Anna Smith Spark - The Tower of Living and Dying

Servants helped Thalia up onto the ship. Her feet slipping on the wet planks. Wet heavy skirts pulling around her legs. Cold and vile, like clinging dead skin. On another ship they were loading horses, kicking out and neighing, making their grooms curse. Her own fear like the horses’ fear, even as Marith took her arm, smiled, called her queen. Blood on his hands that the seawater had not quite washed away. She could smell the fresh blood on him, over the scab filth of his cloak. Osen handed him a gold cup, he raised it, threw it out into the waves. It flashed in the sunlight, wine spilling out into the water with the blood.

‘May the sea not spite us! May the sky not spite us! Victory!’

The wordless cheer back at him. The clash of swords on shields.

We may be going to war, Thalia thought. Such an absurdity. To war! She had told him that she was going, she would not stay here in the marshes sitting and waiting for him. She had ridden away from the battle at Malth Salene, and men had died in pain for her. She had been the High Priestess of the Lord of Living and Dying, the holiest woman in the Sekemleth Empire. She would go now as the army of Amrath’s queen.

‘Do you think,’ she had asked him, ‘do you think that I am afraid?’

‘Of course not.’ He tried to smile. ‘But I am afraid, for you.’

‘You don’t need to be.’

‘No?’

‘No.’

He said, ‘It will all be well, anyway.’

On the shore men struggled with the barrel holding King Illyn’s corpse, loading it carefully onto the ship. The dead face still staring with its eyes and mouth open, shocked. It had all honours now, indeed, his father’s corpse. Kill him and curse him and bury him with gold and love.

The ships hung ready, troops lined up on the decks. Matrina and her women on the shore beside the dead horse. Wind-blown faces. Black mud on their fine skirts. From the king’s ship flew the deep red banner of the Altrersyr, white cloth soaked red with blood. Bright sails, swollen and hard with the wind. The ship juddered. Moving. Marith stood in the prow wide-eyed. Pink fever flush in his cheeks.

A great wild scream cut the air like a sword drawn. A shadow moving over them. An eagle. Black against the sun. It turned overhead, circling the fleet. Men’s eyes and the red painted eyes of the ships and the dead eyes of the sacrifice, watching it. Screams. Swooped low over the ships. High into the sky with the light flashing on its wings. Something fell from its talons, spiralling in the air, falling and twisting, landing at Marith’s feet. Soft crumple sound. The eagle screamed and was gone.

At Marith’s feet was a foal, new born, matted with blood and fluid, shimmering inside its caul.

A strange smell of birth and bloodshed. It twitched a moment, as though it were still alive.

‘The luck horse! The luck horse!’ Voices on the ship whispering, awed. Hands moving in signs of wonder, signs against great magic and god things. ‘The luck horse!’

Marith stared down at the pitiful body, up at the sky, his eyes straight unblinking into the sun. ‘The luck horse.’ He took Thalia’s hand. ‘You see it? You understand?’ The men on the ship bent to kneeling. Marith lifted the vile thing in his arms. ‘Raise it up! Raise it on the mast!’

They tied it above the sail, sailors scrambling upwards like lizards, treasuring the burden one carried bound to his back with long fine legs flopping like he had grown some fragile leprous wings. Still it shimmered, black and rainbowed in the sun. Thalia tried to turn her head away but the only other place to look was the body of the sacrificed horse on the shore. She thought: do I understand? Any of these things?

Under a banner of dead horses the fleet sailed fast across the bright water, red painted eyes staring hungrily ahead.

‘The isle of Third is a fine land,

Her corn rising high like maidens dancing,

Her fat flocks, her fat cattle,

Her green meadows and her green forests,

Her rivers sweet and clear.

But still I say nothing is more lovely,

More joyous, more worthy of praise,

Than a great host girded for battle,

Bronze swords bright in the sunlight,

Young men’s faces raised and eager,

Red banners proud in the wind.’

The marsh and the banks of the estuary slipped away behind them. Ahead, the dark sea and the darker smudge of Seneth Isle. The wind blew fair in the sails. Scant hours, before they made land.

‘That’s the biggest load of cock I’ve heard in days,’ said Tobias.

‘I’m sorry?’

‘That bloody song. A load of crap. Third’s a shithole, and an army’s a load of ugly sweaty buggers ready to rip someone’s guts apart.’

‘Watch your mouth,’ said Brand. ‘Third’s his kingdom, and we’re his army, and it’s bloody glorious.’

‘Oh, bloody glorious.’

‘I said watch your mouth, Immishman.’

Fuckhead romantics. Tobias went back to looking at the water. Maerlk, the man who had started it by singing, went back to looking at his sword. He seemed quite astonished to be wearing one. Tobias kept feeling an itching need to tell him which end you held it by.

Back on a bloody ship. Spent years successfully avoiding ships. Never get involved in amphibious warfare . One of Skie’s old maxims. Suddenly made a hell of a lot of sense. Just never, Tobias. One thing this company’ll never bloody do .

Never do a lot of the things he’d somehow done in the last little while.

It was all cloudy in his mind, making him irritable. He’d hated the king, once. Before he realized something. Something. And now the great coming battle, to decide who got the crown and got to say he was better and everyone loved him more. He hadn’t wanted the king to win, once. Had wanted … something else for him. Kind of hard to remember what. Just still a nagging sense of pointlessness, that there was no real reason for any of this. That he should just turn around. Run.

A little house and a girl to clean it and a pint of Immish gold of an evening and a fat soft gut. That had been … been a really good good idea he couldn’t quite shake. He’d done a bad thing, hadn’t he? Something bad. To the king. Hadn’t wanted … something to happen.

He looked across the water and the king was there, standing at the prow of his ship, looking straight ahead. So tiny, a stick of black with a red cloak, maybe a flash of light where his crown was, but you knew him. They all knew him, even without seeing him. The ships moved slightly, changing formation; the figure was gone. Light snow furring the deck, making it slippery. Hands cold and raw on the hilts of their swords. He’s the king. We’ll make him king. His kingdom and his army.

Bloody glorious! Yeah!

Third was still an ugly freezing damp shithole, though. And his army was still a load of ugly sweaty buggers ready to rip someone’s guts apart. Bloody wounds and oozing sores glorious.

Yeah.

Seneth was coming properly into sight, grey rocks and green hills rising up clear ahead of them, blurred in the snow. Huddles of houses down on the shoreline; you could even see the smoke of hearth fires. Didn’t look any different to Third.

Tobias had kind of expected they’d be making land soonish, camp for the night and then march. Instead, the ships turned, moving north following the line of the coast, the king’s ship taking position at the front. Another hour’s sailing, slow in a weak wind. The snow had stopped, thank the gods. But still bloody cold. Rations of bread and meat and beer handed out, they ate crouched on the deck, eyes on the shore. Could feel people on the shore looking back. A couple of fishing boats sailing panicked before them, tacking and darting to get away. An army looks like a dragon to peasant men, Tobias thought watching them. Gods alone know what an army of ships must look like, when you’re out on the dark pitiless sea. They sailed on, then a shout came from one of the ships ahead of them, orders relayed back whipping on the wind, voices calling like the gulls, the sound of the waves slapping against the hull, the men craning to hear.