The King's Last Song

by Geoff Ryman

  "We push on,” said Jaya. “We have twenty boats with us from the east. If they get into the canal system, that will be enough."

  Jaya cocked an eye back at the poop deck and said, “Tillerman? Keep going."

  A conch shell sounded, the agreed signal to keep advancing. From the decks of the other eastern boats captains smiled and waved.

  Jaya spoke to the men. “Remember, our job is to get the troops on land. The aim is to avoid fighting on the water. The battle will not be decided on the lake.” Arrows always seem to accelerate towards their targets. Like arrows, the Cham navy advanced. Very suddenly Jayavarman could make out the round, high-cheeked faces of the Chams and their glittering lotus-bud helmets.

  "Have I ever told you, Vid,” Jayavarman said, with a voice as airy as clouds, “that I cannot swim?"

  Vid caught the spirit. “That must make this more interesting for you, then."

  Jayavarman shook his bow and his fistful of precious arrows. “It is good that I have been so hard at work at my archery. I don't intend that the Chams give me swimming lessons."

  A crocodile thumped the side of the boat again. This time the men laughed.

  Two of the King's smaller boats swung up on either side of his barque, like horses protecting an elephant.

  And very suddenly the Cham fleet was on them.

  The conches blew from boat to boat. Drive on, drive on, drive through! Jayavarman bellowed, “Get past them, push past them!"

  A particularly large Cham vessel, hewn from a single giant tree, nosed its prow towards him at rowing speed.

  "Spin right!” shouted the tillerman. In unison, the paddlers on the right reversed the direction of their stroke, pushing against the water. The whole boat turned as if on an axis for less than a quarter arc. Then all the paddlers stroked forward in unison and the boat leapt forward.

  The Cham boat shot past their poop, water shushing out from it, as the enemy oarsmen cried out and their boat tried to change direction. The Cham navigator shouted and pointed at the central pavilion. Jayavarman had been recognized.

  "Down,” cried the tillerman.

  The paddlers ducked and the soldiers lifted up their tall wooden shields. A volley of Cham arrows sped with a sound like birds, then bit with a sound like talons. They tore into the deck or thunked against shields.

  A Cham boat slammed along the left-hand side of one of the King's side-boats. Grappling ropes uncoiled in the air. One missed; two others bit into the sides of the ship. Rowers spearpointed the tips of their oars at the eyes of boarders, and crouched forward to throw off the hooks. The Khmer soldiers then pushed off from the side of the Cham barque with their long lances. The side-boat shot free.

  The King laughed aloud. His little arrowhead of three boats was already through. Ahead lay the undefended waterways of Yashodharapura. He nipped between his crouching soldiers along the boat to climb onto the rear deck. He peered behind, into the morning sun, shielding his eyes.

  Come now, remember, he told his other boats. Do not engage. Treat the Cham ships like shadows and slip past them.

  Jaya saw one of his seventeen other boats disengage and push forward. Then he saw, unmistakably, the spider-web grappling lines fly across from the Cham ships.

  The boat that had nearly rammed him seemed to lose heart. It slowed as if foundering and then turned south.

  Lose heart nothing, they're joining the battle. Where we don't need one.

  "Slow down, stop,” the King said to the tillerman, who struck a gong to signal to the side-boats.

  In the distance, Jaya saw Chams swarm up and over onto one of his boats. The Khmer advance had snarled itself. Sounds flew across the lake like samosan birds scooping up fish: shouts, slams.

  The hollow whispering of the wind.

  The King calculated quickly. His three boats carried forty men....not enough.

  Come on, come on, he told the other boats. Get out of there, come north.

  Still no boats broke free from the engagement.

  He sighed. This was no doubt only the first disaster on what would be a day of them.

  "Turn,” said the King. The tillerman thumped once on a gong to signal. The King's boat milled its way round like a waterwheel and the side-boats pushed forward on their oars to slow down.

  "Let the side-boats catch up,” the King told the tillerman and then walked back to the central pavilion.

  Vid asked, “What's the plan now?"

  "Cut our boats free and remind our men that the battle will be on the land not on the lake."

  The battle swung into view. Ahead, everything had stalled. The vessels of both sides had lashed themselves together into a giant raft of boats.

  The King raised his voice only slightly, so that it would not waver. “We head straight into that tangle nose-first. We need four men in the prow. You cut all grapples, even our own. The rest of you, keep the Chams off our sides. As soon as the grapples are cut, I want the paddlers to back us away.” The King's hand mimicked a jabbing boat, thrusting its way in, then backing out. “This will take courage. You have it."

  Already he heard the men on the hindmost of the Cham vessels shouting to alert each other of his presence. The King stood up in his pavilion, exactly as he would stand on the howdah on an elephant's back. The instant he was in range he began firing his precious arrows.

  His first arrow sizzled into the neck of the Cham helmsman. His own men cheered. Good omen, Luckbringer.

  What looked like an officer all in armour was stumbling over backs down the length of the Cham boat. Jaya's second arrow drove into the man's mouth, and his forward momentum somersaulted him over the backs of his men.

  The mess of boats loomed. The tillerman said one low word and the paddles flashed in sunlight like the tongues of hunting frogs. They accelerated into the heart of the snarl.

  Ram.

  Rattan crackled. The King's boat listed to the left as if it had been picked up. Jaya was nearly pitched off his feet. Four soldiers stood up, swords raised, and slashed at Cham grapples. A hedge of lances along their sides kept off boarders.

  Jaya heard rather than saw the arrows and felt their dim shadows flick across the sun. The pitching of his boat made it easy to fling himself behind the scant defences of his mid-deck pavilion. The wooden floor sprouted the shafts of arrows. The backs of his men grew barley.

  But already grapples had been cut; already his paddlers were backing them out of the snarl.

  The King stood up and shouted in Khmer to his boats, “Pull out! Pull out now!"

  He looked round to Vid. Vid was fine. So was the tillerman. Damage to the men on the right was extensive, but Jaya saw one of his other boats shrug its way out of the mess.

  The soldiers went to work, hauling wounded paddlers into the center of the deck. The King danced towards the wounded, to help ease them clear. Other paddlers replaced them, scuttling from the row on the right.

  Five would probably die, three more were useless but would survive. One of the wounded grinned and gave a hand symbol for good luck.

  The King pointed to another narrow bay between boats. Steer there! “There, there, there,” he shouted, pointing.

  And he began to whisper the names of the wounded men, remembering their stories to tell their wives and children.

  The King's boat gathered speed again and rammed its way between Cham vessels. His men raised their paddles as the Chams shouted to get their own oars up in time. Some snapped and crackled, shards of wood scything through the air.

  With a rumble and a judder their boat collided with both a Cham and a Khmer boat. The Chams were faster this time and hooked lines were flung over the figurehead and stern of Jaya's own boat.

  The three ships were locked in one embrace. Jayavarman drew his sword. So did Vid.

  "You are the son of my friend who protected me,” said Jayavarman. “I will not let them take you."

  "Nor I you,” replied the Cham prince.

  The Chams swarmed, pouring onto their confine
d deck. Pointed paddles jabbed at their faces and the soldiers in crouching phalanx drove spears up at them. But a wall of Cham troops, covered in metal armour, knocked aside the lances and spilled over the paddlers’ backs.

  Soon it was messy hand-to-hand. Pressed close together, the Khmers could hardly lift up their homemade weapons without whacking their comrades. But the Chams had no experience of defending themselves against these long spears with blades at both ends.

  One Khmer soldier successfully swept his lance up and round into a Cham gut and then levered his victim over the side.

  Jaya glanced behind him and saw the Cham bleeding as he swam.

  The front end of a Khmer spear drove forward into another Cham throat while another tripped and flicked the same man over the top of the low rattan screen.

  Two Chams had climbed over the backs of Jaya's men, swatting lances aside and lunging towards the King.

  Vid swung, protecting Jayavarman as his father Jaya-Harideva had done.

  A Cham charged Vid, and Jaya aimed a blow at the throat left exposed by the lotus helmet.

  The Chams tried to grasp the naked, oiled, sweaty Khmers, who slipped out of their arms like greased locks. The Khmers turned and surged onto the Chams’ backs. The lotus helmets provided a perfect hold. One Khmer seized and held a head, another opened up the voice box.

  Lances were thrust between legs and then levered upwards.

  The rattan screens were low, to make it easier to fling boarders over the side. Top-heavy in armour, the Chams fell over backwards into the milky brown lake. They cast off armour too late. They kicked and splashed their way back towards their boats. By now the water all around the boat boiled with crocodiles and asura-fish that could take whole deer.

  "Now pull! Pull!” shouted the tillerman.

  The paddlers, their faces struck by urgency and fear, dug swift and deep into the water.

  Jayavarman nodded thanks to Vidyanandana. Vid's sturdy face beamed back at him. In a flash, Jaya calculated. A Buddhist adopted crown prince over a Hindu one? This Cham over a Khmer?

  The soldiers jumped forward, killing any wounded Cham and harvesting armour and weapons. They flung the dead and dying over into the water.

  The helmsman shouted something. Jaya didn't understand, but the men did. They swept the prow of their boat through an arc and used it like a lever to push another Khmer boat around.

  His boat sprung another Khmer vessel free. Unbidden, his paddlers then shoved their way out backwards.

  The King steadied himself for balance and saw that the lead Cham vessel was just in range of his arrows, and that, in its pavilion, the Cham Admiral stood firm and brave and bannered.

  With a whisper of hope, the King drew back his arrow. The bow sung, the arrow leapt. Like an angry bull, the arrow charged into the Admiral's neck. A Cham officer cried aloud and a moan of alarm spread through the Cham vessels.

  "Down!” Jaya shouted and dropped, rolling off his raised deck.The King's men dived for the shadow of the rattan screens.

  The air sizzled like kebabed fish. Arrows applauded all across the deck and the sides of the boat.

  Before Jaya could give any other order, the tillerman screamed, “Get the King onward!” Another Khmer barque sliced through the water past them.

  Jaya leapt to his feet and saw behind him grappling hooks being thrown free. Eight or nine boats free now? Enough.

  Jaya nodded thanks to his helmsman. He had given the right order. The King's boat backed away from the mêlée.

  Dead weight had to be cast off. Soldiers had already hammocked up a limp, grey man.

  "Let me see their faces!” the King shouted and strode forward.

  Mulberry from his own city. Fox from Big Pier.

  He saw them, and rehearsed their names and how they had died. So many names he would have to remember with gifts and honor. So many widows to comfort.

  Then they were thrown to the fish and crocodiles.

  And the King counted ships. Eleven, twelve....more.

  "We're through,” Jayavarman said to Vidyanandana. “Now the battle can really begin."

  * * * *

  The King's nerves crackled as his men dug their paddles swift and hard into the canal water.

  Category people raced ahead of the boats along the banks of the canal. They swung the long arms of their irrigation pumps out of the path of the boats. They skidded down the slopes into the water, to seize their buffaloes by the horns and coax them to one side of the canal. From the buffaloes’ backs, they waved at the boats that swept past them.

  For months the songs had been telling them: the White Rabbit wants to swim. For months they had been dredging the canal. All along the tops of its banks, clumps of weed and black soil still crispened in the dry air.

  Swift-footed boys ran barefoot alongside the boats calling, White Rabbit! White Rabbit goes boating!

  The King laughed with them, flowering out his arms and chest as if he had already won. Daughters waved from elevated porches. Old men rocked back and forth on their haunches with excitement, laughing toothlessly.

  Behind him, all along the straight, deep canal, thirty or forty boats rowed, all the way back to the white glare of the Great Lake, a bubble of reflected light on the horizon. The strategy was that half the boats would turn to guard the canal entrance. Could he hear, even from here, the dim sounds of the lake battle?

  The King, standing proud on the poop, could see that on the banks there were barricades of sharpened tree trunks.

  The King called, “You roll those in after we pass?"

  The boys jumped up and down with excitement and yelped. “Yes, those Chams will not get past us!"

  They had the faces of slaves set free.

  It worked, thought Jayavarman. Calling on my peasant people. It worked.

  Beyond the rows of houses, scrubland bristled.

  Where, the King asked himself, are the houses?

  Yashodharapura had once housed a million people. In the days of Yashovarman, these fields surrounded villages. Jaya's heart rose to his mouth. What have they done with all the Khmer people?

  The Cham King had burned the City in order to take it, and it had been the houses of the categories that had burned, along with their tiny vegetable gardens, their one-tree orchards and the small flowery borders they planted for the spirits. Had the people not been allowed back? Had they all died?

  The backs of his paddlers swelled and clenched and swelled again with the pumping motion of hearts.

  I always took the main road into the City. I didn't see this. If I'd known this I would have strangled Jaya-Indravarman where he sat.

  The silky water slithered past, reflecting sky.

  So now we take revenge.

  The wide fields, once crammed with children, dogs, cisterns, and ovens—empty. Who supports the temples, who grows rice for the devotees? Do the robes hang grey and tattered on statues in empty temples?

  We will have to rebuild. First, conquer all the little kings, then rebuild. Make all the little kings pay for the rebuilding.

  The King cried to the people on the bank, “Where are all the houses?"

  The people smiled in shame, and shrugged and blinked. All gone.

  That is why they have joined with me.

  His paddlers beat the water like an egret's wings skimming a lake. Suddenly they came to a clot of people standing and waiting at the mouth of another canal opening to their left. Already?

  The King called, “The canal to the Vishnuloka?” The waterway along which all those giant stones were floated.

  The people's faces flared as they recognized him. “Yes! Yes!” they shouted. “This is the canal!"

  "You make good time!” one man shouted in joy.

  The King cried back, “We will kill the tyrant!"

  As the boats neared the canal, it snowed petals—white and purple and indigo. The people were throwing them. The flowers fell over the soldiers’ backs and swirled on the water in the currents of the swift boats.r />
  A glimpse of sky-blue water, running straight into the heart of the towers, the giant lotuses of stone.

  Vidyanandana's face fell in wonder at the size of the temple.

  "This was all city, all people, all around here,” the King shouted. “It's all been burned."

  More people stood on the other side of the Vishnuloka canal. The King called to them, “Help us! Run and see what the Chams are doing!"

  The men gaped, sompiahed, and pushed a boy's shoulders. He sprinted off. A team of boys pelted after him, jumping over thorns and thistles.

  Vidyanandana's eyes gaped. “Burned?"

  Jaya nodded yes in answer. He scanned the wide-open flat plains. Somewhere to the south and west he would expect to see some sign of General Namasivaya's land forces. They would have come from the north, round the western reservoir, and been joined by the rest of the army landing on the north shore.

  Jaya turned to face forward. Ahead of them, the great road to the old capital Hariharalaya would cross the canal.

  Finally, he could see a village, to the west, shaded by a clump of young trees that looked like a tuft of marsh grass.

  Out of it bounded a Cham horseman. His horse bounced to a halt, feathers of dust hanging in the air, swords of sunlight reflecting from his armour.

  "We've been seen,” said Jaya.

  The horseman wrenched on the reins and the horse danced around, back towards the village. The Cham defenders would soon know that they were coming.

  The King demanded, “One last sprint.” The tillerman sang out to the side-boats ahead. Together the boats surged forward like crocodiles.

  At last they saw the bridge, blackened in streaks. The fires.

  The King explained, “We need to get past the bridge before they defend it.” Dust billowed from the west. “And they're coming."

  People crowded the top of the bridge. The King's eyes pulled them closer to him. His own bare-shouldered people. They started to wave. The King waved too, towards the west, to warn them: flee or defend.

  "Faster, if we can, faster!” He snatched up one of his banners from the back of his boat, orange, yellow, and shaped like flames. He waved it like a torch to the boats behind, to warn them—the Chams were coming for the bridge.