by Kearney Paul
Part of this was city living, part of it was sheer administrative necessity, and part of it was down to changes in Corvus himself. He was less patient than he had been, more autocratic. Where once he would have won round his officers with at least the appearance of debate, now he simply issued orders, or better yet, had Parmenios’s secretaries write them down and then sent his pages out to deliver them. It was as though the nature of his achievements had finally begun to sink home.
The army itself was only part of his concerns. His rule now lay over many thousands of pasangs of a foreign world, and he was ruler of places he had not yet seen. Cities he had never visited were erecting statues of him in an effort to curry favour, and his lenient treatment of those who surrendered to him willingly meant that not a day went by without an embassy from some obscure imperial province wishing to secure its place in the new order of things.
‘IT’S A RELIEF to be going at last,’ Ardashir said. He stood over Rictus, as stately as a sunlit stork. ‘This time in the city has brought it all home to him. He’s at his best when on the move, nothing but that damned tent over his head.’
Rictus smiled. ‘He can’t be on the move forever, Ardashir. One day he will sit down and realise he can go no further. On that day, I will be glad to be elsewhere.’
‘On that day he will need you more than he ever has before.’
‘No. My time is past. I’m too broken and old now to ever stand in a spearline again. I am no further use to him.’
‘My, you’re a stiff necked bastard – as bad as he is.’
‘Keep an eye on him for me.’
‘Will you be coming east, Rictus, or will you stay here? You know that wherever you stay, Corvus will set you up like a king.’
‘I’ve no desire to be one. I am not Demetrius – I don’t have a wife whispering ambitious noises in my ear.’
‘Then you will come east – good – that relieves my mind.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Rictus snapped. And then, ‘Yes, I suppose so. I’m to bring Roshana to him anyway, once Ashur falls.’
‘Does she know what her fate is to be?’
‘I don’t speak Kufr – I haven’t asked. It would not surprise me, though. She’s not stupid.’
‘If it happens, then Ashurnan’s grandson may one day be Great King. The more things change –’
‘The more they stay the same.’ Rictus smiled up at the tall Kefre. ‘You be careful, Ardashir. You and Druze are the only people left with the army he still listens to.’
‘I’ll be careful – it’s in my nature. I leave the heroic gestures to you Macht. The Kefren are a more pragmatic people.’
‘I have learned that. I am glad that I have one to call a friend.’
Ardashir bent and embraced Rictus in his chair. ‘Stay alive, brother,’ he said. ‘If Bel is merciful, the next time we meet it will be in Ashur itself.’
‘Perhaps.’ Rictus rose to his feet as Ardashir bowed to him. Kurun propped him up on one side and on the other he leaned upon a thornwood stick, a black, gnarled length of iron-hard wood polished to a high ebony shine. A parting gift from Corvus, one of many.
‘Ardashir.’ Rictus called the Kefre back as he was turning to leave.
‘Come with me a moment. There is something I want you to see.’
He limped into the antechamber, where his gear had been stowed. His armour, his weapons, the curios and equipment he had hauled halfway across the world. They half-filled the room, hung from the walls and assembled on shelves. It seemed like quite a collection, but it was not much to show for a life.
At the far wall were two black cuirasses, Antimone’s Gift, polished and shining in the lamplight. Sometimes they reflected the flames, and sometimes they did not. It was one of the mysteries about them. The two cuirasses were exactly the same; neither had so much as a scratch upon them, though they had both seen hard service. There was no way to guess their age; they were as changeless as the waves of the sea.
‘They brought me Fornyx’s armour, after they found his body,’ Rictus said. ‘His is the one on the right, though they can’t really be told apart. I’ve been thinking on it, and it seems to me you should have it. Fornyx would have had it so. After Gaugamesh they policed up a dozen of these from the dead, and I know Druze and Teresian and Demetrius were given them by Corvus. But he never gave one to you, his best friend.’
‘Because I am Kufr,’ Ardashir breathed. ‘Rictus, I am honoured by the thought, I truly am. But I cannot take this thing. It would not be right.’
‘Bullshit. If Corvus can wear one, then I’m damned sure you can. You’re a marshal of the army – you should be a cursebearer no matter what blood runs through you. Kurun – go get it.’
The boy left Rictus’s side and put his hands out to lift the right-hand cuirass off its stand. Then he shrank away. ‘I cannot,’ he said to Rictus. ‘It frightens me.’
Rictus grunted and limped forward himself. He took the cuirass by its wing and lifted it easily with one hand, then tossed it to Ardashir.
The Kefren marshal caught it with an expression of outright fear blazed across his face, as if he expected the touch of it to burn him. He held the armour away from his body in both hands, as one might hold a baby which had soiled itself.
‘It won’t bite, you damned fool,’ Rictus growled. ‘Put it on. Kurun – help him, and stop being such a girl about it.’
The snap of the clasps was loud in the room, along with the heavy breathing of the two Kufr. Rictus leaned on his stick and watched while Ardashir clicked down the wings over his shoulders and stood, shocked, as the armour moulded to his shape, extending to fit his long torso.
‘Bel’s blood – it is alive!’
‘No – it’s just a piece of craft we don’t understand. Men made these things once, but then forgot how.’
‘I thought your goddess gifted them to the Macht.’
Rictus shrugged. ‘Call me cynical.’
They stood looking at one another. ‘What will your people say when they see a Kufr wearing the Curse of God?’ Ardashir asked.
‘They will get used to it. Times are changing, Ardashir. The army is made up of all three races now. And every man who was at Gaugamesh and the Haneikos knows you have earned the right to wear that armour.’
Ardashir embraced him. ‘You have come a long way, my friend,’ he said.
‘So have we all.’
THE ARMY MARCHED out of its camps two days later, on a bright summer morning in the month the Kufr called Osh-Nabal, the time of the high sun. Rictus watched the endless columns filing across the Bekai bridge, Druze and his Igranians already fanning out towards the foothills of the Magron beyond. The shimmering haze of the river-plain blurred the bright sun-caught flashes of bronze and iron on the marching men. A contingent of hufsan spearmen marched with them, volunteers who had joined the great adventure to see where it might lead. The army was no longer truly Macht. The empire was no longer entirely Kufr. He wondered if it was for the best, or if it really made any difference at all to the farmers and peasants of the fertile lowlands. They still paid their taxes and saw their sons go off to war as they always had. The more things change...
‘Will we follow them?’ Kurun asked beside him. The boy was staring at the marching columns with a kind of hunger, the endless curiosity of the young.
‘We’ll follow them,’ Rictus said. ‘How could we not?’ He set a hand on the boy’s shoulder and bent his head to hide the sudden dazzle in his eyes.
TWENTY-TWO
THE STEPS OF THE KING
THEY HAD BEEN gathering people ever since leaving Hamadan, accumulating a ragged tail of leaderless troops, fleeing nobles, masterless slaves. As they came down into the sun-baked lowlands of Asuria, they numbered in their thousands, a cavalcade of remnants looking for a way to become whole again.
At the head of the straggling column Kouros sat upon the big bay Niseian which had carried him clear through the mountains, and reined in at the sight below, his breat
h caught in his throat at the panorama that opened out before him.
Asuria, the heart of the empire. It was an endless green country which rolled away beyond the edge of sight, gridded with the darker green of irrigation channels, glinting under the sun. In the distance, he could see the grey line of Ashur’s walls, the sea of terracotta roofs beyond it, and the two ziggurats, lonely mountains afloat on the haze, the Fane of Bel catching the sun with a brief flash of gold.
Lorka, Archon of the Arakosans, drew up beside him in his kingfisher-blue armour. He touched his forehead and then opened his palm to the sun in thanks to Bel.
‘So long as Ashur stands, there is hope,’ he said to Kouros. ‘You are Great King now – it must be proclaimed. The people must know that the world continues as it did, that all things will one day be the same again.’
Kouros nodded. ‘Bring your men into the city – I will see that they are found quarters.’
‘And the others?’ Lorka gestured to the river of people who were plodding past them, head down and exhausted with the long trek over the Magron.
‘They are rabble. Let them find a place where they may. I will ride ahead, Lorka. Make sure that the bullion waggons are within the city walls by nightfall.’
‘As you wish, my lord. I will detail a small escort to see you through the gates. Remember me to your mother, and tell her I send my respects and rejoice that I may soon see her again.’
Kouros looked at the Arakosan sharply. ‘My mother – yes, of course.’
He kicked his mount savagely, and started down towards the city at a gallop with a skein of Arakosan riders in tow.
They entered the western gates without ceremony or remark. The tall barbican of enamelled tile was the same colour as the Arakosans’ armour, and the traffic went in and out of it as though nothing had changed. Farmers still brought their crops to market, merchants still led braying mule-trains, slaves still filed along in chained gangs.
There was one difference, though – there were no Honai on guard, just some leather-clad hufsan of the city watch.
Kouros let his horse pick the way through the crowd, massaging his still-stiff torso with one hand. Apart from the magnificence of his steed and his armed escort, there was little to set him apart personally from a thousand other prosperous minor nobles or merchants. His clothing was well made but hard-worn, and he wore no komis; his face was brown and wind-burnt like that of a peasant, and for a weapon he bore nothing more grand than a filthy kitchen-blade of blackened iron. These things would have seemed important to him, once, but no more.
They rode up the Huruma amid the spray of the fountains, the palace ziggurat looming ever closer and taller above them, casting a shadow as large as that of a stormcloud. Only when Kouros set his horse to climb the King’s Steps did the guards come awake, and he found himself surrounded by a knot of hufsan with whips and scimitars. He thought of the gleaming Honai who should have been there, now dead on the barren plain of Gaugamesh, and something like grief rose in his throat. He did not speak, and let his Arakosans do the talking for him. They cursed and swore at the hufsan in common Asurian, the language of the masses, but the hufsan guards were adamant; no-one save the Great King himself might mount the Steps on horseback.
Finally, as the Arakosans began to draw their swords, Kouros spoke. In high Kefren he said, ‘I am Kouros, son of Ashurnan. My father was Great King of the empire, and I am his heir. The crown is mine; this ziggurat is mine. This city and everything in it belongs to me, as do your lives. If you do not let me pass I will summon my army into the city and have you impaled at this very spot. Will you let me pass, or will you wait here to die?’
Something in his tone stilled them. The guards muttered among themselves, looking at the bright steel in the hands of the Arakosans. They noted the Niseian warhorses, and the effortless confidence of the Black Kefre who spoke to them. Finally they gave way.
Kouros began pacing his horse up the wide-spaced steps that led to the summit of the ziggurat.
This would have been the highlight of my life, once, he thought. Now it is just another road.
THEY HAD WORD of him on the summit before he arrived, so swiftly did the rumour-mill grind in the ziggurat. He dismounted to find an honour guard awaiting him, gaudily armoured Kefren who looked as though they had never held a spear before. There was a disordered flurry, a kind of silent, low-key panic as some sense of ceremony was grasped at. Kouros stood by his patient horse and smiled a little as he saw his mother approach, decked out like a queen in a city’s worth of silk and jewels, flanked by Charys, the brutal-faced head eunuch, and little Nurakz, the harem secretary. A train of beautiful young women brought up the rear, as butterfly-like as ever. They blinked in the sunlight and held up little parasols to protect their complexions.
‘My son – is it really you?’
She glided up close to him as smoothly as if she ran on wheels, and took Kouros’s face in her cold ring-bright hands.
‘Bel’s blood, your poor face. You are burnt black with the sun.’
‘The Mountains will do that to a man. Did you get the despatches?’
‘They arrived five days ago. I did not think to find you so close behind them – what are you wearing? Was there no-one to greet you into the city?’
He shook his head free of her hands. ‘We must talk.’
‘You must bathe.’ She clapped her white hands. ‘Charys, see to prince Kouros – see that –’
‘I am King now, mother. I need no crown for that. I saw my father die, as I saw Rakhsar die. The throne is mine.’
She stared at him for a long, wordless moment, the heavy cosmetics stark in the sunlight, her eyes unreadable. At last she bowed to him, and as she did, so did everyone else in the courtyard.
‘My lord King,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you wish, and it shall be done.’
THEY CHANGED THE bathwater three times before he got to the end of the dirt ingrained in him. It was his mother’s bath in the harem, not that in the royal bedchambers, for the Great King’s apartments were being refurbished and aired in readiness for their newest occupant. Kouros did not greatly care. He had not stopped to bathe even at Hamadan, and he had become used to the grime of travel, the smell of woodsmoke, the hard ground for a pillow.
Hufsa slaves as naked as he wiped him down with wooden strigils and applied sweet oils to his abraded skin, combing out the long black hair that fell to his shoulderblades and tying it up in the customary topknot. He stood to be dried and dressed and was too tired to do more than run one hand in absent speculation across the breasts of the prettiest slave. Standing there as they belted the silk robe about his waist, he began to understand his father a little better. He thrust the knife which had killed his brother into the broad sash they wound about his middle. It was an artefact from another world, a world more real than this.
He joined his mother that evening to eat, reclining amid the marble pillars of the harem and lifting ridiculously small dainties from a platter of beaten gold. He had eaten horsemeat in the mountains, and found it not at all bad. In any case, he had little appetite for anything but wine, and this Orsana served him herself in a crystal cup. Kouros held it up to the lamplight and marvelled at the workmanship, the fragility of it in his brown fingers.
‘War has made a man of you,’ Orsana said from her couch.
‘I see things differently now, it’s true.’
‘I have already sent out a proclamation; the city criers are shouting it all over the streets. Asuria has a new king. My son is alive, and the throne is no longer empty. I will begin preparations for the coronation in the morning.’
‘Make it swift, mother. We do not have time to indulge these things any more. The enemy is hard on my heels. He will be in front of our walls before the summer is out.’
She leaned forward. ‘So soon?’
‘He is a man in a hurry.’
‘What did you save out of the wreck, Kouros?’
He thought of the long nights in the mou
ntains, the waystations lost in a sea of refugees, the broken wreckage of a once-mighty army. It had melted away like a late snow. If he had not witnessed it with his own eyes, he would not have deemed it possible.
‘A few thousand of the Honai survived. I left them at Hamadan to hold the city, and came on with the Arakosans. Lorka will be within the city walls tonight; he has brought some two thousand horsemen with him, and the contents of Hamadan’s treasury. There are thousands more still on the move in the foothills, but they are no more than a common rout.’
The shock sat hard on his mother’s face. He almost enjoyed watching her master it.
‘Is that all?’
‘The Macht did a thorough job. They hunted us all the way to the passes of the mountains. And I have heard that the Juthan have sent an army to join them. There is nothing left beyond the Magron, mother. Asuria is all that remains.’
‘And Arakosia,’ she said instantly. He tilted his cup to her in agreement.
‘We have only the city guard here in Ashur,’ she went on, staring into space. ‘Five thousand hufsan who direct traffic and beat slaves. That is all.’
Kouros lay back on the cushioned couch. It was too soft for him. The weeks in the mountains had accustomed him to the feel of earth and stone under his back.
‘I killed Rakhsar with my own hand.’ He drew the knife from his sash. ‘That, at least, is done.’
