At noon the next day he again summons the Army of Amrath before him. Stands again to address them on a dais hung with silver silk. The men stare up at him. They are wary. Frightened of themselves. Frightened of him They move and murmur like waves. A voice shouts, ‘Pay us!’ and is hushed. A voice shouts, ‘Don’t abandon us! Lord King! Please!’
How could he have thought it could simply end?
He cannot speak, at first. His mouth feels dry as desert sand. He stares down at them. They stare back at him.
His hand rests on the hilt of his sword. I don’t have to do this, he thinks. All I have to do is walk away.
He rubs hard at his eyes. His voice and his hands tremble as he speaks. ‘The army will not be disbanded. Not a single man of you. My companions, my most loyal ones, my friends. The Army of Amrath will be doubled in number! Every one of you shall be re-equipped in new armour with a new sword sharp enough to draw blood from the wind. There will be places in my army for your children, your lovers, your friends. All your arrears of pay will be compensated twice over. And in three weeks’ time the Army of Amrath will march out! You will be glutted with gold and with killing! My companions! My friends!’ He draws the sword Joy, holds it shining aloft, white light dancing along its blade. ‘We will see victory and triumph!’ His soldiers cheer with tears of happiness running down their faces. Alis Nymen cheers. Osen Fiolt cheers louder than any of them.
He thinks of Thalia cupping her hands over her belly. She just about shows now, when she wears a tight dress. The women of the court croon over her, fussing, ‘Oh, My Lady, how wonderful, how wonderful, oh, the greatest blessing a woman can have, My Lady, oh, joy to you, joy to you, My Lady Queen, My Lord King.’ Many of them had mothers or sisters or friends who died in childbirth. His own mother died in childbirth, a dead child rotting in her womb, it had to be cut up inside her, they say, extracted piece by rotting piece. The sounds a woman makes, in childbirth …’ The greatest joy of your life,’ the women say to Thalia, fussing. He knows it is.
He has some claim to the throne of Immier. His great-great-great-great-grandfather’s second wife was a princess of Immier; her father died without a male heir and the crown passed to someone else. Disgraceful. The throne should have gone to … whatever the girl’s name was. And the first Amrath conquered Immier a thousand years ago. Well, then. Immier is not a rich land. But there are many people there for his army to kill.
‘Death!’ the men chant, loud as trumpets. How much they love him! ‘Glory! Glory! King Marith!’
His uncle’s voice, mocking him: ‘You were such a happy child, Marith. But one might have guessed, even then, that this would be where you’d come to in the end.’ Where any man would come to, once they started on this.
He thinks: Immier, Cen Andae, Cen Elora, the Forest of Maun in the furthest south of Irlast … it doesn’t matter where we go. We will march, we will fight, we will kill, we will march on. We dream of glory, and we must have more glory, and more, and more. Men grow restless, look wistfully on swords growing blunted, dream of times past when they were as gods. Looted coin is soon spent.
Thalia miscarries that same evening. The first of them: she has lost two more children since, on the march; they are marching still and now she is pregnant again. He still owes his men two months’ arrears of pay. But, now, behold, half the world is conquered.
The dragons were black dots in the white snow sky. Marith rode back to Arunmen through the snow falling heavier. Thick soft white flakes like feathers. Falling until he could barely see his hand in front of his face. He rode along unconcerned. A king in his kingdom. Silent in the snow. A wolf slunk past almost in front of his horse’s hooves. Looked at him. Sadder eyes than the dragons. What might have been a scrap of human flesh in its mouth. The horse snorted, rolled its eyes. The wolf was injured, like the green and silver dragon, a long wound running down its flank. Maggots crawled there, even in the winter snowfall. It was heavy and fat from glutting itself on his dead.
‘Denakt,’ he shouted at it, as though it was another dragon. Go. Leave. It stared at him. Padded off, disappeared into the snow. He rode on, in a while came across the body it had been feeding on, a man, torn apart lying there. Someone who didn’t want to be a soldier, he’d guess. Tried to escape his men. The face was untouched. Mouth open. Eyes open. The snow slowly covering it.
Envoys came to Arunmen from Chathe and Immish and every city of his empire, brought him gifts from every corner of the world. Treasures and jewels, objects of great beauty and wealth. White horses. Silver cloth as light as sea foam. A thousand ingots each of iron and copper and lead and tin. The emissaries from Chathe came to kneel before him, swear their loyalty. He smiled at them, raised them up, promised them his faith back in return as long as they remained loyal to him. Ryn Mathen nodded, eyes bright with happiness. On a whim, Marith ordered the emissaries to be given a hundred chests of gold and silver, to bring back to King Heldan as an honour gift. The lords of Marith’s empire knelt and crowned him with wreaths of flowers. He held races and dances and feasts. The soldiers paraded for him, dressed in their finery, polished bronze, red plumes nodding on their helmets, red cloaks, gleaming, marching and wheeling in the snow. The music of the bronze: they danced the sword dance, clashed their spears, shouted for joy. So many of them, uncountable, like the trees in a forest. They roared out his name with triumph, he who had given them mastery of the world, made them lords of life and death. Their love burned off them, warm and joyous; Marith gasped as he watched them, his face radiant, breathless, still, after everything, half unbelieving, all this, all this, for him. The emissaries departed, leaving more allied troops in his army’s ranks. The Army of Amrath prepared to march out. The forges rang with the clash of hammers, the glowing fire of liquid metal, burning day and night. More swords! More spears! More helms! More armour! Grain carts rumbled in beneath the ruins of the gateways. Provisions for a long hard march. A new levy of troops marched in from Illyr, young men who had not yet seen the glory of his conquests, staring wide-eyed and hungry at the ruins of the city, the tents piled with plunder, the campfires of his army numberless as the stars. They marched in between towers of white newly slain bones, white skulls grinning, the shriek of carrion birds. He saw in their eyes the wonder, the longing to be part of this. They saw him, and he felt their love rise like mountains. A marvel, a gift unparalleled, that they could look upon him, fight for him, swear to him their swords and their spears and the strength in their body and all the length of their lives, to kill and to die at his will.
Onwards. Ever onwards. New lands to conquer. The road goes on and on. Issykol. Khotan, with its sunless forests. The lawless peoples of the Mountains of Pain. Turain, with its wheat fields and its silver river. Mar. Maun. Allene.
The Sekemleth Empire of the Golden City of Sorlost.
Gods, he sees it, so clear in his mind. Yellow dust, yellow sand, yellow light. Magnolia trees and lilac trees and jasmine, all in flower; women in silk dresses, bells tinkling at their wrists and ankles; in the warm dusk the poets sing of fading beauty and the women dance with grief on their crimson lips. The golden dome of the Summer Palace. A boy falling backwards through a window, lit by a thousand glittering shards of mage glass. In Sorlost I saw her face for the first time, radiant, and when I saw her I knew. My hands wallowing for the first time in innocent blood there. In Sorlost I killed a baby, I looked down and I ran my sword through it because I could. Sickness filled him. Fear. He thought: don’t think of it. There are so many places to conquer before I have to go back there.
At night he lay with Thalia in the bedroom with the green glass windows, beneath the mage-glass stars. Thalia naked and glowing, bathed in light. He rested his head on her stomach, imagined he could hear the child’s heart beating. In the dark inside her body it swam and dreamed. Absurd and impossible.
‘I can feel it move,’ she said. ‘Fluttering inside me. Like a bird. Like a butterfly landing on my hand.’ My child! he thought. My child!
He said, ‘This time it will live.’