The King's Last Song

by Geoff Ryman

  Root and the solider quarter-turned him. “More! Right around!"

  He was turned and saw disaster.

  The Vishnu formation had split in two, opening up a corridor. The Vishnu elephants began to advance down it

  "Vishnu elephants going deep in. Right down the middle."

  Root repeated it, calling blindly, but there was no messenger. The big infantryman signalled to him and sprinted away to carry the news, leaving the pole to swing wildly. Root struggled to right it, but it slammed into the forest of other standards. Rajapati clattered against them. A prong of metal struck and numbed his hand. Another forced itself between Rajapati's hip and the legs of the Monkey God.

  With a flip and a twist, it levered him free.

  Rajapati fell, shouting. He thumped onto a warrior's head and rolled down onto the man's shoulder. The Khmer blindly cast him off as a distraction.

  Mud slammed up into him, reeds sliced his skin like tiny knives. As if it were threshing time, many feet in unison pounded the ground.

  Helplessly Rajapati thrashed on the ground. His hand cracked under a heavy foot. “Root! Root!” he shouted. “Idiot! Don't step on me! Root!"

  An ignorant Cham face peered down at him in horror. It did not know what it saw, something half-human speaking on the ground, some kind of battle sprite, some garuda or demon or emissary of death.

  The Cham made a vomiting sound and kicked him.

  "Stop, stop, you idiot!"

  He doesn't speak Khmer, ‘Pati.

  Rajapati flailed himself forward and out of the way. His right hand was now as useless as a flipper. His bent, wishbone legs slipped, tying to find a purchase on the wet ground; his aching knotted little belly heaved and inched him forward like a caterpillar. “Root, Root!"

  Suddenly the tide of feet swung around. There was a cry, a wail of alarm. What now? The feet broke into a run.

  Running away.

  Hands fumbled in the mud next to him, feeling the ground.

  "Root! Root! Here!"

  Root crawled forward, patting the ground. Running men fell over Root's back, piled high over him. They all fell on top of Rajapati, hands extending, knees ramming their full weight onto him. They stumbled their way to their feet, stepping on him. Root lunged forward, diving for him, finding him. Like a mother, Root seized Rajapati, and pulled him to his breast, fought to his feet, and ran blindly.

  Feet thundered; drums beat; long horns sounded retreat. Billows of sound swirled around them booming, clanging. Root lifted up his head.

  Rajapati guided him. “Ahead. Dead ahead. Run!"

  Root spun instead, in waves of noise.

  A wall of the Usurper's troops bore down behind them.

  Root ducked like a bull and charged. An elephant trumpeted. There was a sound like rain, a sound like a tailor cutting silk.

  Arrows.

  Root hunched over the Prince, his back fanned over him like a parasol.

  He stumbled, fell.

  Root heaved himself up and thrust Rajapati further down under him, into the mud. Root's hand reached out, found a leather shield and hoisted himself up and pushed the shield under himself.

  Over Rajapati.

  With a sound like an orchestra beginning to play, a blade sliced into the earth next to Rajapati's cheek.

  Through Root.

  There was a drumming overhead. Clubs pounded on a ribcage, on a back, over a heart.

  The singing blade slipped upwards. Voices roared, feet pounded, milling the mud. Over him, Root shook and shivered.

  Root? Root?

  Rajapati writhed out from under the shield. Chest hair was in his face, and blood. He wanted to see Root's face while it still had life.

  The weight of the body was too great for him to shift. Rajapati was pinned. He arched up, his back locked again, and all he could see was Root's neck. He could smell Root, all over him. If he ever smelled that smell again, he would cry.

  "Root? Root? I know what you did, Root. You saved me. Root. That was stupid. Why did you do that for someone who wants to die?"

  Because you don't want to die, Root seemed to answer.

  Because you have worth, little prince.

  It was me who didn't mind dying.

  Root, Root, I will never forget you. Root, Root, you were my true friend. Root, you are worthy of princes and kings and diamonds; you are worthy to have temples built for you; you are worthy of inscriptions in Sanskrit and bas-reliefs that name you and show how you fell.

  Oh, Root, where will I ever find a friend like you again?

  The sound of the battle passed over them. Root's blood ceased to pump over the Prince. Rajapati tried to pull himself free and couldn't.

  All was silent except for the wind. Rajapati started to sing. He sang the song of the white rabbit, who was tricky.

  Life was tricky, it was a game, you had to accept that too. You march off into eternity and that in itself has no meaning.

  Oh, Root, Root, I hope we meet again in another life, and I hope I know you, I hope I will recognize a friend. For your merit I hope you are born a prince, and for mine I hope I am born crippled again, and blind, and that I will have a chance to save you and serve you as you served me.

  The white rabbit tricks you. The white rabbit fools. Rajapati realized that he had been howling the song aloud.

  Let them hear me, I don't care if they find me.

  "Brother? Brother!” said a voice. Suddenly Root was hauled off him.

  There, surprised, full of alarm, pity, and joy, was the face of his brother Suryakumara.

  "Rajapati!” said his brother, and hugged him up and lifted him away.

  The rout had been complete. King Jayavarman had survived and both of his sons, but the Chams felt there must have been spies in their camp. Perhaps there had been. In any case, the Chams did not ask for Jayavarman's help again. Nor did they attempt to remove the Usurper again for another twelve years.

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  April 16, 2004 night

  Rith drives home.

  He pushes the accelerator pedal flat onto the floor as if it were Map's face. His black Toyota roars ahead, sounding like he feels.

  Let's say for one minute, he thinks, that Map had nothing to do with the theft or the kidnapping. Say for a minute that Tan Map actually cared about temples and carvings, or even about a book.

  Was that any reason to stop treating him as an ugly, sneering criminal? To forgive murder?

  And that motoboy of his, may his liver fall out. Sitting, legs folded on top of a chair like a peasant, who was he to preach to an army officer about not fighting other Cambodians? What does he know about it? I lived through the Pol Pot era. I lived through everything that followed.

  We had to take the Khmers Rouges back, we needed somebody to do the work, so we let them all come back in. The result: we live with murderers. In Samrong, there's a guy who turned his whole family in to the Khmers Rouges. Both his parents were killed because of him, but he still swings in his hammock. It's one thing to have to accept breathing the same air as those turds. It's something else to be preached at by a boy who only knows how to bargain tourists out of a meal.

  A small animal darts across the road, a flash of red on its belly.

  Rith swerves to miss it, tires squealing in the heat. Rith's heart pounds as if he's woken from a dream. It was a cat, a beautiful chmaa. He glances back over his shoulder to see if he's missed it.

  That motoboy has got him so angry he's driving like a madman.

  Okay, Sinn Rith, you're nearly home, so calm down.

  Rith lives in a side street near the old colonial town. From the outside, his house looks like a wall of streaked corrugated iron.

  Rith beeps his horn, waits, and beeps again with impatience. That old slattern of a servant Jorani pulls the gate open, bowing, trying to look pleased, and covering her broken teeth with her hand. Rith glowers at her and thinks: not good enough, Jorani.

  The driveway is a narrow passage forced betwe
en two houses. Rith has to push down his side-mirrors to be able to edge though it. That yesh Jorani stands in front of the gate. Rith glares at her and beeps at her to step aside, and she looks pleased. She gestures for him to drive on. So he drives on. She soon gets the point: the side of the car grinds her against the corrugated iron. She giggles and finally gets out of his way.

  Rith swings the car round into the courtyard and then reverses into the garage. Rith's son slips into the house through the back door. Where's he going? Rith whips protective sheets over the car, to keep off drips.

  Rith leaves his shoes on the doorstep and steps up into his house. Grey concrete floors, whitewashed walls, bars across all the wide and open windows. He hears the front door slam. Rith shouts his wife's name, storms through the smells of rice vapour and spices, and rams his nose and eyes between the bars of the front window. A narrow alley full of potted plants runs along the front of the house to the gate. Rith is in time to see his skinny teenage son spin round its edge and pull it shut after him.

  Rith shouts his name after him. “Sok! Sokhem!"

  His wife shuffles up behind him in fluffy slippers.

  "Don't worry,” he says at once, “I'm not mad at you. Why did our oldest son go slinking off?"

  "He said he was seeing friends."

  "Well, if he misses his supper that will be too bad, don't cook him another."

  Rith's daughter lounges on the floor, hypnotized by the TV. A Thai woman in a shampoo ad stands in front of skyscrapers, tossing her beautiful glossy black hair.

  "Chavy,” Rith calls her, Little Angel, and he kneels down and kisses her head. She grins with pleasure, and they fold up together in a hug. Her eyes stray back to the TV—a Thai serial about teenage vampires.

  Though it's modern and made of concrete, the house is bare. There is a photo of his wife on the wall, but clothes hang from the top window bars or from hammock hooks in the walls. The hammocks in turn lie folded in the corner. There are no chairs and the thin plastic mats fail to cushion the floor.

  Rith hauls off his hot, heavy shoes, feeling sore at heart.

  He pads out to the waterbutt in the courtyard and wrenches himself out of his clothes to wash.

  All his money is tied up in his General's hotels. What will happen to that investment now, with all the tourists gone?

  "Get on with the food,” he says to his wife, through the window bars. He riles up his sweaty hair and starts to pour water over his head.

  I provided for my family better when I had a few more things to sell. Yes, okay I sold government guns, but only when things were at their worst. It was that or my family starved. Hasn't my wife suffered? She is as nervous as a butterfly. How many kids has she lost to illness? How much worry did she have all that time I was fighting?

  Who is Tan Map to accuse people? What was he doing in Phnom Penh, then? How did he know about the Tamil café, if he wasn't selling guns himself? Who is he to humiliate me in front of my own troops?

  In front of everyone. They put someone else in charge of the investigation and didn't even tell me. So I show up to do my job and arrest a suspect, only to find they know more about the investigation than I do! How is the army to hold up its head with all this internal rivalry and division? It turns us into a laughingstock.

  Rith scoops more water over himself, cooling, cleansing.

  That Map, he's just a killer who thinks he's got away with it. I can't stand it when he grins; he's grinning because he has escaped. They all escaped, all of those Khmers Rouges, from ever being called to account. He is utterly without shame, without remorse. He's like an animal.

  The water freshens his skin. Rith feels the dust and heat sluice away. He sags into comfort, a numb, slow comfort that is so much like despair.

  It looks so bad. We are the army and we said the Book was safe with us; nobody else should be allowed to take care of it. Then it was not only stolen from us but the thieves took our General and a foreigner and shot up the town and chased all the tourists away. I can't blame Tan Map for all that. I can't blame him for getting all that information on Saom Pich.

  But I can still hate him.

  In the end it is the murder that is the root of this evil. All these years I have sat and tried to forget, knowing it was Map who shot my man. Okay, that quartermaster was a coward. Okay, gunfire made him shake. Everything made him shake. Okay, it was fifteen years ago. But that man was in my care and I owed him protection and he didn't get it. Map killed him and got away with it.

  I never can stand losing.

  Rith pulls on shorts and slumps down shirtless onto the doorstep to be cool.

  "Husband,” says his wife. She lowers a plate of rice laced with pork and greens. It's even scented with coconut water—a very good Cambodian meal.

  Rith wants to kick the plate across the courtyard. At the very least he wants to say he is not hungry and push the plate away. His insides seethe. He belches and holds his tummy.

  "You will feel less angry when you eat,” says his wife. Then, in a softer voice, “You always do."

  Shrugging as if she's made a grudging compliment, Rith leans forward and eats in a rage, pressing rice and pork with his fingers into a fragrant parcel and jamming it into his mouth.

  She's a good wife. I shouldn't be bad-tempered with her. Regret passes through Rith like a sigh. The good food turns round and round in his mouth like everything bad he has ever had to swallow.

  No, it's no good; he can't stand it. He can't stand the thought that Map is not to blame for the loss of the Book. He must have taken the thing. He's turning on Saom Pich to save his own hide. Saom Pich was his old boss, they're in this together, that's where all his information comes from.

  We've found nothing, for all our motorcycles and roadblocks. Map has even sent children out to find the Book. It's like he's saying look, even children are better than the army.

  His wife says, “Your eldest son was thinking he could join the search."

  "Join that rabble? No!"

  His wife looks down towards the floor. “But, Children's-father, if it does some good? More and more people join in the hunt."

  That's it. “So now even you join with the enemy!"

  Now Rith can slam down the plate. Now he can take revenge. He feels justified in being angry with his wife. She blinks back at him in fear and surprise. Join the enemy? He stands up and begins to shake his way back into his uniform.

  "Where are you going,” says his wife. It is not even a question, her voice is kept so carefully flat and neutral.

  Rith buckles up his belt and buckles on his gun.

  "You should eat,” says his wife. “You should not go out with a gun."

  "I know what I should do, Wife. I know what I should have done.” Rith nods and feels wild and actually has no idea what he's going to do. He simply has to move.

  "Give my dinner to that boy and tell him to expect trouble if he joins the rabble! Jorani! Jorani! Get the gate open!"

  You couldn't go hunting men in a Toyota sedan. Rith stops first at HQ and gets out his army motorcycle.

  Rith drops himself down on the kick-start like an avalanche and the bike roars under him. He shoots out of the gates and up the dusty track to the main highway.

  He feels like a stone flung from a slingshot. The air cools him, as if a woman with forest breath was blowing on him, teasing.

  He feels launched through all of his life so far: the early days with his brothers laying out reed fencing for the fish farm. Late at night they kebabed a small part of the catch, smelling smoke, looking up at the stars.

  Now, when people speak of corruption, his belly tightens. They are talking about people like him. He takes money for promotions; he takes money whenever he can. For Chavy, for Sokhem.

  Of course it's not ideal. What is? But it's how people of position do things. Who could live on an army salary?

  And still his son does not respect him. How could he? The house has no furniture, and after all these years he still swims after
General Yimsut Vutthy for scraps.

  This was peace? The peace they yearned for all those years? Why does peace feel like one long, unending headache?

  Rith sweeps past the crossroads where APSARA checks passes to the monuments. His bike spits out a spark and a puff of smoke. The boys stand up open-mouthed. I'm army, you stupid schoolkids. What a useless job you have, what a useless life!

  A useless life for the whole country, sitting on top of these temples as if they were eggs that could hatch a future. All they hatch is a fortune for Thai airlines and Thai businessmen and people in the government. We live off these stones like wasps on fruit. Maybe the best thing for us would be if someone did steal them, then we would have to find something else to do.

  Rith slows alongside the Angkor Wat moat. They had not found even a trace of a camp in the main temple area, so Map must sleep somewhere outside it, within walking distance. Rith knows where the villages are within the forest, and the footpaths that go to them. He knows which sections of forest would be deep and tangled enough to hide Map's camp.

  He sees a couple of likely looking partings in the low scrub. Nothing too well worn, but enough for a man to duck through twice a day. He works his way on his bike into the forest. He imagines the bike shooting him forward to take Map by surprise. The motorcycle trampolines up and over tree roots, and skirts damp patches.

  Then his machine slips on a polished tree root. Suddenly the bike slides sideways out from under him and onto his knee, slamming it painfully onto something knobbed and hard. With a choke and a chortle, the bike falls silent.

  In a rage, Rith kicks the bike off and staggers to his feet. His knee crumples under his weight.

  The pain punctures his anger. It settles like a flat tire.

  Calm down, Rith, he tells himself. Calm down, you have to be clear-headed. He stands the bike back up and sees with regret that roots have scratched it. He licks his fingers, rubs some of the scratches away and takes a deep breath.

  Then he realizes he's smelling a fire. He knows this kind of fire, it's made from green twigs torn from trees. It smokes and keeps away insects. Rith pats his gun, still firmly in its holster. He hobbles on, springing lightly off the hurt leg and swinging it forward like a suitcase, into the dark.