The King's Last Song

by Geoff Ryman

  He turned back and saw about six of the peasants staggering forward, carrying one of the canal barriers of sharpened trunks. Not now! he thought. Then he saw category people, men and women, reaching down towards it from the road embankment.

  They were going to blockade the bridge.

  My people are made of fire. Fire and flowers combined.

  The square mouth of the bridge yawned towards the boats.

  The paddlers lowered their blades, and everyone in the boat ducked. Like a gasp of cold air, shadowed stone passed over their heads.

  The King looked up and suddenly, ahead of them, in clumsy blocks, the Unfinished Temple baked squarely in sunlight.

  They were in the City.

  So, now we sail on past all the temples to the tyrant's palace.

  To the west, dust rose, a discoloration in the sky, orange, almost as if there were a fire.

  "Your general meets the defenders,” Vid said.

  Jaya tried to avoid calling the enemy the Chams in Vidyanandana's presence. “Our main hope now is that most of the tyrant's troops went charging out to meet him."

  "Some,” advised Vid. “But not perhaps those of the King's own guard. They'll be there in the palace to protect Jaya-Indravarman.” Vid smiled. “Don't underestimate my people, even here."

  Wisdom. The Chams would be smart, hard, cruel, and swift. “They will wait at the docks,” Vid said.

  Jaya breathed deeply as if to suck in courage and intelligence. He said to the tillerman, “Dock at the Unfinished Temple instead. That should leave space for the other boats to get through the bridge. Then we disembark."

  From the bridge behind them came a thundering of hooves, a whinnying of horses and women's screams. Jaya saw his people fleeing east across the dark platform of the bridge. Arrows shot up from his boats on the canal. The King saw no Cham horsemen on the bridge itself—the barriers had evidently blocked their crossing. From under the bridge, one of his boats glided, oars up, wooden shields turtle-backed over the heads of his men.

  All their cavalry needs to do is ride along the top of the canal banks and rain arrows down on us.

  Change of plan again.

  "Get us out of the boats now. Trumpet! Signal!” the King shouted. The tillerman blinked. They had agreed that there would be no musical signals inside the City in order to take the tyrant by surprise. The King kept his temper. “They know we're here, man! Signal!"

  The musicians sounded the trumpet, meaning dock or retreat. The blaring sound was taken up along the line of boats. “Out, out now!"

  "Racing march,” the King told his tillerman, and the man began to beat his drum in a running rhythm. The King seized his fire-banner from the deck, gathering up its folds. His boat veered into the bank, settling against it with a thump. Before it had steadied itself, the King flung himself from the poop onto the bank. The grass was patchy, parched grey in places, and though he was pitched onto his hands, he found a footing. He scrambled up onto the top of the dike and waved the orange-red banner and roared to the men below, “Racing march! Racing march!” He ran ahead to the lead of his sword-boats. “Shields in front!"

  The platoon leader of the sword-boats jumped, but landed in a buffalo wallow. He hauled himself up, laughing and kicking mud from his feet. Back along the canal, the last of the boats nosed into the bank, men in the water pulling it in sideways. With a rustle like a flock of birds taking wing, soldiers and oarsmen stood up. The rattan screens were lowered, and, as if released from a pen, the men streamed onto the bank, their commanders bellowing, “Run, run, run!"

  The King shoved his banner at his platoon leader to hold up, scanned the wave of men to find Vidyanandana, and grabbed his shoulder. “Stick by me,” Jaya told him.

  Barefoot, over scorching white dust, they all launched themselves forward, jostling each other into position as they ran. Shield bearers thrust themselves to the front or to the side, raising protective walls. The drums beat and the dry ground shivered underfoot.

  Like egg in soup, the navy coalesced into a land army.

  Khmers! You have sat still and waited long enough. Run free now, like the wild bull. Peasants, charge like the wild boar. Princes, fight like tigers.

  It felt good to run at last, good to run to the foreign house and expel the conquerors, good to avenge the deaths of so many, good to take action against the murder of Vidyanandana's father.

  Above all, it felt good to be done with dissembling. My banner is raised against you, Jaya-Indravarman.

  Boys tumbled out of the bankside houses, or ran towards them out of hamlets to the west. Jaya looked behind him. All along the bank two hundred or more of his men ran, with women and boys running alongside them and cheering. Their young smiles cut through the distance like knives.

  On the other side of the canal, the Unfinished Temple loomed over them, its raw, uncarved blocks looking like something piled up by a child.

  Ahead on this side was the last of the Yashodharapura forest. The giant green trees rose up like thunderclouds.

  A wall of forest around the tyrant's palace. It was a good defence—burn all the ground around so you can see who approaches, and then waylay them with high trees and dense undergrowth.

  The Chams were forest warriors. No matter, thought Jayavarman, so are we.

  The trees would break up their formation. Like a sieve, the forest would strain them. The King's eyes flicked towards the canal; the bank had been dug all the way to the roots of the trees.

  "Push on, push on through the trees."

  Their formation broke apart, spreading out among the trees. The Khmers darted like shadows, swift and dark, ducking the branches that sprang back into their faces. They jumped over logs that could conceal traps, making no more noise than a natural falling of leaves.

  The band of forest was not wide, a hundred yards at most. Through the trees, the King saw searing daylight on white ground.

  A bursting rustle of leaves made him spin around. From out of a hide, a Cham warrior whirligigged towards him, swords spinning.

  Jaya thrust his lance; something clanged against his breastplate; he swirled out of the way and heard something sliced, cloth and flesh. His platoon leader fell. Vid swiped his sword at neck level, and the Cham attacker rolled, tumbling across the ground like an empty suit of armour.

  A blur of bronze spun out from the left. Jaya caught up the banner as it fell out of the platoon leader's grasp and swiped the air with it, making a curtain to hide behind. He ducked to the side and a sword cut through the banner. Jaya shoved his lance where the hand behind it should be, lodging it between plates of metal.

  Vid pushed him on....go, go, go, out of the trees!

  Footsoldiers and shield bearers clenched around Jaya like a protective fist. Another Cham tried to scramble up and over them. They seized him by his helmet, opened up his throat, and cast him aside.

  Ringed round with men, Jayavarman ducked out of the forest into the palace parkland.

  Elephants cried and like huge rumbling boulders jogged into formation. Beyond them stood the new palace that Yashovarman had built.

  Jaya caught Vid's eye. Their plan of reaching the palace was setting like the sun. They had been too slow; they had not realized how little the tyrant cared about defending the City.

  Something shot like a serpent across the ground—arrows, aimed at their feet. Ahead of them was a reservoir; Jaya knew it from his visits. It was small with steep stone steps leading down to the water. Archers were lying flat against those steps, concealed and shooting low.

  Something made a noise like a giant hornet. More arrows, from high up in the trees. Concealed platforms on the branches, hard to spot, hard to aim at. Jaya blinked southward into the sun when the sky seemed to open its mouth and spit something at him.

  An arrow slammed against Jayavarman's forehead. He dropped to his knees before realising the arrow must have glanced off his bronze diadem. Blood dripped onto the white sand.

  "King, you are hit!” wailed a soli
der.

  "Shut up, you idiot!” Jaya heard another arrow sizzle into a wooden shield. He heard more elephant cries. Jaya scooped up dust, wiped the blood away with it, scooped up more and caked it on the wound to staunch and hide it.

  Vid held his arm and hauled him to his feet. The ground itself seemed to have gone woozy from the blow.

  Arrows purred like cats into warm flesh all around them.

  "Where are my archers?” the King demanded.

  Archers were nobles in flowered cloth and were usually safe in the rear. Currently they were still being cut to pieces in the trees.

  The Cham elephant-handlers shouted orders. Necklaces of bronze leaves jingled around the elephants’ necks as the beasts advanced, heads down.

  A day of disasters.

  "Right. Get out of here,” the King said. “We head west, west and south to General Namasivaya."

  Sergeants, ordinary men at arms, took up the cry. “South and west. To Namasivaya!"

  Conches sounded for retreat, the long horns blaring out the instruction: west. Messenger boys hopped like sparrows to carry orders, some cut down by arrows. Men cried and clutched their heels.

  Slowly, like grain stirred by wind, the Khmers began to move.

  The King stumbled forward, his whole head ringing, blood seeping into his eyes. But he was still able to run, supported by Vid, who held him by the arm.

  Drums beat out the racing march. “Go, go, go, go!” sergeants shouted.

  Finally some of the Khmer archers fought their way out of the trees. Finally, Khmer arrows arced upwards to rain down on to the pond or into the trees.

  Their retreat covered, the Khmers ran, leaving behind bodies fallen in the dust.

  Ahead of them lay parkland. Pathways wound across the grass and under the few shade trees, leading to the City.

  It did not feel like a retreat. They seemed to be running not for their lives, but for joy.

  It was their City.

  The paths had been worn by generations of their people. The dust that billowed up into the air had been milled from the bodies of their ancestors, their ash and their dried faeces. The poor shaggy houses that loomed ahead were unmistakably Khmer homes. It was as if the City were joining them in the battle.

  The King's troops charged unimpeded into the familiar chaos of home. The sociable huts crowded together, the narrow trails between them were covered with haphazard timbers. The hammocks on the raised porches still swung. Hens fluttered inside fallen cages. People had recently fled out of the path of the battle.

  Ahead of them a glaring white mist of dust hid the towers and the trees. Dimly they heard the cries of men and elephants, and the drums, gongs and trumpets of battle music.

  The King's troops pounded on towards the sound, understanding now. They were to form a second front, to close on the backs of the Chams. They ran into clouds of dust and covered their faces. Their columns poured between the houses into a market square. Everything was grey, in silhouette as if in fog.

  They ran full-pelt into the back of the Cham lines.

  The round bottoms of the Cham elephants shrugged their way backwards. Footsoldiers stumbled over abandoned hoes, buckets, and unstable timber. Something half-seen in the clouds of dust was pushing the entire Cham force into retreat. Glancing behind them the Chams finally saw the other Khmer force closing in behind them. Before they could cry out, the King's arrows flung themselves into their backs.

  The King turned and waved towards the rooftops.

  His troops understood and laughed.

  Jaya laughed too. They all knew what they were to do. As boys they had all climbed up onto the tops of houses. They had all thrown fruit or stones at each another, and then ducked down behind the crests of the sloping roofs.

  Vid looked confused and shook his head at Jaya. What?

  Jaya hauled himself up and then pulled Vid up after him. The Khmers scampered up onto the tops of the houses.

  Like smoke from a thousand fires, dust trailed around the Chams on the ground. They heard laughter all around them, invisible. They squinted, blinked, and rubbed their eyes—more laughter.

  Reserving so many of his forces to defend the palace had cost the Cham King dearly. From the vantage point of the rooftops, Jaya could see that the Cham elephants were being forced backwards, unable to turn in the narrow streets. The feet of the giant beasts slipped sideways off the narrow, unsteady timbers of the walkways. Oxcarts had been left deserted, blocking the tracks. An aggressive buffalo, still tethered to a house, lowered his horns towards them. The houses seemed to press around them like curious, shaggy animals.

  An arrow sang through the air from over the edge of a rooftop. Then another, and another. Like a gathering thunderstorm, the arrows rained down with increasing strength, leaping into hands, throats, anything the Cham armour left exposed. Arrows bit into the sides of the elephants, into their sensitive ears and trunks.

  The elephants bellowed and thrashed their way around to face the other direction. They kicked Cham foot soldiers out of their path, or staggered over them. Arrows plunged into the animals’ jowls and foreheads. On their backs, Cham officers in howdahs ducked or found arrows in their cheekbones or throats. Beneath them, the panicked elephants began to rock, to toss the howdahs off their backs.

  One fall of arrows came after another, dropping like layers of mosquito nets. The elephants screamed. Finally, one of them broke free and ran directly at one of the houses. Khmers leapt down from its roof and rolled away. The elephant twisted the house sideways, splintering the porch-frame, and the house tipped, settling out of the elephant's way.

  The elephants stampeded, thundering over the backs of their own troops, pushing over the houses, or breaking through them. Arms windmilling, the Khmers on the rooftops jumped free, and then ran.

  A seething flotsam of Cham infantry was left behind, out of formation, wreckage after the passage of a storm.

  Another curtain of arrows fell over them, thinner this time, but just as sharp.

  The dust, flinty in eyes, throat, and nostrils, wafted over them all. The Cham troops began to run as well.

  From his rooftop, it looked to the King like a battle in the clouds. Out of the mist, looming at first only as huge shadows, came Khmer elephants with fire banners. They charged the Cham troops, trampling them. From the ground, from the rooftops, the King's troops cheered them.

  Rout.

  Namasivaya's elephants and infantry pursued the Chams through the haphazard streets. The last of the Khmer arrows gusted over Cham backs as they all emerged from the City, back onto open ground.

  An elephant surrounded by parasols strolled up next to the King's roof. A friendly voice chuckled. In the howdah, blooming with confidence, was General Namasivaya. “White Rabbit, why are you on a roof?"

  "To bounce up and down on the heads of my enemies!"

  The smile faded as Namasivaya glanced at the King's head. “Someone's been bouncing on yours."

  Vid nodded and helped the unsteady King onto the General's howdah.

  Namasivaya asked both of them, “What lies ahead?"

  "Open ground to the palace. Another wall of elephants around it. There's a band of forest on the right, full of teeth."

  A Cham elephant, unmanned, stumbled blindly back across their path, its sides streaming with blood.

  Jaya found his footing in the howdah. “We need to regroup. It will be a traditional battle now."

  The General nodded, and called. A dull regular thudding signalled: classic formation. Their driver backed the General's elephant calmly away from the house and Khmer footsoldiers nearby slipped into rows around it. A Khmer cavalryman rode up beside it, the first to arrive.

  Ahead of them, somewhere beyond the trails of dust, a new sound tumbled towards them, like an avalanche of loose stones.

  Jaya had time to mutter, “Cavalry."

  Out of the dust, a wave of Cham horsemen surfed up and over the heads of the infantry. Dust thrashed behind the horses like spume.
Jaya turned his head away, but even so, grit clogged and stung his eyes.

  His own horsemen jerked round, wrestling with the reins to keep their horses in formation. Dust blanketed everything, but the Khmers could follow the sound of the Cham cavalry as it swept back around them in a wide arc, gathering for another charge.

  The Khmer infantry was still coalescing around the elephants.

  A sound like a breaking wave advanced through the dust towards them.

  The Khmer cavalry gathered, with a slapping of harnesses, feet, lances, and arrows. With a sudden spurt of hooves, the Khmer horsemen lurched forward to meet the charge.

  The two waves of horses met, breaking around the feet of the Khmer elephants. A Cham horse was up-ended like a boat by the impact of colliding at full gallop. The Cham was thrown headfirst, and from where Jaya balanced, he heard the crack of the fallen cavalryman's neck. Khmer infantry squatted around the elephants’ feet with axes. They chopped the legs of the passing horses as if they were birch trees. A horse rolled to the ground, splintered white bone rupturing its shins. The charge passed thundering back towards the City.

  Jaya peered ahead, still blinking dust out of his eyes. The avalanche of hooves encircled them once more.

  There was no strategy now, just raw battle. The formations held; the disciplines were arrayed. This is what it had been for, all those boyhood years in training.

  The training taught this wisdom—that you would die anyway. So die joyously; die well; die with acceptance, in the heat of battle as a hero, not as some tired old man with bad joints.

  Jaya laughed and tossed his head like any wild animal. Oh! I am sliding back down samsara from buck-ape to serpent. Hee hee! I feel as hot and as roaring as fire. All this dust is me smoking.

  General Namasivaya caught his mood and laughed as well and shook the King by the muscles of his neck. Both men laughed and the troops looked up to see them, the King bloodied but still with them in the thick of the fight.

  The King bellowed at them, “Come on! We will win.” He felt buoyed up, supported by the power of the earth. “Hammer them! Cut them down like saplings in your pasture. Harvest their heads like rice. Pluck their balls like cotton. Fall into your formations as if into your mother's arms!"