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We reached the Red Gate on the far side of the courtyard.
‘That boy could die,’ Lundist said.
‘I know,’ I said. ‘Take me to see these prisoners that Father’s to have killed.’
12
Four years earlier
More of the Tall Castle lies below the ground than above. It should be called the Deep Castle, really. It took us a while to reach the dungeons. We heard the shrieks from a level up, through walls of Builder-stone.
‘This visit is, perhaps, a bad idea,’ Lundist said, pausing before an iron door.
‘It’s my idea, Tutor,’ I said. ‘I thought you wanted me to learn by my mistakes?’
Another scream reached us, guttural with a hoarse edge to it, an animal sound.
‘Your father wouldn’t approve of this visit,’ Lundist said. He pressed his lips in a tight line, troubled.
‘That’s the first time you’ve called on Father’s wisdom to resolve an issue. Shame on you, Tutor Lundist.’ Nothing would turn me back now.
‘There are things that children—’
‘Too late, that horse already bolted. Stable burned.’ I brushed past him and rapped on the door with the hilt of my dagger. ‘Open up.’
A rattle of keys, and the door slid inward on oiled hinges. The wave of stench that hit me nearly took my breath. A warty old fellow in warder’s leathers leaned into view and opened his mouth to speak.
‘Don’t,’ I said, holding the business end of my dagger toward his tongue.
I walked on, Lundist at my heels.
‘You always told me to look and make my own judgement, Lundist,’ I said. I respected him for that. ‘No time to get squeamish.’
‘Jorg …’ He was torn, I could hear it in his voice, wracked between emotions I couldn’t understand, and logic that I could. ‘Prince—’
The cry rang out again, much louder now. I’d heard the sound before. It pushed at me, trying to force me away. The first time I heard that kind of pain, my mother’s pain, something held me back. I’ll tell you it was the hook-briar which held me fast. I’ll show you the scars. But in the night, before the dreams come, a voice whispers to me that it was fear that held me back, terror that rooted me in the briar, safe while I watched them die.
Another scream, more terrible and more desperate than any before. I felt the hooks in my flesh.
‘Jorg!’
I shook Lundist’s hands from me, and ran toward the sound.
I didn’t have far to run. I pulled up short at the entrance to a wide room, torch-lit, with cell doors lining three sides. At the centre, two men stood on opposite sides of a table, to which a third man had been secured with chains. The larger of the two warders held an iron poker, one end in a basket of glowing coals.
None of the three noted my arrival, nor did any of the faces pressed to the barred windows in the cell doors turn my way. I walked in. I heard Lundist arrive at the entrance and stop to take in the scene, as I had.
I drew close and the warder without the iron glanced my way. He jumped as if stung. ‘What in the—’ He shook his head to clear his vision. ‘Who? I mean …’
I’d imagined the torturers would be terrifying men with cruel faces, thin lips, hooked noses, the eyes of soulless demons. I think I found their ordinariness more of a shock. The shorter of the two looked a touch simple, but in a friendly way. Mild I’d call him.
‘Who’re you?’ This one had a more brutish cast to him, but I could picture him at ale, laughing, or teaching his son pitch-ball.
I hadn’t any of my court weeds on, just a simple tunic for the schoolroom. There was no reason for warders to recognize me. They would enter the vaults through the Villains’ Gate and had probably never walked in the castle above.
‘I’m Jorg,’ I said, in a servant’s accent. ‘My uncle paid old Wart-face at the door to let me see the prisoners.’ I pointed toward Lundist. ‘We’re going to the executions tomorrow. I wanted to see criminals close up first.’
I wasn’t looking at the warders now. The man on the table held my gaze. I’d seen only one black skin before, a slave to some noble visiting Father’s court from the south. But that man was brown. The fellow on the table had skin blacker than ink. He turned his head to face my way, slow as if it weighed like lead. The whites of his eyes seemed to shine in all that blackness.
‘Wart-face? Heh, I like that.’ The big warder relaxed and took up his iron again. ‘If there’s two ducats in it for me and Grebbin here, then I reckon you can stay and watch this fellow squeal.’
‘Berrec, it don’t seem right.’ Grebbin furrowed his broad forehead. ‘He’s a young-un an’ all.’
Berrec pulled the poker from the coals and held it toward Grebbin. ‘You don’t want to stand between me and a ducat, my friend.’
The black man’s naked chest glistened below the glowing point. Ugly burns marked his ribs, red flesh erupting like new-ploughed furrows. I could smell the sweet stench of roasted meat.
‘He’s very black,’ I said.
‘He’s a Nuban is what he is,’ Berrec said, scowling. He gave the poker a critical look and returned it to the fire.
‘Why are you burning him?’ I asked. I didn’t feel easy under the Nuban’s scrutiny.
The question puzzled them for a moment. Grebbin’s frown deepened.
‘He’s got the devil in him,’ Berrec said at last. ‘All them Nubans have. Heathens, the lot of them. I heard that Father Gomst, him as leads the King himself in prayer, says to burn the heathen.’ Berrec laid a hand on the Nuban’s stomach, a disturbingly tender touch. ‘So we’re just crisping this one up a bit, before the King comes to watch him killed on the morrow.’
‘Executed.’ Grebbin pronounced the word with the precision of one who has practised it many times.
‘Executed, killed, what’s the difference? They all end up for the worms.’ Berrec spat into the coals.
The Nuban kept his eyes on me, a quiet study. I felt something I couldn’t name. I felt somehow wrong for being there. I ground my teeth together and met his gaze.
‘What did he do?’ I asked.
‘Do?’ Grebbin snorted. ‘He’s a prisoner.’
‘His crime?’ I asked.
Berrec shrugged. ‘Getting caught.’
Lundist spoke from the doorway. ‘I believe … Jorg, that all of the prisoners for execution are bandits, captured by the Army of the March. The King ordered the action to prevent raids across the Lichway into Norwood and other protectorates.’
I broke my gaze from the Nuban’s, and let it slide across the marks of his torture. Where the skin remained unburned, patterns of raised scars picked out symbols, simple in design but arresting to the eye. A soiled loincloth hung across his hips. His wrists and ankles were bound with iron shackles secured with a basic pin-lock. Blood oozed along the short chains anchoring them to the table.
‘Is he dangerous?’ I asked. I moved close. I could taste the burned meat.
‘Yes.’ The Nuban smiled as he said it, his teeth bloody.
‘You shut your heathen hole, you.’ Berrec yanked the iron from the coals. A shower of sparks flew up as he lifted the white-hot poker to eye-level. The glow made something ugly of his face. It reminded me of a wild night when the lightning lit the faces of Count Renar’s men.
I turned to the Nuban. If he’d been watching the iron I’d have left him to it.
‘Are you dangerous?’ I asked him.
‘Yes.’
I pulled the pin from the manacle on his right wrist.
‘Show me.’
13
Four years earlier
The Nuban moved fast, but it wasn’t his speed that impressed, it was his lack of hesitation. He reached for Berrec’s wrist. A sudden heave brought the warder sprawling across him. The poker in Berrec’s outstretched hand skewered Grebbin through the ribs, deep enough so that Berrec lost his grip on it as Grebbin twisted away.
Without pause, the Nuban lifted himself halfway to sitting, as close to upright as his manacled wrist would let him. Berrec slid down the Nuban’s chest, sliding on sweat and blood, into his lap. He started to raise himself. The Nuban’s descending elbow put an end to the escape attempt. It caught Berrec on the back of the neck, and bones crunched.
Grebbin screamed of course, but screams were common enough in the dungeon. He tried to run, but somehow lost his sense of direction and slammed into a cell door, with enough force to drive the point of the poker out below his shoulder blade. The impact knocked him over and he didn’t get up again. He twisted for a moment, mouthing something, with only wisps of smoke or steam escaping his lips.
A cheer went up from those cells containing occupants too stupid to know when to stay silent.
Lundist could have run. He had plenty of time. I expected him to go for help, but he was halfway to me by the time Grebbin hit the ground. The Nuban pushed Berrec clear, and freed his other wrist.
‘Run!’ I shouted at Lundist in case it hadn’t occurred to him.
Actually, he was running, only in the wrong direction. I knew the years lay less heavy on him than an old man had a right to expect, but I didn’t think he could sprint.
I moved to put the table, and the Nuban, between Lundist and me.
The Nuban unpinned both ankles as Lundist reached him. ‘Take the boy, old man, and go.’ He had the deepest voice I’d ever heard.
Lundist fixed the Nuban with those disconcerting blue eyes of his. His robes settled, forgetting the rush from the doorway. He held hands to his chest, one atop the other. ‘If you go now, man of Nuba, I will not stop you.’
That brought a scatter of laughter from the cells.
The Nuban watched Lundist with the same intensity I’d seen earlier. He had a few inches on my tutor, but it was the difference in bulk that made it seem a contest between David and Goliath. Where Lundist stood slender as a spear, the Nuban had as much weight again, and more, corded into thick slabs of muscle over heavy bone.
The Nuban didn’t laugh at Lundist. Perhaps he saw more than the prisoners did. ‘I’ll take my brothers with me.’
Lundist chewed on that, then took a pace back. ‘Jorg, here.’ He kept his gaze on the Nuban.
‘Brothers?’ I asked. I couldn’t see any black faces at the bars.
The Nuban gave a broad smile. ‘Once I had hut-brothers. Now they are far away, maybe dead.’ He spread his arms, the smile becoming half grimace as he felt his burns. ‘But the gods have given me new brothers, road-brothers.’
‘Road-brothers.’ I rolled the words across my tongue. An image of Will flickered in my mind, blood and curls. There was power here. I felt it.
‘Kill them both, and let me out.’ A door to my left rattled as if a bull were worrying at it. If the speaker matched his voice, there was an ogre in there.
‘You owe me your life, Nuban,’ I said.
‘Yes.’ He jerked the keys from Berrec’s belt and stepped toward the cell on my left. I stepped with him, keeping him between Lundist and myself.
‘You’ll give me a life in return,’ I said.
He paused, glancing at Lundist. ‘Go with your uncle, boy.’
‘You’ll give me a life, brother, or I’ll take yours as forfeit,’ I said.
More laughter from the cells, and this time the Nuban joined in. ‘Who do you want killed, Little Brother?’ He set the key in the lock.
‘I’ll tell you when we see him,’ I said. To specify Count Renar now would raise too many questions. ‘I’m coming with you.’
Lundist rushed forward at that. He pivoted past the Nuban, delivering a kick to the back of his knee. I heard a loud click as the black man went down.
The Nuban twisted as he fell, and lunged for Lundist. Somehow the old man evaded him, and when the Nuban sprawled at his feet, Lundist kicked him in the neck, a blow that cut off his oath and left him limp on the stone floor.
I almost skipped free, but Lundist’s fingers knotted in my hair as it streamed behind me. ‘Jorg! This is not the way!’
I fought to escape, snarling. ‘It’s exactly the way.’ And I knew it to be true. The wildness in the Nuban, the bonds between these men, the focus on what will make the difference – no matter what the situation – all of it echoed in me.
From the corner of my eye I caught sight of the cell door opening. The click had been the key turning.
Lundist held my shoulders and made me face him. ‘You’ve no place with these men, Jorg. You can’t imagine the life they lead. They don’t have the answers you want.’ He had such intensity to him, I could almost believe he cared.
A figure emerged from the cell, stooping to come through the doorway. I’d never seen a man so big, not Sir Gerrant of the Table Guard, not Shem the stablehand, nor the wrestlers from The Slavs.
The man came up behind Lundist, quick, a rolling storm.
‘Jorg, you think I don’t understand—’ The sweep of a massive arm cut off Lundist’s words and sent him to the stone floor with such force I’d have winced even if he hadn’t taken a handful of my hair with him.
The man towered over me, an ugly giant in stinking rags, with his hair hanging down in matted curtains. The scale of him mesmerized me. He reached for me, and I moved too slow. The hand that caught me could almost close around my waist. He lifted me level with his face, and his filthy mane parted as he looked up.
‘Jesu, but you’re one hideous offence to the eye.’ I could tell he was going to kill me, so no point in being tactful. ‘I can see why the King wants to execute you.’
Even from the anonymity of the cells the laughter was hesitant. Not a man to mock, then. Nothing soft in his face, just brute lines, scar, and the jut of bone beneath coarse skin. He lifted me, as if to dash me on the stone, like throwing down an egg.
‘No!’
I could see under the giant’s arm, an old man and a red-haired youth had followed him out and were now helping the Nuban to his feet.
‘No,’ the Nuban said again. ‘I owe him a life, Brother Price. And besides, without him, you’d still be in that cell waiting on the pleasures of the morrow.’
Brother Price gave me a look of impersonal malice, and let me fall as though I’d ceased to exist. ‘Let them all out.’ He growled the words.
The Nuban gave the keys to the old man. ‘Brother Elban.’ Then he came across to where I’d landed. Lundist lay close by, face to the floor, blood pooling around his forehead.
