The Ten Thousand (18 page)

The young Iscan,
Rictus, was standing slopping stew into his mouth and listening to the boasting
of his strawhead friend. He had filled out a little, and was dressed in a red
Kufr tunic that had been cut down to size. He looked up as Jason approached and
nodded, that Iscan arrogance dripping off him. Even by firelight, Jason could
see the dried blood that still caked his hands.

“A good hunting?”
he asked casually.

“A good hunting,”
Rictus said. Something twisted his mouth. He looked down into his stew. “Not
much of a fight though, once they broke.”

“Fight enough for
me, getting cross that bloody river undrowned,” his friend said, rising; Gasca,
that was the name. This fellow was beefy, his face shining with fat. He was
drunk, too, but then most of them were. Drunk with having survived. It came
upon even veterans after a battle, and Jason thought none the worse of him for
it. But Rictus interested him.

“You think we
should have let them go?” he asked.

“I think the
slaughter was excessive. If we’re here to win an Empire for our employer, I don’t
see how we’ll do it by killing every mother’s son who stands up against us.”

“Mother’s
son—listen to him,” one of the veterans scoffed. “They’re Kufr, lad. Not even
human. What do we care how many of them bleed under our spears? The more the
merrier I say.” And there was a chorus of full-mouthed approval around the
great black, steaming centos.

“You got to break
eggshells to eat eggs,” someone else said, spitting gristle into the fire.

Rictus shrugged.
He was a self-contained young fellow, Jason thought. “I’ve not met many Iscan
mercenaries,” he said.

Rictus spooned his
stew around his plate. “Isca is gone. It’s barely a memory now. Here, we’re all
the same.” He raised his head and looked about him at the catcalling, carousing
company which filled the night, and there was a kind of hunger in his eyes. He
still wants to belong, Jason thought. Well, that’s a good thing. I can use
that, perhaps.

Rictus spoke
again. He was awkward now, some of the maturity dropping off him. “I found a
good shield with a bronze facing. It’s smaller than ours are, but sound enough.
And I have a spear and a helm now. I could take my place in the battle line. I’ve
drilled; I know the way of it.” He met Jason’s eyes, then looked away again.

“I’ll think on it,”
Jason said, though he would not. He thought there were other things to be had
from this young fellow, things that hunger in his eyes might make him good at.

THE PASSAGE OF THE STORM

Tal Byrna, a great
city, now scooped up as a man will stoop to lift a chestnut off the ground and
put it in his pocket.

There it clicked
with the others: Tanis, Geminestra. The south-eastern portion of the Empire had
been secured by Arkamenes now, that change in ownership ratified in the blood
of the Abekai Crossing.

The army marches,
there is a slaughter, and a form of words is made to make the world change. But
the world does not change; the water still flows, the seeds still sprout, and
those who work the soil continue to work it, a little poorer, a little thinner
and sadder than before. The storm moves on, and in its wake the world goes once
more about its business. This is war, this passing storm on the land. This
stink on the air, this dust-cloud which hems the sky. These creatures marching
in their thousands, changing everything and changing nothing with their
passage. This is war.

So thought the
lady Tiryn as she pulled back the curtains of her bobbing litter to watch the
green hills of Jutha roll past, their bases bedded in the glittering tracery of
water-channels which enriched this earth and held it back from the embrace of
the desert to the west. Nothing in her life had so sickened her as the sight of
the broken Kefren army lying scattered for pasangs between the Abekai River and
the walls of Tal Byrna. The corpses had been stripped naked, high-born Kefren
some of them, all of them high caste, the masters of this world. As naked
frameworks of meat they had been piled into mounds by the Juthan peasants and
set afire, great stinking pyres topped with pillars of oily smoke that could be
seen for pasangs. Thus did the mighty of the world pass away: as ashes, to be
scattered into the dirt and nourish the seeds of next year’s harvest.

She looked down at
the heavy scroll in her lap. On one side, words in her own tongue—Asurian, the
language of the masses. On the other, in the same script, odd-sounding
gibberish, nonsense-words that were nonetheless somehow familiar to her. She
had been bred in the Magron Mountains, and the tribes there had dialects of
their own, words lowlanders did not know or could only half guess at. Some of
these meaningless words sounded like the tongue of her childhood, the rough
speech her father’s goatherds had used.

It was the speech
of the Macht, transcribed phonetically in good Asurian script. Amasis had given
her this scroll, to keep her occupied perhaps. The sister-copy had been given
to the Macht general some time before. Tiryn had been learning Machtic now for
many weeks, since landfall in Tanis, and the more she learned of it, the more
she became convinced that it was—or had once been—the same language the
mountain-people of the Empire spoke in their snowy fastnesses. Whatever the
Macht were now, at some time in the distant past they, too, had lived in the
highlands of the Empire, and had spoken something akin to Asurian. This knowledge
Tiryn had kept to herself—for who was there to tell? Arkamenes had barely
spoken to her in weeks. Tiryn was a tool, once of great use in palaces, but now
mere baggage in the midst of a marching army.

A line of men went
running past the litter— Macht without armour. They were dressed in the
interminable red tunics and carried leather-faced shields of wicker, javelins,
and short stabbing spears. Arkamenes and his Household were at the forefront of
the column for once, they being sick and tired of eating Macht dust, so these
men were running up to the very forefront of the army. Tiryn eyed their passing
ranks with some curiosity as they sped across her vision, sandals slapping in
the muddy verges of the road. There were scores of them and they ran easily,
like loping wolves.

A different sound
in the air; the muffled thunder of hooves. Horses approaching—a troop of them
cantering in the wake of the Macht—and there was Arkamenes himself at their
head, jewelled breastplate flashing in the sun. He wore a
komis,
the
cowled linen head-dress of the Kefren nobility, and there was a holster of
javelins at his thigh. Then he was gone, and the plodding column carried on its
way, the litter swaying on the shoulders of its Juthan bearers. Tiryn’s maids
squatted with downcast eyes opposite her in the perfumed compartment. Once
again, the endless tramp of feet upon the earth, the army’s heartbeat. Tiryn
sank back upon her cushions, the scroll sliding from her lap, forgotten. He did
not so much as look my way, she thought. I am no longer useful to him now, not
even as a brood mare. And from the hot glare of her eyes the tears spilled, and
trickled into her veil.

Arkamenes reined
in, the high-bred Niseian prancing under him, nostrils flared. The tallest of
the Macht would not reach its shoulder, and he felt that he towered over all of
them. This put him in an even better humour. He set one hand on his hip and
slouched in the saddle as one born to it.

“Well, Phiron,
what plan is this you’ve hatched for me now?”

Phiron stepped out
of the brisk-marching column. He wore his cuirass and carried a spear. Like all
the Macht, he stored his shield and helm in the wagons while on the march. He
was growing a beard; Arkamenes thought it did not suit him, but then no Kefren
noble grew hair on his face. What an ugly race, he thought. So stubborn and
steadfast, so small in mind, unprepossessing. They might be brothers to the
Juthan, were it not for their colouring. And yet, these hairy, ugly little
creatures were the stuff of Asurian legend. Deep down, Arkamenes knew full well
that no Kefren army, not even the Great King’s Honai, could have come out of
that river and broken the enemy line as these things had. There was an
implacability about them that had to be seen to be believed. His money had been
spent well.

“I am sending
forward a flying column to scout out the region to our front,” Phiron said. His
eyes ranged up and down the passing files of marching men, noting everything.
The Macht winked or nodded at him as they passed by, no jot of deference about
them. Arkamenes, they ignored entirely, and he swallowed the anger that welled
up in him.

“I wish to send
these scouts far ahead of us. They’ll be on foot, as we are not a horse-people,
but they can move swiftly if they’re unarmoured. And my lord, I would like one
of your staff to accompany them, someone who can speak Machtic and interpret
for their officers.”

“What is there to
scout for? We have destroyed the only Imperial force in Jutha,” Arkamenes said.
The sun caught the polish on his nails as he held one reasonable hand palm
upwards.

“Fast moving
cavalry could cover a lot of ground. Levied in Pleninash, it could be on the
Jurid River a week from now. I mean to seize the next bridge intact, my lord. I
do not want my men to fight their way across another river.”

Arkamenes was
stung by the implication. Again, he found himself controlling the anger these
creatures seemed to stoke in him. He affected disinterest. “Very well. But you
are not in luck today, General. None among my staff speak your barbarous
tongue. That is the reason Amasis had ours written down for you in Tanis—the
costly labour of a dozen scholars, I might add. Your men will have to shift for
themselves.”

Phiron looked up
at Arkamenes’s golden face. He seemed thoughtful and almost puzzled at the same
time. Even silent, he rebukes me, Arkamenes thought. He kicked his horse’s ribs
and the animal half-reared.

“You are in my
Empire now, General. Your men will have to learn my language.” The horse took
off under him. He galloped away, raising a hand in mocking farewell, whilst a
brightly dressed kite-tail of attendants and staff trailed after him, whipping
their mounts to keep up.

The combined army
trekked onwards across, the fertile plains of southern Jutha, a moving city of
some forty thousand souls. The Juthan peasants who worked the land straightened
from their labour to watch as the phenomenon came and went. In the morning it
would be a rumble on the air, a dust cloud at the horizon. As noon came, it
would fill their world, an awe-inspiring host of hosts tramping the winter-sown
barley under their feet and gathering up every hoard of grain, every herd of
livestock in its path. The Macht army in the van held to its ranks and marched
in disciplined companies. Behind them the Kufr troops spread out in skeins and
crowds about the countryside, looting as they came, not just for food, but for
anything they might carry on their backs. They rifled through the reed-thatch
of the Juthan villages, poked holes in the mud-brick walls, kicked in the doors
of smoke-houses, and made off with the hanging hams.

When evening came,
the storm had passed. The army was no more than a blur on the dimming horizon
again, marching into the eastern darkness. In the sky above Phobos and Haukos
looked down in its wake, and the Juthan set about repairing their homes and
salvaging what they could out of their gutted farms, rebuilding the broken
dykes of the irrigation channels and comforting their weeping wives and
daughters. And when they had finished, the Juthan menfolk gathered in quiet
crowds about the squares in their villages with their billhooks and axes to
hand, and talked amongst one another long into the night.

“He is crossing
into Istar now, following the Great Road eastwards. It is the best route, quickest
and in the richest country. He will not deviate from it. With that knowledge,
we can plot his march with some accuracy.”

Vorus stood
looking up at the brilliantly lit western wall of the chamber. There, in mosaic
pieces smaller than a moth’s wing, was set a map of the world—or at least, that
portion of it which mattered. The map was as accurate as the Imperial surveyors
could make it, and the craftsmen had laboured over it for fifteen years, or so
court legend said. The room was circular, with windows set high above his head.
The map curved about half the room’s circumference, and marked out in stone and
tile upon it were not only the mountains and rivers and cities of the Empire,
but the roads, the posting stations, the Imperial granaries, and the fortresses
which nailed this immense expanse of territory together. Vorus had last stood
before this map with Anurman and Proxis, planning the Carchanis campaign twenty
years before. Now he turned to Ashurnan the Great King, the only person seated
amid the crowd of others who stood silent in the room, and he clicked his ivory
pointer from spot to spot on the map.

“We thought to
hold him at the Jurid River by taking the bridges with cavalry before his main
force had come up, but he sent ahead a body of light infantry and forestalled
us. Esis has capitulated to him, the last major fortress before the Bekai
River. All the Juthan cities have now declared for the traitor: Anaphesh,
Halys, Dadikai—”

“I know the cities
of Jutha, General,” Ashurnan said quietly. “What of Honuran, Governor of
Istar—any word?”

There was a
silence. Somewhere, a woman’s voice sang with exquisite sweetness. This chamber
was near the harem—Hadarman the Great had built it here so he could be briefed
on the Empire’s doings without straying too far from his wives. It had the
added advantage of being far from the audience chambers of the Court, and easy
to secure against prying ears and eyes. The Honai outside the door were high
kin of the King himself. One turned to blood for trust, even when it was the
blood one was wariest of. Honuran, Governor of Istar, was Ashurnan’s cousin.
They had played together in this palace as boys.