by Paul Kearney
“A burial cairn,” Rictus said heavily.
“I know this face—I know this face!” one of the Hounds shouted. “This is Creanus of Gleyr, Gominos’s mora.”
Rictus and Phinero looked at one another. “There’s been a fight here,” Phinero said.
“But who were they fighting?”
“They got the best of it, or they wouldn’t have stayed around to cover their dead.” The bodies were stripped of all clothing, blue and naked save where the deep gashes and bruises of their wounds discoloured the skin. Their mound was taller than Rictus.
“He lost a lot of men,” Rictus said. “This was no skirmish. There’s two hundred dead in here, or more.”
Phinero was staring up at the snow-wrapped heights of the mountains, the wind blowing white banners from their summits. Not so much as a bird stirred in that savage sky. “What in hell did this?”
Rictus began replacing the stones upon the cairn. “When we meet up with Aristos,” he grunted, “I’ll be sure to ask him.”
* * *
That night the scattered bivouacs of the Macht drew together, and for the first time since entering the high mountains they camped like an army, with sentries set out every fifty paces and the baggage in the middle of the encampment. The big centoi were left on the wagons, for there was nothing to cook in them, nor anything to heat them with. The men lay close together in the darkness, chewing raw mule meat and speculating about the fate of Aristos and Gominos. Around them, the wind roared down the valleys of the Korash, picking up until it sounded like the howl of beasts lost somewhere out in the storm. On its white wings the snow began to come down harder, until a blizzard blanked out the world and the sentries were brought in lest they be lost within it. The snow raged and thrashed in the grip of the wind, fat, soft flakes that built up into drifts and began to bury the shivering men. When morning came there was no light, no dark, no east or west, only the empty shriek of the wind and the mounting snows, a world swallowed up by the fury of the endless mountains.
TWENTY-FIVE
THIS ANCIENT IDEA
When the sun was high, Vorus could stand up and see a single square of blue sky set in the vaulted brickwork of the roof. His cell was small, barely a spear-length to a side, but it soared up in blackened brick curves to come to this point. For a few, magical moments every day, the sun came down through this masoned hole like a ladder of light being lowered for him. He struggled to his feet every time, the shackles cutting into his wrists and ankles, his toes sliding in the sodden straw upon the floor. For that brief mote of time he looked up into the face of mighty Araian each day, and felt as light as the dust dancing in the sunbeam. Then the moment passed and he was in darkness again, awash in his own filth, the iron manacles cutting slivers from his flesh, the rats scuttling in the gloom around him. It seemed as though it had been a long time, this subterranean existence, but it had not been much more than seven days. Or eight—or ten. He was no longer sure. Perhaps it had been ten years. He was a patient man though, and his mind was clear. Since he had been here the only distractions he faced were the arrival of a bowl through the slot in the door every day and the coming of the sun. He had mused upon his condition with equanimity, knowing that things would come around to him again. He had only to wait, and fill in the blank hours with his thoughts.
After Irunshahr he had ridden south amid the mobs of his fleeing troops, not trying to halt them or bring any organisation out of that chaos. It was no longer his job. He had been four days travelling, subsisting on the scraps in his saddle-bag, following the Imperial Road south and east but remaining clear of it, watching the Empire slowly regain control of the army the Macht had broken. He had stayed one night with an elderly farmer, alone in his turf-walled house with his dog and his plot of corn. The old man had spoken of the end of the world, the fall of the Empire, and Mot coming back to haunt the face of Kuf to set the Great Bull free to trample all the works of the Kefren. Word of the Juthan mutiny had spread fast; now there were rumours of uprisings all over the Middle Empire, the slave-race turning on their ancient masters at last. The Bull let loose.
Word travelled fast along the Imperial Road. At Edom, Vorus had been arrested on the orders of Tessarnes, the Kefre to whom he had turned over the army. He had been thrown in here to contemplate a square foot of sky. After they had manacled him, he had lain down and had perhaps the longest and deepest sleep of his life. It had been a long rime since last his mind had truly been at rest.
The lock turned in the door, a sound he had not heard since his arrival. He rose to his feet, naked, his beard matted, lice crawling in his hair, and awaited the new distraction.
Bent almost double, two Honai of the Imperial bodyguard entered the cell one after the other. So bright and bejewelled was their armour that it seemed a little of the sun had returned with them, even down to the golden sheen of their faces under the tall helms. They had naked swords in their hands, and took up station in the corners of the cell without a word.
A third Kefre entered, this one swathed in folds of midnight silk, komis pulled close about his face. Vorus knew the eyes, though. He bowed at once.
“Your majesty, you honour me.”
The Great King straightened, and did the same thing Vorus had done upon entering the cell for the first time: he looked up at the square of sky high above. He met Vorus’s eyes, his own almost black in the gloom. Nodding, he said, “Leave us,” to the guards.
They hesitated, then dumbly did as they were told.
“And pull the door to after you.”
The Great King and his general, alone together, stood in the stinking straw while the rats rustled heedless around their feet.
“I could not do otherwise, my friend,” Ashurnan said. His voice was thick and raw.
“I know. You are a king, after all.”
“You let Proxis go. You knew what he was about.”
“I had an idea, yes.”
“Why, Vorus—why?”
The Macht sank to his haunches in the straw. “Forgive me,” he said. “I am getting old, I think.” He smiled at the veiled figure which towered over him, as baleful and threatening as could be imagined, except for the real grief in the eyes.
“I wanted to let him choose for himself. I had not the right to compel him.”
“You were his superior, his friend. You had every right.”
“My lord, I owed Proxis a life. Now I have repaid that debt.”
“He has shattered the Empire.”
With great gentleness, Vorus said, “He has freed his people.”
“He has bought his people a generation of war. The moment I heard, I set the army on the road. Jutha will be subjugated once more. The Empire will be reunited. It will endure.”
“It will endure, yes; but perhaps in a different form. My lord, here at the end of my life, I have come to understand that an entire race cannot be enslaved forever.”
“Is it only your friend’s fate which has brought this thought to your mind, or has the pursuit of your own people changed you? The Vorus my father knew would not say things like this.”
“I was younger then. I had not seen quite so much death. And yes, seeing my own people again has changed me. If Proxis had not deserted at Irunshahr, I would have destroyed the Ten Thousand, and now I am glad that I did not, glad that Proxis took his people home, glad that my people escaped.”
“I thought you were loyal. I thought you were my friend.”
“I am your friend, Great King. But you and the Empire are not the same.”
“They are; they must be. My race, my blood conjured up this ancient idea out of nothing. They ordered the world, quelled all wars, made it safe for the farmer to till his land. They brought peace to millions. What have your Macht done to make them so mighty?”
“They believe in freedom,” Vorus said. “And that will never be taken out of them, not by you or any other king who ever wears a crown.”
“Freedom! Was that what they were teaching the
people of Ab-Mirza? They are barbarians. They have brought war throughout the Empire, and just when you had it in your power to crush them, you failed.”
“Yes, I did. And yes, they are barbarians. But they are my people, when all is said and done. I shall die one of them.”
There was a pause. Then Ashurnan asked, “Your black armour, where is it? You were not wearing it when you were taken.”
“I buried it.”
“So no Kufr would ever find it.”
“So no Kufr would ever find it.”
The Great King’s eyes flashed. “A traitor, at the end.”
“No lord. A loyal servant, come to the end of his usefulness.”
“They want me to burn you alive, here on the battlements of Edom like a common criminal.”
Vorus’s face stiffened slightly. “So be it.”
Ashurnan watched him for a long moment. “I do not think my father would do such a thing, not to his friend.”
“Your father would have done whatever he thought necessary, and he would have regretted the necessity later, in private. But he would have done it.”
Ashurnan reached under his robe and produced a long-bladed knife. He tossed it onto the floor before Vorus with a dull clang. “I am not my father,” he said simply.
Vorus stared at the knife. Tears welled up in his eyes. He looked at Ashurnan and smiled. “Thank you, my lord,” he whispered.
The Great King bowed deep before his servant, then snapped, “Guards!”
The door scraped open again behind him.
“Goodbye, Vorus.”
The Macht general bowed wordlessly and Ashurnan left the cell, the door grating shut behind him, the key turning in the lock.
Vorus picked up the knife, tested the edge. He looked up one last time at the square of blue sky high above his head.
“Proxis,” he said, “I wish you well.”
Then he thrust the keen point of the weapon deep, deep into his heart.
TWENTY-SIX
GRAPES AND APPLES
Tiryn raised her head, listening. The wind had dropped a little, she thought. After three days of hearing it shriek in the same monotonous note, she was sure of it. Something else, though— something different over the wind.
Jason grasped her hand. She saw his eyes glitter, awake at once. “You hear that?” he asked.
A man screamed, quite close by, and there was a great animal bellow.
“Phobos!” Jason exclaimed. “Help me up.”
“No—stay down. You’re not fit to go outside.”
“Shut up, woman, and help me.”
Shouting all around them now, men casting orders into the storm, metal clashing. Tiryn unloosed the end-flap of the canopy and at once it flew up and flapped madly, scattering snow, beating against the frame. Freezing, snow-thick air struck her face, a physical blow. The blizzard was still upon them, snowflakes hard as gravel, the drifts halfway up the wheels of the wagon. She dropped down into them. Before her men were charging, black against the snow, disappearing and reappearing as the blizzard blasted about them. A line of white mounds close by; those were the mules.
She helped Jason down into the snow. He reached back into the wagon-bed and slid out his spear, leaned on it like an old man. Tiryn took his other arm. “What in hell is going on?” he wondered. “An attack?”
Something huge reared up out of the snow, barely twenty paces from them. It was taller than the spear Jason held. Two lights burned in its head, bright as frost. It opened a red maw and roared at them. They had a brief impression of a huge bulk, white-furred, and then it bowled away through the snow, man-like, bipedal, but using its great arms to gather speed, chopping through the drifts like a wind-driven boat.
“Qaf,” Tiryn said. “It is the Qaf. Oh, Bel, be merciful. We must hide, Jason.”
“What—and miss all the fun?”
“You can scarcely stand.”
The camp was in chaos. In the gaps between curtains of driven snow they saw men coming together in knots and crowds, spears facing outwards. The Qaf came up to these and launched themselves on the spearpoints, white and unreal as ghosts, bellowing like maddened bulls. Tiryn saw one of the Macht picked up and flung thirty feet through the air, another lifted and torn to pieces between two of the giant creatures. Centurions were shouting orders, half heard in the storm. Throngs of men waded through the snow to the wagons to fetch their shields and armour. The Qaf launched into these and scattered them. A wagon was overturned, crashing onto its side. The wheels were ripped off and flung through the air. The roaring of the Qaf hurt the ears.
“Let’s find a hole to hide in,” Jason said. “These bastards are too big for me.”
“Back in the wagon.”
“No—out in the snow. Come on, Tiryn.” With surprising strength he struggled through the drifts, out from the camp. Tiryn bore half his weight, his spear the other.
“Down—down,” he hissed, and they collapsed into the snow. Half a dozen of the great beasts chopped past them. Their eyes were blue, and lit up like winter stars, deep-set in massively built skulls. Wide nostrils in the middle of their faces, not much more than holes, and fanged mouths from which the hot breath issued in smoking clouds. Their white fur was caked in rime and ice, as though this were part of their physiology. They were mere beasts, but they walked upright for the most part, and they had hands like those of men, pink-skinned, black-nailed, and as wide as shovels.
Tiryn and Jason lay in the drift, half-buried, the cold sinking through their layered clothing, smarting the exposed flesh of their faces.
“Are they just beasts, or do they have minds?” Jason asked, shivering.
“They can speak, after a fashion. They keep to themselves, in the high mountains. I heard tell there were some brought all the way to Ashur, but they did not do well in the heat.”
The sounds of battle now carried clearly over the wind. Men had congregated together and were fighting back with the long spears. The smaller groups were overwhelmed, but where the Macht could present a united front of bristling aichmes they held their ground, stabbing out at the Qaf with the courage of desperation. The great creatures coursed throughout the camp, killing men who were floundering through the snow to join their comrades, tossing them up into the air as a dog would fling a rat. They killed the surviving draught animals with great blows of their fists, smashed the wagons to matchwood, and stamped the life out of the sick and wounded as they lay helpless in the snow.
Jason and Tiryn crawled into a snowdrift, tunnelling into it like moles and excavating a white cave for themselves. There they lay, spent, their noses touching. Jason smiled at her. “I did not think it would end like this, buried in a snowdrift.” His lips were blue.
“It has not yet ended,” she said.
“Wake me up when it does,” Jason said. He was drifting off. He had stopped shivering. Tiryn drew him close to her, wrapped her limbs around him. The flesh of his face felt like cold wax. “Do not sleep,” she said brokenly. “Stay with me, Jason.” But there was no reply.
“Hold fast!” Rictus shouted. “Spears up. Forget about the damn shields. Skewer these bastards!”
Hundreds of men had come together now and were fighting in a great circular bristling mass, four and five men deep. About them the Qaf raged like some manifestation of the storm, charging into the spears in ones and twos, sometimes penetrating far enough to grab a man off his feet, more often pierced through and through, bellowing in rage as they died with the spear-points thrust in their eyes. They had no discipline, no fighting system, just the raw fury of animals, and they failed to combine their attacks. Had they done so, the line of Macht would have quickly been overwhelmed. Rictus stood back from the front ranks and watched the Qaf range through the camp beyond. There were not so many of them as he had thought. A few hundred, perhaps. Out in the shifting snow, he could see other formations of the Macht fighting as these were, gathering together shoulder to shoulder and setting their heels in the ground.
Whistler joined him. “They’re backing off a little. They’re not much more than animals, after all.”
“Who’s here—any centurions?”
“Dinon, and Navarnus of the Owls.”
“All right—you hold here with them. I’m taking a centon forward.”
“Rictus—”
“Do as I say.”
Rictus gathered up perhaps a hundred men, and these he led forward into the caterwauling fury of the Qaf. They advanced step by step, spears out on all sides, stabbing like men possessed at the monsters that towered over them. One of the Qaf launched itself into their midst, its great weight bowling half a dozen men through the air. The men of the inner ranks drew their knives and swords and fell upon it like vultures, hacking the beast to pieces even as it struggled to regain its feet again.
The Qaf fell back. Across the gutted wreck of the camp, other formations of Macht were following Rictus’s example, and moving forward to engage the largest crowds of the enemy. The Macht made of themselves bigger monsters than those they faced, monsters with a hundred heads and a hundred keen spearpoints all in a body, all moving as one. As the Qaf split up, so they became easier to kill, one by one, until some kind of tipping point was reached. A collective howl went up from the beasts. They backed away from the thick formations of spearmen, roaring and spitting hatred. The Macht were able to look up and see them streaming back up the mountainsides, scrabbling up the rock-strewn heights at incredible speed, quadrupeds now, their long arms hauling them forward.
They took the storm with them, it seemed. As the last of them disappeared into the folds and rock-fields of the summits above, so the wind fell, and soon after the snow drifted down in a heavy silence, the thick flakes intent now, it seemed, on burying the dead.
“It’s quiet,” Jason said. “Am I dead, then?”
“If you are, you’re in bad company,” Rictus told him.
Jason opened his eyes. Tiryn, as always, Rictus, and Mynon—all looking at him as though he were some form of freak. He was warm. He could smell woodsmoke, feel the heat of flames. He had almost forgotten what it was like.
