"Who is this man?" Gonatas asked. One of the Epirians at the table casually reached down and picked up a helmet. He tossed it to Gonatas. It was highly polished brass and shone like gold. A long sky-blue horsehair tassel sprouted from its crown. The captive was one of Demetrius' guardsmen.
"Not so fearsome in the flesh, are they?" the Epirian man said without looking up.
"The heir to the throne of Irrylia is the traitor! Who could have seen that?"
"I am heir to no throne," Gonatas snapped in a sudden rage. "That thing I saw up there on the road…That is Demetrius' heir now. I will not serve a madman--or his demons! Perhaps his slaves make no such distinctions." He hurled the helmet at the chained man's feet. It clanked on a stone and skittered across the floor, striking the wall.
The chained man's anger turned to despair. "Oh, I have seen too much," he cried, burying his face in his hands. "I will never leave here alive."
"You will receive only what a murderer deserves," the Epirian told him.
"But I have told you what you wanted to know." The captive lifted his face from his hands. His eyes were rimmed red. "A traitor would be found traveling the road. I told you. And so it is as Pylia has Seen it--and here he is. You have found him and he stands before you, alive and well. I will say nothing. I have done nothing more than my duty, my sworn duty, and yet you treat me like a criminal. It is you who are the criminals. Traitors and murderers, all of you! And you, Gonatas…Pylia will soon speak your name, and you will know what it is to be doomed and chained to a wall…"
Gonatas' old soldier spit on the ground. "Just kill him already," he growled and turned on his heel. Without another word, he tramped off into the arching trees and disappeared back up the bluff.
The Epirian man rolled up the parchment that had been laid out on the table and handed it to Gonatas. "This is the way to Clautias," he said. "I hope you like the water because you'll be traveling by boat. Come with me."
Gonatas' party followed the man down a long set of square-cut timber stairs set in the mud to the water below. There, they found a four-oared, single-masted skiff waiting for them.
"Between the wind and the current and the backs of your men, you'll reach Clautias in two days time." He held the boat steady for the men to board. It had been loaded with food and water. "We hear tell the Shadow Riders are traveling with footmen. They lumber into a camp and then the Riders range out from there, for days at a time. They move slowly, but once they have made camp within range of Clautias, they will strike fast. So stop for nothing. Your Irrylian cloaks should keep you safe. No one is looking for traitors on this river."
"Thank you, my friend," Gonatas said.
The Epirian pushed them off and Gonatas' men sat to their oars and began rowing out into the current. After a few strokes, they found a rhythm. Gonatas sat down at the tiller. Behind them, he saw nothing but a steep leafy bluff, no cave, no captive, no road upon which a traitor was said to be traveling. The snake man scoured an empty road, for the traitor plied the river now, and no one thought to look for him there.
Chapter 21
They came upon the two dead men just after dawn. They had not made it far. The Sarians had left their bodies for the sandrunners and the scavengers huddled round them as though at a feeding trough. Of the one, Hurrus could see nothing but a pair of sandaled feet protruding from the mass of scaly, green-backed lizards. Of the other, he saw rather too much. He felt his stomach lurch.
"Deon…" Hurrus said.
Deon rode down the slope. One of the sandrunners popped its head above the others and stared at him, its big round yellow eyes as piercing as a bird's.
"A madness must have seized them," Xandros muttered.
"They were attempting to desert to the Sarians. To the Sarians." Hurrus said in disbelief.
"It is thirst that drives them."
Others had stolen away into the desert to die quietly. These had died anything but quietly. The Sarians had tortured them through most of the night. The entire camp had heard them screaming. After that, it had been the constant yipping and squawking of animals - sandrunners, foxes and hyenas. Some of the men said they were not desert beasts at all but the Sarians themselves, creeping up onto the dunes to imitate the creatures of the Eastern Desert, trying to unnerve the soldiers. Others said they were the jackal-headed minions of Hathor, companions of the dead. In either case, fatigue and fear could now be added to the list of the soldiers' woes.
Deon approached the creatures and began waving his arms. The sandrunners scattered, revealing bodies that had been stripped of flesh and meat to their bones. Hurrus sent five more men down to help Deon conceal the corpses. "I don't want the men to see them," he said. The sandrunners had not retreated far. Peering out from behind bushes and out of hollows in the ground, they watched the men dragging the bodies away. Sandrunners were their constant companions now. A man could not stagger off to relieve himself without flushing them from rocks and bristling shrubs.
"Some of our men would count these lucky," Xandros said. "For them, their torment is over."
"These two unfortunates were Tepes' men, not mine," Hurrus said.
"All men suffer," said Xandros.
Hurrus turned back. He had called a halt to the march and his men sat in exhaustion in the road. Horses grazed among the shrubs and grasses that sprouted on the hillsides. The previous day the army had only managed ten miles before collapsing under the blazing sun. The Sarians shot at them in rocky passes and spirited away stragglers and deserters, leaving them in the road for the men to see. The nights were full of ghosts.
Shimmering in the distance behind them stood the dual hills of the Horns of Hathor. The twin peaks marked the farthest any Tygetian army had ever marched into the Eastern Desert. Not even Xarhux had dared traverse it, leaving Tygetia instead by the coast road - and leaving the Eastern Desert to the Sarians. They had plagued Tygetia ever since.
The Horns also marked the last of the army's well-watered camps. Since leaving them, the men had suffered torments of heat and thirst such as Hurrus had not thought possible. The Sarians, however, were little better off. Stragglers continued to pour into his camps as they had from the first day, always with the same story.
"Memnon ahead…" they related to him in their pidgin mix of Tygetian, Sarian and the common tongue. They would point to the east and describe arcs with their hands: Memnon's army was just over the next rise. Always the next rise.
And what of its condition?
"Much sad…Much sad…"
Hurrus' heart would quicken. Twice he had deployed his van to shatter a rearguard Memnon had thrown up between them to buy himself time. Dispirited by defeat, the Sarian army could not hope to stand against him. When he caught up to it, a generation would pass before Saria could again threaten Tygetia. Hurrus drove his troops ever forward.
The Horns marked the dividing line, the line between water and dust, between ease and torment, between comfort and strife. Once he had marched through them, there was no going back. It was before the Horns that Bellog's man had found him.
"The general commands you to halt," the messenger had said as he strode into Hurrus' tent that night as if he owned it.
"And who might you be?" Hurrus had asked, looking up from his papers and maps. Xandros and Deon stood at each of his shoulders and the rest of his companion body surrounded him in full regalia of war.
"I have ridden hard after you with General Bellog's orders--"
"Orders?" Hurrus laid down a parchment and approached the man with arms outstretched, flashing him a disbelieving smile. "You interrupt a war council of a victorious army with such a trifle as Bellog's orders? And to what does he order me now, defeat?"
Hurrus' companions laughed, but Bellog's man found no humor in it. "A trifle?" the messenger sputtered indignantly.
"The last order I heard out of Bellog was for me to defend my position. Would he like me to go back and hold it now?" More laughter.
"He sent Tepes to you…"
/> "The lad was out of his depth. Now, if you will excuse us."
"The general orders you back to Tygetia--"
"Orders me? If it were up to Bellog, we would be defending the gates of Archentethe against a Sarian horde bolstered by victory, and not pursuing them to their destruction."
"Still…"
"Orders me? By gods, you go tell your master that he no longer commands this army. I do!" Hurrus grabbed the man by his collar and propelled him towards the tent flap. "Tell him I might have a little desert province for him to rule when I'm done here, but he is finished in this army." Hurrus gave the man a final shove and kicked him in the ass as he flew out of the tent.
The men had howled with laughter. Of course, that was before the Horns, when laughter was still possible.
"We should not have crossed the Horns," Xandros had said two nights later. His face was caked with dust. He spoke with a thick dry tongue and cracked lips.
Hurrus sat slumped in his chair. "Do you smell that?"
Xandros sniffed. "The men are cooking--"
"--their own horses, I know. I pretend not to notice. On the other side of the Horns, any man committing such a crime would be flogged."
"The men must live," Xandros said. "When the wagons are empty…"
His voice trailed off. Hurrus stood and moved to his desk where he kept a little box. He opened it and withdrew a jewel-encrusted dagger. It was worth more than Xandros would earn in a year.
"I want you to have it," Hurrus said. "One of my Shields took it off a Sarian officer. He presented it to me, but it is yours. Gods know, you killed enough of them, many with your own hands. Don't think I do not know that."
Xandros held it under the light of the burning lamp, turning it. "What on earth would I do with this? Were I to wear it in my belt, I would look like a Sarian whoremaster."
Hurrus turned. "Xandros, I need you," he said.
"Then let us turn back."
Hurrus clenched his fists. "It is the old Xandros I need."
"And I need the old Hurrus," Xandros said. "The one who cared about his men more than some petty god-king."
"My men have tasted their first battle, Xandros. What would you have me tell them when they stand upon the same blood-soaked ground to face this Memnon a second time? What answer would you have for them when they weep at the funeral pyres of their fallen comrades and wonder to what profit their brothers have died? When they see the crown of Memnon sitting atop my head, they will know."
"Know what? That you are the king of the sandrunners?"
"I don't believe my ears. Xandros, what has happened to you? What glory has ever been won through caution and fear?"
"Cautious I am, yes, with the lives of men. Need I remind you that the funeral pyres we light now are for those lost not to glorious battle, but to want and savagery. What is to be gained out here in this wasteland? Xarhux conquered the world, but even he did not bother with this place. Let us leave this desolation to the Sarians, as Xarhux did."
"I leave nothing to my enemies," Hurrus said. "Nothing."
"I fear it may be you who ends with nothing, Prince."
"I will be left with men who have been tested beyond human endurance."
"Those who survive, yes."
"Those who survive will be the greatest soldiers of this age, Xandros. They will give me the world."
"The world now, is it? I thought you only meant to have Epiria."
"Epiria I shall have, my old friend, but I will only enter it with the blood of my enemies smeared on my face, marching at the head of an army that will make even Gyriecians tremble."
Xandros smiled. "Perhaps it is only their leader that will make men tremble," he said, laying a hand on Hurrus' shoulder. He sighed. "Hurrus, I am your brother and you will find me always at your side. But this…" He held up the pretty Sarian dagger and thrust it into the tabletop where it stuck fast, the lamplight dancing in its jewels. "I have a feeling I won't be needing a bloodless blade such as this."
Hurrus reflected that his real brother had tried to kill him. Perhaps he had brothers enough already.
When Deon and his squad had cleared the corpses from the road, Hurrus ordered the advance to resume. The men picked themselves up wearily and trudged on. During the march, a group of half-naked Sarian bowmen wandered into their column. They threw down their quivers and prostrated themselves at the feet of dying men, trading a chance to kill for a chance to live. In exchange, some of the Tygetians sat down at the side of the road to rest and could not be made to move again.
Gain some, lose some.
The dark lumps of the men left behind could be seen for miles as sandrunners closed in around them.
By midday, the army arrived at the site of an abandoned Sarian encampment. A ripple of excitement spread along the column. Dry grasses sprouted from the hillsides and little clumps of trees and shrubs filled the valleys. The camp had been centered on a small village. Not only were there signs of water about, but a well stood in a clearing surrounded by a cluster of white brick and mud dwellings, long vacant.
The men at the head of the column dashed at once towards the well, their feet kicking up sand as they ran. Hurrus watched from a distance, not daring to hope. One of the men leaned over the well and drew back sharply as if struck by an invisible fist. He sank to his knees and pounded the ground. Another bent over and looked into the shaft. He came walking back, slump-shouldered. "It is poisoned," he cried. The despair in his voice pierced the men's hearts as sharply as any Sarian arrow.
As Hurrus rode close, he caught the scent of putrescence emanating from the well.
Other men had run off in every direction to sprawl in the shade of tree or house. Men were desperately digging in the gullies, using helmets and shields, spears and swords.
"It is a fresh camp," Deon reported after inspecting the still-warm ashes of a fire. Hurrus nodded and both men turned when they heard a shout from one of the defiles. By the time they arrived, the cry of joy had changed to an anguished sob.
The man they found there was one of the Silver Shields. He had dug a little hole beside a harsh gray shrub. His hand-dug well amounted to little more than a damp spot in the sand. He had teased perhaps a saucer-full of gritty water from it and it now pooled in the crown of his helmet. When he saw Hurrus, he offered the helmet as if it were a precious chalice.
"For you, King," the lad said. His lips were cracked and dust clung to the fuzz that grew on his cheeks. Though only in his eighteenth year himself, Hurrus felt a fatherly tenderness for the boy. The entire army had stopped to watch them. "It is all there is," the boy said. Hurrus could see that his eyes would have welled with tears had he any in him. "You drink it, King."
Hurrus knelt on one knee and took the helmet. A tiny disk of water swirled inside. He handed it back. "I am no king," he said, "and the water is for you to drink, son."
After that, the men found water spread throughout the campsite, in little saucer-full packets as the boy had.
When the army had rested, they moved on. That night a wind began to blow across the desert, and when Hurrus finally called a halt, the Sarians lit fires upwind of them and the smoke blew across their camp, increasing their misery.
"We can't take much more of this," Deon said. They were standing outside Hurrus' tent, he and Hurrus and Xandros. The wisps of smoke from the Sarian fires drifted among the tents like ghost ships. A full moon had risen above the desert. "We should attack them at once."
Hurrus turned his back and paced a few steps.
"You can't be considering this, Hurrus," Xandros complained.
"We have the light of the moon, Highness," Deon said. "The Sarian main body can't be more than a single march ahead of us. We must not let this opportunity pass." He balled his fist and cast a defiant look at Xandros.
"The men cannot be pushed any further," Xandros said.
"Pushed?" Deon exclaimed. "The men would march over a cliff if it meant an end to this torment. Highness, you order these men into
columns and they will not only march at the enemy, they will run at them!"
"And how many dead will they leave scattered along this road behind them?"
"It is a little late to start worrying about the dead, don't you think, Xandros?"
Xandros glared at Deon hotly, but the sound of hoofbeats preempted his answer. The men turned and saw a rider sweeping around a line of tents. He reined up alongside them, an officer of the light horse Hurrus had sent out before nightfall. He uncoiled a scarf from around his face.
"The Sarian camp is less than three leagues ahead of us," the rider said, still huffing from his hard ride. "We could reach them by dawn, easily."
Deon spread his hands. "We can end this tonight."
Hurrus turned back, rubbing his chin.
"You can't be serious," Xandros said.
"The Sarians are in no fighting mood, my lord," the officer of light horse reported. "We have scattered them like sandrunners wherever we have found them."
Deon stared at Hurrus solicitously and grinned when Hurrus asked the officer, "Can you prevent Sarian eyes from seeing us?"
"Give me a hundred men and I will gouge the eyes from their heads. I will scour the country clean."
"And give me the Shields and I will drive a hole through their heart!"
"You will have your chance, Deon. Prepare your men. Xandros, one final push is all I ask of them."
Deon clapped Hurrus on the back and hastened away to his men. Xandros bowed his head without a word and stalked off.
The men's crimson cloaks were black in the moonlight as Hurrus rode at the head of the cavalry column. His heavy horse had been reduced to half the size of the formation that had won the battle on the plain. With so many dead horses, many of its former troopers marched as infantry. Ill-armed as footmen, but veterans now, Hurrus reflected. His entire army, in fact, untested boys a week ago, now marched with the grim faces of hardened men, fearing neither death nor want, having endured it all. To a man, he knew they required no more speeches and reassurances. They wanted only to get on with the business of killing so they could get back to the business of living.
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