by Paul Kearney
The currents that moved the melee were created by killing, by the sheer brutal struggle of one against another. The Great King moved forward, horses going down as he and his guards stabbed at the big veins in the neck, or transfixed them through the eyes. Arkamenes’s bodyguards fought back with the savagery of the trapped, but though they were Honai, they were not the Honai of Ashur, and they gave ground, dying and falling and turning their faces from their own deaths instead of trying to deflect the killing blades as they realised they had become carrion.
And so Ashurnan and Arkamenes met in the middle of that vast bloodletting, in the end both willing that it should be so, in the end neither afraid, in the end brothers again.
Their eyes met but they did not speak, though both of them had words they would have said. Their blades clicked off one another. Under them the tall Niseians charged at each other’s shoulders and tried to bite and rear, but were reined in by both their masters as the swords flickered out and clashed and sought the life of the other in a kind of dance, in its way a splendid thing. But Ashurnan had always applied himself better to the learning of such skills, and it was his blade which sliced home first. Though he had put his strength into the blow, he tried to take it back as he saw it would go home, not even conscious of the reason. But the keen blade did not need much muscle at its back to do the work, and the edge took Arkamenes under the chin, severing the big arteries there and the windpipe, before sliding free.
The rebel prince dropped his sword and clasped both hands to his gaping throat. His mouth worked, frog-like, and in his eyes there was terror, and a kind of regret. Then he toppled from his horse. Around him, his bodyguards saw the death of all their hopes, and sent up a kind of wail. Some threw down their swords and raised their eyes to the sky as if in prayer, others turned their horses around and tried to fight their way to the rear. The horsetail standard that signified the presence of the pretender was cast aside, disappearing in that great mass of bloody, struggling flesh. And as the standard fell, a kind of shudder, more felt than seen, went through the ranks of Arkamenes’s army.
FIFTEEN
A FAREWELL TO THE KING
Phiron walked out to the front of the phalanx and held up his spear. Up and down the endless lines of the heavy infantry the order was passed along: “Halt.”
Pasion joined him, and as the minutes passed so did a few other centurions, standing like curious spectators at a street fight. “Is that the—?” Durik began to ask.
“The Great King has proved himself a man, it seems,” Phiron said. He levered off his stinking helm, his black hair plastered down flat as a seal’s back beneath it. “They’re at it hand to hand, bodyguards and all.”
“And what about these bastards?” Pasion asked, gesturing to the enemy ranks not half a pasang from them along the hilltop. Kufr spearmen now as irresolute and fascinated as their officers by the close-packed cavalry battle in the valley below and the two standards waving in the midst of it, mere yards apart.
“If they fight it out, that’s the whole battle down there, won or lost in a moment,” Orsos said. He joined them, breathing heavily. “Jason covers our rear, Phiron. He’s seen off the Arakosan cavalry. It’s a fucking slaughterhouse down there.” Even he seemed shocked by the carnage of the day.
All along the ridge-top, thousands of men were standing still, watching while the contest went on, the sound of it a dull roar that echoed off the face of the hills. The Juthan Legion had come to a halt halfway up the slope and now stood in a rankless mob of several thousands, all looking back the way they had come rather than up to where the enemy centre stood above.
“We stand here like virgins in a fucking marriage chamber!” This was young Pomero, come striding up to them with a face full of baffled anger. “What’s halted the lines? We should be pitching into them right now, and the Juthan should be hitting them from the flank. We have the battle won, here and now!”
Phiron did not turn round. He closed his eyes for a second. “The battle is lost. Can you not hear it?”
They watched, silent now. The crush of cavalry which composed the battle below was opening out. To the Macht, all Kefren looked the same, but it was possible to see that their employer’s horsetail standard no longer waved above the ranks. The Great King’s winged banner was advancing, whilst before it clouds of cavalry were streaming away. All along the field, there came from Arkamenes’s Kufr troops an eerie collective sound, half groan and half wail. It trailed for pasangs along the flatlands of the valley floor.
“The son of a bitch has gone and gotten hisself killed,” Orsos snarled.
Remarkable, how that information seemed to disseminate about the battlefield faster than a man could run. The Juthan Legion disintegrated first, just as the first knots of fleeing bodyguard cavalry came galloping past them, the riders beating their horses beyond reason, throwing away priceless breastplates to ease their load. Back down the slopes towards the Bekai River in the distance, what had been an army was now in the process of breaking up. Here and there, ordered formations survived and held together— they could see the troops from Artaka under Gushrun, who had marched all the way from the shores of the Tanean with them. But for the most part Arkamenes’s forces became a formless mob now running for their lives, and hoping to make the Bekai crossings before the Great King’s cavalry cut them off. Already, the superb ranks of the Asurians had given chase, thousands of richly clad horsemen yelling like maniacs and starting the grim sport of the pursuit. The Macht centurions on the hill watched in horror and something approaching awe. It was Phiron who collected himself first.
“We may well be fucked, brothers, but that does not mean we leave this world like lambs. Orsus—about-face your mora and link up with Jason. Tell him to pull up the hillside, and bring the skirmishers with him, what’s left of them. Brothers, we go into all-round defence and see what transpires. We do not run, nor do we retreat. The Bekai bridges are about to become a chokepoint, and the Great King will destroy the rest of the army before them. We must do otherwise.” He donned his helm once more. They stood looking at one another, all thinking the same thing. The battle had been won; another half hour of fighting and an Empire would have been gained. One Kufr’s stupidity had lost it, and with it, their lives.
“We are Macht,” Orsos said, spitting out the word like a curse. “We do not show our backs to Kufr. The morning is done, brothers; now night approaches. We will go into the dark together.”
In the Kefren centre, Vorus watched the death of Arkamenes’s army with a kind of wonder. Beside him, old Proxis set his fist on his heart and prayed a moment to the Juthan smith-god, in whose forge the world had been hammered out.
“I knew he was his father’s son, but even Anurman would not have staked all on one throw, Proxis. He is either a genius, or a fool.”
“He did right; the snake’s head is severed. He has saved his Empire.”
Vorus called over a battle-scribe and a courier. He scribbled quickly on the portable desk the hufsan scribe wore about his neck. “We are not quite done,” he said to Proxis, still writing. “There are men on this hill who will not be running.”
“The Macht? They are finished. They fought well, but their legs are cut out from under them now.”
“We must contain them at once.” And to the courier, “Take this to all the legion commanders in turn. Tell them they must not hesitate or break ranks; give them those words as well as the despatch.”
The courier nodded and ran off.
“We will surround them, and then destroy them,” Vorus said, and despite the resolve in his words, he looked sick to his stomach.
Out on the southern edge of the battlefield Jason’s mora stood easy now, shields at their knees, helms off. Around them what remained of the skirmishers went over the mounded corpses looking for wounded, for loot, for Kufr whose throats could still be slit. The runner found Jason sharing a skin of water with Rictus and Gasca, the three of them not speaking, just drinking in turns from the skin,
their eyes glazed with that blasted look of men who have seen enough. The runner told them of events on the rest of the field, a strawhead youth who had cast aside all his wargear to run this errand. His account was tortured by the effort to breathe. Jason listened to him without comment.
“Rictus, what do you have left here, you suppose?”
Rictus’s face was an unknowable mask of dried blood, black gobbets streaking it, the only clean spaces about his lips and where he had wiped his eyelids. He looked around them at the shattered hillside and its ghastly carpet of bodies. “I’m thinking maybe eight hundred fit to fight, another two or three hundred lightly wounded, and as many again who will not see tomorrow unless they’re seen to right now.”
Jason rubbed his forehead. “We must get back up the hill and rejoin the other morai at once. We don’t have time...” He turned and looked northwards up the valley. Six pasangs away, the bulk of Arkamenes’s army covered the ground like a creeping rash from which glints of white light sprang out, reflected metal. Behind them the hill-crest was bare, the bulk of the Macht centons having moved beyond it. Standing here, it hardly seemed possible that the battle was not over.
Jason beat the black flies from his face, grimacing. His grey eyes were cold as a spearhead, but he closed them as he spoke, like a man tired to the marrow. “Kill the severely wounded. Bring along the rest. We’ll cover your retreat. Bring along what spares you can scavenge off the dead; arm heavy, if you can. It’s spearmen we need now, not stick-throwers.”
Rictus shared a glance with Gasca. “Kill them?”
Jason’s eyes broke open, shot with blood. “You heard me. We can’t take them all with us, and the Kufr will torture them. It’s a kindness. Besides, we’ll likely be joining them soon enough.”
Rictus blinked rapidly. “Who am I to be giving such orders?”
“You’re in fucking command is what you are. Agrimos and everyone else above you are dead or maimed. You take these men now, Rictus, and you get a grip of them. Do you hear me? Now start them at it.” Jason strode away. There had been a quake in his voice. Rictus watched him go, aghast.
“Promotion. Ain’t it grand?” Gasca snorted, and drank from the skin again. He wiped his mouth, and with a half-smile said, “Tonight you’ll be a centurion in hell.”
The Great King sat his horse and looked down on the thing that had been his brother. Arkamenes had been a handsome creature in life; his face now seemed nothing more than a mound of meat, for the horses had trampled it. Below what had been the chin a blackberry-dark gash gaped wide, a black mouth smiling at the sky, running with flies.
“Cover him up,” Ashurnan said unsteadily. “Bear him from the field. His bones will be buried in Ashur, where they belong.”
The Honai bent and laid a cloak over the battered remnants of Ashurnan’s brother. The Great King wheeled his horse away and pulled his komis up over his face.
“Midarnes!”
“Yes lord?” The commander of the Household troops drew level, bowing in the saddle.
“Leave the pursuit to the cavalry. Tell Berosh to take our Juthan to the river also, and make sure he takes and holds the bridges. The Household and the Honai are to remain opposite the Macht lines, but are not to engage. Is that understood, Midarnes?”
“Yes, lord.”
Ashurnan looked up at the sky. It was past noon. The morning had ended at last and the day was on the slide, but there was enough daylight left for the things which had to be done.
“I need scribes and couriers, the best we have. We will send word to Istar, to Jutha, to Artaka. The pretender is dead. These provinces must come back to me without delay. If they do, there will be no repercussions. If they do not, I will bring fire and the spear among them.”
“Honuran died on the field,” Midarnes said, “But Gushrun of Tanis has not yet been caught.”
“Find him. Bring him to me. He will be made an example of. I will impale his body upon the very gates of Tanis.”
Midarnes bowed again.
“Amasis also, the chamberlain—he will be back with the baggage. We must take their baggage train, Midarnes, without it these Macht will be without food, without water, without so much as a spare spearhead.”
“It shall be done, my lord. I shall send word to the cavalry. It is rumoured that Arkamenes travelled with a fortune in bullion also, half the treasury of Tanis to pay these mercenaries with.”
“Secure it. The day is far from over.”
The Great King rode sedately up the hillside that he had so recently charged down, surrounded by hundreds of heavy cavalry, Kefren who had pledged their loyalty to him in blood. He warmed to them now as he had not before, for they had followed him down into the great gamble, not knowing it would pay off. He felt slightly dazed, dazed by the victory, by the aftermath of the violence still singing in his ears and shaking in his muscles. Today, he thought, I proved myself my father’s son. I have earned my throne at last. And he gave thanks to God, there in the midst of that vast slaughterhouse, for the way the morning had passed.
“It’s twelve pasangs to the river, and five back to the baggage train,” Phiron said.
“The baggage is gone,” Pasion growled. “We need not trouble ourselves over it. All we have left in this world are the spears in our hands and the bronze on our backs.”
“Then we are still rich men,” old Castus said. “I’d as soon die with wargear on my back as staring up the arse of an ox. What’s the plan, Phiron? Do we stand here and let them come to us, or do we charge down into them and try and make a story out of it?”
Thirteen men, all in the Curse of God except for the youngest among them. Rictus had unstrapped a battered bronze cuirass from a corpse and now wore full panoply for the first time since the day he had fought in the ranks of the Iscan phalanx. Jason had insisted he be admitted to the Kerusia, as his skirmishers had rearmed themselves similarly, and now constituted a Macht mora. Rictus had not become a centurion; he had become a notional general of several hundred men. For all that, he was entirely ignored by the true veterans of the Ten Thousand who despised him for a strawhead upstart, Iscan or no. He held his tongue as the older men debated.
The Macht had come together again on the ridge-crest of Kunaksa and now their centons were facing out in all directions. In the hollow heart of the formation several hundred lightly wounded were strapping themselves up as best they could, helped by those of the skirmishers who were too young or too old to bear the weight of a full panoply. A few hundred paces away, the Kufr lines were extending to east and west, a shallow crescent of troops thickening moment by moment. On the plain below the great hunt went on, Kefren horsemen riding down and slaughtering the last of Arkamenes’s army before they could come to the Bekai bridges. There were so many figures on the move that the plain seemed to be crawling with life for pasangs to the west, as though someone had tipped up a termite mound and let the occupants spill out in their busy, frantic tens of thousands.
Phiron wiped the sweat from his face. What remained of the water had been given to the wounded, and his tongue was rasping against his teeth like something foreign in his mouth. “We go to them,” he said tersely. “Otherwise they wait for thirst to do half their work for them.”
“What way?” Pomero asked.
“Not to the river; they’ll be expecting that. We hit them here, as hard as we can, and beat them back off the heights. Their cavalry is still busy down on the plain, so we stick to the hills. We head north, parallel to the river. There are big cities up there, on the river. One called Carchanis maybe eight, ten days’ march from here. We get there, take that city and hold it, regroup and resupply. Then—”
“Then?” Orsos demanded.
“Then we decide what to do next.”
“If we get to decide how to die in the next two hours we’ll be lucky,” Mynon snapped, black eyes flashing. “Ten days’ march? And we eat and drink what on the way? And won’t the Great King have something to say about us tramping off through his Empi
re?”
“Mynon’s right,” Pasion said quietly, kneading his jaw. “We fight and die here and now, or we sue for terms. Ashurnan knows we’ll take ten times our number with us when we go down; he may be amenable to some kind of compromise. Otherwise his army could well be wrecked by our last stand.”
“You think he cares?” Teremon spoke up. An older man, a close friend of both Castus and Orsos, he had taken an arrow in the face during the morning’s fighting and now a bloody rag was stuffed in the socket where his left eye had been. “He can call up a million spears against us if he wants; the whole Empire sits around us. What does he care if he loses another ten thousand, another fifty thousand, so long as he sees the end of us?”
“Calling up more levies takes time,” Pasion said patiently. “For now, the only army in the Empire that the Great King can rely on stands opposite us, on these hills. Don’t forget that Jutha, and Istar and Artaka are still in rebellion. He’ll have to send troops to recall them to the fold. No, Teremon, he cannot afford to see this army of his wrecked upon these hills. I say we send him an embassy under a green branch, and see if we can come to some arrangement. Who knows, he may need Macht spears as his brother did. We fight for pay, not for any cause. He must learn of this, and quickly. If the fighting starts again, then the moment is lost. We will leave our bones here, and the Kufr will pick Antimone’s Gift off our bodies.”
There was an angry murmur at this. The thought of the black armours falling into Kufr hands was unthinkable, impious; there were scores of them in the ranks of the army.
“All right then,” Phiron said. He seemed shrunken, as if the turn of events had done something to his insides. “We’ll send out an ambassador. Someone who can speak their damned language.” There was a pause. “That’s—”
“Me, you fucks,” Jason said. “Yes, I know. I’ll do it. And I’ll take the strawhead here with me.”