by Paul Kearney
The two husband-brothers stared at one another, white-faced, and then at their new wives. The look on the women’s faces reminded Gasca of a rabbit he once caught alive in a snare.
“And how were you privy to their discussions?” the fat merchant asked.
“I have been travelling with them. I, too, was drinking last night at their fire.”
“A roadsman,” the thin merchant spat, and he whipped out his slim-bladed eating knife. “It’s out of his own mouth.”
“Stay,” his colleague said. To Rictus he said, “What brings you here to warn us?”
“I have seen my fill of killing—that kind of killing. I will fight them with you, if you’ll have me.”
Gasca rose from the fire and went to the roadside again. The sun, mighty Araian, had climbed out of her bedclothes; she broke out now in a wrack of crimson and golden cloud, and the glare of the thin snow was broadening moment by moment. He looked about himself, at the wide spaces around them, then at the hills ahead which framed the road, the ruins of long-sacked Memnos rising white and dark with shadow and snow.
“We must pack up,” he said. “If they catch us on the move we’ll have no chance. We must make for the hills, put our backs to something. Those broken walls; we can climb them and fight from a height.” He turned again. “What weaponry do they have?”
“Spears, swords, javelins. No bows, or shields either, not even a pelta.”
“Are they up and about?”
Rictus considered. He was eerily calm. He does not care, Gasca thought. He thinks to do the right thing, but most of him could care less if he lived or died today.
“They’re slow, hung-over. You have time. Not much, but enough perhaps.”
“We’ll do as the boy says,” the fat merchant said abruptly, rising. “Time to be moving.”
“We’ll outrun them,” one of the young husbands said desperately. “It’s thirty pasangs to Machran; I can run that.”
“And your wife?” the merchant asked. “These children? If we splinter up, they’ll take us in mouthfuls. Fighting together, on good ground, we can hurt them, enough perhaps to make them think again.”
“You care only for the wares on your donkey’s back.”
“Among other things. Run if you wish. They have legs too. You’ll be dead before sundown, and your wife will be a raped slave.”
They packed up their bedrolls, the younger women snivelling, the children subdued by their elders’ fear. They left the fire burning and struck out for the south at a fast pace. The fat merchant was the slowest. Gasca took his donkey’s halter and tugged the animal on while the big man clung to the animal’s tail, sweating. They left the road, and the going became much harder as they forged up the hillside to the ruins above. When the youngest child began to fall behind, Rictus slung her up on his back, and she clung there with a wide smile on her face, hooting triumphantly to the other urchins. The thin merchant paused to catch his breath, and looked back into the lowland below. He cried out, and they all paused, turned their heads. A group of men had come out of the trees, moving fast, black as crows against the snow.
The company’s fear lent them speed. They passed though the massive broken arch which had once been Memnos’s main gate and raised a startled flock of sparrows out of the stones. The snow was deeper here, high as a man’s calf. Gasca dropped the donkey’s leading rein and ran ahead, his shield and helm bruising his back as they bounced there. The ruins were extensive, and had there been no snow it might even have been possible to hide the party amid them and avoid any fight at all; but now their tracks were clear as a line of flags. He cast about like a hound near a scent-line, and nodded as he found what he was looking for.
“The walls,” he said, rejoining the others. “There’s a stair leading up to a good section of them, and a tower that’s still got a doorway. We go up there, the men defend the stairtop, and the others hide in the tower.”
“What about our animals?” the thin merchant asked, gasping.
“They must stay below.”
“I’ll be ruined,” the thin merchant groaned. But he did not argue.
From the wall-top they could see for pasangs. Their attackers were still toiling up the snowy slope below. The road was empty; no fellow travellers to provide allies or diversions. The world was a vast, bright stage ringed by mountains, snow blowing off their peaks in ribbons and banners, the sky above them flawless, pale blue, blue as a baby’s eye. Only the pine forests provided a darker contrast, the shadow deep beneath their limbs.
“Look,” Rictus said. He stood beside Gasca and pointed. There was a light in his eye.
Machran. To the south the mountains opened out in a vast bowl, perhaps fifty pasangs across, and within this ramp of highland the country was a patchwork of wood and field, the lower hollows of it untouched by snow, and green, green as a dream of spring. Machran itself was a sprawl, a smudge, an ochre stain upon the rolling mantle of this world, and from it the smoke of ten thousand hearths rose in a grey smear to sully the sky. From these heights it looked as though a man with a fair wind behind him might lope there in a matter of minutes. Gasca found himself smiling.
A shout from below. Their attackers had seen them standing up here. There were indeed eight of them. They had knotted their cloaks up over their elbows; sheepskins, fox-hide caps with the fur still on, and high boots. Their beards were black, long and tangled as the tail of a cow.
“Goatmen,” Gasca said, using the contemptuous term reserved for those who had no city, who frequented the high places of the Harukush and were reputed to sleep in caves and hold their women in common. “You travelled with these?”
“I chanced across them,” Rictus said.
“I’m surprised they didn’t kill you out of hand.”
“They tried,” Rictus said, still in the same quiet tone. “Isca trained me. They came round to thinking that might be useful.”
“Ah, Isca,” Gasca said. He had heard the stories. It was hardly the time to hear them again. “You will need that training today.”
They took their place at the stairtop. It was broad enough for two, but slippery with trodden snow. Gasca put on his father’s bronze helm, and immediately all sounds became washed out by the sea-noise within. He had thought to leave it off, but knew how fearsome a crested helm would look to the men below. It would make of him a faceless thing, and hide whatever fear might fill his eyes.
He took the weight of his shield off his shoulder and balanced it on his arm. The bronze-faced oak covered him from shoulder to thigh. “They’ll start with the javelins,” he told Rictus. “Get behind my shield until they’re done.”
“I’d rather stand free.”
“Suit yourself.”
Behind Rictus and Gasca stood the fat merchant, face still shiny with sweat, and one of the husband-brothers. At the rear, the thin merchant and the other husband. Only Rictus and Gasca had spears. The rest were armed with knives and cudgels, the eternal stand-by of all travellers, but of little use today unless the enemy made it up onto the wall.
A harsh braying from below. The thin merchant cursed in the name of Apsos, god of beasts.
“They’ll eat the damn donkeys. Goatmen— worse than animals themselves.” Behind the six men, the sounds of wailing children came from the doorway of the ruined watchtower.
“I wish those brats were mutes,” the thin merchant said.
“I wish you were a mute,” his fat colleague murmured.
The goatmen sidled up to the wall-bottom, watching out for missiles. When it appeared the defenders had none they grew more brazen, edged closer. Two spoke together and pointed up at Gasca, in full panoply, as stark and fearsome as some statue of warfare incarnate.
“If I had some rag of red about my shoulders they’d walk away,” he muttered to Rictus. There was no response from the Iscan. Despite the cold, Gasca was sweating, and the heavy shield dragged at his left bicep. Wolves he had killed, and other men he had broken down in brawls, but this was the fir
st time he had ever hoped to plunge a spearhead into someone’s heart.
He jumped, as beside him Rictus shouted with sudden venom. “Are you afraid? Why be afraid?” For a second, fury flooded his limbs as he thought the Iscan was talking to him; then he realised that Rictus was shouting at the goatmen below. He turned his head, and saw through the confined eye-spaces of his helm that Rictus was red-faced, angry. More than angry. He was feral, hate shining out of his eyes. Gasca shifted away from him out of sheer instinct, as a man will give space to a vicious dog.
“Is it too much, to fight men face to face, who have weapons in their hands? Can you not do that? Or will we send out children with sticks, and let them taste your valour? Come—you know me. You know where I hail from. Come up here and taste my spear again!” Now Gasca was thrust aside, and Rictus stood alone at the top of the steps. There was spittle on his lips. He opened out his arms as if to pray.
The javelin came searing up from the men below. Gasca, by some grace, saw it coming, even with his circumscribed vision, and managed to lift his shield crab-wise. It clicked off the rim of the bronze, pocking it.
“What in the gods are you doing?” he shouted at Rictus. He had half a mind to shove this madman down the steps.
“Now keep your shield up,” Rictus said, and his face was rational again.
A flurry of javelins. They came arcing in: one, two, three. Two bounced off Gasca’s shield. The third struck the ground between his feet, making him flinch. His panoply seemed impossibly heavy. He wanted to rip off the damned helm and see what was going on. His eye-slots seemed absurdly small.
But now Rictus was smiling. In his hand he held two javelins. The tips were bent a little; soft mountain-iron.
“Well thrown. Now have them back.” His arm swooped in a blur. He had looped the middle-strings of the weapon about his first two fingers and as he loosed it the javelin spun, whining. It transfixed one of the goatmen below, entering under his beard and emerging from his nape for half a foot. The man crumpled, and his comrades scattered around him as though his bloody end were contagious.
The second sped into them three seconds later. This one missed a man’s head by a handspan but struck the fellow next to him just above the knee. He yelped, dropped his spear, and grasped his spitted limb with both hands, mouth wide and wet.
“Even odds now,” Rictus said, perfectly calm.
“Boy, the goddess has you under her wings,” the fat merchant said behind them.
“Isca trained me well. They’ll rush the stairs now. We stop the rush, and they’ll break. Then we go after them. Agreed?” The men around him mumbled assent.
“They come,” Gasca said, and raised his spear to his shoulder.
The rank smell rose before them as they scrabbled up the snow-covered stone of the stairway. Jabbing with their spears, snarling, they did not seem like men at all. Gasca crouched and took the impact of one blow on his shield. It jolted him, but the heavy wood and bronze shrugged off the spearpoint. His mouth was a slot of spittle as he breathed in and out, and all fear left him; there was no time for it. He felt his own spear quiver in his hand as he grasped it at the balance point and poked downwards. The goatmen were trying to come to grips with the defenders, get under the spearheads. One got a fist about Gasca’s spearpoint but he ripped it back through the man’s hand, the keen aichme shearing off fingers as it came free of his grasp. The man shrieked. Then Rictus stabbed out with his own weapon, transfixing the fellow through the mouth, the shriek transforming horribly into a gargle. He toppled backwards. Behind him, two of his fellows roared and swore as his carcass rolled down the stairs and took their legs out from under them. A tumble of foul-smelling flesh encased in fur, flashing eyes, a snap as a spear-shaft broke under them. They rolled clear to the ground below, and bounced to their feet again as enraged as before.
Three remained on the stair. One had eyes that were different colours. Gasca was able to see this, notice it, store it away. He had never known that his own senses could be so keen. Two spearpoints jutted up. One came below the rim of the shield, scoring the metal. Gasca felt a sting in his thigh, no more. He thrust his own spear down at them and felt it go into something soft. Recovering the thrust, he felt warm liquid trickling down the side of his leg. Thrust, recover, catch another point on the shield. A goatman came up bellowing, dropped his spear and sought to grasp Gasca’s shield in his fists and pull it away. Gasca felt his balance go, and fear so intense flooded him as he felt himself fall that he urinated hotly where he stood.
Then Rictus had embedded his eating knife in the goatman’s neck, right up the hilt. The man wailed, his grasp loosened. He scrabbled at the knife handle and tumbled backwards. About to follow him, Gasca’s chiton was seized from behind. There were arms about him, a stink of sweat and cheap scent.
“Easy there,” the fat merchant said. “Find your feet, lad.”
Recovering himself, Gasca blinked sweat out of his eyes. On the steps below him his blood had trickled in a thin stream, now diluted with his urine, steaming, all the stuff of his insides turned to liquid.
The goatmen backed down the stairs. Three of them now lay still and dark on the snow, and two more were grasping their wounds and struggling to keep the blood inside their flesh.
“I believe they’ve had enough,” Rictus said.
“It was so fast,” one of the young husbands said behind them. He had been four feet from the struggle, and it had not touched him, nor had he so much as raised his arm. Dimly, Gasca had some insight of what real phalanx fighting might be like. The proximity to violence of some, so close to the spearheads, and yet not part of the fight.
“Now, after me,” Rictus said. There was a kind of joy in his face as he started down the stair.
“No, boy!” the fat merchant shouted, and he seized Rictus’s chiton in much the way he had Gasca’s. “Let them go. You go down those stairs and they’ll fight you to the death. You may win, but there’s no need for it, and you’re likely to take a bad hurt before the last goes down.”
Rictus suddenly looked very young, like a sullen boy denied the treat he had been promised. He hesitated, and the look vanished. That calm came across his face again, and a smile that was not entirely pleasant. He gently lifted the fat merchant’s hand from his clothing, and then turned to address their enemies.
“Take your wounded and go,” he called down to the goatmen.
“Come down and fight us here,” one shouted back in the guttural accents of the high Harukush. “We will wait for you.”
“You will die, all of you, if we do,” Rictus said. And he was still smiling.
The goatmen stared at him. One spat blood onto the snow. Then they began to methodically strip their dead, whilst one remained at the foot of the stairs, spear at ready.
“You’ve done well, lads,” the fat merchant said. “Now with a little more help from the goddess, we’ll be in Machran by nightfall. We’ve nothing left to fear from these ugly wights.”
They stood upon the wall, watching while the goatmen bundled up the belongings of their dead comrades. When they were done, the three bodies lay nude in the snow, their hairy nakedness taking on a bluish tinge already. Then, without ceremony, the five survivors took off, the leg-hurt one hobbling and hissing in the rear. They turned a corner of the ruins and disappeared.
“They may hide and ambush us,” Rictus said. “I would.”
“You and your friend have put fear in them,” the fat merchant said. “I know these sorts. I come from Scanion, in the deep mountains. We used to hunt them like they were boar. Good sport, if you’ve a strong stomach. They’re brave when they’re in numbers, with an easy kill in sight, but you kill one or two and the rest lose heart right quick, like vorine. This pack is spent. Though what they’re doing so close to Machran is anybody’s guess. I’ve never met them so low.” And then, “Boy, that leg of yours needs attended.”
Gasca took off his helm and closed his eyes as the cold air cooled the sweat on his head. “
You saved my life between you. I am in your debt now.”
“You saved mine by standing there,” the fat merchant grunted. “Do not speak of debt to me.”
“Nor me,” Rictus said. “You took that first javelin on your shield when it was aimed my way.”
Gasca and Rictus looked at one another. Both their hands rose in the same moment, and in the next they grasped each other’s wrists in the warrior salute, smiling, seeming not much more than boys.
“Of course, you did piss yourself,” Rictus said.
FOUR
MACHRAN
There was a legend that the Macht had once been ruled by a single King, a mighty soldier, a just ruler, an architect of ambition and vision. He had gathered together all the scattered cities of his empire and connected them with a series of great roads, hewn with titanic labour out of the very faces of the mountains. Bas Mathon on the coast, he had linked to Gan Cras in the very heart of the Harukush range. Thousands of pasangs of highway he had carved across the northern world, the better to speed the passage of his messengers, his governors, his armies. But they also sped the feet of his enemies. An unruly, restless and stiff-necked people, the Macht had overthrown him, broken down his palace at Machran, and splintered his empire into a hundred, two hundred different vying polities. The cities had elected their own rulers, one by one. They had forged alliances and broken them, and they had bludgeoned their own passage through history, heedless of any larger call on their allegiances. The empire of the Macht was no more; the idea of a single King ruling all the great cities of the Harukush came to seem fantastic, then risible; a tale to he scoffed at in taverns. But the roads still stood. Some fell into disrepair, but the most important ones survived, and men still walked them to trade their wares and make their wars and indulge the lust of their wanderings. The King who had made them became a figure of myth, and in time even his name was forgotten, and the stones he had set up to commemorate it were worn smooth by the wind and rain of centuries.
