The House of Sacrifice by Anna Smith Spark

Author:Anna Smith Spark
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orbit
Published: 2019-08-12T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Two

Tobias

The Mountains of Pain. Very, very aptly named and the world’s best ever funniest joke

A trail of wounded staggered through the mountains. Wailed like seagulls. Crows big as vultures coming down in their faces picking at them. Like flies. Wounds oozing in the heat. Pus and sweat.

Got really bloody hot suddenly. Like proper southern heat. And raining: it barely ever rains here, they say, should be grateful, the locals must be out jumping up and down singing with happiness. Knee-deep in mud full of insects. All the world rushing up alive, plants and insects and animals, gods, you could see it and smell it, that lush living rain-damp hot-air scent. Swelling all the streams, glutting the mountain slopes, nourishing the fields. Ideal breeding ground for wound rot. The lost and the wounded, hiding in the wooded valleys, in the mountain caves, digging in trying to make any decision, frightened, defeated, uncertain which way to go or what they would find, soldiers and camp followers all mixed together, scattered, all of them stinking of bloody wound rot.

Mountains. Valleys. Rock falls. High passes. Enemy soldiers. Pissing it down.

Got up higher, where the mountain slopes were barren. Huge outcrops of black rock rearing up out of grey soil, that had to be scrambled up or around. Hidden gullies overflowing with rainwater, overgrown with dark scrawny trees. Tamas birds shrieked and called, sounded like they were speaking. Was sure, briefly, that one of them was shouting “Hail King Marith!” Which was creepy and freaky and stupid and way too frigging weird as an insight into the state of his mind. There were enemy soldiers moving down in the valleys, harrying the survivors; they had heard fighting ahead of them in the early afternoon and again at dusk, from a high slope they looked down to watch horsemen skirmishing far below. Impossible, from that distance, to tell which side won. They had to stop for the night shortly afterwards, sat down in the shelter of an overhanging rock face on soaked grey earth you could almost see growing, and the rain had even briefly stopped. Still had some dried salted meat stuff that everyone pretended was dried salted pig. Tough, gristly, bled-out-in-the-mud-after-marching-a-­thousand-miles pig.

It’s pig! It’s just pig. If you don’t ask you don’t know. If you don’t know you’re not guilty. Shut up and chew. What will become of us now he’s died? Better things, maybe, like no longer thinking it’s normal to eat “salt pig.”

“I might even have some rock-hard soggy crusts of mouldy bread,” said Naillil. “If you’re lucky.” Rovi wheezed at her in a way that made Tobias feel sick. Gods, half the Army of Amrath slaughtered, half the camp followers slaughtered, but Rovi the walking dead man goes on and on.

“We should get on,” said Lenae. She was jumpy, twitching. “Might be more soldiers around.” They had their backs against the rocks, facing the way they had come. Camp followers of the Army of Amrath: think we might know something about what will happen if the enemy happens on us.

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