by Paul Kearney
Rictus stayed with the ships along with all the other skirmishers. The off-loading of the Macht gear and animals was going to last some time. There was some shouting and weapons were brandished as a huge crowd of Juthan dockworkers swarmed up to the gangplanks, pushing wheeled cranes in their midst as though they were siege engines brought to the walls of a hostile fortress. The skirmishers closed ranks and spat abuse at the line of grey-skinned Juthan, who stood impassive, yellow eyes blinking balefully. Only when a centurion came striding down the waterfront, swearing at them for fools, did the skirmishers relent and let the brawny Juthan clamber over their ships and begin the hot and heavy work of winching the army’s stores ashore.
“They smell different,” one of Rictus’s comrades said, upper lip rising over his teeth. “Do you get it too? Like a beach in the summer when the tide has left weed on the strand.”
“That’s the port you smell,” Rictus told him. But he was not sure that the fellow was wrong. Jostled beyond irritation on the crowded deck, he climbed up the mainmast shrouds until he was fifty feet above the wharf. From here the press and din and heat of the city seemed no less overpowering. The great harbours of Tanis were crammed with ships—not just the Macht fleet, but half a thousand other vessels, all edging to the docks for off-loading or loading. And the streets leading up from the waterfront were a jammed chaos of pedestrians, carts, handcarts, wagons, and pack-animals. Only the thoroughfare up which the Macht army now marched seemed free of congestion, the inhabitants of the city making way for the river of bronze and scarlet as it wound its way inland to where the white towers gleamed. Suddenly, the world had become a place immense beyond Rictus’s imaginings, and the army that had appeared huge and fearsome in its multitudes back in the Harukush was now swallowed up by Tanis as a bullfrog will snap up a gnat.
Sweating like a horse, Pasion nonetheless felt the cool relief wash over him as he recognised Phiron standing at the summit of the street, waiting for the glittering river of men to trudge their way up to him. Phiron was grinning, that handsome face of his burnt dark, the grey eyes flashing bright in the shadow of it. He fell into step beside Pasion and the murmur went back down the gasping column. The men lifted their heads somewhat, eyes flickering in the T-shaped slots of their helmets, crests bobbing and feet tramping up and down. They began to keep time, and the cadence grew as the hob-nailed sandals on their feet punished the cobbles.
Pasion had always resented Phiron a little for his good looks, his aristocratic ways, his easy grasp of larger things; but he was glad to see him now. The two men gripped each other’s forearms without breaking stride. “Where are they taking us?” Pasion asked, nodding to the pair of Kefren striding easily ahead.
“Out to the Desert Wall; the Kerkh-Gadush they call it. It’s a fair tramp, and you and I cannot go all the way. We’re wanted in the Aadan, the High City. Our principal awaits us there, no doubt growing mighty impatient. I want ten centurions too, to make a bit of a show. Make sure one of them is Jason of Ferai; I need an educated man there.”
Pasion smiled without humour. “He’s ten paces behind you, Dogshead banner and all. What about Orsos?”
“No, for God’s sake. I want quick-witted fellows who know how to keep their tongue behind their teeth. Mynon—we’ll take him. Pick out the rest, Pasion. There’s not a moment to lose.”
Phiron and Pasion stood aside and let the men march past them. They snagged Jason and Mynon, called them out of the endless files. Marios of Karinth, a hardened killer who nonetheless had the bland face of a baker. Durik of Neslar, black-bearded and broken-nosed, a veteran with a love of music. Pomero of Arienus, red-haired, his freckled face peeling in the beat of the foreign sun. Five others; the younger, the comelier, the more presentable of the army’s centurions. Phiron called them all out of the marching files, bade them smarten themselves up with a curtness he had not possessed six months before, and then led them up the man-made tell of Tanis’s upper city.
Every centurion he had chosen bore the Curse of God black and lightless on his back.
EIGHT
RULERS OF THE WORLD
Twelve men walked up the echoing length of that great space, that towering weight of marble and gold leaf and limestone arrayed in odd and improbable swirling balconies and galleries clear up to its roof, the vaulted pillars wrought in unsettling sinuous curves which did not ought to lie within the art of the mason. They did not look up, but in their close and fearsome helms kept their eyes facing front. They bore swords, but had left their real weapons behind. In the legendary black God-given armour of the Macht they strode onwards, scarlet cloaks wrapped around their left forearms, scarlet transverse crests nodding to their shoulders. They came to a halt in one bracing crash of iron on stone and stood like things immutable and unworldly in all that varicoloured, fragranced throng which packed the walls of the hall, silenced by curiosity and a little fear.
Tiryn watched from one side of the dais. Phiron she had seen up close—and now she watched him bow and doff his helm before Arkamenes and Gushrun and Amasis, all regal as statues in a little tableau they had practised beforehand, Arkamenes sitting upon the throne, Gushrun standing on his right hand with the staff of the governorship in one manicured hand, Amasis on the left, a vision of white linen. Down the hall the two lines of Kefren spearmen stood tall and fearsome in full, shining armour. It was as good a show as she’d seen—even in Ashur the Great King would not do much better, not for the everyday business of meeting his commanders. So what was different?
Tiryn tugged her veil down a little, that she might smell. The Macht stink she caught at once. There was an acrid fullness to it. These things sweated like animals and smelled like animals. Even the incense in the overhead burners could not wipe it out. In her childhood, Tiryn had sat in the stables while the slaves rubbed down horses fresh from the circuit. The smell was like that.
But there was something else. Impossible to define, it might have been something to do with the way these things simply stood, in attitudes of easy attention before the dais, oblivious to the crowds behind them, the great ones they faced, the opulent and crushing grandeur of their surroundings. They seemed more solid than anything else in the hall. Perhaps it was that fabled armour they wore, which reflected no light. Even the tallest of them barely came to the shoulder of the shortest Kefren guard, and yet...
I here was something unsettling about these mercenaries, far beyond the myth and rumour which surrounded their race. Tiryn felt, standing there with one hand holding her veil from her face, that she was in the presence of something wrong, something that did not belong in the world she knew.
Another stir in the crowded hall as Phiron spoke up in good Kefren, the language of Kings. He had worked hard on his accent and sounded foreign but not boorish. It was remarkable to hear this thing speak up in the cultured tongue of the nobility, that which they spoke in the very throne-hall of Ashur itself.
“My lord, I bring to you the flower of our people, the finest warriors we possess. I bring before you one hundred centons of Macht spearmen to swell the ranks of your armies, to aid you in the time ahead. My lord, we are yours, here and now. We will not quit your service until you stand supreme in the Empire, and are crowned Great King in the holy halls of Ashur. This we have all sworn.” Here, Phiron bowed deep, and after an awkward, ugly little pause, so did the other Macht standing behind them, faces unreadable behind their helmets.
Arkamenes stood up, smiling. “My dear friends,” he began, stretching out his arms in the gesture which was his wont upon making a speech.
Tiryn edged away. Beside her, some of Arkamenes’s higher-caste concubines stepped aside to let her pass, as one would make way for a malodorous beggar. She was the favourite, but when it came to it, he would breed with them. One could not have a true heir with low-caste blood in him. Tiryn lifted her head and thanked God for the kohl and stibium she had applied about her eyes that morning. They felt like armour to her now as she made her way through the crowd. The o
ther concubines would have bowed to her, had Arkamenes’s eyes been upon them. Now they barely gave her room to scrape past them. The closer he came to power, the less he would look for his little low-caste whore, the hufsa from the Magron Mountains. Would he miss her? Probably not. He talked to her in the night because it did not matter what one said to a hufsa. One might as well confide in a stone.
And yet, she thought, I walk here in silk and linen with gold upon my forehead and wrists and ankles, a bodyguard five steps behind, and a maid behind that. Mother, I did well.
She remembered the white mountains, and the blue sky beyond. From there, one looked down on the brown and green plains below with the glitter of the rivers and thought of them as another world, a place to provide a sorry backdrop to the real existence of snow and stone. And yet those endless, horizon-spanning river-plains with their black soils and thrice-yearly harvest were the powerhouse of the world, and demanded tribute from those who lived on their borders. And so Tiryn had been sent, in lieu of a son for the army. One serviced the Empire in whatever way one could.
And now it had been so long that the mountains were mere distant pictures in her head. I have become spoiled, she thought. Too long in palaces. I was born in a place where people worshipped God out of doors, stood before fallen rocks on the heads of mountains and looked up and spoke their mind to him. Now He is hedged about with ceremony and sanctuary, candlelight and gold. One whispers to Him in the shadows.
One begins to doubt if He is there to listen.
Momentarily, she hated herself. This soft, well-clad creature with painted eyes and pointed nails, who now doubted all the good things her parents had fought to make her learn. Why? Because she had seen something of the world and had begun to count herself wise.
Her mother had sliced off a fingertip the day the Tax collectors had taken Tiryn away. Wordless, white-faced, and without complaint, she had lopped it off with the best of her cooking knives, making of Tiryn’s going a bereavement. Tiryn had understood and had not wept upon leaving, so shocked was she by the knowledge that this was for real and forever, not some temporary exile. But she had cried herself to sleep later that night, after the Tax collectors had taken it in turns to rape her.
Leaving the hall, staring down a pair of sentries in order to leave by one of the bewilderingly situated side doors, she found herself walking downhill because it was the easiest way to go. The heat of the day was beginning to fade a little, and it was becoming colder. Many of the local folk were clad in wrapped burnooses, which made Tiryn smile unwillingly, remembering childhoods deep with snow, and frozen lambs set in the ash of the fire to bring back some warmth of life. This winter, as they called it, was as warm as an upland spring. Artaka claimed to be the oldest place in the world, and Tanis its oldest city. Tiryn could believe that, but she still felt that slight scorn the mountain-dweller harbours towards the lowlander. Higher the land, lower the caste, the old saying went. That also was true. The tall, golden-skinned Kefren from the humid and fertile river-plains; these had been rulers of the world time out of mind. They utilised the other races and castes as a carpenter will reach into his box of tools. It had always been this way, and most thought it always would. But for Tiryn, looking on that small group of black-armoured soldiers in the great hall of Tanis today, there had been a jolt of some strange emotion she could not quite bring to register. These things; these men. They had never been anything to do with that box of tools. They did not show deference; they did not care about caste. They were ignorant, and Tiryn sensed that in their ignorance they would be full of hate. But all the same—all the same—how good it was to see the mighty Kefren stand unassured for once, and somehow in awe of the fierce creature they had invited over their doorstep.
Rictus had always liked climbing, whether it was trees or hills, and thus he was quite at home in the rigging of the ship. He sat in the Top of the mainmast, a narrow platform of heavy, salt-scarred wood some six feet across, and listened with a smile to one of the crew tell a story of a certain lady’s house in Kupr, the forested island of many springs in the northern Tanean which Macht navies had plundered time out of mind for the excellence of its timber, their own homegrown stuff being too gnarled and hard to work for proper masts and spars. This certain lady had entertained two sea-captains in the one evening, and had kept them amused in turn, going from room to room in her spacious apartments until one had followed her and found her in the arms of his brother. Neither had been much fazed by this (both being very drunk), and the two of them had married her, all three living in serene contentment for the rest of their lives. When one brother was at sea the other would be on land, and so the lady was kept occupied and the brothers had a fine housekeeper to come home to. But that’s folk on Kupr, the sailor finished with a wink and a grin.
The ship below them looked like a gralloched deer. Every hatch was gaping, and in some places the planking of the deck had been levered up so that the stores in the hold might be off-loaded more quickly. Rictus lay on the wood of the Top and looked down on the avid activity below. He was hungry and thirsty, as were almost all those detailed to remain with the ships, but the heat of the day was fading at last, and all along the dozen crescents of sea-leaning buildings and warehouses and other edifices which formed this part of the harbour the lamps were being lit, both onshore and in the ships which were moored nearby and along the wharves. Never in his life before had he seen anything resembling the marvel of such a sight, such a high and multi-layered snowstorm of lights. He lay there staring at it, thinking about this Great Continent, this vast beast upon whose hide he now looked in the darkening of a foreign evening.
“Who’s that asleep in the Top?” a voice snapped out below.
“That’ll be the Iscan, Rictus.”
“Get him the fuck down. There’s work here that needs another back.”
As Phobos rose in the sky and Haukos trailed after him, so Rictus laboured on the wharves amid crowds of his own people and a dwindled gang of Juthan. Most of these had left with the coming on of dusk, and hence the Macht must sweat now to get their own stores ashore. The two races worked together without any communication other than grunts, nods, and arm-waving, but managed to get the job done with little more than the usual profanity.
They had stacked the crates too high. One was teetering over now, like to fall on the bent figure of a Juthan below it. Always fast on his feet, Rictus dashed to the creature’s side with a shout and shoved it out of the way. He reached up at the falling crate and the wood of it struck him hard in the breastbone. He knew in that moment that it was too heavy for him.
The Juthan he had knocked aside rounded upon him, eyes glaring, fists clenched. Then it saw what he was doing. The Juthan ducked in under Rictus’s arms and set its own strength to work. Between them, they edged the crate to one side. It missed them both, falling to the cobbles with a crash. It broke open to reveal bundled sheaves of aichmes, iron and bronze spearheads wrapped in straw.
Rictus straightened, staring at the Juthan and rubbing his bruised ribs. He smiled.
The yellow eyes regarded him carefully. The thing shrugged, then went back to work. But after that, when a heavy piece of cargo was lowered his way, Rictus often found this Juthan close by, and they would handle it together.
Several hours of staring seemed to sate the curiosity of the dockyard crowds. Before the middle of the night, while the work went on unabated at the quays, they dispersed, and the Kefren spearmen who had been set there to control them relaxed their guard, setting their shields on the ground and doffing their helms to reveal the strange, long-boned faces of their kind. Tiryn stepped through their scattered line with her attendants ten paces behind, her bodyguard bright-eyed and watchful, the maidservant veiled and impassive as only a Juthan could be. There were untold pasangs of docks and wharves down here at the waterfront, and almost every one it seemed had been given over to the Macht ships and the thousands of their occupants and crews who had not marched up the hill to the Aadan. How ma
ny of them have sailed here, really? Tiryn wondered.
She approached the nearest ship and the hill of casks, crates, and sacks that cluttered the dock-side before it. The Juthan were here, of course, as they were anywhere in the Empire where heavy work needed to be done. They were humming their deep songs as gangs of them hauled on the tackles of the dockyard cranes. How odd, how disconcerting to see them working side by side with these strangers. The Macht labouring here wore no armour, of course. They were all sizes and all ages. Greybeards with nut-brown skin and corded forearms worked side by side with slim-shouldered youngsters. Was it true, as Amasis had told her, that the Macht had no castes?
There—look at that. One of the younger Macht, tall for their kind, and with pale-coloured hair, was drinking from a waterskin. When he had finished he offered it to the squat figure of a Juthan beside him. And the Juthan took it, squirting liquid into the red gape of its maw. Tiryn stepped forward, fascinated. Her bodyguard, a tall Kefren warrior long past his youth, appeared at her side. “Lady, is this fitting?” he murmured.
“Leave me be, Hurth.” She walked forward, long skirts trailing and grimed from the passage of the streets. The Macht and the Juthan stopped to watch her.
“How can you share this thing’s water?” she asked the Juthan in the common Asurian of the streets. “It is an animal. Can you not smell it?”
The Juthan bowed low, having noted the jewellery she bore, the bodyguard standing hand on sword behind her.
“Mistress, I was thirsty.”
Tiryn found herself catching the eyes of the Macht who was watching this exchange with wariness and curiosity. In the light of the dock-side cressets it was possible to see how gaunt it was, dressed in not much more than rags, and scarred about the mouth. A slave, then. But the eyes were undaunted. There was humour in them. The thing said something, and then had the effrontery to hold its waterskin out to her.
