“Let’s hope,” says Alleen, glaring at her. He licks his lips nervously. Frayed, all of them. So on edge it hurts me to watch them. “You surrendered after the battle at Balkash, with ten of your soldiers left alive around you, Dansa. Of the soldiers I led at Geremela, two thousand survived,” Alleen says. “Ask them if I betrayed anyone.”
Osen Fiolt moves his horse away from them. Reviewing the lines once and again. Our lines, and their lines. Looking, trying to see something. Whatever it is that Marith sees, when he looks them over and knows how to win. “We kill them before they kill us,” Marith says, before a battle. “Our men and our horses, we go at them, we kill them all, we win. That’s all there is. There’s nothing special I do.” Osen looks at the lines of soldiers, our lines, the enemy lines. Again and again. Trying to see it. I ride over to join him. Tal, my guard, follows me, as he always follows me.
“We can defeat them,” I say. “You believe it.”
Osen laughs. “We have to defeat them. We suppose we could see what happens if we try to slip away overnight.”
“We can defeat them,” I say. I think so clearly of the Small Chamber and the knife. “Death to the dying,” I say to Osen. “We can defeat them.”
We look down over the great lines of my soldiers. So beautiful. So perfect, lovingly carefully turned out, their swords and spears clean and sharp and hungry, their armour polished, the crests of their helmets nodding in the wind. A horseman stroking his horse’s neck, whispering into its ear; an infantryman with his hand resting gently on the hilt of his sword; an infantryman rubbing fretfully at a smear of dirt on the pole of his sarriss.
Marith’s words come back to me, shouting, his voice slurring drunk: “Kill them all! Onward forever! On and on until the world ends!” Weeping, drooling, he disgusts me, I want to strike him, I am repulsed by him, I wish I had never seen him. “Never stop! Never stop! On and on! Kill them!” Brychan has come running to wake me and fetch me, because he thinks that as the king’s wife I can do something. Marith is crawling through his vomit, sobbing, cursing, I wish with all my heart that I had killed him. “Never stop! On and on! On and On! Again! Again! Kill them!” Marith’s words come back to me, lying beside me in the cool green of the mountain slopes, his hair damp from swimming in a stream, he is weaving a garland of white flowers for my hair, in a glade of lilies and woodstars and wild honeysuckle they are setting a tent of gold silk for us to sleep in, laying our bed with rose petals, preparing honey cakes and wine, guards keep anyone from coming within a mile of this place, he is sad and kind and beautiful, his hands rest on my pregnant belly, delighting in the child’s kicks, but he says again in grief, “But what will we do, Thalia, when we have conquered the world?” And there is fear, deep in his eyes, he twists the stem of a woodstar flower and it snaps between his fingers, its juice on his fingers is red, he says fearfully, “What will the army do, Thalia, once it has run out of places to conquer? Go home? Live at peace?”
Once, when I was a child, I put my hand into a silver box, drew out a little piece of painted wood. If it had been painted black or white, I would have died that evening. Because it was painted red, I was enthroned as the Beloved of the God Great Tanis. If we win this battle, I am the Queen of All Irlast still. If they defeat us, I am nothing. How very simple that is.
The army crackles with readiness. Eager. I can feel their hope and their love.
“Marith swore we would retreat,” Osen says. “If he lost.”
“I know that.”
Osen says, “Shall we attack?”
When a child in the Temple reached the age of five, she put her hand into the box. If she drew black or white, I killed her. If she drew red, when she was grown to adulthood she would kill me.
I say without a pause, “Yes. Attack.” The two armies facing each other. The enemy clashing their swords on their shields. I raise my left arm. In my hand I am holding a knife, the sun flashes on its blade. I remember… The smell of it, the taste of it. I drop my arm down.
The whole army before me breathes a great gasp.
A shout from off to my left. The war engines loose. Barrels of banefire crash into the enemy ranks. The bubbling voiceless cries of men dissolving away in fire as they die for me. A shout from the enemy. Answering crash of their war machines, loosing black rocks.
Rocks! It is pitiable. The King of Death looses banefire, commands dragons, and his enemies defend themselves with rocks!
A shout from the enemy. A hail of arrows, thick ripping barbed poisoned iron points. Slamming into the Army of Amrath’s front lines. Punching through the soldiers’ bronze. Piercing through to the bone. Among the killing arrows, whistling arrows that sing as they fly. An eerie howling sound. It reminds me of a prayer chant.
Both armies are champing their teeth waiting to get going. Desperately hungrily ears pricked for the signal to advance. The enemy loose another arrow-storm. A shout from our men and our war machines loose again, all four of them, hurling banefire. Osen looks at me. I draw a breath. Raise my arms for the dragons. Rehearse the words in my mind, once, twice, they come out with a sweet hot taste: “Ke kythgamyn!” Kill! Kill! At my voice they rise together. Their fire bursting out of them. Ah, Great Tanis, my head spins with it, I raise my hands and the dragons come at my command. Ke kythgamyn! It is wondrous. Yet, even as I had expected, dark shapes rise from the enemy lines to match them. Shapeless, shifting wing beats, the old things of ice and darkness that walk the high peaks of the Mountains of Pain on cloven-footed legs. Wild terrible god things.
The war engines loose. Ours and the enemy’s both. Banefire and dead black stones. Ynthe Kimek the magelord looses out a blaze of mage fire. That, also, is matched from the enemy ranks by lightning bolts of silver and black. Mage fire searing through the front ranks of both armies. The war engines loose and loose.
Ke kythgamyn! Osen draws up his horse for a charge. He looks strange, his teeth gritted, his eyes fixed not on the enemy but on the head of his horse.
Opposite him, the men of the Mountains of Pain charge first.
Red shrieking lips, black helmets with antlers nodding, black horses with cold fire hissing from their mouths and beneath the tread of their hooves. I call out to the dragons that spiral in the air fighting the mountain gods.
Osen charges. The spear point, where Marith should be. The men behind him shrieking, foaming-mouthed with rage, kill them kill them kill them. The war engines loose over them. A black stone crashes towards them, brings horses down. Men scrabble in the dirt before they are crushed beneath the charge. A wash of mage fire. Horses and men burning. The earth rising as steam. Bronze rising as steam.
Osen smashes into the enemy’s charge. Horses breaking. Men breaking. Everything red and dust and screaming. Nothing but sword blades coming down. The two armies face each other. Swords and spears. Aching for this. Starving men coming to sate themselves. Drums. A peal of trumpets. The massed lines of the Army of Amrath begins to advance. The men of the mountains stand waiting. Faceless iron helmets. Cut off from the world of the living. Dead, iron men. Ah, Great Tanis. I see it. The thrill of it, the beauty of it, for this alone all that he has done is worth the cost. To see it, to see men die in light and fire, falling like stars, tearing all the world apart as they die. This is what Marith sees. What they all see. It is like light. I who was the High Priestess of Great Tanis the Lord of Living and Dying, she who alone was permitted to shed blood for the God—I thought that I understood death and killing.
Meet them! Kill them! Take them! The killing ground. The two lines moving. The two armies meet.
The infantry lines push together. The massed ranks of the Army of Amrath, a wall of flawless bronze, pressing forward, advancing, crushing, their feet trampling down the earth. The thinner line of the men of the mountains is pushed backwards at the centre, its battle front curving, a thin crescent of black iron like a waning moon. Weaker, surely? I had faith in our army, I knew that they could do this, they who die for me, fight for me, they cannot be
defeated, they will be triumphant. Yet the crescent holds them, pushes back. Hold them! Hold them! Break them! Break them! The two sides pushing and grappling. Everything utter confusion, pressed so tight, everything shattering. Crushing too tight to breathe. Everywhere swords and spears and metal grinding remorseless against metal and skin and bone. Push. Hold. Hold them! Break them! The lines wavering. The weight of the Army of Amrath bearing down. The enemy begins to move back.
On the left wing, the light-armed cavalry under Faseem Meerak struggles to engage the enemy. Repeatedly, the mountain men charge towards them, eagles flashing down above them, talons ripping at their horses’ heads. Repeatedly, Faseem screams to his men to be ready. Repeatedly, the mountain men break off short, wheel away left or right, reform, make to charge again, again break off. Confused and maddened, Faseem Meerak’s men begin to lose cohesion. Their formations begin to break up. Faseem can be heard cursing, his face flushed. The mountain men jeer. Shake their axes. They have bells strung on the handles of their axes that ring with a jingle of child’s bells. Osen Fiolt comes riding towards them, his sword the Calen Mal shining. The Eagle Blade. Faseem Meerak’s horsemen cheer him. Faseem Meerak can be seen to grind his teeth.
In the centre, the infantry push forward. The men of the mountains are staggering back. Their lines folding, their centre crumbling, the Army of Amrath surging through them. Water eating its way through sand. The red dragon tears apart the mountain gods.
Faseem Meerak shouts. Readies his cavalry for a counter-charge. Swords flashing. Polished bronze reflecting killing light. The mountain men on their demon beasts retreat back. Clearly, in the melee of the battle, I can see Kiana Sabryya, strapped to her horse. Alis Nymen, who was once a fish merchant in Toreth Harbour, hacking away with his one good arm. Dansa Arual, wounded, her face so bright. The enemy riders swarming around them.
A shadow crashes into the melee. A dead god falling from the sky. It breaks over horses and men, mine and my enemy’s; blue mage fire cold as wanting, surging in waves, rising as mist, eating flesh and bone and iron and bronze. An enemy sword takes down Dansa’s horse. It falls and she falls with it, crushed beneath its bulk. Blue mage fire rips two of her men apart.
A wall of mage fire sears across Faseem Meerak’s advance. His light-armed troops fall back panicked and burning. Shadow creatures with eyes of stone. Faseem Meerak screams and curses and burns and dies. I see it, so clearly, through the melee. Alleen Durith pulls his horsemen into some kind of order. Mage fire seethes over them. They too break, flee with the fire burning them to ash even as they run. The ground around them is strewn with corpses. Ice freezing over faces black with cold. Faseem’s horsemen are pulling back, terrified. Defeated. They are not used to defeat. The men of the Mountains of Pain on their demon horses shriek with laughter. Wheel away. Charge the infantry lines. At the flanks the enemy surge inwards. The horns of the crescent drawing together. Enveloping the army. Closing like a mouth.
Above the battlefield, watching, I see it. All of it. I cry out to them to warn them. I am powerless to do anything to help them. I watch uselessly, helplessly, I am their queen and I can do nothing to save them.
The Army of Amrath tight-packed. Shoulder to shoulder. Their long spears are tall as a man, heavy, difficult to manoeuvre. Their minds soaked with blood. The enemy lines are closing from the flanks, encircling them, closing up behind them. They are unable to turn to respond.
The green dragon comes down rending fire, the gods it fights claw it and hurt it, fight it and it comes down tumbling in shadows, the demons clinging to it devouring it, its blood sprays out, but it turns and burns the ranks of the enemy, burns them, destroys them. But it is too late. Our infantry lines struggle and are surrounded. The enemy lines close around them. Discipline is lost. Weapons are flung down. A slaughter. A choking crush of bodies. Sword blades and spear points and mage fire and mage ice. Their own bodies. Dead men trampling on dying men.
This is not like light.
There is a song the men sing, sometimes, when they are tired and maudlin and the lamps are burning dim.
You who were strong as mountain streams,
Warriors, lion-men, storm-bringers, spear-clad.
You drank wine in the feast hall,
Boasted, wrestled, your fathers were proud,
Your wives loved you, women loved you,
The bright-faced ones, shining sword-men,
“Be as he is,” mothers bade their young sons.
Joy you brought to all in the feast hall,
You sang the songs, the maidens sighed when you danced.
Handsome-faced, gold-wearing,
Your renown, your valour, your glory,
Pleasure to all, we sang of the strength of your spear arm.
On the grey hill you lie now.
Food for crows.
The old songs, the glories and the tragedies, let us sit now by the fire and tell sad stories of the death of kings. The enemy is defeated. The hero conquers. Evil is vanquished, the world turned to rights, good men stand victorious, the shadow is cast out. The rout of the enemy who came to rape and slaughter and pillage and must be destroyed and must be cast out. And the enemy were men, as we are. And the enemy were husbands and fathers and brothers and mothers and children and sisters and wives. The enemy loved and hoped and sorrowed and wanted. The enemy raped and slaughtered and destroyed. And those who loved them weep.
A hundred thousand men we have in our army. Loving us. Following us. They have conquered half the world for us. They fight for us. They die for us. A hundred thousand men who have grown to love fighting and have done nothing else for four long years but fight. They have made me Queen of the World. They delight me and disgust me. I stand and watch them dying, and I want to bury my face in my hands for shame. But I will not look away.
If we lose, I am nothing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
The whole battlefield is burning. There is no battlefield. Huddles of men fighting and dying. Lying wounded, staring up at the sky. The sound of men dying, gasping for breath. Horses’ hooves again, thundering like water, black horses rushing down like water; golden hair like a wheat field rippling in midsummer breeze. Blue cornflower eyes. A scent of flowers. A woman’s laugh. Swords and axes, metal crashing against metal, skin ripped open, the crack of bones as they break. All eternity, fighting. Nothing, nothing left but to fight and die. The shriek of murder. The hiss of breathing. The gnashing of men’s teeth. A horse runs past without a rider. Two men fighting together cursing each other, each blaming the other for their wounds.
A voice screams on, “The army is destroyed! The Army of Amrath! Destroyed! We lost! We lost!”
Tal curses and curses and curses. Soldiers dying. More and more of them dying. Cut down unarmed. Trying to flee and there is nowhere to flee. Their bodies are frozen. Blue lips rimed with ice. The ground where they lie is white with ice. Horsemen coming closer. Smash of iron axes. Taste of cold.
Ashamed and betrayed. Humiliated. Knowing ourselves for fools. All is confusion, soldiers running here and there, blood stink, death stink, bronze and iron, rank sweat dirt smell. The men collapsing on the damp earth, cold and filthy, bleeding; they sink down, stretch out exhausted, trembling. Dry voices calling out for water and bread. On the edges of the fighting the camp women are already picking their way forward, women with knives, and their hands move, and occasionally their hands come up flashing with gold. A woman comes up to a wounded man weeping and shrieking, begins to mourn him as already dead. The shadows come down to the dark earth to lick at his bright blood. His mouth and nose and eyes are grey with dust. The look in his eyes is the look of a man who knows that he is dead.
And I remember, suddenly, then, something I have not thought of for years, buried away in shame. Ausa, my friend, one of the priestesses in the Temple, leading her small nothing life in service to the God. I remember leading Ausa away to punish her for her crimes against the God Lord Tanis, and Ausa cried out, “Look at the sun, Thalia! Look
at the sun!”
The bronzesmith works for days, forges a great sword for a king or a mage lord, sets its hilt with jewels, weaves it around with spells and charms, makes sacrifices to its forging, whispers rune words over the molten bronze. Men die in the dark to mine the metal, crouched beneath the roots of the mountain, scrabbling mouthing like worms in the rock. The closest a man can come to being a dragon, bronzeworking. Ca deln, Marith says they are still called in the old rune tongue of the White Isles. “Dragon men.” Sacred men. The work breaks the body. Leaves the bronzesmith crippled and in pain. Destroys him.
Marith’s voice, stricken with grief, screaming. “On and on! On forever! Killing till the world ends!”
We have unleashed it. We cannot stop. We must go on. A ravaging beast, my army. Its hunger is eternal. Its hunger grows and grows. So many other things we could do indeed, Marith and I. But—I think…
This is why he let the Queen of Turain defeat him, I think. Because he wanted to lose. Because he wanted…
A man comes crashing towards me, one of our own soldiers. In front of us, screaming. In our way. Tal cuts him down. Cold blue ice flames. Tal is panting: “Run! Run!”
Fear pouring off Tal, and I am terrified. But we must go, get out. Ride through cold fire. The Army of Amrath is dying, Marith is dead or dying. I have lost everything. But I must get out. Crawl out of here on my hands and knees. Down on my belly, if I must.
The dragon’s shadow, the dragons coming down. I hear voices screaming in fear of them. Riders coming up behind us. The sound of horses’ hooves. I run. Like trying to outrun the waves of the sea. Five men in black horned helmets, going past us, cutting our men down. They swing around. They are facing me. They stop still, their horses trampling red gore. Hold up bloody axes. The absurd sweet ring of silver bells.
I will not die. I refuse to die.
Silence, suddenly. We are cut off from the world. Standing waiting, the horsemen waiting. I can hear the horses’ breath. The hiss of the snakes in the horses’ manes.
The House of Sacrifice Page 22