The Briar King

Chapter One The Holter Aspar White smelled murder. Its scent was like a handful of autumn leaves, crisped by the first frost and crushed in the palm. Dirty Jesp, the Sefry woman who had raised him, told him once that his peculiar sense came from having been born of a dying mother below the gallows where the Raver took his sacrifices. But Jesp made her living as a liar, and the why didn’t matter anyway. All Aspar cared about was that his nose was usually right. Someone was about to kill someone else, or try. Aspar had just walked into the Sow’s Teat after a week of hard going in the Walham Foothills. His muscles burned with fatigue, his mouth was grittier than sand, and for days he had been dreaming of the cool, dark, honeyed sweetness of stout. He’d had just one sip, one moment of it dancing on his tongue, one kiss of foam on his lips, when the scent came and ruined the taste. With a sigh, he set the grainy earthenware mug on the pitted oak of his table and looked around the dark, crowded interior of the tavern, one hand straying to the planished bone grip of his dirk, wondering where death was coming from and where it was going. He saw only the usual crowd—charcoal burners mostly, their faces smudged black by their trade, joking and laughing as they drank away the taste of soot on their tongues. Nearer the door, which had been propped open to let in the evening air, Loh—the miller’s boy, in his clean, lace-trimmed shirt—gestured grandly with his mug, and his friends hooted as he drained the whole thing in one long draught. Four Hornladh merchants in checkered doublets and red hose stood near the hearth, where a spitted boar dripped sizzling into the coals, and around them gathered a clump of youths, faces eager and ruddy in the firelight, begging stories about the wide world beyond their tiny village of Colbaely. Nothing that even looked like a brawl about to start. Aspar picked up his mug again. Maybe the beer was a little off, today. But then he saw where murder was coming from. It came in through the open door, along with the first tentative trilling of whippoorwills and a faint, damp promise of rain. He was just a boy, maybe fifteen. Not from Colbaely, Aspar knew for sure, and probably not even from the Greffy of Holtmarh. The newcomer swept a desperate, hurried gaze around the room, squinting, trying to adjust his eyes to the light, clearly searching for someone. Then he saw Aspar, alone at his table, and lurched toward him. The young fellow was clad in brain-tanned elkskin breeches and a shirt of homespun that had seen better days. His brown hair was matted, caked with mud, and full of leaves. Aspar saw the apple in his throat bobble convulsively as he pulled a rather large sword from a sheath on his back and quickened his pace. Aspar took another pull on his beer and sighed. It tasted worse than the last. In the sudden silence, the boy’s buskins swish-swished on the slate-tiled floor. “You’re the holter,” the boy said in a thick Almannish accent. “The kongsman.” “I’m the king’s forester,” Aspar agreed. “It’s easily known, for I wear his colors. I’ll be Aspar White. And you’d be? . . .” “H’am the man is going to slooter you,” the boy said. Aspar lifted his head just slightly, so he was looking at the lad with one eye. He held the sword clumsily. “Why?” he asked. “You know why.” “No. If I knew why, I never would have asked.” “You know saint-buggering well—tho ya theen manns slootered meen kon—” “Speak the king’s tongue, boy.&a