A Woman of the Sword by Anna Smith Spark

Author:Anna Smith Spark
Format: epub

Thirty

That evening the army burned King Durith. His pyre was raised on the very top of the hillside, for all to see.

‘Everyone must know that he is dead,’ Clews said. He had found Lidae standing outside the tent, straining to watch the pyre being raised, asked if she wanted to come and watch with him. Many of Temyr’s army were still out in the hills, hunting down the last remnants of Durith’s soldiers who had fled. Those who had surrendered were kept apart, in small groups under guard for the night. Placed where they could see the pyre clearly from a distance, understand what it meant. ‘He should not only be watched by those who betrayed him,’ Clews said.

Clews led her to a bare patch of ground looking across at the great pyre. Heaped up branches, white flash of white birch bark that glowed in the failing light. Spear shafts to form a bier for a king’s body. The whole thing was gleaming with oil to help it burn, the smell of it was rancid and thick. Durith was in his full armour apart from his helmet, his red cloak folded about him. They had placed his sword in his hands. Heaped may blossom at his feet and his head.

She thought of dragging Emmas’s body onto the pyre of stones she had built for him. The weight of Emmas’ dead limbs.

Temyr stood near the mound, staring out at his soldiers. Did not look at the body of his murdered king. Where Durith had been glorious in his old age, white-bearded, wise, stately, Temyr was in the full vigour of his manhood, his golden hair and beard just tinged with grey. His armour was black and gold and scarlet, worked with a pattern of flowers, his cloak was red trimmed with gold, he wore on his head a helmet with a great golden crest. Jewels flashed on his cloak and his armour, on the hilt of his great sword. He was a tall man, strong built: Durith’s body looked smaller, very fragile, beside him. There was a weariness and a pride mixed together, Lidae thought, in his face. He looked very fine. So very much a king. Almost as Durith had looked, she thought, riding into Raena, seeing all about him what he in his great victory had done. She had never seen Temyr before, in all her years of fighting, she stared and stared, marvelling, though he stood so that the evening sun was behind him, making him a great figure of dark and shadow, outlined and gilded, too dazzling to look long upon.

The last rays of the sun vanished below the hilltop. The living king and the dead king were outlined against red fire fading. A soldier all in black brought up the horse for the sacrifice that was proper at the death of a king. Durith’s own horse: they must have taken him still mounted before they killed him. It reared up, when it saw the body, lashed its gilded hooves out at Temyr, almost struck him.

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