The House of Sacrifice

by Anna Smith Spark

  “Which way?” I also look around us. A shutter bangs upstairs in a house, I start and Brychan starts; a face appears in a window, mouth open, stares out and disappears. “This way,” I say, nudging the horse on.

  I should feel something. My Temple should ring in my mind, draw me on. I push the horse forward down the street. Brychan knows very well that I have no idea where we are going, of course he does.

  “As long as it’s not like it was at the Nimenest, My Lady Queen,” he says to me.

  “It’s bright daylight, and clear skies, and dry stone beneath our feet,” I say in reply. “And we were safe then, weren’t we?”

  The street leads into a narrow courtyard, a drinking fountain in its centre. A foodshop with bread and meat scattered in a tumble of broken pottery. Someone has hung wet washing in a doorway: bright clothes flap in the smoke-wind, untouched. A man is face down in the fountain. The fighting is closer, we cross the courtyard into an alleyway, come out on a wide street where a handful of my soldiers are fighting a press of soldiers in gold armour crouched behind a barricade that blocks the street.

  “We need to get away,” Brychan hisses.

  “No. We stay.” I want to see it close.

  “The queen!” one of my soldiers cries out. A noise from our enemy. They know me, then? Shouts and roars. The fighting redoubles, at the sight of me. Ugly dry hack of spears. I have heard so many songs describing the beauty of this moment, gleam of bronze, fury of men’s hearts, killing music, sweet pleasure warmth. What all men live for. The joy of every human heart. I have never before seen anything of it so close. The words they sing—they themselves know, I assume, how absurd they are. Ugly stab of spears and swords, the dry rasp of the metal on metal, the horrible feel in my own skin when a blade cuts in. A dry feeling on my skin. They tell these lies about it, I think, watching them, because . . . I cannot say how and why they tell these lies about it without falling down laughing. Unless they are really so pitifully weak. One of my men falls backwards. He is all bloody in his belly. He will not have a quick death. One of the enemy dies, neat symmetry, to avenge him. Then another, another, another, because my men are the Army of Amrath the scourge of the world, the conquerors, the bloodletters, the plague-bringers, the despoilers of all that lives, the floodtide, the pestilence, thus our vengeance is great, thus we will win. Quickly we go onward, past the barricade, sweeping on down the street. In the houses people stare out, terrified; we ignore them, there is nothing they can do. A few ragged voices are already crying out in Literan and Pernish, “Hail King Marith! Hail to the king!”

  In the distance now I can see the dome of the Summer Palace that was hidden in the maze of streets. There are more of my soldiers here, and more of theirs. We still seem of course to be winning. The crash of the fighting flows around me. A group of enemy soldiers comes rushing toward us, Brychan has his sword on them, I turn my head away from them, I do not want to have to look at them as they die. They begin to weep with fear. I think that two of them kill themselves out of fear, before ever Brychan comes near them.

  Tobias is there in the fighting. He looks happy. His face has a freshness to it I had not seen in him. Despite his armour he moves with more grace. I am glad that I thought of this for him. Does it surprise you, that I want him to be happy? I should hate him, curse him, for what he did to me. Oh, do not mistake me, I did hate him, certainly I have cursed him. But I think, with what I have, that I should be able to find it in myself to feel pity for him.

  He sees me. Pretends he hasn’t. I hear him roar at his men to redouble their fighting, or words to that effect. His sword is fast and fine in his hand, he holds his shoulders proud. His men follow him.

  “Ride on,” I say to Brychan. He is looking better now also, having seen how safe I am.

  The street opens into a wide square. I have never seen it, but I know it. The Court of the Fountain.

  It is disappointing, compared to the poems and the pictures. A large square, handsome buildings around it, the fountain itself smaller than I had thought. Marith talks a great deal about this place: in his dreams, the fountain runs red first with blood and then with wine to welcome him. It is made of white marble, curls of stone, clots of stone like a tree in blossom; the water it sends up is clear as diamond, it is made to resemble a great waterfall. Which makes me laugh, for not one person in fifty who lives in Sorlost can have seen a waterfall.

  Ah, my love, her hair, her slender feet as she dances,

  Her eyes that look anywhere but at my face.

  She moves like the waters of the fountain,

  Rushes, falls,

  I take her in my arms but I cannot hold her.

  Marith liked to recite those lines to me, before I pointed out to him what they might be about.

  The water of the fountain is tinted pink already, if not yet deep red. A woman’s body is being pushed under and under by the weight of the water. Her hair bobs up and down. She didn’t manage to escape, poor thing.

  “They’ll have to give it a good clean out, first,” says Brychan.

  I should know where the Temple is, from here. This is the heart of my city, I should know. I have seen pictures… the Summer Palace is very near here. It is absurd I do not know.

  This is… not my city. This place means nothing to me. The realization surprises me, then I am surprised I had to realize it.

  “Thalia!”

  Marith rides into the Court of the Fountain. Ryn Mathen and Kiana follow him, all three of them slick with blood. Marith is as covered in blood as my dead child. New born. He takes off his helmet, his skin beneath is clean of the blood so that his eyes look huge, his hair is soaked through with sweat. “I’m so glad we came on you here,” he says happily. “We can go up to the palace together, take it together.” He, too, has at last forgotten any fear for me. “You should be there.”

  “Not the palace, Marith. Not yet.”

  He frowns. “Why not?”

  “The Temple, Marith.” Still I look about me, hoping I will suddenly know the way. “First we must go there. That is what we need to set ourselves against, to conquer Sorlost.”

  He says, “I thought you wouldn’t want to go there.” He laughs uneasily. “I was about to send Ryn and Kiana to secure it for me.”

  Ryn starts so much his horse bucks under him.

  “I want to go there,” I say. The Great Chamber. The Small Chamber. The garden where they buried them. Only when it is done will I be able to go to the palace.

  I remember him begging me to stay when he killed his mother and his brother. All night he sat in the hall where he had done it, with his sword in his hand. He sat in their blood, with their bodies at his feet. Screamed as loudly as Tiothlyn did as he died. I lay in our bedroom, in our bed with red hangings, I could hear the sea through the window, the gulls were shrieking all night. I covered my ears but through all of it I could hear his screams. I thought of Ausa my friend in the Temple, and the way that she had screamed when I cut her hands and her eyes. His screams that night, I think, were what made me certain that I could bring myself to marry him. The way he looked at me, in perfect human grief, once he had killed them, threw back his head and screamed that I had had to see it.

  “Have they surrendered yet?” I ask Marith.

  “Not yet. That was where we were going. To see if anyone is left who can surrender to us.”

  “The Temple,” I say again. “That is where it must be done. The palace is nothing. We will do it together, Marith,” I say to him. “Side by side.”

  A silence. He nods at Kiana. “Get the palace secured. The Emperor…” He frowns then. The Emperor is a child of five. Though no one has said it aloud in my hearing. “Don’t tell me,” he says. Kiana nods back.

  His eyes grow distant. Thinking. Something has come to him. A fear. And a relief.

  There are a hundred songs of the king’s sack of the Summer Palace of the Asekemlene Emperor of the Sekemleth Empire of the Eternal City of Sorlost the Golden. Marith does n
ot like to hear any of them sung.

  For him, also, the Temple is the right place.

  “The Temple,” he says.

  “So do you know how to get there from here?” I ask him. “Or can you find someone to take us?”

  So many years I lived within the Temple walls.

  It is hard, it would seem, to wash the past away.

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Orhan Emmereth, the last living defender of the city

  The ruins of Sorlost

  All of it was gone. All of it. Orhan fell back, and fell back, and fell back.

  They were outnumbered, these scraps of an army, defeated, abandoned, they ate away the city, the soldiers of the Empire in their fine gold armour fell away before them. Pestilence and plague, they called themselves. They ate their enemies’ bodies like the plague, yes. The soldiers of the Empire lay down and died before them. In places the streets ran ankle-deep with blood. The walls fell ruined in fire. They were not bronze but heaped sand. The men’s swords corroded in their hands. Their bodies crumbled away to nothing.

  Orhan fell back and fell back, rallying the soldiers, fall back, a fighting retreat, fall back, fall back. Darath beside him wounded, sweating, his sword weak in his hand.

  “You should go,” Orhan told him. “Go home. You’re hurt.”

  Darath only panted and shook his head. Didn’t trust himself to speak.

  “Go back. Go and guard Bil and Dion.”

  Hiss through clenched teeth: “No.” There was blood and spittle around Darath’s lips.

  “You can barely fight.” You never could. You should never have been here.

  Hiss through clenched teeth: “Doesn’t matter. Does it?”

  Two more of their men died. Swords in the air near them, and they died choking on blood. The ground trembled as a building fell. In the sky before them, a shadow came down. They fell back and they fell back. In places, the streets were so clogged with corpses they could not get past.

  There is a point, Orhan thought, surely, when they will be unable to lift themselves for more killing? The swords in their hands will blunt. So the swords in their minds must blunt. At the last, surely, they must grow sated with killing.

  I have killed, Orhan thought. That night in the palace, fighting the sellswords he had hired, fighting Tam Rhyl’s men—excitement, and fear, and fury, and then… Weariness. Hunger. Thirst. The need to piss and shit. And finally something like boredom. Men grow bored of sex and drink and debauchery and rolling in gold thalers. I think I might know this. Men must grow bored of death.

  The enemy drove the people before them, slaughtered them, the people of Sorlost died without a sword being raised. Just fell down and died, emptied, gutted, as the enemy came through the city streets. The sky was black. All around them the walls burned, the city was ringed with metal fire. Have you ever seen metal burn? It is… beautiful. The enemy did not become weary, or bored, or blunted. They slaughtered as the rain beats down on the desert soil, as the river runs down to the sea.

  A crash, the earth shaking. A gap in the sky, with the walls lit behind it, a gap through which the fire showed bright. Then all was blotted out by a shadow huge and faceless, rising against the damage it had done.

  “The House of Flowers,” Darath said. There was blood in his eyes. “My house.” He sagged against Orhan’s arm. Another of their men died, cut open. They fell back and fell back. Fighting retreat.

  To what?

  Orhan said, “Darath: go back to the House of the East. Stay with Dion. Shelter.”

  Darath almost spat at him. “No.” Darath’s teeth were chattering now. He looked at Orhan like he felt anger for having been made to unclench his mouth to speak. “No. No. No. No.” Had to make himself stop saying it. Clench his mouth back shut, clutch his sword. The words stopped but his body shook.

  The air smelled suddenly of incense. Sweet and soft through the filth. Fragrant as Darath’s bedroom. Orhan stared through the rubble and found himself in the Street of the Drum Makers, which led to the Court of the Broken Knife.

  There was a sound coming from the Court of the Broken Knife.

  A woman was standing in the street holding out her arms. Even as they watched she fell to her knees, prostrated herself.

  Beyond her, the square was filled with candles. Sacrifice offerings: milk, wine, meat, gold coins, animal blood. The statue was garlanded with so many flowers it was hidden beneath them. The broken knife in its hand jutted downwards, and the broken blade was sharp enough to kill. Its pointless burden raised to the sky. Orhan could not see its face.

  The square was filled with people to overflowing. Kneeling, pressing each other for space. Begging the statue, imploring: look, behold, witness us here welcoming you, worshipping you, surrendering to you, spare us. Spare us! Praise him! Bodies jostling together for space, struggling, packed tight—yet there was no fighting, no arguing, the people gathered there tried to make room for each other, pressed up close and meek, very quickly the newcomers would become small and huddled, fit themselves into the crowd, in turn make way.

  Some there were already injured. Orhan saw many of his soldiers there, still armed.

  No one wept.

  A flash of red fire caught on the roof of one of the buildings lining the square. Very quickly spread. The kneeling faces were cast in red from the fire. The flowers garlanding the statue bloomed red.

  Enemy horsemen rode into the square from the Street of Water. They stopped, a line of them five abreast in the shelter of the street. The crowds spilled right down to the horses’ hooves. The horsemen looked huge, compared to the people huddled beneath them. Sitting, kneeling, and the horsemen on their tall horses looked down at them.

  A moan, from the square, and a cry of welcome.

  The horsemen rode forward.

  The statue watched; Orhan and Darath watched.

  The people in the square flowed beneath horses’ hooves. There was no other word for what happened there. The horses rode through them not like through men but as if they were crossing a stream. Children playing and splashing in a rain-flooded street. The people in the square lay before them. Did not move. Surrendered themselves to them. They died without a word, or they lay injured and uncaring, waiting for another horseman to bring his horse’s hooves down on them. They were smeared and trampled. Iron-clad hooves reared up and crashed down into them. A child with her head smashed open. Her mother sat beside her, holding her dead hand, waiting. A man with his chest shattered, ribs jutting. A fine roan horse reared and came down, reared and came down, ground him away as a butcher grinds meat. The horse was gore to its withers. It wore a leather head covering that made its head look like a black skull. Its rider wore a helmet that covered his eyes. His teeth showed as he smiled, white in a face that was stained with smoke and blood. Spittle dripped from his mouth, like a dog.

  All this time, Orhan and Darath and their few soldiers stood watching. Cannot look but cannot look away. Cannot move to fight or to flee. How can they bear it? Orhan tried to think. Tried to imagine that the soldiers of the Army of Amrath were not men. One of them pushed back his helmet, drank from a wineskin at his hip, fumbled in a purse on his belt to find a hunk of bread. One of the Imperial soldiers in the square was still alive, trying to get up, his golden armour had shielded him. He got half to his feet, stumbling: Orhan had the sense that he did not know who or where he was. The enemy soldier eating bread gestured, lightly, still chewing with his mouth a little open. Another of them rode at the man, killed him. The first enemy soldier passed him the wineskin.

  We have to get away, Orhan thought then. Brilliant flash of revelation: they’ll come at us next and kill us! We’re standing here, rooted here watching this impossible unreal thing, they’ll ride over here to us, kill us. He dragged at Darath’s arm, Darath too was paralysed with it, and the handful of soldiers beside them. The horsemen gazed over to them, uninterested. Had a piss, enjoyed a brief break.

  Hide and get away and hide and hide and pray.r />
  They began to run.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Tobias, acting senior squad commander in the “Winged Blades”

  Sacking Sorlost

  Woooooo!!!!!!

  Kill!!!!!!!

  Kill!!!!!!!!

  What he’s been doing since he was a young man trying to find a way to scratch a living. The village dyer died and the village that depended on him to dye died with him. A joke that never got stale, for all he’d borrowed it from someone else. Weave cheap cloth for a pittance, remembering the good days when the merchants would sigh with pleasure over the cloth they wove. Or go away to do something else. Tobias went away to learn to kill people. Discovered he was good at it. Just like the weaving: if you’ve got a skill, be a crime to waste it.

  Yeah, he feels guilt. I mean… obviously. What have this lot ever done to deserve any of this? Been born at the wrong time. Lived in the wrong part of the world. Been cruelly oppressed and ill-treated by a government that really hacked the wrong people off. He’s fighting for a really bloody rubbish cause that he’d sooner drink literal goat’s piss than profess to believing in, notice he’s not shouting “Hail King Marith” like the poor deluded fuckers he’s leading on, but that’s true professionalism for you, isn’t it? He’s good at this stuff. Too good to waste himself not doing it. Four years wandering around a wasteland of corpses doing nothing, telling himself he’s not complicit in it, like that matters to anyone except himself.

  It probably matters to the kid he’s just disembowelled, to be fair to her. Girl might have… hidden in the pile of bleeding limbs that was her family and next-door neighbours, pretending to be dead… if he’d not swallowed any moral qualms he might have about doing this. Her mum might have had time to kill her peacefully before this particular squad of soldiers in the Army of Amrath got to them. Or, to really paint a good contrast here, her street might have been left completely untouched. Plenty of streets in Sorlost left completely untouched, her bad luck Tobias made a spur-of-the-moment decision to take his men down this one. A different squad commander might have gone left at the last corner, left her alone to grow up a healthy happy loyal subject of Marith Altrersyr King Ruin King of Death.