The Ten Thousand (14 page)

Rictus had always
liked climbing, whether it was trees or hills, and thus he was quite at home in
the rigging of the ship. He sat in the Top of the mainmast, a narrow platform
of heavy, salt-scarred wood some six feet across, and listened with a smile to
one of the crew tell a story of a certain lady’s house in Kupr, the forested
island of many springs in the northern Tanean which Macht navies had plundered
time out of mind for the excellence of its timber, their own homegrown stuff
being too gnarled and hard to work for proper masts and spars. This certain
lady had entertained two sea-captains in the one evening, and had kept them
amused in turn, going from room to room in her spacious apartments until one
had followed her and found her in the arms of his brother. Neither had been
much fazed by this (both being very drunk), and the two of them had married
her, all three living in serene contentment for the rest of their lives. When
one brother was at sea the other would be on land, and so the lady was kept
occupied and the brothers had a fine housekeeper to come home to. But that’s
folk on Kupr, the sailor finished with a wink and a grin.

The ship below
them looked like a gralloched deer. Every hatch was gaping, and in some places
the planking of the deck had been levered up so that the stores in the hold
might be off-loaded more quickly. Rictus lay on the wood of the Top and looked
down on the avid activity below. He was hungry and thirsty, as were almost all
those detailed to remain with the ships, but the heat of the day was fading at
last, and all along the dozen crescents of sea-leaning buildings and warehouses
and other edifices which formed this part of the harbour the lamps were being
lit, both onshore and in the ships which were moored nearby and along the
wharves. Never in his life before had he seen anything resembling the marvel of
such a sight, such a high and multi-layered snowstorm of lights. He lay there
staring at it, thinking about this Great Continent, this vast beast upon whose
hide he now looked in the darkening of a foreign evening.

“Who’s that asleep
in the Top?” a voice snapped out below.

“That’ll be the
Iscan, Rictus.”

“Get him the fuck
down. There’s work here that needs another back.”

As Phobos rose in
the sky and Haukos trailed after him, so Rictus laboured on the wharves amid
crowds of his own people and a dwindled gang of Juthan. Most of these had left
with the coming on of dusk, and hence the Macht must sweat now to get their own
stores ashore. The two races worked together without any communication other
than grunts, nods, and arm-waving, but managed to get the job done with little
more than the usual profanity.

They had stacked
the crates too high. One was teetering over now, like to fall on the bent
figure of a Juthan below it. Always fast on his feet, Rictus dashed to the
creature’s side with a shout and shoved it out of the way. He reached up at the
falling crate and the wood of it struck him hard in the breastbone. He knew in
that moment that it was too heavy for him.

The Juthan he had
knocked aside rounded upon him, eyes glaring, fists clenched. Then it saw what
he was doing. The Juthan ducked in under Rictus’s arms and set its own strength
to work. Between them, they edged the crate to one side. It missed them both,
falling to the cobbles with a crash. It broke open to reveal bundled sheaves of
aichmes, iron and bronze spearheads wrapped in straw.

Rictus straightened,
staring at the Juthan and rubbing his bruised ribs. He smiled.

The yellow eyes
regarded him carefully. The thing shrugged, then went back to work. But after
that, when a heavy piece of cargo was lowered his way, Rictus often found this
Juthan close by, and they would handle it together.

Several hours of
staring seemed to sate the curiosity of the dockyard crowds. Before the middle
of the night, while the work went on unabated at the quays, they dispersed, and
the Kefren spearmen who had been set there to control them relaxed their guard,
setting their shields on the ground and doffing their helms to reveal the
strange, long-boned faces of their kind. Tiryn stepped through their scattered
line with her attendants ten paces behind, her bodyguard bright-eyed and
watchful, the maidservant veiled and impassive as only a Juthan could be. There
were untold pasangs of docks and wharves down here at the waterfront, and
almost every one it seemed had been given over to the Macht ships and the
thousands of their occupants and crews who had not marched up the hill to the
Aadan. How many of them have sailed here, really? Tiryn wondered.

She approached the
nearest ship and the hill of casks, crates, and sacks that cluttered the
dock-side before it. The Juthan were here, of course, as they were anywhere in
the Empire where heavy work needed to be done. They were humming their deep
songs as gangs of them hauled on the tackles of the dockyard cranes. How odd,
how disconcerting to see them working side by side with these strangers. The
Macht labouring here wore no armour, of course. They were all sizes and all
ages. Greybeards with nut-brown skin and corded forearms worked side by side
with slim-shouldered youngsters. Was it true, as Amasis had told her, that the
Macht had no castes?

There—look at
that. One of the younger Macht, tall for their kind, and with pale-coloured
hair, was drinking from a waterskin. When he had finished he offered it to the
squat figure of a Juthan beside him. And the Juthan took it, squirting liquid
into the red gape of its maw. Tiryn stepped forward, fascinated. Her bodyguard,
a tall Kefren warrior long past his youth, appeared at her side. “Lady, is this
fitting?” he murmured.

“Leave me be,
Hurth.” She walked forward, long skirts trailing and grimed from the passage of
the streets. The Macht and the Juthan stopped to watch her.

“How can you share
this thing’s water?” she asked the Juthan in the common Asurian of the streets.
“It is an animal. Can you not smell it?”

The Juthan bowed
low, having noted the jewellery she bore, the bodyguard standing hand on sword
behind her.

“Mistress, I was
thirsty.”

Tiryn found
herself catching the eyes of the Macht who was watching this exchange with
wariness and curiosity. In the light of the dock-side cressets it was possible
to see how gaunt it was, dressed in not much more than rags, and scarred about
the mouth. A slave, then. But the eyes were undaunted. There was humour in
them. The thing said something, and then had the effrontery to hold its
waterskin out to her.

Hurth stepped
forward and slapped the skin our of the Macht’s hand, snarling. All about them
work on the dockyard stopped. Macht and Juthan all paused to view the little
incident. Others of the Macht came crowding forward, and some bore knives. Others
were untangling slings from their belts, eyes hot and bright. A splash of
shouting in their language, and in the middle the Juthan standing like stone,
as if waiting.

“That’s enough,
Hurth. Leave him. He—he meant no harm, I think.”

Hurth drew his
sword and backed away. “Insolence,” he said. “But there are too many of them.
We should leave, lady.”

They retreated
from the wharf, pursued by catcalls and whistles. A half-cobble soared through
the air to land at their feet. Tiryn jumped, and the Macht about the ships
laughed. All save the one with the waterskin. He bent to retrieve it, and
watched their hasty departure with thoughtful eyes.

Twelve men stood
on a bare hill, every one in black armour with a red chiton underneath. Above
them, the sky was blinding blue, and around them a host of untold thousands
went about its business, covering the land about like some windswept plague of
legend. Off to the west, the glitter of a great river could be made out. There
the land was green and there were trees worthy of the name, but here the dust
tumbled in ochre clouds before the wind, and only thorn and greasewood and
creosote shrubs fought their way out of the cracked dirt.

“From Tanis to
Geminestra is four hundred pasangs, give or take,” Phiron said. He knelt beside
the map, scanning the calfskin as a man might search a foreign horizon. In his
hand a length of withered stick served as a pointer. “It’s desert, scrub
land—rather like the plains about Gast back home.”

“Only a little
warmer,” Jason said, and there was a rattle of laughter about the map-table.
Phiron waved the flies from before his face. There was a drop of sweat hanging
from his nose, more glistening along his cheekbones.

“Fuck this heat,”
someone murmured venomously.

“I second that. We
will march at night. I have already discussed this with our principal. We will
lie up in the heat of the day. By all accounts, the Gadinai Desert is not to be
trifled with.”

“Four hundred
pasangs,” Orsos the Bull said. “Ten days’ march, if all goes well.” He had
shaved his head, and the scalp was burnt pink. His face shone as if oiled.

“Fifteen,” Phiron
corrected. When the centurions stared at him he raised both hands palm upwards,
like a stallkeeper accepting a bad bargain. “The Kufr cannot march as fast as
we can, it seems.”

“You march slower,
you eat and drink more,” Jason said. “This is their country; what makes them so
bad at walking across it?”

“They are not us,”
Phiron said simply.

He looked up from
the map, eyes screwed narrow against the glare. One hand eased the rub of his
cuirass against his collarbone. “We will start out tonight. Pasion, you have
the manifest. We will be in the middle of the column—”

“Eating his Royal
Highness’s dust,” Orsos growled.

“Indeed. But the
main part of the Kufr forces will be in our rear. We keep our own baggage train
with us, in our midst. Brothers, whether we are part of this Kufr host or not,
I intend to proceed as if were on our own. Skirmishers out to the flanks, heavy
infantry in hollow square. Baggage animals in the centre.”

“We need to sweat,”
Mynon said, blackbird eyes darting over the map. “The men are out of shape
after the voyage, and they need to get the last of our employer’s wine out of
their guts.”

“Agreed,” Phiron
said “Pasion? You are close-mouthed this morning.”

“You keep your
mouth shut and less flies get in it,” Pasion retorted. He was rubbing the side
of his jaw, like a man with toothache. “I was just thinking. So, we’ve divided
the army into ten battalions, morai, with ten generals to command them; but we’ve
only enough spearmen for nine. We should perhaps think of making up those
numbers out of the skirmishers.”

“What, kit out the
old men and boys with panoplies? I’d rather be under strength,” Orsos snorted.

“There’s likely
enough lads among them,” Pasion said, glaring at the Bull. “We have the gear;
it’s weighing down the wagons as we speak. Better it sits on a man’s back than
in a wagon-bed.”

“I’ll bear it in
mind,” Phiron said quickly, smothering the birth of the quarrel. “Brothers, to
your morai. Brief your centurions, and have all ready. Pasion will inspect each
centon’s baggage this evening. Let your men sleep this afternoon. Any
questions?”

There were many.
Phiron could feel them hanging before him in the air, dancing in the
heat-shimmer above the hill upon which they stood. Finally, inevitably, it was
Orsos who spoke up. Despite his years, the mass of kneaded flesh which formed
his face made him look like some huge, brutish child.

“You put this
whole deal together, Phiron, and for that we all here give you credit”—a
collective murmur of assent, but grudgingly given. Phiron raised an eyebrow,
and moved his feet like a man about to receive a blow—”but you’re not to forget
that this here is now a Kerusia, an Army Council. The men elected ten of us out
of a hundred centurions, but no one elected you—or Pasion there, if you come to
it. We know you’re the only one among us speaks Kufr, and so there’s no thought
of pushing you out of the way; but when it comes to decisions made for the
army, we make them together now.”

“You’re not a
king, brother.” This was white-bearded Castus. Old as he was, he had the
blackest heart of any of them. The scar that ran into his beard turned his
smile into a leer. “You know these foreigners, it’s true, but me, or Argus
here, or Teremon, we all have more campaigns under our belt than you.”

“And in battle,
Castus, shall we take a vote on it every time I want a centon to hoist their
shields?” Phiron asked lightly, but there was a wire in his voice.

“Don’t be
stiff-necked. We’ll be working with these here Kufr when the time comes, so it
makes sense you give the orders. Yonder would-be King will be sending you
couriers by the dozen once the fur begins to fly. But for other things, for the
ways we march and the places we stop, you come to us, this here Kerusia, and we
puts a vote on it. Fair’s fair.”

“All right.”
Phiron bent his head a little. Castus, Orsos, Argus, and Teremon. The most
experienced centurions in the army, a little quartet of killers. The younger
generals— Pomero, Durik, Marios, and Jason—these formed another group. They
even stood a little apart from the rest. And the crowd-pleasers, the talkers:
Mynon and Gelipos. These would watch the way the wind blew, and make their
votes the deciders.

“Anything else?”
The ten generals looked at each other, nodded, shrugged. Pomero cracked his
knuckles with a show of nonchalance. Argus spat into the dust and rubbed the
liquid into a little turd with his foot.

“Very well then,
brothers. Let us go about our business.” And as the knot of men broke up, “Jason,
stay a moment.”

Three remained.
Phiron, Pasion, Jason. The tell upon which they stood was no more than three
spear-lengths high, and looked to have been made by man; there were ancient
clay bricks peeping through the dirt at their feet. It made a fine
vantage-point to survey the encampments of the army. They had not erected
tents, but each centon had marked out its bivouac with cairns of heaped stones.
The men had laid their bedrolls on the rolling dust of the plain in neat rows,
two paces per man, and the company wagon in the middle. All told, the Macht
camp was two pasangs long and somewhat wider. Not even Phiron had ever been
part of so large an army before, or seen it spread out before him as it was
here on the sere plain that bordered the Gadinai Desert.