The Tower of Living and Dying

by Anna Smith Spark

Win.

  Look at Maen lying there. A lump of meat. One sword stroke and just dead, just meat, nothing, just like that. Dead.

  Of course he’d win.

  Death always triumphs over life.

  Chapter Sixty-Nine

  And so in the grey dawn the Army of Amrath spread out over the Field of Shame to meet the Illyians, the traitors, the betrayers of the World Conqueror. The second great battle for Illyr, the greatest so far of Marith’s battles, and the one upon which all else would rest. Thalia herself helped him don his armour, pinned his cloak with a brooch she had had made for him as a Year’s Heart present, silver tendrils like flowers or water or her hair hanging loose, curling around a ruby almost black until the light struck it in just the right way and then it blazed blindingly bright perfect red. It had a flaw in it, a long dark scar running through it from end to end. If he twisted it in his hand, he could see the scar move. Alive. It made him think of dragon fire or the scars on Thalia’s arm. Of something entombed and fighting to get out. She pinned it now to his blood-covered cloak. Flakes of dried blood stuck to her fingers. Her hands were trembling. The brooch stabbed her hand. Drew blood.

  “Thalia! Are you afraid?”

  She said, “Not for you.”

  “Promise me, you’ll stay well back, this time. Keep out of it. Stay with your guards.”

  “I wanted to see it close up. See what the men do. Dying for us.”

  From outside the tent, someone, probably Osen, coughed.

  “Now you’ve seen it. It’s less confusing than it probably looks.”

  It flashed across his mind that Carin would have been coming with him. Marching beside him to fight at his side. Would have to have been: he’d have been useless anywhere else where Marith couldn’t keep an eye on him, he could never have trusted him with a command of his own. Next to him, cheek to cheek, licking blood from each other’s kills from their lips.

  Shook the thought away. Hadn’t thought about Carin for a long time. Strange, to see him in his mind now so vividly.

  She said, “A lot of the men will die, won’t they?”

  “Probably. More than I’d like. Yes. My fault.” He said, “I’ll bring back a feather from the bird god for you to wear in your hair.”

  She smiled. “I want enough to make a cloak from. You go now. Poor Osen will cough himself to death if you don’t.”

  The Illyians had the better position. A very strong position. Their lines filled the plain, anchored at their left by thickly wooded hills, at their right by the deep waters of the Jaxertane, swollen from the rain. Marith could not therefore easily outflank them. They could form a solid wall and hold there steady, with his men breaking themselves against them like waves. The plain behind them was wide and gently rising, allowing if necessary an easy orderly retreat into the safety of the western hills. He had nowhere to go but back into the narrow river valley where the men would be penned like sheep. The sky above was filled with silver lights dancing. The gold and silver firebird god with its sharp shimmering metallic claws. Shadows gathered around Marith. Smaller. Weaker. Missing the dragon. Afraid.

  “Hold them,” he commanded the shadows. “No matter what comes. The things of power. The lights. They must be kept away from the men.” The shadows hissed obedience. Reluctant, but bound to his will.

  The tragically unexpected death of Maen Bemann had necessitated a quick reordering of the senior command. Osen had the right wing, heavy-armoured swordsmen and a reserve of Ithish spearmen with poison-tipped trident spears. Yanis Stansel had the centre, the solid core of the sarriss. Kiana Sabryya had the light horse on the left wing, mounted swordsmen and her force of horse archers, interspersed with foot archers and two banefire trebuchets. On the far left, the small surviving troop of heavy cavalry, led by Marith himself.

  “Hold,” he had ordered his captains. “No matter what, hold the line. We cannot be pushed back. No matter what they do, we must not move back.” His lines glittering before him. Now he spurred his horse, raised his sword, shouted in a voice loud as trumpets, “Amrath and the Altrersyr! This is my kingdom! The kingdom of Amrath! His very bones are waiting for us! Calling us to victory! Here, here on the Field of Shame we will conquer! Be avenged! In Amrath’s own name, I promise it! For glory! For vengeance! For ruin! Death and all demons! Death! Death! Death!”

  The Army of Amrath moved slowly forwards in the rain.

  Chapter Seventy

  Battle.

  The armies thrashing together. At their centre, the heart of the fighting, like a forge, the two opposed ranks of sarriss. Smashing and grinding and holding. Dead men trampled underfoot. Kiana’s horses charging the Illyian swordsmen. Crash of banefire trying to break the Illyian counter charge. Mounted archers wheeling and circling, never still, never stopping, rushing and shooting and moving like little darting high-flying birds. Marith, on the far left, on the banks of the fast flowing Jaxertane, waiting, breathless, his maimed left hand on Thalia’s brooch. The sky was filled with fires, explosions brighter than the sunrise, flashes of darkness that made the air suddenly run cold. The shadows were just about holding. The silver lights squirmed around them trying to envelop them. The firebird god dived at his men and ripped at them with claws like hawks’ talons. Banefire arrows flew over the battlefield. The light was blinding. But still his lines just about held.

  His right hand itched on his sword hilt. Death and ruin! Soon. Oh, soon.

  Kiana’s charge had made a breach in the Illyian light armed infantry, pushed them back in confusion towards the hills. A good part of them cut up, cumbersome against the mounted archers and then the fast mounted swordsmen coming at them in waves. Kiana pulled her troops together, reformed for another charge. The Illyian heavy cavalry charged to meet her, checked her and beat her back. She pushed again, the archers bringing down several of the Illyian horses. A burst of mage fire. Several of her horse archers went down.

  “The mage!” a voice shrieking. “Kill the mage!” An explosion of banefire. Green fire and white light. Another burst of mage fire. Another explosion of banefire. The mage went up in towers of green flame.

  The sarriss lines wrestled each other. Stamp and creak of muscle. Shattered bronze spear points. Crack of wood breaking. Voices screaming orders, keeping the lines together, screaming at them to hold.

  The shadows collapsed as the dragon had before the silver lights in the sky. Ripped into pieces. The few tattered remnants fled. Silver light exploded down over his army. Faces dissolving. Screaming. Beauty, wondrous to the eye. The firebird fell upon the shadows, consuming them. Still, heroically, his lines were just about holding. Voices screamed orders, moving to fill gaps emerging, howling at the men to stand firm. The right, the swordsmen under Osen, slowly beginning to be forced back. A shower of banefire struck the Illyian cavalry as they charged down Kiana’s horse again. Bones went flying up burning. Lumps of metal that might have been swords. Osen’s lines were moving backwards. Silver light melting over them. Dissolving them to nothing. Gaps, where man after man was torn down. Kiana charged again, her archers swerving off shooting high at the birds circling, Osen’s lines still just about holding but being edged slowly slowly back.

  The Illyians moving forward faster, confident, their gods and magics driving off the army of the demon. Gaps opening. Osen’s men being forced back and back.

  A clever man, Osen. Praise his good and thoughtful heart. Did exactly as he needed to without even needing to be told.

  A gap opened too in the Illyian lines as they pressed eagerly forward.

  Widened. Perfect ordered formations joyfully coming apart.

  Marith charged at the head of his heavy cavalry.

  The firebird saw him. Shot towards him.

  As before, he killed it with one blow.

  The sky roared. The silver lights came down at him. His charge punched through the Illyian right wing, skewed round, smashed into them again. The press at the centre suddenly slackened as the lines responded. The Ithish spears on Marith�
�s right moved up for a charge. The pressures of the battle shifting, changing, shattered lines trying to reform themselves, all the powers of magic loosed on the battlefield pulled off from the soldiers and directed solely and entirely against him. Silver light crashing over him again and again and again.

  The lights were … women? Beasts? Gods? Swirling patterns of branches with animal-like bodies and human heads. Dimly, striking at them, hacking off things like antlers only to see them grow again, formless twisting things of light, dimly he thought of the gestmet Landra had brought to his tent in the mountains. Fighting it, wrestling with it, struggling to keep himself. The smell of flowers and bread and muddy water. The taste of grass and rot and thick green forest leaves. Life things.

  Laid about him with his sword, cutting into them. Each time they seemed to rise up around him taller and brighter than before. As vast as the sky and as tiny as insects, and he was with them, huge as they were, tiny as they were, moving, falling, flowing, fighting around and around and around. Through them, the ghost of the battle: he saw it, felt it in his mind, the ranks of his soldiers holding, pushing, killing, Osen rallying them onwards, Kiana taking his position leading another charge of the heavy cavalry, they might even be winning, the sarriss men pushing and the Illyian centre was broken, ah, but they went forward too eagerly, he could see it before it happened, breaking formation, the Illyian horse came round to charge them, the line of spears wavered, he felt Nasis Jaeartes take a wound in the shoulder, stumble backwards, go down under a sword thrust, die. A flash of mage fire ripped towards Osen’s lines. No, not Osen! Not Osen! Not after Carin! Tried to wade towards him, locked in the silver light embrace of his enemies the powers of life. Hacked and cut and tore at them and they enveloped him, surrounded him, kept him from his soldiers. Things that tormented Thalia, refused to leave her be, tried to hurt her to hurt him. Killing his soldiers. Punish them. Mage fire rolled over him. His skin felt dry and hot. He hacked and cut and tore at the lights and they were unharmed. Like trying to fight a rushing wave of water. Fighting the night sky or the bottomless sea.

  The sky roared. Marith hacked at the gods fighting him. Death is stronger than living. Stronger than all the powers of life. One sword stroke and life is over. Ended, nothing, just like that. He hacked and cut and tore at them. His sword burned silver. Rainbows flickering around him. More and more shadows pouring out from a crack in the sky. The gods fighting him began dying. He slashed at them and they fell apart. Punish them. Death will always triumph over life.

  Osen rallied the soldiers, screaming them on. They cheered him almost as they cheered Marith himself. The sword the Calien Mal blazing. The Eagle Blade, carved of eagles’ bones. The sword dancing in Osen’s hand. The Army of Amrath surged forward, trampling the Illyian traitors beneath them. Froth of blood, bodies tangled hacked up in pieces, astonishing beautiful perfect stink of shit and piss and death. Oh joy! Oh wonder! Kill and kill and kill! Marith screamed in jubilation. The gods of life fell broken before him. The soldiers of Illyr fell broken five, ten, twenty to a stroke. The paean rang out in a thousand voices. For Amrath! For death! For ruin! For the destruction of the world!

  “Why we march and why we die,

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

  Death! Death! Death!”

  Chapter Seventy-One

  It was dusk before the Army of Amrath finally had the field secured properly, the few Illyian survivors penned in the mud by the river, a trophy of arms set up where the fighting had been fiercest, a bonfire of corpses smoking beneath it, burning brilliantly even despite the heavy rain. The tears of Illyr, the soldiers were calling the rainfall. The tears of Illyr, washing the Field of Shame clean.

  “If I had my copy of the Treachery of Illyr with me,” said Osen, “I’d chuck it onto that bonfire.”

  “You should get the text carved into the hillside,” said Alleen Durith. “With a big sign underneath saying ‘Avenged.’”

  Marith laughed. “We’ll have to rename the battleground. The Field of Vengeance.”

  Osen said cheerfully,

  “Dark its mountains,

  The wide green field where horses run.

  The river is green and silver.

  There all the world’s ruin came.

  Still fits, no?”

  A few hours’ sleep. Should really celebrate with copious heavy drinking but gods they were all exhausted after the day. In the dawn the rain finally stopped, the sky clearing rosy pink. All the churned earth of the battlefield gleaming. Washed clean, indeed. Marith cut the throats of five men and five horses beneath the victory mark.

  They raised up one hundred of the surviving captives on poles beside the river. Another two hundred, shackled in pairs, followed along behind the Army of Amrath to help carry the baggage train. Their first job to strip the battlefield of arms and armour, sort all that was usable into piles. A rough tally of the dead suggested the Army of Amrath had lost perhaps one man in four. Or perhaps nearer one man in three. Cavalry losses in particular were atrocious, and they were very short of horses now. Made something of an effort to shovel up the bodies, but gave up when it became obvious just leaving them would in fact be slightly better for general morale. Mael Bemann and Nasis Jaeartes were buried with honours beneath a shared cairn.

  The land grew still harsher. Everything burned. The soil was so thin anyway, very little would grow here, the horses gnawed at bitter scrubs and thistles, the men ate horses and dreamed of bread. The water tasted of rot. Godstones reared up through the skin of the landscape. Looked like graves. The men left offerings of blood and water and coin. Shuddered in fear, spat for luck. These were my people’s gods, once, Marith tried to tell himself, as they rode past them. Thalia bent before them a couple of times to pray.

  Three more skirmishes. They won one, drew one, lost one with a whole company of sarriss destroyed. Sneak attacks in the night, things clawing in the dark, invisible. The men screaming. Cutting their own throats. Ruined watch towers cresting the hills. Amrath’s watch towers. Raised by Amrath’s own command. “There, the tower of Hekenae, where Serelethe spent a summer, when Amrath was a boy.” “There, the fortress of Ilyryl, where Amrath drowned Lord Emrysis in a barrel of his soldiers’ blood.” Ruined. Burned. Fallen tumbled stone. Another town to run through. Another skirmish: won it, but at high cost. Another scouting party came back cut to pieces. Reported through bloody broken mouths that they had reached the sea. Things were visible in the water, champing yellow teeth. No trees growing. No birds. No life.

  The ruins of a fortress. Huge jagged towers lying shattered. Burned stone. Burned dead earth.

  Ethalden.

  Amrath’s bones lay there. Unburied, scattered in the burned earth. The thought filled him with something between horror and joy and disbelief. What if he should find him? Look at Amrath’s face? Where could he go, from that? “Turn back,” a tiny part of him whispered. Turn back.

  To see Amrath’s body. To see the ruined towers of Ethalden. To claim it all as his own.

  Chapter Seventy-Two

  “Here we are, then,” said Raeta. Her shoulder was all fat and swollen. Stinky. Rippled like mud as she moved. Made a squashy farty noise when she raised her arm too high. Tobias had got down on bended knee and begged her not to raise her arm too high. Her face was grey-green-white-purple. Her voice wheezed as she spoke. Dying: be a race to see who died first, him or her or all three of them. They were camped maybe three hours’ walk from the walls of Ethalden.

  “We’ll be off at dawn,” said Tobias.

  “At dawn. Why not tonight?”

  “Because it’s the Tower of Life and Death, the fortress of Amrath, and it therefore seems a jolly sensible idea not to walk there in the sodding dark. Yeah? And because I need a rest first.” I don’t want to be walking there at all, Tobias thought. Been there once. Never wanted to go back. They could feel it, all of them. He could see it in them. The pressure of it. Haunting them. Every step they took now, they walked on sacred god
cursed ground. Going to the ruins of Amrath’s fortress to search for Amrath’s skeletal remains and pull a ring with a demon imprisoned in it from His skeletal hand. The Tower of Life and Death. Naff as fuck and twice as terrifying.

  “One day too late, I remember you screaming at me.”

  “At dawn,” said Tobias. “Dawn. Please.”

  “At dawn. If you insist. But don’t blame me.” Raeta said then, “Tobias: I didn’t magic you to come here. I didn’t magic you to want to kill him.”

  Dawn. They walked down through a narrow valley cutting between steep hills. A gash of moorland on the scorched black uplands of western Illyr, on the edge of the frigging world. The valley opened out into a huddle of burned-out houses. Some dead sheep. Three dead people. Tobias tried not to look at them and did and yet again swore off roast meat. Up above, on a hilltop, the ruins of a building. A watch tower. They felt it staring at them as they passed. The land rose again. Green barren walls closing. A stream of water trickling over boulders. Black rocks. White pale morning sky.

  A beautiful place, oddly enough. The grass was soft underfoot. Mossy. A bare tree on the slope of the hillside thrust up against the white. The water sang as it fell. The curve of the hills like beasts sleeping. Rich, deep, warm green.

  Maggots on a corpse, Tobias thought, looking at the landscape. That’s what human life is. Maggots on a fucking corpse. Look at this place. It’s beautiful. It’s too good to have people walking in it, knowing what it is that people do.

  “Not people,” said Raeta. “Him.”

  “They’re following him,” said Tobias. “They crowned him king.”

  The hills dropped away suddenly to a broad river floodplain. Scrubby thorn trees, an outcrop of rock like a cairn, black mounds of ash. And noise, smoke smell, men smell. A salt wind. There, in front of them, the ruins of Ethalden, rearing golden out of the burned ground against the silver line of the sea.