by Kearney Paul
Let the King of the Macht try and halt this tide, Kouros thought. And he gripped the hilt of the cheap iron kitchen knife in his sash. He had kept it as a kind of talisman. His brother’s blood was still black upon it.
The green country around them was leached away. The land rose slightly, becoming a plateau many pasangs wide standing somewhat above the fertile plain. The ground was stonier here, crossed by the dry ruin of ancient watercourses, and the dust was choking, kicked up by men and animals to tower in the sky. This was empty country, a pocket of scrub savannah which was as ancient as the tells of the green river valleys. Too arid for crops, or even to support a herd of goats, these raised pockets of desert were known as gaugamesh in the Asurian tongue: a place blighted by the god Mot, where no man might grow things.
This is where we fight? Kouros wondered. He squeezed the waterskin that hung in the chariot, and thought of the tens of thousands all around him, and the dry country which they were traversing.
By tonight, if they find a river they will drink it dry.
There were Honai in a line up ahead, the occasional flash of sun-caught metal through the dust. The chariot came to a halt amid a cloud of cavalry and one by one the imperial couriers filed in behind it, young men of the lesser nobility whose fathers had paid a fortune so that their sons might gallop across battlefields carrying the Great King’s orders. Alongside them clustered a knot of scribes and other attendants, who were dressed as though they were still in the palace. Their finery was utterly incongruous in that sere landscape.
Ashurnan stood gripping the rail of his chariot and peering into the dust. A hundred paces in front of the wheels, the ten thousand spearmen of the Honai were forming up with a speed and precision that belied the chaos of the rest of the field. Eight ranks deep, their line stretched some pasang and a half, though both ends were invisible. But it was reassuring to see those tall warriors standing stolidly in front of them. This was to be the centre of the army, the very heart. Everyone else would take their dressing from the Great King’s chariot, and would link up with that formidable phalanx.
‘This will be a knife fight,’ the Great King said to Dyarnes, who was standing by the chariot with his helm in the crook of one arm. ‘It will be won or lost at close quarters. But we must use our archers at the start, once the dust settles somewhat. When the general advance is signalled they will be firing blind, and after that we must throw in our people at the enemy and overwhelm them. There will be no fancy manoeuvring today, not in this place. The dust hides everything. And double the couriers, Dyarnes. A lot of them will become lost today. I want two riders bearing each message.’
‘Yes, lord. At what point do you wish the advance sounded?’
‘As I said, wait until the dust settles. The men must be able to see the enemy in order to close with him. As soon as the Macht line is visible, I want you to start with the outer formations – we should outflank on both sides. But hold back the Arakosans, Dyarnes. They are to be kept for the killing blow.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
THE SUN BROKE through the dust now and again, providing vignettes of war; masses of ranked troops trudging west, shuffling into position. A forest of spears all catching the light in the same moment, like a flashing gleam of teeth. And all around, the sodden thunder of marching feet, an echo that trembled the very flesh of the earth.
Kouros drank water from the skin, his mouth dry and sour. Thanks to his injuries, he was not wearing armour, though the bronze helm on his head had already caught the heat of the sun and felt as though it were a hot vice bearing down on the bone of his skull. The Great King wore merely a black diadem, and bright blue silk robes that concealed a breastplate underneath. He bore a plain steel scimitar which could have belonged to any man on the field, and which had seen much use. Kouros abruptly found himself wondering if it were the same sword with which Ashurnan had killed his own brother, thirty years before. He touched the knife in his own sash.
We are alike in that, at least, he thought, and licked his dry lips again.
The dust began to sink in the centre of the army, as the men found their places and stood with their shields at the shoulder, leaning on their spears. Kouros could hear them talking to one another. Asurian of half a dozen different dialects, some so strange as to barely constitute the same language. Good Kefren in the ranks of the Honai up front. A column of leather-armed skirmishers went past with armfuls of javelins and the crescent-shaped shields of their calling, short-legged hufsan from the mountains who seemed as cheerful as men walking to a wedding.
The whole world is here, he thought. He remembered the slight, pale youth on the black horse who had called himself Corvus. There was Kefren blood in him – he had never suspected that.
What kind of man is he, to think he can fight the whole world?
Blue sky again, and the sun was high in it. It must be midday at least.
‘There they are,’ Ashurnan murmured. He reached out one hand and set it briefly on Kouros’s arm. ‘There they are.’ The golden glow of his face had gone. He looked sick and old and tired.
‘They’re so close!’ Kouros exclaimed.
A swift-footed man could have run between the armies in minutes. Kouros was able to make out the red chitons of the enemy spearmen, the bronze-faced shields painted with some pattern he had never seen before, a bird of some kind. They stood as immobile as a wall, all across the plain, their length punctuated by hanging banners.
‘I will break that line today.’ Ashurnan said quietly. He motioned to the scribe with his hip-desk who stood behind the chariot.
‘An order for Dyarnes. He is –’
A swooping sound, as though some monstrous hawk had stooped for the kill. Instinctively, they all looked up. To their front, something exploded into the front ranks of the Honai and there were shouts of pain.
‘What is it? What is happening?’ Kouros demanded, hugging his ribs as though afraid they would fly apart.
A file of the Honai had been hurled into ruin, men lying dead, others dropping their shields and spears to assist the wounded.
Kouros looked up again, baffled, and saw a shower of what looked like arrows arcing up from behind the Macht line. But they were not arrows. Each was longer than a man. They came down in a black, monstrous hail.
And struck the ranks of the Great King’s bodyguard.
The shafts were as thick as a man’s arm, the heads cast in black, barbed iron. They punched through shields and breastplates as though the bronze were paper, and skewered two and three and four men at a time, knocking down whole files like wooden skittles bowled over by a child’s ball.
Ashurnan’s face was transformed by outrage. Dozens of these great bolts were now hurtling down out of the unclouded sky.
‘Message to Dyarnes!’ he shouted above the growing cacophony. ‘Advance – advance at once with all the infantry!’
An explosion of dirt and stone, and the Niseians yoked to the chariot reared in fear as one of the massive bolts slammed into the ground at their feet. This was not warfare as they understood it. They began to dance and bite and neigh.
The ranks of the Honai were buckling and reforming, the files knocked apart only to be brought together again. They were the best soldiers in the empire, and would not retreat or break, but they could not hit back either. They could only die helplessly under the obscene barrage.
Ashurnan’s bodyguard, an armoured Honai who towered over his lord, thrust both Kouros and the Great King behind him.
‘Move us out of here,’ he barked to the driver. ‘This is no place for the King.’
The chariot wheeled round, the four horses pulling with a will, the driver lashing their backs with the long whip. They cantered away from the Honai phalanx, and the Arakosans followed them. Up and down the immense line the word went out that the Great King was retreating, that he was wounded, that he was dead. But the rumours were quashed by the sudden order to advance.
Like a great stone starting to roll downhill
, the vast army of the empire began to move forward, a juggernaut bent on vengeance.
RICTUS WAS THIRSTY. There was still water in the skin at his back, but he was saving it for later. He knew that as soon as the fighting began he would forget his thirst. If he survived, he would be desperate for that water afterwards. If he did not, someone else would drink it.
Cheers and whistles went up through the ranks as the first of Parmenios’s machines sent their deadly missiles soaring off towards the dust-choked line of the massing enemy. They gave way to a kind of awed silence as the ballista bolts struck home. The Macht spearmen watched as the Honai were battered by that relentless aerial assault. They saw shields tossed high in the air, men cartwheeling, impaled on the heavy bolts like frogs on a skewer.
Beside Rictus, Fornyx gave a low whistle. ‘That is no way for brave men to die,’ he said.
‘They can die any way they like – there are more than enough left over for us all,’ Rictus rasped.
‘What are those troops? They’re just reforming like nothing has happened.’
‘Those are the Honai,’ Rictus said. ‘The Bodyguard. They’re the best he’s got.’
Fornyx smiled. ‘Just as well Corvus has us facing them, then.’
There were three thousand Dogsheads in battle-line opposite the Great King, and they were the centre of Corvus’s line as the Honai were the centre of the enemy’s. Rictus had fought the Honai at Kunaksa. It had been one of the hardest fights of his life, and he had been young then.
But I know more now.
‘Something’s stirring,’ Fornyx said, and there was a rustle of talk through the ranks. Men eased their shields off their shoulders so that their arms took the full weight of the bronze-faced oak. They moved their spears from side to side to loosen the sauroters in the hard ground. A few files across from Rictus someone was pissing where he stood, and the acrid reek of it carried down the ranks, along with the inevitable catcalls and jeers.
‘How does that bastard have enough water in him to piss it out?’ Fornyx asked. ‘I’m dry as an old crone’s cunny. I don’t even have spit.’
The dust flagged up the enemy movement, drawing all their eyes. It was almost imperceptible at first, until the formations began to loosen up and draw apart.
‘He’s coming on willingly enough,’ Rictus said. ‘Corvus was right about that, at least. I’ll bet half his men are still on the road behind, or running up into position.’
‘Fuck,’ Fornyx said with feeling. ‘I’d be running if I had Parmenios’s pins raining down on me.’
‘Ready arms!’ Rictus cried, and up and down the line the centurions took up the cry. The Dogsheads closed up, each man’s shield protecting the spear-arm of the fellow to his left. The phalanx clenched itself like a fist.
‘Stand fast and wait for my word!’ Rictus shouted. ‘File-closers, take the count!’
Starting out on the left, the men began to count down their numbers starting from the front man in the file. The numbers were called out like some repetitive ancient ritual, and it almost seemed like one to Rictus, who had heard it so many times on so many far-flung battlefields.
‘Arrows!’ Someone shouted. ‘’Ware arrows!’
‘Shields up!’ Fornyx bellowed.
They came down in a black rain, Kufr broadheads lancing out of the sky. The Dogsheads lifted the heavy shields and leaned into them, like men sheltering from a storm. The arrow-cloud smote the bronze with an unholy metallic racket, like hammers in a tinsmith’s shop. But even over that noise, Rictus could still hear the distinctive meaty slap as some of them found flesh.
Men were going down, cursing and groaning. It felt as though someone was poking the face of Rictus’s shield with a stick. An arrow came down close enough to his toes to throw dust upon them. Another passed through the transverse horsehair of his helm-crest. He shared a look with Fornyx. The younger man was grinning into his black beard. An arrow skittered off the wing of his armour and bounced away into the faces of the men behind.
‘I thought it looked like rain,’ Fornyx said, and down the line the comment spread, and men managed to laugh at it as their comrades fell about them.
The volleys passed. To the front, the dust had hidden everything again, but out of that dust came the sullen roar of the enemy advance.
‘Wounded to the rear!’ Rictus cried. ‘Close up – close up, lads. We’re about to earn our pay!’
They burst out of the dust thirty paces ahead, a boiling mass of wild-eyed men bearing crescent shields and short spears, no order to their ranks, but stark momentum in their sheer numbers.
‘Spears!’ the order went up, and the aichmes were levelled at the oncoming tide. The phalanx tightened over the bodies of its own dead and wounded. Rictus ducked his face behind the rim of his shield, gritted his teeth, and dug his right heel into the hard ground.
‘See you in hell, brother,’ Fornyx said, teeth bared and set like those of a dog.
‘See you in hell,’ Rictus repeated.
And then the enemy wave slammed into them.
‘THE DOGSHEADS ARE engaged,’ Parmenios said to Corvus, wiping his hand across his gleaming bald scalp. ‘He moved some of his levies across the front of the Honai, but the move disorganised them some. They should not prove to be a problem for Rictus.’
‘He’s saving his best,’ Ardashir said, and patted the neck of his restless horse.
‘But he is throwing everything else in as fast as he can,’ Corvus said. ‘Good. That is as it should be. Parmenios, you’re sure he had his heavy horse out on our right?’
‘I’m sure. There’s a dried up river-bed out on our left – he doesn’t want his cavalry to break their necks in it. All but a tithe of his horse is facing the Companions. But Corvus –’
‘Speak up. It’s quite a noise they’re making down there.’
‘He has a hundred thousand men coming up the roads from the east. Once they’re in position, they’ll swamp us.’
‘One thing at a time. Repoint your machines, Parmenios. I want you to start bombarding his cavalry. It doesn’t have to be a heavy fire – just enough to stir them up.’
‘At once.’ Parmenios wheeled his mule, kicking it savagely, and trotted away to the rear, where hundreds of his engineers were working upon the great ballistae. They had piled rocks under the front timbers of the machines to elevate their fire, and a steady train of fast-moving carts were galloping up from the baggage train with fresh missiles to feed them.
A courier cantered up, his face a mask of dust. He had to spit and wipe his mouth before he could speak.
‘My king, Marshal Teresian sent me to say he is heavily engaged out on the left. He is holding, but the enemy is trying to outflank him.’
‘Go to Druze. Tell him to peel off a mora to help Teresian. What’s your name?’
‘Deiros, my king.’
‘Deiros, you must tell Marshal Teresian to hold the line of the riverbed. He cannot retreat from that position. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, my king.’
‘My name is Corvus, lad. Now get going.’
The youngster sped off, eyes alight as though he had been somehow honoured. Ardashir chuckled.
‘You call them lad, now?’
‘I feel old enough to be their father, some of them.’
‘When do you want me to move?’
Corvus grinned, and instantly years fell off him. ‘When I join you, Ardashir. You think I’d let the Companions go into battle without me?’
Ardashir gathered his reins. ‘Brother, remember one thing; if you go down, we all go down.’
‘Where is your faith, Ardashir? If old Rictus can fight in the front rank, then so can I.’
‘You knew?’
‘I always know.’
FOR PASANGS ACROSS the plateau of Gaugamesh there now extended a brute mass of struggling men. The slender line of the Macht had received a succession of hammer-blows as the imperial forces came up, formation after formation, and launched themselves
at it. Had they coordinated their attacks, then Corvus’s line would have broken, chopped apart by sheer numbers. But the levies of the empire pitched into the battle as soon as they came off the line of march, and one by one their attacks were blunted by the stubborn professionalism of the Macht spearmen.
Out on the left, they were fighting along the banks of the dry riverbed, Teresian’s morai thrusting down into the crowded ranks of the Kufr struggling up the crumbling, sunbaked sides of the bank. On that flank some enterprising Kufr commander had thrown a fresh levy out to the north, seeking to outflank the position, but just as it seemed they were on the verge of success, Druze and a thousand of his Igranians pitched into them, swinging their drepanas to terrible effect and shrieking the high war cry of their own hills. The levy was broken, and hurled backwards.
These were small farmers and tradesmen of the Middle Empire. They had been marching for weeks, learning the ways of an army, sure of their own numbers and the authority of the high-caste Kefren officers who led them. But they had not reckoned on the utter bloody confusion of battle. They had never before seen what the sweep of a drepana could do to a man’s body when wielded by an enemy who had been fighting for years, and was well-versed in the chaotic savagery of war. They saw their friends and neighbours slashed to quivering meat around them, and streamed away in disorder.
Druze met Teresian to the rear of the line. Six thousand Macht were standing fast here, and the riverbed at their feet was filling with bodies so that the Kufr were climbing over their own mounded dead to come at the spears. The dust shrouded everything, and the roar of the battle was unlike anything that even the veterans had experienced before.
Druze drew close so he could be heard, his dark head next to Teresian’s straw-bright one.
‘I secured your left for now, but they’ll try again,’ he shouted. ‘There are too many – they’re going to pour round that flank soon. I’ll leave you my mora, but I have to get back to Corvus. He needs me in the centre.’
‘I need more of your men, Druze,’ Teresian told the Igranian. ‘That, or cavalry. There’s nothing behind me – they cave in my flank and the whole line will fold.’
