Читать книгу The House of Sacrifice - Anna Spark Smith - Страница 18

Tobias the bastard-hard sellsword failed fucking assassin waste of bloody space

The camp of the Army of Amrath, the scourge of the world, the conquerors, the bloodletters, the plague-bringers, the despoilers of all that lives, somehow in some complicated way kind of his friends

‘More porridge? It’s calling your names, lads …’

‘It’s calling out for something, certainly.’

‘So put it out of its misery and finish it, won’t you?’

‘Its misery? What about my misery having to eat it?’

‘Mercy, mercy, I’ll do anything, mercy! Just don’t offer me any more of that porridge, please!’

‘I’ll have another bowl, if it’s going.’

‘Ah, gods, hear that? Clews wants another bowl. Make sure you’re marching well upwind, yeah?’

‘Better out than in, man. Better out than in.’

‘That goes for the porridge, too.’

‘Piss off, man. You want to be the cook, you can be the bloody cook.’

‘That was my damned bag you just dripped porridge on!’

A troop of fresh new soldier boys finishing up their breakfast, their armour so new and shiny, their faces so young and ardent; it was positively freakish, to see them beside the old hands.

Tobias sat and watched them for a bit. Kind of pleasure/pain in it. Like probing a wound with a fingernail. Seemed to be becoming more and more of a masochist in his old age.

Regrets? I’ve had a few. But if I could fix one moment in all my life … Warp and weft of it, backwards and forwards, some company of an evening, two hot meals a day, the odd barrel of strong drink. Him and Geth and Skie, the lads with their innocent killer’s faces, playing dice and arguing and ignoring him and Geth and Skie when they ordered them to stop arsing around and polish their kit and then get some sleep. The Free Company of the Sword, a troop of bastard-hard sellswords and lonely blokes with no other job prospects. An old name, if not a famous one. Well-known in certain select political circles. Specialized in stabbing people in the back. Skie the commander-in-chief, thinker, broker, scariest hardest hardman Tobias had ever met. Tobias and Geth the squad commanders, hard-bitten, respected, maybe even kind of father figures to the squad boys, certainly both agreed they felt guilty when they stabbed the squad boys in the back. To be fair to Tobias, the clients did pay a lot more if the job included stabbing the squad boys in the back. ‘It’s good here,’ one of the squad boys had said to him, ‘don’t you think?’

Recruited some new boys. And one of them was Marith pissing Altrersyr may his godsdamned kingly dick rot off with pox. Decided it would be a great idea to stab Skie and Geth in the back and strike out on his own, Commander-in-Chief Tobias, build up a new troop around him, be his own man, do his own thing. Or just retire, drink beer, find himself a woman, keep her well enough she’d grit her teeth and ignore him getting fat and sweaty and farting all night.

Yes. Well. The best laid plans and all that, if ifs and buts were pots and pans, etc etc to the bitter clichéd end. Think it would be fair to say things didn’t entirely go quite to plan there, yup.

Four years, Tobias the bastard-hard sellsword had been floating around following in the Army of Amrath’s wake. His leg hurt where he’d once jumped out of a bloody window. His arm hurt, where Marith shitting Altrersyr had once stabbed him. His ribs hurt, his knees hurt, his frigging arse somehow hurt, hair was grey and thinning, his gut hung over his belt-buckle and he did indeed fart all night. ‘We can kill him, we can stop him, we can … we can do something. Right?’ And lonely. One man, stumbling along.

There had been others, once: Raeta, Landra. Friends. Raeta was … not human. Antlers. Claws. Wings. Green leaves, wet earth. Life god wild god thing. ‘I am his death, Tobias,’ Raeta had whispered. ‘I am his death, I will follow him and follow him, I will destroy him.’ Raeta the life god was four years dead. Landra Relast had finally fucked off two years back. ‘We have to destroy him, we have to kill him, I will find a way to destroy him, I will, I swear it.’ She had sounded the voice of reason. But there had been something in her face that made him glad, still, that she had gone off alone. Her eyes were like a wild dog’s eyes. Running her hands over a knife blade, whispering her father’s name and her brother’s name, promising them vengeance. Sometimes thought of her and shivered, right down inside his manhood. Raeta … Landra … Gods and monsters … ‘It’s worse than he is,’ Landra had cried out once, before Raeta died. And he might almost understand that, thinking of Raeta’s eyes, dying. Thinking of Landra’s eyes in the last days before she left him. ‘Kill him. Kill him.’ Grinding her teeth whispering it in her sleep. Wild dog’s eyes, wild dog’s moaning howling, ‘We have to kill him.’ So bloody empty, she’d looked. ‘I will be his death, Tobias. I will end this. I will stop him.’ Thank the gods he himself was old and sore and ached.

Gods. Shivered now. Anyway. They’re gone, like rainfall. Don’t think of them. Four years, Tobias the bastard-hard sellsword been floating around old and sore and farting, marching up and down behind the army. ‘I’ll think of something, right? Okay?’ I’m not complicit in this shit that’s happening here. I’m a hero, me. I’m following him around because one day, one day, when he’s old and sick and abandoned and ruined and his army’s left him and he’s nothing, I’ll still fuck up and fail to kill him. If Landra’s a wild dog, I’m just a fucking dog too. I’m walking here in the darkness in his footsteps forever. Following him because there’s nothing else. This is all there is of the world. The fire burning hot and light and there is no heat and there is no light. I can’t kill him. Terrified to even think of killing him. But I’m alive. Just about.

‘Gods and demons, look at that, Clews has finished the whole of his second bowl.’

‘Clews, man, your insides must be made of bronze.’

‘Iron, Turney, mate. My insides are made of iron.’

‘So … your insides are rusting away, then? That would explain a lot.’

‘Petros, mate, you see this empty bowl …?’

‘I see it, Clews. I’m thinking of giving you a special medal, in fact, for emptying it.’

‘Oh yeah? Oh yeah?’ The whole company turned to Clews, who in turn turned to Turney. Ooooh. There going to be a fight?

They were getting bored. Arrived ready and eager, ‘March like all hells, lads, no slacking now, got a war to fight,’ halfway across the whole of Irlast, ‘you’ll be men, soon, laddies, real men, you just need to bloody get there,’ and now they were waiting around in a mountain valley in the middle of nowhere, five days now just sitting here, no slaughter no looting no torture no rape. Okay, so Sunreturn had been fun and games, if a bit weird here in the south, they could use a day afterwards to rest, yes, but now it was over lads like these needed to get on. The latrine trenches were filled to overflowing, apart from anything else.

Rumour going round that the queen was ill. That was why they were hanging around. Obvious what ‘ill’ means, in a pregnant woman. Nobody dared say it. But.

Don’t. Just don’t.

The lads’ squad commander turned up, bawled at them to get themselves sorted out, they were marching in an hour or so, look at the bloody state of them, thought he’d told them twice already to polish their bloody kit. The lads shuffled up grumbling, faffing around in time-honoured fashion with random bits of stuff.

‘And get that bloody cookpot cleaned up. It stinks. Looks less like food, more like someone sneezed in it. Cleaned. Now. You, Petros.’

‘Me?’

‘Chuck it away, mate,’ Clews said. ‘We’ll be in Turain, soon. Famous for their metalwork, they are, the people of Turain.’ They’d never even heard of Turain before yesterday, Tobias thought. No idea where it is. Don’t think they’re even pronouncing it right. Good King Marith could just be making these places up.

The lads got themselves sorted, Petros humming Why We March like it was a love song, Turney having lost half his equipment, Clews regretting out loud having to march on two full bowls of the porridge.

‘Turain, here we come!’

‘Woop woop!’

Tobias wandered off. Gods. Fucking gods. Tears in his eyes.

We were all that bloody innocent, once.

His own belongings were the basic definition of basic. A blanket. A cookpot. A couple of spare shirts and leggings. A spare pair of boots. The blanket was silk velvet, a stunning deep emerald green with a pattern of silver flowers, seed pearls crusted around the edge. The cookpot was copper and had an enamelled handle in the shape of a peacock, its tail fan spreading across the side of the pot. The shirts, leggings and boots must have been made for a prince. Several princes, as none of them matched. The Army of Amrath and the second army of camp followers following it marched around looking like peacocks themselves, resplendent, dazzling, a riot of colour, nothing fitting with anything else, nothing quite fitting the body it was draped on. There’d been excited chatter in the camp about Turain’s fashions and craft traditions for days now, everyone working out what they might want to get their hands on, putting in early orders with the soldiers, haggling over prices. Vultures. Though Tobias wouldn’t mind a new coat, if one happened to turn up.

Anyway. He bagged everything up, shouldered it. The whole camp was stirring, busying itself for the march.

‘Finally getting off, then,’ Naillil said cheerfully. A woman he knew, made her money doing the soldiers’ washing and sewing. She’d been with the army since Ith, way back. Longer than Tobias, in fact, technically. When Naillil started following the army, Tobias was still labouring under the impression he could do something else with his life.

Tobias nodded. ‘Finally.’ Had to say something more, really, somehow. Speak, Tobias! Don’t mumble at her and walk off.

Rovi said in his horrible dead voice, ‘Maybe King Marith’s hangover was really crippling him?’

Tobias shuddered. All this time and you’d think he’d have got used to Rovi’s voice and he never did and never would if he lived a thousand years and heard it every day.

Naillil said, ‘Rovi!’ Pretending shock.

‘Four days, we were all sitting around, after Lord Fiolt’s birthday. Ander almost had to sack itself.’ Dust puffing out of Rovi’s rotting toothless scar-tissue mouth. Smell like when you dredged the bottom of a pond after a sheep fell in. Rovi had been a goatherd. Thirty years man and boy tending his flocks in the highlands of Illyr, until the Army of Amrath turned up. Rovi had got stabbed in the chest and the gut and the neck during the battle of Ethalden. Rovi had ended up face down in the river Jaxertane, sunk in the mud and the filth for three days. Only somehow Rovi … hadn’t died. Kind of. Naillil had found him when she went to wash some shirts out. ‘Helpful for carrying my wash bags,’ she’d said once, and Tobias really wasn’t sure whether she meant something dirty by that or not. Really, really, really hoped not.

‘Here we go,’ said Rovi.

‘Here we go.’

Trumpets rang. Strange gathering sound of an army beginning to march. Tramp of feet and clatter of horses’ hooves. A rhythm to it, a music.

All day marching, through the mountains, beside the river that rushed down fast and wild and cold. The mountain slopes were covered with fruit trees, rich in birds and deer and wild goats. The sunlight came down through the leaves thick and golden, dappled the light, bathed their skin green. The men laughed and sang as they marched. A green tunnel, they were marching through, like being a child forcing your way through hedgerows, unable to see the sky, parting the leaves like parting the water of the sea. Then the path would rise, the trees would thin out, the sky would explode huge above them, deep joyous blue. The mountain peaks would appear then, and even in the warm damp growing heat, on the highest peaks of the mountains, there was snow. Marching on soft green grass, green bushes crusted with purple flowers, sweating in the sunlight, dazzled by the light and the blue of the sky. Then the path would dip again, the trees would close in around them, green soft damp cool heat. Felt different. Sounded different. The air tasted different in the mouth.

The fruit on the trees was poisonous, the camp followers had been warned. If you ate it, you’d swell up and sweat and die. When they stopped that night the trees had great knotted roots and twisting branches reaching almost to the ground. Hiding the world around them. Huge waxy pink and red flowers that attracted more insects than you’d believe possible. There were birds in the trees eating the insects, they had brilliant red feathers with black undersides to their wings. Tamas birds. They shrieked and called, sounded like they were speaking.

A whole village of camp followers setting down for the night. Endless babble of women warning their children against eating the poison fruit, smell of food cooking, smell of sweaty bodies, smell of human excrement. The sun was just setting. Warm and red like a healing wound.

Naillil was cooking stew. Asked Tobias if he’d like to join her and Rovi in having some.

‘Uh … Yeah.’ Paused. He could sit downwind of Rovi. And the stew smelled good. ‘Thank you.’

‘Want to help me wring out some shirts, afterwards?’

‘Uh … No.’ Paused. ‘Okay, then. Just this once.’

Tobias the bastard-hard sellsword! Hell yeah! Eased off his boots. Gods, his leg was bloody killing him this evening. Bad enough to make him forget about the pain in his arm and his ribs. When they’d eaten, Naillil called him over; he bent down over a pot of warm water, sank his hands in. Lifted the wet cloth up, water running back down into the wash-pot, the heavy feel of the wet cloth, solid and satisfying, the smell of the warm water in the warm air, the smell of the wet cloth. Twisted the shirt up to wring out the water, flicked it out with a good loud noise to get the creasing out. Water sprayed on his own clothes.

‘You’re good at this,’ Naillil said. She sounded surprised. Made a noncommittal secretly pleased nothing sound in his throat in answer, wrung out another shirt and enjoyed the feel of twisting the wet cloth. Naillil said, ‘Want to help me soap the next load, as well?’

Raeta the gestmet’s voice, weary: Not much else you can do with your life, I’m guessing, except kill? Tobias flicked the shirt out with a snap. Showered water over Naillil, who swore at him and laughed. Rovi sort of laughed.

From somewhere far off in the trees, a voice screamed.

Naillil looked up. Tobias looked up.

A howl in the air. A great gust of hot wind. More voices shouting. Screaming.

‘The dragon! The dragon!’ The sky lit up crimson. Fire blazing across the sky. ‘The dragon!’ a voice screamed. ‘The dragon!’

It came rushing over them, green and silver, huge as thinking, writhing and twisting and tearing at itself, swimming in the flames. Spewing out fire. Again. Again. Again. Again.

Soldiers came tramping towards them. Armed. Began killing them. Killing women. Killing children. The trail of lives that followed where the army led. Their women. Their children. Killing them.

Run.

Just run.

Tobias was gasping, wheezing, limping. His leg shrieking in pain and his arm shrieking and his heart and his ribs. Rovi next to him staggering, gasping, rot stink coming off him. Almost fell. Teeth gritted with pain. Up the slope of the mountain, towards … something. Nothing. Just run. Good rich black earth clinging sucking to his boots. Streams of people. Soldiers. Panic. Naillil shouted, ‘Look.’ A dark little cleft in the rocks, a cave, could hardly see it in the night and it looked like a wound in the hillside and it stank of blood like everything everywhere they had been. They scrambled up to it, crouched into it, sat in the dark, like sitting inside a wound. Stone walls close around them. Tobias gasping and sobbing in pain. Trying to gasp loud enough to drown out Rovi wheezing his horrible broken dead bad-water breath.

‘It will be over soon,’ said Naillil. ‘Few hours, at most.’

‘Yeah. Few hours. Like last time.’

‘She’ll stop it. Or Lord Fiolt will.’

Noises in the night. Wing beats. Voices shouting. Then horsemen passing very near them, riding hard. Trumpet calls. Then silence.

They emerged from the cave in the first light of morning. Voices crying. Footsteps on loose pebbles, jangle of bronze. A soldier’s voice shouting commands.

‘Line up there! We’re marching now.’

The slope of the mountain fell away very steeply beneath them, they must have scrambled up it climbing, Tobias could barely remember except that it had hurt. In the valley beneath them, a column of soldiers was marching off south. Staring straight ahead, everything neat and tidy, armour polished, red crests to their helmets very bright. They marched past in silence. Another column, spearmen with long sarriss, a raw red banner at the head of their files. It hung limp in the still air. Further up the slope, very near them, a party of horsemen. The smell of the horses was strong and pleasant.

There were great burn marks across the mountain. The fruit trees were burned away, rocks smashed up. The earth bare and black and dead. Figures picked their way across a wasteland of black ash.

A woman was standing a short distance from them. A dead baby in her arms. Her face and body were streaked with blood. Further down the slope a dead child lay sprawled, flies buzzing over it. A dead woman lay near it, her arms thrown out towards it. There were flies everywhere.

Oh Thalia, Tobias thought. Oh Thalia, girl.

‘She’s lost four pregnancies now,’ said Naillil. ‘Four pregnancies in four years.’ Naillil’s hands folded over her stomach. ‘You could almost pity her.’

She must have heard the sound Tobias was trying not to make. ‘I said almost,’ she said.

They began to walk slowly down the burned slope. Following the way the horsemen had gone. Tobias groaned in pain, rubbed at his arm. ‘Any chance any of our stuff survived, you reckon?’ One of the pointless things they said. Survivors coming together, the old hands who knew what to do to avoid the soldiers on the bad nights. Pedlars began to shout that they had cloths and blankets and cookpots for sale, cheap and best quality, lined up waiting for those who had lost everything overnight. The woman holding the dead baby began walking behind them. After perhaps an hour she grew calmer. Dropped the baby’s body. Walked on and walked on.

They stopped that night to make camp on the banks of a stream. Tobias made up the fire. Naillil began to prepare a pot of stew. Rovi sat and stank.

‘Why … why did he … do it?’ the woman whose baby had died asked them. Her name was Lenae. Couldn’t bring himself to ask about the baby’s name. Her hands moved and for a moment Tobias almost saw a baby cradled in them.

Why? Oh gods. Don’t ask that.

‘You haven’t been with the army long, then?’ said Naillil at last.

Lenae flushed red as the fire. Pulled her cloak around her tight. ‘I … My husband was a merchant in Samarnath. When the Ansikanderakesis Amrakane’s army came … One of the soldiers was kinder to me. Stopped another from killing me. He – so I – everyone there was dead, and he – I – then he must have been killed, at Arunmen.’ She looked away. ‘Why did he do it? Kill the children? Burn the camp?’

A branch moved in the cookfire, sending up sparks. The fire died down to embers. ‘Damn,’ said Naillil. Tobias got up and poked at the fire and moved bits of wood around and eventually it flared up bright and hot.

‘The queen lost her baby,’ said Naillil. ‘She was pregnant, and she lost the child … And last night the king … He …’

‘He was angry,’ said Tobias. Say it. That fucking poison bastard Marith. That sick, vile, diseased, degenerate fucking bastard. My fault my fault my fault my fault. ‘He ordered the … the dragon … ordered his soldiers to kill the children. All the children in the camp. He’s done it before. Twice.’

‘He’ll feel remorse, soon enough,’ said Naillil. ‘He probably does already. Gets drunk, orders it, cries when he’s told what he did. He’ll probably give a bag of gold to anyone whose child died in it. To make amends.’

‘Like he did before,’ said Rovi. ‘Twice.’

‘So you’re quids in, then, woman,’ said Tobias. He stared into the fire. ‘You can go home to the smoking ruins of Samarnath and live rich as an empress in the ashes there.’

Thought then: I let Marith kill a baby, once.

Once?

A few years ago.

Let Marith do it?

Encouraged him. Swapped a baby’s life for a sleep in a bed.

You look like what you are, boy, he’d told Marith before the boy did it.

Three days later, Lenae had five thalers in a bag around her neck she didn’t know what to do with. Buy a house somewhere and live long and peaceful. Bury them in a hole and piss on them and curse Marith Altrersyr. Drink herself senseless and pay someone to slit her throat.

The first, almost certainly. That’s what most of the women had done. Twice before.

That’s not fair, Tobias thought. Not fair. She’s got every right to make the best of her crapped-on ruined wound of a life.