Emperor of Thorns

We came into Gottering at first light. The water sloshed around the carriage floor at the deepest point and brought the smell of the river to us, but we didn’t have to get out.

I climbed from the carriage in the town square, with the flood trickling down the step behind me. The place showed no signs of damage, a pleasant enough town in the most prosperous region of Attar. Bunting from the harvest festival still hung across the main street from rooftop to rooftop. A child’s hoop beside the carriage wheels. Birdsong.

‘Did it seem to the patrols that the screams came from town?’ I asked.

Harran nodded. ‘Couldn’t be more than an hour since they stopped.’

A sniff of the air spoke of rot and shit, cold against the sinuses, what you expect from any town. And something else.

‘Blood,’ I said. ‘There’s slaughter been done here. I can smell it.’

‘Search the houses.’ Harran waved his men on. Dozens of them set off, ducking through doorways, the dawn light gleaming on their mail.

The first of the guard re-emerged within minutes. He held some kind of garment out before him, a pale and wrinkled thing, his face, almost as pale, kept stiff in a mask of revulsion.

‘Here!’ I called the man to me and put my hands out to inspect his prize.

He placed it in my arms without waiting for further invitation.

Even with it draped across my forearms, with the weight of it, the raw scent, and the faintly obscene warmth still clinging there, it took several moments before I understood what I held. It took an effort not to flinch and drop the thing in that instant of realization. I lifted it up, let the arms hang, the scalp flop.

‘It takes some skill to flay a man so completely,’ I said. I scanned the company, meeting the gaze of each soldier. ‘Terror is a weapon, gentlemen, and our enemy understands its use. Let’s be sure that we also understand this game.’

I let the skin drop to the cobbles. A wet sound. ‘Find them all. Pile them here.’

I rode the empty streets with Red Kent and Makin, circling the town at the water’s edge, finding nothing. By the time the sun cleared the rooftops Harran’s men had made a heap of one hundred and ninety skins, taken from cellars, bedrooms, stables, chairs before hearths, all across town. Each of a piece with just the three slices that a practised huntsman would use to take the hide from a deer. Men, women, young and old, children’s skins lay there, all faces wrinkled now. I picked up the hoop toy from by the carriage and fretted it through my fingers as the guard built the pile.

Marten escorted Miana and Katherine from the carriage into the Red Fox Inn, Gottering’s only such establishment. Miana waddled, her belly impossibly large, discomfort written across her face. Marten saw them installed in cushioned chairs and kept their company while they waited, with a fire lit and guardsmen about them, Gorgoth at the door. Outside, Gomst read a benediction over the remains in the square. I trusted Katherine to maintain whatever wall she had erected to keep the lichkin out of our heads, but she would have to sleep eventually.

‘We should move on,’ Harran said, pulling his white mare to Brath’s side. ‘This is not our concern.’

‘It’s true. The Duke of Attar would not thank us for policing his lands on his behalf.’

Harran pushed the gratitude from his face so fast many would have missed it.

‘Prepare to move out!’ he shouted.

I would have been happy to ride on as well – but it felt like being pushed.

Through the small leaded panes of the inn window, stained a faint green by the Attar glass, I saw Marten start to his feet and take Miana’s hand with concern.

‘However,’ I said. ‘Are you not expecting other guard troops to come this way? The flooding narrows the options for travelling from the west. How many of the Hundred are to follow in our wake?’

‘There may be some.’ Honour wouldn’t let him lie. A problem that never troubled me.

‘And aren’t the guard bound to the whole task, to getting the Hundred to Vyene, not just to those in their immediate charge?’

Harran stood in his stirrups. ‘Strike that! I want the victims found. I want each house secured.’ With a growl he rode off to oversee.

‘Whoever has still to travel this way is unlikely to be voting in your favour at Congression.’ Osser Gant levered himself from the shadows of stable block, his gaunt frame supported on a silver-topped cane, a nice piece of work in the shape of a fox’s head.

‘So why am I reminding Harran of a duty he would rather have forgotten?’ I asked.

Osser nodded. ‘And risking yourself.’

‘You’ve spent a lifetime on the edge of those stinking marshes, Gant. How many lichkin have you seen?’

‘An old man like me doesn’t stray far from his master’s hall, King Jorg. But you won’t meet many men who’ve seen a lichkin. You might find the corpse of a man who has seen one, and that corpse might try to kill you, but the man will be long gone.’ Osser nodded, as if agreeing with himself.

‘Not a one in all these years?’ I asked.

‘The lichkin may be old,’ Osser said. ‘I don’t know. But they’re new to the Ken Marshes. They’ve roamed there for ten years at most. Maybe not much more than five years. Even in the Isles they are a new plague.’

Marten came to the inn’s door and beckoned to me. Something important. Sometimes you just know. I swung out of my saddle and stepped down. Walking after an age in the saddle puts an unfamiliar edge on something you do every day of your life – just for a moment as your leg muscles remember how they were made. I opted for a slow crossing of the square. Something told me it might be a short walk but it was taking me a long way.

Marten leaned in close. ‘I think it’s her time. Sarah was like this.’

‘She can’t wait?’ I said. ‘Hold it in?’

‘It doesn’t work like that, Jorg.’ The flickered hint of a smile.

‘Hell.’ I raised my voice. ‘I want more guards around this inn. Secure all the exits.’

I peered through a glass pane. Miana had stretched back in her chair, Katherine in close, blocking my view. I didn’t want to go in. There was a time when I was pleased to find that something still scared me. As the years stacked up I kept finding new things to worry over. Pleasure turning to dismay. It seems men have far more to fear than boys.

I went back to Osser. Makin finished tending his horse and came across with Kent to join us.

‘And how many lichkin are there, Chancellor Gant?’ I asked.

‘I heard tell there were seven in all the world,’ Kent said, his gaze flicking to the bishop praying before the mounded skins. ‘Seven is too many.’

‘There may be seven,’ Osser said. ‘The bishop has a list of seven names written by the sisters of the Helskian Order.’

‘I thought the Pope called for all the seers to be killed. She said the nunneries weren’t built to shelter witches.’ The decree had stuck with me – an example of the lengths to which the Vatican would go in order to avoid unwelcome facts.

‘Her Holiness called for the sisters of Helsk to be blinded,’ said Father Gomst, having finished or abandoned his prayers. ‘And they were blinded. But their visions continue.’