An Illyian sneak assault in the dark that night. Marith woke to shouts and confusion. Flicker of lights and men’s screams. Osen appeared in the tent doorway, a smudge of blood on his cheek.
“Nothing to worry about, just a handful of people wanting to commit suicide. Go back to sleep.” He rolled his eyes. “I was nearly getting somewhere with Kiana, I swear, before they interrupted us.”
“Our losses?”
“A few soldiers down in the fighting. They cut the throats of two on watch duty. A third’s alive but only just.”
Marith considered very briefly. “Kill him.”
“I assumed you’d say that. He’s only just alive because he’s got the blunt end of a sarriss stuck three feet up his arse.”
“Lucky for you I didn’t decide to spare him, then, isn’t it?”
He sent the dragon out the next morning, to burn the villages along the road. A squad of horse under Kiana Sabryya to scout out what else might lie ahead. A couple of small walled towns fell easily to the dragon, barely requiring the soldiers’ assistance. He let the dragon really loose itself on them. Stood and watched, awestruck, as it tore the buildings to dust. The place afterwards was a hole in the earth. A void, like the hole where an eye should be. Beautiful obscenity. A nothingness. The dragon bent at his feet and perhaps it did weep, for shame at what it had done or in grief it had come to an end. The only thing that understood how he might feel. In every way, truly, the Altrersyr were well named as dragon kin. He stroked its head and it purred with pleasure. Beautiful obscenity itself. Thalia kept well away from it. And perhaps indeed she might tell them why, if either he or it dared to ask.
A bigger town they took with little damage, ripping open the gates and killing the defenders, the dragon burning anyone trying to flee. The town didn’t have much exactly in the way of three days’ worth of looting: they went though it in maybe two hours, even then it was basically a bit of a forced jollity affair. But it wasn’t long till Year’s Heart, so Marith decided they’d stop there to celebrate. The feast day of Amrath’s birth fell only a short while after, very close this year by good luck, so they could run the two together. Didn’t know really where they’d be if they waited till the day itself, and it would be nice to do it vaguely properly, settled somewhere with walls and ceilings, not stuck in a tent. The town had itself been preparing for Year’s Heart, of course, as had the villages around; it was not, perhaps, the most sophisticated of new year celebrations, but there was food and drink enough for a decent party (Osen Fiolt, praise his good and thoughtful heart, even produced not one, not two, but three vials of hatha for the two of them and Alleen Durith to share) and it was, Marith felt, particularly special. His first as king. His first with Thalia beside him. His first in Amrath’s own kingdom. The local big man’s house was fitted up as a lodging for him, they piled up a bonfire in the house’s orchard, the town’s gates were repaired and the walls strengthened so that a good number of the men could join in enjoying themselves. The men crowned Marith and Thalia with gold and silver and rubies and white flowers, dressed their helmets and spears with greenery, tied ribbons and bones and feathers to the branches of the town’s trees.
Risky, Yanis Stansel kept muttering, to stay in one place for so long, let the enemy collect itself, being behind walls laid them open to a siege themselves, but, look, it was the feast of Amrath and the men deserved a bit of fun. The sky was brighter all night even than it was on the White Isles. Dry, clear air with a few wisps of high cloud that glowed golden in the sunset, glowed golden again scant hours later in the dawn. Too much light to see the stars, but the Fire Star shone. General consensus was that it was looking bigger and brighter than usual. “The King’s Star,” the soldiers were beginning to call it. It seemed to outshine even the moon on the third night, when they celebrated Amrath’s birth.
A couple of days to recover, yes, well, possibly maybe a couple of days longer than he’d originally intended (risky, Yanis Stansel kept muttering, to stay in one place for so long; take it up with Alleen, it’s entirely his fault, he gave it to me, Marith muttered weakly back), then on again. They took two more towns in quick succession, marching along the banks of the river Laxartes that flowed down to meet the Haliakmon very near to the ruins of Ethalden itself. Three minor engagements with Illyian forces, two of which they won. They got further in Illyr than his grandfather. Further than any Altrersyr army had ever reached. The enemy fell back before them. The soldiers were in good cheer.
Then a body of Kiana’s horse on scouting manoeuvres were cut up badly, the two survivors reporting mounted banefire archers, magery, a terrible panicking freezing sense of fear. Another scouting party was cut to ribbons behind them: one survivor, screaming with his face hanging off his skull. Behind them. Osen had the man killed, and the three soldiers who’d found him, and the four men who’d held him down when they tried to get him to say anything that made recognizable sense. The few scouts who did make it back reported the Illyians massing to the north. Difficult, somehow, to get any firm estimate of how many or exactly where. But smoke could be seen on the horizon. Dark thick columns of it, like fields burning, at night what must be fires off in the northern hills.
The next few days it rained heavily, hard heavy cold grey rain. Visibility was poor and they trudged along cautiously, sliding on muddy grass that sucked at their feet. Not as bad as the marshes in the Wastes had been, not even as bad as it often got on Sel or Third in winter in the hills, but somehow it felt worse. The rain sapped all the energy from the legs, got inside one’s armour rubbing the skin raw. The Jaxertane rose, flooded its banks, looked to be becoming dangerous to cross. Marith pulled the columns under Yanis Stansel back across to his side of the river, keeping the troops close together in one long block. Safer, but the increased numbers slowed them, the ground was churned to mud up to men’s knees, the carts floundered until a good number had to be left. The horses hated it, staggered along mired and snorting, a good number of them hurt their legs in the mud and had to be left as well.
All the stories about the endless Altrersyr failures. Soldiers who had recently been toasting Amrath returned on the feast of Amrath’s birth day muttered lines from the Death of Hilanis and the Death of Nevethlyn, made signs against evil with their fingers when they thought their commanding officers weren’t around. Thalia prayed at night to her cursed god.
The next day the sun came out. Marith had them go fast to press on. The valley of the Jaxertane was beginning to narrow, the hills rising nearer and higher and steeper. The valley now almost a gorge through the hills. He hadn’t noticed yesterday, in the rain. They could have turned off up onto higher ground, where it was drier, where they wouldn’t have been so pressed in. But they hadn’t. He somehow hadn’t noticed. Turning the long columns now would be difficult. Nasis Jaeartes had a column of light armed infantry up in the hills, flanking them on the left, Kiana Sabryya still had a troop of light horse across the river to their right. The maps showed the valley opening out onto a plain only a few hours at most ahead of them, before the land rose again towards the sea. The first columns could be there by evening easily, the rest by dawn at the worst. The benefit of the hills around them was that the enemy could not come down on them in any numbers. And of course he had the dragon. This was his rightful kingdom. The sun was shining. Things were just about fine.
He thought afterwards that his head had still been numbed perhaps by the after-effects of hatha, that the thing he should have seen that was so obvious did not occur to him until too late.
The valley did indeed widen out suddenly into a smooth plain, with the river bending away sharply to the west. More hills rose in the distance before them, high enough that their tops were shrouded in cloud. The evening sun flashed on the river, and on the armour of the men assembled in the plain. A thousand campfires like the stars of heaven, as the poets rightly said. Beautiful and bright and flickering and cruel as staring eyes.
The Illyians held the plain in front of him. Behind him was the narrow valley, churned to mud, filled with his soldiers marching up.
Silver lights danced in the sky overhead. The King’s Star was hidden by clouds.