The Tower of Living and Dying

by Anna Smith Spark

  She was awoken that night by a great mass of noise ringing around the camp. In the dark, torchlight flickering in through the closed windows, she had no idea what was happening, panicked that they were under attack. Outside was a mass of activity, soldiers moving, horses being led up. The sky was black as pitch. No stars. Raining heavily. The torches hissed and sputtered in the rain. Firelight shone on bronze armour. Helmeted figures gripping swords, spears. They reminded Thalia of the priestesses, masked for Great Tanis. God things. Holy things. Priests of ruin and death.

  The camp was emptying. In silence, in the dark. Brychan and Tal stood guard by her wagon, watching them go with hungry eyes.

  Thalia dressed herself. A rich silver gown, jewels for her hair and throat. Wrapped her furs around her. Her horse would already be saddled. Waiting if necessary for her to flee back across the Wastes to safety somewhere.

  “We go with them,” she said to Brychan.

  “My Lord King ordered that we were to stay here,” he said. His eyes would not meet her face.

  “Your queen orders you to escort her to the field of battle. Or I will go on my own.”

  Tal said, “I said that My Lord King ordered that we were to stay here.”

  “I said that your queen orders you to follow her.” Thalia pushed past them towards her horse. “Or she will go alone. Your Lord King will make you answer for that, I think.”

  Tal and Brychan sighed and cursed and followed her. They rode down the hill out of the camp.

  Marith had spoken of a good ford upriver. To Thalia’s confusion, however, the bulk of the soldiers were moving back the way they had come a few days before, away from the river, into the Wastes. It was too dark to see clearly; the heavy rain confused everything. But she was certain they were heading away from where they should be going. She looked at Tal in alarm.

  “Do you want to turn back, My Queen?” he asked shortly.

  “No. We follow.” It was very dark. Dawn, Marith had said. It couldn’t be anything near dawn. She felt as though she had had only a very few hours’ sleep.

  They were following a squad of foot soldiers, sarrissmen, walking silently carrying weapons twice as tall as a man. Their raised points made a forest. A palisade to block out the sky. No one spoke or sang the paean. Faces turned to look at Thalia, puzzled, then turned back to staring ahead of them into the dark.

  After what seemed forever marching away from the river they swung sharply to the right. Thalia tried to guess the direction, but there was nothing to judge direction by. No stars. No moon. No light. Nowhere near dawn. The ground under the horses’ hooves was soft. Sandy. Churned up and soaked with rain. It muffled the sound of their footsteps. Sucked at their feet. They were turning again, swinging again right. The ground of the hill had been sandy. So they were near the camp again? But she could see nothing. No lights. They marched on and on. Changing direction again sharply. So dark. She, she who had walked so often in darkness, she felt the dark like a blindfold and could see nothing and was blind. They went on looking straight ahead in silence. No light. No moon. No stars.

  Claustrophobic. This horrible black silent march. It would go on forever, she thought suddenly. They had gone out of the world, beyond the light and the life things. They were marching forever and forever in the endless dark.

  There was nothing but darkness. He had taken them beyond living. They were lost in the dark.

  She wanted to cry out. To make light. To raise up fire. There is nothing out there, she thought. This wall of darkness is everything there is. So weak, the barriers between the darkness and the illusion of living. They had followed him and followed him and marched through out of the world.

  She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t move. It had been raining, but now she wasn’t certain whether she was soaking wet or scoured dry. Silent. No footsteps. Not even the sound of men’s breathing. The men were dead. The horse was dead. The horse walked on fixedly into the dark. The faces of the soldiers staring ahead of them. Seeing nothing. No longer human, in their helmets and armour. Death things walking in the dark.

  And then suddenly she saw light, very faint, pale and barely visible, ghost light in the furthest reaches of the sky.

  Dawn coming, in the east. The traces of trees emerging. The waiting ranks of horses and men. She could see, in the half-light, the outlines of the land.

  They had marched round in a great half circle back to banks of the Nimenest. But not upriver. Down.

  The troop stopped. Drank from water bottles, chewed on crusts of stone bread.

  The light got stronger. The sky in the east soft blue, then blue-silver, then rosy pink. Bronze armour gleamed. The light flashed on the points of the sarriss. A horse whinnied. Hushed. The strange waiting silence. Thalia remembered it from her Temple. The roar of it loud as the wind.

  No birdsong. She remembered that, later. A smell of smoke in the air. The men stirred, looked together all at once to the east. She could hear, suddenly, now that she was aware of it, the sound of metal clashing. Shouts. A crash like thunder and an answering scream.

  Finally she could speak. “What’s happening?” she whispered to Tal.

  He grinned. “We’re crossing the river. That’s what. My Queen.”

  “But the fighting …”

  “Upstream of us, My Queen. My Lord King mentioned the ford?”

  “But that’s where we were crossing …”

  He was close enough she could see him laugh at her. “Bit obvious, wouldn’t that be, My Queen?”

  The sky was flaming pink and orange. Glorious dawn. Thalia raised her head to it. Raised her eyes to the light. It shone on the armour, the horses dressed and ribboned, the points of the sarriss. The dark red banners, silk and leather and men’s flayed skin. The sandy ground and the scrubby trees and the tall dry grasses gleamed pink in the sunrise. Sparkling with rain. The light catching on the water. The river mist rising like steam.

  The sounds of distant battle redoubled. Shouts and cheers and screams. A mile away? Two?

  The heavy waiting silence. The soldiers stood perfectly still. The light was fading. Thalia blinked her eyes. A bank of cloud rushing up in the east. Thick and vast. It covered the sun. The world suddenly dark as night again.

  The soldiers dimly visible around her. The horse shifted. Frightened, she thought, as she was.

  Not frightened, she realized. Eager.

  “We should go back, now, My Queen,” said Tal. “Back to the camp.”

  The press of men began to move forward. Marching forward in slow steady lines. A drum began to beat.

  Gulls and crows. The shrill cry of a hawk.

  The men went on again in the dark.

  They were at the river. The water shimmered black. Slowly and steadily the soldiers began to cross. It was raining again, heavily, a curtain of water. The rain drummed on the soldiers’ armour, a wild thundering roar like horses’ hooves at the gallop, or the rapid hammering of an ironsmith beating out a sword.

  “We have to turn back!” shouted Tal in Thalia’s ear. “We can’t cross with them! We have to go back to the camp! My Lord King ordered you to stay in the camp!”

  The horses pushed on, ignoring him. The soldiers around them seething over the bank into the river. Thalia’s horse slithered down the bank in the river following them.

  The water came up to the horse’s belly. Her body was soaked and cold. The men around her must be almost swimming. How did they manage, she thought, with their sarriss? The weight of the armour alone must threaten to drown them. The current was strong, the horse had to push. It was so dark she could hardly see her hands holding the reins. The sound of the rain on the water and the rush of the current was so very loud. The rain on the soldiers’ armour. So heavy it stung her skin. Waves broke over her body, water stirred up by the press of men. It tasted like metal in her mouth.

  The horse scrambled up the opposite bank. In Illyr, Thalia thought. They were in Illyr. Amrath’s kingdom, where they ate their enemies’ hearts. The bank wa
s very steep and stony. Men and horses slipped and slithered in the mud. Voices shouted, panicked. Something happening behind her. She tried to turn, caught a glimpse of men falling. Sliding back into the water. Trampled by those behind them. Drowned. She cried out to the men to stop. Help their comrades. But the columns of soldiers pressed on. Moved on away from the river into Illyr, taking her horse with them. It staggered through the churned mud. Voices shouted orders. The press of men began to shift eastwards. Downriver. Towards the distant battle. Again Thalia tried to pull back her horse. Tal, close to her, reached for her horse’s bridle. He shouted something indistinct, the columns moved and he was lost in the dark.

  There was a clap of thunder. Deafening, roaring on and on. A sound over it. Men’s faces raised in glory.

  The beating of wings.

  The dragon lit up the sky like the sun.

  Crouching at Marith’s feet, it had been huge as buildings. Flying with spread wings it was vast as a world. Crimson red like new bleeding. Like the inside of a mouth. Its wings and tail were tinged with gold. It breathed out fire and the clouds burned around it. The armour of the soldiers marching beneath it glowed fiery red.

  The sky was on fire. Dust in the air burning. The rain boiled up in a cloud of steam. The dragon came down lower over the army. Vast crushing shape. The flames faded, utter darkness, the dark body darker than the clouds. Lines of fire glowing around its jaws. It spurted fire again, joyful. Dropped lower and lower until its claws were hanging above the soldiers’ heads. Threw back its head and spouted flame upwards. A shimmering fountain. A tree burning. Columns and palaces of flame.

  The men screamed in frenzy. “Amrath! Amrath! Ansikanderakesis Amrakane! Victory! Victory!” And the deeper, bloodier cheering, the clash of swords and spears. “King Ruin!” “Death and all demons!” “Death! Death! Death!”

  Tal was shrieking and shouting somewhere over to the left: “The king! The king! Victory!”

  Intoxicating. Throbbing in her head like wine. She had forgotten, almost, the glorious feeling when one waited to kill. Thalia laughed, shouted, “Victory! Victory! The king!”

  Again the dragon spouted fire. A great rushing wall of light. Like storm waves. A thousand banners of red and yellow rippling silk. The wind of the dragon’s wingbeats stirred burning eddies in the sky. Currents of fire. Spirals. Sparks falling and the grass was ablaze.

  Voices shouting: “Victory! Victory! King Ruin! Death! Death! Death!” A blare of trumpets. The thud of drums. Thalia pulled up her horse and the soldiers surged past her. Like water around a rock or the prow of a ship. They saw and recognized her. Cheered her. Their queen. Their beloved’s beloved. The chosen of their new god. She raised her arms, shouted them onwards.

  “Victory! King Marith! Amrath returned! The king! The king!”

  In the light of the dragon fire the army of Illyr could be seen rushing towards them. A charge by a troop of horsemen, tall heavy men on massive horses, encased in plates of bronze. The ground thundered with the weight of them coming. Their armour was already slick with blood. They flew red pennants, red like the Altrersyr. They too had once been the men of Amrath. They carried trident lances that ended in poisoned barbed bronze tips.

  The army of the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane drew up in formation. The sarrissmen came forwards, a solid wall of bronze and iron, the terrible points of their weapons gleaming hot red. They stood like statues before the oncoming charge. Trident lances rushing up towards them. Filthy with their comrades’ blood. The darkness fell again. Metal flashed in the darkness. The thunder of hooves and the snorting gasps of breath.

  Coming. Coming.

  Here.

  The dragon spurted fire. The crash of it like a breaking wave. So Thalia had imagined, terrified, the surge of liquid metal from a smelting cauldron overturned. Boiling eating the world. The heat and the light left her blinded. Glowing shapes of men and horses danced behind her eyes. The earth thundered. Molten bronze trickling down the grass. The line of Illyian horsemen struck the line of Marith’s sarriss. Explosion of flesh and wood and metal. Then darkness. A ruck of dying bodies, churning like worms.

  Voices screaming: “Victory! King Ruin! King Ruin! Death!”

  “Why we march and why we die,

  And what life means … it’s all a lie.

  Death! Death! Death!”

  Another gout of flame. The battlefield was lit up in splendour, the Illyian horsemen reeling back terrified across the plain. A cheer. The sarrissmen began to press slowly forward, a single unwavering line of bloodied points. Beyond them to their left a block of horse lancers in crimson armour, crimson crests on their horses’ heads. The dragon soaring on huge above them. Drums and trumpets blared to urge them onwards. On, on into Illyr!

  Thalia spurred her horse to follow. Raised her arm to shout again to her men. Tal caught her reins, checked her.

  Tal shouted, “We have to get back across the river, My Queen! It’s not safe here.”

  “But we’re winning! We’re destroying them!”

  “At the moment.” Tal pointed before them. Black darkness, and then a brilliant flash of glittering white light. The dragon shot flame in answer. Shrieked in pain in the sky. “They have mages. Powerful things of their own.” He smiled coldly. “They are the men who betrayed and rejected Amrath. They have destroyed any number of Altrersyr armies. This is not like it was in Ith, My Queen. We must go back.”

  “But—”

  A great howling in the dark ahead of them. An explosion of light showed up clawed shadows, flying in panic, a thing like a golden bird tearing at them. The dragon spat fire. The shadows wheeled, turned on the bird thing, ripped at it with their claws. Light and shadow wrestling. Chunks of shadow flesh and golden feathers crashing down killing the men beneath. Another charge of Illyian heavy horsemen thundered towards the Islander’s horse. The two lines met with a juddering smash. Darkness fell again, thick and absolute. Lit again by the sky burning, and the Islander’s lines were broken and pushed back. Dead horses. A man running past with his face ripped off.

  Thalia stared. Terrified. Appalled.

  This is war. This is what they do for me. This is what they endure, to make me queen.

  This is what Marith endures.

  Her horse began to pull forward again. Caught up in the press of soldiers moving forward into the battle lines. Its hooves slithered in the mud.

  “Marith!” She stared terrified at the rushing lines of soldiers, the flashes of burning maiming light. “Marith! Where is he?” We quarrelled and parted in anger, and I was right to be angry with him, and now he is here, in this, doing this, suffering this. If he is harmed, she thought. If he is harmed …

  “You said we weren’t expecting it to be difficult,” she cried to Tal.

  “I said he said it wouldn’t be difficult.” Tal said, “My Lord King led the first attack at the ford. He’s pushing round to meet us now. He must be, he’s got the Illyians turning to face us here, moving back.” He pulled desperately at her horse’s bridle. “My Queen, we must go back. If My Lord King was in any danger …” He looked at her face. Kind. Soothing. “If anything were to happen to him, do you think we would not all of us know?”

  Another brief moment of sweet blind dark. She could not see, so it must not be happening. She wheeled her horse, pulling hard at the reins. It snorted angrily. Trying to press on. She fought with it. Tal was pulling and fighting his own horse.

  He cannot be harmed, she thought. I am being a fool. Swords and spears, bronze and iron, they cannot harm him.

  “We go back then.”

  The two horses turned, flicking their heads sorrowfully at the battle lines then trotting towards the river. Their hooves sucked in the mud. A handful of wounded were already limping back around them.

  The river had risen. A fast rushing current. Churning up foam as the soldiers’ feet churned up mud. The banks on both sides seemed far steeper. Collapsed stone and earth. In the firelight the water looked red. Thalia regarded it i
n dismay. Her horse snorted, tried to go back.

  A man rushed past her down into the water. On fire. His bronze armour burned. The water hissed up in steam. He stood submerged to his neck. A moment’s relief. Then the current took him, whirled him away.

  “Come on!” Tal shouted. He spurred his horse. “Swim the horse! Come on!”

  A voice shouted off behind them: “The king! The king’s coming!” Thousand-coloured explosions ripped across the sky.

  Thalia hesitated. The horse trying to pull back to the field of battle. A burst of dragon fire showed up Tal’s horse in the river, Tal struggling on its back. Red light on the black water. Beyond the river only empty dark.

  “Swim the horses! Come!”

  The current rose up higher and faster. Rain beating on the surface of the water turning it alive.

  “My Queen!”

  Something was screaming behind her. All the pain in all the world. The earth shook with an explosion. Drums beating harder and a thousand voices shouting “Death! Death! Death!” A thunder of hooves, a crash. Thalia wrenched at the horse and forced it forward into the water. Cold water struck her like the explosions of light. She gasped and struggled, water smashed into her open mouth. Choking. She swallowed, spat. The water tasted of blood.

  They were downstream of the battle at the ford, Thalia remembered. The water was not just red with reflected light.

  The horse pushed forward, half walking half swimming. Its hooves sinking in mud. Something crashed up against Thalia, tearing at her hair. She shoved it away and it was a severed arm. Screamed again and her mouth filled with water tainted with blood.

  The water was rising. Pushing round the horse’s neck. The current stronger. The horse staggered. Tal’s horse was almost across. In a flash of fire she saw Tal reaching out for the trees on the bank.

  Her horse’s head jerked and turned sharply. It shrieked in fear, bucked so that Thalia was almost thrown. She turned in a panic of fear.