Mark Lawrence - King of Thorns

“You should come out with me,” I told him, just to see him wince. I climb alone. In truth there’s never room for two on a mountaintop.

“I’ll rephrase,” said Coddin. I could see the grey starting in his hair. Threads of it at his temples. “Why are you doing it?”

I pursed my lips at that, then grinned at the answer. “The mountains told me I couldn’t.”

“You’re familiar with King Canute?” he asked. “It’s not a path I advise for you-since you pay me for advising these days.”

“Heh.” I wondered if Katherine would climb mountains. I thought she would, given half a chance. “I’ve seen the sea, Coddin. The sea can eat mountains whole. I might have the occasional difference of opinion with the odd mountain or two, but if you catch me challenging the ocean you have my permission to drop an ox on me.”

I told Coddin that stubbornness led me to climb, and perhaps it did, but there’s more to it. Mountains have no memory, no judgments to offer. There’s a purity in the struggle to reach a peak. You leave your world behind and take only what you need. For a creature like me there is nothing closer to redemption.

“Attack,” Miana had said, and surely a man shouldn’t refuse his wife on their wedding day. Of course it helped that I had planned to attack all along. I led the way myself, for the sally ports and the tunnels that lead to them are known to few. Or rather many know of them but, like an honest priest, few would be able to show you one.

We walked four abreast, the tallest men hunched to save scraping their heads on rough-hewn stone. Every tenth man held a pitch torch and at the back of our column they almost choked on the smoke. My own torch showed little more than the ten yards of tunnel ahead, twisting to take advantage of natural voids and fissures. The tramp tramp of many feet, at first hypnotic, faded to background noise, unnoticed until without warning it stopped. I turned and flames showed nothing but my swinging shadow. Not a man of my command, not a whisper of them.

“What is it that you think you’re doing here, Jorg?” The dream-witch’s words flowed around me, a river of soft cadence, carrying only hints of his Saracen heritage. “I watch you from one moment to the next. Your plans are known before you so much as unfold them.”

“Then you’ll know what it is I think I’m doing here, Sageous.” I cast about for a sign of him.

“You know we joke about you, Jorg?” Sageous asked. “The pawn who thinks he’s playing his own game. Even Ferrakind laughs about it behind the fire, and Kelem, still preserved in his salt mines. Lady Blue has you on her sapphire board, Skilfar sees your future patterned on the ice, at the Mathema they factor you into their equations, a small term approximated to nothing. In the shadows behind thrones you count for little, Jorg, they laugh at how you serve me and know it not. The Silent Sister only smiles when your name is spoken.”

“I’m pleased to be of some service then.” To my left the shadows on the wall moved with reluctance, slow to respond to the swing of my torch. I stepped forward and thrust the flames into the darkest spot, scraping embers over the stone.

“This is your last day, Jorg.” Sageous hissed as flame ate shadow and darkness peeled from stone like layers of skin. It pleased me no end to hear his pain. “I’ll watch you die.” And he was gone.

Makin nearly walked into me from behind. “Problem?”

I shook off the daydream’s tatters and picked up my pace. “No problems.” Sageous liked to pull the strings so gently that a man would never suspect himself steered. To make Sageous angry, to make him hate, only eroded the subtle powers he used. My first victory of the day. And if he felt the need to taunt me then I must have worried him somehow. He must have thought I had some kind of chance-which made him a hell of a lot more optimistic than I was.

“No problems. In fact the morning is just starting to look up!”

Another fifty yards and a stair took us onto the slopes via a crawl space beneath a vast rock known as Old Bill.

When you leave the Haunt you are immediately among mountains. They dwarf you in a way that high walls and tall towers cannot. In the midst of the heave and thrust of the Matteracks, all of us, the Haunt itself, even the Prince of Arrow’s twenty thousands, were as nothing. Ants fighting on the carcass of an elephant.

Out on those slopes in the coldness of the wind, with the mountains high and silent on all sides, it felt good to be alive, and if it had to be, it was a good day to die.

“Have Marten take his troops and hold the Runyard for me,” I said.

“The Runyard?” Makin said, wrapping his cloak tight against the wind. “You want our best captain to secure a dead end valley?”

“We need those men, Jorg,” Coddin said, straightening from his crawl. “We can’t spare ten soldiers, let alone a hundred of our best.” Even as he argued he beckoned a man to carry my orders.

“You don’t think he can hold it?” I asked.

And that set Makin running in a new direction. “Hold it? He’d hold the gates of heaven for you, that man; or hell. Lord knows why.”

I shrugged. Marten would hold because I’d given him what he called salvation. A second chance to stand, to protect his family. For four years he had studied nothing but war, from arrow to army, the four years since he came to the castle with Sara at his side. In the end he would hold because years ago in the ruins of his farm I had given his little girl a wind-up clown and Makin’s clove-spice. A Builder toy to make her smile and the clove-spice to take her pain, and her life. The drug stole her away rather than the waste, and she died smiling at sweet dreams instead of choking on her own blood.

“Why the Runyard?” Coddin wanted to know. Coddin couldn’t be put off the scent so easily.

“The Prince of Arrow doesn’t have assassins in my castle, Coddin, but he has spies. I tell you what you need to know, what will make a difference to your actions. The rest, the long shots, the hunches, it’s safe to keep locked away.” I tapped the side of my head. For a moment though the copper box burned against my hip and its thorn pattern filled my vision.

“I’d be happier on a horse,” Makin said.

“I’d be happier on a giant mountain goat,” I said. “One that shat diamonds. Until we find some, we’re walking.”

Three hundred men walked behind us. Armies are wont to march, but marching in the Highlands is a short trip to a broken ankle. Three hundred men of the Watch in mountain grey. Exiting the sally port amid the boulder field west of the Haunt where the tunnel rose through the bedrock. No crimson tabards here, or gold braiding, no rampant lions or displayed dragons or crowned feckin’ frogs, just tatter-robes in rock shades. I hadn’t come out for a uniform competition. I came out to win.

Behind us rockets took flight, lacing the dull morning with trails of sparks, and leaving a loose pall of sulphurous smoke above the castle. Wedding celebrations to amuse the Highlanders, but also a convenient draw for the eyes to the north of us, the uninvited guests.

The Prince’s army had started to move, units massed in their attack formations, Normardy pike-men to the fore, rank upon rank of archers on the far side, men of Belpan with their longbows near tall as them, crossbow units out of Ken, beards braided, brown pennants fluttering above the drummers, each man with a shield boy hurrying before him. The archers stood ready to peel off and find their places on the ridges to our east, the useless Orlanth cavalry at the rear. Their day would come later, after wintering in the ruins of my home, after the high passes cleared and the Prince moved on to increase his tally of fallen kingdoms. The Thurtans next no doubt. And on to Germania and the dozen Teuton realms.