by Paul Kearney
So thought Vorus, looking down on them. Again and again, his eyes were drawn back to the unyielding, insouciant line of blank bronze that was the Macht. Something ached near his heart, a kind of pride. The Macht heavy spearmen had retained their cloaks. They knew that battle might not be joined today and that they would most likely have to sleep in line, so they had brought the scarlet badge of their calling on their backs. They would die tomorrow with their red cloaks on their shoulders. For a single, insane moment, Vorus wished with all his heart that he was down there with them, part of that sombre spectacle.
Only for a moment.
FOURTEEN
KUNAKSA
Off to the north, the Arakosan cavalry had begun to move, six thousand horsemen with the mist of the morning grey about the bellies of their mounts. The ground was packed red and hard under them, the chill of the night holding it firm. The rumble of the horses could be heard and felt over the earth for pasangs on every side. A harbinger of what was to come perhaps, a dark music borne upon the waking world.
The noise woke Gasca from an uneasy sleep, and many others around him. They rose from their cramped ranks, cursed the snag and jab of bronze on their shins, and tugged their cloaks tighter about their torsos, the mist all around them, deep and unknowable as the currents of the sea.
Old Demotes raised his hawk nose to sniff the pre-dawn air and cocked his grey head to one side. “That’s cavalry,” he said. He spat on the ground and bared what remained of his teeth as he stretched his worn and warped limbs into function.
Around him more men rose ahead of reveille, that dark murmur in the earth bringing them out of what scant sleep they had endured. Close on ten thousand spearmen had lain down the bright evening before with their heads pillowed on their shields and their cuirasses biting their hips. Now it was almost a relief to stand up, to make the blood work about the bones and face the thing which had brought them all here.
Gasca checked all his gear automatically, touched the upright planted length of his spear for luck and tried to shiver some warmth into his limbs. The cloak had helped, but his father’s layered cuirass had been stiffened by the cold. His flesh would have to warm it into some kind of compliance before it stopped biting him.
Buridan was walking down the line; he had taken over the Dogsheads after Jason’s promotion and now had the transverse crest of a centurion on his helm. “Up, up, get in rank you motherless fucks. We’ve a big day ahead of us.”
“I hope you slept well, centurion.”
“I dreamed of your mother last night, Bear.”
“Aye, she fucked half the centon in her dreams!”
They rose, pissing where they stood and garnering curses and shoves and the ribaldry which was the meat of an army’s morning. The file-leaders geared up and strode forward a pace or two, bitching and murmuring to each other about where precisely the line should run, and behind them the hastily armouring men fell into their files one after another, pushed, cajoled, and threatened by the file-closers, who counted in each man. When he had six ahead of him, he clapped the shoulder of the man in front, who did the same to the man before him, until the file leader felt the thump on his own shoulder and knew that behind him the file was complete. Buridan then strode down the front of the centon and as he passed each file the leader raised his spear. All down the mist-choked length of the Macht ranks, centurions were doing the same. In the half-light of dawn, the Macht had reformed their battle line in a matter of minutes, whilst to their left the Kefren troops were still milling in bad-tempered disorder, and their officers were cantering up and down among them on horseback, waving swords to get them into place.
The sun rose through the mist; mighty Araian who loved her bed in the north, but in this country seemed eager to rise and reluctant to quit the day. The mist thinned. There was not the breath of a breeze. Even before the sun was well clear of the Magron, the heat had begun to simmer out of the ground itself, and with it the tiny black flies that plagued the low river-country. The ground softened as it warmed, and the Macht spearmen sank an inch into it with all the weight of arms and armour pressing upon their flesh. Gasca heard the file-closer, big Gratus, talking to the light-armed skirmishers who had remained to the rear. “You keep that water coming today. I don’t give a fuck if you have to fetch it all the way from the river, but you keep the skins full, lads.”
“Any word from up front?” someone beside Gasca asked. He was yawning himself, the bronze of the helm constricting his skull. There was a worn spot in the padding within; he should have replaced it before now.
“They’re on the hill, same place as they was last night, except there’s more of them now.”
“Where’s Phiron, I wonder?”
“Licking Kufr arse.” And a mutter of hard laughter went down the ranks.
Arkamenes met with the ten generals of the Macht to the front of their battle line. Phiron and Pasion were there also, every one of them in the transverse crested helm of officers, and every one wearing the Curse of God. They carried their shields on their shoulders and bore spears the same as the lowest infantryman on the field. Arkamenes looked down on them from his horse and when the eyes in the T-slits of the close helms stared back at him he felt a kind of shiver trail down his backbone. He was glad, so very glad, that he was not up on the hill above, waiting to fight these things.
“We will attack,” he said crisply. “My brother has the high ground; he will not leave it, so we must go to him. Phiron, as you have suggested, your people will lead an echeloned advance into his right, and smash that wing. The Juthan have been told to hang back, and only follow on once you have engaged. Then the rest of the line will move up in turn from the right. That way we are less likely to be outflanked. My bodyguard and I will be in the centre. As soon as I mark out Ashurnan, we shall attack him. If the King dies, it is all over. Any questions?”
“When?” Phiron asked.
“I leave that to your discretion. But it should be soon. The heat will be punishing today.”
“Thank you, my lord.”
Arkamenes bent over in the saddle and pulled his komis aside a little. He smiled, his golden face disconcerting so close to theirs. “Good luck, General. If all goes well, when evening comes we shall be rulers of the world.” Then he straightened and kicked his horse, wheeling away to where his bodyguard awaited him in bright and gaudy ranks back at the centre of the army.
Phiron looked round at his fellow officers. “He’s leaving it to us to make the first dent in their line. We must hit them hard as we are able, then wheel left, towards their centre. There the battle will be decided. Arkamenes was right; if we kill their king, they’ll fold.”
“There was cavalry on the move before dawn, Phiron,” Pasion said. “Could be a flank move.”
Phiron nodded. “I’m sure it was. That’s why your Hounds are out on the far right. They’ll have to cover our arse. I need every spear up front if we’re to break these bastards before noon. Jason, your mora is right-handest. The Hounds will be under your orders. If they need help during the morning it is you who will be detailed to assist them. You lead off when you’re ready and we’ll follow on.”
Jason nodded, eyes bright within his helm. He had donned his party-chiton under his armour, and the gold embroidery of it gleamed out incongruously in that sombre gathering.
The twelve of them stood silent a moment, eyes flickering back and forth among themselves. Some of them were smiling.
“Brothers,” Phiron said simply, “let us start the Dance.”
Starting on the right, the Macht line began to move. The men kept the bowls of their shields on their left shoulders, to save their strength, and carried their spears down the length of their right arms, snug against the body. The mud sucked at their feet and broke up their step until they had marched clear of the last night’s ground and were on packed earth and pasture once more. File-leaders and file-closers barked out the time. The men began to march in step, and with that the ground began to echo und
er their feet, ominous thunder. Jason’s mora, close to a thousand men in eight ranks, led off. After it came Mynon’s, then Orsos’s, then Castus’s, then the morai of Pomero, Argus, Teremon, Durik, Gelipos, and Marios.
To their left the Juthan Legion stood watching as the Macht line moved up the slope towards the King’s army, close on two pasangs of tight-packed men marching in almost perfect time, and now in almost complete silence. Above their heads the centon banners hung heavy in the morning air. Hardly a breeze stirred about the plain, but the heat of the sun had already burned away the last of the mist. The men in the ranks had the sunlight in their eyes for the first few hundred paces, until the shadow of the heights above them cut it off.
The light troops kept pace with the phalanx, and in their midst Rictus strode easily along, his heart thumping so hard it seemed the beat of it would leap up his throat.
“We’ll fight like spearmen today, if we have to,” Agrimos, overall commander of the skirmishers had said. “There’s cavalry out on the right, and we’re to hold our ground against it. No retreating today, boys; no falling back. We fight where we stand.”
At long last, Rictus was to be part of a real battle, not some honourless skirmish fought with knives and javelins. Today would be a spear-fight, and he was wholly glad of it.
Look down on me today, father. Grant me your courage. Help me live or die well before the sun goes down.
Jason, in the midst of his thousand, struck up the Paean. It was taken up by the whole mora almost at once, and travelled down the line until the entire Ten Thousand were singing it, the slow mournful beat of the ancient song clenching their feet in time with one another. As always, Jason felt that cold thrill in his flesh at the sound. The Death hymn of the Macht. It had been millennia since a Great King had heard it, and now here in the heart of the Empire, ten thousand voices were rolling it out with a fine relish, their feet providing the beat. Ten thousand voices, the sound of them echoing off the heights of the hills to their front, the ground rising under them as they marched, and the ranks of the Great King’s army awaiting them at the crest.
This, Jason thought, is what the poets sing of; it is what it means to be truly alive. And as he marched, singing, the tears trickled down his cheeks within the tall-crested helm.
Seated on his quiet mare, Vorus watched the line of spearmen march up the hill with a wall of sound that was the Paean preceding them. He thought he had never seen a sight so fearsome in his life: that moving battlement of scarlet and bronze, that wave of death approaching. All along the Kefren ranks, there was a kind of shudder as the troops moved in restive increments, as a man will flinch before a blow.
“Lord,” he said, “let me go out to the left.”
Ashurnan shook his head. For now, he was standing in the Royal Chariot again, shaded by a parasol and surrounded by bodyguards, couriers and staff officers.
“Stay here, Vorus. They may be coming our way soon enough.”
The Kefren troops on the left had begun to shout and jeer and batter their spears against their shields in an emboldening din of defiance. To their rear the archers had nocked arrows to their bows. A flag went up to show that all was ready. Ashurnan waved a hand, as gracious as a greeting to a friend, and the archers loosed.
All at once the air filled with another noise; the swoop of clothyards blotting out the sun. They rose in a cloud, and then arced down towards the Macht line.
The sound of their strike came even to the Great King’s position, a hammering, clattering madness of metal on metal. Gaps appeared in the ranks of the Macht. Men folded in on themselves, dropped as if pole axed, staggered as though struck by a gale of wind. For a few seconds the line wavered, and the Kefren cheered and shouted in derision and triumph. Then the gaps were closed, the phalanx drew itself together, and the Macht came on.
An order was shouted, carried down their line, and the first three ranks of the Macht levelled their spears. Another series of orders, and they picked up the pace to a lumbering trot. Ten paces from the Kefren line they uttered a hoarse roar, and then plunged forward.
The crash of the battle lines meeting, a sound to make the hearer flinch. It carried clear down the valley, and close on that unholy clash there came the following roar of close-quarter battle. The ten thousand Macht slammed into forty thousand Kefren like some force out of nature. In the rear of the Kefren left the archers loosed another volley, twenty thousand arrows overshooting to pepper the ground behind the Macht army. Before them, the ranks of their spearmen were shoved bodily backwards, pressing in on each other. Vorus could see the glittering aichmes of the Macht darting forward and back at their bloody work all along the line, like teeth in some great machine, whilst the men in the rear ranks set their shields in the back of the man in front, dug their heels into the soft ground, and pushed. The Kefren phalanx staggered under that pressure, as a man’s stomach will fold in on the strike of a fist. The battle line was simultaneously chopped to pieces and pushed in on itself. Vorus found the breath clicking in his throat. It had been a long time. He had forgotten what his people looked like in battle, and what savage efficiency they brought to war.
Now the Juthan legion on the Macht left was marching up the hill, and to the left rear of it the traitor’s entire battle line was on the move, pinioning the King’s troops with the threat of their approach. An advance in echelon; brilliant. This Phiron knew his tactics. All along the plain below, for fully six pasangs, great formations of troops were on the move. For the moment, the traitor’s armies had the initiative, but that was part of the plan.
Gasca had moved up from the fifth rank to the third, and now was stabbing overhand with his spear whilst the crushing weight of the men behind him forced him forward. In the frenzied press of the phalanx he periodically felt his feet lifted off the ground and was borne along bodily by the close-packed crowd. He ducked his helm behind the rim of his shield as an enemy spearhead came lancing out at his eyes, was jolted by the impact of the point on his helmet, and stabbed out blindly, furiously. Under his feet, bodies squirmed in the gathering muck and the men behind him with their spears still upright were jabbing downwards with their sauroters, finishing off the wounded, grinding their heels into Kufr faces. The heat was indescribable, the sound deafening, even over the sea-noise of the bronze helm. This was the othismos, the very bowels of warfare. It was where men found themselves or lost themselves, where all their virtues were stripped away, leaving only courage; for one could not endure the othismos without it.
The line lurched forward as the Kufr ranks shrank from the Macht juggernaut. The file leaders shouted hoarse, half-heard commands and from the rear the unrelenting pressure of the file-closers ground the phalanx onwards. Dead men were carried upright in the files, held there by the press of flesh and bronze. The aichmes of the first three ranks stabbed out endlessly. Shearing the sheep this was called, the decimation of the front ranks of the enemy with skilful spear-work, a hedge of wicked metal plunging into the enemy’s faces, shoulders, chests, bellies, anywhere there was an opening. The Kufr infantry were not so heavily armoured as the Macht, and the spear-points were drilling clear through their wooden shields, the leather caps and corselets of their panoplies. Gasca found himself stepping over a layered mound of corpses and half-dead, squirming things that the rear ranks spiked through and through with their sauroters.
A spear-blow to his shield-rim stretched the metal. The men in the front ranks had their heads down as though sheltering from a storm. Many had gashed and bleeding spear-arms from the thrusts of their own comrades behind them. Gasca rested his spear on the shoulder of the file-leader, three ranks ahead; it seemed insufferably heavy. The file-leader’s spear broke off in the body of a Kufr maniac who threw himself at the line of shields, and he flipped the shaft round, tearing up the thigh of the second-rank man as he did so. With the sauroter now facing forward, he began stabbing out with as much energy as before. In this mass of sharp bronze and iron the flesh of men was a fragile thing, to be sco
red and sliced without comment or complaint. They were expendable parts in the machine, and they would endure their role without complaint until the thing was done. That was part of the philosophy of the othismos.
Ten thousand Macht, pressing forward with all the professionalism of their calling. The Kefren spearmen could not hold back that mass of murder. The deep formations of troops here on the left, stacked up to absorb the Macht assault, became a weakness rather than a strength. Reserve regiments, moving forward to the aid of their comrades, became close-packed by the ordeal of the men at the front, packing lines of bodies against the enemy spearheads.
The Kufr army was pulling back; no, it was in flight—but the flight was so constricted as to be a mere shuddering of movement, no more.
But the Macht felt it. A lessening of pressure, like pushing on a stiff-hinged door past the point of equilibrium. A knowledge that the back of this thing is broken.
Those in the Kefren front rank were showing their backs now, pushing and clawing at the men behind them to get away from the spears. These whose courage had failed were stabbed to bloody quivering meat and their toppling bodies entangled the legs of the next rank; the struggling mob that resulted was cut down without mercy. Gasca found himself hiccoughing with a manic kind of laughter as he stabbed out over the shoulders of the men in front of him. The pressure from the rear had eased somewhat, and the Macht ranks were opening up as the enemy to their front disintegrated. Now Gasca felt the rasp of his tongue about his teeth, the taste of salt about his lips: sweat and splashed blood. His legs were scarlet to the knee, and the ground under all their feet stood pocked with puddles of blood where it was not carpeted with the enemy dead. The Great King’s left wing had been smashed asunder.
