Mark Lawrence - King of Thorns

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.