King of Thorns. Mark Lawrence

of introducing His Highness Honorous Jorg Ancrath, King of the Renar Highlands, heir to the lands of Ancrath and the protectorates thereof.’

      ‘Charmed,’ I said, inclining my head. A child. She didn’t reach much above my ribs.

      ‘I can see why your miniature was in profile,’ she said, and sketched a curtsey.

      That made me grin. It might be destined to be a short marriage but perhaps it wouldn’t be dull. ‘You’re not scared of me then, Miana?’

      She reached to take my hand by way of answer. I pulled it back. ‘Best not.’

      ‘Father?’ I nodded the priest on.

      ‘Dearly beloved,’ Gomst said. ‘We are gathered together here in the sign of God …’

      And so with old words from an old man and lacking anyone ‘here present’ with just reason, or at least with just reason and the balls to say so, little Jorgy Ancrath became a married man.

      I led my bride from the chapel with the applause and hoorahs of the nobility ringing behind us, almost but not quite drowning out those awful pipes. The bladder-pipe, a local Highlands speciality, is to music what warthogs are to mathematics. Largely unconnected.

      The main doors lead onto a stairway where you can look down into the Haunt’s largest courtyard, the place where I cut down the previous owner. Several hundred packed the space from the curtain wall to the stairs, more thronging out beyond the gateway, swarming beneath the portcullis, a light snow sifting down on all of them.

      A cheer went up as we came into the light. I took Miana’s hand then, despite the necromancy lurking in my fingers, and lifted it high to acknowledge the crowd. The loyalty of subject to lord still amazed me. I lived fat and rich off these people year after year while they squeezed a mean life out of the mountainsides. And here they were ready to face pretty much certain death with me. I mean, even that blind faith in my ability to buck the odds had to allow a fairly big chunk of room for doubt.

      I got my first proper insight into it a couple of years back. A lesson that life on the road hadn’t taught me or my Brothers. The power of place.

      My royal presence was requested for a bit of justice-making in what they call in the Renar Highlands a ‘village’, though pretty much everywhere else people would call it three houses and a few sheds. The place lies way up in the peaks. They call it Gutting. I heard that there’s a Little Gutting slightly higher up the valley, though it can’t be much more than a particularly roomy barrel. Anyhow, the dispute was over where one scabby peasant’s rocks ended and another one’s started. I’d hauled myself and Makin up three thousand foot of mountain to show a bit of willing in the business of kinging it. According to reports, several men of the village had been killed already in the feud, though on closer inspection casualties were limited to a pig and the loss of a woman’s left ear. Not so long ago I would just have killed everyone and come down the mountain with their heads on a spear, but perhaps I just felt tired after the climb. In any event I let the scabby peasants state their cases and they did so with enthusiasm and at great length. It started to get dark and the fleas were biting so I cut it short.

      ‘Gebbin is it?’ I said to the plaintiff. He nodded. ‘Basically, Gebbin, you just hate the hell out of this fellow here and I really can’t see the reason for it. The thing is that I’m bored, I’ve got my breath back, and unless you tell me the real reason you hate …’

      ‘Borron,’ Makin supplied.

      ‘Yes, Borron. Tell me the real reason and make it honest, or it’s a death sentence for everyone except this good woman with the one ear, and we’ll be leaving her in charge of the remaining pig.’

      It took him a few moments to realize that I really meant what I said, and then another couple mumbling before he finally came out with it and admitted it was because the fellow was a ‘furner’. Furner turned out to mean foreigner and old Borron was a foreigner because he was born and lived on the east side of the valley.

      The men cheering Miana and me, waving their swords, bashing their shields and hollering themselves hoarse, might have told anyone who asked how proud they were to fight for his Highness and his new queen. The truth, however, is that at the bottom of it all they simply didn’t want the men of Arrow marching all over their rocks, eyeing up their goats, and maybe leering at their womenfolk.

      ‘The Prince of Arrow has a much bigger army than you,’ Miana said. No ‘your highness’, no ‘my lord’.

      ‘Yes he does.’ I kept waving to the crowd, the big smile on my face.

      ‘He’s going to win, isn’t he?’ she said. She looked twelve but she didn’t sound twelve.

      ‘How old are you?’ I asked, a quick glance down at her, still waving.

      ‘Twelve.’

       Damn.

      ‘They might win. If each of my men doesn’t kill twenty of theirs then there’s a good chance. Especially if he surrounds us.’

      ‘How far away are they?’ she asked.

      ‘Their front lines are camped three miles off,’ I said.

      ‘You should attack now then,’ she said. ‘Before they surround us.’

      ‘I know.’ I was starting to like the girl. Even an experienced soldier like Coddin, a good soldier, wanted to hunker down behind the Haunt’s walls and let the castle earn its keep, if you’ll pardon the pun. The thing is, though, that no castle stands against odds like the ones we faced. Miana knew what Red Kent knew, Red Kent who cut down a patrol of seventeen men-at-arms on a hot August morning. Killing takes space. You need to move, to advance, to withdraw, and sometimes to just plain run for it.

      One more wave and I turned my back on the crowds and strode into the chapel.

      ‘Makin! Are the Watch ready?’

      ‘They are.’ He nodded. ‘My king.’

      I drew my sword.

      The sudden appearance of four foot of razored builder-steel in the house of God resulted in a pleasing gasp.

      ‘Let’s go.’

      From the journal of Katherine Ap Scorron

       October 6th, Year 98 Interregnum

      Ancrath. The Tall Castle. Chapel. Midnight.

       The Ancraths’ chapel is small and draughty, as if they hadn’t much time for the place. The candles dance and the shadows are never still. When I leave the friar’s boy will snuff them.

       Jorg Ancrath has been gone close on a week. He took Sir Makin with him from the dungeons. I was glad for that, I liked Sir Makin and I cannot truly blame him for what happened to Galen: that was Jorg again. A crossbow! He could never have bested Galen with a blade. There’s no honour in the boy.

       Friar Glen says Jorg near tore the dress off me after he hit me. I keep it at the back of the long closet in the bride chest Mother packed for me before we left Scorron Halt. I keep it where the maids don’t look, and my hands lead me back there. I run the tatters through my fingers. Blue satin. I touch it and I try to remember. I see him standing there, arms wide, daring the knife in my hand, weaving as though he were too tired to stand, his skin dead white and the black stain around his chest wound. He looked so young. A child almost. With those scars all across him where the thorns tore him. Sir Reilly says they found him hanging, near bloodless, after a night in the thorns with the storm around him and his mother lying dead.

       And then he hit me.

       I’m touching the spot now. It’s still sore. Lumpy with scab. I wonder if they can see it through my hair. And then I wonder why I care.

       I’m bruised down here too. Bruised black, like that stain. I can almost see the lines of fingers on my thigh, the print of a