by Paul Kearney
Jason grinned. “Each to his own gods, I suppose. I don’t know about your Bel, or bull, but I have heard the beat of Antimone’s Wings upon the battlefield, like some black flutter in the core of my heart. And then of course there is this.” He cast aside his cloak, and sitting up, he thumped the black chest of his cuirass, the Curse of God.
“I do not know how these things were made if they are not the work of some god, because assuredly, there is no smith on earth who can fathom their creation.”
Tiryn raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps there was once.”
“What is the word for stubborn?”
“Kura. A mule is a Kuru. I am thinking it a good word for Macht, also.”
Jason got to his feet, and bowed. “Thank you for the wine, the food, and the instruction in humility, my lady.”
She lowered the komis from her face, looking up at him as he stood there. She did not want him to go. “I will see you on the march perhaps, tomorrow?”
“Perhaps.” He reached out his hand, and for an unthinking second she did the same, her fingers longer than his, pale in the firelight. They did not touch. She drew back, startled by the temerity of her own impulse.
“Tomorrow,” he said. “I wish to learn the words for hearth, home, and happiness, in case I should ever need them.” Then he turned to go.
“I hope you may need them, one day,” Tiryn said, watching his cloak-wrapped shape disappear into the firelight and shadows of the sleeping camp. She did not think he had heard her.
The next day, a large tell loomed out of the morning mists before Rictus’s trudging skirmishers. All about, the flatlands of the Middle Empire croaked and clicked and buzzed as the sun began to warm the air. A solitary Kufr farmer, leading his ox out for a morning’s work, saw the Macht appear out of the mists and fled, leaving his puzzled animal behind. Rictus slapped the beast’s rump as they passed it, and Whistler grinned. “Rictus, shall I?”
“Leave it. The foragers will pick it up. Cormos—take your centon out on the right, but stay linked.”
“Look,” Whistler said, swinging his pelta from his back to his left arm.
A city reared up before them, afloat on a white sea of mist. Steep-sided as a spearhead, it was a vast black shadow on the edge of their world, coming to life as they watched with the flicker of a hundred, two hundred, a thousand lamps. The inhabitants were rising with the sun.
“Ab-Mirza,” Rictus said. “So Jason says. All centons at the double—pass it down the line. They’ll open the gates at sunrise—we must secure them.”
They ran at a fast jog through the mist, javelins in their shield-fist, short spears in the other. They were nearly all barefoot, for sandals could not compete with the sucking ooze of the farmlands they had passed through. Nine hundred-odd men, their eyes as bright and eager as those of a hunting wolf, no formation to their number, a mere fast-moving, shapeless darkness in the mist.
Another astonished farmer. Someone speared him and he splashed to the ground with a sharp cry. Rictus bared his teeth. No point shouting back at the pack behind him. Leading these men, one took the rough along with the smooth.
They passed clusters of farm buildings, mud walled and thatched with reeds. A line of stout palms planted along an irrigation ditch. Mud walls, knee-high, chest-high. They poured over them with scarcely a pause, the clay brick crumbling under their feet and elbows and scrabbling fingers.
And at last, the great smell of the city itself, to be sensed with the nose, and felt as a shadow upon the mist around them. They were at the walls, fired brick, slimy, veined with ivy. “Follow them round—this way. On me, brothers,” Rictus panted. He heard the slap of their feet behind them, the sound women made when washing clothes on the stones of a river.
And here was the gate—a tall barricade of wood, reinforced with green bronze. It was closing in their faces. Rictus screamed something—he knew not what—and sprinted forward. His men roared out a wordless howl of anger and sped up with him. They crashed into the gate at full tilt, heads knocking against the wood with a ripple of cracks.
“Push, you bastards!” Rictus yelled, and they set their shoulders to it.
He backed out of the ranks of his struggling men, made for the dark, thinning gap, and squeezed through there. On the other side were a crowd of Kufr, tall, angular shapes, grunting and shouting. He stabbed the short spear into their bodies, hardly aiming the head of it. Behind him, more of his men were squeezing through the gap. Whistler was beside him, using a javelin as a spear. A sharp point keened off Rictus’s armour, the blow hardly felt. Then another. Someone was loosing arrows into the press, careless of who they hit.
The gates were opening now, and on the far side of them the Macht were a great mass of shouting men, shields held up over their heads, spearheads lancing out below, going for the bellies and groins of the Kufr. They poured into the city, the momentum on their side now, the gates all the way open, that torrent of muscle scraping them across the flags of the gatehouse floor. The Kufr fell back. There was torchlight here, mixed up and competing with the mist-bound glow of the rising sun. The morning was fighting its way into life. Rictus’s men were through the gatehouse and in the streets. Buildings reared up all around like red cliffs, Kufr running everywhere, showers of arrows hissing through the air, men going down with the feathered shafts skewering them. The Kufr were up on the rooftops, archers bobbing up to loose their shafts, others beside them hurling down bricks and stones and all manner of other debris. A dozen Macht were down now, and the cobbled brick of the roadway was puddled with their blood. The rest of the mora, still pushing and pulsing through the gates, set up a great shout as they saw their fallen comrades and lunged forward. The knot around the gatehouse broke up. The Macht leapt over their own dead and wounded and streamed up every street, cutting down all who stood in their way, kicking in doors and hauling out Kufr women, cutting their throats or stabbing them through the heart, the eyes. They pounded up the internal stairways to come out on the rooftops, and on the flat hard-packed earth above they slew their attackers without mercy, throwing them down to the street. Rictus saw two of his men catch a tall Kefren woman, pinion her arms and violate her with a javelin, laughing with a fierce, insane hatred as they did so.
He shouted orders, but they went unheard. The men were slipping out of his command, scattering into the maze of streets, pursuing any Kufr who dared show their face. And still, on the farther rooftops, the inhabitants of the city were popping up to shoot arrows and fling spears and stones, and carts were being wheeled across the roadways to bar the passage of the invaders. There seemed to be no soldiery resisting the Macht; it was the population itself. Rictus’s mora was being soaked into the city. It was disappearing in chaos and murder before his eyes.
He grabbed a young Macht by the scruff and clouted aside the knife which was raised in his face. “Get out of here, back to the army. Find Jason and tell him to bring up some of the other morai. Tell him we’re fighting in the streets, and like to be swamped if he does not hurry. Do you understand? Repeat it to me.” The boy did so, sour and resentful.
“What’s your name?”
“Lomnos.”
“Lomnos, if Jason does not get this message, I will come looking for you—you understand?”
The boy nodded, snarling, and then ran back the way he had come.
“Whistler, is that you? Not the head again.” Whistler’s bald pate had yet another slice out of it. He raised his hand and touched the blood. “Never felt it—I don’t feel nothing there no more—lucky for me, eh? Rictus, we’ve got to rein in these stupid fuckers before they burn the place down around us.”
“I know. Discipline is all to hell. Do what you can. I’ll try to get to the head of them.” Rictus took off up the steep city street at a run, grabbing men here and there, any face he recognised, any name he could shout out. Called like this, the men remembered their duty and followed him up the hill, but hundreds of Rictus’s mora were scattering through the city, killing and l
ooting as they went, beyond the reach of their centurions. The bodies began to pile up in the streets.
The boy Lomnos panted out his message with the spittle spraying from his lips. Jason set a hand on his shoulder. He looked around, saw Aristos in the midst of the marching column, and called him over.
“Take your mora into the city, at the double. Rictus may need help.” Aristos grinned, face flushing with pleasure. He turned to go.
“And Aristos—keep them in hand!”
The lead mora broke into a run, clapping on their helms and sliding their shields from back to shoulder with the neck-strap. Jason looked round again, saw Buridan two hundred paces away. He pointed to the city and pumped his fist up and down. Buridan nodded, and shouted at his men. Immediately, this second mora began to pick up their pace as well. Two thousand men, sweating and gasping in their armour, now streaming towards the open gates of Ab-Mirza at a run.
“Shields!” Jason cried. The centurions around him took it up, and the five middle morai of the column immediately broke ranks and made for the baggage train, where their shields were stored on the wagons. Morai took it in turns to provide the shield-bearing rear and van guards, because to march all day with the shield was punishing. It would thus be some time before Jason could send more fully-armed morai into the city. For the moment, whatever was happening in there was the concern of Rictus and Aristos and Buridan alone.
Perhaps two hundred men held around Rictus in a body; all that he could gather out of his mora. These were mainly veterans who had been close to him at the Kunaksa, older men with more level heads, but even they were eager to be off and join their comrades. He could feel it. Some fool had knocked a cresset into a stable, and half a street was burning. Rictus found himself frozen, staring at the flames, remembering Isca, the sound of the city’s torture roaring up into the pine-shrouded hills.
Up the steep city streets more troops were advancing, hundreds of heavy spearmen, a curse-bearer at the head. He doffed his helm and became Aristos, lithe, olive-skinned, his face alight with happiness. “Well, lads,” he shouted, “Let’s finish what Rictus has begun. Remember my uncle Argus—remember Phiron! Teach these kutr their names!”
Vorus was woken by an orderly, a young hufsan with a set face. “General, I was told to wake you. Outside, there is something you must see.”
Mystified, Vorus threw a blanket about his shoulders and padded barefoot out of the tent. Dawn was almost upon them, and the great camp around him was stirring, the smell of woodsmoke and horseshit mingling on the air.
“General Proxis is on the mound, sir,” the hufsan said.
Vorus laboured up the slope of the small tell, all that was left of some indescribably ancient city. There was a lookout post at the top, this being the highest point for miles around. Proxis stood there now, along with three other Juthan of the Legion.
“Proxis.”
“Look west, General. What do you see?
A glow on the brim of the sky, red in the white mist-sea which blanketed the plain. Vorus’s face hardened.
“They’re burning a city,” he said. “Where would that be?”
“Ab-Mirza. It’s sixty pasangs from here; two days’ march.”
“I know it. The King’s messenger got through, then; they must have made a fight of it.”
“That, or the Macht are simply setting an example.”
“I don’t think they would,” Vorus said quietly. “What purpose could it serve? No; there’s been a fight in that city, Proxis.”
“And the city has lost. The Governor of Ab-Mirza has brought ruin down on himself. And his people.”
“Would you suggest we order all governors to throw open the gates of their cities to these brigands?” Vorus asked, angry now. “The King was right. We must make them fight every step of the way.”
“Then they’ll be treading on Kufr bodies every step of the way,” Proxis retorted. Vorus turned from the silent spectacle on the horizon. Up here, on the tell, they were above the mist, and below they could hear but not see the army about them. As though it were a mere phantom.
“Proxis,” he said quietly. “My friend, what is the trouble?” He knew it went beyond this morning’s revelation. The three Juthan behind Proxis stared rigidly out to the west, but there was something there between the four of them, something Vorus felt had excluded him.
“Proxis?”
“Nothing. I do not like to see a city burn, that’s all.” Proxis was stone cold sober, with not a breath of wine about him, which meant he had not drunk the night before either. Vorus had known this Juthan for two decades, and he could not remember the last time Proxis had gone to bed without at least a cupful of something, if the cupful could be found.
“Join me in my tent. We’ll have some wine, warm our livers.”
“I have things to do,” Proxis said with a shake of his head.
“It’s not like you to turn down a drink, Proxis.”
The Juthan stared at him. He came up to Vorus’s chin, but was half as broad again about the shoulders. His yellow eyes had veins of blood shot through them, and in the dawn light his skin looked dark as charcoal. “Perhaps I will swear off wine. As a slave I drank every gut-rotting brew I could pour in my mouth,” he said. “Enough for two lifetimes.”
“You are not a slave now,” Vorus said hotly.
“We are all slaves, Vorus. Even you.”
He turned and left the summit of the tell and the three other Juthan followed him, silent and sombre as all their race. But now there was something missing—a certain regard for the general they passed by on their way down the hill. A deference which Vorus had scarcely remarked before, and only knew of now it was gone.
“Damn him,” Vorus whispered. “Twenty years too late, he becomes proud. Damn him.”
He looked back at Ab-Mirza’s ghost, burning in the mist of the far away horizon. We’ll be treading on bodies now, all right, he thought. Every step of the way.
TWENTY
INTO THE DARK TOGETHER
A campfire, and about it, eleven men who wore Antimone’s Gift.
“Why should we not?” Aristos demanded, eyes blazing. “We have the spears to take what we want, when we want it. This Great King of theirs is hiding off behind the eastern horizon somewhere. Why should we not rape his Empire as we march through it? Let us send him a message on the wind and make him smell the stink of his burning cities. Why should we not?”
Several of the other generals thumped their fists on their thighs in agreement. Jason noted their faces. Gominos the stout, Grast the ugly, Hephr the snide and Dinon the ass-licker. Thus had he labelled them in his mind. Then Mynon spoke up, bird-eyed Mynon, always drifting with the wind.
“Aristos may have a point to make, Jason. What does it gain us to negotiate with the Kufr, when we find their gates closed to us anyway?”
Jason was about to reply when Rictus spoke up. The boy’s eyes were like two windows of white glass in his darkly tanned face. The fury could be smelled off him. But he kept his voice even.
“Every time we sack a city, a little of the men’s discipline goes. Every time we let ourselves loose on the innocent and the unarmed, we poison a little of the soldier in us. We make ourselves into brigands and rapists and murderers. If we are to make it to the sea, then we must be soldiers before all else. We must have discipline, and the men must obey their officers. If that goes, that obedience, then we are finished. And we deserve to be finished, for we will be nothing more than criminals.”
Aristos snorted with laughter. “Well, listen to this, a strawhead with a sense of honour! Where did you pick that up, Rictus? Did your father tell you tales of bravery whilst fucking his sheep?”
They saw a blur, a shadow leap across the campfire. Then Aristos was on his back with Rictus atop him, a knife at the prone man’s throat, drawing blood. The other men about the fire froze for a second. Then Gominos drew his sword.
“Hold!” Jason bellowed. He strode forward and grasped Rictus’s shou
lder. “Off him, boy— that’s an order. Rictus!”
Rictus rose and thrust his knife back in his belt. He looked down on Aristos and said quietly,
“You ever mention my father again to me, and I will kill you.”
The knot of men opened up. Aristos rose, hand clenched on his own sword-hilt. The younger generals drew closer to him. “You had best leash this dog of yours, Jason,” Aristos spat, a mite unsteadily. “He is like to get a whipping if he keeps snapping at his betters.”
“Shut your mouth, you damn fool,” Buridan growled, more bear-like than ever in the firelight.
“Enough,” Jason snapped. “Aristos, do you contest my authority?”
“I say we vote for warleader again.”
“On what grounds?”
“On the grounds that some members of this Kerusia are not fit to command a mora.”
“I agree. But we are not going to start swapping generals right now, with the Great King on our tails and the supply-carts half-empty.”
“I say we put it to the vote, here and now!”
“And I say you shut your mouth, or I will demote you.”
“You can’t do that!” Aristos said, wide-eyed.
“I can. The generals were not voted in by the men. I simply gathered up the Second in every mora when we were down on our tits at Kunaksa. At the proper time, the men should have a say in their generals, but now is not that time. Do you agree?”
After a long moment, Aristos nodded.
“Then my orders are still to be obeyed. There will be no more sacking of Kufr cities. That is to be made clear all the way down the line. We’re in a hole as it is, without digging it any deeper.
Make it clear. I will begin instituting field punishments for any man who thinks otherwise.” He paused, looking them up and down, remembering Phiron and Pasion, Orsos and Castus, and the other dead men who had once stood where these striplings stood now. He felt old, he felt as though they were all diminished in some way. That sense of brotherhood that had taken them so far was gone now. He wondered if even Phiron could have brought it back after this.
