The Ten Thousand (20 page)

“Where’re we
headed, cap’n?” one of the other men asked. Rictus collected himself. He
pointed towards the distant mountains. “Out that way. There’s an Imperial post
house twenty pasangs along the road which is still manned. We’re to take it,
and everyone in it.”

“Alive or dead?”

Rictus shrugged,
and the men about him nodded and rubbed their chins or tested the edge of their
javelin-points. These were Phiron’s Hounds, the swiftest, ablest and most
vicious of the skirmishers. For some reason, Jason had taken Rictus and made
him a Second, commander of a half-centon of them. Rictus now led ten fists into
battle. Except that they never saw battle—not as Rictus understood it. They saw
massacre and rapine and murder. They cut down the enemy when he was in flight,
they seized bridges and gatehouses and defiles ahead of the main army, and they
harassed any enemy they found who was too strong for them to destroy. They did
not stand in rank, or bear armour, or meet their foes as equals. They fought
their little war in as dirty a manner as they could. And Rictus was good at it.

They knew him now,
these men—or boys, most of them were—and they trusted his judgement. He had a
feel for the land and the manner in which it must be used—the way terrain could
even stiffening odds, the value of surprise, of ferocity unleashed at the right
moment and from an unsuspected direction. He was brave in battle, a rare hand
with both javelin and long spear, and a captain who was not afraid to get up
and close with his foe, sometimes charging into a wavering enemy without
bothering to find out if the rest of his command had followed. Because of who
he was, his men had taken to calling themselves
the Iscans,
and Rictus
had neither approved nor objected. They had even painted the
iktos
sigil
on the leather facings of their shields, though Rictus had left his own blank.
After each of their missions, they would rejoin the main body—they were part of
Jason of Ferai’s mora—and Rictus would leave for the command tent to report and
receive more orders. Buridan the Bear would see to it that they were fed and
had dry ground to sleep upon, for if Rictus had one drawback as a leader, it
was that he seemed singularly indifferent to such things. He would not let his
men starve, but he would not go to special lengths to make them comfortable,
either. If anything, this made the men he led respect him all the more, for all
that he was a gangling strawhead with the slow twang of the mountains in his
speech.

They took off down
the slope at an easy run. This pace, they knew they could keep up for many
pasangs. Phiron called them his foot-cavalry, and they revelled in the title.
The heavy troops might garner the glory of pitched battle, but for those who
liked to be ahead of the column, unfettered by too many officers, the light arm
was the unit of choice.

Twenty pasangs,
half at a run, the other half at a brisk walk. The day wheeled its way through
morning and afternoon and into dusk. They arrived before full-dark, as Rictus
had intended. In the last light of the sunset they saw the post-house ahead of
them, the land around as flat as the bread the Kufr ate, then rising up as
steeply as rocks out of a calm sea towards the white-topped mountains in the
east, now blushed pink with Araian’s last light. The Imperial Road arrowed up
into the Magron foothills, too straight to be quite real, and off it smaller
roads of red dirt were carved out which led to villages and towns of mud-brick,
none important enough to warrant a tell to perch on. In these, lamps had
already begun to be lit. Not many—poor folk went to bed with the sun—but enough
to mark them out upon the darkening face of the land.

Rictus raised his
hand, and all about him his men came to a halt, blowing and panting, spears
upright in their right fists, their left arms hung with the leather and wicker
peltas, and in the left hand of each a bundle of slim javelins. Rictus nodded
at an older man, a bald-headed, gap-toothed veteran of the skirmishers. “Whistler,
take four fists and hang back left. You’re the reserve. Keep a taenon or two
between us. We meet something big, and we’ll pull back through you.” The man
nodded, grinning. His name was Hanno, but he was known as Whistler because when
he breathed though liis mouth, as he did now, the air shrilled through the gap
in his front teeth.

A younger man, a
mere boy with eyes dark as blackberries and the beauty of a girl, spoke up. “What
of me, Rictus?”

“Go out on the
right with two fists and keep a lookout on that flank, Morian. Get up on the
higher ground there. When the thing is done, we reassemble here.” They nodded
at him, impatient to be off. “Very well. Now we go. Arrowhead, all of us.”

Half the men
spread out in formation, Rictus at the point. They loped forward, eyes darting
left and right, staring ahead. There was no Paean sung, no feet marched in
time. This was warfare on the fly, as much a hunt as anything else.

The post-house was
in fact a complex of several buildings with a corral beside them that had half
a dozen swift horses nosing at the earth within.

Rictus’s men sped
through the buildings and out the other side. A single Juthan slave who walked
out of a doorway was spitted through the neck and dropped without a sound. On
the eastern edge of the post-house Rictus raised his hand again. “Move in.” He
waved at Morian; the boy nodded and spread his own tiny command in a line off
to the right. As he took to the rising ground there, they became silhouetted
against the stars.

Rictus stood fast
as his men went through the buildings. There were shouts now, a scream cut off.
He stood watching in the dark, noting in his head the position of every
fragment of his little command. Moments like this, he loved—when one directed
the men like the elements of some dance and saw the efficiency of it at one
remove. Phobos’s Dance, mercenaries called it, making light of war as they did
of most things.

This kind of
killing, though, Rictus had seen enough of. He did not count it valour to
slaughter men struggling out of their beds.

Morian came
pelting back down to him. The boy’s eyes were so wide they almost had a shine
about them in the gathering starlight.

“Off to the south
and east, maybe three pasangs, there’s a camp, a big one. Scattered fires
spread out wider than the walls of Machran. Rictus, it is
huge.”

Rictus paused a
second. Morian was young, but as clear-headed as they came.

“All right. Bring
in your men. Finish the work here and then join up with Whistler. Quickly now.”
Unable to help himself, he grabbed the boy’s arm. “Morian, are you sure?”

“Antimone’s tits,
it’s bigger than our own, Rictus.”

“You’re sure it’s
not a town?”

“It’s campfires,
not lamps, enough of them for a city. Rictus—”

“Enough. Off you
go.” Rictus released him. His heart had begun to hammer. When he opened his
mouth he could hear the rush of it beating in his throat. He looked around him,
gauging the situation. No more cries from the houses; the work there was done.
Now the men were ransacking the place for food and drink and trinkets. If he
was quick… He hesitated a split second more, then took off at a run.

The ground rose
under his feet. Not a steep slope, but enough to hide what lay beyond the rise.
He sprinted, slinging the pelta on his back by its leather strap. In one hand
he held his spear at the trail; his javelins he clenched together in the other.
His feet barely felt the earth beneath him. He topped the rise and found
fragments of brick under the soles of his sandals. Another tell, vast as a long
hill out of nature, but so ancient that it had worn down to a low slope in the
ground, no more. And on the other side—

On the other side
the world had changed. The quiet starlit night was fractured apart.

“
Phobos!
”
Rictus swore. The boy was right. Two pasangs away, not three, more campfires
were extending the perimeter minute upon minute. How many taenons? A hundred,
two hundred? It was a sea of campfires back to the foothills.

It was an army.

The Great King had
come west over the mountains.

Twenty pasangs
back at a hard run, the men blowing and winded now, heads down. When Whistler
and a few of the older ones began to lag behind, Rictus split his command,
going forward with the youngest and fleetest. They stumbled in the dark and
went headlong, got up and started running again. The two moons rose, and in the
blushed silver light they made better time. It seemed in the moonlight that
they were making no distance at all, but were mere staggering men running on
the spot, while all around the dark world sat still under their feet. But at last
the other campfires hove into view: the lights of their own camp. Running down
into it, swallowing vomit, Rictus knew by the comparison that the army camped
back in the shadow of the Magron was many times larger than their own. Gasping,
he told his men to make for their own lines. He tossed Morian his weapons and
kept running, making for the taller cressets that blazed above the rest of the
Macht camp, marking the large tent of Phiron where the Kerusia met. When he
reached it he bent over and spewed out what remained of his last meal, whilst
in front of the tent two of Arkamenes’s Honai stood watching in disgust,
flanking the open tent-flap. From within there came the sound of music, a woman
singing, and voices engaged in stately conversation.

Rictus staggered
askew, spitting out the foul taste of his vomit, mind wheeling. The sight of
the Honai had completely thrown him. Was he not in the right place? He wiped
his mouth on his arm and went up to the tall Kefren. “Phiron,” he said. “Get
Phiron.”

The guards stared
at him, alien eyes set within the bronze masks of their helms. “Phiron,” Rictus
repeated faintly, and sank to one knee.

A voice spoke up,
louder than the blood thundering in his ears. He was taken by the arm and
shaken roughly. Not Phiron but Jason, the ivy-leaves of a party in his hair,
wine on his breath. He wore his finest chiton, still scarlet, but embroidered
with gold sigils on the shoulders. In his pale eyes there was instant
recognition.

“What’s happened?
Speak, Rictus.”

Rictus regained
his feet, swaying. Jason’s hands grasped his shoulders, transfixing him to the
spot.

“What are the Kufr
doing here?”

“Arkamenes is
within—Phiron is hosting him. You picked a rare night to puke on his doorstep.
Now speak it out.”

“Twenty-two or
three pasangs to the east, there is an army encamped. It is huge—many times
bigger than ours.”

Those eyes,
strange in so dark a face. Pale as flint. Jason studied him for a long moment,
breathing wine into his face. Gods, he could do with some wine. But he was
collecting himself now, his heart hammering out a less insane beat.

“You’re sure,
Rictus?”

Rictus smiled. “I
know an army when I see one.”

“How close did you
get? How many camp-fires? Were you seen?” The questions were shot out like
barbed darts. Rictus answered them as well he could. When Jason was satisfied
he released him. Even in the torchlight it was possible to see how his face had
lost colour.

“They stole a
march on us it seems—a campaigning season of marches. I thought Ashurnan did
not have it in him.”

“The snows in the
Magron,” Rictus said. “They must have melted early.”

“Yes. You’ve done
well, lad. Antimone had her eye on you tonight, on us all. Now it’s Phobos we
have to worry about. Follow me.”

“Where? In there?”
Rictus asked, dismayed.

“In there. You’re
going to stand up straight in front of Phiron and our generals and the Kufr and
tell all this over again, and you’ll not miss a beat.”

Rictus rubbed at
the vomit on his front. His chiton stank with sweat and his legs were spattered
dark with the muck he had run through. “I could use some wine,” he said in a
low tone. Jason grinned.

“You and me both.
Come now.”

He might have been
an after-dinner freak-show. Phiron’s tent had been hung with tapestries and
hangings looted from half a dozen cities; it was lit with many-armed lamps of
gold and silver. The couches of the great and the good were circled round an
empty space below them, through which musicians and slaves came and went. Now
Rictus stood in this space, stinking, filth-stained, rank, and told them all
that the enemy had come over the mountains and was half a day’s march to the
east. An enemy in his many tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands. He was brought
wine and sipped it standing as one after another of the generals questioned
him, many sharp with disbelief, and even angry, as though Rictus were playing
some joke on them. Orsos and Castus denounced him as a spy, planted by their
foes; they were rather drunk. Phiron and Pasion, side by side, questioned him
as parents would a prodigal son. And Arkamenes sat rigid, watching, listening
to Phiron interpret, his eyes glowing with a light that was utterly inhuman.
Behind him, on a lower couch, a Kufr woman reclined. As he spoke, Rictus was
sure she understood some of his words, for she reacted before Phiron
translated. Her eyes were stark with fear.

Jason took his
arm. He had tossed away his ivy crown. “Sit down before you fall down.” Rictus
was led out of that focused space in their midst, to the periphery of shadows.
A cane stool was found for him, and more wine. A Juthan girl poured it, her
blue-black hair in a pigtail that touched his wrist as she bent. He smiled at
her, but there was no answer out of the yellow eyes. Jason stood at his side
and watched the wrangling, the debating, and the barely restrained animosity go
their inevitable way about the banqueting couches. Phiron stood at Arkamenes’s
side now, speaking swiftly to the Kefren prince and hammering his fist into his
palm.