Prince of Thorns

20

We sat at the long trestle where the kitchen skivvies ate their meals, Aunt Katherine and I. The servants cleared the low vault and brought in more light, candles of every length and girth in clay holders. They watched from the doorways at either end, a shabby crowd grinning and bobbing as though it was a holy day or a high day, and we were the mummers to entertain them. Drane hove into view and crested through the skivvies like a barge through water. He brought fresh bread, honey in a bowl, golden butter, and silver knives.

“This is the place to eat,” I said. I kept my eyes on Katherine. She didn’t seem to mind. “Bread hot from the oven.” It steamed when I tore it open. Heaven must smell like fresh bread. “I knew I missed you for a reason, Drane.” I called the words over my shoulder. I knew the fat cook would bask in that for a year. I hadn’t missed him. I hadn’t spared him but one thought for every hundred times I dreamed of his pies. In fact I’d struggled to remember his name when I saw him in the doorway. But something about the girl made me want to be the kind of man who would remember.

The first bite woke my hunger and I tore at the loaf as though it were a haunch of venison and me huddled on the road with the brothers. Katherine paused to watch, her knife suspended above the honey bowl, her lips twitching with a smile.

“Mmmfflg.” I chewed and swallowed. “What?” I demanded.

“She’s probably wondering if you’ll go under the table when the bread’s gone and wrestle the dogs for bones.” Makin had come up behind me unnoticed.

“Damn but you’d make a good footpad, Sir Makin.” I swung round to find him standing over me, his armour gleaming. “A man in plate-mail should have the decency to clank.”

“I clanked plenty, Prince,” he said. He showed me an annoying smile. “You had your mind on more pressing matters maybe?” He bowed toward Katherine. “My lady. I haven’t had the honour?”

She extended a hand to him. “Princess Katherine Ap Scorron.”

Makin raised a brow at that. He took her hand and bowed again, much more deeply, lifting her fingers to his lips. He had thick lips, sensuous. He’d washed his face and his hair gleamed as much as his armour, coal-black and curled. He cleaned up well, and for the smallest moment I hated him without reservation.

“Take a seat,” I said. “I’m sure the excellent Drane can find more bread.”

He let go of her hand. Too slowly for my liking. “Sadly, my prince, duty rather than hunger brings me to the kitchens. I thought I might find you here. You’re summoned to the throne-room. There must be a hundred squires hunting the halls for you. You also, Princess.” He favoured her with an appreciative stare. “I met a fellow named Galen searching for you.” Something tight laced those last words. Makin didn’t like Sir Galen any more than I did. And he’d met the man.

I took the bread with me. It was too good to leave.

We found our way back above ground. The Tall Castle appeared to have woken up during my trip to the kitchens. Squires and maids ran this way and that. Plumed guards passed by in twos and fives, bound for their duties. We skirted a lord in his furs and gold chain, girded by flunkies, leaving him with his astonishment, his bowing, and his “Good morning, Princess!”

By corridor and hall we reached Torrent Vault, the antechamber before the throne-room where the tourney armour of past kings lined the walls like hollow knights standing silent vigil.

“Prince Honorous Jorg Ancrath, and the Princess Katherine,” Makin announced us to the guards before the doors. He placed me before the princess. A small matter on the road, but a touch that spoke volumes in the Torrent Vault. Here is the heir to the throne, let him in.

The crested guardsmen flanking the hallway stood as still as the armour on the stands behind them. They followed us only with their eyes, gauntleted hands kept folded on the pommels of their greatswords, set point to floor. The two table knights at the throne-room doors exchanged a glance. They paused for a moment to bow to Katherine, then set to work drawing the great doors open wide enough to admit us. I recognized one of them by the coat of arms on his breastplate, horns above an elm. Sir Reilly. He’d turned grey in the years I’d been gone. He struggled with his door, straining to move the oak in its bronze cladding. The doors parted. Our narrow view grew from a sliver of warm light to a window on a world I once knew. The Court of the Ancrath kings.

“Princess?” I took her hand, holding it high, and we walked through.

The men that built the Tall Castle lacked nothing in skill, and everything in imagination. Their walls might remain for ten thousand years, but they would hold no artistry. The throne-room was a windowless box. A box one hundred feet on every side maybe, and with a twenty-foot ceiling to dwarf the courtiers, but a box nonetheless. Elaborate wooden galleries for the musicians muted the harsh corners, and the King’s dais added a certain splendour. I kept my eyes from the throne.

“The Princess Katherine Ap Scorron,” the herald called.

No mention of poor Jorgy. No herald would dare such a slight without instruction.

We crossed the wide floor, our pace measured, watched by the guardsmen at the walls. Men with crossbows by the walls to left and right, swordsmen at the plinth and by the door.

I might have been nameless, but my arrival had certainly roused some interest. In addition to the guardsmen and despite the early hour, at least a hundred courtiers formed our audience. They waited attendance on the throne, milling around the lowest steps in their velvets. I let my eyes stray across the glittering crowd, pausing to linger on the finest jewels. I still had my road-habits and made mental tally of their worth. A new charger on that countess’s fat bosom alone. That lord’s chain of office could buy ten suits of scale armour. There was surely a fine longbow and a pony in each of his rings. I had to remind myself I played for new stakes now. Same old game, new stakes. Not higher, but different.

The gentle chatter of the court rose and fell as we approached. The soft hubbub of knife-edged comments, damaging sarcasm, honeyed insults. Here the sharp intake of breath at the Prince coming to court still wearing the road, there the mocking laughter half-hidden behind a silk handkerchief.

I let myself look at him then.

Four years had wrought no change in my father. He sat on the high-backed throne, hunched in a wolf-skin robe edged with silver. He’d worn the same robe on the day I left. The Ancrath crown rested on his brow: a warrior crown, an iron band set with rubies, confining black hair streaked with the same grey as the iron. To his left, in the consort chair, the new queen sat. She had Katherine’s looks, though softer, with a web of silver and moonstones to tame her hair. Any sign of her pregnancy lay hid beneath the ivory froth of her gown.

Between the thrones grew a magnificent tree, wrought all of glass, its leaves the emerald of Katherine’s eyes, wide and thin and many. It reached a slender nine feet in height, its twigs and branches gnarled and vitreous, brown as caramel. I’d never seen the like before. I wondered if it might be the Queen’s dowry. Surely it had the worth.

Sageous stood beside the glass tree, in the dappled green light beneath its leaves. He’d abandoned the simple white he’d worn when first we met in favour of black robes, high in the collar, with a rope of obsidian plates about his neck. I met his eyes as we approached, and manufactured a smile for him.

The courtiers drew back before us, Makin to the fore, Katherine and me hand in hand. The perfumes of lords and ladies tickled at my nose: lavender and orange oil. On the road, shit has the decency to stink.

Only two steps down from the throne a tall knight stood in magnificent plate, the iron worked over with fire-bronze, twin dragons coiling on his breastplate in a crimson inferno.

“Sir Galen.” Makin hissed the words back at me.

I glanced at Katherine and found her smile unreadable. Galen watched us with hot blue eyes. I liked him a little better for wearing his hostility so plainly. He had the blonde hair of a Teuton, his features square and handsome. He was old though. As old as Makin. Thirty summers at the least.

Sir Galen made no move to let Makin past. We stopped five steps down.

“Father,” I said. In my head, I’d made my speech a hundred times but somehow the old bastard managed to steal the words from my tongue. The silence stretched between us. “I hope-” I started again but he cut over me.

“Sir Makin,” Father said, not even looking at me. “When I send the captain of the palace guard out to retrieve a ten-year-old child, I expect him to return by nightfall. Perhaps a day or three might suffice if the child proved particularly elusive.” Father raised his left hand from the arm of the throne, just by an inch or two but enough to cue his audience. A scattered tittering sounded among the ladies, cut off when his fingers returned to the iron-wood of the chair.

Makin bowed his head and said nothing.

“A week or two on such a task would signify incompetence. More than three years speaks of treason.”

Makin looked up at that. “Never, my king! Never treason.”

“We once had reason to consider you fit for high office, Sir Makin,” Father said, his voice as cold as his eyes. “So, you may explain yourself.”

The sweat gleamed on Makin’s brow. He’d have gone through this speech as many times as I had mine. He’d probably lost it just as profoundly.

“The Prince has all the resourcefulness one might hope for in the heir to the throne,” Makin began. I saw the Queen frown at his turn of phrase. Even Father’s mouth tightened and he glanced at me, fleeting and unreadable. “When at last I found him we were in hostile lands.. . Jaseth… more than three hundred miles to the south.”

“I know where Jaseth is, Sir Makin,” Father said. “Do not presume to lecture me on geography.”

Makin inclined his head. “Your majesty has many enemies, as do all great men in these times of trouble. No single blade, even one as loyal as my own, could protect your heir in such lands as Jaseth. Prince Jorg’s best defence lay in anonymity.”

I glanced over the court. It seemed that Makin’s speech had not deserted him after all. His words had an impact.

Father ran a hand over his beard. “Then you should have ridden back to the castle with a nameless charge, Sir Makin. I wonder that this journey took four years.”

“The Prince had taken up with a band of mercenaries, your majesty. By his own skill he won their allegiance. He told me plain that if I moved to take him, they would kill me, and that if I stole him away, he would announce himself to every passer-by. And I believed him, for he has the will of an Ancrath.”

Time to be heard, I thought. “Four years on the road have given you a better captain,” I said. “There’s more to learn about making war than can be discovered in this castle. We-”

“You lack enterprise, Sir Makin,” Father said. His eyes never flickered from Makin. I wondered if I’d spoken at all. Anger tinged his voice now. “Had I ridden out after the boy, I would have found a way to return with him from Jaseth within a month.”

Sir Makin bowed deeply. “That is why you deserve your throne, majesty, whilst I am merely captain of your palace guard.”

“You are the captain of my guard no longer,” Father said. “Sir Galen serves in that capacity now, as he served the House of Scorron.”

Galen offered Makin the slightest of bows, a mocking smile on his lips.

“Perhaps you would like to challenge Sir Galen for your old office?” Father asked. Again he fingered his salt-and-pepper beard.

I sensed a trap here. Father didn’t want Makin back.

“Your majesty has chosen his captain,” Makin said. “I would not presume to over-write that decision with my sword.” He sensed the trap too.

“Indulge me.” Father smiled then, for the first time since our entrance, and it was a cold thing. “The court has been quiet in your absence. You owe us some entertainment. Let us have a show.” He paused. “Let us see what you have learned on the road.” So he did hear me.

“Father-” I started. And again he cut me off. I couldn’t seem to rise above him.

“Sageous, take the boy,” he said.

And that was that. The heathen had his eyes on me and led me mild as a sheep to stand with him between the thrones. Katherine shot me a pale glance and hastened to her sister’s side.

Makin and Galen bowed to the King. They went out through the press of courtiers, breaking free and crossing to where an inlaid marble star, some ten feet across, marked the middle of the throne-room floor. They faced each other, bowed, and drew steel.

Makin bore the longsword Father gave him when he took captaincy of the palace guard. A good weapon, Indian steel woven dark and light, acid-etched with old runes of power. Our time on the road had left its history recorded in notches along the blade. I’d never seen a better swordsman than Makin. I didn’t want to see one here.

Sir Galen made no move. He held his longsword ready, but in a lazy grip. I could see no marking on the weapon, a simple blade, forged from the black iron of the Turkmen.

“Never trust a Turkman sword…” I spoke in a whisper.

“For Turkman iron sucks up spells like a sponge and holds a bitter edge.” Sageous finished the old line for me.

I had a sharp reply for the heathen, but the clash of swords rang out over it. Makin advanced on the Teuton, feinting low then swinging high. Makin had an elemental way with a sword. The blade was part of him, a living thing from tip to hilt. In a wild fight he knew where every danger lay, and where his cover waited.

Sir Galen blocked and delivered a sharp riposte. Their swords flickered and the play of metal rang out high and sharp. I could barely follow the exchange. Galen fought with technical precision. He fought like a man who rose at dawn every day to train and duel. He fought like a man who expected to win.

A hundred narrow escapes from death counted out the first minute of their duel. I found my right hand gripping the trunk of the glass tree, the crystal slick and cool under my fingers. By the end of that first minute I could tell Galen would win. This was his game. Makin had his brilliance but, like me, he fought in real fights. He fought in the mud. He fought through burning villages. He used the battlefield. But this dry little game, so narrow in its scope, this was all Galen lived for.

Makin swung at Galen’s legs. A touch too tight in the curve, and Galen made him pay. The tip of the Turkman blade sketched a red line across Makin’s forehead. A quarter of an inch more reach in Galen’s arm and the blow would have shattered Makin’s skull.

“So, you open your game by sacrificing your knight, Prince Jorg.” Sageous spoke close to my ear.

I startled. I’d forgotten about the man. My gaze wandered to the green canopy above us. “I have no problems with sacrifice, heathen.” The tree trunk slipped glassy smooth under my fingers as my left hand moved up along the trunk. The clash of swords punctuated our conversation. “But I sacrifice only when there is something to be gained.”

The tree was heavier than I had imagined and for a moment I didn’t think I could topple it. I braced my legs and put my shoulder to the task. The thing fell without a sound, then exploded into a million pieces against the steps. I could have blinded half of Ancrath’s aristocracy had their eyes been on the throne rather than the fight before them. As it was, I peppered their backs with shards of glass. The costumed throng at the base of the royal dais turned into a screaming mass. Noble-born women ran their hands through hair confined by diamond tiaras, and brought them out sliced and bloody. Lords in thread-of-gold slippers, coiled in the latest fashions, hopped howling on a carpet of broken glass.

Sir Makin and Sir Galen lowered their swords and watched in amazement.

When Father stood, everyone fell silent, cuts or no cuts.

Everyone except me. He opened his mouth to speak and I spoke first.

“The lessons Makin learned on the road did not include tourney games. Wars are not won with jousting or chivalry. The lessons Makin learned are the same lessons I learned. Unfortunately Sir Makin would rather die than offend his king by demonstrating them.” I didn’t raise my voice. That kept them quiet. “Father.” I turned to face him direct. “I’ll show you what I’ve learned. I’ll fight your pet Teuton. If a man of my little experience can defeat your champion, then you should be happy to reinstate Sir Makin, neh?” I fell back into road-speak, hoping to stir his anger.

“You’re not a man, boy, and your challenge is an insult to Sir Galen, not worthy of consideration.” He spoke through clenched teeth. I’d never seen him so angry. In fact, I’d never seen him angry.

“An insult? Maybe.” I felt a smile bubbling up and let it show. “But I am a man. I came of age three days ago, Father. I’m fit for marriage now. A valuable commodity. And I claim this fight as my Year Gift. Or would you turn your back on three centuries of Ancrath tradition and deny me my coming of age boon?”

The veins in his neck stood proud and his hands flexed as if hungry for a sword. I didn’t think it safe to count on his good will.

“If I die, the succession will be clear,” I said. “Your Scorron whore will give you a new son, and you’ll be rid of me. Gone for good, like Mother and William. And you won’t have to send dear old Father Gomst trawling the mire to prove it.” I took a moment to bow toward the Queen. “No offence, your majesty.”

“Galen!” Father’s voice was a roar. “Kill this devil, for he’s no son of mine!”

I ran then, crunching emerald leaves under hard leather. Sir Galen charged from the centre star, trailing his black sword behind him, shouting for my blood. He came fast enough, but the fight with Makin had taken some of his wind. I knocked an old woman from my path, she went down spitting teeth, pearls spilling from her broken necklace.

I won free of the courtiers and kept on running, angled away from Galen. He’d given up the shouting but I could hear him behind me, the thud of his boots and the rasp of his breath. He must have been a hand above six foot, but lighter armour and fresher wind made up for my shorter legs. As we ran, I pulled out my sword. There were charms enough in its edge to put a notch in that Turkman blade. I threw it away. I didn’t need the weight.

Little space remained to me. The left wall loomed just yards ahead, Galen moments behind.

I’d been aiming for one guardsman in particular, a younger fellow with fair sideburns and an open mouth. By the time he realized I wasn’t veering away, it was too late. I hit him with the vambrace over my right forearm. The blow hammered his head back against the wall and he slid down it with no further interest in the proceedings. I caught the crossbow in my left hand, turned, and shot Galen through the bridge of the nose.

The bolt barely made it through his skull. It’s one of the drawbacks in keeping them loaded, but still it should have been tightened only hours before. In any event, most of the Teuton’s brain left by the back of his head and he fell down very dead.

The silence would have been utter but for the whimpering of the old woman on the floor back by the dais. I looked back over the crowd of nobles, cut and bloody, at Galen lying with his arms flung out, at the sparkling ruins of the glass tree reaching toward the throne-room doors.

“Was the show to your liking, Father?” I asked. “I’ve heard that the court has been quiet in Sir Makin’s absence.”

And for the first time in my life I heard my father laugh. A chuckle at first, then louder, then a howling gale such that he had to hold his throne to stand.