From so close the javelin couldn't miss.
‘Are you going to throw it or not?’
His own face looking back at him! Dear gods, his own face! ‘Who are you?’ Inside he kept screaming it, over and over.
‘You know that, boy. I'm the Bloody Judge. I'm Berren the Crowntaker, the killer of kings. Now put that javelin down before I kill you too.’ The Bloody Judge frowned. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed in disdain. ‘Fish! So you are a warlock. Got a name I can put on your grave?’
Berren's blood surged. Somehow that broke the spell. ‘I've got a name for you. It's Berren!’ He threw the javelin hard and quick. The Bloody Judge ducked sideways, lightning-fast. The javelin screeched off the battered metal on his shoulder and veered sideways and up and speared a tree far down the road. The Judge shook his head and drew his sword, the blade of glittering black moonsteel. His sword, the one he'd held in his hand only a day ago. The moonsteel came arcing at his head and he was already ducking because he knew how the first blow would come, and for the next few seconds he could see, in every movement this pretender made, how he fought. How they both did. How they were the same. And that road led to a dark place of icy cold where he wasn't who he believed with all his might that he must be. .
He threw up his broadsword to block another swing and the moonsteel edge cut it in two. He hurled himself wildly aside, slipped, cried out and fell off his horse. The Judge jumped to the ground after him, grabbed him as he rose and smashed him in the face with an iron gauntlet. He staggered and fell, dazed, eyes ringing, ears full of stars, and then the Judge had him, sword point at his throat. He seemed more puzzled than angry. He poked with his point. ‘Well, you're a strange one. So who are you really?’
Rage and fury and screaming panic boiled together. ‘Who are you?’ Berren howled. ‘Who are you in there?’
The Judge shook his head. His sword twitched back, ready to strike. Berren clapped his hands around the blade and slammed its point down into the dirt beside his cheek. The Judge lurched down. Berren bucked and arced a kick over his own head, straight into the Judge's face, was on his feet in a flash but still not quick enough. The Judge caught his shoulder and sprawled him a second time and a boot smashed into the side of his head. The edges of the world turned black and shrank and all he could see was a bloody face peering down at him.
‘Knock a tooth out, did he?’ laughed someone, and he could have sworn the voice was Tallis One-Eye. Well One-Eye could just fuck off.
‘What do you want us to do with him?’
The world shrank smaller still. The Judge spat. ‘Queensguard. Same as the rest.’ Then Berren's eyes closed. The world turned red and the darkness had him.
Days passed. Skyrie knew he was dying. The village men had done what they could but his leg was lost. The damage was too deep and now the rest of him was fading as well. He shook and shivered in his bed, torn apart by the weakness and the pain. They came to see him, to sit with him, taking it in turns. There was always someone there. They thought they were being kind but he wished they'd just go away and leave him in peace to die.
Time passed again. Alone, finally, with the last of his strength, he hauled himself out of his bed and onto the floor. Outside, the night sky was filled with stars. He heard laughter and dancing and the crackling of a large fire and smelled its smoke. He crawled and dragged himself out of the hut that had been his home, inch by inch out of the village he'd never left, to the reed beds on the edge of the lake where he'd been born. He was going to die tonight and he wanted it to be outside under the stars, not in the dark. He reached the water's edge, rolled onto his back and waited. One by one, the stars winked out. Tears filled his eyes. He wanted to live, not to die. He wanted to live but the choice had been taken away.
A man stood over him. Skyrie blinked. He hadn't heard the man come, hadn't seen him. He was just suddenly there. The man's face, where it wasn't lost among the shadows of his cowl, was pale. One half was ruined, scarred ragged by disease or fire with one blind eye, milky white. He wore pale hooded robes the colour of moonlight.
‘Are you death?’ Skyrie asked, but the words never came out.
‘I carry the Black Moon.’ The stranger's one good eye bored into him.
Hands reached under his arms, hauling him along the road and then slinging him over the back of a mule. They tied him up, good and tight. His wrists tingled and his fingers turned slowly numb. For a while he danced in and out of consciousness. The plod plod of the mule lulled him. Maybe he fell asleep. Maybe he dreamed, or maybe they were memories. Of a man with a ruined face and one milky eye.
He woke again when they pulled him off the mule. He tried to see but his eyes were swollen almost shut. His head pounded like a busy blacksmith's hammer. The brightness of the day made him wince. His mouth tasted of his own blood.
The men around him were soldiers. His soldiers. Fighting Hawks. They tied him to a post beside the road and left him slumped there, groaning. The air smelled of mud and sweat but the sun was higher than he remembered and at least he was warm now. He rolled his head. Other men were tied to more posts around him. Queensguard by the looks of them, and they were on the edge of a field beside the road. Not in the trees any more. When he twisted to look behind him, he saw a farmhouse, but he couldn't look at it for long before the pain was unbearable. He gasped and cried out but no one even looked his way. He knew where he was, though. He'd been here before. Not far from the battlefield.
A steady stream of wagons and horses moved along the road. His supply train from Galsmouth, following the rest of the Fighting Hawks into Tethis itself.
His Fighting Hawks. His supply train.
Past the road all he could see was another field and then sky. They weren't far from the coast. A mile straight west and he'd reach the cliffs and the sea. Not that he had the strength.
A pair of soldiers moved past him. The Judge's men. He closed his eyes but he heard one of them whisper to another as they passed, ‘Let the Taiytakei have the lot of them. The boy's a murderer. Killed a couple of his house guards as well. Not a man you'd miss, but you know how touchy the Crowntaker is.’
His head sank to his chest. Pain, pain, pain, everything hurt, but nothing as bad as his head. There were holes in his memories. Hundreds of them. Like the rotten wood of an old barn so riddled with wormholes that inside its skin was nothing but dust and what was left crumbled to the slightest touch. Crumbs. Whole from the outside but on the brink of collapse.
The world drifted. He saw ships. He didn't know who he was. He'd had a name once. Maybe two. Sometimes he remembered one, sometimes the other. Sometimes he forgot them both.
The Bloody Judge. Berren Crowntaker. Remember!
Early in the afternoon they cut him down, him and the queens-guard, and dragged them over to a dozen cage-wagons and threw them inside. By then he was too delirious to even walk. He barely knew what was happening. They threw him in like a sack of onions and, if it hurt, he didn't notice. The wagons rolled and bounced over the roads, shaking his bones, adding to the hammer in his head. The rain, when it came, soaked him, and for a while his wandering mind thought he was at sea.
Berren Crowntaker. Remember!
He'd spent two years at sea once. A skag. The lowest of the low, scampering through the rigging, hating every moment of it, but he'd deserved it for what he'd done.