I lifted my knife and the map sprung back into its roll. Ive seen enough.
Makin raised his eyes and tipped his maps unopened onto the table.
Mark me out a decent route will you, Coddin, and have that scribe lad copy it down. I stood straight and stretched. Id need to find something to wear. One of the maids had burned my old rags and velvets no good for the road. Its like a magnet for dust.
Father Gomst met Makin, Kent and me on our way to the stables. Hed hurried from chapel, red in the face, the heaviest bible under one arm and the altar cross in his other hand.
Jorg- He stopped to catch his breath. King Jorg.
Youre going to join us, Father Gomst? The way he paled made me smile.
The blessing, he said, still short of wind.
Ah, well bless away.
Kent went to his knees in an instant, as pious a killer as I ever knew. Makin followed with unseemly haste for a man whod sacked a cathedral in his time. Since Gomst had walked out of Gelleth by the light of a Builders Sun, without so much as a tan to show for it, the Brothers seemed to think him touched by God. The fact we had all done the same with far less time at our disposal didnt register with them.
For my own part, for all the evils of the Roma church, I could no longer bring myself to despise Gomst as I once had. His only true crime was to be a weak and impotent man, unable to deliver the promise of his lord, the love of his saviour, or even to put the yoke of Roma about the necks of his flock with any conviction.
I bowed my head and listened to the prayer. It never hurts to cover your bases.
In the west yard my motley band were assembled, checking over their gear. Rike had the biggest horse Id ever seen.
I could run faster than this monster, Rike. I made a show of checking behind it. You didnt take the plough when you stole it, then?
Itll do, he said. Big enough for loot.
Maicals not bringing the head-cart? I looked around. Where is he anyway?
Gone for the grey, Kent said. Idiot wont ride any other horse. Says he doesnt know how.
Now thats loyalty for you. I shot Rike a look. So wheres this new wife of yours, Brother Rikey? Not coming to see you off?
Busy ploughing. He slapped his horse. Got a job of it now.
Gorgoth came through the kitchen gate, looming behind Rike. Its unsettling to see something on two legs thats taller and wider than Rike. Gog popped out from behind him. He took my hand and I let him lead me. Theres not many that will take my hand since the necromancy took root in me. Theres a touch of death in my fingers, not just the coldness. Flowers wilt and die.
Where we going, Brother Jorg? Still a childs voice despite the crackle in it.
To find us a fire-mage. Put an end to this bed-burning, I told him.
Will it hurt? He watched me with big eyes, pools of black.
I shrugged. Might do.
Scared, he said, clutching my hand tighter. I could feel heat rising from his fingers. Maybe it cancelled the cold from mine. Scared.
Well then, I said. Were headed the right way.
He frowned.
Youve got to hunt your fears, Gog. Beat them. Theyre your only true enemies.
Youre not scared of anything, Brother Jorg, he said. King J-
Im scared of burning, I said. Especially in my bed. I looked back to the brothers, stowing weapons and supplies. I had a cousin who liked to burn people up, did I not, Brother Row?
Ayuh. He nodded.
My cousin Marclos, I said. Tell Gog what happened to him.
Row tested the point of an arrow with his thumb. Went up to him all on your ownself, Jorg, and killed him in the middle of a hundred of his soldiers.
I looked down at Gog. Im scared of spiders too. Its the way that they move. And the way that theyre still. Its that scurry. I mimicked it with my hand.
I called back to Row. How am I with spiders, Row?
Weird. Row spat and secured his last arrow. Youll like this tale, Gog, what with being a godless monster and all. He spat again. Brother Row liked to spit. Spent a week holed up in some grain barns one time. Hiding. We didnt go hungry. Grain and rats make for a good stew. Only Jorg here wasnt having any of that. Place was stuffed full of spiders see. Big hairy fellows. He spread his fingers until the knuckles cracked. For a whole week Jorg hunted them. Didnt eat nothing but spider for a week. And not cooked mind. Not even dead.
And rat stew always tasted good after that week, I said.
Gog frowned, then his eyes caught the glitter on my wrist. Whats this? He pointed.
I pulled my sleeve back and held it up for all to see. Two things I found in my uncles treasury that were worth more than the gold around them. Thought Id bring them along in case of need. I made sure Rike caught sight of the silver on my wrist. No need to be going through my saddlebags at night now, Little Rikey. The treasures here and if you think you can take it, try now.
He sneered and tied off another strap.
Wossit? Gog stared entranced.
The Builders made it, I said. Its a thousand years old.
Row and Red Kent came over to see.
Im told they call it a watch, I said. And you can see why.
In truth, Id been watching it a lot myself. It had a face on it behind crystal, with twelve hours marked and sixty minutes, and two black arms that moved, one slow, one slower still, to point out the time. Entranced, I had opened it up at the back with the point of my knife and gazed into the guts of the thing. The hatch popped back on a minute hinge as if the Builders had known I would want to see inside. Wheels within wheels, tiny, toothed, and turning. How they made such things so small and so precise I cannot guess but to me it is a wonder past any man-made sun or glow-light.
What else you got, Jorg? Rike asked.
This. I took it from the deep pocket on my hip and set it down on the flagstones. A battered metal clown with traces of paint clinging to his jerkin, hair and nose.
Kent took a step back. It looks evil.
I knelt and released a catch behind the clowns head. With a jerk and a whir he started to stamp his metal feet and bring his metal hands together, clashing the cymbals he held. He jittered in a loose circle, stamping and clashing, going nowhere.
Rike started to laugh. Not that hur, hur, hur of his that sounds like another kind of anger, but a real laugh, from the belly. Its likeIts like He couldnt get the words out.
The others couldnt hold back. Sim and Maical cracked first. Grumlow snorting through the drowned-rat moustache hed been working on. Then Red Kent and at last even Row, laughing like children. Gog looked on, astonished. Even Gorgoth couldnt help but grin, showing back-teeth like tombstones.
The clown fell over and kept on stamping the air. Rike collapsed with it, thumping the ground with his fist, gasping for breath.
The clown slowed, then stopped. Theres a blue-steel spring inside that you wind tight with a key. And when its finished stamping and crashing, the spring is loose again.
BurlowBurlow should have seen this. Rike wiped the tears from his eyes. The first time Id heard him mention any of the fallen.
Yes, Brother Rike, I said. Yes, he should. I imagined Brother Burlow laughing with us, his belly shaking.
We made our moment then, one of those waypoints by which a life is remembered, the Brotherhood remade and bound for the road. We made our moment-the last good one. Time to go, I said.
Sometimes I wonder if we all dont have a blue-steel spring inside us, like that dena of Gorgoths coiled tight at the core. I wonder if we dont all go stamping and crashing, crashing and stamping in our own little circles going nowhere. And I wonder who it is that laughs at us.
6
Four years earlier
Three months previously I had entered the Haunt alone, covered in blood that was not my own and swinging a stolen sword. My Brothers followed me in. Now I left the castle in the hands of another. I had wanted my uncles blood. His crown I took because other men said I could not have it.
If the Haunt reminds you of a skull, and it does me, then the scraps of town around the gates might be considered the dried vomit of its last heave. A tannery here, abattoir there, all the necessary but stinking evils of modern life, set out beyond the walls where the wind will scour them. We were barely clear of the last hovel before Makin caught us.
Missing me already?
The Forest Watch tell me we have company coming, Makin said, catching his breath.
We really should rename the Watch, I said. The best the Highlands could offer by way of forest was the occasional clump of trees huddled miserably in a deep valley, all twisted and hunched against the wind.
Fifty knights, Makin said. Carrying the banner of Arrow.
Arrow? I frowned. Theyve come a ways. The province lay on the edge of the map we had so recently rolled up.
They look fresh enough by all accounts.
I think Ill meet them on the road, I said. We might get a more interesting story out of them as a band of road-brothers. The truth was I didnt want to change back into silks and ermine and go through the formalities. They would be heading for the castle. You dont send fifty men in plate armour for a stealth mission.
Ill come with you, Makin said. He wasnt going to take no this time.
You wont pass as a road-brother, I said. You look like an actor whos raided the props chest for all the best knight-gear.
Roll him in some shit, Rike said. Hell pass then.
We happened to be right by Jerrings stables and a heap of manure lay close at hand. I pointed to it.
Not so different from life in court. Makin grimaced and threw his robe into the head-cart. Maical had hitched it to the grey out of habit.
Roll him in some shit, Rike said. Hell pass then.
We happened to be right by Jerrings stables and a heap of manure lay close at hand. I pointed to it.
Not so different from life in court. Makin grimaced and threw his robe into the head-cart. Maical had hitched it to the grey out of habit.
When the captain of my guard looked more like a hedge-knight at the very bottom of his luck, we moved on. Gog rode with me, clutching tight. Gorgoth jogged along, for no horse would take him, and not just because of his weight. Something in him scared them.
Ever been to Arrow, Makin? I asked, easing my horse upwind.
Never have, he said. A small enough principality. They breed them tough down there though, by all accounts. Been giving their neighbours a headache for years now.
We rode on without talk for a while, just the clatter of hooves and the creak of the head-cart to break the mountain silence. The road-or trail if Im honest, for the Builders never worked their magic in the Highlands-wound its way down, snaking back and forth to tame the gradients. As we dropped I started to realize that in the low valleys it would be spring already. Even here a flash of green showed now and again and set the horses nosing the air.