Kings of Morning

by Kearney Paul

  ‘Refuse your left, but stay anchored to the riverbed.’

  Teresian nodded grimly. ‘Tell Corvus if he has any tricks left to pull, we had best see them soon.’

  Druze took his forearm in the warrior’s grip. ‘Hot work, brother.’

  ‘Fucking thirsty too. We need water; my men are chinstrapped.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. Would you like me to wash your face and put you to bed, or do you want to play for a while?’

  ‘Fuck you, you black-eyed Igranian cocksucker.’

  They grinned at each other, and Druze ran off, back to the centre of the Macht lines.

  IN THE CENTRE the blows were falling fast and hard. The first attack had been beaten off in minutes, but had been followed almost instantly by a second, and a third. It seemed that there was an endless procession of enemy formations streaming forward to slam into the ranks of the Dogsheads. The Macht stood their ground and fought each one to a standstill, until they had to retreat several paces just to get clear of the corpse-choked ground. Then they stood fast again, and watched another line of screaming Kufr come charging out of the dust.

  This was not phalanx fighting – it was not the othismos as the Macht understood it. The Kufr ran up to the line of shields and hacked at them with axes and short swords, while the wicked aichmes of the spearmen jabbed out in short, economical thrusts to cripple and slay them. The leather corselets of the levy infantry were little protection against a Macht spearhead, and many of the enemy did not wear helmets either. They ran up to the line and battered upon it, and died. Some got lucky, and caught tired or already wounded men and saw their blades strike home, but most died to no result, except to make the men in the shield line more tired, to break off a few more spearheads. To bring down a few here and there and make a gap which was closed moments later.

  Extravagant it might have been, but it was slowly becoming effective. The Dogsheads were being worried to death, worn down in increments. And each and every one of them was aware that the Great King’s Honai were still out there opposite them, waiting in the anonymity of the dust.

  ‘He may be attacking everywhere, but he’s going to make a real play for it here,’ Rictus told Fornyx. They stood panting, spitting white and leaning on their spears. There was a momentary lull in the fighting, but they could hear the cries of the Kefren officers in the ochre cloud to their front and knew it would not last long.

  ‘Then I wish he’d fucking get on with it,’ Fornyx said. ‘I could do with a lie down.’

  ‘He’ll send in the Honai when he’s ready, and try to break clear through. He does that, and he has a free path to the baggage behind.’

  Fornyx looked Rictus in the eye. ‘We’re doing just fine. Do you really think his Honai can break us, Rictus – us?’

  ‘They are ten thousand, Fornyx, and they fight like we do, shield to shield. We’ve been at it all morning while they’ve been leaning on their spears. Just because Parmenios managed to skewer a few of them doesn’t mean they’re not ready to pitch in. No – they’ll be right in our lap soon. We have to be ready for that.’

  ‘Corvus should be told.’

  ‘You can be sure he knows. The boy’s not stupid – he placed us here for a reason.’

  ‘He put us here to die, it seems to me.’

  ‘He put us here to stand, and die. To give him time to work his magic elsewhere. That’s why he wanted me out of the line for this one.’

  ‘Little bastard,’ Fornyx said. ‘I might have known. Remember Machran, Rictus? He did the same damned thing.’

  ‘Because we’re the best he has.’

  ‘Chief, here they come again,’ the man beside Rictus cried.

  ‘Stand to!’ Rictus shouted, the words cracking in his dry throat. ‘Shields up, level spears –’

  And so it began again.

  THE AFTERNOON DREW on. All along the battlefront, the troops of the Great King were being steadily sent in to the meat-grinder. As well as attacking constantly on every front, the imperial forces were still coming in from the east in an unending stream, shaking out into line of battle, and then going forward. Sometimes those advancing were shaken and disordered by the fleeing remnants of the men who had been up at the spears before them, but they went in anyway. In this respect the dust was a blessing for the Kefren officers. Their men were walking into the battle blind, unable to see the true extent of the carnage ahead. Not until they began stepping on their own heaped dead did they realise what lay before them, and by then it was too late.

  The smell of blood rose in the air, the stink of sweat, urine and ordure. The fighting took men and squeezed everything out of them, along with their lives. Already the flies were black about the bodies, and men in the midst of combat would find the carrion insects buzzing about their mouths and eyes as they fought, one more torment in a world of them.

  Kouros flapped his good hand in front of his face as though it would rid him of the smell. He had perfume on his komis, and tugged the fine material tight about his mouth, trying to breathe. Trying not to breathe. It was not as he had expected.

  He had been in battle before now, but his previous experiences had been nothing compared to this. He had taken part in ragged running fights with bands of runaway slaves, road-bandits and misguided rebels, but those skirmishes had been more akin to hunting than to warfare proper. He had never in his life before seen men stand and fight as the Macht were fighting now, destroying legions of levies, piling the ground black with bodies, and then dressing their lines, ready for more.

  ‘What are they?’ he asked aloud. ‘What kind of things can they be, to stand like that?’

  It was his father who answered him. ‘At Kunaksa, we slew their leaders and took their baggage. We had them surrounded and outnumbered five, six to one. But still they attacked, and routed my entire army. They were thirsty, exhausted, half dead on their feet – I can still see it now – and they kept coming down that hill. They beat us that day because they thought they were already dead men. Only the Macht fights like that. Like a cornered animal, bereft of reason. That is why they are so dangerous.’

  Kouros stared. The dust came and went in rolling clouds. He caught glimpses of the fighting lines to their front, a vast river of murder. He could not imagine what it must be like, up there at the spearheads. It must be very like hell itself.

  ‘My lord, we have word from the Arakosans out on the left.’ This was Marok, Dyarnes’ second-in-command. A tall, dark Kefre, like a lean version of Kouros, he was the one who loved women and horses, and who had more of both thanks to the generosity of the King’s heir. He glanced at Kouros and nodded his head in a half bow of acknowledgement.

  ‘The Macht have begun loosing off their great arrows again, into the ranks of the cavalry. The Arakosans are taking casualties. Their Archon, Lorka, asks your permission to advance.’

  Ashurnan raised a hand, and Marok went silent and bowed deeply. The Great King was looking west intently, trying to pierce the curtain of dust.

  At last it opened a moment. Another attack had been beaten off; there were hundreds of figures streaming in panic from the Macht line. But that line was not as tidy as it had been. It bulged and bent here and there, and there were gaps in it now as the enemy hauled away his wounded and brought men out of the rear to fill the gaps at the front. The red-clad ranks did not seem as thick as before.

  Ashurnan looked at the sky. He was sure of it now.

  The sun was still high, but it was westering. Soon he would have it in his eyes.

  ‘Couriers,’ he snapped. At once, half a dozen mounted Kefren were at the back of the chariot, their mounts stamping and snorting under them.

  ‘Go to Lorka and the Arakosans. Tell him he is to advance at once. He must assault the Macht right wing and then swing behind them. I will send follow-up levies behind him.’

  Two couriers wheeled their horses round and burst into a canter. They took off as if racing each other.

  ‘Marok,’ the Great King said. ‘Go t
o Dyarnes. Tell him he is to take in the Honai. I want him to assault the centre and break it. He will be supported with everything I can send up. I want him to split the enemy and keep going, right to the baggage if he can. Is that understood?’

  Marok blinked. Some of the colour left his face. He bowed. ‘Yes, Great King.’

  ‘And Marok, tell Dyarnes not to jeopardise himself. He is to remain behind the main assault.’ The Great King smiled. ‘You, Marok, will lead the attack in person.’

  Marok looked quickly at Kouros, then back at the King. He bowed. ‘You honour me, lord.’

  ‘Break the Macht line, Marok. Show me your loyalty.’

  Marok turned away and walked slowly back to the Honai lines, tugging on his helmet as he did so.

  ‘A good man,’ Ashurnan said. ‘Ambitious.’ He looked at Kouros and smiled a scimitar smile.

  ‘A favourite of your mother’s, I believe.’

  TWO MASSIVE BODIES of troops now began to grind into motion. On the left the Arakosan cavalry broke into a trot, eight thousand heavy horsemen in several columns. Their ranks were ragged and disordered, for Parmenios’s missiles were still plunging out of the air, and few could miss such a packed target. There were scores of horses lying on the ground, kicking the last of their lives away, and the Arakosans were seized by rage at the screams of the beautiful Niseians. When the order to advance was given they surged forward with a will, a massive tide of flesh, bone, bronze and iron. For fully two pasangs they covered the earth, and before the dust of their own advance covered them they seemed from afar to resemble a tumbled avalanche of lapis lazuli stones, so bright was their blue armour. The buried thunder of their advance carried clear across the battlefield, like the anger of some earthbound god.

  The Honai heard it as they took up their spears and began to advance, to the sound of horn-calls and long flutes. Ten thousand tall Kefren in polished bronze. Their armour also caught the sun, and it seemed that a host of blazing statues had come to life and were advancing across the field. The levies moving forward on their flanks gave a great cheer, and it was taken up all along the imperial lines, until a hundred thousand voices were shouting together in a moment of pure exultation. The mood of the entire battlefield shifted. The weary Macht lifted their heads in a moment of cold doubt, and the fresh levies who were still coming in from the east heard that sound and stepped forward with a will, sure that they had just heard the sound of victory rolling towards them out of the dust.

  ‘GIVE US A DRINK, will you, Rictus? I’ve a tongue like a block of wood.’

  Rictus leaned his forehead against his spear. He tried to spit, but nothing came out.

  ‘I sent it back with Kesero after he was wounded. There’s none left.’

  ‘Damn it. I’ll die thirsty.’

  ‘So will we all, brother.’

  ‘Look at them. Someone in this country can teach drill.’

  They stared at the advancing ranks of the Honai, marching in perfect time to the flutes, a shrill, unearthly noise.

  The Dogsheads stood surrounded by mounds of dead, the enemy’s and their own. They had thinned out the line to keep connected to Demetrius’s conscripts on their right and Teresian’s veterans on their left. They stood four deep now, half their regular formation. Behind them, the wounded were lying in a carpet of broken, writhing humanity, painted black with flies. The carts could not load them up fast enough to take them back to the baggage train.

  Behind the wounded were a few hundred of Parmenios’s engineers, manning ballistae and looking distinctly nervous. Behind that there was nothing but empty plain all the way back to the waggon-park holding all the army’s supplies, some two pasangs to the rear.

  ‘We’re a bit thin on the ground,’ Rictus said mildly. He had never felt so tired in his life before. A few nicks and scratches were all that the fury of the battle had so far inflicted upon his flesh, but he was bone weary.

  I am too old, he thought. Corvus was right.

  And yet, when he lifted his head and looked at the Honai advancing towards him, marching to the sound of flutes, something in him leapt.

  I am as much made for this as is the head of a spear.

  A sense almost of happiness.

  ‘I don’t think much of their music,’ he said aloud. And then, louder, ‘What say you we make some music of our own, brothers?’

  Half a dozen of them took him up on it at once, and began the slow, mournful chant of the Paean, the death-hymn of the Macht. It went down the line like smoke on the wind, and rose higher, fighting down the shrill pipe of the approaching flutes.

  Thousands took it up, not only the Dogsheads, but the morai to left and right in the line. It rolled out of the Macht army like the murmur of a storm, and grew. The men straightened at their spears, lifted their heads from behind their shields and sang, until the singing was the loudest thing on that enormous tortured plain, and the sound of it carried clear across that deadly space, even to the ears of the Great King himself.

  ‘Close shields! Level spears!’ the orders rang out, but the singing went on, drowning out the Kufr flutes and horns.

  The Honai gave a great collective snarl, and quickened their pace.

  The Macht were still singing when the Great King’s warriors smashed into their line.

  EIGHTEEN

  DEATH HYMN

  DRUZE STOOD PANTING and lathered in dust before Corvus, Ardashir and Demetrius. He took a swallow from a proffered waterskin and rinsed his mouth. When he spat the water out it was brown.

  ‘He’s doing it – he’s committed the Honai at last. They charged into the Dogsheads like the end of the world. Corvus, he is about to cut us in two.’

  Corvus nodded. He did not look in the least surprised.

  ‘How are the Dogsheads faring?’

  ‘They’ve lost near half their number, but you know what they are. They’ll not retreat, not with Rictus there to hold them.’

  A flash of something like anger passed over Corvus’s face. ‘That damn fool,’ he said, exasperated. ‘He’ll end up dying there.’

  ‘You should have told him,’ Ardashir said.

  ‘That I was sacrificing his men – again? I needed the Dogsheads to hold for a long time – that’s why I put them there. I had to get the Honai moving. But I did not mean them to stand to the last.’

  ‘There will be none of them left if we don’t start things in motion,’ Druze said. ‘The Honai can fight – they fight like us, and they’re the biggest bastards I’ve ever seen.’

  Corvus nodded as though some internal argument had been decided.

  ‘Very well. Druze, get you back to your command. Hold them in readiness. But they are not to move before my order – understood? This is all about the timing.’

  ‘Corvus,’ Druze said, looking up at the pale man on the tall horse. ‘They’re dying fast, Rictus’s people.’

  ‘Wait for my command, brother,’ Corvus said crisply. Druze stared at him a moment more, then nodded, and took off into the dust-shrouded chaos of the battlefield at a flat sprint, his drepana bouncing on his back.

  ‘Demetrius?’

  The one-eyed veteran stepped forward.

  ‘Now is the time. The Arakosans are on their way. Your boys are about to earn their pay. You know what to do.’

  ‘I know what to do,’ Demetrius said heavily.

  ‘Whatever happens, they must not break. If they do, the Arakosans will chop them to pieces. They must stand together. Green as they are, they must be able to understand that.’

  ‘If I cannot make six morai of spears stand and fight on a battlefield, then you can have my other eye,’ Demetrius snapped. ‘But it won’t be just the cavalry – he’s sending other troops out on the right as well.’

  ‘By the time they arrive, the thing will be over, one way or another.’

  Demetrius nodded. ‘It had better be,’ he said grimly.

  Corvus leaned in the saddle until his face was close to the frowning veteran. ‘Have faith, brother.�
��

  Demetrius pursed his lips, and uttered something like a laugh. Then he stumped off to where his command waited in formation behind the Companions. Six thousand inexperienced spearmen, the only reserve Corvus had on the field.

  ‘Time for me to go,’ Corvus said to Ardashir, donning his helmet with the horsehair plume. ‘Don’t get caught by the Arakosans, Ardashir, but make them charge home. If it means you must –’

  ‘I know what it means,’ Ardashir interrupted him. ‘I will sacrifice the mora if it comes to that – we will all do as we are bidden today, my friend.’

  ‘I wish Rictus had done as he was damn well told. He should have been commanding the reserve, not Demetrius.’

  ‘Rictus would have been in the thick of the fight wherever you put him. That is his nature.’

  Corvus nodded, the crest bobbing on his helm.

  ‘See you in hell, brother.’

  ‘See you in hell.’

  RICTUS WAS ON his knees, his shield held over his head while he scrabbled in the bloody mire for a weapon to fight with. His spear was shattered, his drepana was broken, and were it not for the Curse of God, he would already have been dead several times over.

  He found a short sword, old fashioned, the type his father would have carried, and levered it out of the sucking muck while all around him the fight went on, and he was buffeted by the men struggling around him. The dust had turned to mud under them, thickened by their blood, and other, nameless things. Rictus was plastered brown with it, his armour’s cold gleam obscured.

  He was on his feet again. He could feel the old wounds all over his body complaining, but ignored that winter-pain and gripped the slimy hilt of the sword in his fist while the heavy shield dragged at his left shoulder.

  He was no longer in the front rank, but the front rank was fast becoming a mere concept. They were nothing more than a line of struggling men, sometimes two ranks deep, sometimes three. Like seaweed being moved ever farther up the beach by successive waves.