The Ten Thousand

by Paul Kearney

  “They’re on their way, brothers,” the file-leader, big Gratus said. “Kufr to our front, spindly bastards a girl could kick over. Juthan on the right, a big damn crowd of them, and out on the left I see that bastard cavalry of theirs.”

  “Fuck, I hate cavalry,” someone said.

  “They won’t come up here—too many stones for them to stub their toes on. I hope Aristos and his lot are ready to take on horses, because you mark my words, they’re heading out round the flank for the baggage.”

  “How many of this crowd are there, Gratus?” someone back in the file asked.

  “Maybe five times what we have here. Enough to go around, at all events. All right, brothers, here comes Jason. Shields up as he passes.”

  Jason strode past the front of the phalanx, helm off, nodding to those file-leaders he knew best. As he passed, so the Macht reached down for their shields and slid their arms through the bronze bands in the centre, gripping the strap at the rim.

  “Hold fast,” Gratus said. “Spears stand until we get the word.”

  The Paean began, out on the right, and it swelled as the eight thousand men on the hill took it up centon by centon. The Kufr army began to march up the rocky slope towards them, the neat lines of spearmen splintering and reforming, rippling around the larger boulders. To their rear, the archers opened their ranks and began sticking arrows in the ground at their feet, the swifter to pluck them for their bows.

  Down the Macht line the centurions bellowed out the order: “Level spears!” The first three ranks of the phalanx brought down their spearheads and gripped the weapons at shoulder-height. This time, Gasca was one of those who would be shearing the sheep from the start. His aichme thrust out just to the right of Gratus’s helm. Behind him, he could sense the men of the rear ranks bracing themselves, jamming their bare feet amid the rocks, seeking purchase for the pushing match to come. He closed his eyes for a second, and saw the terrorised eyes of the Kufr girl at Ab-Mirza. All around him, the noise of the approaching Kufr army rose up, the tramp of their feet, the catcalls and cheers and inchoate screams of them. And then the hissing sound in the air above as the first wave of arrows swooped down and began the day’s killing.

  The Kufr line was the better part of four pasangs long. Vorus sat his horse in the centre rear, his head turning left and right as he tried to keep track of the various elements in the army. The archers were firing volley after volley now, and the main body of the heavy infantry was well up the hills, about to engage. The Asurian cavalry was out of sight, hidden by the rising ground to the north, but he could still hear the low rumble of the moving horses, even over the clamour near at hand. He meant to outflank the Macht on the right with the cavalry, and on the left with the Juthan Legions. In the centre he simply meant to hold them. He knew now that there were no troops in the Empire who could hope to prevail against the Macht in a stand-up fight, not even the Honai of the Great King. In the centre, he would feed in his troops line by line, and keep the enemy spearmen pinned in place, buying time with their lives. On the flanks, the decision of the day would turn. He had agreed the plan with Proxis the night before.

  The Kufr centre made contact with the Macht. They were eye to eye up there, for the Macht were on the upslope. The spearheads of the Macht phalanx jabbed in and out, a long glitter caught in the sun. Before them, the Kufr formation rippled in and out as the front ranks fell, or recoiled, and then lunged forward again. Now the armies were joined together, two fighting dogs with their teeth locked in one another’s throats. This was the time.

  Vorus turned to one of his couriers. They sat their horses around him like eager children, the tall Niseians stamping under them.

  “Go to Proxis. Tell him to move in.”

  “Yes, general,” and the Kefre took off, his mount scattering clods of turf as it went.

  Another one came in to replace him, his horse foaming and blown. “General, Archon Tessarnes is south of the Imperial Road with his command. He is in the enemy rear, and means to attack at once.”

  “Very well. Have yourself some water.” Vorus felt a wave of relief flood him. The cavalry were in place. The building of the thing was done. He had set it up and loosed it according to plan. Now it was up to those at the spearheads.

  The Asurian cavalry broke into view over the embanked line of the Imperial Road, a shining mass of horsemen two pasangs wide and many ranks deep. They were behind the Macht phalanx, ready to gut it from the rear. They were singing as they came, and the heavy Niseians were surrounded by a fog of their own sweat as the ranks separated out. They came on at the gallop, losing riders here and there whose mounts had tripped on the rough ground, but holding together, a brute mass of muscle and flesh and bone, a gold-flecked tide.

  Rictus saw them burst into view and was staggered by their numbers, the momentum they carried with them, the true weapon of all cavalry.

  “No,” he said aloud. “Oh, no.”

  They curved in, wheeling like fish in shoal. Before them now was the rear of the Macht phalanx on the rocky hillside ahead. Bad ground for cavalry. But the Asurians seemed not to care. They gave a great triumphant cheer and kept the pace, spreading out and drawing their bright swords. The horses grunted as they hit the slope and powered on.

  At last, Aristos’s mora was on the move; to his right came Rictus, his men spreading out and already beginning to throw their javelins into the press of horsemen. Rictus sprinted over to Aristos, who was labouring along at a run in front of his men, his helm bobbing on his head.

  “Thin out your line! Go in four deep or you’ll just get bogged down!” He was ignored.

  The heavy mora crashed into the right flank of the horsemen. The Asurians had wheeled several squadrons round to meet their advance, but the movement robbed them of all momentum. They were virtually at a standstill as the spearmen struck. The horses recoiled, staggering backwards, rearing, screaming as the lines of spearheads did their work. Aristos and his mora cut into the Asurians like an arrowhead seeking flesh. But like the arrowhead, their own momentum was burying them. They had engaged perhaps a third of the horsemen. The rest had kept going. Up on the hilltop, the bulk of that cavalry was about to hit home.

  Rictus raised his fist. “Hold!” Behind him, his men came to a ragged halt. Javelins were still being thrown over his shoulder. He stopped, eyes wide, and looked around his portion of the battlefield.

  Too late. The cavalry had made it to the top of the hill, and had crashed into the rear of the Macht spearmen. Thousands of horsemen. The left-hand portion of the Macht line seemed to simply disappear, engulfed.

  Whistler came up beside him, panting. “Oh, Phobos,” he groaned.

  Lower down the hillside, Aristos’s mora were embroiled in a bloody, futile contest with perhaps two thousand Asurians. The cavalry had surrounded them. The riders hacked with great courage at the heavily armoured spearmen, whilst underneath them their mounts were slaughtered by the keen aichmes. But Aristos had missed the main body. He was entangled now; he would be fighting there for precious time to come.

  “Throw away your javelins,” Rictus said. “We use the spear today.”

  “Last time we took on cavalry we got our arses fucked,” one of the men said.

  “This time it’s we who take them up the arse. Brothers, they’re killing us up on that hill. That’s Jason’s mora there on the left, and they’re destroying it. I’ll walk up there alone if I have to.”

  “My arse, alone,” Whistler said, and tossed his bundled javelins aside. There was a clatter all around as scores, hundreds of men did the same.

  “Lead us, Rictus,” someone called out.

  They started up the slope at a swift run, short spears in their right hands, peltas on their left arms, fear and hatred blazing out of their eyes.

  * * *

  Gratus had gone down, and so Gasca was now in the second rank, with Astianos in front of him. His spear had snapped in half, the fore part of it lost in some screaming Kufr’s head, so he had re
versed it and was now stabbing out with the sauroter, the splintered end of the shaft slicing out slivers of his palm as he thrust it into the faces of the Kufr in the enemy line before him. Under his feet, Gratus had crawled back from the forefront of the fighting, one eye stabbed out from his head so that it flopped on his cheek. He had made it back a little, the spearmen straddling him, protecting him, but then had died. Less spectacularly he had been pierced through the thigh as well, and had bled to death with his comrades fighting around him. Now they were standing on his corpse, their feet shunting it back and forth as they struggled to keep the line intact. His was not the only corpse the Macht spearmen were standing upon, but he had been well-liked, and his death had infuriated his comrades. Before them, the Kufr marched up the hill only to be cut down. Now they were climbing over mounds of their own dead, their heels set in the flesh of their comrades.

  There was a shudder from behind, and Gasca was jolted off balance. He fought to stay upright, and before him Astianos was shoved forward. He beat back a Kufr with the bowl of his shield, head-butted another, and stabbed out blindly with his spear. “Easy—easy!” he yelled as he and Astianos fell back into the line.

  A horse screamed, right in Gasca’s ear it seemed. He half-turned, and as he did the files of men around him broke up, shouting. The whole mass of the formation, which had seemed so locked together a few moments before, was smashed open. The light of the westering sun was cut off by a mass of horsemen careering into the back of the spearmen, knocking them down, hacking at their backs, stabbing them through their napes.

  “Rear ranks, face about!” a voice was thundering. It was Buridan, his russet beard trailing below his helm. “Stand fast brothers!”

  He had dropped his shield and now hauled a Kufr horseman off his mount. The animal collapsed on him as one of his comrades speared it through the skull. Buridan went down, smashed between the horse and the unforgiving stones. The Macht around him set up a great shout. The Asurians’ horses careered and stamped and reared, butting the line into pieces, bowling men off their feet. In the press it was hard to turn round and face this new assault, harder still to bring the long spears into play. The Macht line was splintered into chaos, and dozens of the heavy spearmen were hacked down before they could even bring their weapons to bear.

  “Gasca!” Astianos was down. He had turned to see what was afoot behind him and a Kufr spear had taken him in the armpit. He toppled. At once Gasca moved forward, set his shield over the fallen man and jabbed out with the sauroter spike, his head snapping back and forth, trying to see what was going on beyond the confines of the helm-slot. The line was broken, in front as well as rear. He could not see what was happening.

  “Astianos!” but Astianos had already been subbed through and through, and as Gasca en mi lied there a trio of snarling Kufr thrust their spears at him. He beat off the first, killed the second with a thrust to the throat, but the third caught hint in the instant before he could recover, spearing him right through his father’s cuirass, the point breaking off in his flesh. He fell sideways, baffled at the turn of things, his feet scrabbling in the stones. Two more spears came down, transfixing him, fastening him to the earth, he squirmed there, his helm coming off, the upland air cooling his face. Confused, he thought for a moment that he was back with his brothers again, up in the high pastures, and they had bested him at some game. Then the last spearhead came down and, feeling the blow, he remembered where he was.

  We have them, Vorus thought. It’s working.

  He had seen the left wing of the Macht army shudder as the Asurians charged them from the rear. They were engulfed now, that fearsome beast of bronze and iron. He watched, more intent than he had ever been in his life before, as the Macht line was chopped to pieces. The cavalry burst through it, hacking bloody gaps in the ranks of the spearmen. In the front the Kufr infantry, emboldened by the sudden apparition of the Asurians, pressed forwards.

  Vorus turned to his nearest courier. This one was a hufsan, and he was looking up at the ruin of the Macht army like one who has been granted a glimpse of a miracle.

  “Go to Archon Distartes. Tell him to send in the reserves—to send in everything.”

  “Yes, lord.” The hufsan’s teeth were a white flash in his face as he took off, the dun pony’s hooves twinkling under him.

  The Macht on the right were no longer a line, but bristling knots of infantry, fighting back to back. They could not run, for there was nowhere to run to. They died where they stood, fighting as long as their feet could bear them.

  I have beaten them, Vorus thought. He watched the Macht dying up on the hill and knew it to be true. Many of them were now fighting with their swords, their spears shattered or lost. He saw a Cursebearer go down, the black armour standing out in that mass of bronze. And for a second he had to bow his head and choke back a kind of grief.

  On the left, the Macht morai were creating a terrible slaughter among the Kufr pushing up the hill. Most likely, they were not even aware of the disaster unfolding on their flank. It was time Proxis moved in to finish it. His legions were standing out on the Macht right flank, facing empty air. Once they wheeled in as the Asurians had done, the Ten Thousand would be no more. That story would be ended at last.

  Except that the Juthan were not moving. They stood in rank, all twelve thousand of them, and watched the battle lines struggling on the rocky hillside to their right, as stolid and unmoving as mourners at a funeral.

  A chill went down Vorus’s spine. Proxis, no, do not do this to me now.

  He leaned in the saddle and physically grabbed the courier nearest to him, not taking his eyes off the ranks of the Juthan some pasang and a half away. “You must go to—” He released him again.

  “ They’re moving, General,” someone said beside him. “The Juthan are moving off.”

  “Slow, as always,” another of his aides said with the hauteur of the high-caste Kefren.

  And yes, they were moving at last. Twelve thousand of them, and with them his friend of twenty years.

  “Where are they going?” the aide asked, puzzled, not yet realising.

  Twenty years, Vorus thought. What was it to you, Proxis—something to be endured? Maybe that was why you drank, to keep the knowledge that you would one day do this toward the back of your mind.

  For the Juthan were marching away, legion by legion. They were leaving the battlefield to turn south, marching in perfect ranks. Vorus saw a figure lead them away, seated on a mule.

  “Where are they going?” his aide repeated, wild-eyed.

  “They’re going home,” Vorus said. “Where else?” And you timed it well, Proxis, he thought. You left it until the perfect moment.

  He bowed his head, leaning on his horse’s neck, smelling the salt sweat of the patient beast under him. I have lived too long, he thought. “General.”

  He straightened, looked up the hill at the battle once more, that all-encompassing roar of madness and slaughter which meant nothing to him now. More Macht troops had come up to hammer the Asurians from the rear, light-armed by the look of them. That corner of the battlefield was as confused and murderous as anything at Kunaksa. There, the Arakosan cavalry had been fought to a standstill by skirmishers too. He wondered if it was the same commander. Someone capable, at any rate.

  The Kufr centre was collapsing. As the Juthan legions peeled away, abandoning them, so the Macht on that flank began to advance, finally aware of their brethren’s plight out on their left. They came down the hillside in a ferocious, perfect line, tramping across the bodies of the dead and the living alike. The Kufr troops could not withstand that torrent of professional fury. They retreated, withdrawing in some order at first, and then casting aside their shields and running without shame. Behind their running backs, the Macht wheeled right, by morai, and moved in on the catastrophe that had overtaken the other half of their army.

  Vorus’s young Kefren aide was weeping in grief and fury. “General—my lord. We should move. This field is lost.”r />
  “Juthan bastards!”

  Vorus sat upon his horse and stared up the hill at his own people, whom he had tried to destroy. Around him, the Honai stood uneasily, looking behind them at the pale length of the Imperial Road. On the slope ahead the lightly armed companies of archers were already running, their quivers only half-empty.

  There is such a thing, Vorus thought, as a tradition of victory. Perhaps that is what does it.

  Proxis, may I be forgiven, I wish you well. Take your people to freedom.

  Aloud, he said, “Signal general retreat. We will pull back along the Imperial Road.” He grasped the shoulder of his weeping aide. He was not much more than a boy. “Phelos, try and get through to Tessarnes. Tell him to break off, to get away as many of his men as he can.”

  The Kefre wiped his nose on the back of his gold-skinned hand. “Yes, sir. Where will I find you when I return?”

  “Tell Tessarnes to take command, Phelos. I am stepping down. I have failed.”

  “My lord! General!”

  “Go now. And try to stay alive.” He clapped the boy on the shoulder. Was I ever that young? he wondered. As Phelos sped off the standard-bearer at Vorus’s side was waving his banner to the rear. A formality. The army was already in full retreat.

  It is stubbornness, Vorus realised. That is what sets us apart. We Macht will fight on when there is no hope of victory. We are stubborn bastards, worse than mules. It is not even a matter of courage.

  He looked up at the chaos on the hill. The Macht morai that had wheeled north were the only intact troops on the field. Everything else was just a mass of struggling men and Kufr and horses, all lines lost, all order destroyed. In some places they were packed together like a crowd in a theatre; in others the masses were opening out in flight, in death, a collapse of the bonds that held armies together. As the Kufr companies streamed down off the hill they left behind a heaped and tangled line of bodies, like seaweed thrown up on a beach by a spring tide. On the left, the Macht had died where they stood, falling in line.