The Court of Broken Knives

by Anna Smith Spark

  Marith swerved his horse towards her. His face was rapturous. Ecstatic. So beautiful her heart leapt. He raised his sword and for a moment she thought he would kill her, and for a moment she thought that she would welcome it if he did. So beautiful and perfect his face. So joyous and radiant his smile.

  ‘Get back to the gates,’ he said shortly. Not loud, but his voice was clear over the roaring, screaming dark. For a moment they were alone in the world, and then he wheeled away and Thalia found her horse galloping towards Malth Salene, through the gates and beneath the dead body that hung there, against a tide of men running out with swords in their hands.

  In the courtyard, Thalia almost fell from her horse, her hands shaking. A young groom came to help her, tried to quieten the horse. It gnashed its teeth at him, shrieked and kicked out its hind legs. Its body was lathered with sweat as though it had run a race. Blood dripped from its mouth where it had torn itself on the bit. Thalia staggered away from it. Hands caught her, holding her up.

  ‘You’re not hurt? Help her to her chambers.’ Landra’s voice, shaking like Thalia’s body and mind.

  ‘No … I want … to see.’ Thalia gestured weakly to the walls where the other women still stood looking out. ‘I need to see.’

  Landra looked at her. Nodded. Her eyes too were filled with tears. They climbed the steps of the wall, Thalia holding Landra’s arm. Don’t let go. Hold on to something. Grief and fear. Shame. The absolute certainty of what was to come. Lady Jora turned briefly as they joined her. Her hands gripped the stone so hard they were bleeding. Savane’s face was rapt.

  A trampling mire of men and horses. In the maelstrom of the fighting, loyalties and allegiances were long lost, men hacking at comrades and commanders and lovers, nothing in them beyond killing and being killed. King Illyn’s army surged forward, formless, swords shaking in their eagerness. Men came riding or running out from Malth Salene, some barely armed, bareheaded and clad in servants’ liveries, clutching swords and spears and wooden sticks. A madness overtaking them all, bloodlust and deathlust, hacking and stabbing with no thought to self-defence. The hard ground churned to mud. The horses rearing, exposing their soft underbellies, falling dying and crushing their riders beneath them, men and beasts treading them into the ground. In the midst of it all, Marith Altrersyr, dragonlord, dragon killer, dragon kin, demon born. King of Dust. King of Shadows. King of death and emptiness and despair. His sword flashing, his face alive with radiant shining light.

  Blood! Oh blood! Oh blood and killing! He struck out with his sword and a man fell before him, cut open, gutted like a fish. A stink of shit. He spurred his horse forward and a young man was there, mounted on a warhorse, expensive silver armour, his helm crested in peacock feather plumes. Kamlen Jurgis, the younger son of his father’s best friend. Kam lunged at him. Marith parried the stroke easily, struck back. Kam was good: parried, twisted himself sideways in the saddle, struck again. A shriek of metal as the sword grated on Marith’s armour. Green eyes stared at him, hating. Gods, this was wondrous! Everything, even the joyful slaughter in the palace of Sorlost, everything in his life was as nothing compared to this! Power. Such power flowing through him. They died at his asking. All of them. He’d kill them all. So futile, their little lives. The thin fine skin of life, suspended over the eternity of emptiness. They all deserved to die, surely? Death and death and death! The one true thing! The only thing! He drew first blood on Kamlen, making a mess of the man’s left arm. Kam howled at him and got a stroke in in return, not managing to wound but the flat of his sword smashed into Marith’s head by his temple, making his ears ring. You can die badly for that, Marith thought. For hurting me. He’d never liked him when they were children together. Nasty, lazy boy two years his senior. He wheeled and struck again and Kam lost his helmet. Hah! Marith raised his sword. Drove it in across the boy’s face. A gash opened where the eyes should be. Seemed to stay alive for a moment, blinded, raw, opened up. Puzzled at what had just happened to his world. Made nothing as he died, a broken thing lacking the power of sight and speech, unrecognizable so that no one would know it to mourn. He killed the horse too and rode his own horse over their bodies, just to be sure, bringing its front hooves down hard on what was left of Kam’s face. A funny loud hollow crunching sound, it made.

  He could hear it, clear and fine, over the roar of battle around him. Could see everything, hear everything, every detail, the pattern, the logic of it. Everything. Ti was swinging and hacking. His face was bloody, he seemed to be wounded. You can’t die, Marith thought suddenly as he watched. You can’t die. I need to kill you. He steered his horse over towards his brother, cutting men out of his path as he went. Couldn’t see his father. Ti looked up and saw him coming towards him, stared, mouthed something, turned his horse and was off down the field away from him. Coward! Coward! Come back and die! Marith turned his own horse to follow, but then suddenly two men were in front of him, drawing up swords. He recognized them too, men of his father’s guard, good fighters, men who’d helped teach him to fight. They knew what they were doing, they came on together, one on either side of him, swords swinging in concert, heavy thick broadswords, their horses getting in close so he couldn’t turn away. Stank of sweat.

  No fear in him. No concern. He knew perfectly and absolutely that they could not kill him. ‘Amrath!’ he shouted, parrying off one blade, ducking and twisting to avoid the other. ‘Amrath! Amrath! Amrath and the Altrersyr! Death and all demons! Death! Death! Death!’ The air screamed around him. Things tore through the skies, shrieking, clawing at the light. He parried another sword thrust, avoided another, struck out. His sword met his opponent’s with a crash. Garent. The man’s name was Garent. Had helped teach him to fight. The other’s blade came for him, he couldn’t move in time but it rang on his armour and he knew he was unhurt because here nothing could hurt him. The screams were so loud, a maelstrom of noise, waves hammering on rock, seabirds shrieking, hungry, angry, maddening, maddened, voiceless, beyond speech, beyond anything. So loud it was almost blinding. But he could see. He could see everything. This was all he was. This was all that was real. Everything would die. ‘Death!’ he screamed over the shrieking voices. ‘Death! Death! Death and all demons! Death!’ He lashed out and Garent was dead, his head hanging from his body. Lashed out again and the other was broken, arm cut off at the elbow, staring bloodied and astonished at his wound, horror in his eyes as Marith killed him.

  Garent’s horse went screaming off towards the cliff top, Garent’s body flopping over it, the head hanging on by a few shreds of sinew and bone. Jogged up and down as the horse bucked, like Garent was laughing. The horse’s eyes were so wide. The body slipped and went down hanging upside down tangled in reins and stirrups, arms dangling. The head was torn off, rolled away and was crushed in the melee of men fighting. The horse went over the cliff top, still screaming, taking Garent’s headless flopping body with it.

  Hah!

  He needed someone else to kill. Everything around him was red and bleeding. The men seemed to be fighting so slowly, like they were too worn out to move properly, like they were fighting underwater, like the air was too thick. Their mouths opened and shut but he couldn’t hear them. All he could hear was the screaming. Crows and gulls thick in the sky, wheeling, shrieking, heads red with blood. A man in white armour careered towards him, running on foot, holding his sword in both hands like a woodman’s axe. Laughing. Marith killed him in one stroke. A ragged boy with the dirt of the kitchens on him, a meat cleaver in one hand, a poker in the other. A lord on horseback who recognized him at the last minute, pulled away and ran until Marith cut him down. Another man on horseback. Another man on foot. A serving girl. Another man on horseback. Another man on foot. More. More. More. Killed and killed and killed and killed. His heart sang with killing. His mind was empty, dancing light, pure and utterly perfect joy. Saleiot: to shine, to sparkle, to dance like the sunlight on fast-flowing water. Joy absolute in his heart. The things in the air screamed, tearing at the
light. He killed and killed and killed and killed.

  Death! Death! Death!

  Evening drew in, and surely none of Lord Relast’s men remained alive by now. Illyn’s army turned in upon itself, eating itself alive. The battlefield was meat like a butcher’s counter, the men fighting no longer recognizable as men. Half-living fragments hacking at each other, tearing with nails and teeth, drowning in their own blood. Endless bodies trampled in the dirt, a mass of dark and red and brilliant metal like a mosaic floor. All the banners brought down and scattered, most of the horses dead. Crows and seabirds everywhere, beaks crimson, drunk on blood, too sated to fly.

  The sky burned with the awful, terrible beauty of sunset, turning the sea to liquid flame. Beyond the cliffs the seal women swam in the harbour, watching with pebble eyes the insanity and cruelty of men. Far off, around the high peak of Calen Mon, eagles were dancing on the wind. Somewhere in the west in the desert a dragon flew. Always a perilous time, this borderline between the realms of life and death, light and darkness. Thalia raised her face to the west and prayed. From the fear of life, and the fear of death, release us.

  The words faded in her throat, empty.

  No one wants to die, she thought. Not truly. At the moment of death, all regret that it comes. All see that they were wrong, and fools. All see the glory of living, even in pain, even in sorrow, even in the dark. The men out there fighting will regret, in the moment of dying.

  I pray they will, she thought. It is too horrible otherwise. Too horrible to bear.

  Finally, two figures broke away from the heaving mass, which now resembled only maggots wriggling in the filth. Two mounted figures, riding for the gates, flashing light and shadow as they came. A cry from one of the riders, answered by men at the gatehouse. The gates opened, the riders came in and the gates swung shut behind them with a crash.

  Silence. No more screaming. The air stilled. The sea and the seabirds fell silent. Calm.

  Marith dismounted his horse in the courtyard and Thalia came down to meet him. He was mired in blood to his eyeballs, his drawn sword still clutched in his hand. Light shone in his eyes. Unharmed, of course. Bareheaded, lightly armoured, even his horse unscathed. Lord Relast beside him, as caked in gore and as radiant.

  Every man, woman and child in the courtyard apart from Thalia went down on their knees before him. Lord Relast shouted in a great voice, ‘All hail King Marith! King Marith! He is king here! The true and only king!’

  Lady Jora shouted, ‘King Marith! King Marith! Ansikanderakesis Amrakane!’

  Marith looked at them. His eyes were like knife blades. His face was a rotting wound. He looked, thought Thalia, as though he might kill them.

  The people around took up the cry. Every voice, of all those left alive in Malth Salene. ‘King Marith! King Marith! Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! Death! Death! Death!’

  What does it mean? Thalia wondered.

  Ansikanderakesis: Great Lord. King.

  Amrakane …

  She saw his silver armour. His red cloak. His shadow. His face.

  Lady Jora shouted, ‘All hail King Marith! Marith Ansikanderakesis! King Marith, who is Amrath come again!’

  Thalia began to weep. Marith was weeping. Grief and wonder perfect in his face.

  Landra lowered her face into the dust and shouted, ‘All hail King Marith! King Ruin! King of Dust! King of Shadows!’ Her voice dripped hatred. Grief. ‘I brought him back to you! King of Death!’ The people of Malth Salene took up the cry with joy. ‘King Ruin! Amrath returned to us! Death and all demons! Death! Death! Death!’

  Outside the gates, the shattered remnants of the army of King Illyn stumbled over the battlefield, bloodied and broken, filled with shame. Searching out fallen comrades. Brothers and friends and enemies and lovers. Men they had themselves killed.

  Out of a clear bright sky it began to snow, the white flakes like feathers, white and perfect, covering the bodies of the dead.

  But he’s so beautiful, Thalia thought, looking at Marith.

  He took her into his arms.

  ‘King Marith! King Ruin! Amrath come again!’

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  Bright they rode out in the sunlight,

  They did not fear to ride out to slaughter

  Nor did they fear to ride out with drawn swords.

  Bright their armour,

  Bright the jewels on their arm-rings,

  Bright their shining hair.

  The wolf ones, the bold warriors, the thieves.

  Happy they feasted in our halls,

  Happy they fought and bested each other,

  Smiled at women, groomed their horses,

  Drank wine in gold cups.

  At Amrath’s command they rode out in sunlight,

  Swords drawn, spears poised, hair bound.

  Every man they met, they slew and left dying.

  Red the blood they shed, and red their bleeding.

  They did not ride back.

  The great chant, sung by the men of the White Isles at the crowning of kings. The burial song of the last of Amrath’s followers, composed on the battlefield of Malth Ethalden where the ground was burned black with dragon fire. The last men of His Empire. The few who were loyal to the end.

  They say, anyway. Who can tell what it’s about, or when it was written? Just men who died.

  And with that, they crowned Marith king.

  Chapter Fifty-Seven

  That fucking poisonous bastard Marith. That sick, vile, diseased, degenerate fucking bastard shit. Gods and demons, he should have knifed him.

  In a stinking tent most of whose other occupants were now dead, Tobias sat gnashing his teeth.

  Join King Illyn’s army. March on Malth Salene to see Marith get his comeuppance. See Lady pox-on-her Landra get hers too. Find some closure on the whole fucking disaster then bugger off to Alborn to sit and drink beer. Maybe even find Thalia to apologize.

  Yeah. Good plan, Tobias, me old mucker. Really good plan.

  King Illyn had been really very nice to him when he turned up at the gates of Malth Elelane the never-was-anything-more-aptly-named Tower of Joy and Despair. As in: hadn’t killed him on the spot. Listened oh so politely, not asked the obvious questions about how exactly he came to have run into Lady gods’ damned Landra whilst in the company of beloved former son and heir wacked out and tied up in a cart. Nodded, said ‘I see’ a couple of times. Frowned. Barked orders about ships and swords at people. Made Tobias a nice generous choice of rewards for his services to the throne.

  Option one: Stand in the front line when they marched on Malth Salene.

  Option two: Have his throat cut right there and then.

  Same old same old. Never ever turned out to be a choice anyway. He’d only survived what was politely being referred to as the battle at all because he’d run screaming and stuck his head in a lousy horse blanket the moment Marith drew his sword.

  So now here he was. In a stinking tent most of whose other occupants were now dead. Besieging a fortress. Front line to what now seemed to be a civil war. Freezing his nads off. Being driven half-insane by seagulls. Listening hilariously to the hilarity going on just the other side of the besieged fortress wall.

  Such hilarity! Cheering and laughing and dancing and big warm-looking bonfires. A great big feast where they emptied every storeroom. Days, it seemed to go on. People occasionally stumbled onto the ramparts waving drink cups, shouting ‘King Marith! Hail to the king!’ One girl flashed her nipples at them, yelled they’d see a lot more where that came from if they came over to the side of the true king. Dead drunk: she slipped and fell off the wall. It was a long drop, the outer wall of the fortress of Malth Salene. The bloke who found her body did indeed see a whole lot more.

  King Illyn the actual/ex true king’s soldiers, meanwhile, scraped up meat slurry with shovels and poured it onto funeral pyres. Days, it seemed to go on. Tobias’s arms ached. His back ached. The pools of dead people never ended. Then they broke for dinner and it was
roast pork and whichever fucker thought roast pork was a good idea right now should be disembowelled. He sat staring at it trying to eat it without breathing in. Until a seagull swooped down and crapped in it. Bloody bird shit dripped down his arm and onto his food.

  Gnashed his teeth at it. Oh hell yeah.

  Tense days passed, dusk and dawn and dusk and dawn again. The party in Malth Salene finally ended. The keep before them fell silent, men were occasionally glimpsed walking its ramparts, hoisting red banners, cheering their king. Tobias’s few surviving tent-mates sat and tried to pretend they weren’t all thinking ‘King Marith’ and shivering with something and simultaneously almost pissing themselves with terror and creaming their breeches with lust. Fresh troops and siege engines arrived by fast ship from Malth Elelane, trundled up the cliff road. They all watched them, awestruck. A thousand soldiers. A hundred horses. Seven trebuchets. A whole load of big, carefully handled barrels. One old bloke in fancy robes.

  Banefire and mage fire. The men were halfway between terror and climax at the thought of that, too.

  The men were a fine lot. His squad. Not that he thought of them as that. Maerc and Brand and Mish and Acoll. Mish was two heartbeats away from killing himself. ‘I trained and trained to be a soldier,’ the kid kept muttering under his breath. Brand and Maerc spent their time trying not to kill each other. San spent his time doing something nobody wanted to ask about in his tent. Tobias mostly sat about feeling sick.

  Good lads. Handy with the shovels. Kept their armour polished to a mirror shine. Didn’t even seem too bothered by the smell of roast pig.

  Join King Illyn’s army! Gods and demons, he bloody missed Alxine and Rate.

  Finally, at noon on the sixth day, trumpets sounded and the men were drawn up in files close to the funeral mound.

  ‘Here we go, then,’ said Maerc. ‘Meat slurry time again. Hope you’ve all been sharpening your swords.’

  The king trotted up on his warhorse, Prince Tiothlyn by his side. He’d aged ten years in the last few days. Prince Tiothlyn beside him also looked changed, his face worn and grey. Never seen real bloodshed before, Tobias would guess. Like poor Mish.