by Kearney Paul
‘And Roshana?’
‘The Macht took her, I think; if she lived. She is immaterial now. The intrigues are over, mother. We must think of gathering more men. We must send to Arakosia, somehow scrape up another levy. These walls must be held.’
She nodded, watching him. She looked upon the blood-grimed blade of the knife he held in fascination and disgust.
‘We must meet with Borsanes in the morning,’ Orsana told him. ‘He commands the city guard. Lorka also. I must talk to him as soon as he gets in. The Arakosans have been coming west for weeks now, but in small numbers. There are perhaps a thousand of them in the city, and more at Hamadan.’
‘Enough to stage a palace coup – not enough to fight off an invading army. You must change your sense of scale, mother.’
Suddenly Kouros hurled the beautiful crystal cup away. It soared through the air and smashed in a shower of glass and wine against the pale Kandassian marble of a nearby pillar, staining the stone. Kouros stood up.
‘We are at the end of things here, the finish of everything we have known. Lorka looks to me now; he knows it is I who rule in Ashur. Your intrigues have not prepared you for the waging of war.’
‘And running from a battlefield has suddenly transformed you into a general of genius, I suppose!’
Kouros smiled, where once he would have flown into a fury. ‘You said yourself; war has made a man of me.’
He strode over to Orsana, where she crouched, cat-like, in a billow of silk, the knife still in his hand. From behind a pillar, he saw Charys, the massive chief eunuch, sidle out, as broad as the pillar himself.
Kouros bent and kissed his mother’s cheek, tasting the chalk that whitened it.
‘I’m going to bed, to sleep in the chambers of the King where I belong. I will see Borsanes and Lorka in the morning, and I will notify you of events as they occur. Sleep well, mother.’
Her eyes seemed black in the light of the lamps, as cold as stones on a mountainside.
‘Do not overreach yourself, Kouros. You stand in my world.’
‘Your world is too small,’ he retorted. ‘You have forgotten what life is like beyond it.’
Then he walked out of the harem, sliding the iron knife back into his sash, and not deigning to give so much as a glance at the glowering eunuch whose eyes followed him all the way to the doors.
THE CITY WAS a changed place the next morning. In the early hours, before even the sun had struck the pinnacles of the ziggurats, the proclamations had gone round with the sprinting, great-lunged city criers. Crowds congested the streets in a feverish hunger for good news. For weeks now, there had been nothing but ominous rumours out of the west. A great battle had been fought, it was generally agreed, but if it had gone well, then the victory tidings would have been spread about without delay. Defeat had been suspected, but never had the high and humble of the imperial capital even dreamed that the Great King himself could be slain in battle. This was the first confirmation they had of the extent of the catastrophe now overtaking the empire. For many, it was the first time they had ever heard Kouros’s name spoken.
He rode through the streets at noon that day with an escort of Arakosan cavalry resplendent in their blue armour. A second Royal Standard had been unearthed out of the palace vaults and flew above him in a billow of rich purple and gold, the sigil of the Asurian kings catching the light in a reassuring blaze. Those who were close to the procession as it paraded down the Sacred Way could see that this new king was wind-burnt and thin. He looked like a warrior, not an aristocrat, and they took some comfort in that, and in the white grin with which he received the tossed flowers that carpeted the stones in front of his horse.
Keen observers might also have noticed that the mounts of the Arakosans were not in good flesh, and their riders had dark, tired rings under their eyes which belied the magnificence of their enamelled armour. But the parade reassured the city populace, or at any event it gave them something else to talk about. It took their mind off the storm approaching over the mountains.
IN THE DAYS that followed, Kouros found he could not rest in the ziggurat – it held too many memories for him, both of his father and his mother, and it was too stiflingly confined by protocol for him to bear, after all the months on campaign. He elected to meet with his officers at the western barbican in a plain room above the gate itself. He wore a diadem now, though he had not been crowned. His father’s had been black silk. Kouros chose scarlet, perhaps as a kind of nod to the red-clad men who were now tramping across the empire.
He, Lorka, and Borsanes stood there looking down at a map of the city walls, and flicking through a bundle of tally-sticks representing those available to defend them. Kouros gripped one of these birch-wood counters in his hand as though he could squeeze more out of it.
‘It’s no good – we must recall the garrison from Hamadan. There are almost three thousand Honai up there; they will do more good with us than in the hills.’
‘Hamadan guards the eastern passes of the Magron,’ Lorka said, rubbing the triangular beard upon his chin. Many of the Arakosans were bearded; it was an archaic trait of theirs.
‘Those men will not be able to halt a field army. They will merely find themselves besieged. When I left them there, I thought the situation in Ashur was better than it is,’ Kouros said. His jaw worked, chewing on the problem.
‘If we cannot stop them at Hamadan, we will not stop them here,’ Borsanes said. He was a thin, drooping Kefre who reminded Kouros of nothing so much as a wilted sunflower. His head seemed too big for his shoulders, and he had a nose a tapir would have been proud of.
‘We will stop them,’ Kouros hissed. ‘If you lack confidence in our chances, Borsanes, then you should go back to whatever backwater my father dragged you from. You are relieved of your post. Now get out before I decide to make an example of you.’
Borsanes sputtered, eyes wide on either side of his remarkable nose. ‘Guards!’ Kouros called at once.
Two Arakosan troopers were at the door in a heartbeat.
‘Escort this fellow out of the city, as he stands. He is to leave by this very gate. Pass the word about the walls; if he is seen trying to return he is to be killed on the spot.’
The Arakosans took hold of Borsanes with some relish and dragged him, protesting and still sputtering, from the room.
Lorka roared with laughter. ‘I do not know if that was your father or your mother I just saw in you, Kouros, but it was worthy of them both.’
‘You may address me as lord,’ Kouros said icily, and Lorka’s face went flat.
‘Of course. I forgot myself, my lord. Forgive me.’
Kouros was clicking the tally sticks down on the table one by one.
‘With the Honai from Hamadan and the drafts of your people who have still to come in, I make it some twelve thousand spears. Those are the real fighters. We can probably round up some of the city low-castes and arm them also to bulk out the numbers.’
‘In Arakosia a slave who saves his master’s life is considered free by all,’ Lorka said. ‘There are thousands of imperial slaves in the city, lord. Perhaps they could be made use of. For the right incentive, a slave will fight near as well as a free man.’
Kouros shook his head. ‘That is an invitation to chaos. I will not consider it.’
Lorka bowed his head. ‘My lord, what of the coronation ceremony, then? It would be a boost to the city’s morale.’
‘Perhaps. But I do not think we have the time.’ Kouros raised his eyes. ‘My mother asked you to bring that up.’
Lorka bowed again. ‘The lady Orsana is kin to me and mine, as are you, my lord. When she bids me speak to her, I do so.’
‘Not any more. From now on, Lorka, if you wish to see the lady Orsana, you will seek my permission first. Are we clear?’
‘Very clear, my lord.’
‘Good. Now let us go through these tallies once more.’
TRYING TO GET things done in Ashur was like trying to prod an elephant in
to movement with a needle. So convinced were the population of the city’s inviolability that they could barely imagine that it might be attacked, that an enemy could actually enter their gates. The circuit of the walls was in good repair, and fearsomely high, but it stretched for over sixty pasangs, and to defend the perimeter the river Oskus also had to be taken into the equation. It flowed through the eastern quarters of Ashur like a wide brown highway. An inventive attacker might use it to by-pass the walls entirely.
The endless meetings in the audience hall, with Kouros sitting on the throne that had been his father’s; the stifling formality of it all, the time wasted on protocol and ceremony, when every moment counted. It threw Kouros into icy rages, which he took out on a succession of unfortunate slave-girls. He did not yet care to inspect his father’s concubines, nor would he ever let his mother choose more for him, so slaves were sent up to him from the lower city in a steady stream, and night after night they went back down again, bruised and bleeding. In this, at least, he felt he had some control.
Ten days after his entrance to the city, something new was admitted to the echoing audience hall with its lines of courtiers and scribes. Orsana was there that day, seated to Kouros’s right like the queen she was. There was something of a stir as Akanish the chamberlain announced the arrival of Archon Gemeris, a name Kouros knew. He rose from the throne, smiling, as the tall Kefren noble stalked up the length of the hall. He was clad in Honai armour, and the sight of it sent a glad murmur down the walls from the assembled notables and nonentities.
Kouros did not let the man kneel, so glad was he to see him, but took his hand.
‘Gemeris – you are well met. So, you made it down from Hamadan in good time – are all your men with you?’
‘Yes, lord. Something over three thousand of your bodyguard are now within the city walls.’
‘Excellent! We –’
‘My lord, listen to me.’ Gemeris had marched with Kouros clear across the Magron. He presumed on their acquaintance now, his face stark with urgency.
‘I bear bad tidings as well as good. The Macht king is over the Magron Mountains. He has already taken Hamadan; the city opened its gates to him without a fight. Now he is already on the march for Ashur.
‘My lord, he will be here in a week or less, and his whole army with him.’
TWENTY-THREE
THE STONE IN THE MOUNTAINS
THE PASSES THROUGH the Magron Mountains were not like those of the Korash to the north-west of the world. Though the Magron were the highest peaks known on Kuf, wide valleys lay between them, linking up to make as good a thoroughfare as any in the homeland of the Macht. Only in the darker half of the year were any of the passes closed, and even then, small bodies of men had been known to win through at some cost, as the imperial couriers had been doing for centuries.
The Imperial Road continued here, not the broad straight highway it was in the Middle Empire, but a meandering track under yearly assault from the elements. It was regularly washed away by meltwater or buried in avalanches, but the empire kept the road open, each waystation along it home to a work-gang of slaves who spent their entire lives labouring in the mountains to this end.
Rictus and his companions left Carchanis some two weeks after the Macht army had departed. They did so in some style, for Corvus had left the forty-six survivors of the Dogsheads behind to provide a kind of honour guard. Under Sycanus of Gost, a short, muscular veteran who had once stood with Rictus upon the walls of Machran, these men now accompanied him east in the wake of the army. Most of them were past the first flush of youth, as seamed and scarred as any old campaigner could be, but there were a few younger men in their ranks too, eager to get across the mountains and view the fabled heartland of the Kufr empire.
They rigged out the blue-roofed caravan once more, though they swapped the horses that drew it for hardier mules, and accompanied by more mules bearing packs, the company left Carchanis behind, following in the rutted track of the main host and marvelling at the views behind them as they clambered higher into the foothills of the Magron.
For Rictus, it was his first time travelling into a region he had never seen before. For the others, it was a relief to leave behind the heat of the lowlands and breathe the cool blue air of the hills.
The waystations were deserted now, their crews having run away at the approach of the Macht army. And they passed abandoned homesteads of stone and heather-thatch close to the road, their doors kicked in, their interiors rifled. It would seem that some of the new recruits were missing the iron hand of old Demetrius.
Not for long, though. They also passed a gibbet hung with three young men, Macht soldiers, their eyes already pecked empty by the crows. Corvus had never shown any mercy to looters, when he had not sanctioned their actions himself.
The company did not hurry, but they still made better time than the army, unconstrained by a vast baggage train. As it was, they passed abandoned waggons on the road, dead mules and horses, and massive stone-built cairns left at regular intervals, as though Corvus were leaving markers for them to follow.
The nights were short, but grew more bitter as they climbed higher into the Mountains. Ragged patches of snow began to appear on the mountainsides close to the road, hardy upland wildflowers springing up beside them, like two seasons living in truce together. It reminded Rictus of the Gosthere Mountains back around his home, or the place he had once called home. There were green glens here with rivers running down them that might have been in the Harukush, and once he caught his breath as they turned a corner on the road and saw, off to one side, a steep-sided valley winding past tree-covered spurs, and a wide, shallow river in the bottom of it, as brown as a trout. In a flash, he was back in Andunnon, building the house with Fornyx and Eunion stone by stone while Aise tended the fire and set barley bannock to baking on a rock griddle. It was so clear in his mind it almost seemed real, and when he came back to himself there was a moment of crushing despair. They were all dead now, every one of them. He was the only person left in the world who still possessed memories of that time and place.
That night, by the fire, he was withdrawn and morose, sitting propped up against a stone with the thornwood stick in his hands, the cold aching in his battered bones. He watched Sycanus and the other Dogsheads around other fires, listening to the timeless banter of soldiers, talk which had been the backdrop to all his adult life. He realised, in that moment, that he was no longer a warrior himself. Rictus of Isca, leader of the Ten Thousand. Who remembered his exploits now, since Corvus had risen like a storm to hurl the world on its head? The boy who had marched beside Jason, who had fought at Kunaksa – he was utterly gone. Even the cursebearer who stood in the front line and held men to his will was no more.
I am old, he thought. I will see Ashur, to sate the dregs of my curiosity, and then my service is over. I owe nothing to any man alive.
Kurun handed him a bowl of steaming goat stew with a smile. Beside him, Roshana was already eating hers with a crude stick-spoon. The three sat apart from the Macht soldiers by choice, whereas once Rictus would have been right at the lip of the centon, in the heart of them.
‘Does she know what Corvus has planned for her?’ he asked Kurun, nodding at Roshana.
Kurun dropped his eyes. ‘She knows. I told her.’
‘And how does it sit with her?’
‘I will marry him.’ To Rictus’s astonishment, it was Roshana who spoke. ‘He will be Great King. I will be Queen.’
‘I didn’t know you spoke our tongue.’
‘A little. I learn, for him, for Corvus.’
‘You taught her?’ Rictus asked Kurun. The boy nodded, stirring his stew with the spoon as though he no longer had any appetite.
‘She made me. For marriage.’
He loved her; it was clear in his eyes. But what could a boy-eunuch offer the wife-to-be of a king? Rictus felt a pang of pity for him.
‘And you?’
‘I stay with her.’
‘Even in Ashur?’
He hesitated. ‘Even in Ashur.’ But the words did not ring true. Rictus realised in that moment that Kurun did not want to return to the imperial capital. Once there, all his dreams would be snuffed out, and the reality of his station would be brought home to him.
Well, we have that in common, Rictus thought.
AFTER TEN DAYS on the road they came to the highest point in the passage of the mountains. It was marked by a huge granite monolith, chiselled deep with words in the Kufr language, which Rictus could not read. Of them all, only Roshana could decipher it, and she lacked the skills to render the inscriptions into Machtic, so they passed it in ignorance. It was already a relic from another world. In passing, Corvus had set up a bigger stone, and had carved into it his name and the pasangs marched to this point. Below his name were carved others; those of all his marshals. Ardashir, Druze, Teresian, Demetrius, Parmenios – even Marcan. But Rictus had not been included. Wrapped in his threadbare scarlet cloak, Rictus stood and read the names on the stone over and over again, thinking on it. He realised that Corvus had not forgiven him for staying behind, for becoming old, perhaps. He was no longer part of the adventure.
How Fornyx would have fumed at this, he thought, smiling.
After they passed the stone markers, they were over the divide, and little by little they realised that they were descending again. The high point of the Magron had been crossed, and the rivers ran eastwards now, following their feet. Every stream they crossed was a tributary of the Oskus, far below. The water that ran cold and clear over the stones would soon be coursing in brown channels through the irrigation network of Asuria.
SIXTEEN DAYS OUT of Carchanis, the pass widened until it was no longer a cleft between mountains, but a whole widening country of oblong hills, each the shape of a boiled egg sliced down its length. The air grew warmer – almost overnight they had to pack away their furs and cloaks as the heat of the lowlands returned, edging up into the high places. Summer was waning, but the sunlight still set a shimmer upon the landscape, and out of that shivering haze they saw a city on a hill to the north-east, walls of grey stone rising in ordered terraces to a string of stately towers. Roshana pointed at the city and threw back the folds of her komis, her face alight.