The Ten Thousand

by Paul Kearney

  The heat of the afternoon was an enervating oven which must be struggled against physically. The corpses had already begun to add something to the brew, and their luckier comrades had to piss and shit somewhere. So for pasangs all around, the stink on the unmoving air was a thing that hung heavy in the stomach. It was as if the bloodletting had fouled some essential balance in the earth itself, and now the face of Kuf was revolted by it. The Macht had a name for this miasma, as they had for most things connected with warfare: the soup, they called it. By naming it, joking about it, they made it more bearable. For the carrion birds circling and the black flies laying their eggs in the eyes of the dead it was a field of bounty, and their claims upon it would soon make of this place a plague-pit.

  Jason and Rictus strode forth unarmed under the withered stick that was the nearest they could come to a green-leafed bough upon the field. They walked out across the sucking, steaming morass of mud and carrion which occupied the space between the armies and planted themselves there whilst the sweat stung hot in their eyes and the stink of the place seemed fair to choke them.

  “Why me?” Rictus asked as they watched the Kufr lines and saw figures run back and forth behind them.

  “I might ask the same myself,” Jason said equably. “Phiron speaks Asurian better than I, and Kefren too. My guess is, he’s so indispensable to the army’s survival he’s counted himself out of gambles such as this. As for you, I picked you as a companion for several reasons. You’re not stupid, you know how to listen, and you’re a big bastard who might be able to look one of these gangling fucks in the eye. Now shut up and prove me right on all counts.”

  Their presence in the field between the armies had set individual horsemen to the gallop behind the Kufr phalanx. There were more horsemen there now; fine looking fellows in all the finery the Empire could provide. Jason stared at them and said; “I believe the King is there. No standard or chariot, but that’s his bodyguard, or I’m a blind man.”

  “What happens if all this is moonlight?” Rictus asked. “What if they’re just set on finishing it today?”

  Jason looked at him, cocking his head to one side. “We die fighting.”

  Strangely, Rictus smiled.

  The Kufr ranks broke open, and someone came walking out across the mud to meet them. He wore black armour, and as he drew close, they could see that he was Macht, clad in the Curse of God. Jason’s mouth opened in astonishment.

  “What are your names?” the strange Macht asked. He was middle-aged, spare and lean and bearded. He bore no weapon, and stared upon them with a barely restrained hunger of curiosity. Jason and Rictus stared back at him with something of the same expression on their faces.

  “Jason of Ferai; Rictus of Isca,” Jason said, collecting himself.

  The man smiled. “My name is Vorus. I am general of the army behind me.”

  This fell into silence, Jason and Rictus too thunderstruck to reply. Vorus looked them up and down, not without kindness. “You wish to negotiate on behalf of Phiron, I take it. Well, I am authorised likewise on behalf of the Great King. You may speak to me freely.”

  “Phobos,” Jason said under his breath. “We wish to discuss terms under which we may leave the Empire in peace.” Still staring he added, “Our employer is dead, and now we just want to get home. Vorus you say—Vorus of where?”

  “Son, I left the Harukush long before you hefted your first spear,” Vorus said. And more formally, “My King has divined your intention beforehand. We have no wish to see further bloodshed—the issues which set us at each other’s spearpoints have already been decided. Now it only remains to see how this army of yours can be repatriated as quickly and easily as possible. To that end, we wish to invite the entire Kerusia of your generals to a meeting tonight, down on the plain, where terms for your departure from the Empire shall be discussed. Would that be acceptable to your commander, you think?”

  “I believe it would,” Jason said, and he could not help the smile that broke about his face. “I take it all parties shall be unarmed, and that the space where the meeting takes place be equidistant from both army’s lines?”

  “Of course. We will prepare a suitable venue at once. The Great King will attend, with myself and two or three others. There will be slaves also, of course. You may bring your senior officers only; there is no need for a large crowd at an event such as this. Things become too easily misunderstood. What say you?”

  “I think I may say on behalf of Phiron that we can attend as you suggest. Might I request in the interim, as a gesture of good faith, that water could be brought to us here by your—your people? We have wounded in our ranks who would bless your Great King’s name for a single sip.”

  Vorus’s face clouded. “I am afraid that’s out of the question. We remain enemies in name at least, until your generals agree to some arrangement tonight.” His jaw worked, and he looked away for a second. “I am sorry.”

  Jason stiffened but his tone remained perfectly civil. “I quite understand. We will rejoin our comrades now.”

  He turned away, exasperation and relief warring on his face. Rictus paused a moment. He stared Vorus in the eye, that Iscan arrogance coming out once more. Vorus met him look for look a long moment, and then moved with an odd jerkiness, walking back to his own lines. He moved with the stiff onerous gait of a man ashamed of what he has just done.

  SIXTEEN

  THE MEN ON THE HILL

  Many of the wounded died during the day, and the healthy were reduced to dipping their helmets in some of the less noisome puddles which dotted the hillside, drinking down mud and blood as much as any water. They threw it up again directly, until Phiron forbade the practice.

  The Great King’s army continued to follow its own evolutions, with regiments marching here and there in the shimmering heat, and pack-trains of laden mules bringing up supplies from the baggage-camp to the east. From the ridge-crest it was possible to see through the heat-haze to the bright glimmer of the Bekai River twelve pasangs away, but beyond a certain shadow upon the earth about the mound of Kaik, it was impossible to tell what had transpired there. Arkamenes’s army seemed to have vanished from the face of the world, leaving behind only corpses, a windfall of carrion scattered across the earth for as far as a keen eye could see. Juthan soldiers were methodically clearing the plain, stripping and looting the dead, piling up the bodies into pyres. The work went on all day, until the light began to fail and the shattering heat at last eased a little. On the ridge-line of Kunaksa, the Macht stood in stubborn ranks, shields at their knees, helms at their belts, and their throats as parched as burnt bread. They had piled up all of their own dead that they could come at, though there was nothing to burn them with. Every spearhead and belt-buckle that could be gleaned from the battlefield had been gathered. The corpses now lay stacked, almost three thousand of them in several long mounds. Ravens and vultures were already clustered on these knolls of rotting flesh, heedless of any outraged shout or thrown stone. And the soup thickened about the hills as evening drew on and the blood congealed in gobbets about the very stones half-buried in the ground.

  The Great King’s standard was set up on the plain some pasang and a half from the Macht lines, and about it hundreds of Kufr had erected a tented compound, labouring through the heat of the day until it seemed that a veritable village had sprung up in the space of a few hours. As the light failed, a trio of Kefren horsemen rode up to the Macht lines under a green branch and gestured with it to the tents below. Phiron shouted assent at them in their own language and they galloped off again, komis held close to their noses.

  “Well, there’s the invite,” he said. “Shall we take him up on it?”

  “It’s that, or charge his lines,” Castus retorted. His seamed old face appeared to have withered in the space of a day, like an apple in an oven, but his eyes Were as fierce and clear as always. “Can we trust these bastards?”

  “We trust them or fight them,” Phiron said simply.

  “Let’
s move, before it gets too dark to see where the fuck we’re going,” Orsos rasped.

  Thirteen of them walked out from the Macht phalanx. They had left off their armour and weaponry and walked in the cool lightness of their sweat-sodden chitons, with short swords in their belts. Many of them bore crudely bound wounds. All were plastered with dried blood and shreds of flesh and bone, and their legs were caked black with filth to the knees. They looked more like defeated slaves than the generals of an army. There was an uneasy murmur in the ranks as they picked their way down the broken hillside to the tents below. The Kufr army had drawn back somewhat for the night and had lit campfires, breaking their lines and laying out pickets every hundred paces. As the light faded and the stars began springing out above the black heights of the Magron, these campfires described an arc some eight pasangs long. In the centre of the arc the Macht army stood by its arms in fireless darkness, the wounded shivering as the heat of the day evaporated and a coolness poured down out of the mountains in the east.

  There were horses hobbled by the meeting-tent, but apart from that the plain seemed wholly deserted now, the Juthan having given up their corpse-gathering for the night. The thirteen Macht officers paused at the lightless bulk of the tents until a flap was lifted to let light spill out from within. They entered in single file, Rictus at the rear, his hand on the hilt of his cheap sword.

  “Up on the hill, the wounded are dying for want of a cup of water, and this twisted bastard has set us out a feast?” Teremon whispered, venom in the underscored rasp of his voice.

  “Behave yourself tonight and the wounded may drink before morning,” Phiron told him. “This is the Great King we deal with now, not some usurper with ideas above his station. Brothers, we must be humble—do you hear me now? We stand in a foreign land, not as some conquering army, but as interlopers.”

  “Interlopers, my arse,” Orsos said.

  The tent within which they stood was as tall as a great tree, and had been floored with planks of cedar. It was hung with lamps up and down, all burning sweet oil. On a low table to one side a vast array of breads, meats, fruit, preserves, and wines had been set out, as well as a great earthenware bowl full of clear water, as big as a centos. The generals eyed it with some anger, licking their cracked lips, but not one made a move towards it. They stood in two rows behind Phiron.

  Opposite them were some of the low-caste hufsan, Royal attendants in the livery of the King, and in the darker corners of the tent a trio of towering Honai, unarmed save for stabbing short-swords—this being the only form of weapon permitted at a parley, and more a ceremonial badge than a useful adjunct to a fight.

  “So where is the renegade?” old Argus asked.

  “And the King,” Mynon added.

  Jason stood, head cocked to one side in that way of his, listening. He was about to speak when a flap in the far side of the tent was lifted and Vorus entered. He was wearing his black armour and his helm sat in the crook of one arm.

  “There’s more behind him,” Jason hissed, and started to draw his sword.

  “Peace, brothers,” Vorus said, holding up one hand. But the Macht generals were all drawing their weapons now, except for Phiron, who stepped forward with both hands up and empty, palm out.

  “Listen to him,” he said loudly. “Sheathe your swords, damn it all. Think of the men on the hill, for Phobos’s sake. Stand down.”

  The men behind him paused, and one after another the twelve blades were slid back in their scabbards. Vorus nodded. He stepped forward. “Phiron of Idrios,” he said. “You have led your men well, and they have acquitted themselves honourably. I salute you, one man to another, one general to another.” He held out his free hand, and after a moment’s hesitation, Phiron took it in the warrior grip. The tension in the tent sank swiftly. Pasion, just behind Phiron, shook his head and began to smile.

  Vorus brought up his helm, that bowl of iron, and smashed it into Phiron’s face, breaking bone.

  Phiron staggered, and Vorus struck again, still gripping the other man’s hand in a white-knuckled fist. As Phiron crumpled, Vorus shouted out in the Kufr language. All around the walls of the tent, hitherto unseen flaps were lifted, and pouring into the space around the Macht there filed fully-armed Honai of the Great King’s bodyguard.

  Vorus released Phiron’s hand, and the Macht general crumpled to the planked floor, his face a broken mire of blood. Vorus stepped back, donning the gore-flecked helm, and shouted in Kufr once again. The Honai moved in.

  Pasion had leapt forward, sword in hand. He bounded across Phiron’s body with a full-throated roar and stabbed out at Vorus. The blade struck the renegade’s black cuirass and scored harmlessly off to the side. Vorus’s own blade came up from his waist and transfixed Pasion through the ribs, hilt-deep.

  Rictus did not see much more. He and Jason were at the rear of the Macht. As Rictus started instinctively to advance, Jason thumped him backwards to the wall of the tent. “Cut it open!” And then he turned to clash aside the thrust spear of a Honai guardsman.

  Rictus scored his blade down the tent-leather, admitting a bloom of cold air from the night outside. He turned once, to look back at the one-sided melee that was now raging in the tent. The Macht had come together in a tight knot of blades and were beating down the spears of the Honai. Vorus had disappeared. Phiron and Pasion lay dead, and as Rictus watched, Teremon followed them, his one eye not quick enough to catch the spearhead that look him on his blind side. Orsus’s bull-roar tilled the air as the shaven-headed general hinged forward, stabbing the Honai below the corselet and opening his bowels. This Kufr’s fall entangled the legs of two more, and the Macht blades licked out at once, opening their throats and groins. The air was full of blood; the tall Honai with their raging eyes seemed like some smith-made automatons set whirring into clockwork life, jabbing down with their spears and butting into the Macht with the bowls of their shields.

  Then Rictus was through the opening he had made. The night was dazzlingly dark about him, full of feet running, plashing through the mud, Kufr voices calling to one another, screams echoing out of the tent. He stood one moment, and then turned back and was about to push his way back inside when Jason burst through the rent, dragging Mynon with him. “Get his other arm. Up the hill, now. Move!”

  Mynon had taken a blow to the head. He was supporting his weight with all the craft of someone very drunk. They dragged and carried him away from the tents, the breath sawing in their lungs, their brains white with the enormity of it all. Rictus felt as though his mind had been locked down in some box, and his body carried on its necessary work without it.

  “Down,” Jason said. And all three of them lay flat in the mud. Kufr with torches ran back and forth across the plain and clustered around the tents like fireflies. The three Macht lay not thirty paces from the nearest, but so slathered were they with mud that only their eyes gleamed clean of it. These they shut when the Kufr torchbearers looked their way.

  “Is this all?” Jason asked hoarsely. “That cunting renegade. I will have his life, before this is over.” He rested his forehead in the clammy ground and his body shook in silent spasm for a few seconds. When he raised his head again his features were a mask of mud and hatred.

  Mynon’s eyelids fluttered. He groaned loudly, and Rictus placed a hand over his mouth. The dark-browed man glared at him, then collected himself. He levered Rictus’s palm gently from his face. “Who is this? Rictus?—and Jason.”

  “Quiet,” Jason whispered.

  A chariot trundled forward and about it gathered a body of Kufr cavalry, well-armoured Kefren of the bodyguard. In the chariot were a bufsan driver and a tall Kufr with a snow-white komis about his face. Juthan warriors lined up and held their torches above their heads, making an avenue of torchlight leading up to the chariot. Up this avenue came a file of Honai, some bloodied and limping. Each of them bore something dangling from one hand. Vorus was at their rear, his black armour gleaming.

  The Honai lifted up their burd
ens. First the Juthan and then the mounted bodyguards gave a great shout and clashed their spears against shields and breastplates. Ten severed heads, held up dripping in the torchlight to stripe the arms of their bearers. The leaders of the Ten Thousand, their features frozen in death, eyes blank and glazed.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Jason said. “We go now, while they’re having their party. Up the hill.”

  The three of them began crawling up the muddy slope in the darkness, whilst behind them the Kufr shouted and cheered their King and the heads of the ten generals were set upon poles as trophies.

  “Is that all?” Ashurnan asked. “Did we get them all, Vorus?”

  The Macht general had a face like some grey mask carved out of stone. “I believe one or two escaped. But we got Phiron, and Pasion, all the senior officers of experience. The Macht are lead-erless now. We must attack them at dawn, a full assault.”

  The Great King stared at the pole-mounted heads that snarled at him in the torchlight. Bred to war though they were, his chariot horses stamped and snorted uneasily under the regard of those dead eyes. “You know what to do with these,” he said briskly. “I will return to the camp. Take them at dawn, Vorus, and wipe them out. If any are alive by the moons of tomorrow, I want them in capture yokes.”

  “Yes, lord.”

  Ashurnan regarded his general more closely, dropping his komis from his mouth. “Would you rather some other officer undertook this mission? I would understand. They are your people, after all.”

  Vorus drew himself up, anger sparking out of his eyes. “I serve the Great King. I do his bidding, whatsoever it might be. I have served the Great King for twenty years, and never yet have I begged off a mission or disobeyed a command. I will continue to serve the Great King until the day of my death.”

  Ashurnan smiled. “I do not doubt it, my friend. Send word of events to me. Midarnes, you will place the Household troops under Vorus’s command, and obey his orders as though they were my own. I go now, General, to see what remains of my brother’s baggage train and the riches he brought from Tanis. Should you need me, seek me there.” He raised a hand and the charioteer slapped the reins on the horses’ rumps. The vehicle moved away, and with it a great cloud of Honai cavalry, their hooves thumping out a triumphant tattoo on the ground. Vorus stood and watched them go for a long while, the Juthan and Kefren guards standing around him in the torchlight, the dead eyes of the Macht watching all.