.’

He bowed again. Not so deep, but this time I felt he meant it. ‘That’s why I’ll follow you, Prince. Wherever it takes us.’

For the moment it took us to fishing brothers out of the mud. We got Maical first, even though Rike howled and cursed us. As the rain thinned, I could see the grey and the head-cart off in the distance. The grey had the sense to keep to the road, even when Maical didn’t. If Maical had led the grey into the mire I’d have left him to sink.

We pulled Rike out next. When we reached him the mud had almost found his mouth. Nothing but his white face showed above the pool, but that didn’t stop him shouting his foulnesses all the way. We found most of them on the road, but six got sucked down too quick, lost forever; probably getting ready to haunt the next band of travellers.

‘I’m going back for old Gomsty,’ I said.

We’d come a way down the road and the light had pretty much gone. Looking back you couldn’t see the gibbets, just grey veils of rain. Out in the marsh the dead waited. I felt their cold thoughts crawling on my skin.

I didn’t ask any of them to go with me. I knew none of them would, and it don’t do for a leader to ask and be told no.

‘What do you want with that old priest, Brother Jorg?’ Makin said. He was asking me not to go; only he couldn’t come out and say it.

‘You still want to burn him up?’ Even the mud couldn’t hide Rike’s sudden cheer.

‘I do,’ I said. ‘But that’s not why I’m getting him.’ And I set off back along the Lichway.

The rain and the darkness wrapped me. I lost the brothers, waiting on the road behind. Gomst and the gibbets lay ahead. I walked in a cocoon of silence, with nothing but the soft words of the rain, and the sound of my boots on the Lichway.

I’ll tell you now. That silence almost beat me. It’s the silence that scares me. It’s the blank page on which I can write my own fears. The spirits of the dead have nothing on it. The dead one tried to show me hell, but it was a pale imitation of the horror I can paint on the darkness in a quiet moment.

And there he hung, Father Gomst, priest to the House of Ancrath.

‘Father,’ I said, and I sketched him a bow. In truth though, I was in no mood for play. I had me a hollow ache behind my eyes. The kind that gets people killed.

He looked at me wide-eyed, as if I was a bog-spirit crawled out of the mire.

I went to the chain that held his cage up. ‘Brace yourself, Father.’

The sword I drew had slit old Bovid Tor not twenty-four hours before. Now I swung it to free a priest. The chain gave beneath its edge. They’d put some magic, or some devilry, in that blade. Father told me the Ancraths wielded it for four generations, and took it from the House of Or. So the steel was old before we Ancraths first lay hands upon it. Old before I stole it.

The birdcage fell to the path, hard and heavy. Father Gomst cried out, and his head hit the bars, leaving a livid cross-work across his forehead. They’d bound the cage-door with wire. It gave before the edge of our ancestral sword, twice stolen. I thought of Father for a moment, imaged his face twist in outrage at the use of so high a blade for such lowly work. I’ve a good imagination, but putting any emotion on the rock of Father’s face came hard.

Gomst crawled out, stiff and weak. As the old should be. I liked that he had the grace to feel the years on his shoulders. Some the years just toughened.

‘Father Gomst,’ I said. ‘Best hurry now, or the marsh dead may come out to scare us with their wailing and a-moaning.’

He looked at me then, drawing back as if he’d seen a ghost, then softening.

‘Jorg,’ he said, all full of compassion. Brimming with it, spilling it from his eyes as if it wasn’t just the rain. ‘What has happened to you?’

I won’t lie to you. Half of me wanted to stick the knife into him there and then, just as with red-faced Gemt. More than half. My hand itched with the need to pull that knife. My head ached with it, as if a vice were tightening against my temples.

I’ve been known to be contrary. When something pushes me, I shove back. Even if the one doing the pushing is me. It would have been easy to gut him then and there. Satisfying. But the need was too urgent. I felt pushed.

I smiled and said, ‘Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.’

And old Gomsty, though he was stiff from the cage, and sore in every limb, bowed his head to hear my confession.

I spoke into the rain, low and quiet. Loud enough for Father Gomst though, and loud enough for the dead who haunted the marsh about us. I told of the things I’d done. I told of the things I would do. In a soft voice I told my plans to all with ears to hear. The dead left us then.

‘You’re the devil!’ Father Gomst took a step back, and clutched the cross at his neck.

‘If that’s what it takes.’ I didn’t dispute him. ‘But I’ve confessed, and you must forgive me.’

‘Abomination…’ The word escaped him in a slow breath.

‘And more besides,’ I agreed. ‘Now forgive me.’ Father Gomst found his wits at last, but still he held back. ‘What do you want with me, Lucifer?’

A fair question. ‘I want to win,’ I said.

He shook his head at that, so I explained.

‘Some men I can bind with who I am. Some I can bind with where I’m going. Others need to know who walks with me. I’ve given you my confession. I repent. Now God walks with me, and you’re the priest who will tell the faithful that I am His warrior, His instrument, the Sword of the Almighty.’

A silence stood between us, measured in heartbeats.

‘Ego te absolvo.’ Father Gomst got the words past trembling lips.

We walked back along the path then, and reached the others by and by. Makin had them lined up and ready. Waiting in the dark, with a single torch, and the hooded lantern hung up on the head-cart.

‘Captain Bortha,’ I said to Makin, ‘time we set off. We’ve got a ways before us till we reach the Horse Coast.’

‘And the priest?’ he asked.

‘Perhaps we’ll detour past the Tall Castle, and drop him off.’

My headache bit, hard.

Maybe it was something to do with having an old ghost haunt its way through to the very marrow of my bones, but today my headaches felt more like somebody prodding me with a stick, herding me along, and it was really beginning to fuck me off.

‘I think we will call in at the Tall Castle.’ I ground my teeth together against the daggers in my head. ‘Hand old Gomsty here over in person. I’m sure my father has been worried about me.’

Rike and Maical gave me stupid stares. Fat Burlow and Red Kent swapped glances. The Nuban rolled his eyes and made his wards.

I looked at Makin, tall, broad in the shoulder, black hair plastered down by the rain. He’s my knight, I thought. Gomst is my bishop, the Tall Castle my rook. Then I thought of Father. I needed a king. You can’t play the game without a king. I thought of Father, and it felt good. After the dead one, I’d begun to wonder. The dead one showed me his hell, and I had laughed at it. But now I thought of Father, and it felt good to know I could still feel fear.

Chapter 7

We rode through the night and the Lichway brought us from the marsh. Dawn found us at Norwood, drear and grey. The town lay in ruin. Its ashes still held the acrid ghost of smoke that lingers when the fire is gone.

‘The Count of Renar,’ said Makin at my side. ‘He grows bold to attack Ancrath protectorates so openly.’ He shed the road speak like a cloak.

‘How can we know who wrought such wickedness?’ Father Gomst asked, his face as grey as his beard. ‘Perhaps Baron Kennick’s men raided down the Lichway. It was Kennick’s men who caged me on the gibbet.’

The brothers spread out among the ruins. Rike elbowed Fat Burlow aside, and vanished into the first building, which was nothing but a roofless shell of stone.

‘Shit-poor bog-farmers! Just like fecking Mabberton.’ The violence of his search drowned out any further complaint.

I remembered Norwood on fete day, hung with ribbons. Mother walked with the burgermeister. William and I had treacle-apples.

‘But these were my shit-poor bog-farmers,’ I said. I turned to look at old Gomsty. ‘There are no bodies. This is Count Renar’s work.’

Makin nodded. ‘We’ll find the pyre in the fields to the west. Renar burns them all together. The living and the dead.’

Gomst crossed himself and muttered a prayer.

War is a thing of beauty, as I’ve said before, and those who say otherwise are losing. I put a smile on, though it didn’t fit me. ‘Brother Makin, it seems the Count has made a move. It behoves us, as fellow soldiers, to appreciate his artistry. Have yourself a ride around. I want to know how he played his game.’

Renar. First Father Gomst, now Renar. As though the spirit in the mire had turned a key, and the ghosts of my past were marching through, one by one.

Makin gave a nod and cantered off. Not into town but out along the stream, following it up to the thickets beyond the market field.

‘Father Gomst,’ I said in my most polite court-voice. ‘Pray tell, where were you when Baron Kennick’s men found you?’ It made no sense that our family priest should be taken on a raid.

‘The hamlet of Jessop, my prince,’ Gomst replied, wary and looking anywhere but at me. ‘Should we not ride on? We’ll be safe in the homelands. The raids won’t reach past Hanton.’

True, I thought, so why would you come out into danger? ‘The hamlet of Jessop? Can’t say I’ve even heard of it, Father Gomst,’ I said, still nice as nice. ‘Which means it won’t be much more than three huts and a pig.’

Rike stormed out of the house, blacker than the Nuban with all the ash on him, and spitting mad. He made for the next doorway. ‘Burlow, you fat bastard! You set me up!’ If Little Rikey couldn’t find himself some loot then somebody else would pay. Always.

Gomst looked glad of the diversion, but I drew his attention back. ‘Father Gomst, you were telling me about Jessop.’ I took the reins from his hands.

‘A bog-town, my prince. A nothing. A place where they cut peat for the protectorate. Seventeen huts and perhaps a few more pigs.’ He tried a laugh, but it came out too sharp and nervy.

‘So you journeyed there to offer absolution to the poor?’ I held his eye.

‘Well…’

‘Out past Hanton, out to the edge of the marsh, out into danger,’ I said. ‘You’re a very holy man, Father.’

He bowed his head at that.

Jessop. The name rang a bell. A bell with a deep voice, slow and solemn. Send not to ask for whom the bell tolls…

‘Jessop is where the marsh-tide takes the dead,’ I said. I saw the words on the mouth of old Tutor Lundist as I spoke them. I saw the map behind him, pinned to the study wall, currents marked in black ink. ‘It’s a slow current but sure. The marsh keeps her secrets, but not forever, and Jessop is where she tells them.’

‘That big man, Rike, he’s strangling the fat one.’ Father Gomst nodded toward the town.

‘My father sent you to look at the dead.’ I didn’t let Gomst divert me with small talk. ‘Because you’d recognize me.’

Gomst’s mouth framed a ‘no’, but every other muscle in him said ‘yes’. You’d think priests would be better liars, what with their job and all.

‘He’s still looking for me? After four years!’ Four weeks would have surprised me.

Gomst edged back in his saddle. He spread his hands helplessly. ‘The Queen is heavy with child. Sageous tells the King it will be a boy. I had to confirm the succession.’

Ah! The ‘succession’. That sounded more like the father I knew. And the Queen? Now that put an edge on the day.

‘Sageous?’ I asked.

‘A heathen bone-picker, newly come to court.’ Gomst spat the words as if they tasted sour.

The pause grew into a silence.

‘Rike!’ I said. Not a shout, but loud enough to reach him. ‘Put Fat Burlow down, or I’ll have to kill you.’

Rike let go, and Burlow hit the ground like the three hundred pound lump of lard that he was. I guess that of the two, Burlow looked slightly more purple in the face, but only a little. Rike came toward us with his hands out before him, twisting as though he already had them around my neck. ‘You!’

No sign of Makin, and Father Gomst would be as useful as a fart in the wind against Little Rikey with a rage on him.