at my hip.
A quick step and I thrust at him. He hissed as the blade bit in, with no more resistance than if only his robe hung before me.
“I’m not here!” Through gritted teeth, as if insistence made it true. And he was gone.
“Jorg?” Makin at my side, a frown on his brow, his hand on my arm. “Jorg?”
“Heh. Dreaming on my feet.” I shook my head. “Lead on!”
The sally tunnels connect to separate cellars beneath the Haunt, their exits disguised as huge wine barrels. I elbowed my way among the Watch and found Hobbs.
“Do what you can about the ram,” I said. “It looks to be well covered but it needs fresh men to swing it, so shoot a few of the bastards as they come up to take a turn. Also, you’ll find there’s not much incoming at the moment. At least not of the pointy kind. They’ll still be slinging rocks at us. So take advantage and just kill as many of his men as you can.”
Next I took myself to the courtyard where my levies, subjects, and bannermen waited, crowded rank upon rank before the gatehouse. Knights from Morrow to the left of the portcullis, armour gleaming, swords in hand. To the right more knights, plate-armoured, the noblest sons of Hodd Town, my capital down in the valleys to the north. No doubt they had come to win the king’s favour and honour for their houses. Young men in the main, soft with gold and more used to lance and tourney than blood and ruin. I saw Sir Elmar of Golden among them, his armour radiant as his name implied. A warrior, that one, despite his finery.
They had some strength among them. Crowded on the gallery and stairs, crossbow men from the Westfast under Lord Scoolar, hard-eyed and wind-burned. Packed before the splintering gate, men of the Hauntside, tough fighters from the hills, in leather and iron, axes honed, round wooden shields layered in goat-hide. Behind these, warriors from Far Range, their iron helms patterned with silver and tin, each man armed with hammer and hatchet. And to the rear, ranked before the keep wall, Cennat shield dancers, their warboards taller than a man.
I walked among them, Makin at my shoulder, amid the stink and heave of bodies, the tension a taste in the air at once both sour and sweet. I hadn’t words for them, no kingly gestures, no speech to shout above the screams from beyond the wall and the crash of the ram. When you fight alongside Brothers you bind them with word and deed. When you fight among subjects you are a figure, a form, an idea. Men will die for many things; lives hoarded with care can be spent for the strangest of reasons. What bound us here, we men of the Highlands, was defiance. All men will dig their heels in if pushed enough. All men will reach the point that they say “no” for no reason other than opposition, for no reason other than the word fits their mouth, and tastes as good as it sounds. And in the Highlands, among our mountains, the heights breed men who will give no single inch without defiance.
I walked between the men of the Highlands, the old and young, some bearded, others clean-cheeked, some pale, some red, the trembling and the steady, and came to stand before the portcullis, iron-bound timbers splintered, the rush of the ram beyond, the savage cries of the hundred wrestling it toward me. My fingers found my knife hilt and I pulled it clear. Laid against my unburned cheek the metal felt like ice. The portcullis shuddered and groaned before the ram. Men of Arrow screamed and died as missiles rained upon them. The knife blade cut skin soft as a kiss. I took the blood on scarlet fingers and wiped it over the gate timbers. I turned my back on the gate, crouched before my men, and smeared a line of blood across the flagstones. As I returned to the keep I set my hand to a score of warriors, the eager ones, the ones in who I saw an echo of the same hunger that made me want that gate open every bit as much as those men on the ram.
“King’s blood!” Sir Elmar of Golden raised his axe, the crimson smear of my fingers left across his shining helm.
“King’s blood!” A hairy Hauntside warrior pressed the heel of his hand to the red imprint I set across his brow.
“King’s blood!” A Cennat dancer twirled the huge shield where my handprint sat scarlet across the white moon of his house.
“King’s blood!”
The roar pulsed back and forth, following us within the keep. A king is a sigil, not a man but an idea. I thought they had the idea now.
I took myself up to my throne-room with Makin at my side, and called for my table-knights, Red Kent, and the captain of the contingent from the House Morrow, Lord Jost.
Lord Jost arrived last, with a second knight and Miana. Queen Miana I supposed I should call her. She still wore her wedding dress, though with the train and veils taken off and a shawl set with pearls added against the cold. Lord Jost looked rather embarrassed by her presence at my council of war.
“Gentlemen,” I said. “My lady.”
I sat in the throne. Slumped would be more accurate. It felt good to take the weight off my feet. I’d done more running and climbing and descending than I wanted and was ready to sleep for a week.
“How many of the enemy did you kill, and at what loss?” Miana asked. The men had been waiting for me to speak. She felt no such need. I would have asked the same question.
“About six thousand for the loss of two hundred,” I said.
“A thirty to one ratio. Better than the rate of twenty to one needed.” To hear her high sweet voice recite the statistics of our body count seemed wrong.
“True. But they were two hundred of my very best, and I have played the aces from my hand.”
“And Chancellor Coddin has not returned,” Miana said. She was remarkably well informed for a little girl.
A pang of something ran through me at that. I saw Coddin once more in the tomb we made for him. “He’s safer than we are,” I said. He would probably live longer too. He would linger.
I took a goblet of watered wine from a page and a plate with crusted bread and goat cheese.
“And your plans?” she asked.
I blew through my lips. “We will have to place our faith in stone and mortar, and hope that in the time they buy us, fortune decides to smile our way.” The wine tasted like heaven and made me dizzy after one sip.
“Perhaps my new father-in-law will send us aid?” Miana said, her smile faint and years too old for her.
“I was hoping something similar myself,” I said.
More than in muscle heaped on bone, Brother Rike’s strength springs from the ability to hate the inanimate.
39
Four years earlier
“She’s gone, yes?” Makin shaded his eyes against the sunrise and squinted back across the marsh. We stood on rolling scrubland now with yellow rock breaking through in sandy patches here and there.
“I hope so,” I said. Part of me wanted Chella to find destruction at my hands, the personal touch, but perhaps she ended there in the marsh amongst the burning dead. I hadn’t felt it. No sense of satisfaction, but my uncle’s death had taught me that revenge is far less sweet than it promises to be. An empty meal, however long you take over it.
We took to horse for the first time in what seemed an age. Rike on Row’s roan since his own plough-horse proved too heavy for its own good in the bogs. Kent and Makin on their horses. Grumlow riding double with me since he and I were the lightest of the Brothers and Brath the strongest of the nags.
The sour stink of the marshes followed us for miles. Black mud caking on our clothes, drying grey and flaking away. More persistent than stink or mud, the image of Chella as the flames rose around her, and the echo of her last words. The Dead King sails.
In three days we came by moorland and scrub, then by forgotten roads, and finally by country tracks, to the free port of Barlona. Rike made ceaseless complaint about his sunburn until I convinced him to smear pig-shit over the worst affected areas. For some reason it seemed to help though I hadn’t intended it to. Suggestion can be a powerful thing.
The ancient walls shimmered in the summer heat as we approached. They must have been impressive a
