by Paul Kearney
The temple predated the palace, but those who dwelled in the latter had been making up for lost time over the last few millennia. The top of the palace ziggurat was perhaps fifteen taenons, and of those, ten were covered by the structures of the palace itself. The remainder was a green-walled park, a garden as big as five farms in which the great cypresses of Ochir had been planted, along with poplar from Khulm, plane-trees from the Tanean coast, and date palms from the Videhan Gulf. Springs welled there, turning into clear streams that coursed around the roots of the ancient trees. These were not natural but torrents of pumped water, serviced by an army of Juthan slaves who inhabited the bowels of the mountain-ziggurat. Thousands of them laboured there in the dark so that the trees of the Great Kings might drink. Thousands never saw daylight, but were born, laboured there, bred their replacements, and died, and above them the serene parks and gardens swelled and bloomed under the sun.
In the lower city, the real city, as Vorus often called it in his mind, the teeming population went about its business with little or no thought of those in the ziggurats above. They revered the concordats of the priests, they were awed when the Great King chose to make a processional down the wide space of Huruma, the Sacred Way, but by and large they were intent on buying and selling, on eating and drinking and procreating, the same as any other creature with a brain in its head that walked the earth. And Vorus loved them for it. He loved the close-packed streets of the lower city, the shadowed canopies of the stallholders, the dark alcoves of the artisans where one might walk by and be showered in sparks, the spice-merchants, the carpet-bazaars, the metal-workers’ plinths. He loved the slave-yards, where snivelling creatures of every race and type and colour were on display. He loved the packed busyness, the life, the arrogance, the insistence of this place. It was his city—he was more at home here than in any other place upon the teeming face of Kuf. No matter that he had been born in a snowbound mountain village of the Harukush; this was his home, had been for going on twenty-five years. He was no longer Macht. He was the servant of a Great King who ruled an Empire rooted in history—great, bloody, and enduring history. And he knew that he would fight to his death for it to remain that way.
When one alighted from the litter, there were the Steps to endure. These had been constructed so that horses could walk up them in swift, dignified strides, but for those with two feet they were a wearying experience, Added to this, on one’s left as the ascent continued, there were carved upon the wall and inlaid in brilliant colour the spectacle of two hundred successive Kefren Kings of the line of Asur, subjugating their enemies in an unending series of sieges and battles. The Steps had been counted, and were something over two thousand. No one save the Great King might mount them on anything save their own two feet. Thus were the mighty made breathless who came to pay court on the Ruler of the Empire. But to Vorus now they were an irritating necessity that did nothing more than squeeze the sweat from his back. He passed more sedate supplicants on their way to the Audience Hall, striding upward and remembering mountains—real mountains—as he felt the strain in his thighs. There were quicker paths to the face of the Great King, of course, but he, as a hired foreigner, was no longer privy to them, never mind the fact that he had served the court for decades. And bled for it, and for the father of this Kufr he now had to meet.
“General Vorus of the Macht,” he was announced. Always, of the Macht. It was that epithet that made heads swivel in the Court, that silenced the bullshit tapestries of conversation weaving their delicate ways about the King’s ears. Vorus knew this Great King to speak to, but his father he had known better. Anurman had been a soldier, a hunter, a gardener. He had loved everything which nature had created, had planted bulbs with his bare hands, and with his bare hands had slain several assassins who had hoped to end his line. A plain Kufr, one of courage and honesty and humour, Vorus had learned generalship at his side. At first a novelty— the Macht renegade—he had progressed to errand-runner, and thence to warleader. But first, foremost, and forever, he had been a friend.
That was the pity of it—that Anurman’s heirs were wood from some different tree. But Vorus served the son because of love for the dead father. It was why he was here now, sweating under the undulating air stirred by half a thousand fan-bearers. Because he owed it to the man he had known.
“You may advance,” the outer chamberlain said with the great stately patronising chill of his caste. “Keep your eyes down, and always—”
“I know this dance,” Vorus said and strode forward, scarlet cloak wrapped about his left arm, black cuirass sucking light from the hall.
The usual crowds, a long, useless length of them clad in the raiment that ten thousand villages toiled every year to produce. The Great King had entire towns devoted to the production of his slippers. One might laugh and disbelieve, until one saw it. Half a world given over to the luxuries of a few thousand; it was monstrous, until you realised that they were well paid and lived in peace. That was a good thing, was it not? To live in peace, even if that peace were servitude, and at the whim of the next high-caste Kefren higher in the preening order.
A phalanx of court officials stood on either side of the throne, and two Honai in full armour but for their shields. Vorus halted, and then went to his knees. He lowered himself further, until his forehead kissed the cool marble of the floor, then regained his feet with a swiftness that belied his years. The prostration was performed by those not kin to the King, or outside his favour. In the old days Vorus had performed a bow, no more, and then Anurman would stride forward and take him by the hand and look him in the eye.
“Great King, here stands General Vorus of the Macht, commander of the city garrison, who served under your blessed father and won high renown at the battles of Carchanis and Qafdir.” The High Chamberlain rolled out the words with a fine, ringing relish, so that all in the hall could hear them. He met Vorus’s eye as he spoke, and the two shared an imperceptible nod. Old Xarnes had been Anurman’s High Chamberlain too, and had a fine sense of loyalty.
“He seeks an audience.”
“I know who he is. He may speak, Xarnes.”
Vorus raised his head. “My lord, I have received a message from the west. It might be better if its content were divulged in a more private setting.”
“We are among our kin here, General, and our friends. You may speak freely.” Ashurnan leaned one elbow on his throne and sat forward with a smile on his face. Taller and paler than his father had been, he had the gold skin of the highest castes, the violet eyes of the nobility. And his father’s smile and easy manner. Vorus stepped forward a pace and lowered his voice.
“Your brother Arkamenes has raised the standard of rebellion against you. He has suborned Governor Gushrun of Artaka, raised an army of Macht, and is leading them east. He left Tanis the better part of a month ago; they will be in Jutha by now. If he is not hindered, he will be before the walls of this city in six weeks. He means to take the throne.”
Ashurnan blinked, the smile freezing upon his face. “How do you know this before I?”
“Your father had me install trustworthy men in most of the major provinces. They reported to me alone, and some still do.”
Ashurnan collected himself with admirable speed, but not before a flicker of the anger shone through. “What of our Royal spies in Artaka? There has been no word of this from them.”
“My lord, they are either dead or have been bought by your brother. It is by the merest chance that we have this information in such a timely fashion. We must begin mustering the Royal Levy at once if we are to meet the traitor in battle.”
The Great King sat back in his throne, his face blank. Only his fingers moved, gripping the arms of the massive, ornate chair until the blood showed blue about his knuckles. “You are quite sure about this, General? You are happy to stake your life on the word of this source of yours?”
Vorus’s voice was harsh as that of an old crow. “Very happy, my lord.” He lifted his head, defying prot
ocol, and looked the king in the eye. “I served your father all my life. I serve his son now with the same measure of devotion. If I am wrong in this, then you may have that life, gladly given.”
Ashurnan held his eyes as one man to another, rank, protocol set aside; he was setting Vorus on the scales of his reckonings, wondering if the son could truly inherit the loyalty that had been freely given to the father. Vorus knew this and stood very still, face set.
“Loyalty must be earned, if it is to be worth anything,” the king said to Vorus. It was as though all others in the hall had disappeared and it was only the pair of them, equals, circling each other’s intentions and memories and wondering how they would dictate the future entanglement of their lives.
“Trust is worth something also, my lord,” Vorus said hoarsely. “Your father taught me that.”
The moment broke. Ashurnan stood up. All down the gleaming length of the hall the talk stilled, and the brilliant creatures of the court bowed deep.
“Xarnes, summon my generals, and some scribes—good ones who write fast and clear. General Vorus, we will adjourn to the ante-room. Your second in the Garrison is Proxis, is it not?”
“Yes, lord.” An old friend, and the only Juthan general in the Empire, Proxis would be drunk by now, it being mid-morning.
“Hand over your command to him. I have other uses for you now. Xarnes! I want runners, and the fastest despatch-riders in the city. Hunt them up. We must make use of our time.”
Robes hissing on the floor, Ashurnan turned on his heel, beckoning them after him with just that abrupt, impatient jerk of his hand that his father had used. Vorus found himself smiling and wondering if there was not some of the old man’s wood in the son after all.
Before noon, the riders began leaving the gates of the city with courier pennants flapping from their spines. These bobbing flags of silk opened up the roadways and sent all other traffic into the ditches as the couriers sped at full, frantic gallop down the good paved roads of Asuria, the heartland of the Empire. They went east, to Arakosia, south to Medis and Kandasar, north to the fastnesses of the Adranos Mountains, and westwards—by far the largest number went westwards. These riders galloped to Hamadan, the king’s summer-capital in the heights of the Magron Mountains, and past that, the Asurian Gates, the narrow series of defiles that led out to the vastness of Pleninash beyond, and the Land of the Rivers with its many cities, lush farmland, and teeming millions of subjects and province governors, each of whom were mighty as kings in their own right. All the messages the couriers carried were the same. Raise your armies and stockpile supplies. The Great King calls you all to war.
PART TWO
PHOBOS’S DANCE
TEN
THE ABEKAI CROSSING
In the morning, the line of infantry stood in place as though they had been planted there. Three pasangs long, they had stood-to in the dark before dawn and now had their shields at their knees and were donning helms. Up and down the line water-carriers waddled, giving each warrior a glug from the bulging skins. Behind the line, cavalry moved casually in loose formation and in the centre-rear the baggage train sat like a lumpen mole on the plain, several hundred handcarts and wagons full of gear and rations that were manned by a bewildering crowd of non-combatants.
To the front of the line the Abekai River foamed between its banks, raised by spring meltwater. This was a ford, or had been. After that there had been a bridge, but the Asurian engineers were now busy levering the last of its masonry into the river. So it was a ford again, and the only crossing-point for four hundred pasangs. The line of Kufr infantry were quite happy to stand before the ruined bridge and wait. They had reinforcements coming it was rumoured, the Great King himself perhaps. In the meantime, let the feared spearmen of the Macht grow fins, or chance the rocky riverbed in rushing water up to their chests. Either way, the Great King’s levy would be pleased to receive them, should they be insane enough to try crossing.
The courier had arrived four days before with the fortuitous elan of some staged play. The governor of southern Jutha had a sizeable garrison of Kefren to play with, and as soon as he had dropped the Imperial scroll from his nerveless hands he had mustered these and set them on the road, no small achievement in the time allotted to him. These twenty thousand spearmen now stood in eight ranks along the ruins of the Abekai bridge, and had arrived there a scant two days before the appearance of Arkamenes’s vanguard.
Out of the desert these invaders had come, their ranks shimmering in magnified blurs of scarlet and shine as they tramped amid the heat-haze of the Gadinai. It had been a spectacle to see, a life’s event. Crowds had ridden out from Tal Byrna to watch, then had hurried away again. In the van of the enemy host had been the bronze and scarlet machine of the Macht, and when one saw them move unwearied into camp in perfect ranks, singing as they came, somehow the thousands of landlords’ sons on the eastern bank seemed less reassuring.
That first night, the opposing banks had been dark and bristling, there being no firewood to burn on this edge of the Gadinai. The Kefren spearmen had stood by the riverbank and stared out into the darkness opposite and had tried, as all men have always tried, to look into the hearts of their enemy. A hundred paces away, the creatures on the western bank had done likewise, Macht and Kefren and Juthan alike, sidling down to the riverbank in the small hours to try and glean some wisdom out of the night and perhaps gain some courage. But on either side of the river, none truly believed that his adversary was doing the same. They walked back to their fireless camps with hearts as full of ignorance and hatred and fear as before.
“The skirmishers, in a mass, in the night,” Phiron was saying. At his shoulders Pasion stood mute, and Jason listening. “We send them across in morai, and as they gain the eastern bank, so we feed in the spearmen. We must have space for the phalanx to shake out and reassemble, lord, else their impact is lost.”
He had been giving this speech, or variations on it, for an hour now, a good two turns of the clock. And watching Arkamenes’s golden face, he knew that it was all piss dropped down a drain.
“My lord, you perhaps overestimate the capabilities of our race.”
“I do not,” Arkamenes said with great good humour, speaking for the first time in too long. He was well wrapped in a scarlet cloak lined with the fur of hares, and the great tent within which they all spoke was warmed further by a series of braziers, all burning the black stones that passed for fuel hereabouts. They did not smell as fine as burning wood, but they did the job well enough, and were better than the camel-dung that had been their lot in the crossing of the Gadinai.
“In truth, General, all I want is to demonstrate the fighting superiority of this race of yours. Something, I might add, which I have been eager to witness at first hand. If your soldiers are all that hearsay makes them out to be, then you will do this thing for me—and you may even call it a demonstration of good faith. I have been paying your wages now for quite some time. I wish to see this machine of yours in full flow, as it were. I do not want to see a series of ragged boys wading through the river to sling stones at the enemy. Do you take my meaning? Or am I being unclear?”
Phiron bowed. What this Kufr said was almost just. The crossing of the desert had frayed all their nerves—especially since the Macht had been always in the van, by virtue of their faster marching. The Kufr host had been eating their dust for weeks, and this had not improved cooperation between the races.
We could have been here two sennights ago if it had not been for you and that ridiculous baggage train, Phiron thought, but his face remained blank. This, here, was where the contract cost the lives of his men. It had always been so—it was just a little more pronounced this time, and on a larger scale.
What fat-headed fuck sired him? he wondered as he bowed to Arkamenes and promised a heavy assault in the morning. And he promised himself that in event of disaster, he would find his way back to this warm tent, and see if he couldn’t make Antimone weep a little.
They walked away from the king’s tent in the chill desert night, and Jason explained with surprising accuracy what had just occurred—this to Pasion, who worked his mouth and said nothing until Jason was done. Phiron paused and looked up at the stars, closing his eyes for a moment to Phobos as one should, and nodding at Haukos for hope. As Pasion began to speak, he cut him off.
“We do it. He’s paying us, and this is the way he wants it done.”
“He’s never led so much as a dance-line in his life,” Pasion said. “Ignore him. Do it properly.”
“No. This is a test he’s setting. We do as he says, this time. We cross that river in full panoply, we beat those Kufr on the far bank. After that, we will do things our own way, I promise you.”
“Who leads?” Jason asked. He, too, was staring up at the stars. He loves all this, Phiron realised. It’s all just a vast education for him, a richening of experience. He felt a pang of envy, a memory of youthful energies.
“You do,” he said.
So they attacked at first light, as so many of their fathers had. But the first thing they had to assault was the river itself.
Gasca was in the fifth rank, about as untried as one could be. He could not quite believe it when he saw them marching towards the river, but once he was in the midst of those foul-smelling, heavily armoured ranks of men, there were no ways in the world he was going to turn back.
