The House of Sacrifice. Anna Smith Spark

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?