The man Brychan was trying to ignore him as he stamped off.
The summons came an hour or so later again. Just as the nervous terror of every moment waiting was wearing off. Ten men in red-crested helmets, drawn swords, the breeze blowing their blood-red cloaks. Their leader had gold trimming to his armour, a pattern of leaves and flowers, ivy, daisies, roses. A jewelled brooch at his throat fastening his cloak. A jewelled sword hilt.
Flashy. Posh bloke. Or good at dice and tavern fights.
Ominous/gratifying, that the boy had sent all this lot. Ominous/gratifying/fucking what possessed me?/what kind of inferiority complex do you have to have to send ten men and a flash git in gold armour to escort one old bloke with a bad leg through a heavily guarded military camp?
“You’re to come with us. Now.”
“I’d guessed.” Played up the limp a bit as they went, made them all walk slow. Everyone staring as they went past. Stared back. Wonder if there’s anyone I know still alive somewhere here? Acol. That kid with the bowl of porridge… Clews, wasn’t it? Odds are… well, there’s maybe eight thousand men here, tops, I’d say with my best professional years of experience finger in the wind guess. Accepting the claim that the Army of Amrath numbered a thousand times a thousand, as many battle-hungry soldiers in the Army of Amrath as there are grains of sand in the desert, that’s . . . [looks down at the sand in the desert] not great odds anyone I know survived, really, is it?
They reached Marith’s tent. Brychan was still standing there, rigid, sword in hand, sweat dripping down his face. The flash git nodded to him as they went in.
As they went in.
Oh fucking hell. What possessed me? Terror. Skin went cold. Doorway like a bloody wound into something. Gaping gnawing mouth. Don’t go in. Don’t go in. As he crossed the threshold, the shadows came up to meet him. Pus pain hate rage trauma bloody murder my fault my fault. World screams at him.
Marith was sitting on a camp chair, dressed in a loose shirt and leggings, bare-headed, unarmed. His hair was still damp from his bath. He looked so bloody young. Thalia came through from the sleeping chamber at the sound of them entering. Her hair too was wet, tracing a pattern of damp lines like foliage down her dress.
“Hello Tobias,” said Marith. Sounded so young, too. That gentle soft lilting voice.
“Hello Marith, boy.” His own voice sounded less shaky than he’d feared. The space between them seemed vast, he felt vast, dizzy, as though he was falling. Hard to keep looking, like none of this was real, like he should be looking at something else beyond this. “Mind if I sit down? My leg’s never been the same since that night in Sorlost. And as for my arm after that night in your tent with Raeta—”
The man in the gold armour hurried to bring up another chair. Then slipped out. Just the three of them. Thalia standing, Marith and Tobias sitting face to face. Long, long time since they sat face to face. “I want a straight answer out of you, Marith.” Blinked and looked away. A trumpet sounded in the camp outside. The army readying itself for battle. Tobias swallowed. Rotten taste in his mouth, maggots and bad meat. Why? Why? Why the fuck any of this? Why can’t any of us just be happy with what we’ve got? Why do we have to do this? Come on, then, Marith, boy. Draw your sword on me. Curse me. Spit in my face. Just bloody say something. Do something.
Thalia said, “Will you fight for us, Tobias?”
Uh.
Uh.
All the questions in the bloody world.
You wouldn’t expect bloody that.
Thalia said, “Will you?”
Trying to be casual, like. Tobias said, “I can’t fight any more, if you hadn’t noticed. I can barely use my bloody arm, after what your husband there did to me. I’m in constant bloody fucking pain. If you hadn’t noticed. I’m—”
Thalia said, “You don’t need to fight yourself. You could lead a troop of men.”
“I just rode through a desert to bring you here, Thalia. You damned well near killed me doing that. You begged me to bring you back to him. So I brought you bloody well back to him. Act of kindness. This is how you thank me?”
Marith just sat in silence, staring. His hands were clasped in his lap, very still, every now and then he’d raise his right hand to his face, make to scratch at his eyes, flinch and drop his hand back down.
What? I mean… come on, Marith, boy. Come on here. Say something.
“I brought her back to you, Marith. Yeah? So say something.”
Thalia frowned at him. Bit her lip, shook her head.
“Come on. I could have been anywhere else in the bloody world but here. I’ve spent the last four fucking years dreaming about trying to kill you. And here you are and here I am. You’ve got your sword, your army, you can kill me right here right now. So fucking well say something.”
“You trusted me,” said Marith finally. “Back then.”
Uh.
“Back then. Before. You trusted me.”
Fuck off. Right? But I did. Gods, Marith. You could’ve been . . . What you could have been. What I saw in myself, when I looked at you. Fucking hope, like Thalia said. Tobias said, “I’ve dedicated years of my life to trying to kill you, Marith, boy. You out of your tree on hatha again?”
Admit it. Confess. Said slowly, “I did fight for you in your army, once. At Malth Salene, way back in the beginning. Not sure you ever knew.”
Marith looked almost surprised. “You did?”
“I saw you kill your own father, Marith, boy. I cheered you doing it. I sailed into Morr Town with your war fleet and almost got disembowelled and was almost drowned and was almost eaten by a thing with too many teeth. I swore to all the gods and demons, I swore on my mother’s soul that I’d never bloody fight for you again.”
The boy’s face twitched. “You must be the only other person who was there who’s still alive, then.”
“I saw you crowned in Ethalden and I swore it again. And swore again that I’d kill you, in fact.”
Thalia said gently, “So go into Sorlost and fight against us.”
Oh, yes, right. That’s why I came back here with you, girl. Not. “I’m not fighting at all. I told you.”
Thalia said, “I can give you a bag of gold thalers, as I promised you, thank you, send you away alone into the desert. Or you can fight for me. Or I can give the order and men will come with swords and kill you, as my enemy.”
Oh. Oh, you bitch. Oh…
Tobias thought: gods, Thalia, girl, I thought… I thought you were better than that. All those days riding in the desert. Talking, being honest. You bitch.
Thalia said, “Well?”
“One company,” Tobias said slowly. “Swordsmen, not those stupid sarriss blokes, I wouldn’t know what to do with them.” Voice got faster, he could hear himself gabbling. “Blokes with swords. And not anywhere near anything involving your shadow-things or dragons. I’ll need a new sword, armour, new boots, I won’t fight in the lines, but I’ll lead them, give them orders and that. And I want a servant of my own, and a tent, and all that. A doctor, to have a look at me. Lenae and Naillil and Rovi get their bags of gold you promised them. Big bags. Very big. Like, they can piss half of it away on rubbish and still never have to worry again big. And—” Sudden brilliant idea. “And I want you to introduce Lenae to your friend Lord Mathen, tell him what a fine nice young woman she is. And I want you to find Naillil and Rovi and Lenae a fine tent as well, and horses, and servants, and all that.”
Thalia nodded. Like she’d had it all planned for days. Marith said, very quietly, “Thank you, Tobias.” His hands dug at his eyes. Thalia pushed his hands away from his face.
The bloke in the gold armour found Tobias a tent, and a sword, and a pasty-faced servant boy. And he had a bath himself (cold water, but) and a change of clothes, scrubbed himself down and felt the sand run off him. His skin beneath the dirt was yellowed, cracked, stained with age. Moisture seeping back into him, could feel himself plumping up, swelling like dried fruit. After the bath he
sat with a warm wind blowing his wet hair. Cold and warm together, delicious feeling, like he’d been crying a long time or exhausted himself fighting, his body languid now, a piece of taut thread that had snapped, stretched out now resting in the sun. He was half-asleep in the pleasure-ground between dreams and thinking when the bloke in gold armour came back, embarrassed, turned out the bloke in gold armour and all of his men were now Tobias’s squad. Marith boy had obviously thought long and hard about Tobias’s skills and where they could best be of use to him. They called themselves “The Winged Blades.” Had had to turn his laugh into a cough.
“Right. Right. Okay. Get them lined up, let’s have a look at them.” They blinked back at him, “who’s this loser?” written in every pair of eyes. Tobias walked down the line studying each face. Grown men, grown women, an old codger wheezing into his helmet, a boy with a face full of spots. But… gods and demons, there at the end was Clews, here, one of his men.
“Clews, man! Remember me?”
The boy shook his head in confusion. On second thoughts, maybe that was for the best. Got introduced to the rest of them and the gold-armoured bloke, thought the latter’s name was “Dyrk” but could be wrong.
“Right, you can fall out now, lads,” Tobias told them. “Relax and that.” They had a nice little circle of bed rolls and knapsacks, no tents or anything fancy but some branches and a spear shaft rigged up with cloaks to keep off the sun. A big canteen of water, a girl with a thin grey face to fetch the water for them. The whole lot of them squatting around a horse-shit cookfire drinking tea.
“Another cup, lads?”
“Gods, this is good tea. The best tea.”
“Put the leaves in when the water’s proper boiling, that’s the secret. Thirty years soldiering, I’ve had, to perfect making a cup of tea.”
“Worth it, worth it. What’s thirty years and your left eye and half your nose, when you can make a perfect cup of tea?”
“Just what I tell myself every morning, Clews, boy. What’s my left eye and half my nose, when I can make a perfect cup of tea?”
“They should give you some special commendation, services to tea making above and beyond.”
“Somewhere out there, there’s a gorgeous blond, his heart’s desire’s a bloke who can make the perfect cup of tea.”
“Oh, I think I killed him in battle just last week. Fell down to the black earth, his teeth in the dust and the dust covering his shining hair, the light dying in his eyes, and his final words were, ‘If only, if only I’d ever loved a man with half a nose who could make the perfect cup of tea.’”
“Here’s the new squad commander. Look lively.”
“Hello, lads. Sit down, sit down, no formalities here. I’m just coming to sit here and join you. Let’s have a cup of this famous tea, then.”
There was that time way back when, when he was a sane man. I kill people for money. That’s it. That’s what I do. And then there was the madness, killing and fighting to make Marith king, blood-soaked to the eyeballs, still no idea what all that was about, don’t ever want to know. And then there was the time afterwards when his heart was so fucked up mad with hate and all he could see was his fury, the world was a bleak terrible place not worth living for and maybe he could die lying to himself that he was doing something good. The boy’s a fucking sick-in-the-head killer. So… I’m going to kill him to put things right! Right? Makes sense?
And now there was this time when he felt sane again. Just plodding on. Live and let live.
“Got the money to buy your dad a farm yet, Clews, lad?”
Clews’s face lit up. “Soon. Really, really soon.”
Thought: tried the whole martyrdom resisting thing, tried as hard as I could, yeah, four fucking years, you know I did. Not complicit. Fighting from the inside. There was a night once after a battle when I gave water to one of his enemies who was dying, stuck a knife in the throat of one of his soldiers who would have lived. That’s got to count for something. In the grand great scheme of things? But I’m so fucking tired now. And Clews is going to buy his dad a farm with his soldiering money, and I’m going to help him. What’s wrong with that? We’re a bit past “let’s all try to come to an amicable arrangement here, chaps”: kind of guessing Clews’s dad and a lot of other people would be happier if I kept their loved ones alive, than if I helped their loved ones to die a horrible death.
Helping someone stay alive rather than helping them die, because they trust me and I promised them I would. Helping someone feed their family, do well for them. These aren’t excuses. These are the root of human things.
PART SIX
THE GLORY
Chapter Forty-Three
Orhan Emmereth the Lord of the Rising Sun, the adviser to the Emperor’s Nithque, the Emperor’s Counsellor and Friend, trying to keep himself from weeping until his heart breaks
Sorlost
And they awoke one morning to find the Army of Amrath camped beneath their walls.
How fine it sounded, how stirring to the blood, when it happened so long ago it didn’t really happen at all.
So few of them. This is absurd! A village of them, raddled barbarians waving bronze-tipped sticks. In the blazing sun, in the desert sands, they have a muddy stream to drink from, at night they must be cold as ice. Look, the wind is rising, blowing sand into their faces as they march about. Tiny, tattered figures. See one bend its head, imagine it blinking and spitting as the sand blows in its face into its teeth.
“You can almost count them,” Darath said. “Look.” Held his hands up to the window and the whole camp of them was blotted out. “If they linked their arms to make a chain around the city walls, they’d stretch perhaps between the Gate of the Evening and the Gate of Dust.”
Never had the city felt such fear. Worse than deeping fever. Worse than the Immish coming. Worse than the night the palace burned and for a moment there might have been civil war between Orhan and March Verneth. Writhing at the heart, eating at the mind of every man, woman and child in Sorlost.
After long hours the Emperor’s servants bethought themselves to meet to consider. There must be… something. Between them, they have killed and betrayed and lied a thousand times, they are lucky that they do not believe in the soul to fear their souls being judged. They sat in one of the great state rooms of the Summer Palace, on chairs of ivory and whale bone dragged a thousand miles across the desert, drinking wine from porcelain cups. Their eyes moved, again and again, to the window. It looked out over a fine courtyard garden, fragrant almost to rank excess with jasmine. They tried to see, through it, beyond it, the tents of the army of the enemy, the dripping bloody red banner of the King of Death. As a newborn baby looks again and again to its mother, knows her face before it can see more than the flickering of light and shade, so they looked again and again out to the west, as if they could see him.
“We should… send a message?” said Darath. The Nithque to the Emperor, the Emperor’s Beloved Counsellor and Friend, the most powerful man in the Sekemleth Empire.
“Oh, I’ll just get Gallus to draft one, shall I?” said Orhan. “There must be a standard letter somewhere for what to say.”
“We will have to go out to meet him,” said Selim Lochaiel.
Orhan said, “Yes. I know.”
“Not a thing to say,” said Darath. “That’s an obscenity, Selim. Go and wash your mouth out.”
“Darath, obviously,” said Selim. “Orhan, of course. Who else?”
“The Emperor. He gets down from his palanquin and prostrates himself in the dust. The High Priestess. She gets down from her palanquin and prostrates herself in the dust.”
Selim said, “The Emperor is forbidden to leave the palace except to visit the Great Temple. The High Priestess is forbidden to leave the Great Temple. In the whole history of the Sekemleth Empire, neither of them has been beyond the city’s walls. It is the word of the God.”
“There’s a first time for everything,” said Darath. “Two young children betw
een me and the demon sounds better than nothing. You’re serious, aren’t you?”
What did you expect, a gnashing of teeth? The gates were sealed, the city was silent. Even the Great Temple was almost deserted. The people of Sorlost sat in their houses in stunned silence, mouths opened but no words came out. Like the whole city was drugged with hatha, Orhan thought, their minds so numbed they could not see or think. After the frenzy of the last few years, murder, fire, plague, heresy, murder, the death blow comes pitiful and silent. In the palace a few servants wandered through the corridors, changing the oil in the lamps, mopping the floors, dusting, washing, picking up the child Emperor’s toys. At home, maidservants would be trying to play with Dion. A few shops were open, the owners trying to pretend. People still had to eat, do things; a wedding procession moved through the streets to the accompaniment of walnut shell rattles, the dancer at the front crowned in gold ribbons shouting “Joy to the bride!” in his rich well-trained voice. In the groom’s house the cooks would be bent over the feast, shouting at the underservants, cursing as a pot boiled over on the hearth. In the bride’s house the women would be making the last arrangements of the flowers, pinning and repinning a jewel just so on the bride’s dress. These things were still somehow important things. And still, in the back of the mind, the little voice that said that everything would be well, this was not happening, death and ruin and fire would not come to pass. Because. Dion won’t die, and Darath won’t die, and I certainly won’t die, not ever, really, not really die, because. None of this can come to pass. Not in my life.
The Court of the Broken Knife was crowded, one might imagine. If one could bear to go there.
They got the Emperor dressed and ready. A black shirt crusted with black embroidery and black gems so heavily he could barely move his arms. Black leggings the same, black jacket, black boots. Around his head the yellow band of cloth that marked his status, shining even in the sunshine, lit like mage glass from within. In the dark, it glowed with its own light as bright as a candle. No one knew how it was made, or where. Dragon cloth, cloth-of-the-sun, woven light. The demon Marith Altrersyr would doubtless soon be using it to wipe his arse.
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