Free King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence

leaves unfurling on every branch, as if one blow of spring’s green hammer had set them exploding from the bud. I took the Brothers from the road and we followed trails into the woods. If you don’t want to meet anyone, take the forest path, especially in Ancrath since I stole Father’s Forest Watch from him.
    Spring warmth, the luminous green of new leaves, the song of thrush and lark, the richness of the forest breathed in and slowly out…Ancrath has charms unknown in the Renar Highlands, but I’d started to appreciate the wildness in my new kingdom, the raw rock, unobtainable peaks, even the endless wind scouring east to west.
    Grumlow leaned over and snagged something from Young Sim’s hair. “Woodtick.” He cracked it between his nails. Even Eden had a snake problem.
    The head-cart started to snag on bushes and dead-fall as the trails grew narrow. Rike’s cursing came more frequent and more dire, prompted by repeated slaps in the face from branch after branch.
    “Shouldn’t ride so high, Little Rikey,” I told him.
    Makin came up, behind him Kent and Row, chuckling over some joke he’d left them with. “We’ll be walking soon then?” He ducked under low-hanging greenery.
    I pulled up at a stream crossed by a small clapper bridge that must have been old when Christ first learned to walk. I remembered the bridge, possibly the farthest I’d ever ventured alone before I left the Tall Castle for good. “We’ll leave the horses here,” I said. “You can watch them, Grumlow, you being the man with the sharp eyes today.”
    And that wasn’t all that was sharp about Grumlow. That moustache might make him look stupid but he had a clever way with daggers, and a clever number of them stashed about his person.
    I thought about leaving Gog and Gorgoth. Especially Gorgoth, for he wasn’t one to be taken places unobserved. When I first brought him into the Haunt, after sitting my arse on the throne for a day or two, he caused quite a stir. Even lame, from the arrows he’d taken for me holding open that gate, he looked like a monster to reckon with. I had Coddin bring him up through the west-yard on a market day. You’d have thought someone dropped a hornets’ nest for all the commotion. One old biddy screamed, clutched her chest, and fell over. That made me laugh. And when they told me she never did get back up…well that seemed funny too at the time. Maybe I’m getting too old, for it doesn’tstrike me quite so merrily any more. Let truth be told though, she did fall funny.
    In the end I took them both. Gorgoth is the kind you need in a tough spot, and Gog, well he makes lighting the campfire less of a chore.
    Making your way through the greenwood without people seeing you isn’t too hard if you know your way and don’t count charcoal burners as people. They’re a lonely breed and not wont to gossip. So Rike didn’t have to kill them.
    And so we sliced into Ancrath easily enough, tramping along the deer paths. Even hard kingdoms have their fault lines.
    “It shouldn’t be this easy,” Makin said. “It wasn’t in my day. Damned if Coddin and his fellows would have let bandits wander so carelessly.” He shook his head, though it seemed an odd thing to complain about.
    “Your father’s army has grown weak?” Gorgoth asked, demolishing the undergrowth as he walked.
    I shrugged. “Half his forces are out in the marsh or barracked in the bog towns. Dead things keep hauling themselves out of the muck these days. There’s others having similar problems. I had a merchant at court telling me the Drowned Isles have fallen to the Dead King. All of them. Given over to corpse men, marsh ghouls, necromancers, lich-kin.”
    Makin just crossed his chest and picked up the pace.
    We travelled light, locating good shelter in the woods, and good eating. Young Sim had a way with the finding of rabbits, and I could knock the odd squirrel or wood-pigeon off its branch with a handy stone. Animals in spring are easy,