Five pairs of eyes staring at me from black iron helmets. Eyes as terrible and empty as Marith’s own. I will put the fear on them. Fear and dark and light. From the fear of life and the fear of death, preserve us, Great Tanis, Lord of All Things.
The horsemen come closer. Perhaps four spear-lengths away. Behind us, distant, the roar of the battlefield, my soldiers being torn apart. A single scream cutting through all the rest, a woman’s voice in pain beyond anything.
Crackle of ice. The woman’s scream is cut off.
One of the horsemen comes still closer. Black eyes in a black helmet. Black armour. He could be made of black iron. He smells of iron. He does not look alive.
“You will not harm me.” I can hear my voice very clear, very cold, like a mountain stream.
This is how Marith feels, I think, when he kills.
I can make him fear me, I think. His horse snorts, stamps, tosses its head. I see the man tremble. He moves his horse a step back.
One of his companions shouts something in their language. He shouts in reply.
The world closed down to this, I am staring and the man in his black helmet staring back. I feel the ghost of my dead child kick inside of me.
I will not let him kill me. He will not. He must not. I did not do it all to die here defeated. I also take a step back.
A long time, I think, since I killed a man. I remember it. The way it felt to kill. The feel of blood on my hands. I can feel it, on my hands. He is my enemy, I think. He wants to kill me. Thus I must kill him first. It is a sweet thought. Of course it is.
I am unarmed, I look at him, I feel him fear me, he chokes out a cry. With his left hand he takes a knife from his belt. It reminds me of the knife I used in the Small Chamber. It is long and sharp.
“Do it,” I say to him. My voice sounds clear and cold and unreal. My mouth feels filled with blood. My hands feel sticky with blood. My dead child kicks in my womb. His companions cry out to him in horror as he raises the knife to his throat. He is crying with fear.
He slumps dead in the saddle. The knife falls from his dead hand. His horse bolts away. His companions flee from me.
The rain is coming down harder, washing the blood on the knife away. It is made of iron, it is colder and heavier than bronze. It lies on the trampled earth gleaming clean. My hands are sticky with blood.
Tal cries out, “We must go, we must flee.” He is so afraid. The enemy comes at us again. My guards’ pathetic swords, against these demon men. Butcher men. I am trapped. And I am afraid. One man I can break with fear, still, I can put fear into him, fear of death, fear of living, he falls away from me weeping in fear, shaking. But there are so many of them. So many. My guards are dying or dead. My horse shrieks, wounded, and I scramble from its back before it runs and then it crashes to the earth, dead. Tal, my guard, falls dead.
I am so alive. I am nothing. I don’t want any of this to stop. Twenty years dead, if I had chosen a different lot, if another child had chosen a different lot. I don’t want to lose this. The sheer futility of my life, if one day I must die. I who knew life and death. Make it stop, take it away, make me not a mortal woman, say I will not die!
Marith shouting in his sleep, “Mother, Father, Tiothlyn!” Say you will not die. Say you are not dead. It is impossible to conceive of it, that you are dead and will not return. Say I will not die as you are dead. I stand looking at the enemy soldiers before me. They stare at me. They will not kill me. They cannot.
“Thalia!”
Absurdly, mockingly, Tobias is standing there. His whole body is soaked in blood.
“Thalia!” Tobias cries out. There is blood and sweat and spittle on his face His face when I turn to him… it is like a light has settled on his face.
“Run!” he screams to me. “Run!”
Always, always, he follows me. I should kill him.
The sun is setting in a sky the colour of rotting wounds. Dusk coming: seserenthelae aus perhalish. We will. Oh my love, we will. Too dark now for shadows. The cold seeping in. Chaos and murder: they do not know, the soldiers, they do not know what to do, they have no words for this, no thinking, they march and they die and they kill and they are victorious, and now they are like children, and they do not know now what to do.
The sky is full of death things, walking, calling. I touch the scars on my arm. Sacred words of life and death. So many have I killed. But I wanted… all I ever wanted was to live.
I take his hand and we run.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Marith
Fighting
And in his head all was crimson. The filth of blood covering him. Peace inside him. I never wanted this. Remember? Never. I meant it and meant it and it’s all too late. I thought there was a way out. There’s no fucking way out. There never was. There never is.
An enemy horseman came up against him, drove his mount against the flank of Marith’s horse. Chill of cold down to the bone. A mage blade lashed out. Blue fire flickering down its length. His horse shying, stamping, maddened, the snakes in the enemy horse’s mane goading it. Biting at it. Couldn’t get straight. Horses wrestling. Blue mage fire cold as love. Hacked and hacked, got the man, his sword twisting on the man’s armour, blows so hard the sparks rose. His horse’s legs going, skipping, stumbling. Shrieked in pain. The mage blade thrusting itself into his face. Marith drove his sword in. Killed him. The air rang with the crash of it, his blade hacking at the man like an axe against a tree. And he was killing.
Hacking and stabbing. Stinking press of men and horses and demons. Black mage fire. Killing. Killing.
The battle was lost. The men were dying. His army was crushed, scattered, torn away on a cold wind. Alone, Marith rushed down to them, wounded, his sword shining in his hand. The Army of Amrath parted before him, drew back knowing he was coming without needing orders, felt him, knew him, and he was there and their lines parted in wonder to see him charge through them, cleave his way into the enemy ranks. As a dog knows its owner is approaching, lifts up its tail, trots eagerly to the doorway, waits there, so the Army of Amrath knew their lord their king their god their master, parted for him, surged back after him to follow him as the sea parts and breaks and surges onwards when a fast ship races on bringing plague and death. And he was killing. And he was killing. And his sword and his sword arm were soaked through with blood, and his eyes were filled with blood, and his head was sweet with blood.
“Marith!” Osen Fiolt was staggering towards him, on foot.
“They’re dying,” Marith cried to him. “My men. They’re dying.”
“I know. We’re losing. We need to retreat.”
“Retreat?” No, Marith thought, no, no, but I’m killing them.
“Marith!” The blood on Osen’s face was new and fresh. Osen was holding his body wrong, his shoulders, his leg; gasped and winced, cursed, breath hissed out of him, his face screwed up, his body shook.
“Osen?”
He’s hurt he’s hurt he’s hurt. Not Osen. Osen can’t be hurt.
His own body hurt, still. His sword was very heavy. His head felt heavy. Fall off his horse and sleep… Men running past him, bloodied, shrieking. Stinking of fear. Some of them had dropped their weapons. A sword fell at his feet as a man ran. The blade all bloody. The man’s face all bloody. Gone and ran on. Breaking from him. His horse moving backwards, pulled back by the men. Rout. Slaughter. Those that stood firm, their swords hungry, fighting, brave men, men who loved him, who loved war, who would not break, fighting on, their swords hungry, their spears hungry, hacking, pressing, they stood firm and he watched as they were butchered and swept away. He thought, suddenly, of digging channels in the sand on the beach on a hot summer’s morning, the sea would come in, sweep over, the sand would hold in places, little islands, the sea would eat away at it but it would stand, and then…
“Sound the fucking retreat!” Osen shouted. Screamed.
“No! Kill them!” Osen looked so small, on foot, all hunched up in blood.
Trumpets sounded. Osen had not been asking him.
Osen pulled at Marith’s horse, mad, trying to drag it. “Fucking get out of here.” The horse reared, almost struck Osen’s chest. Osen screamed, “We’ve lost, Marith, we need to get out.”
The enemy was boiling up around them. Cutting them. Bringing his men down. His men retreating. “Hold them!” Osen screamed to someone, “Hold them while we get the king out, get back, oh gods gods—”
Through the enemy ranks a figure was coming, huge, towering over the men around it. She was wounded and bloodied, as Marith was. Her hair was filled with black blight, her skin was cracked like soil in a drought. She brought down his men around her, felled them. They died like children at her hands. She rode her black horse that poured out cold blue fire, frosted the earth beneath it, its eyes were blind wounds where they had been hacked out, its ears and its lips had been cut off. The snakes of its mane dripped venom.
“Hold them hold them hold them while we get the king out oh gods oh gods oh gods oh gods—”
And Marith thought: is this how men feel, when I come at them with my sword drawn?
“Get out get out get fucking out.” Osen pulling at his horse his horse shrieking and bucking. “Get out cover us get the king out.” Two men throwing themselves before her his army crumbling like sand running like the tide going out running like clouds. “Get out, Marith.” The men came running. Screaming. Shouting. Blind dumb dead broken crushed. Their voices called out the despair of the end of all things. The dragon came over them. The red dragon. Flying very low. Marith raised his face to it. Ke kythgamyn maritket! But it swept over them to the south, flying fast, and was gone.
“Osen!” he shouted, because Osen looked as though he might be going to stay, to try to fight her, to cover him fleeing. She killed one of his men with a sword stroke that cut his body in two. Red madness. Rage. Scent of sunlight and wet earth and fresh baked bread. The men dying. All dying, shrieking, falling, the green dragon wrestling in the sky with gods that overcame it, tore at it, stifled its fire, the shadowbeasts broken down fleeing, his army eaten up by the enemy, consumed in black iron jaws, oh my army, my beloveds, you who fought and died and lived for me, you who would follow me forever, my loves, my companions, oh you who were true to me, who trusted me, who cared for me and placed your lives in my hands… you see? You see? What I am? What you are? Rotting flesh, my army, men marching who are a long time dead.
Didn’t I promise you death? Death and ruin and killing without end?
You wanted it! You wanted it! All of you!
The swords came down, the axes came down, teeth and fists and knives and down to the bone. His men were scattered, fleeing, dying, the earth was slick and liquid and scented with their blood.
The Queen of Turain, laughing. The enemy lines are solid as the mountains. Perfectly ordered, shields locked to shields. Black armour sucking all the light out. Cold fire plays around their helmets, runs down the black iron, dances on the antlers they wear that make them monstrous beast things. The blades of their iron axes burn blue. They are not men. They cannot be men. A shower of arrows, whistling. There are long ribbons tied to some of the arrows, brilliant red and silver streamers that snap in the wind as they fly. Beautiful. Terrifying, somehow. Ribbons and whistles. They run like the dragon runs in the sky, they come down on the Army of Amrath and the tips are poisoned. Like the dragon’s blood. The sound, like rain on water, of the arrows striking the Army of Amrath in retreat. Cold fire in the sky. Old gods. The shadowbeasts twist and flee in panic. Shatter into grey ice.
He thinks: I can father no living children. My father hated me, he was right to hate me, he didn’t hate me. I killed him. Thalia is dead. Carin is dead.
The ground is churned-up mud. It catches in his horse’s hooves, drags at the horse, slows it. This is my soldiers’ blood, he thinks. The horse snorts and shrieks. Black horses coming towards him. He draws his sword. The horse goes forward in the mud. On the edges of the killing ground things crawl towards him in the earth. Blood and bone. Hungry maggot things. Consuming his men.
This is what they were born for. What all men are born for. What is life, Marith? Life is a lie. Life is death. He screams out to his men.
His men remember this as they stumble backward in retreat in fear, and their hearts beat. He screams to them to rally. They steady themselves. Become themselves. Their lines reform around him. They shout out his name. “Marith! Amrath! Death!” They pull themselves into order, grasp tight their swords, grit their teeth. A bloody sweeping howling tide. “Marith! Marith!” They charge the enemy ranks.
This is the Army of Godsdamned Amrath. Some of these men, they butchered their own mothers to be here. Some of these men, they’d drag themselves along by their bloody fingernails to kill. There are men fighting with maggots eating their faces. Grinning, stroking their swords, and you can see them rotting away, their skin going black and green as they fight. The crows come down. Peck at the wounds. Pretty little songbirds up overhead twittering, swirling clouds of them, beautiful like smoke, gorging themselves on maggots and flies. The Army of Amrath regroups itself, steadies itself strong. The Army of Amrath fights joyfully, singing the paean, pushes on. Kill them! Kill them! The Ansikanderakesis Amrakane leads his horsemen forward. His sword shines in his hand brilliant with rainbows, rainbows dancing on the ground around him, dancing in the air, like snow falling, like coloured stars. Drums pound out a rhythm. Silver trumpets ring. Crash of metal and flesh. Slaughter. Death like the world’s end.
It is too late.
Alleen Durith turns to the enemy, throws up his hands in surrender, calls out to them, “I am with you! Kill the demon! Destroy it, the plague, the King of Ruin and Death!” Some of his men join him, merge into the ranks of the enemy, rush down onto the Army of Amrath from behind, tearing down on them like a sudden flood. Some stand in confusion, while the enemy goes past them. Are overwhelmed and dragged on. Some few of them shout out in rage or in horror: “Betrayal! Treachery!” Die as they stand. Ynthe Kimek the magelord blasts out power, lost and panicked, hesitant to destroy his own men. “To me, to me, Army of Amrath!” The men do not listen, to him or to his magic. A man comes up behind the magelord, runs him through. Blood spurts from his mouth. A glorious thing, magic. A wonder. A marvel. But it can’t stop a man dying in pain. Ynthe Kimek the magelord falls dead. Alleen Durith shouts, “Destroy the monster!” Leads the men of the mountains and his own men down on the Army of Amrath. One of your own generals himself plots to betray you. Conspires against you. Thinks you nothing but filth and death. The gods run with them on cloven-footed legs.
Lord Ranene the weather hand swings his sword, wounded. Blood is pouring from his chest, his arms, his gut. An old man, now. Tired. In the last years, as weather hand to the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane the King of Ruin, his black hair has turned white. Standing on a beach looking down into the wine-dark sea he could raise a tempest, drown every man here fighting, blast them with lightning, call up a wind so strong every tree in a hundred miles would be torn down. Here, in the mountains, he is an old man with a sword he does not know how to use. He screams, reaches out for his power. He falls and his mouth is filled with grey dust. His entrails lie spilled in the dirt for the crows. His death closes over him.
Ryn Mathen and the Chathean allied troops break. Run in panic. Stampede down toward the river, their eyes wide and wild. The enemy does not follow them. They throw themselves into the water, some are drowned there, the water is churned up with men’s limbs. They get across, trampling on the drowned. The enemy leaves them to run. “Betrayed!” the men of Chathe scream, “We are betrayed!” And others scream, “Destroy the monster! He will lose this battle! What is he to us but bloodshed? Why should we fight for him?” Across the mountains and across the plain, in every direction, like autumn leaves on the storm wind, the men of Chathe run.
“Alleen!” Osen Fiolt screams. He is weeping with rage and grief. “Alleen!” Osen Fiolt screams, “Alleen!” The enemy
breaks over him like a wave. The shock on his face—and Marith realizes, dimly, that Osen truly did not expect this. “Marith!” Osen Fiolt screams, “Marith! Please!” Osen’s eyes roll from side to side, waiting for another of his friends to turn against him. Confused and lost. “But you were my friend,” poor Osen screams.
A man with an axe comes charging at him, a huge black horse with red demon eyes, blue fire in its mouth. Its hooves strike blue flames as it runs. The axe is raised at him; he sees as it comes down that the man recognizes him even as he strikes him, checks his arm with a cry of fear or wonder or triumph. He feels the blade of the axe on him, the weight of the whole horse and rider behind it, it bites into him through to the bone. The axe blade crumbles. The metal eaten. Fallen to rust. Blood comes out of his wound dry as rust. The horse rears up in terror. Black hooves shod in iron. It writhes and twists itself, a thing of shadows, a mass of shadow dirt writhing together, like the white horses riding the waves of the sea. Its hooves strike him, send him reeling, they hurt him. He goes down under the hooves and he sees the rider’s face staring at him in disbelief. The horse rears again, the hooves come down. His blood running from the iron-shod hooves. Thrashes away from it, its shape is changing, it shrieks out in a human voice. Dead and alive and never-living, a shadow horse, this is a dream, he thinks, a dream a nightmare I am dreaming about horses riding horses being a child before all of this when I was alive when the world was a real place for me. He strikes it, kills it, kills the rider, the rider falls crumbling corroding eaten away. He can’t remember how he killed it.
He can hear the scream of horses. Children’s voices screaming as the enemy butchers the camp followers of the Army of Amrath. His eyes sting him, blurred and swimming. He staggers to his feet. Gods, he’s so tired. His hand shakes on the hilt of his sword. His mouth tastes of blood. Make it stop. It twists in his head. Like fingers. Tangling themselves, all entwined together. Hands clasped. Light and sound screaming heat and blood smell. Hatha dreams: I’m lost, it’s not real, I’m far away back somewhere, in my bedchamber at Malth Elelane, in the desert, none of this is real, all of this is a dream. Carin. Carin. Help me. Father. Ti. Mother. Not real. Not real. None of this is real. My father is alive and my mother and Ti and Carin. I’m a nameless man in the desert. I’m a child in a castle by the sea. Birdsong in the orchards. Running in the gardens. Reading a book by a winter fire. The smell of a summer stream. That’s real. Not this now. This is a lie. This is a dream. His sword is in his hand. Red jewel at the hilt winking at him. Glittering. Red light like the red light of the Fire Star. The King’s Star.
The House of Sacrifice Page 23