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‘You’re insane.’ The words escaped in a whisper. For some reason he didn’t lisp when he whispered.
The riders, Marclos’s personal guard, led the charge. Now that they had fifty foot soldiers around them, they had found their courage. Up on the ridge the two dozen house-troops took their cue and began to run with the slope. The archers started to emerge from the thicket for better aim.
‘These bastards will burn you alive if they take you that way,’ I said to the five brothers I had with me. Then I paused and I looked them in the eye, each one. ‘But they don’t want to die. They won’t want to go back to the Count either way. Would you take old bonfire-Renar his dead son back, and smooth it over with an “oh yes, but we killed scavengers … there was this boy … and an old man with no teeth …”?’
‘So mark me now. You fight these tame soldiers, and you show them hell. Show them enough of it and the bastards’ll break and run.’ I paused and caught Brother Roddat’s eye, for he was a weasel and like to run, sense or no sense. ‘You stick with me, Brother Roddat.’
I looked to the thicket, over the heads of the men surging up from the market field and saw an archer fall among the trees. Then another. An armoured figure emerged from the undergrowth. The archers in front of him still had their eyes on the advance. He took the head from the first one with a clean swing. Thank you, Makin, I thought. Fat Burlow came out at a run then, barrelling his armoured bulk into the bowmen.
The troops from the ridge passed by Rike’s position and his lads set to gutting them from behind. Not the sort of odds Little Rikey favoured, but the word ‘loot’ always did have an uncanny effect on him.
ChooOm! The Nuban’s crossbow shot its load. He couldn’t really miss with so many targets, but by rights he shouldn’t be able to pick his man with that thing. Even so, both bolts hit the lead rider in the chest and lifted him out of his saddle. Kent and the other two rose from behind the burgermeister’s walls. They did a double-take when they saw what was coming, but choices were in short supply and they had plenty of arrows.
The Renar troops hit our trip-pits at full tilt. I swear I heard the first ankle snap. After that it was all yelling as man went over man. Kent and Liar and Row took the opportunity to send a dozen more arrows into the main mass of the attack. The Nuban loaded his monster again and this time nearly took the head off a horse. The rider went over the top, and the beast fell onto him, brains spilling on the ground.
Some of those soldier boys didn’t like the road so much any more and took to finding a way through the ruins. Of course they found more than a way, they found the brothers who were waiting there.
The archers broke first. There isn’t much a man in a padded tunic, with a knife at his hip, can do against a decent swordsman in plate armour. And even Burlow was more than decent.
Three of the riders reached us. We didn’t stay on the street to meet them. We fell back into the skeleton of what used to be Decker’s Smithy. So they rode in, slowly, ash crunching under hoof. Elban leapt the first one from an alcove over the furnaces. Took that rider down sweet as sweet he did, his sharp little knife hitting home over and over. If you recall, I said Elban had a bite to him.
Two brothers pulled the second rider down, feinting in and out until they got an opening. He had no room to move his horse around. Should have got off.
That left me and Scar-face. He had a bit more to him, and had dismounted before he followed us. He came at me slow and easy, the tip of his sword waving before him. He wasn’t in a hurry: there’s no rush when the best part of fifty men are hard on your heels.
‘Flag o’ truce?’ I said, trying to goad him.
He didn’t speak. His lips pressed together in a tight line and he stepped forward, real slow. That’s when Brother Roddat stepped up behind him and stuck a sword through the back of his neck.
‘Should have taken your moment, Scar-face,’ I said.
I got back onto the street just in time to meet some huge red-faced bastard of a house-trooper who’d run his way up the hill. He pretty much exploded as the Nuban’s bolts hit him. Then they were on us. The Nuban picked up his mattock and Red Kent grabbed his axe. Roddat came past me with his spear and found a man to pin with it.
They came in two waves. There were the dozen or so who’d kept up with Marclos’s bodyguard and then behind them, another twenty coming at a slower pace. The rest lay strewn along the main street or dead in the ruins.
I ran past Roddat and the man he’d skewered. Past a couple of swordsmen who didn’t want me bad enough, and I was through the first wave. I could see that skinny bastard with the boils on his cheeks, there in the second wave, the one who’d joked about me on the fire.
Me charging the second wave, howling for Boil-cheeks’s blood. That’s what broke them. And the men from the ridge? They never reached us. Little Rikey thought they might be carrying loot.
I reckon more than half of the Count’s men ran. But they weren’t the Count’s men any more. They couldn’t go back.
Makin came up the hill, blood all over him. He looked like Red Kent the day we found him! Burlow came with him, but he stopped to loot the dead, and of course that involves turning the injured into the dead.
‘Why?’ Makin wanted to know. ‘I mean, superb victory, my prince … but why in the name of all the hells run such a risk?’
I held my sword up. The brothers around me took a step back, but to his credit, Makin didn’t flinch. ‘See this sword?’ I said. ‘Not a drop of blood on it.’ I showed it around then waved it at the ridge. ‘And out there there’s fifty men who’ll never fight for the Count of Renar again. They work for me now. They’re carrying a story about a prince who killed the Count’s son. A prince who would not retreat. A prince who never retreats. A prince who didn’t have to blood his sword to beat a hundred men with thirty.
‘Think about it, Makin. I made Roddat here fight like a madman because I told him if they think you’re not going to give up, they’ll break. Now I’ve got fifty enemies who’re out there telling everyone who’ll listen, “That Prince of Ancrath, he’s not going to break”. It’s a simple sum. If they think we won’t break, they give up.’
All true. It wasn’t the reason, but it was all true.
9
Four years earlier
The baton struck my wrist with a loud crack. My other hand caught hold as it rose. I tried to twist it free, but Lundist held tight. Even so, I could see his surprise.
‘I see you were paying attention after all, Prince Jorg.’
In truth I had been somewhere else, somewhere bloody, but my body has a habit of keeping watch for me at such times.
‘Perhaps you can summarize my points thus far?’ he said.
‘We are defined by our enemies. This holds true for men, and by extension, their countries,’ I said. I’d recognized the book Lundist brought to the lesson. That our enemies shape us was its central thesis.
‘Good.’ Lundist pulled his baton free and pointed to the table-map. ‘Gelleth, Renar, and the Ken Marshes. Ancrath is a product of her environs; these are the wolves at her door.’
‘The Renar highlands are all I care about,’ I said. ‘The rest can go hang.’ I rocked my chair onto the back two legs. ‘When Father orders the Gate against Count Renar, I’m going too. I’ll kill him myself if they let me.’
Lundist shot me a look, a sharp one, to see if I meant it. There’s something wrong about such blue eyes in an old man, but wrong or not he could see to the heart with them.
‘Boys of ten are better occupied with Euclid and Plato. When we visit war, Sun Tzu will be our guide. Strategy and tactics, these are of the mind, these are the tools of prince and king.’
I did mean it. I had a hunger in me, an aching for the Count’s death. The tight lines around Lundist’s mouth told me that he knew how deep the hunger ran.
I looked to the high window where sunlight fingered into the schoolroom and turned the dust to dancing motes of gold. ‘I will kill him,’ I said. Then, with a sudden need to shock, ‘Maybe with a poker, like I killed that ape Inch.’ It galled me to have killed a man and have no memory of it, not even a trace of whatever rage drove me to it.
I wanted some new truth from Lundist. Explain me, to me. Whatever the words, that was my question, youth to old age. But even tutors have their limits.
I rocked forward, set my hands upon the map, and looked to Lundist once more. I saw the pity in him. A part of me wanted to take it, wanted to tell him how I’d struggled against those hooks, how I’d watched William die. A part of me longed to lay it all down, that weight I carried, the acid pain of memory, the corrosion of hate.
Lundist leaned across the table. His hair fell around his face, long in the fashion of Orient, so white as to be almost silver. ‘We are defined by our enemies – but also we can choose them. Make an enemy of hatred, Jorg. Do that and you could be a great man, but more importantly, maybe a happy one.’
There’s something brittle in me that will break before it bends. Something sharp that puts an edge on all the soft words I once owned. I don’t think the Count of Renar put it there that day they killed my mother, he just drew the razor from its sheath. Part of me longed for a surrender, to take the gift Lundist held before me.
I cut away that portion of my soul. For good or ill, it died that day.
‘When will the Gate march?’ I left nothing in my voice to say I’d heard his words.
‘The Army of the Gate won’t march,’ Lundist said. His shoulders held a slump, tiredness or defeat.
That hit me in the gut, a surprise shot passing my guard. I jumped up toppling the chair. ‘They will!’ How could they not?
Lundist turned toward the door. His robes made a dry sound as he moved, like a sigh. Disbelief pinned me to the spot, my limbs strangers to me. I could feel the heat rising in my cheeks. ‘How could they not?’ I shouted at his back, angry for feeling like a child.
‘Ancrath is defined by her enemies,’ he said, walking still. ‘The Army of the Gate must guard the homeland, and no other army would reach the Count in his halls.’
‘A queen has died.’ Mother’s throat opened again and coloured my vision red. The hooks burned in my flesh once more. ‘A prince of the realm, slain.’ Broken like a toy.
‘And there is a price to pay.’ Lundist paused, one hand against the door, leaning as if for support.
‘The price of blood and iron!’
‘Rights to the Cathun River, three thousand ducats, and five Araby stallions.’ Lundist wouldn’t look at me.
‘What?’
‘River trade, gold, horses.’ Those blue eyes found me over his shoulder. An old hand took the door-ring.
The words made sense one at a time, not together.
‘The army …’ I started.
‘Will not move.’ Lundist opened the door. The day streamed in, bright, hot, laced with the distant laughter of squires at play.
‘I’ll go alone. That man will die screaming, by my hand.’ Cold fury crawled across my skin.
I needed a sword, a good knife at least. A horse, a map – I snatched the one before me, old hide, musty, the borders tattooed in Indus ink. I needed … an explanation.
‘How? How can their deaths be purchased?’
‘Your father forged his alliance with the Horse Coast kingdoms through marriage. The strength of that alliance threatened Count Renar. The Count struck early, before the links grew too strong, hoping to remove both the wife, and the heirs.’ Lundist stepped into the light, and his hair became golden, a halo in the breeze. ‘Your father hasn’t the strength to destroy Renar and keep the wolves from Ancrath’s doors. Your grandfather on the Horse Coast will not accept that, so the alliance is dead, Renar is safe. Now Renar seeks a truce so he may turn his strength to other borders. Your father has sold him such a truce.’
Inside I was falling, pitching, tumbling. Falling into an endless void.
‘Come, Prince.’ Lundist held out a hand. ‘Let’s walk in the sunshine. It’s not a day for desk-learning.’
I bunched the map in my fist, and somewhere in me I found a smile, sharp, bitter, but with a chill to it that held me to my purpose. ‘Of course, dear tutor. Let us walk in the sun. It’s not a day for wasting – oh no.’
And we went out into the day, and all the heat of it couldn’t touch the ice in me.
Knife-work is a dirty business, yet Brother Grumlow is always clean.
10
We had ourselves a prisoner. One of Marclos’s riders proved less dead than expected. Bad news for him all in all. Makin had Burlow and Rike bring the man to me on the burgermeister’s steps.
‘Says his name is Renton. “Sir” Renton, if you please,’ Makin said.
I looked the fellow up and down. A nice black bruise wrapped itself halfway round his forehead, and an overhasty embrace with Mother Earth had left his nose somewhat flatter than he might have liked. His moustache and beard could have been neatly trimmed, but caked in all that blood they looked a mess.
‘Fell off your horse did you, Renton?’ I asked.
‘You stabbed Count Renar’s son under a flag of truce,’ he said. He sounded a little comical on the ‘stabbed’ and ‘son’. A broken nose will do that for you.
‘I did,’ I said. ‘I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t have stabbed him under.’ I held Renton’s gaze; he had squinty little eyes. He wouldn’t have been much to look at in court finery. On the steps, covered in mud and blood, he looked like a rat’s leavings. ‘If I were you, I’d be more worried about my own fate than whether Marclos was stabbed in accordance with the right social niceties.’
That of course was a lie. If I were in his place, I’d have been looking for an opportunity to stick a knife in me. But I knew enough to know that most men didn’t share my priorities. As Makin said, something in me had got broken, but not so broken I didn’t remember what it was.
‘My family is rich, they’ll ransom me,’ Renton said. He spoke quickly, nervous now, as if he’d just realized his situation.
I yawned. ‘No they’re not. If they were rich you wouldn’t be riding in chain armour as one of Marclos’s guards.’ I yawned again, stretching my mouth until my jaw cracked. ‘Maical, get me a cup of that festival beer, will you?’
‘Maical’s dead,’ Rike said, from behind Sir Renton.
‘Never?’ I said. ‘Idiot Maical? I thought God had blessed him with the same luck that looks after drunkards and madmen.’
‘Well he’s near enough dead,’ Rike said. ‘Got him a gut-full of rusty iron from one of Renar’s boys. We laid him out in the shade.’
‘Touching,’ I said. ‘Now get my beer.’
Rike grumbled and slapped Jobe into taking the errand. I turned back to Sir Renton. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look as sad as you might expect a man in such a bad place to look. His eyes kept sliding over to Father Gomst. Here’s a man with faith in a higher source, I thought.
‘So, Sir Renton,’ I said. ‘What brings young Marclos to Ancrath’s protectorates? What does the Count think he’s up to?’
Some of the brothers had gathered around the steps for the show, but most were still looting the dead. A man’s coin is nice and portable, but the brothers wouldn’t stop there. I expected the head-cart to be heaped with arms and armour when we left. Boots too; there’s three coppers in a well-made pair of boots.
Renton coughed and wiped at his nose, spreading black gore across his face. ‘I don’t know the Count’s plans. I’m not privy to his private council.’ He looked up at Father Gomst. ‘As God is my witness.’
I leaned in close to him. He smelled sour, like cheese in the sun. ‘God is your witness, Renton, he’s going to watch you die.’
I let that sink in. I gave old Gomsty a smile. ‘You can look after this knight’s soul, Father. The sins of the flesh though – they’re all mine.’
Rike handed me my cup of beer, and I had a sip. ‘The day you’re tired of looting, Little Rikey, is the day you’re tired of life,’ I said. It got a chuckle from the brothers on the steps. ‘Why’re you still here when you could be cutting up the dead in search of a golden liver?’
‘Come to see you put the hurt on Rat-face,’ Rike said.
‘You’re going to be disappointed then,’ I said. ‘Sir Rat-face is going to tell me everything I want to know, and I’m not even going to have to raise my voice. When I’m done, I’m going to hand him over to the new burgermeister of Norwood. The peasants will probably burn him alive, and he’ll count it the easy way out.’ I kept it conversational. I find it’s the coldest threats that reach the deepest.
Out in the marshes I’d made a dead man run in terror, with nothing more than what I keep inside. It occurred to me that what scared the dead might worry the living a piece too.
Sir Renton didn’t sound too scared yet though. ‘You stabbed the better man today, boy, and there’s a better man before you. You’re nothing more than shit on my shoe.’ I’d hurt his pride. He was a knight after all, and here was a beardless lad making mock. Besides, the best I’d offered was an ‘easy’ burning. Nobody considers that the soft option.
‘When I was nine, the Count of Renar tried to have me killed,’ I said. I kept my voice calm. It wasn’t hard. I was calm. Anger carries less horror with it, men understand anger. It promises resolution; maybe bloody resolution, but swift. ‘The Count failed, but I watched my mother and my little brother killed.’
‘All men die,’ Renton said. He spat a dark and bloody mess onto the steps. ‘What makes you so special?’
He had a good point. What made my loss, my pain, any more important than everyone else’s?
‘That’s a good question,’ I said. ‘A damn good question.’
It was. There weren’t but a handful of the prisoners we’d taken from Marclos’s train who hadn’t seen a son, or a husband, a mother or a lover, killed. And killed in the past week. And this was my soft option, the mercies of these peasants compared to the attention of a young man whose hurt stood four years old.
‘Consider me a spokesman,’ I said. ‘When it comes to stage-acting, some men are more eloquent than others. It’s given to particular men to have a gift with the bow.’ I nodded to the Nuban. ‘Some men can knock the eye out of a bull at a thousand paces. They don’t aim any better for wanting it, they don’t shoot straighter because they’re justified. They just shoot straighter. Now me, I just … avenge myself better than most. Consider it a gift.’
Renton laughed at that and spat again. This time I saw part of a tooth in the mess. ‘You think you’re worse than the fire, boy?’ he asked. ‘I’ve seen men burn. A lot of men.’
He had a point. ‘You’ve a lot of good points, Sir Renton,’ I said.
