by Paul Kearney
They crossed the Bekai River in the early spring, and accepted the capitulation of Istar in the city of Kaik, another of those tall fortress-cities the Empire had reared up at every ford of the world’s great rivers. The Bekai was fast-flowing with the meltwater of the mountain snows, for the year had turned at last, and in the east the green line of the lowland world was inching up the slopes of the mighty Magron Mountains, though their peaks were still wrapped in everlasting snow. Beyond those mountains lay Asuria, the heart of the Empire, and the Imperial capital itself: holy Ashur of the endless walls. The army had marched almost two and a half thousand pasangs since disembarking at Tanis, and they had been seventy-eight days on the road. The Kufr troops now marched almost as fast as the Macht themselves, and their numbers had been augmented by contingents from those provinces which had surrendered along the way. Honuran, Governor of Istar, now accompanied the army as one of Arkamenes’s lieutenants. His family had been left behind under guard back in Istar, for their safe-keeping, and to assuage any regrets he might feel at his betrayal of his cousin.
Rictus led his fist up the smooth-sloped hill and stood at the top, breathing and sweating hard. The air seemed heavy, laden with the moisture of the great river at their backs. He turned and stared back into the west. The Bekai was a long, meandering curve of brilliant light upon the carpet of the world, spearpoint-bright where the sun took it, mud-brown and ochre where the passing clouds kept the sunlight from its banks. The city-fortress of Kaik rose high upon its tell west of the river, a pasang to the north, and from the many thousands of its hearths a thin haze of smoke rose to cloud the still air. Even at this distance the hum of its busy streets could be heard, filling the countryside all around. Kaik was a brown city, as so many were in the Land of the Rivers. Constructed largely of kiln-fired brick, it held within its walls a hundred thousand square houses which all looked the same, but on the flat roof of each was a garden, and each of these gardens was like a tiny, distinct little emerald jewel. The mighty Bekai had been bled by man-made channels lined with more brick, and an army of slaves toiled ceaselessly on the waterwheels to keep siphoning off the life-giving water for the greenery of the city. Earth and water, the very stuff of life itself. In this part of the world they were held in reverence, and the Kufr had river-deities and crop-deities by the score. Earth and water: the building blocks of the Empire. The only commodity that could match them in abundance was the labour of slaves.
Down at the river the army continued to cross by the Bekai bridges, as it had been crossing since the morning of the day before. All but the last of the Kufr baggage and the rearguard were now on the eastern bank and the Macht were already on the march for higher ground, seeking open country beyond the stinking, confined ditches of the lowland farms. Flies and all manner of flying filth haunted these moist fields, for the peasants hereabouts fertilised the land with their own excrement. Thus far in their journey the Macht had lost few men to disease, thanks both to the season and rigid latrine regulations. Phiron did not intend to relax these rules now. The sternest part of the march was before them, looming up at the edge of the world with every sunrise, a saw-toothed barrier now only some two hundred pasangs away. The Magron Mountains.
More lightly armed Macht troopers joined Rictus on the crest of the height. This was not a hill, but one of the ubiquitous tells which marked the sites of old cities all across the Middle Empire. By some unimaginable labour in the distant, legendary past, the inhabitants of these parts had reared up dozens of the things, each large enough to hold a fair-sized Macht city with room to spare. On these stood the most ancient Kufr fortresses and cities. But many were bare and forgotten now. Looking at the shape of the land below, Rictus realised that once the Bekai River had wound close to the foot of this tell, and thus the city built thereon had controlled the crossing. But rivers were fickle things, changing course even in the space of a man’s lifetime. As the Bekai had moved away, so the people had followed it, to keep to the crossings, and they had built another tell for their new city where Kaik now stood, snug up against the steep riverbanks.
Rictus thought of a different river, a mere stream flashing through a quiet glen somewhere in the far west and north. The snowdrops would be gone by now, and there would be primroses and crocuses about the oaks in the valley-bottom. He fingered the coral pendant about his neck, slick with his sweat, and for a moment he felt as lost and bewildered as if he had only this moment left his father’s farm and found himself here, in this immensity of strangeness that was the world.
“Where’re we headed, cap’n?” one of the other men asked. Rictus collected himself. He pointed towards the distant mountains. “Out that way. There’s an Imperial post house twenty pasangs along the road which is still manned. We’re to take it, and everyone in it.”
“Alive or dead?”
Rictus shrugged, and the men about him nodded and rubbed their chins or tested the edge of their javelin-points. These were Phiron’s Hounds, the swiftest, ablest and most vicious of the skirmishers. For some reason, Jason had taken Rictus and made him a Second, commander of a half-centon of them. Rictus now led ten fists into battle. Except that they never saw battle—not as Rictus understood it. They saw massacre and rapine and murder. They cut down the enemy when he was in flight, they seized bridges and gatehouses and defiles ahead of the main army, and they harassed any enemy they found who was too strong for them to destroy. They did not stand in rank, or bear armour, or meet their foes as equals. They fought their little war in as dirty a manner as they could. And Rictus was good at it.
They knew him now, these men—or boys, most of them were—and they trusted his judgement. He had a feel for the land and the manner in which it must be used—the way terrain could even stiffening odds, the value of surprise, of ferocity unleashed at the right moment and from an unsuspected direction. He was brave in battle, a rare hand with both javelin and long spear, and a captain who was not afraid to get up and close with his foe, sometimes charging into a wavering enemy without bothering to find out if the rest of his command had followed. Because of who he was, his men had taken to calling themselves the Iscans, and Rictus had neither approved nor objected. They had even painted the iktos sigil on the leather facings of their shields, though Rictus had left his own blank. After each of their missions, they would rejoin the main body—they were part of Jason of Ferai’s mora—and Rictus would leave for the command tent to report and receive more orders. Buridan the Bear would see to it that they were fed and had dry ground to sleep upon, for if Rictus had one drawback as a leader, it was that he seemed singularly indifferent to such things. He would not let his men starve, but he would not go to special lengths to make them comfortable, either. If anything, this made the men he led respect him all the more, for all that he was a gangling strawhead with the slow twang of the mountains in his speech.
They took off down the slope at an easy run. This pace, they knew they could keep up for many pasangs. Phiron called them his foot-cavalry, and they revelled in the title. The heavy troops might garner the glory of pitched battle, but for those who liked to be ahead of the column, unfettered by too many officers, the light arm was the unit of choice.
Twenty pasangs, half at a run, the other half at a brisk walk. The day wheeled its way through morning and afternoon and into dusk. They arrived before full-dark, as Rictus had intended. In the last light of the sunset they saw the post-house ahead of them, the land around as flat as the bread the Kufr ate, then rising up as steeply as rocks out of a calm sea towards the white-topped mountains in the east, now blushed pink with Araian’s last light. The Imperial Road arrowed up into the Magron foothills, too straight to be quite real, and off it smaller roads of red dirt were carved out which led to villages and towns of mud-brick, none important enough to warrant a tell to perch on. In these, lamps had already begun to be lit. Not many—poor folk went to bed with the sun—but enough to mark them out upon the darkening face of the land.
Rictus raised his hand, and all about him his me
n came to a halt, blowing and panting, spears upright in their right fists, their left arms hung with the leather and wicker peltas, and in the left hand of each a bundle of slim javelins. Rictus nodded at an older man, a bald-headed, gap-toothed veteran of the skirmishers. “Whistler, take four fists and hang back left. You’re the reserve. Keep a taenon or two between us. We meet something big, and we’ll pull back through you.” The man nodded, grinning. His name was Hanno, but he was known as Whistler because when he breathed though liis mouth, as he did now, the air shrilled through the gap in his front teeth.
A younger man, a mere boy with eyes dark as blackberries and the beauty of a girl, spoke up. “What of me, Rictus?”
“Go out on the right with two fists and keep a lookout on that flank, Morian. Get up on the higher ground there. When the thing is done, we reassemble here.” They nodded at him, impatient to be off. “Very well. Now we go. Arrowhead, all of us.”
Half the men spread out in formation, Rictus at the point. They loped forward, eyes darting left and right, staring ahead. There was no Paean sung, no feet marched in time. This was warfare on the fly, as much a hunt as anything else.
The post-house was in fact a complex of several buildings with a corral beside them that had half a dozen swift horses nosing at the earth within.
Rictus’s men sped through the buildings and out the other side. A single Juthan slave who walked out of a doorway was spitted through the neck and dropped without a sound. On the eastern edge of the post-house Rictus raised his hand again. “Move in.” He waved at Morian; the boy nodded and spread his own tiny command in a line off to the right. As he took to the rising ground there, they became silhouetted against the stars.
Rictus stood fast as his men went through the buildings. There were shouts now, a scream cut off. He stood watching in the dark, noting in his head the position of every fragment of his little command. Moments like this, he loved—when one directed the men like the elements of some dance and saw the efficiency of it at one remove. Phobos’s Dance, mercenaries called it, making light of war as they did of most things.
This kind of killing, though, Rictus had seen enough of. He did not count it valour to slaughter men struggling out of their beds.
Morian came pelting back down to him. The boy’s eyes were so wide they almost had a shine about them in the gathering starlight.
“Off to the south and east, maybe three pasangs, there’s a camp, a big one. Scattered fires spread out wider than the walls of Machran. Rictus, it is huge.”
Rictus paused a second. Morian was young, but as clear-headed as they came.
“All right. Bring in your men. Finish the work here and then join up with Whistler. Quickly now.” Unable to help himself, he grabbed the boy’s arm. “Morian, are you sure?”
“Antimone’s tits, it’s bigger than our own, Rictus.”
“You’re sure it’s not a town?”
“It’s campfires, not lamps, enough of them for a city. Rictus—”
“Enough. Off you go.” Rictus released him. His heart had begun to hammer. When he opened his mouth he could hear the rush of it beating in his throat. He looked around him, gauging the situation. No more cries from the houses; the work there was done. Now the men were ransacking the place for food and drink and trinkets. If he was quick... He hesitated a split second more, then took off at a run.
The ground rose under his feet. Not a steep slope, but enough to hide what lay beyond the rise. He sprinted, slinging the pelta on his back by its leather strap. In one hand he held his spear at the trail; his javelins he clenched together in the other. His feet barely felt the earth beneath him. He topped the rise and found fragments of brick under the soles of his sandals. Another tell, vast as a long hill out of nature, but so ancient that it had worn down to a low slope in the ground, no more. And on the other side—
On the other side the world had changed. The quiet starlit night was fractured apart.
“Phobos!” Rictus swore. The boy was right. Two pasangs away, not three, more campfires were extending the perimeter minute upon minute. How many taenons? A hundred, two hundred? It was a sea of campfires back to the foothills.
It was an army.
The Great King had come west over the mountains.
Twenty pasangs back at a hard run, the men blowing and winded now, heads down. When Whistler and a few of the older ones began to lag behind, Rictus split his command, going forward with the youngest and fleetest. They stumbled in the dark and went headlong, got up and started running again. The two moons rose, and in the blushed silver light they made better time. It seemed in the moonlight that they were making no distance at all, but were mere staggering men running on the spot, while all around the dark world sat still under their feet. But at last the other campfires hove into view: the lights of their own camp. Running down into it, swallowing vomit, Rictus knew by the comparison that the army camped back in the shadow of the Magron was many times larger than their own. Gasping, he told his men to make for their own lines. He tossed Morian his weapons and kept running, making for the taller cressets that blazed above the rest of the Macht camp, marking the large tent of Phiron where the Kerusia met. When he reached it he bent over and spewed out what remained of his last meal, whilst in front of the tent two of Arkamenes’s Honai stood watching in disgust, flanking the open tent-flap. From within there came the sound of music, a woman singing, and voices engaged in stately conversation.
Rictus staggered askew, spitting out the foul taste of his vomit, mind wheeling. The sight of the Honai had completely thrown him. Was he not in the right place? He wiped his mouth on his arm and went up to the tall Kefren. “Phiron,” he said. “Get Phiron.”
The guards stared at him, alien eyes set within the bronze masks of their helms. “Phiron,” Rictus repeated faintly, and sank to one knee.
A voice spoke up, louder than the blood thundering in his ears. He was taken by the arm and shaken roughly. Not Phiron but Jason, the ivy-leaves of a party in his hair, wine on his breath. He wore his finest chiton, still scarlet, but embroidered with gold sigils on the shoulders. In his pale eyes there was instant recognition.
“What’s happened? Speak, Rictus.”
Rictus regained his feet, swaying. Jason’s hands grasped his shoulders, transfixing him to the spot.
“What are the Kufr doing here?”
“Arkamenes is within—Phiron is hosting him. You picked a rare night to puke on his doorstep. Now speak it out.”
“Twenty-two or three pasangs to the east, there is an army encamped. It is huge—many times bigger than ours.”
Those eyes, strange in so dark a face. Pale as flint. Jason studied him for a long moment, breathing wine into his face. Gods, he could do with some wine. But he was collecting himself now, his heart hammering out a less insane beat.
“You’re sure, Rictus?”
Rictus smiled. “I know an army when I see one.”
“How close did you get? How many camp-fires? Were you seen?” The questions were shot out like barbed darts. Rictus answered them as well he could. When Jason was satisfied he released him. Even in the torchlight it was possible to see how his face had lost colour.
“They stole a march on us it seems—a campaigning season of marches. I thought Ashurnan did not have it in him.”
“The snows in the Magron,” Rictus said. “They must have melted early.”
“Yes. You’ve done well, lad. Antimone had her eye on you tonight, on us all. Now it’s Phobos we have to worry about. Follow me.”
“Where? In there?” Rictus asked, dismayed.
“In there. You’re going to stand up straight in front of Phiron and our generals and the Kufr and tell all this over again, and you’ll not miss a beat.”
Rictus rubbed at the vomit on his front. His chiton stank with sweat and his legs were spattered dark with the muck he had run through. “I could use some wine,” he said in a low tone. Jason grinned.
“You and me both. Come now.”
<
br /> He might have been an after-dinner freak-show. Phiron’s tent had been hung with tapestries and hangings looted from half a dozen cities; it was lit with many-armed lamps of gold and silver. The couches of the great and the good were circled round an empty space below them, through which musicians and slaves came and went. Now Rictus stood in this space, stinking, filth-stained, rank, and told them all that the enemy had come over the mountains and was half a day’s march to the east. An enemy in his many tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands. He was brought wine and sipped it standing as one after another of the generals questioned him, many sharp with disbelief, and even angry, as though Rictus were playing some joke on them. Orsos and Castus denounced him as a spy, planted by their foes; they were rather drunk. Phiron and Pasion, side by side, questioned him as parents would a prodigal son. And Arkamenes sat rigid, watching, listening to Phiron interpret, his eyes glowing with a light that was utterly inhuman. Behind him, on a lower couch, a Kufr woman reclined. As he spoke, Rictus was sure she understood some of his words, for she reacted before Phiron translated. Her eyes were stark with fear.
Jason took his arm. He had tossed away his ivy crown. “Sit down before you fall down.” Rictus was led out of that focused space in their midst, to the periphery of shadows. A cane stool was found for him, and more wine. A Juthan girl poured it, her blue-black hair in a pigtail that touched his wrist as she bent. He smiled at her, but there was no answer out of the yellow eyes. Jason stood at his side and watched the wrangling, the debating, and the barely restrained animosity go their inevitable way about the banqueting couches. Phiron stood at Arkamenes’s side now, speaking swiftly to the Kefren prince and hammering his fist into his palm.
“What a marvellous thing a Council-of-War is,” Jason said, shaking his head.
“Jason. I saw what I saw. I am not a fool.”
“I know that, Rictus. But all they see is a young buck out on his feet and covered in shit.”
