The King's Men

The guns burrowed into the soldiers’ gentle arms, triggers suckling on twitchy fingers as the men cradled the weapons to their chests. They marched single file through the twisting lanes of the bazaar, their boots dull with the dust that rose with each footstep. Every now and then the soldiers would stop to look under a table or pull down the faded cloths of some forgotten textile stall, but they never seemed to find anything.

From his rooftop perch he watched the soldiers through narrow eyes. He waited until they turned a corner before swinging to the ground and following them from a safe distance.

He frowned as they poked through Alhzeim’s old fish-shop, and bit his tongue as he heard them smashing the abandoned vases in Kindiri’s glassware outlet. The soldiers’ boots crunched easily over the shards of glass, but his sandals were more wary as he tiptoed after them.

The men weren’t difficult to follow. They made a lot of noise and never strayed from the bazaar’s main path. He preferred to clamber through the adjacent back alleys, catching glimpses of the soldiers through cracked windows, sometimes losing sight of them altogether.

Crouching behind a crumbling wall he watched as they eventually arrived at the edge of the marketplace and stopped to have a smoke.

After a few minutes one of the soldiers got to his feet and started shouting and kicking at the sand and pointing at a building just outside the bazaar, so they stubbed out their cigarettes and started walking again, their faces round and shining with sweat. The building stood by itself with clumps of hay strewn about outside.

He shivered.

*

Back straight, arms folded, face unsmiling; he stood behind the palace gates, trying not to fiddle with the medals pinned to his jacket. His eyes strained to see into the night.

Behind him, the King’s palace was wrapped in a thick darkness, except for in the courtyard where a lone candle burned.

“See anything, sir?” whispered a voice to his left, further along the palace wall.

“No,” he sighed, not turning his head. “Still nothing.”

“But, sir, we’ve been out here for hours,” the voice said. “Are they running late?”

“No,” he said again.

“But, sir-”

“But nothing!” he hissed. “Discipline. Discipline, respect, protection.”

The night was quiet for a moment.

“Sorry, father- sir,” said the voice eventually. “I am not used to being this still for so long. But I am thankful for this opportunity – this honour – sir, to prove myself as one of the King’s Men. I really-”

The voice gasped.

Cursing his poor eyesight, he wondered what had interrupted the voice. He peered into the night, and slowly a few glowing spots on the horizon eased into focus.

He blinked.

The pricks of light grew larger. He thought he could hear singing.

“Sir?”

The light oozed across the sky until it dripped from the stars and the singing got louder and the drums beat quicker and the people danced harder; and with a surge, the parade was upon him, pressing in on him from all sides; and he clutched to the bars of the gate, desperate to not get swept away; and slowly the procession ebbed through the open gates and into the courtyard of the palace where a lone candle was joined by countless lanterns which spread light across the square like a creeping blush.

Inside the palace gates the singing eased to a stop and the courtyard was quiet once again.

*

The chestnut-brown mare was running wild in her stall, crashing into the walls and stomping her hooves on the ground. Her eyes rolled wildly from side to side. The soldier frowned, nodding and whispering to the horse as he approached her stall.

High amongst the rafters of the stables he watched as the soldier tried to calm the beast.

He brushed a fly from his face.

He’d followed the soldiers from the bazaar to the stable and had slipped in through the back door, climbing above the stalls to his dusty lookout. The other soldiers were poking around near the back of the shed, but this one couldn’t seem to leave the horse alone.

The soldier moved closer to the horse, still whispering to her. The soldier showed the horse his empty palms, and, with gentle hands, slowly undid the gate to the mare’s stall.

It seemed to have worked: the horse had stopped charging about and was soberly eyeing the soldier as he entered her stall.

Using his arms to balance himself he moved across the beams in the rafters until he stood directly above the horse.

He held his breath.

The soldier smiled, running his hands through the horse’s knotted mane. The soldier turned, looking for his companions, when the horse bit down hard on his hand.

“Aiiii!” the soldier shouted, slapping the horse away.

The horse backed into the corner of the stall, its eyes wide, as the soldier collected his rifle and pointed the barrel at the horse’s head.

*

Turning to look at the group of people huddling in the courtyard, he allowed himself a rare smile. It was the final night of the week-long city festival. He watched as a middle-aged woman, her skin darkened by the sun, approached the palace walls with her daughter.

The festival celebrated the city’s date of settlement and a time of renewed hope. The King’s grandfather, a proud, young warrior, had led a small band of followers out of the war-torn West and into the desert.

The woman nodded and her daughter laid a woven basket of fresh bread at the foot of the wall. They knelt before the towering structure.

They trudged for seven days and seven nights across the desert in search of food and water. Not everyone was strong enough; those they left behind, clawing in the sand. The King’s grandfather encouraged and coerced and bullied those remaining to keep marching, but even he was tiring. As the sun crossed the sky his footsteps grew shorter and clouds of doubt cast shadows across his heart.

The daughter copied her mother’s actions, clasping her hands together and rocking back and forth on her knees.

On the seventh night the King’s grandfather admitted defeat and he vowed to deliver his followers from their suffering. He sharpened his blade as the sun rose.

*

With a shout he dropped from the rafters onto the back of the horse, ignoring the way the soldier’s eyes bulged and his mouth hung open. He kicked at the horse, urging it to run, as the soldier fumbled with his gun; but the mare was old and her coat was patchy and she was slow to react; and he expected to hear the shot, the gunshot that still sang with his father’s voice; then the horse was on top of the soldier, and the stable was a haze of human limbs and unforgiving hooves; and then, impossibly, they were bursting out of the stables and into the sweet, fresh air, galloping along a path that he hadn’t travelled in a long time.

The old palace gates stood in the distance.

*

The daughter craned her neck as her gaze travelled up the sides of the wall and past the ornate ellipses that were carved into the arches.

But as the King’s grandfather prepared himself to free his people from their torment, the rising sun revealed something in the distance.

Finally, the daughter’s eyes settled on the golden egg that was seated on top of the wall. Its shell gleamed with the reflection of her face.

An enormous egg, a gift from the giants, so large that thirty men with outstretched arms could not encircle it, lay embedded in the sand. Forgetting his weariness the King’s grandfather ran to the egg, driving his sword through the shell and licking the sweet yolk from the blade’s sharpened edge.

Her lips moved in unison with her mother’s as she stared at the golden egg. With a final bow, she rose and returned to the centre of the courtyard where the lanterns still burned.

As his people fell upon the egg and gave thanks to the desert giant that had saved them, the King’s grandfather made his decision. Framed by the locks of the low-hanging sun he declared that the mysterious egg would be the foundation for their city. This was where they would settle.

*

He dismounted from the horse and clutched the bars of the gate as he’d seen his father do so many years ago. The gates had forgotten how to shine. They opened with a screech.

Discipline.

He cast a look over his shoulder. The desert was empty but he knew the soldiers couldn’t be far behind.

“That was a good run, eh?” he said, patting the horse as he led her through the gates. He tried not to look at what the palace had become.

“Over here,” he said to the horse as they walked together through the courtyard to the palace walls.

“It symbolised everything our city stood for. Hope. New beginnings. The people used to come and celebrate for days and days. Singing, dancing, offerings… and I was one of the King’s men. My father was the head guard, you see.”

The horse’s tail swished from side to side.

“I just had to see it one last time.”

Respect.

He shielded his eyes from the sun as he looked up at the palace wall. His mouth went dry. The egg was not there.

“No,” he whispered to himself, his hands balling up into fists. “No, no!”

He fell to his knees in the sand, clawing at the desert, when his hand brushed against something cold beneath the surface.

The horse came closer, nuzzling into his shoulder.

Scooping the sand away, a smile spread across his face. He stood, holding his discovery up to the sun. A cracked piece of the golden egg shone.

Protect.

He dug around the area quickly, excavating the other fragments of the egg, until he had all the pieces in front of him. He set to work trying to join them, using different pieces in different combinations. Calmly, he tried to slide the pieces into place, and, when that didn’t work, tried forcing the pieces into position. He pleaded with the horse and swore at the desert, but try as he might, he simply couldn’t put the egg together again.