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Chapter 10

We had ourselves a prisoner. One of Marclos’s riders proved less dead than expected. Bad news for him all in all. Makin had Burlow and Rike bring the man to me on the burgermeister’s steps.

‘Says his name is Renton. “Sir” Renton, if you please,’ Makin said.

I looked the fellow up and down. A nice black bruise wrapped itself halfway round his forehead, and an over-hasty embrace with Mother Earth had left his nose somewhat flatter than he might have liked. His moustache and beard could have been neatly trimmed, but caked in all that blood they looked a mess.

‘Fell off your horse did you, Renton?’ I asked.

‘You stabbed Count Renar’s son under a flag of truce,’ he said. He sounded a little comical on the ‘stabbed’ and ‘son’. A broken nose will do that for you.

‘I did,’ I said. ‘I can’t think of anything I wouldn’t have stabbed him under.’ I held Renton’s gaze; he had squinty little eyes. He wouldn’t have been much to look at in court finery. On the steps, covered in mud and blood, he looked like a rat’s leavings. ‘If I were you, I’d be more worried about my own fate than whether Marclos was stabbed in accordance with the right social niceties.’

That of course was a lie. If I were in his place, I’d have been looking for an opportunity to stick a knife in me. But I knew enough to know that most men didn’t share my priorities. As Makin said, something in me had got broken, but not so broken I didn’t remember what it was.

‘My family is rich, they’ll ransom me,’ Renton said. He spoke quickly, nervous now, as if he’d just realized his situation.

I yawned. ‘No they’re not. If they were rich you wouldn’t be riding in chain armour as one of Marclos’s guards.’ I yawned again, stretching my mouth until my jaw cracked. ‘Maical, get me a cup of that festival beer, will you?’

‘Maical’s dead,’ Rike said, from behind Sir Renton.

‘Never?’ I said. ‘Idiot Maical? I thought God had blessed him with the same luck that looks after drunkards and madmen.’

‘Well he’s near enough dead,’ Rike said. ‘Got him a gut-full of rusty iron from one of Renar’s boys. We laid him out in the shade.’

‘Touching,’ I said. ‘Now get my beer.’

Rike grumbled and slapped Jobe into taking the errand. I turned back to Sir Renton. He didn’t look happy, but he didn’t look as sad as you might expect a man in such a bad place to look. His eyes kept sliding over to Father Gomst. Here’s a man with faith in a higher source, I thought.

‘So, Sir Renton,’ I said. ‘What brings young Marclos to Ancrath’s protectorates? What does the Count think he’s up to?’

Some of the brothers had gathered around the steps for the show, but most were still looting the dead. A man’s coin is nice and portable, but the brothers wouldn’t stop there. I expected the head-cart to be heaped with arms and armour when we left. Boots too; there’s three coppers in a well-made pair of boots.

Renton coughed and wiped at his nose, spreading black gore across his face. ‘I don’t know the Count’s plans. I’m not privy to his private council.’ He looked up at Father Gomst. ‘As God is my witness.’

I leaned in close to him. He smelled sour, like cheese in the sun. ‘God is your witness, Renton, he’s going to watch you die.’

I let that sink in. I gave old Gomsty a smile. ‘You can look after this knight’s soul, Father. The sins of the flesh though – they’re all mine.’

Rike handed me my cup of beer, and I had a sip. ‘The day you’re tired of looting, Little Rikey, is the day you’re tired of life,’ I said. It got a chuckle from the brothers on the steps. ‘Why’re you still here when you could be cutting up the dead in search of a golden liver?’

‘Come to see you put the hurt on Rat-face,’ Rike said.

‘You’re going to be disappointed then,’ I said. ‘Sir Rat-face is going to tell me everything I want to know, and I’m not even going to have to raise my voice. When I’m done, I’m going to hand him over to the new burgermeister of Norwood. The peasants will probably burn him alive, and he’ll count it the easy way out.’ I kept it conversational. I find it’s the coldest threats that reach the deepest.

Out in the marshes I’d made a dead man run in terror, with nothing more than what I keep inside. It occurred to me that what scared the dead might worry the living a piece too.

Sir Renton didn’t sound too scared yet though. ‘You stabbed the better man today, boy, and there’s a better man before you. You’re nothing more than shit on my shoe.’ I’d hurt his pride. He was a knight after all, and here was a beardless lad making mock. Besides, the best I’d offered was an ‘easy’ burning. Nobody considers that the soft option.

‘When I was nine, the Count of Renar tried to have me killed,’ I said. I kept my voice calm. It wasn’t hard. I was calm. Anger carries less horror with it, men understand anger. It promises resolution; maybe bloody resolution, but swift. ‘The Count failed, but I watched my mother and my little brother killed.’

‘All men die,’ Renton said. He spat a dark and bloody mess onto the steps. ‘What makes you so special?’

He had a good point. What made my loss, my pain, any more important than everyone else’s?

‘That’s a good question,’ I said. ‘A damn good question.’

It was. There weren’t but a handful of the prisoners we’d taken from Marclos’s train who hadn’t seen a son, or a husband, a mother or a lover, killed. And killed in the past week. And this was my soft option, the mercies of these peasants compared to the attention of a young man whose hurt stood four years old.

‘Consider me a spokesman,’ I said. ‘When it comes to stage-acting, some men are more eloquent than others. It’s given to particular men to have a gift with the bow.’ I nodded to the Nuban. ‘Some men can knock the eye out of a bull at a thousand paces. They don’t aim any better for wanting it, they don’t shoot straighter because they’re justified. They just shoot straighter. Now me, I just … avenge myself better than most. Consider it a gift.’

Renton laughed at that and spat again. This time I saw part of a tooth in the mess. ‘You think you’re worse than the fire, boy?’ he asked. ‘I’ve seen men burn. A lot of men.’

He had a point. ‘You’ve a lot of good points, Sir Renton,’ I said.

I looked around at the ruins. Tumbled walls in the most, and blackened timber skeletons where roofs had kept a lid on folk’s lives for year after year. ‘It’s going to take a lot of rebuilding,’ I said. ‘A lot of hammers and a lot of nails.’ I sipped my beer. ‘A strange thing – nails will hold a building together, but there’s nothing better for taking a man apart.’ I held Sir Renton’s rat-like eyes, dark and beady. ‘I don’t enjoy torturing people, Sir Renton, but I’m good at it. Not world-class you understand. Cowards make the best torturers. Cowards understand fear and they can use it. Heroes on the other hand, they make terrible torturers. They don’t see what motivates a normal man. They misunderstand everything. They can’t think of anything worse than besmirching your honour. A coward on the other hand; he’ll tie you to a chair and light a slow fire under you. I’m not a hero or a coward, but I work with what I’ve got.’

Renton had the sense to pale at that. He reached out a muddy hand to Father Gomst. ‘Father, I’ve done nothing but serve my master.’

‘Father Gomst will pray for your soul,’ I said. ‘And forgive me the sins I incur in detaching it from your body.’

Makin pursed those thick lips of his. ‘Prince, you’ve spoken about how you’d break the cycle of revenge. You could start here. You could let Sir Renton go.’

Rike gave him a look as if he’d gone mad. Fat Burlow covered a chuckle.

‘I have spoken about that, Makin,’ I said. ‘I will break the cycle.’ I drew my sword and laid it across my knees. ‘You know how to break the cycle of hatred?’ I asked.

‘Love,’ said Gomst, all quiet-like.

‘The way to break the cycle is to kill every single one of the bastards that fucked you over,’ I said. ‘Every last one of them. Kill them all. Kill their mothers, kill their brothers, kill their children, kill their dog.’ I ran my thumb along the blade of my sword and watched the blood bead crimson on the wound. ‘People think I hate the Count, but in truth I’m a great advocate of his methods. He has only two failings. Firstly he goes far, but not far enough. Secondly he isn’t me. He taught me valuable lessons though. And when we meet, I will thank him for it, with a quick death.’

Old Gomsty started at that. ‘Count Renar did you wrong, Prince Jorg. Forgive him, but don’t thank him. He’ll burn in Hell for what he did. His immortal soul will suffer for eternity.’

I had to laugh out loud at that. ‘Churchmen, eh? Love one minute, forgiveness the next, and then it’s eternity on fire. Well rest at ease, Sir Renton, I’ve no designs on your immortal soul. Whatever happens between us, it will all be over in a day or two. Three at most. I’m not the most patient of men, so it will end when you tell me what I want to know, or I get bored.’

I got up from my step and went to crouch by Sir Renton. I patted his head. They’d tied his hands behind him, and I had my chainmail gauntlets on, so if he had a mind to bite, it’d do him no good.

‘I swore to Count Renar,’ he said. He tried to pull away, and he craned his neck to look at old Gomsty. ‘Tell him, Father, I swore before God. If I break my vow I’ll burn in Hell.’

Gomst came to lay his hand on Renton’s shoulder. ‘Prince Jorg, this knight has made a holy vow. There are few oaths more sacred than that of a knight to his liege lord. You should not ask him to break it. Nor should any threat against the flesh compel a man to betray a covenant and forever place his soul in the fires of the Devil.’

‘Here’s a test of faith for you, Sir Renton,’ I said. ‘I’ll tell you my tale and we’ll see whether you want to tell me the Count’s plans when I’m done.’ I settled down on the step beside him and swigged my beer. ‘When I first took to the road I was, oh, ten years of age. I’d a lot of anger in me then, and a need to know how the world worked. You see, I’d watched the Count’s men kill my brother, William, and slit Mother open. So I knew that the way I’d thought things were supposed to work was wrong. And of course, I fell in with bad sorts – didn’t I Rikey?’

Rike gave that laugh of his: ‘hur hur hur’. I think he just made the sound when he thought we expected a laugh. It didn’t have any joy in it.

‘I tried my hand at torture then. I wondered if I was supposed to be evil. I thought maybe I’d had a message from God to take up the Devil’s work.’

I heard Gomst muttering at that one, prayers or condemnation. It was true too. For the longest time I looked for a message in it all, to work out what I was supposed to be doing.

I laid my hand on Renton’s shoulder. He sat there with my hand on his left shoulder, and Gomst’s hand on his right. We could have been the Devil and the angel from those old scrolls, whispering in his ears.

‘We caught Bishop Murillo down by Jedmire Hill,’ I said. ‘I’m sure you heard about the loss of his mission? Anyhow, the brothers let me have the bishop. I was something of a mascot to them back then.’

The Nuban stood and walked off down the hill. I let him go. The Nuban didn’t have the stomach for this kind of thing. That made me feel – I don’t know – dirty? I liked the Nuban, though I didn’t let it show.

‘Now, Bishop Murillo was full of harsh words and judgement. He had plenty to tell me about hellfire and damnation. We sat a while and discussed the business of souls. Then I hammered a nail into his skull. Just here.’ I reached out and touched the spot on Renton’s greasy head. He flinched back like he’d been stung. ‘The bishop changed his tune a bit after that,’ I said. ‘In fact every time I knocked a new nail into him, he changed his tune. After a while he was a very different man. Did you know you can break a man into his parts like that? One nail will bring back memories of childhood. Another will make him rage, or sob, or laugh. In the end it seems we’re just toys, easy to break and hard to mend.

‘I hear that the nuns at Saint Alstis still have Bishop Murillo in their care. He’s a very different person now. He clutches at their habits and slurs awful things at them, so they say. Where the soul of that proud and pious man we took from the papal caravan is – well, I can’t tell you.’

With that, I ‘magicked’ a nail into my fingers. A rusty spike, three inches long. The man wet himself. There on the steps. Burlow gave an oath and kicked him, hard. When Renton got his breath back, he told me everything he knew. It took almost an hour. Then we gave him to the peasants and they burned him.

I watched the good folk of Norwood dance around their fire. I watched the flames lick above their heads. There’s a pattern in fire, as if something’s written there, and there’s folk who say they can read it too. Not me, though. It would have been nice to find some answers in the flames. I had questions: it was a thirst for the Count’s blood that had set me on the road. But somehow I’d given it up. Somehow I set it aside and told myself it was a sacrifice to strength.

I sipped my beer. Four years on the road. Always going somewhere, always doing something, but now, with my feet pointed towards home, it felt like I’d been lost all that time. Lost or led.

I tried to remember when I’d given up on the Count, and why. Nothing came to me, just the glimpse of my hand on a door, and the sensation of falling into space.

‘I’m going home,’ I said.

The dull ache between my eyes became a rusty nail, driven deep. I finished my beer, but it did nothing for me. I had an older kind of thirst.