Kings of Ash

by Richard Nell

  Again without a word, the Mesanites slowed to a crawl. Their shields lowered nearly in unison, and without instruction, every Mesanite in range hurled his javelin towards the waiting enemy.

  The Naranians were shieldless. They wore no armor save for cotton and leather with perhaps a few, useless bucklers. Their spear-wall tore faster than frayed cloth.

  Men cried out in surprise and terror as the deadly throwing spears pierced their bodies. Then the hillmen charged.

  Their shields led the way, smashing and shivering spears, brushing them away like cobwebs. In every gap, in every faltering stab from the enemy, hillmen stepped through to lance Naranian guts with their stabbing swords, then fell back in line.

  The heavy infantry made no shouts or calls. They fought in silence, eerie and terrifying save for their grunts and growls. They bashed and stabbed, withdrew and advanced, folding their enemy like smiths hammering bronze, moving step by step through a field of blood with practiced ease.

  Asna was impressed, and yes, a little frightened, and suddenly, very bored.

  He rolled his shoulders and dropped his shield. He unsheathed both blades at his hips, pushing out from the cover of his fellows with a few Condotian swears to slip out the flank.

  He knew the sides of Osco’s square were the only places the lady-men had a chance. If they had any sense they would push here and try at least to slow the butchery enough to stop the advance. Perhaps there the fighting would be fierce, and chaotic. Perhaps there would be glory.

  If you are watching from hell, Papa, time to see how a real man fights.

  “I am Asna Fetnal,” he called out over the din, seeing with great pleasure the skirmishers had begun to wrap around the square as he’d predicted.

  He slashed aside a boy’s spear-shaft and severed his wrist.

  “All will fall before me, starting with you!” Asna pointed a curved sword into the chaos of skirmishers, vaguely at some man he couldn’t reach, and in any case didn’t intend to. He turned the other way and charged.

  * * *

  Kale felt the deaths around him. The heat seeped out of men to cool and mix with dirt, clumped and trodden, mud tinged with red. He’d never seen war, and this was small but already terrible. It would be worse where they were going.

  “Please just stop,” he whispered.

  His empty stomach heaved at the smell and noise and movement and he put a hand to his face. He imagined his fig tree in Nanzu, sitting with students as he focused on his breathing.

  If there was only wind or clouds, or something, anything he could use for spectacle—some way to shatter these men and make them run.

  He reached out to feel again and failed. He hovered up with his senses to look down at the square of discipline all around him fenced in by spears. It was like a wolf-pack pecked by chickens. So far, he couldn’t see a single dead Mesanite.

  Then he saw Asna.

  The Condotian had run out alone, out of formation. He was already half-surrounded, chopping spears and hands with his curved swords, narrowly avoiding death from an arrow shot.

  “Fall back you damn fool,” Kale whispered with his spirit.

  The Condotian jerked, confused, and in his distraction death lunged at his side. Kale snapped the spear in half before it landed.

  “Islander! About time!” The mercenary backed away, half a dozen spears fanning out to skewer him. He pointed a sword and looked to the sky, then laughed. “God is with me!”

  Before Kale had time to react, the Condotian charged.

  Iron-tipped shafts thrust up but he ignored them, reaching around them for the kill with no thought of safety.

  Kale swept the tips aside to save his life, barely, and Asna slashed a man’s throat. Blood sprayed over men too shocked to withdraw.

  “I am death!”

  Asna abandoned defense entirely, not even flinching at his enemy’s thrusts.

  Kale didn’t know what to do. He pulled the weapons away in panic, or raised them straight in the air, or plunged spear-tips into the dirt, catching two arrows before they landed. With every stroke, Asna murdered.

  He threw himself forward, racing across the ground and cleaving at faces and chests, his movements erratic but efficient, his swords perfect for the task.

  “Stop,” Kale whispered, too distracted to project it.

  With his spirit he watched one man against fifty, twisting from side to side, laughing and slaughtering anyone he reached. Kale broke his enemy’s weapons in mid-air, knocked them from their grasp, or turned them aside only to protect his friend, but also leaving the unarmored scouts exposed.

  Asna began singing in his own tongue, which Kale understood with his spirit. The sounds were lyrical, flowing, even beautiful. The words were monstrous.

  “Send the city up in flames, spit in their face, spit in their face. Raise your torches, hope remains, spit in their face, spit in their face…”

  He’d snarl a verb as he hacked off a limb. “Spit in their face”. Then twirl and catch the next line and take half a head.

  “It’s the Anointed!” shouted one of the scouts. “He uses his magic!”

  In the small clearing of bloody men on the Mesanite’s flank, men were running now. They pointed and shouted. The archers tried to bring Asna down as space around him cleared, but Kale caught the arrows.

  Asna sheathed a sword and threw knife after knife, then turned back and raced down the line of enemies pinning in the Mesanites.

  These men stood in formation. They faced the infantry, attention consumed with jabbing at shields and anything exposed, trying desperately to slow the advance and protect themselves from retaliation.

  Asna was free, ignored, and unopposed. He cut backs and sides, hamstrings and necks. The spearmen were shieldless, armorless, trapped against the square. Every stroke of Asna’s sword killed or maimed. When at last he seemed to tire of hacking men to death he simply switched arms, walking now instead of running to save strength, moving down the line butchering, singing, ‘spit in their face,’ ‘city in flames’ as he chopped.

  Some turned to face him, and were cut down by Osco’s men. Those that held faced Asna’s scimitar.

  Heads swiveled and heard the singing, heard their fellows dying. They saw no support or reinforcements; they saw the column of heavy infantry still advancing no matter what they did. Many turned and fled, and soon the whole flank broke apart.

  The Mesanites finally came apart to chase, strength re-surging as victory loomed. They rolled out and down the ‘outside’ square of scouts still holding, poking holes and bashing over the enemy with their shields as often as their swords. It all ended quickly.

  Kale soon heard only the moans, the weeping, the begging. There was an awful smell, like a butcher or a harbor. He looked upon a whole field of men in pieces, their blood feeding the soil. Osco’s soldiers moved across it finishing the wounded, ignoring their pleas.

  Kale felt utterly numb. He tried to think back to the moment he had turned his miracles on the enemy and found he couldn’t. He had meant only to help, to protect; he reacted because his friend and ally was in danger and what else could he do?

  The action had come without thought, like dancing the Ching with Master Tamo in a room of symbols and sunlight, like an infant holdings its breath under water. But I must accept blame, he thought. Surely he had destroyed those men as sure as Asna.

  The ‘windows’ in his spirit-house were near sealed and so he fled back to his own senses. He looked on his blood-soaked friend—the friend who had saved him from assassins twice, and who just killed or wounded maybe a hundred men with his own hands while singing and laughing.

  Asna’s curved blade was raised in the air splattering gore. His clothes looked dyed red, his silks and frills dripping all around him. Mesanites shook his shoulders and laughed, patting his back, raising their swords with his and chanting in their tongue.

  Kale was glad not to be watching with his spirit, because he didn’t want to know what they said. He thought
back to the beach—to navy life and fighting with Thetma while boys hooted their names.

  Does nothing ever change, he wondered? But he knew the answer. Nothing ever changed, save for the stakes.

  The memory of Thetma was unwelcome, for he was likely dead, too, sunk beneath the waves of the Alaku sea. Sergeant Kwal, Kale’s enemy in the navy, was dead. The Exarch and his servant were dead. The martial students, the assassins, Amit and no doubt Lani and Kikay, his brothers and father.

  Kale wept for the dead while his men roared in triumph. He saw perhaps fifteen hundred cold Naranians in a field of dry grass, with only five hundred to run and live and tell the tale.

  Many Mesanites had been wounded by arrows or spears, or bones broken in the clash of shield and body, wood and iron. But there was not a single dead.

  Kale knew little of battle, and of war, but he knew this in itself had been a miracle. The Condotian and the Sorcerer-Prince, he thought, a legend written in blood. They would re-tell it, perhaps, without the prince’s tears.

  Chapter 24

  With the enemy routed and the wounded seen to, Kale and his allies crossed the border into Nong Ming Tong. Half of Trung’s army followed watching, but at a distance, sending only one messenger to announce their ‘escort’.

  Kale went to his wagon to meditate and let the men pull him. He didn’t want to talk or even look at anyone, so he focused on the terrain, which bristled with summer heat.

  Every step seemed dryer, and more barren; stream-beds lay jagged with stones, empty and dead; grass stuck out like straw, clinging to the soil by yellowed roots. The air shimmered. The men’s lips cracked and even Osco carried his helm.

  Their march passed farmland parched to ruin, dull-eyed merchants rattling dust with stick-thin donkeys. Kale’s people called this place the ‘Rice-basket of the world’, but he saw no sign of that here—he thought the good land must be further to the coast.

  “I want to thank, friend.” Asna approached him very late in the day, his posture cautious. “What we do together,” he looked off into the horizon. “Glorious, yes? Glorious.”

  They both knew Kale wasn’t pleased, and that he’d been an unwitting participant.

  “You seemed very sure I could save you, and that I would.”

  The Condotian smiled.

  “No. But faith, yes?” He put a hand out to rest on Kale’s shoulder. Sweat trickled down his brow, and not just from the heat.

  Good, Kale thought, you know you’ve pushed me, and you know I could rend you skin from bone, and you think perhaps I might. He met the mercenary’s eyes.

  “I wouldn’t try it again.”

  “No, no, of course. Rest my friend.” Asna bowed his ludicrous bow and twirled away in courtier fashion, shrugging at Osco, who ignored them both.

  Kale settled back to his silence, sweeping his gaze out over the tumblebush and skinny trees that looked like starving peasants. A soldier handed him water and twice-baked bread, holding it out as if in sacred offering.

  ‘I am just a man’, Kale wanted to say, but he couldn’t speak their difficult tongue. He took it and smiled, thinking of a thousand corpses picked by vultures and maggots and feeling more like vomiting than eating. But he was alive. He had to eat to keep his strength because he had things yet to do.

  He’d lost weight—more weight, as his appetite dwindled, his stomach still weakened by the poison. The hard muscles of navy life had begun to round and soften, his chest growing leaner and fatless, ribs now poking out slightly beside.

  “How far to the king’s city?”

  Osco’s voice broke Kale’s thoughts.

  The general’s son was far from his home now. He knew of the comings and goings of other places, but likely he had never walked their lands.

  “Several days,” Kale said, but wasn’t sure, or at least not exactly.

  He came this path in the opposite direction with Amit, first from Sri Kon to Tong with his father’s ships, then with King Kapule’s escort from the coast on foot. He’d been hurt still from a fight with his father’s guards, and from being forced away from Lani. It had felt a very long trip indeed.

  But he smiled as he thought of Amit—the old crickety-legged scholar who made every step that Kale did. He’d kept them moving, tired in body but never in spirit.

  “If I can do it, certainly you can,” he’d say, contempt and humor mixed inexorably in his voice.

  “You’re not hurt,” Kale had whined.

  Amit had stopped, eyes wide, finger prepped for wagging.

  “Boy, I once walked for a week, puffy and half-blind from a snakebite, mad with hunger and wounded, straight through a swamp. Now get up.”

  Kale laughed now at the memory, though he hadn’t at the time. In fact he’d pouted and kicked rocks feeling sorry for himself like a child.

  And what are you doing at this moment?

  He took a deep breath, and burned his thoughts.

  Opening the windows of his spirit-house was getting easier—the ‘muscle’ of his power was sharpening, firming, even as his body withered. He breathed and floated up and out with the ashes, then sped out and over the road watching everything. He sensed a great flood still waiting in the distance, lurking in dark clouds held back by wind, penned as if by God himself. But this was not his current concern.

  How far can I go, he wondered? And how many threads can I gather?

  He thought often now on Ando’s words—the Batonian ‘boy’ who taught him to meditate. Nishad, he’d called him—‘they who stay’. Stay where? And where is there to go?

  In truth he was afraid to learn. The thought of being trapped when his windows closed still shook his chest and tightened his throat. But he knew he must at least push the boundaries to grow.

  He raised his arms and soared above himself, higher and higher until the men below became a swarm of ants on a dusty plain. He looked into the perfect blue sky and wished he could feel the wind with his body, but regardless, the sight was incredible—the feeling freeing, and terrifying, like leaping from a cliff to the sea.

  He had risen faster than he expected. His spirit was growing, lengthening, quickening. He blew past birds in flight, hollering in joy at the speed, but glad that he was nothing and weighed nothing, and did not intrude on the little creatures.

  For miles in every direction he saw a countryside begging for rain. He came upon towns that stretched on like cities, sparse and sleeping, streets spotted with guards and meager shops.

  Beyond he found more fields—endless fields of different crops, some seeming as large as the whole of Sri Kon. But he flew on. He flew until field became gravel and paving stone, brick and wood and the taming pathways of man. Every road seemed to lead the same way, a thousand rivers pouring humanity into a great sea. For the second time in his life, and from the first time from above, Kale saw Ketsra, the farmer-king’s hall.

  It was said to hold a million lives, and seeing it now from above Kale believed. A motley canopy of clay or mud, sandstone or brick houses checkered every patch of earth. Narrow streets wound between them filled by people and animals, tarps and bazaars. Clothes dangled on lines between floors and windows making the city look like a web weaved of dyed cloth and livable earthworks. At its Southern edge was the sea, which called to Kale and whispered freedom and home and a thousand thoughts he forced from his mind. Instead he flew down to inspect the palace.

  It looked much like Farahi’s, though this was connected to the city and far less protected. The gates lay wide open, walls built half-heartedly and small, courtyards filled with people and merchants, animals and sound. It had no moat, no secondary or tertiary walls, no curved angles or maze of inner fortress, not even a throng of spears or men-at-arms.

  A line of women with baskets and children were the largest crowd, standing at a huge clay silo that rose up as tall as the palace. They held pouches, waiting for baskets or scoops of grain doled out by sweaty, smiling guards. It looked organized, but tense.

  Kale swept in and throu
gh the open entrance at the front. The yard might be welcoming, but the palace itself was thickly piled stone strengthened by wide outside tiles, topped by hard plaster roofs to prevent fires in a siege. It was square and unimaginative, but sturdy-looking.

  He flew further inside to a gathering of cleaner-looking men in fine linen and silk. These stood at ease, huddled near a door flanked by swordsmen.

  Kale saw the trinkets and baubles outside, the artwork and sculptures and weapons hung from marble carvings—all the heirlooms his own family used to display their wealth, ancestry and power.

  With no further evidence required, he knew he’d found the Tong king. He passed straight through the door.

  * * *

  “Tell me,” said the King of Nong Ming Tong, seated on a throne so thick with silver and cushions it looked like a cloudy moon.

  “It is unclear, my lord.”

  Kale floated in the center of the room and watched a man in black, jewel-studded robes lean over a bloody table.

  With careful attention the man picked through a chicken’s guts as if panning for gold, weighing and feeling fleshy chunks before placing them back.

  The king smiled, seemingly relaxed. He wore a layer of healthy fat like a uniform, squeezed in more layers of what looked to Kale like women’s silks from ankles to neck, with even more swaddling his head, so only his face remained in sight.

  “Do you know why I sent for you, seer?” The king breathed out as he spoke, as if he’d lost interest.

  “My lord is concerned for his people.” The older man spoke calmly, but his neck glowed as red as his nose.

  “Of course. I mean you specifically. Frankly, I’ve never liked your chicken guts. They’re messy, and they stink. But you see I’ve killed all the others. They’re down with the dogs.”

  A bead of sweat, perhaps, grew on the seer’s brow, but he stood with surprising poise. “My lord may kill me if he wishes, of course, but it will not bring the rains.”

  The king’s eyed widened momentarily, but shrunk again.