by Paul Kearney
Then the pain came, flooding his extremities, an exquisite rush of returning sensation. His lips drew back from his teeth. “I heard tell hell was a warm place,” he said.
“We’ll get you to it, soon enough,” Mynon said, grinning.
“You look old, Mynon. Is that grey I see in your beard?”
“No more than is in your own, Jason.”
“What happened?” The pictures trickled back into place now. He was alive—he was alive. And the wind had dropped.
“I thought it was time we got out of these mountains,” Rictus said. “We’re on the road again, making good time, or as good as you can get in this fucking place.”
“Ah, Rictus, wake me up when we get to where there are grapes on the vine and apples on the tree.”
“I will, Jason, you have my word on that. And it will not be so long now.” Rictus tried to smile, but the gesture did not take. He had dried blood on his face, a great brown splash of it. His eyes seemed to look beyond Jason, into some unseeable distance. Mynon’s eyes were the same.
When they left, Tiryn propped Jason up beside the fire so that he could look upon its wondrous heat and beyond it, the blinding white mantle of the world, dotted with the black, insignificant dots of moving men, pasangs away.
“What are they up to, so far from camp?” he asked Tiryn irritably.
“They’re scouting a way out of the mountains. When the snow lifted, some of those furthest up the hills swore they could see green lands beyond, out to the west.”
“How bad was it, Tiryn?”
“I thought you were dead,” she said, touching his face.
“No, no, damn it—the army.”
“Bad. I saw men weep. The sick, the wounded, they were all slaughtered, and hundreds more died in their blankets, or unarmed. Rictus brought them together. They stood with him and fought the Qaf to a standstill.”
“So, another victory, I take it,” Jason said, his mouth a bitter line.
“Another cairn. They built it yesterday, and then Rictus moved us on, up the valley. It’s warmer—can’t you feel it? Even here, spring has come, Jason. I can smell it. In the lowlands, it is full summer. When we leave these mountains, it will not be long before you have your grapes and your apples. I too promise you that.”
“I love you,” Jason said, not looking at her.
“What?”
“Help me up; don’t just stare at me like a pole-axed calf. I want to stand up, to smell this new air of yours.”
He was stronger—he felt it in his bones. He was over the worst of it now. His breathing would never be what it was, but he was alive. And he had this woman standing beside him, this fine woman who was not even human. And he did not care a damn.
“When we get clear of the mountains we’ll find somewhere, you and I,” he said to Tiryn. “Somewhere there is no snow, and there are no armies. A quiet place.”
“Grapes and apples,” Tiryn said, her arm about his shoulders.
“Hearth and home.”
They came down out of the high places at last, a meandering column of ragged, limping men, their beards long and tangled, their faces blackened by wind and cold. They drew in their midst thirty or forty battered carts, taking turns to haul and push them bumping over the rocks. In these were piled shields and helms and the cooking pots they had not cooked with for many days, and in the beds of the carts lay the gold of Tanis, or as much of it as had survived. Knowing it was within the vehicles, the men manhandled them along without complaint. Now that it seemed they might survive after all, it had taken on a new importance.
They marched with their spears in hand. Their armour they had abandoned up in the mountains, except for those among them who wore the Curse of God. As they descended the air grew warm about them, and they cast off the rags they had bound about their bodies, unstrapped the filthy bindings from their feet and marched barefoot, feeling the new grass between their toes. Their eyes glittered, sunken in fleshless faces. Some wept silently as they marched, not believing what they saw.
The land swelled out before them, a green and blue immensity running up to the horizon. Here and there the gleam of a river caught the sun, and there were trees, crops, orchards, and pasture-land with animals moving across it in herds. Nearer at hand a large town or city sprawled in the foothills below, the smoke rising from it in a thousand threads of grey. It was unwalled, the houses built of pale stone, roofed with clay tiles such as the Macht used themselves in the Harukush.
“That is Kumir,” Rictus said, pointing. “We’ll form up before the city and send an embassy, ask for supplies. This is rich country here, and it’s easy going all the way to the sea.”
“How much farther to the sea?” Whistler asked, scratching his scarred pate.
“A man marching light could make it in two weeks, I reckon.”
“Aristos must be close, by now,” Whistler said. “If he’s still alive.”
“I think he is,” Rictus told him. “His kind always are.”
He had been here before them, him and Gominos. The town elders came out to talk to Tiryn and Jason and Rictus with several hundred of their young men armed at their backs. They saw on the hill above their settlement a fearsome army, five thousand men or more, all standing in rank with faces lean and hungry as wolves, a rancid smell about them, and filth crusting every facet of their appearance except their spearpoints. These glittered painfully bright in the early summer sun. It was an army of vagabonds, but vagabonds who knew discipline, and were the more frightening for it.
The town’s Headman was an old Kefre, his golden skin faded, but his eyes still the startling violet of the Kefren high castes. He came forward leaning on a black staff and flanked by two others scarcely less infirm than he.
“You are Macht,” he said in Asurian.
“We are.”
“We have seen the likes of you before. Nine days ago your people came through here, a thousand of them. They stole our cattle and looted our farms and slew our folk out of hand. Are you here now to finish what they began?”
“Aristos,” Rictus said through clenched teeth.
It was Jason who spoke up in the Headman’s own language. “We need food, draught animals, and wagons. Give us those, and I swear we shall harm none of you.”
“How can I believe you?”
Tiryn stepped forward, dropping her veil. “You may believe him. These are not like the ones who came before. They are men of honour.”
The old Kefre stared at her, both startled and scandalised. “What do you do here, with these animals?” he demanded in Kefren, the language of the kings.
“I am guiding them home. The faster you provide them with what they need, the sooner they shall be gone. They are starving. If you do not give it to them, they will take it.”
The Kefre nodded slowly. “So it has always been. The spearpoint cannot be denied. Very well.” He paused. “I have heard stories from the south. These then are the Macht who fought the Great King?”
“They are.”
“Then we will feed them. But we will curse their names, and rue the very footsteps they must take across our world.”
Tiryn nodded. “I know,” she said.
* * *
They marched across the green hills and open farmland of Askanon, and upon meeting the Sardask River, they consulted Jason’s map and decided to cross it before it broadened in the flatter plains below. The army splashed through it thigh deep, and on the far side they pitched camp and sent out foraging parties. They drew water from the river and set it to boil in the centoi, whilst the herd of livestock that now travelled with them was picked through for the day’s meat. The citizens of Kumir had handed over all their draught animals to Aristos, and what was left over in their grain stores after the winter. There had been little enough to spare for the main body of the Macht, but for hungry men it had been enough. For a while at least.
Rictus and Jason stood at the riverbank, watching the water pass by and tossing stones into it like bo
red children. Both wore the Curse of God. Both were as lean as a man can be and still live. They looked almost of an age now; Rictus had lost the last rags of his youth in the Korash. His face was lined and he had the makings of a beard on his chin, for all his light colouring.
“In the mountains, we passed the line at which rivers choose where to flow,” Jason said. “In all our march thus far, they have been flowing from the west to the east, into the lowlands of the Middle Empire. Here, on this side of the high country, they flow east to west. This river ends in the sea, Rictus.” He shook his head slightly, and chuckled.
“I was born by the sea,” Rictus said. A moment later he added, “I like the sound of it, the smell. I shall be glad to look on it again.”
“Ah, it’s something to look at, I suppose. But I’ll not set sail upon it again, not if I can help it.”
Rictus turned, surprised. “You’ll have to, if you want to make the crossing to the Harukush.”
“There you have me. I’ve been meaning to say it, and now seems the time. I’ll be leaving you very soon, you and the army.” Rictus stared at him, mute.
“I’ve had enough of soldiering, Rictus. I’ve seen enough death. I’ve tramped halfway across the world, killing and watching others kill. Most of my friends are dead. I—” He stumbled a little. “I have no sons to carry on my name. I have nothing but this black armour on my back, and the spear-calluses on my hands. It is not much to show for a life.”
“You have a name among us whom you have led, and one day soon you will have one among all the Macht. You go home, and you’ll be a hero. There’s not a city in the Harukush would not empty its treasury to hire the man who led the Ten Thousand back from Kunaksa.”
“I am no longer that man.”
Rictus looked away. “Is it the woman? Is it Tiryn?”
“It’s her, as much as anything else.”
“You think you can live here, in the Empire, in peace—a Macht and a Kufr together?”
“The Empire is a big place. I intend that we shall lose ourselves in it. I want that peace, Rictus. I want soil to till, grapes to grow, an old hound to lie scratching itself at my feet.”
Rictus shook his head. For a second there flashed through his mind a picture of his father’s glen, the farm buildings, the quiet river. “The Great King will hunt you down,” he said, not without bitterness.
“I think he may have other things on his mind. From what we’ve heard, a good portion of the Empire is in chaos. Let him chew his way through that for a while, and he’ll forget us.”
“You’re wrong, Jason. You should stay with us. Come back to the Harukush.”
“And you think I could settle there in peace, with a Kufr woman for a wife? I’d sooner take my chances with the Great King’s wrath. My mind is made up. Tiryn and I leave the army in the morning. I’m sorry, Rictus.”
The Iscan moved away, stared out into the west and the blue distance there with the sun going down behind it. “I wish you luck, then.”
Jason set a hand on his shoulder. “You have come a long way from the strawhead I hired in Machran. You were born to lead, Rictus. Your time in the colour is only beginning. You, too, have a name among the Macht now.”
“Stay with us a little longer. Look upon the sea with me, Jason, and then take your leave. We’ll have a feast to mark your going. I’d not have you leave like a thief in the night.” Rictus’s voice was thick and raw. He remained staring at the western horizon. Jason shook him slightly.
“Very well. I suppose a new life can wait a few more days.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
THE SEA, THE SEA
Past the city of Ashdod the army marched, the Imperial Road unwinding beneath their feet like a carpet spread to speed them home. This was the province of Askanon, which once in the semi-legendary past had been conquered by their forefathers. They had landed in their black galleys at the mouth of the Haneikos River and had issued forth across the Great Continent with an arrogance the world had not seen since. Those ancient armies had marched east to the Korash Mountains, and there the black tide of the Macht had been foiled, beaten back by the overwhelming numbers and valour of the Kufr armies. That defeat had set the fate of the world for millennia, giving rise to an empire and an unbroken line of Kings. Now a Macht army was marching west in the footsteps of their ancestors. They were a mere remnant of what they had been: ill-equipped, half-starved, and ragged as tramps. But they were unbeaten, and word of their deeds had spread out across half the world.
Talking to frightened Kufr peasants in the farms they passed, Tiryn learned that the Juthan had set up a king for themselves, a soldier named Proxis. There were rumours of great battles with the Imperial armies along the Jurid River. And Ancient Artaka was still in revolt, shielded from reprisal by the bulwark of Jutha. All over the Empire, it was said, slaves were rising up against their masters, and chaos was threatening the line of Asur. Perhaps what men whispered around their night-time fires was true: the Empire’s day had come and gone. The world was being crafted anew according to some unknown whim of the gods above and below. Mot had destroyed the harvest of Pleninash, and there was hunger in the Land of the Rivers, the most fertile provinces in the entire world. The march of the Ten Thousand had been ordained by God, the Macht the instrument with which he had visited his wrath upon the earth.
“Imaginative fellows,” Jason said when Tiryn apprised him of the peasants’ stories. “I never thought I would be an instrument of God. Still, it’s something to know we’ve shaken the foundations of a world, the Juthan and us. I always thought those yellow-eyed folk were too quiet.”
“It’s why they were made slaves, far back in the past. They loved their freedom too much,” Tiryn said.
“Then I wish them luck. May they be a thorn in the Empire’s side forever.”
“You dismiss a world you know little about,” Tiryn said quietly.
“I do. I am an ignorant fool. I have walked half the earth with nothing in my heart but the craft of killing. I am changing, though. Be patient, Tiryn. Speak to me now, and tell me new words.”
“The word for a plough is kinshir. The word for a hoe is atak.” She paused. “The word for a child is oba.”
Jason looked at her, and smiled. “Good words. I shall have need of them all one day.”
The days passed, and the army came upon signs of Aristos’s passage ahead of them. Burnt-out villages, looted farmsteads, smoke on the far horizon. Every time they came to a large town, Tiryn had to speak with the inhabitants and assure them that the main body of the Macht would not behave as these forerunners had done. The men were in no mood for looting at any rate. They took what the folk of the country gave them and moved on, intent now on the way ahead, the end of the road. There were some five and a half thousand of them left alive. The wounded, the sick had all died in the mountains, and those who were left were the hardiest or the luckiest of the fourteen thousand that had taken ship with Phiron the year before. They moved in a compact column not two pasangs long, the single-axled carts hauled along in their midst and clattering on the stones of the Imperial Road. They had no armour left worth speaking of, their shields were piled in the mule-carts, and they marched with their spears to hand like nothing so much as a procession of staff-bearing pilgrims pursuing some crack-brained vision. Most still had their scarlet cloaks; the only badge they bore now. Centons had been amalgamated from half-strength remnants, and the Kerusia had more or less ceased to function. They followed Rictus and Jason, obeying their orders without question— for there were not many orders left to obey. They had only to march, to put one foot in front of the other, to keep their ranks and eat up the pasangs day after day with their eyes fixed on the west.
Whistler commanded the light troops now and took them ahead every morning at dawn to sniff out the way ahead. Seventeen days out from Kumir the army found itself marching up a long incline, a line of high ground dotted with woods and cropland, the earth rising up to bring close the horizon. Rictus and Jason
, at the front of the column, saw some of Whistler’s men come running back down this hill, sprinting like men who carry news. As they drew closer, it could be seen that these were the youngest and fleetest among the Hounds, mere boys most of them, with hard eyes now wide and bright. They were shouting as they ran, waving their arms as though afraid they would not be seen.
“What is it?” Rictus demanded as one collapsed at his feet, chest heaving. “Geron, isn’t it? Take your time.”
“The sea!” the boy cried, gulping for air as though the words would choke him. “The sea!”
The words went down the column more quickly than a racing horse. They were repeated. The entire army took them up. Rictus bent over the gasping, grinning, hiccupping boy. “Geron, are you saying—”
I he column broke up. Men began running up the long slope ahead. At its top, more of the Lights could be seen now, waving their spears in the air, hallooing down at their comrades. The Macht became a crowd of running men, hundreds, thousands leaving the road to begin running westwards towards the men on the hill ahead. The mule-carts were abandoned. Men tripped up and were knocked aside. Jason and Rictus and Tiryn stood together over the boy Geron as he climbed to his feet. “General, up ahead, you can see it from the hilltop, I swear. You can even smell it on the air.”
Mochran and Mynon joined them, jostled and bumped by the tide of men running past. “Is it true?” Mochran demanded. “Boy, I’ll brain you if it’s not.”
“Just a few pasangs, General, I swear by the mother that bore me. Go up the hill and see for yourself.”
They looked at one another and finally Jason said, “Well, brothers,” and led the way.
At the top of the hill fully two thirds of the army now stood and knelt and embraced each other and wept and shouted thanks to the gods. Rictus felt his heart rising in his throat, beating as fast as if he were going into battle. Beside him, Jason and Tiryn strode hand in hand. The Kufr woman had torn the komis from her head and her dark hair was blowing out like a flag in the wind.
