The Nuban pursed his lips, shrugged, and set off after the others. I stepped over Lundist, and followed.
Assassination is just murder with a touch more precision. Brother Sim is precise.
14
So we rode out from Norwood. The peasants watched us, all sullen and dazed, and Rike cursed them. As if it had been his idea to keep them from a Renar bonfire and now they owed him a cheer as he left. We left them the ruins of their town, decorated with the corpses of the men that ruined it. Poor compensation, especially after Rike and the brothers had stripped the dead of anything of worth. I reckoned we could make Crath City by nightfall, riding hard, and be banging on the gates of the Tall Castle before the moon rose.
I shouldn’t have been turning for home, picking up my old ways, and thinking once more about vengeance upon the Count of Renar. That’s what instinct told me. But today instinct spoke with an old and dry voice and I no longer trusted it. I wanted to go home, perhaps because it felt as though something else required that I did not. I wanted to go home and if Hell rose up to stop me, it would make me desire it the more. We took the Castle Road, up through the garden lands of Ancrath. Our path ran alongside gentle streams, between small woods and quiet farms. I’d forgotten how green it was. I’d grown used to a world of churned mud, burned fields, smoke-grey skies, and the dead rotting on the ground. The sun found us, pushing its way through high cloud. In the warmth our column slowed until the clatter of hooves broke into lazy thuds. Gerrod paused where a three-bar gate led through the hedgerow. Beyond it, a field, golden with wheat, rolled out before us. He tore at the long grass around the gatepost. It felt as if God had poured honey over the land, sweet and slow, holding everything at peace. Norwood lay fifteen miles, and a thousand years, behind us.
“Good to be back, eh, Jorg?” Makin pulled up beside me. He leaned forward in his stirrups and drank in the air. “Smells of home.”
And it did. The scent of warm earth took me back, back to times when my world was small, and safe.
“I hate this place,” I said. He looked shocked at that, and Makin was never an easy man to shock. “It’s a poison men take willingly, knowing it will make them weak.”
I gave Gerrod my heels and let him hurry up the road. Makin caught me up and cantered alongside. We passed Rike and Burlow at the crossroads, throwing rocks at a scarecrow.
“Men fight for their homeland, Prince,” Makin said. “It’s the land they defend. The King and the land.”
I turned to holler at the stragglers. “Close the line!”
Makin kept pace, waiting for an answer. “Let the soldiers die for their land,” I said to him. “If the time comes to sacrifice these fields in the cause of victory, I’ll let them burn in a heartbeat. Anything that you cannot sacrifice pins you. Makes you predictable, makes you weak.”
We rode on at a trot, west, trying to catch the sun.
Soon enough we found the garrison at Chelny Ford. Or rather they found us. The watchtower must have seen us on the trail, and fifty men came out along the Castle Road to block our way.
I pulled up a few yards short of the pikemen, strung across the road in a bristling hedge, double-ranked. The rest of the squad waited behind the pike-wall, with drawn swords, save for a dozen archers arrayed amongst the corn in the field to our right. A score of heifers, in the field opposite, saw our approach and idled over to investigate.
“Men of Chelny Ford,” I called out. “Well met. Who leads here?”
Makin came up behind me, the rest of the brothers trailing in after him, easy in their saddles.
A tall man stepped forward between two pikemen, but not too far forward, no idiot this one. He wore the Ancrath colours over a long chain shirt, and an iron pot-helm low on his brow. To my right a dozen sets of white knuckles strained on bowstrings. To my left the heifers watched from behind the hedge, complacent and chewing on the cud.
“I’m Captain Coddin.” He had to raise his voice as one of the cows let out a low moo. “The King signs mercenaries at Relston Fayre. Armed bands are not permitted to roam into Ancrath. State your business.” He kept his eyes on Makin, looking for his answer there.
I didn’t care for being dismissed as a child, but there’s a time and place for taking offence. Besides, old Coddin seemed to know his stuff. Putting Brother Gemt out of his misery was one thing, but wasting one of Father’s captains quite another.
I had my visor up already, so I used it to pull my helm off. “Father Gomst!” I called for the priest, and the brothers shuffled their horses aside with a few mutters to let the old fellow past. He wasn’t much to look at. He’d hacked off that beard he grew in the gibbet-cage, but grey tufts still decorated his face in random clusters, and his priestly robes seemed more mud than cloth.
“Captain Coddin,” I said. “Do you know this priest, Father Gomst?”
Coddin raised an eyebrow at that. He had a pale face, and now it went paler. His mouth took on a hard edge, like a man who knows he’s the butt of a joke that he hasn’t worked out yet. “Aye,” he said. “The King’s priest.” He snapped his heels together and inclined his head, as if he were in court. It seemed funny out there in the road, with the birds tweeting overhead and the stink of the cows washing over us.
“Father Gomst,” I said. “Pray tell Captain Coddin who I am.”
The old fellow puffed himself up a bit. He’d been listless and grey since Norwood, but now he tried to find a crumb or two of authority.
“Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath sits before you, Captain. Lost and now returned, he is bound for his royal father’s court, and you would do well to see that he gets there with proper escort…” He glanced at me, screwing up what courage he had behind the foolish remnants of his beard. “And a bath.”
A little snigger went up at that, on both sides of our standoff. It doesn’t pay to underestimate a cleric. They know the power of words and they’ll use them to their own ends. My palm ached for the hilt of my sword. I saw old Gomst’s head falling from his shoulders, bouncing once, twice, and rolling to a halt by the hooves of a black- and-white heifer. I pushed the vision away.
“No bath. It’s about time for a little road-stink at court. Soft words and rose water may please the gentry, but those that fight the war live dirty. I return to my father as a man who has shared the soldier’s lot. Let him know the truth of it.” I let my words carry on the still air, and kept my eyes on Gomsty. He had the wit to look away.
My speech earned no rousing cheer, but Coddin bowed his head and we had no further mention of baths. A shame, truth be told, because I’d been looking forward to a hot tub ever since I decided to turn for home.
So Coddin left his second to command the garrison, and rode with us. His escort of two dozen riders swelled our numbers to nearly sixty. Makin carried a lance from the Ford armoury now, flying the Ancrath colours and royal crest. The garrison riders spread word through the villages as we passed. “Prince Jorg, Prince Jorg returned from the dead.” The news stole ahead of us, until each town presented a larger and better prepared reception. Captain Coddin sent a rider to the King before we left Chelny Ford, but even without his message, they would know of us in the Tall Castle well before we got there.
At Bains Town the bunting stretched across Main Street, six minstrels, sporting lute and clavichord, played “The King’s Sword” with more gusto than skill, jugglers exchanged twirling fire-brands, and a bear danced before the mill pond. And the crowds! People packed in so tight we’d no hope of riding through. A fat woman in a tent of a dress which was striped like a tourney pavilion saw me amid the van. She pointed and gave a shriek that drowned the minstrels out, “Prince Jorg! The Stolen Prince!” The whole place went mad at that, cheering and crying. They surged forward like wild things. Coddin had his men in quick, though. I forgave him his earlier slight for that. If peasants had reached Rike, we’d have had red slaughter.
On the Lich Road the brothers were more scared, but that’s the only time I’ve seen more fear in them than there at Bains Town. They none of them knew what to make of it. Grumlow’s left hand never left his dagger. Red Kent grinned like a maniac, terror in his eyes. Still, they’d learn fast enough. When they figured out the welcome that lay ahead. When they’d seen the taverns and the whores. Well, there’d be no dragging them out of Bains Town in a week.
One of the minstrels found a horn, and a harsh note cut through the tumult. Guards, red-robed with black chain beneath, cleared a path, and no less a man than Lord Nossar of Elm emerged before us. I recognized the
