Emperor of Thorns

‘What happened to him?’ He sounded like a useful man to know, this Arron.

‘Sunk.’

‘Ah.’

‘Not at sea though. Ortens says he saw it, and Ortens isn’t one for lying. He just sunk into the floor one morning. Right out in the centre courtyard. And nobody saw him again. There’s just a grey stain where he went into the rock.’

‘Well there’s a thing,’ I said.

And we all fell silent.

I lay for a time, on my blanket on the dust, listening to the silence. Something was wrong. I groped for it, reaching like you do in the night when your knife isn’t where it should be. For the longest time I couldn’t discover what it was that irked me.

‘There’s no noise.’ I sat up.

‘What?’ Lesha, sleep edging her voice.

‘Those things, those damned cicadas that screech all night. Where are they?’

‘Not here,’ she said. ‘We’re too close. Nothing lives in the Iberico. Not rats, not bugs, not lichen on rocks. If you want to go back – now is the time.’

13

Five years earlier

The silence made it hard to sleep. The quiet seemed to have infected us all, even the horses held their peace, barely a snort or scrape of hoof hour after hour. In place of the night’s muttering my ears invented their own script for the darkness. I heard whispers from the copper box, a taunting voice just beyond hearing, and behind even that, the sound of my own screaming. Perhaps the death of all those cicadas saved me, burned away by the ghost of the Builders’ fire, or maybe built as I am of suspicion and mistrust I would have heard the attackers coming wherever we slept. Somewhere a stone grated beneath the sole of a shoe.

My kick found Lesha first. A stretched hand found some part of Sunny and I pinched it. Had they been road-brothers they would have, depending on their nature, sprung up blade in hand, or frozen where they lay, alert but waiting, until they understood the need. Brother Grumlow would have knifed the hand that shook him, Brother Kent would have feigned sleep, listening. Lesha and Sunny had slept too long in safe beds and started to rise in confusion, grumbling questions.

The predawn hint gave me the enemy as clumps of blackness, low to the dark ground, moving.

‘Run!’

I threw my knife into the nearest threat, praying it wasn’t a rock, then rolled past Lesha and took off at a sprint. The shriek that went up from the new owner of my dagger did more to convince the others of the danger than did my sudden exit.

Running in the dark is foolish but I’d seen the surroundings before the sun set. No bushes to tangle the feet and most of the rocks not big enough to be a problem. I heard the others behind me, Sunny’s boots pounding, Lesha barefoot. Never let an enemy choose the ground. The only consolation in running blind into the night was that whoever meant us harm was now having to do the same.

Memory told me a shallow valley lay ahead, dividing the first swelling foothills of the Iberico. I glanced behind, knowing that if the enemy were too close I would have heard the others go down already. The pursuers had unhooded several lanterns and their lights swung as they ran. Sunny had kept up a good pace and I had a scant twenty yards on him. Already Lesha was lost in the gloom, too stiff in the armour of her scars to run very fast.

I stopped and collared Sunny as he ran past. He nearly gutted me. ‘Get down.’ I hauled him to the ground. The Cuyahoga was out there, chuckling along its stony bed and Lesha had advised against wetting your feet in those waters – if you wanted to carry on walking.

‘What? Why?’ At least he had the sense to hiss his questions.

‘The guide!’ I kept low, crouched and hoping I looked like a rock. Lesha’s feet made an odd noise hitting the dusty ground as she ran. She sounded close, the whoops of pursuit almost as near. She loomed into view and shot past us. I left Sunny to end the first man chasing her as I drove forward into the next two. Behind them the lights of at least four lanterns swung wildly in the hands of running men.

We took them by surprise. I swung left and right, crippled two men, and took off running again. I saw enough to know we had more than a dozen still chasing us, rough irregulars by the look of them. Road-brothers if you like, just not my brothers and not my roads.

I caught up with Lesha soon enough. They would too. Her only chance had been to get to her horse but there wasn’t time.

‘Where to?’ I shouted.

‘Don’t know.’ She panted it out. A useless but reasonable answer.

We let the valley guide us between the hills. Even as we ran the light grew, or rather the greys paled revealing hints at the world. Sunny waited for us where the valley divided, sword in hand, breathing hard. The cries of pursuit rang out behind. Hollers and wolf-howls, as if it were a game to them. It sounded like a lot more than a dozen on our trail.

It occurred to me that we were being herded. I had a couple of seconds to consider the realization before the ground gave way under Sunny. He vanished into a dark hole and I avoided following him by the narrowest of margins. Lesha hit me from behind as I teetered, arms wheeling, on the crumbling edge of the pit, and we went in together.

‘Shit.’

We landed next to Sunny, our fall broken by a pile of sticks and dry grass. Looking up earned me an eyeful of loose earth sifting down and a glimpse of the paling sky, lighter still now viewed from the depths of a pit. To escape would require a climb of twelve maybe fifteen feet. We’d fallen into some kind of natural sinkhole covered to make a trap.

‘Who are they?’ I asked.

‘Bandits.’ Lesha’s voice came soft with terror. ‘Perros Viciosos, Bad Dogs in the old tongue. I didn’t think they came this close to the Iberico.’

‘Let them know who you are, Jorg. They’ll ransom us.’ Sunny tried to climb but slipped back in a shower of dry earth.

‘You don’t believe it half the time, Sunny. You think I’ll convince this lot they’ve caught a king?’

The whooping drew closer, louder. Laughter now. ‘We’ve got them!’

‘Viciosos? That means “bad”?’ It didn’t sound quite right.

‘Vicious,’ Lesha said, stuttering out her words. ‘For what they do to captives.’

The pit smelled of char.

‘Give me a knife,’ I said.

‘Left mine in a Bad Dog.’ Sunny patted his side.

‘It’s all on Garros,’ Lesha said. She’d left her weapons on her horse. Who sleeps like that?

I drew my sword and made a slow arc to check the space. We had room to swing a cat if its tail wasn’t too long. The laughter and mutter of voices increased above. The Bad Dogs were gathering.

I caught Lesha’s shoulder and felt the unheard sobs shudder through her. No swift death waited for any of us. ‘Stand there.’ I pushed her into clear space, stumbling over the broken branches. She turned to me, just the glimmer of her eyes to mark her in the dark.

Light from above. A torch and a man to hold it. He could have passed for Rike’s smaller uglier brother. ‘See what running got you?’

I swung and severed Lesha’s neck in a single clean cut, letting the sword bury its blade in the wall. Before she could fall I had her head in both hands, scarred and heavy, no realization in those eyes yet, and threw it as hard as I could. It struck the bandit square in the face, not on the forehead as I would have liked, but on the nose, mouth, and chin. He staggered one step backward, two steps forward, and fell with a wordless curse. He landed on Lesha’s body. I caught the torch.