Published at 29th of December 2023 9:40 am

Chapter 29: Four years earlier

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On the long journey south I questioned the motivation for my diversion more than once. More than a hundred times, truth be told. The fact of the matter was that I hadn’t found what I needed yet. I didn’t know what I needed, but I knew it wasn’t in the Haunt. My old tutor, Lundist, once said that if you don’t know where to look for something, just start looking where you are. For a clever man he could be very stupid. I planned to look everywhere.

We rode out on the sixth day. I sat in Brath’s saddle stiff in every muscle, my face aching and weeping.

“You’re still sick,” Makin said beside me.

“I’m sicker of sitting in that chair watching you gorge yourself as if your only ambition were to be spherical,” I said.

The Duke came to the doors of his hall with a hundred and more of his warriors to see us off. Sindri stood at his right hand, Elin at his left. Alaric led them in a cheer. Three times they roared and shook their axes overhead. They were a scary enough bunch saying farewell to friends. I didn’t fancy the chances of any they deemed to be enemies.

The Duke left his men to come to my side. “You worked a magic here, Jorg. It will not be forgotten.”

I nodded. “Leave the Heimrift in peace, Duke,” I said. “Halradra and his sons are sleeping. No need to go poking them.”

“And you have a friend up there.” He smiled.

“He’s no friend of mine,” I said. Part of me wished he was though. I liked Gorgoth. Unfortunately he was a good judge of men.

“Good travels.” Sindri came to stand beside his father, grinning as ever.

“Come back to us in the winter, King Jorg.” Elin joined them.

“You wouldn’t want to see this ugly face again.” I watched her pale eyes.

“A man’s scars tell his story. Yours is a story I like to read,” she said.

I had to grin at that, though it hurt me. “Ha!” And I wheeled Brath to lead my Brothers south.

Back on the road, and with regular applications of Ekatri’s black ointment, my face began to heal, the raw flesh congealing to an ugly mass of scar tissue. From the right you got handsome Jorgy Ancrath, from the left, something monstrous: my true nature showing through, some might say. The pain eased, replaced by an unpleasant tightness and a deeper burning around the bones. At last I could bear to eat. Now all the fine servings from the Duke’s table were trailing farther and farther behind us, I discovered that I had an awful hunger about me. And that’s a thing about the road. Out on a horse, trotting the ways of empire day after day with nothing to eat but what you can carry or steal, you discover that everything tastes good when your stomach is empty. If you look at a mouldy piece of cheese and your mouth doesn’t water—you’re just not proper hungry.

In the Haunt the cooks would honey-glaze venison and garnish it with baked, rosemary-sprinkled dormice just to tempt my palate. After days in the saddle I find that in order for food to tempt me it must be either hot or cold and preferably, though not essentially, if it is animal, that it should not be moving and should once have possessed a backbone.

Around the fire at camp on that first evening we made a subdued huddle, somehow more reduced by the absence of our smallest companion than by that of our largest. I stared at the flames and imagined a sympathetic tingling in the bones of my jaw, even under the deadening effect of the ointment.

“I miss the little fellow.” Grumlow surprised me.

“Aye.” Sim spat.

Red Kent looked up from the polishing of his axe. “Did he give good account of himself, Jorg?”

“He saved me and Gorgoth both,” I said. “And he finished the fire-mage before he died.”

“Sounds about right,” Row said. “He were a godless bastard, that one, but he had a fire in him, God did he.”

“Makin,” I said.

He looked up, the flames reflected in his eyes.

“Since Coddin is at home…” I paused then, realizing that I’d called the Haunt “home” for the first time. “Since Coddin is at home, and the Nuban isn’t with us…”

“Yes?” he said.

“I’m saying, if I set on a path that’s…maybe a little too harsh. Just let me know. All right?”

He pursed those too-fleshy lips of his then sucked air in through his teeth. “I’ll try,” he said. He’d been trying all these years, I knew that, but now I gave him permission.

For a week we skirted villages, circled towns, and picked our way through the soft edges of the kingdoms we had passed on our journey north. We came to the settlement of Rye, too big to be a village, too recent and too random to be a town. On our trip out we had purchased provisions there and with our saddlebags flapping empty we rode in to resupply. Paying for goods still feels odd to me, but it’s a good habit to get into when you’ve the coin to spare. Of course you should steal every now and then, take something by force just for the wickedness of it, or how else will you keep your hand in the game? But aside from that, paying is recommended, especially if you’re a king with a pocketful of gold.

The main square in Rye isn’t square and it’s only just about “main” as there are other markets and clearings in Rye almost as large. Rike had loaded the last sack of oats onto that great carthorse of his and Makin was trying to strap his saddlebag over four gutted hares in their fur when the crowd flowing around us seemed to part like the Red Sea for an old man. I had been leaning against Brath feeling rather faint. Summer had decided to give us a preview and the sun came beating down out of a faded sky. My face ached like a bastard and a fever had got its claws into me.

“Prince of Thorns!” the old fellow cried as he homed in on me, loud enough to turn heads.

“That’d be ‘king’ if it’s anything,” I muttered. “And if there’s a Thorns on the map then I must have missed it.”

He stopped about a yard in front of me, and drew himself up tall. A skinny fellow, dried like a prune, with white hair fluffing at the sides of a bald head. His eyes were milky, though not like cataracts but somehow pearly with a hint of rainbows. “Prince of Thorns!” Louder this time. People started to close in.

“Go away.” I used my quiet voice, the one that recommends you listen.

“The Gilden Gate will open for the Prince of Arrow.” Something electric crackled in the air around us, the white fluff stood out from the sides of his head. “You can only—”

There’s an art to the quick drawing of a sword. Providing the scabbard strap is undone, and I always keep mine so, you can propel the whole blade several feet into the air just by hooking a hand loosely under one side of the cross-guard and literally throwing it upward. With good timing and a quick turn of the body you can snatch the hilt at the apex of the throw and as the sword falls you can turn that momentum into a sudden thrust into whatever is beside you.

I looked back over my shoulder. The man’s eyes still had their milky sheen but he’d stopped prophesying on me. By stepping away I drew the blade from his chest. He looked down at the scarlet wound but, oddly, did not fall.

I waited a moment, then another. The crowd kept their silence and the old man kept standing, making a close study of the blood pumping down his stomach.

“Hey,” I said.

He looked up at that, which helped. His chin had been in the way. I took his head with one clean blow. I’m not one to boast but it’s not easy to decapitate a man in one swing. I’ve seen expert axemen take three blows to do it at an execution when their victim’s neck is laid out for them on a block.

The seer had enough grace to let his body topple after his head landed by his feet. He kept looking at me though, with those pearly eyes. There’s no magic in it, a severed head can watch you for close on a minute if you let it, but they say it’s bad luck to be the last thing it sees.

I picked the head up by its tufts of hair and held it facing me at eye level. “Seriously? You can tell me what I am and am not going to sit on in years to come and you didn’t see that one coming?” I kept my voice loud for the crowd. “This fake has been living off your misery and the misery of folk like you for years.”

And in a quiet voice, just for the seer and any who watched me through his eyes, for all those who watched this moment across the span of years before I was born. “I will make my own future. Being dead doesn’t make you right. Everybody dies.”

The lips smiled. They writhed. “Dead King,” they said, without sound, and where I touched him my skin crawled, as if a spider unfolded itself in my palm.

I dropped the head and kicked it into the crowd. I say “kicked” but in truth it’s a bad idea to kick a head. I learned that years ago, a lesson that cost me two broken toes. What you want to do is shove the head with the side of your foot, like you’re throwing it. It’s going to roll anyhow so you don’t need that much force. See, the thing about severed heads is the owner no longer has any interest in minimizing the force of the blow, or any ability to do so for that matter. When you kick somebody in the head as you do from time to time, they tend to be actively trying to move themselves out of the way and the contact is lessened. A severed head is a dead weight, even if it’s watching you.

And that exhausts my insights into the kicking of severed heads. Admittedly it’s more than most people have to offer on the subject but there were Mayans who knew a lot more than I do. That of course is a whole different ball-game.

Makin finished with his straps and stepped beside me. “That was probably too harsh,” he said. “You did ask me to point these things out.”

“Fuck off,” I said.

I waved to the Brothers. “Let’s ride.”

For close on a hundred miles we retraced our path along the North Way, down through the duchies of Parquat and Bavar where most travellers are welcome so long as they don’t plan to stay, and even our sort are tolerated so long as we don’t get off our horses.

The town of Hanver greeted us with bunting. Among those peaceful huddles of thatched cottages that I had remarked upon whilst travelling north, Hanver lay equally untouched and unspoiled, a place not visited by war and cradled amidst idyllic farmland divided into tiny fertile fields.

“Looks like a holy day.” Kent stood in his stirrups to see. For all that he was a dark and deadly bastard, Kent had himself a pious nature, the good kind of pious, or at least the better kind.

“Gah.” Rike liked his celebrations louder, more wild, and more likely to end in a riot.

“There’ll be chorals,” Sim said, ever the music-lover.

And so without much more than a nod toward the fact I was king of Renar and that none of them were much more than scabby peasants at the end of it all, the Brothers led me into Hanver. We rode in down the main street, through the crowd, the locals with scrubbed faces, sporting their best rags, the children waving ribbon-sticks, some clutching sugar-apples kept sweet over winter. The Brothers set off on separate ways, Sim to the church, Grumlow to the smithy, Rike handing his reins to a boy outside the first tavern. Row, more particular, chose the second tavern and Kent veered off to a stables to get an expert eye on Hellax’s front right foreleg.

“Looks like there’ll be more than chorals.” Makin nodded ahead to the main square. A wooden platform had been erected, fresh timbers, still weeping. A wide stage, a gallows frame, and three strangling cords dangling in the breeze.

We tied up at the public tether and Makin flicked the watch-boy a copper double.

“Church execution,” Makin said. A white flag fluttered at the far corner of the platform, the holy cross and cup inked onto the linen.

“Hmmm.” I had little enough enthusiasm for matters ecumenical in the Tall Castle. On the road the church spread Roma’s poisons without moderation. And that perhaps is the only time I have considered my father to be a moderating influence.

We stood with the others in the sunshine, snagging skewers of roast mutton from a passing seller. An ale-boy sold us arac in pewter cups, a dark and bitter local brew, stronger than wine. He waited for us to throw it back then went on his way with his cups returned. I may not have any time for the church, but why miss a good execution? Once years back we’d watched them hang Brother Merron and Row had said, “A good execution don’t need a good reason.” Which is true enough.

We heard the singing first, four choirboys, probably none of them cut, not in a wattle-and-daub town like Hanver. Nothing to see to start with save a silver cross up high on a staff, then the crowd parting and the boys in white frocks, voices soaring. I saw Sim way back, mouthing the words, though he didn’t know the Latin, just the sounds of it.

The priests then, two black crows with the holy purple showing at their breast, swinging censers. Blunt-faced, alike as brothers, no older than Makin. Following, drawn on a cart and bound at hand and foot, a mother and two daughters, ten, twelve, hard to say, white with terror. The senior priest brought up the rear, purple silks showing in diamonds through the black of his cassock, a stern man, handsome enough, silver hair in a widow’s peak lending him gravitas.

“I need a decent ale.” Makin spat. “That arac’s left a sour taste.”

It might be that a good execution doesn’t need a good reason, but it seemed to me that no execution the church conducted could be called good. I’d held Father Gomst in contempt most of my life, as much for the lies he told as for his weakness. That night of thorns and rain had shown his lies, clear as if lightning found them in a dark room. But they would have surfaced in time either way. In fairness though, Gomst’s brand of feeble optimism and talk of love had little of the Roma doctrine in it. Father wouldn’t let the pope’s hand inside his castle.

There were jeers among the crowd as the woman and her girls were manhandled onto the platform, though plenty kept silent, faces held tight and joyless.

“Do you know what the Church of Roma has in common with the church that came before it, the faith the popes held in the time of the Builders, in the centuries before the Builders?” I said.

Makin shook his head. “No.”

“Nobody else does either,” I said. “Pope Anticus took in every bible that survived the Thousand Suns in deep vaults, all the books of doctrine, all the Vatican records. All of it. Could have burned the lot. Could be following every letter and footnote. The scholars can tell you nothing except that you’re not allowed to know.”

The priest up on the platform had found his stride, patrolling the edge before the crowd and bellowing about wickedness and witchcraft. White flecks of spit caught the sunlight as they arced over the heads of the peasants closest in.

“I never took you for a theologian, Jorg.” Makin turned away. “Coming for that ale?”

I watched the executioners wrestle the first girl to the post. Not to be a straight hanging then, a little cutting first perhaps. She put up a struggle for a small thing: you could see the strain in the man’s arms.

“Too early in the day for blood, Sir Makin?” I goaded him but the jibe was aimed inward at whatever was putting that same sour taste in my own mouth.

Makin growled. “Call me soft but I’ve no stomach for it. Not for children.”

I don’t think he’d ever a stomach for it, Makin, not for children, not for men, though he’d let himself be carried along in the darkness of the Brotherhood back in those early years when he counted himself all that stood to defend me.

“But they’re witches.” Another taunt meant for myself. They probably were witches. I’d met witches of many flavours and more magic seemed to leak into the world with each passing year, finding its way through this person or that as if they were cracks in the fabric of our days. I’m sure the priest would have had me up on his platform too if he knew I could talk to dead men, if he saw the black veins running corrupt across my chest—if he had the balls to take me. They might be witches, but just as likely the woman had dared to disagree, or invent. Roma hated nothing like it hated invention. A priest might order you burned for making free with some enchantment, but find the trick of a better steel, or rediscover some alchemy of the Builders, and they would have an expert spend all week killing you.

Makin spat again, shook his head, walked away. A judgment on me. On his damn king! I threw off the anger, it was an escape, I could hide in it, but it wasn’t Makin that had made me angry.

Let people pray to God, it’s nothing to me. Some good may even come of it, if goodness is something that matters to you. Trap him in churches if you must, and lament him there. But Roma? Roma is a weapon used against us. A poison flavoured sweet and given to hungry men.

Up on the platform the girl screamed as they stripped her. A man approached holding a cane all set with metal teeth, glittering and pretty.

“It’s the bishop, isn’t it?” I found Kent beside me, his hand on mine as somehow it worked to draw steel without asking my permission. With Kent’s help I kept my sword in its scabbard.

“Murillo,” I agreed. There were few men who would dare mention Bishop Murillo to me. I regret the nails still. I had hammered them slow enough into his head, but even so it was too quick an escape for him.

“A black day,” Kent said, though I couldn’t tell if he meant then or now. Pious or not, he had never once chided me for the pope’s nephew.

I nodded. I had better reasons to hate the church of Roma than for Murillo, but the bishop had put the edge on it. “How’s Hellax?” I asked.

“She’ll be fine. They put a poultice on her leg,” Kent said.

The girl howled like the damned though all they’d done was show her the cane.

“Fit to ride, is she?” I asked.

Kent gave me a look. “Jorg!”

We’re built of contradictions, all of us. It’s those opposing forces that give us strength, like an arch, each block pressing the next. Give me a man whose parts are all aligned in agreement and I’ll show you madness. We walk a narrow path, insanity to each side. A man without contradictions to balance him will soon veer off.

“Let’s get a better view.” I moved through the crowd. Most got out of my way, some I had to hurt. Kent stayed close behind.

Makin walked away because his contradictions allowed him a compromise. Mine are not so gentle. I’ll say it was hate that put me on that platform. Hate for Roma, for its doctrine of ignorance, for the corruption of its highest officials, perhaps for the fact it wasn’t my idea. My Brothers would tell you the decision owed as much to contrariness, to my taking offence at the idea that the only things holding those prisoners save the binding cords were fear of the priest and the baying of the mob. Certainly my actions owed nothing to three months on the throne of Renar. When they set that crown on my head technically I accepted responsibility for the people of my kingdom, but the crown weighed more than the responsibility ever did, and I even took the crown off before too long.

Nobody tried to stop me clambering on stage. I swear there were even a few helping shoves. I took the cane from the executioner’s hand as he drew back for his first swing. Sharp little twists of iron studded its length. The girl, naked against the post, watched that cane as if it were the only thing in the world. She looked too clean for a peasant. Perhaps the priests had washed her so the marks of her torture wouldn’t be lost in the dirt.

Red slaughter was an option, my fingers itched for a sword hilt and I felt fairly sure I could kill everyone on the stage without breaking sweat. Hanver hadn’t seen war in a generation—I was more than ready to change that. Instead I tried reason, or at least my brand of reason. Three strides brought me to within a yard of the silver-haired priest. The toothed cane twirling in one hand.

“I am King Jorg of Renar. I have killed more priests than you have killed witches, and I say you will release these three for no reason other than it pleases me.” I spoke clear and loud enough for the crowd, which had fallen so quiet I could hear the flag’s fluttering. “The next words out of your mouth, priest, will be ‘Yes, Your Highness’ or you’ll be making a meal of this cane.”

To his credit the priest hesitated, then said, “Yes, Your Highness.” I doubt he believed my lineage, but he sure as hell believed my culinary predictions.

Armed men stood among the peasants, not so many but enough, bullies in helms and padded jerkins keeping order for whatever lordling held sway here. I met their eyes, beckoned to a group of three over by the horse trough. They shrugged and turned away. I can’t say it pleased me. Makin stood just beyond the trio, his compromise not having taken him as far as the closest alehouse after all.

“Tell me no!” My sword cleared its scabbard so fast it almost rang.

Blood-hunger on faces in the crowd, the shock that they had been denied their due. I shared it too. Like a sneeze that goes unvoiced, a vacuum demanding to be filled. I waited, more than half of me wanting them to riot, to sweep forward in a wave of outrage.

“Tell me no.” But they stood silent.

The prisoners’ ropes gave before my sword’s honed edge. “Get out,” I told them, angry now as if it were their fault. The mother limped away pulling her girls behind her. Makin helped them down.

I wondered later if it would be enough to send my ghost away, if my good deed, whatever the reason for it, would keep that dead baby from my dreams. But he returned as ever with the shadows.

We stayed a full day in Hanver and left on a bright morning, our saddlebags full, and with the bunting still overhead. Such is the beauty of places untouched by war. And the reason they don’t last.

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