The Ten Thousand (19 page)

“There is no word
from him, my lord,” old Xarnes said. He cleared his throat slightly, leaning on
his staff of office as though it were a thing of practical use now, not merely
ceremonial. “Our messengers sent to Istar have not yet returned.”

“He’s
equivocating, waiting. That means Istar is already lost,” Vorus said bluntly.
In the knot of people about the seated king, the wide, grey face of Proxis
stared back at him, yellow eyes shot with blood. Proxis shook his head
slightly, one old comrade to another.

“At least, lord, I
believe it likely that—”

“My cousin has
betrayed me for my brother. I know, General. You need not be too careful of
your words.” Ashurnan stood up, and approaching the wall he ran his hand along
the mosaic of the map as though he thought he could gain information from its
touch. “Not today, anyway. Today I must have truth in all its bitterness.” He
turned away from the wall abruptly. “Berosh, how is it in the Magron Passes?”

A high-caste
Kefren with the violet eyes of the Royal house bowed deeply before responding. “My
lord, the snow is still deeper than a wagon’s wheel. The Asurian Gates are
closed to all but the hardiest of our couriers. There is no passage yet for the
army. Spring has not yet come to the passes.”

“So we’re caught
here, whilst beyond the protection of the mountains he rapes half the Empire,”
Ashurnan snarled. “General, what of our muster?”

Proxis stumped
forward, bowed as deeply as Berosh had done, though without grace, and handed
Vorus a scroll. The Macht general opened it and scanned the tabulated lists
that lined the parchment in the exquisite hand of the palace scribes. Even
writing bald lists of numbers, their craftsmanship was a thing of beauty.

“My lord, the
levies from Arakosia and Medis are in. With the Asurian troops and your
Household, that totals some hundred thousand foot and twelve thousand horse.
The marshals have done well.”

“And now we must
feed them all through what remains of this winter,” Ashurnan said, rubbing his
eyes.

“My lord, this
works to our advantage. He must make the passage of the Asurian Gates soon
after the spring melt. His men will be marching down from a mountain-crossing,
tired, their supply lines strung out. We meet him here, on the plains before
Ashur itself, where our cavalry will carve him up and our numbers can be
brought to bear. Our men will be rested and well-fed, and we will outnumber the
foe three or four to one. My lord, the traitor will die before the walls of the
Imperial City, I promise you.”

Ashurnan smiled.
He stepped across the room in three strides and set one hand on Vorus’s
shoulder. The Kefren among those present stirred in shock. The Great King bent,
and kissed Vorus on the cheek, the greeting of a close friend, or a kinsman.
Vorus felt his face flush with blood. There were murmurings among those
present.

“You will lead
this army,” Ashurnan said. He turned and looked over the high officers and
courtiers of the Empire, who stood stiffly before him now, eyes downcast, heads
bent.

“Who else could I
choose that would better know how to kill an army of Macht?”

It was a bad place
for a girl to be, this far into the bivouac-lines of the army. In the firelight
she wore a komis pulled across her face, but there was no mistaking the curves
that filled her silk robe, or the peep of her pale hand as it tugged the veil
closer about her nose. She was as tall as the average strawhead from the
mountains, and she was Kufr, wandering through a Macht camp at night. One of
the other army’s whores, Jason supposed, though she was well dressed, and more
demure than most. The Macht did not copulate with Kufr—never had, never would.
That was the chosen line they all took. But at night, when the camps of the
Macht and the Kufr drew close for protection, there was a certain traffic of
figures flitting back and forth that had nothing to do with the daytime
commerce. It was hard to know. Even Jason could not say for sure, and he had a
quicker wit than most. And even he, the scroll-scratcher, was beginning to feel
the lack of female company. It had been a long time since they had taken ship,
and now the Kufr did not look so outlandish as once they had.

Orsos, of all
people, turned up in her path. He was middling drunk, as affable as a pig like
him was likely to get. He grinned at her, shaven bristles standing up on his
head, and took her by one slim arm as she tried to pass.

“Ha! Dearie, you
picked the wrong spot to splay your legs. We’re men here, not those ball-less
calves you’re used to servicing.” He drew her close to his large, lumpen face,
and leered happi
ly.

“Let’s have a look
then, and see what the Kufr call a good fuck. Set aside that rag on your head.”
With a twitch of his wrist, Orsos ripped the komis from the Kufr’s face. The
girl cried out something in her own tongue, and twisted in his grasp. Tall
though she was, her wrist was engulfed by his meaty fist. “You’ve come here, so
you’re looking to get a taste of—”

“What’s this you’ve
found, brother?” Jason asked lightly, stepping up. Around him, other Macht
spearmen were rising from their camp-fires with anticipation shining in their
eyes. If Orsos was starting something, there would be sport to watch ere it
ended. Jason snapped out at them; “Back on your arses, and keep your eyes to
yourselves!” And he could not quite account for the anger which bit through his
voice.

“Centurion’s meat,”
someone said with a shrug. There were a few catcalls around the farther fires,
from those too far away to be identified, but in the main the centons settled
down again. Orsos was about to rape something—it was not exactly news.

The Kufr girl had
darker eyes and skin than the high-caste Kefren Jason had seen, in Tanis and
about Arkamenes’s tents. She was shorter too, though still a head higher than
either of them.

“She could almost
be one of us,” he said to Orsos, surprised despite himself.

Orsos was turning
her face this way and that, as though studying a melon at market. The girl was
silent in his grasp now, clearly terrified.

“What do you
think, Jason, is the rest of her as good-looking as her face?”

Part of Jason
wanted badly to find out, but then the girl met his eyes. There was more than
fear in them; a kind of pitiful resignation. And then, in clear and perfect
Machtic, she said,
“Please.”

Orsos dropped his
hands from her face as though they had been burned. “Phobos! Did you hear that,
Jason? It speaks our tongue. Kufr—say something else!” He was grinning, and he
poked the girl with his finger.

Her face was still
now, though tears had marked tracks down it, streaking the kohl about her eyes.
“Please,” she said again, “I am Arkamenes’s… woman.”

Jason and Orsos
looked at one another. “She’s well enough dressed,” Jason said. He bent and
retrieved the girl’s komis. “Could be she’s a household slave.”

“Could be she’s a
liar,” Orsos said, but the humour had gone out of him now. “Get her the hell
out of here, Jason. Best to be safe. That Kufr bastard doesn’t like to have
anyone so much as look at his women.” Orsos stumped away. “I’m going to find a
goat to fuck.” And he cackled, weaving his way off through the campfires and
shouting insults at the men upon their bedrolls.

Jason studied the
girl as she wrapped her komis back about that beautiful face. She looked so
human. Then, in Asurian gleaned from his studies, he said, “I’m sorry.”

The girl looked at
him like a startled deer, and there came a flurry of Asurian too fast for Jason’s
limited scholarship. He held up his hands, smiling. “Slow, slow.”

“You speak our
tongue?”

“You speak ours?”

She hesitated. “I
am been learning. I have a scroll.”

“I have one also.
I am Jason.”

“I am Tiryn.”

Jason gestured to
the lines of men reclining about the campfires, their eyes catching the flames
as they watched the little exchange. There was a pool of silence about them as
the Macht watched, and listened.

“Why are you here?”
he asked her. She shook her head, and seemed near to tears again.

“I don’t know.”

His head hurt from
recalling the close-written phrases on his precious scroll. Eyes shut,
haltingly, he said, “I take you home.”

“Home,” she said
in wonder.

“Arkamenes.”

“Ah. Yes. Take me
to him.”

“You are his
woman?”

“His woman, yes.”

Jason held out his
arm, but she recoiled as though he had raised a fist at her. Cursing his
ignorance, he led the way and heard the soft hiss of the silk about her thighs
as she followed. Through the Macht camp, hundreds of eyes following their every
move as they wove in unhurried fashion about the campfires. Everywhere they
went the talk was stilled, and the Macht watched them in wonder and surmise:
the handsome Macht general, and behind him the tall, veiled Kufr woman with the
dark eyes.

THE MELTED SNOWS

They crossed the
Bekai River in the early spring, and accepted the capitulation of Istar in the
city of Kaik, another of those tall fortress-cities the Empire had reared up at
every ford of the world’s great rivers. The Bekai was fast-flowing with the
meltwater of the mountain snows, for the year had turned at last, and in the
east the green line of the lowland world was inching up the slopes of the
mighty Magron Mountains, though their peaks were still wrapped in everlasting
snow. Beyond those mountains lay Asuria, the heart of the Empire, and the
Imperial capital itself: holy Ashur of the endless walls. The army had marched
almost two and a half thousand pasangs since disembarking at Tanis, and they
had been seventy-eight days on the road. The Kufr troops now marched almost as
fast as the Macht themselves, and their numbers had been augmented by
contingents from those provinces which had surrendered along the way. Honuran,
Governor of Istar, now accompanied the army as one of Arkamenes’s lieutenants.
His family had been left behind under guard back in Istar, for their
safe-keeping, and to assuage any regrets he might feel at his betrayal of his
cousin.

Rictus led his
fist up the smooth-sloped hill and stood at the top, breathing and sweating
hard. The air seemed heavy, laden with the moisture of the great river at their
backs. He turned and stared back into the west. The Bekai was a long,
meandering curve of brilliant light upon the carpet of the world,
spearpoint-bright where the sun took it, mud-brown and ochre where the passing
clouds kept the sunlight from its banks. The city-fortress of Kaik rose high
upon its tell west of the river, a pasang to the north, and from the many
thousands of its hearths a thin haze of smoke rose to cloud the still air. Even
at this distance the hum of its busy streets could be heard, filling the
countryside all around. Kaik was a brown city, as so many were in the Land of
the Rivers. Constructed largely of kiln-fired brick, it held within its walls a
hundred thousand square houses which all looked the same, but on the flat roof
of each was a garden, and each of these gardens was like a tiny, distinct
little emerald jewel. The mighty Bekai had been bled by man-made channels lined
with more brick, and an army of slaves toiled ceaselessly on the waterwheels to
keep siphoning off the life-giving water for the greenery of the city. Earth
and water, the very stuff of life itself. In this part of the world they were
held in reverence, and the Kufr had river-deities and crop-deities by the
score. Earth and water: the building blocks of the Empire. The only commodity
that could match them in abundance was the labour of slaves.

Down at the river
the army continued to cross by the Bekai bridges, as it had been crossing since
the morning of the day before. All but the last of the Kufr baggage and the
rearguard were now on the eastern bank and the Macht were already on the march
for higher ground, seeking open country beyond the stinking, confined ditches
of the lowland farms. Flies and all manner of flying filth haunted these moist
fields, for the peasants hereabouts fertilised the land with their own
excrement. Thus far in their journey the Macht had lost few men to disease,
thanks both to the season and rigid latrine regulations. Phiron did not intend
to relax these rules now. The sternest part of the march was before them,
looming up at the edge of the world with every sunrise, a saw-toothed barrier
now only some two hundred pasangs away. The Magron Mountains.

More lightly armed
Macht troopers joined Rictus on the crest of the height. This was not a hill,
but one of the ubiquitous tells which marked the sites of old cities all across
the Middle Empire. By some unimaginable labour in the distant, legendary past,
the inhabitants of these parts had reared up dozens of the things, each large
enough to hold a fair-sized Macht city with room to spare. On these stood the
most ancient Kufr fortresses and cities. But many were bare and forgotten now.
Looking at the shape of the land below, Rictus realised that once the Bekai
River had wound close to the foot of this tell, and thus the city built thereon
had controlled the crossing. But rivers were fickle things, changing course
even in the space of a man’s lifetime. As the Bekai had moved away, so the
people had followed it, to keep to the crossings, and they had built another
tell for their new city where Kaik now stood, snug up against the steep
riverbanks.

Rictus thought of
a different river, a mere stream flashing through a quiet glen somewhere in the
far west and north. The snowdrops would be gone by now, and there would be
primroses and crocuses about the oaks in the valley-bottom. He fingered the
coral pendant about his neck, slick with his sweat, and for a moment he felt as
lost and bewildered as if he had only this moment left his father’s farm and
found himself here, in this immensity of strangeness that was the world.