Art of War

by Triantafyllou, Petros

  “When the gate opens again to send in more men, we have to be ready to rush it and get out.”

  “So, whatever happens, don’t let them damage your lovely legs.”

  Fayad watched the approaching men. “What are you going to do when we get out of here?”

  “Confidence, I like that. I thought I might ask if you wanted to go for a drink.”

  “The dead drink?”

  “This one does.”

  Fayad laughed. “Yeah. This one, too.

  The Fall of Tereen

  Being an episode from the History of Amrath the World Conqueror

  Empires of Dust

  Anna Smith-Spark

  Fire on me.

  Fire. Burning.

  Burning and its pain, pain on me, running everywhere all over. Running, running, burning, my whole body is fire and it hurts, it hurts. And I’m burning, and I’m blind, and all there is fire and burning everywhere, running everywhere, and I hurt, and I hurt, and I burn, fire on me, fire on me.

  The walls are falling. The walls of my city of Tereen. One day, I would have been queen of it. White walls of white smooth marble. Clean and smooth and tall. Silver towers. Silver gates.

  Falling.

  Fire.

  Burns.

  A burst of mage fire. The earth shakes. The whole world is falling. The walls burn. The earth burns. White light. Ladders up against the walls, and the enemy comes scaling up them. Sword blades. Knife blades. Sharp killing blade-sharp eyes.

  ‘They’re coming! Hold! Hold! We can hold them! Take them! Take them down!’ Ansel’s voice. My brother. His face is bleeding. His hair is burning. He holds his spear and it shakes in his hands.

  ‘Hold! Hold! Take them!’

  Our spearmen push. Forcing them back. The enemy coming up at us. A wall of spears, pushing and thrusting at the enemy soldiers as they climb. Arrows shooting down at them. A rain of arrows. Thick in the air. The soldiers climbing fall back, falling out into nothingness, spinning, screaming as they fall. Blood, as they fall. I get one of them. Get my spear in his face. Under the helmet, where his eyes are. I feel it stick in there. I see him falling. The first man, I think, perhaps, the first man I have killed.

  More and more of them. Coming up the ladders. Scrambling with knives in their mouths. Their eyes staring at us. They hate us. They want nothing but to kill us. We kill them and an eternity of them rise in their place.

  Like locust. Filthy scrabbling insects. The army of Amrath. They climb the ladders. We kill them. They keep climbing. They mount the walls. More of them. Like insects. We fall back. We kill them. We are overwhelmed.

  Their ladders stand on piles of corpses. There is a great deep ditch around the walls of Tereen, filled with sweet water. A ditch and a moat and walls of white marble, that we thought would be our defence. The stories came to us from Bakh. They dug a ditch there to defend their walls, deep and lined with stakes coated in poison, and the walls rising smooth and strong behind it, impregnable, out of the enemy’s reach. Five men survived the destruction of Bakh. They told us the stories, that the army of Amrath took the peasants from the fields around and killed them and threw their bodies into the ditch, more and more and more of them, all the people of Raen who had surrendered to them, opened the gates and embraced them and crowned Him in gold. Every one of them they killed, and threw their bodies into the ditch, and they filled up the ditch with corpses, and their ladders and their siege engines came up to the walls, and Bakh fell in three days.

  We heard the stories.

  We did not believe them.

  Five men, who claimed to be the only five survivors.

  Absurd.

  All of it.

  Absurd.

  They have carts with them our scouts have told us. When they have killed us every one of us, so they will use our flesh and our bones.

  Mage fire. The mage lord Semserest moves beside me. Her hair is black with ashes, she stinks of sweat and blood. Her face looks like she is dying. She is dying. Her hands clench. She is dying in pain.

  ‘I can’t… We have to pull back, my lady,’ she says to me. The walls shake around us. Stones falling. Her voice is choked like she has glass on her tongue. ‘We have to...pull back. To the inner wall. We must.’

  ‘No! No!’ We can hold them. We can. We must. Our spearmen strike, pushing them off their ladders. Archers shoot down fire arrows. Our trebuchets loose over and over. They come scrambling up the ladders with knives in their teeth, and our swordsmen kill them and cut them down. We can hold them. We can.

  A crash below us, against the gates. Semserest staggers backwards. All her power, all her magery, clenched tight holding closed the gates. She staggers. Her mouth is bleeding. Her face is grey as dying. The gates groan and creak and begin to break.

  ‘We must fall back,’ she screams. ‘The inner walls. The citadel.’

  ‘No! No! We must hold!’

  A blast of mage fire sweeps over the walls. Our soldiers shriek and burn. Their hair is on fire, white flames like they are crowned in gemstones. Like the crowns we placed on His head. Their skin shines white and golden, lit up with fire inside them, bursting out of them., They open their eyes and their mouths and the flames blaze up out of them, and they writhe and tremble in the light as they die. Twenty of them. Thirty. The army of Amrath cheers. Scrambles faster up the siege ladders, over the walls. Mage fire explodes again and some of the enemy’s soldiers themselves blaze up burning. Their swords and their armour glow like gems. The men behind them on the ladders laugh at their comrades dying. They come over the top of the wall and kick the burning bodies out of their path.

  ‘Hold them. Hold them.’ My brother’s voice. Shaking. ‘Hold. We can. We can.’ The walls tremble. The walls, falling. Rocks and fire smashing against them. Tearing them down. ‘We can! We can!’ My brother’s voice rises to a child’s cry. I do not think I have ever heard anyone so afraid. He thrusts his spear at the enemy coming up the ladders. His spear shakes like a grass blade. They come over the walls, more and more of them, like insects, locusts, swarming gleaming silver and bronze. The army of Amrath. They cut my brother down.

  We push back in disorder. Retreat! Retreat! Get back to the inner walls!

  A crash from the gateway. A roar of thunder. Semserest sways. Staggers. Falls down bleeding. Smoke pouring out of her mouth. The gates below us shatter. The army of Amrath streams through into the city. The walls tremble. The walls burn.

  Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!

  He first sent envoys to us three years ago. Amrath of Illyr. The petty king of a small poor country at the edge of our world. We had a beautiful city, with strong gates and high walls and many soldiers. We said kind polite things to Him. Gave him gifts of silk, cloth, and fast horses. I sat at my father’s right hand as we bade His envoys farewell.

  The next year, His envoys returned to us. Balkash and Ander had fallen to Him. Balkash surrendered. He burned it anyway. Ander resisted. Her rivers ran red. Nothing lives now where her towers stood

  We proclaimed Him king. We are not stupid. We made Him gifts of silk cloth and fast horses and a crown of diamonds. Our poets praised Him as master of all Irlast. I sat at my father’s right hand and made a speech of loyalty to Him.

  Raen surrendered to Him. Bakh fell to Him. He sowed the fields of Cen Elora with salt and human ashes. He poured poison into the River Malpath until the water turned black as pitch.

  We proclaimed Him god and lord and emperor. We are not stupid. We sent Him gifts of silk cloth and fast horses and diamonds and gold and wheat and slaves and pearls and tin. I sat at my father’s right hand and swore that of all that lives beneath the sun, I thought only and ever of Him.

  He returned three weeks ago. Spread His army beneath our walls. A host in bronze and iron, uncountable as the stars in heaven. Soldiers from every country in the world, armed with spears and swords and great war machines, hungry for our blood.

  They ride horses we gave them. They eat wheat we sent them. They for
ged the tin we gave them into bronze armour. His tent is silk cloth sewn with gold and pearls.

  We were a city of blind fools.

  We wept and despaired. We are not stupid. We sent out envoys, begging Him for mercy. I sat at my father’s right hand and our people cursed me.

  The envoys were sent back to us. Their eyes had been put out and their mouths sewn shut and their hands cut off and their flesh rotting off their bones.

  We forged swords and spears. We prepared to fight Him. Every man and woman. Every child old enough to hold a blade.

  Our city is burning now. All the world burns.

  Retreat! Retreat! Dying. Burning.

  He has breached our walls.

  We crawl our way backwards. The enemy floods into the city through the Skaen Gateway, through the Gate of the Tower, up their ladders, through the walls. The people have sworn to make them fight for every inch of our city. Every flagstone must be bought in blood and suffering.

  We die.

  We die.

  We die.

  They come flooding in.

  ‘Pull back!’ A voice that might be my father’s. An old fat man wielding his father’s sword. He will not even know that my brother is dead. ‘We should surrender,’ he said to me. We stood on the walls above the Skaen Gateway and looked at the army of Amrath spread before us, and he said that he and I should walk out alone and offer ourselves to Him. The king and the king’s heir. Let Him torture us. Play with us. Offer ourselves to Him that the city might live.

  His soldiers thrust their way into the city. Killing everything. The air is black with flies and crows. Mage fire. Darkness. Rocks loosed from their siege engines. White and red and black and green flames.

  I do not think He would have kept our bargain, even if we had had the courage to carry it out.

  We did not, of course, have the courage to carry it out.

  I rally our soldiers to me. Good strong fierce fighters with good strong bronze swords. We must get to the citadel. The inner walls. Bar the way to them. Resist! Defend! Hold them! We can! We must! We can!

  Lies and bloody lies and cowardliness. I wish I had offered myself to Him for Him to play with. I would now at least already be dead.

  And His soldiers are on me. The army of Amrath. Ten of them. Silver armour. Plumes on their helmets. They are covered, covered running with blood.

  A sword comes up at me. It looks huge as mountains. The only thing in my world. I strike back. Duck backwards. My sword catches it. My whole body rings with the force of it. Clash of metal. Again. Again. There is nothing else left of me. My sword. My body, trying to fight.

  Blood in my mouth. My blood? The enemy’s blood? Strike and lunge and duck and strike and duck away. Clash of metal. Blood. Sweat. Screaming. My sword is the heaviest thing I can imagine. Killing. Trying to kill. All there is. All there is. All there is.

  My sword meets the enemy. Cuts into him through a weak point in his armour. Killing. Trying to kill. Clash of metal. My body screaming aching. Swinging the sword mad and blind. And I get him. I feel it, the sword taming him. His body yields. Grate of metal, and then skin, and then meat. The enemy falls backwards. He’s bleeding. Blood all over him. I taste it. Gasp at it. He dies.

  Another two are on me. They have bloody swords. I want to beg for mercy. I hit at one. My blade bounces off his armour. Laughs at me. A sword flares up blue fire. Mage blade. Harsh sweet dry smell of hot metal. Swinging the sword again and again, and I begin to break.

  My sword is hot from his fire. The hilt burns in my hand.

  I drop my sword.

  I run.

  Three weeks, Amrath sat before our walls with His army. He made no move to attack us. Just sat there. His army squatting around our walls.

  So, we sent out our envoys. And He sent them back, maimed. But He did not send us a message. What He wanted. He just sat. His army squatting before us. His siege engines glaring at our walls. So, my father and I considered offering ourselves to Him. Wondered if it was us alone that He wanted to hurt. He destroyed Bakh in three days. Bakh is a far greater city than Tereen. Thicker, higher, stronger walls. I think… I think it simply amused Him. To make us wait.

  My father wanted to abdicate. An old man with a paunch and a pain in his leg. Crown me queen because I am strong and in my prime, trained as a warrior, even if a warrior who had never indeed raised her sword in war. My brother refused to allow it. Said he would dispute my right to the throne. The army of Amrath sat before our walls, and we argued which of us should die with a crown on their head.

  ‘We have a king. A good king. Beloved by his people.’

  ‘We need a king who is younger. Stronger. A king who can fight.’

  ‘Very well, then. But Lendalla is a woman. I am a man. I should be king.’

  ‘Lendella is a warrior as much as you are. Her arm is strong. And she is six years the elder. Since before you were born, she has trained to fight. To rule. To lead. Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘We should have raised our swords against Him years ago!’ my brother shouted. ‘As I said we should.’

  We looked at him, my father and I. ‘We should,’ I said. ‘As you said we should. But that does not matter now. And it has nothing to do with which of us should wear the crown.’

  ‘Our father will wear it. Until he dies. Or I will take up my sword against you, sister. I will leave you and go over to Amrath.’

  Our father did not abdicate. He strapped on his father’s sword. Went out to fight.

  My brother did not leave us. My brother held against them, as they came over the walls at us. Shrieking and shaking with fear, and he held.

  My brother’s hands shook on his spear haft. My brother shrieked with fear.

  My brother is dead.

  I run. White fire and green fire and blue fire erupting around me. The whole city is burning. The fire is silent. Mage fire. Magic fire that is silent as graves. A woman runs past me. She is burning. The whole front of her body is blood.

  I should have given myself to Amrath in offering. I should have tried to save my people. I should—

  Why are we even fighting them? Fighting will only delay them killing us. Give them leave to kill us more slowly and in greater pain.

  A good ruler would have spiked our wells with poison the day Amrath first drew up His army before our walls.

  Let them kill me! Let me die! Get it done!

  But I run through the city as it burns around me. Run past my people, fighting, dying, burning, dead.

  A group of soldiers. Bloody. Soiled. They cry out my name, ‘Lendalla! Our Queen! Our Lady! Your father is dead! We look to you now!’

  We are almost at the gates of the citadel. The inner walls. Huge. Surely impregnable, even to Him. I am almost at their gates.

  ‘What should we do, my Lady?’

  ‘Die,’ I cry to them. I wish I could kill them. Cut them down. I do not want to be queen. I do not want them to look to me. I am their queen. So, I wish I could kill them quickly. They would not suffer. They would be spared. That is all that is left that a good ruler can do.

  I run. Leave them. Up so close in the shadow of the safety of the inner walls.

  A group of soldiers. Bloody. Soiled. They are mired in filth to the plumes of their helmets. They are cut and bleeding. They hold out their swords. One of them has a baby. Holding it. He drives his sword into it. He raises his sword aloft. The baby is still alive. It screams on the blade.

  They chant ‘Amrath! Amrath!’ They laugh.

  A good ruler would have poisoned the city’s wells.

  I strike out at them. There is nothing else. The city is burning. The city is dying. I should have tried to save my people. I should have tried, even if I knew I would fail. Five of them. And I am alone. I have no sword. I strike out at them with my hands. I do not want to die. I want to go on living. Even for a few moments. But there is nothing else left now. Dying. Giving in to death.

  White light. Mage fire.

  I am blind and I am dum
b and I am alight with fire, and it is all my world. Black fire. White fire. Every part of me burns.

  The soldiers I am fighting fall dying. I fall with them. Burning, burning, burning in pain. Pain everywhere. Pain like water. Bathing in fire. Pain everywhere, drowning me. I burn. I burn.

  The mage Kestel. Semserest’s friend, Semserest’s rival, Semserest’s lover. She is burning the soldiers who are killing me. She is killing me. Defending the citadel. Defending our people. Killing me. Letting me die.

  The enemy soldiers are dying. Kestel, my friend, you are winning! I think. There is so much pain. But I am dying, and they are dying, and there are five of them, and that is five fewer soldiers in the army of Amrath.

  And that is all there is left now. To kill as we die. To hope that as we die we take them to their death.

  I don’t want to die.

  Pain. Burning. My body. Burning.

  Five soldiers of His army, dying.

  My death is worth that.

  White light. White fire. Darkness.

  I burn. I burn. I burn.

  The city is falling. Tereen, with her white marble walls, her silver gates, her silver towers. She falls. She burns. She is gone from the face of the earth. Her people murdered. Her towers broken. Her walls breeched. We wove silk cloth and bred fast horses. We worked gold and jewels, we fished for river-pearls, we mined lead and tin. Our fields were rich with wheat and barley. We worshipped the gods with kindness. All my life, I was trained to be her queen.

  White light. White fire. Burning. The enemy soldiers burn and die. More come running. More and more, like insects. A flood. A plague-tide. The gates of the citadel are shattered. The inner walls run with blood.

  Kestel screams. Her body breaks open. Shattered fragments like the gates. A thing like a man towering over her. His sword is blue with fire. His face is empty. His face is an empty grave.

  Amrath.

  He does not need to strike her. He looks at her and she is destroyed. Her body claws itself open. She dies before Him. Worship. Her body tears itself apart for Him, and she dies.