by Kearney Paul
‘Hear me out, without wasting any wine this time. If I cannot speak my mind to you, then I should roll up my pack and march home.
‘Fight the battles as you always have, by all means. But use your mixed blood to win the peace afterwards. If you portrayed yourself more as a... as a –’
‘A Kufr?’
‘As a Kefre, among his own people, then you will find this empire you’re making easier to rule when the bloodletting is done.’
Corvus glared at the older man. ‘I’ve been playing the Macht for long enough, is that it, Rictus? Now that we’re here in the empire, I can revert to my true self – a Kufr. How do you think the army would take that?’
‘You are both Macht and Kufr. The two bloods that are in you made you what you are. Without either, we would not be here now, and the thousands of men forming up to the east of this tent would never have thought to march so far. They follow Corvus, their king.’ Rictus smiled now. ‘And if he is a strange-looking little wight with something of the east about him, then what is that? Men need a hint of difference in the leaders they follow.’
‘Not too much difference. A King of the Macht with Kufr blood – I do not think they are ready for that yet, Rictus.’
‘Many suspect it already. We are surrounded by the Kufr, Corvus, and the men see now what is in you. They see that the people of the empire are your people also.’
‘You are becoming something of a philosopher in your old age.’
‘You take the spear out of a man’s hand, and he must fall back on something. Words, usually. Or wine.’
Corvus drew close. ‘I will think on your words, brother. Do not think I will not. Ardashir has already said similar things, though he cannot be as direct as you. No-one can.’
Corvus turned away again, and laughed, a free, unforced laugh – the first Rictus had heard from him in a long time.
‘Look at us, discussing the disposal of an empire that is not yet ours. There are two hundred thousand Kufr asleep on the plain east of here who have come to dispute that little fact with us, Rictus. We could both of us be dead by tomorrow night.’
‘I could choke on a plum stone tonight, or take a fit while having a shit. Men must make provision for a future, even when they are not so sure they will live to see it.’
Corvus turned away at this. Over his shoulder he said, ‘Do you know the full story of the skirmish at the farm Ardashir and I became caught up in some days ago?’
‘I know you brought back some wounded waifs and strays, and a body we burned with more ceremony than it warranted.’
‘The girl is beautiful, is she not?’
‘The boy, too, though the surgeon tells me he is a eunuch. Last night I had to slap sense into a few of our people who were about to have some fun with them.’
Corvus glared again. It was his battlefield look. The eyes went wide until there were whites all around the iris, and his voice lowered an octave. Rictus did not believe it was a conscious thing, but it was like watching something possess him, and it never failed to unnerve anyone who saw it.
‘Who were they? Name them to me.’
‘I will not. They were fools, and I slapped them down. There was no harm done. We are not going to start hanging men on the eve of battle, Corvus, no matter who they were pawing.’
‘You do not know who she is, Rictus. The girl, I have discovered, is a daughter of the Great King himself, a royal princess.’
Rictus snorted. ‘What?’
‘It’s true. I have had some of the story from her, some from the Kufr wounded we brought back to camp in the wake of the fight. Her name is Roshana. Her brother Rakhsar died on the field, killed by his elder brother, the heir to the throne.’
‘You mean to tell me –’
‘They were all there together, the elder pursuing his younger siblings – or half-siblings. I had the Great King’s eldest son on the point of my lance. I could have killed him, Rictus, but I was distracted.’
‘The girl.’
‘The girl’ – Corvus shrugged – ‘and the small matter of a thousand enemy cavalry. But yes; her face is enough to distract any man. It is the stuff of tall tales, is it not?’
‘Phobos! And the heir to it all got away, you say.’
‘Possibly. It was the strangest thing. Only Ardashir and I, and now you, know the whole truth of it.’
‘This girl, also, is the strangest thing...’ Rictus tailed off.
‘You’re not as incisive as you think, brother. I have been thinking over some of your ideas for a long time now. It seems to me we have been given a sign, a gift if you like.
‘If all goes well – if this time tomorrow we are alive and whole and victorious, then I intend to make this royal princess, Roshana, my wife.’
RICTUS WALKED OUT of the camp that night, clad in the Curse of God and carrying a drepana, but with the rest of his panoply left with the baggage. He strode out under the stars, leaving behind the milling assemblies of the army and the startled sentries, and trudged up to a low knoll some two pasangs from the camp lines, where a trio of lonely olive trees huddled. There was stone in the grass at his feet, and he realised the mound was something man-made and ancient, its history buried under more history, millennia of stories laid down in layers, forgotten now. Perhaps it had been a tomb, perhaps a place to speak and be heard. Now it was simply somewhere he could sit and look out in the night at the turning darkness of the world.
There was a stifled curse in the dark, the click of hobnails on stone, and then a wineskin was tossed out of the gloom and struck him on the chest.
‘You’re getting to be an eccentric old bastard, you know that?’
Fornyx’s voice.
‘And you’re blind as a mole, if you stub your toes in starlight as bright as this.’
Fornyx sat down beside him in the dry grass. He wore full armour save for his helm, and swore at the clasps as he undid them. Then he tossed his black cuirass to one side as if it were a thing of little account, and pulled the cork from the skin.
They shared the wine, a swallow each, back and forth as if it were some wordless game.
‘I wish Valerian was here,’ Fornyx said.
‘Lord of Irunshahr. The boy made it a long way. I wish him well.’
‘May he find himself a bow-legged woman who bears him many sons,’ Fornyx said solemnly. He took another snort, and wiped his mouth.
‘The men will miss you out there tomorrow,’ he said, quietly.
‘I’ll be out there. I’ll just be behind instead of in front.’
‘Kesero is useless. Fifteen years in the scarlet and he hasn’t the sense of a goose.’
‘But you tell him to stand somewhere, and he will stay there. That’s why he was banner-bearer all those years.’
‘Too stupid to retreat,’ Fornyx agreed.
‘Keep him in the centre; he’ll do well there. And watch your left. Don’t come unattached from Demetrius’s flank. Many of the latest draft are green as grass. If they see a gap, they’ll go to pieces.’ Rictus paused. Fornyx was looking at him, smiling into his beard.
‘There’s an old saying about grandmothers and eggs, Rictus. Let me see if I can remember how it goes...’
‘Fuck off, you shortarsed little shit. Give me the wine.’
They drank. Rictus unbuckled his own cuirass and hauled it off. He laid the black plates of it on his knee and wiped a palm across them.
‘You ever notice, Fornyx, how even the dust will barely stick to a black cuirass?’
‘I know. Water, too. Once Corvus becomes king of the world he should get old Parmenios to take a look into the things, see if we can’t hammer out a few more.’
‘I don’t think we ever will. Whoever made them, their art is lost for good.’
‘I could never wear a bronze cuirass again. The weight! I’ve heard old men say that there’s a forgotten place in the deep Harukush where they mined the stuff that makes the Curse of God, but that it was lost in some disaster. Fire, flood and ea
rthquake – the usual tales.’
Rictus set Antimone’s Gift aside.
‘What won you over?’
Fornyx paused with the neck of the wineskin on his lips. ‘Eh?’
‘Corvus. How did he do it? There was a time not so long ago when you were the most awkward bugger at the table, but now he has you convinced. Did his genius dazzle you at last, Fornyx?’
‘Genius? Genius, my arse.’ Fornyx drank deep. The wine ran black from the corner of his mouth.
‘He said he would take Machran, and he did. He said he would be King, and he was. Now he says he will be Great King, and I want to be there to see that day, Rictus. He has us all now, caught in the fire of his dreams. We can no more turn away than the moth can leave the flame. For some it is power, riches – the chance to be something approaching a king. For others like me, well –’ he grinned. ‘I just want to see how it turns out.’
‘You don’t argue with him any more, or question his strategy.’
‘No. Because he has proved himself. And also, we all have you to do that for us. He will take it from you, Rictus, and if it were one of the other marshals, I believe he would get that look on his face – you know the look – and blood would flow. But you, he still listens to.’
‘I can’t be the conscience of an entire army, Fornyx.’
‘You’re doing all right so far. And he knows it – that’s why he has taken you out of the front line. He needs you, Rictus, and we all know it. If there was no man around rash enough to speak the truth to his face, what would he become?’
‘Perhaps that’s the reason the ancient Macht got rid of kings,’ Rictus said wryly.
‘Well we’re stuck with one now, may Antimone watch over him. We’ll need that little bastard and his hare-brained plans tomorrow, to help even up the odds.’
They drank some more. The skin was half-empty, but the wine had not gone to their heads. The stars were a little brighter, perhaps, but that was all.
‘Did you see the girl he brought back to camp?’
‘The little Kufr with the shaven head? Half the army is talking about her. A little beauty, they say.’
‘She reminds me of Aise.’
Fornyx was shocked into silence for a moment. Rictus’s wife had been dead these seven years, and he rarely spoke her name.
‘When she was young. She had the same pale face, that fine-boned strength to her. The black hair. Do you remember, Fornyx?’
‘I remember,’ his friend said heavily.
‘I’ve been thinking on her lately. The early years when we were all together: you, me, Aise and poor Eunion. Building that house stone by stone at the river. The pictures are in my mind tonight, as clear as if it were yesterday, and not a quarter of a century ago.’
‘Rictus –’
‘I don’t want to remember, Fornyx. Not those things. I don’t want those memories in my mind, the knowledge of what happened after...’ His voice thickened.
‘Tomorrow, when the thing begins, I will be where I belong; standing beside you in the front rank.’
‘Rictus –’
‘Hold your tongue and drink, Fornyx. You think I would let a little shit like you take my Dogsheads into battle? The last battle, if Corvus is right. You say you would not miss it for the world. Well, neither would I.’
Rictus smiled. He was drunk at last. He felt it come upon his mind like a blessing.
‘My wife is a long time dead, brother. I know that. But her face has been in my head ever since Machran; it is clearer to me than the faces of my grandchildren, than that of any man I ever killed. But in the othismos; in that black dream of Phobos where there is nothing but blood and sweat and death – in that heart of battle – it is then that I feel free, and unafraid. Only then. It is the only place I know where the memories cannot follow.’
He squeezed the last of the wine down his throat while Fornyx watched.
‘In the morning, little brother, I shall be by your side where I belong.’
SEVENTEEN
GAUGAMESH
THERE HAD BEEN reports of dust clouds to the west, and scouts had been sent out to investigate, but none had returned. For three days now, the Great King had been ordering parties of cavalry into the west to find his enemy, and in all that time none of them had come back, save one.
But the Macht were out there somewhere, as Kouros could testify.
He rode in the swaying palanquin with his father, the motion of the elephant easier on his wounded shoulder and knitting ribs. He bore the pain better than he once would have, and he found the Great King looking at him now and again in a kind of reappraisal. The feverish paranoia of earlier days had gone. Rakhsar was dead, and for the first time in his life, Kouros felt at ease. There was no-one else now. The intrigues were over at last.
They were far back in the endless column, which was itself one of several unending snakes of men and animals trickling their way across the flat, fecund country west of the Bekai River. The city of Carchanish, sixty pasangs behind them, had been transformed into an enormous supply dump. Foodstuffs, waggons, fresh horses, armour and weapons were flooding into a vast stockaded second city which had been constructed on the east bank of the river. This was their base of operations. If they did not contact the enemy some time in the next few days, that base would have to be brought forward, with all the labour that entailed. And this was one of the reasons why the progress of a large army was so agonisingly slow.
I never knew that the waging of war could prove so tedious, Kouros thought.
Rakhsar’s face, as the blade went into his belly. That sneer gone at last. Kouros dwelled on the image, warming himself at it like a man at a fire.
His father was watching his face, as if he knew what his eldest son was thinking. Kouros shifted on the padded cushion, his ribs flaring into pain. He could not meet his father’s eyes, even now.
Horses galloping past. They stamped to a halt, and there was shouting, an unthinkable breach of protocol so close to the King’s person.
‘What are they at?’ Ashurnan muttered, disturbed from a reverie.
‘My lord – my lord!’ A familiar voice.
Both Kouros and Ashurnan lifted aside the gauze curtains of the palanquin and looked down. It was Dyarnes, helm off and komis thrown down around his chin.
‘What is this, Dyarnes?’ Ashurnan demanded.
‘Forgive me, my king, but we have sighted the enemy – they are directly to our front and already in line of battle.’
‘What?’ Ashurnan sputtered. He looked up at the sun in some bewilderment. It was early morning, and the column had barely gotten under way. The men at the rear had not even begun marching out of last night’s camp yet.
‘How close are they?’
‘We must form the line at once, lord. With your permission, I deem it imperative that we bring in the other columns and deploy for battle.’
‘Are they advancing?’
‘Not yet. They’re just standing there.’
‘How many?’ this was Kouros, hissing with pain as he leaned over the rail of the palanquin. The elephant tossed his head under them and the whole construction rose up and down like a boat on a wave.
‘They are not many, my prince – not a fifth of what we have brought.’
Then why stand and wait for us? Kouros wondered.
‘Bring in the columns – deploy the troops,’ Ashurnan snapped. ‘We must attack as quickly as possible, before they can get away. Move up your leading elements, Dyarnes, and send a courier to the rear. The men behind us will have to run. We must crush them, Dyarnes – do you hear me? They must not escape. And bring me my chariot.’
SO THIS WAS what happened when the enemy was tracked down at last.
Chaos.
Kouros could not remain on the Great King’s elephant without the Great King, nor was he fit to ride a horse, so he joined his father in the royal chariot. This was an immense affair drawn by four black Niseians and crewed by a driver and two bodyguards, Honai chose
n by the Great King himself. A parasol overhung it to keep the sun off their heads, and there were holsters of javelins in front of either wheel.
The vehicle was beautifully sprung, ornamented with enough precious stones and chased silver to buy a city, and it had loops of red Bokosan leather to steady oneself by. The floor, also, was red leather, criss-crossed straps embroidered with golden wire. And rearing above it, the purple imperial banner was suspended from a cross-piece of varnished oak. It had been built to catch the eye, to provide a focal point on the battlefield, and to reassure the assembled thousands that their lord was in their midst, watching them.
It thundered up the roadway now, scattering everything in its path, preceded and followed by a hundred picked cavalry from all over the empire, though most wore the blue-enamelled armour of Arakosia. The Great King himself took the whip, and flicked it over the rumps of the straining Niseians with a smile in his beard.
Kouros studied his father discreetly. For days the old man had been withdrawn and uncommunicative. He had not been told that Rakhsar and Roshana were dead, but he seemed to know nonetheless. He had watched Kouros with that odd new look, and bade him join him on the back of the elephant, an honour not bestowed lightly.
Could it be respect? The Arakosans had gone out to look for Kouros and brought him back more dead than alive. Ashurnan had expressed no concern, asked no questions. But he had treated Kouros differently ever since.
And for once, Kouros had enjoyed writing a letter to his mother.
THE COLUMN HAD fractured all around them, and companies of infantry were spreading out across the plain on all sides, some running, all being screamed at by officers both mounted and afoot. There seemed to be little order involved, but the milling mobs were at least all moving the right way. Every one of them had their faces turned to the west, and the sun was behind them. Even the simplest peasant conscript could be told to keep the sun on his back. The army was disordered, chaotic and confused, but it was advancing in the right direction; a flood of men pouring across the earth in the rising dust.
