Free King of Thorns by Mark Lawrence Page A

too full of the new warmth, too taken with new possibilities, and not enough of watching for rocks winging their way out of the shadows.
    Ancrath casts a spell on you, and nowhere more so than in the greenwood where the day trickles like honey and the sun falls golden amid pools of shade. We walked in single file with the song of the thrush and sparrow, and the scent of may and wild onions. The day set me dreaming as I walked and my nose led me back through the years to memories of William. There was a night when my brother lay sick,when my mother wept, and the table-knights would not turn their stern faces to me. I remembered the prayers I had whispered in the dark chapel when all the holy men were in their beds, the promises I made. No threats back then. I barely even bargained with the Almighty in those days. And when I crept back to our chambers I climbed in beside William and held his head. The friar had given him bitter potions and cut his leg to release the bad blood. My mother had set an ointment of honey and onion on his chest. That at least seemed to ease his breathing a little. We lay with the night sounds, William’s dry wheeze, our hound Justice snoring by the doors, the click of the maid’s needles in the hall, and the cry of bats, almost too high for hearing as they swung around the Tall Castle in the moonless dark.
    “A penny for them,” Makin said.
    I snapped my head up with a start, almost tripping. “My thoughts are worth less than that today.” I had been a foolish child.
    Sometimes I wished I could cut away old memories and let the wind take them. If a sharp knife could pare away the weakness of those days, I would slice until nothing but the hard lessons remained.
    We made our way without problem until we ran out of forest. The land around the Tall Castle is clear of trees and set to farming, to feed the king, and so that he may see his enemies advance.
    I leaned against the trunk of a massive copper beech, one of the last great trees before the woods gave over to a two-acre field of ploughed earth peeping with green that might have been anything from carrots to kale for all I knew. More fields to the left and right, more beyond. A lone scarecrow watched us.
    “I’ll go on alone,” I said. I started to unbuckle my breastplate.
    “Go where?” Makin asked. “You can’t get in there, Jorg. Nobody could. And what for? What are you possibly going to achieve?”
    “A man’s got a right to call in on his family now and again, Brother Makin,” I said.
    I stripped the vambraces from my forearms, my breastplate, and finally the gorget. I like to have iron around my neck, kept it from a slitting once or twice, but armour wouldn’t save me where I was aimed.
    I took the scabbard off my belt. “Kent, look after this for me.” His eyes widened, almost as if he didn’t know that’s how a leader binds his men, with trust.
    “A sword like this…Sir Makin—”
    “I gave it to you.” I cut him off.
    “You need a sword, Jorg,” Maical said, confusion in his eyes. Behind him Sim watched me without comment, unwrapping his harp. He at least knew enough to settle down for a wait.
    I magicked my old knife into my hand, a trick I learned off Grumlow. “This will do for what I have in mind, Brother Maical.”
    “Give me two days,” I said. “If I’m not back by then, send Rike to take the castle by storm.”
    And with a bow I left them to watch the carrots grow. Or the kale.
    I made my way along the margins of the forest toward the Roma Road. They say you can put foot on that road and never leave it till you reach the pope’s front door. I planned to walk the other way.
    There’s a cemetery near the Roma Road, mostly eaten by the forest, mostly forgotten. I hunted through it as a child, crumbled mausoleums choked with ivy, smothered with moss, cracked by trees. The cemetery covers acre upon hidden acre, a lost necropolis. Perechaise they call it in dusty books. The legends mean nothing to