The Ten Thousand (30 page)

“All the gods in
their heavens, what incredible creatures these are,” he said, shaking his head
in genuine wonder.

“My King,” one of
the bodyguards said. “We should—”

“I know, Merach. I
see them too. Watch them march! Our legends did not lie, did they?” His face
tightened. “Someone else to join us, I see, some other lost soul.”

It was Vorus, on a
blown, shattered horse. He dropped his cloak from his face and held up a hand. “My
lord—”

“Is Midarnes dead?”

Vorus could only
nod.

“I knew he would
not run, not Midarnes. He was my father’s friend also.” Suddenly the Great King
looked away, pulled his komis up over his eyes and choked down a sob. They sat
there on their horses, appalled and afraid and understanding as he bit down on
his grief, knuckles white on his reins, and before them the Macht marched on, scarcely
half a pasang away now.

He collected
himself, the tears shining on his face, his violet eyes still glittering. “General
Vorus, I rejoice to see you alive. What do you suggest?”

Vorus’s tired
horse was moving restlessly below him now, for it had picked up the vibration
beneath its feet, the tramp of the approaching army.

“We flee, my lord,”
Vorus said. “We flee, and we pick another time, another place, to finish what
was begun here.”

“Your brother is
dead, my King,” old Xarnes added. “This Empire stands. The Macht are a problem
for another day, as the general says. But you, you must not come to harm. Your
place is no longer here.”

Ashurnan’s mouth
twisted. He looked at the oncoming Macht spearmen. Now he was close enough to
see the stumbling weariness of their stride, the blood that soaked them, the
broken spears and dinted shields. These were not a legend; they were men at the
end of their strength. They were not invincible.

“Let us go,” he
said. “Merach, lead on. Take us back to camp. We leave this field to the Macht.”

The girl was bound
naked to a wagon-wheel. At first he thought her dead, but when he took her by
the hair and raised up her head, he saw the eyelids flutter. She was Kufr, one
of the shorter ones. What were they called?

Gasca reached for
his knife. Once, his father’s best hound had been gored by a stag, its entrails
spread far and wide. He had done then what he would do now, not out of anger or
vindictiveness, but out of pity. He set the knife at the Kufr girl’s throat, thinking
how much a pity it was, for she did not look so inhuman at all. He sighed
heavily. The knife was blunt.

“Stop there!” This
was Jason of Ferai, doffing his helm and striding forward. He set down his
shield. “Lower the blade, son. Lift up her face again.”

Dumbly, Gasca did
as he was told, cursing the fact that he had stopped at all. The mora had
retaken the camp and lost all order in its search of the remaining tents and
wagons. Water, they were after, more than anything, but there was none to be
found. The centurions had set them to loading up the wagons with the centoi
instead, and as there were no draught animals left alive in the camp it would
seem they were to draw these across the river with the yokes on their own
necks. Had it not been for the semi-sacred regard the mercenaries held the
great cooking cauldrons in, there might have been trouble, a last straw to
break the back of their discipline; but for the most part, it had held. The
camp was a gutted wreck and there was nothing else in it to ease their passage,
but even the most bloody-minded of the Macht would be glad to have those damn
pots back.

And this girl…
Gasca looked at Jason curious
ly.

“I believe I know
this one,” Jason said. He knelt before the girl and moved her face this way and
that, as though studying a sculpture. “
Phobos,
what have they done?” he
whispered, taking in her abused form. Anger lit his eyes. He unstrapped his
cloak from the back-belt and threw it down. “Who is it—Gasca? Cut her free,
wrap her in that, and bring her with us. Keep her alive, Gasca.”

Gasca set his jaw.
“General—”

“Don’t fucking
argue with me, strawhead. And don’t try fucking her, either.” At the expression
on Gasca’s face he laughed, and thumped the wing of the younger man’s cuirass. “All
right then. Just humour me—bring her along. She may be useful. Where’s your
friend Rictus?”

Gasca was sawing
methodically at the ropes binding the Kufr to the wheel-rim. “Haven’t seen him
since he stuck on that black armour. He could be dead, for all I know.”

“That one? Never.
He’ll see old bones. You know why? Because he doesn’t care if he will or not.
Look after her, Gasca!” Jason rose, collected his shield with an audible groan,
and then was off shouting at a group of spearmen who had dropped their weapons
to rifle through some sacks.

Rictus stood at
the Bekai Bridge with his shield leaning against his knees and his forehead
leaning against his spear-shaft. He thought that if the spear slipped, there
would be nothing in the world that would keep him on his feet. He would topple
down the steep bank, through the mizzling clouds of mosquitoes, and into the
brown water. He would drink that water, no matter if every Kufr ever born had
pissed in it, and he would die bloated and happy.

His head jerked
up, and a spike of pain transfixed his skull as the helm came with it. Another
man’s helm, not set to the bones of his own face. The pain woke him from the
half-doze. He stamped his bare feet and looked down on the endless column of
men crossing the bridge before him and half a pasang away, the same on the
other bridge. They were crossing the river again, back the way they had come
only some—what—three days ago? It seemed like a month.

Jason found him
there, nodding in and out of a kind of sleep.

“Bastards took my
scroll, all my gear,” he said. “You’re still this side of the Veil I see.”

“Still this side,”
Rictus said thickly, his tongue rasping against his teeth like meat rolled in
sand.

“We take the men
into Kaik, and we get whatever we can out of the city. But we can’t stay there
long. The Empire did not disappear in the night. Rictus, I will need you for
light work again.”

Rictus stared at
him, bloodshot eyes crusted within the T-slot of the helm. “Why?”

“We will need
light troops, more than ever now, and you’re half-good at leading them.”

Rictus said
nothing. Talking was too painful. All he could think of was water.

“Join your
mora—get into the city. I’ll stand over the rearguard.”

But Rictus did not
move. “What do we do now, Jason?” he asked. “Do we look for another employer,
set up shop in some city?”

“We’ll talk later,”
Jason said. His hazel-green eyes caught the light as he looked back eastwards
to the dark heights of the Kunaksa. How many bodies left there? In a few days
the place would be fetid. Then he looked west, to the unending plains and
farmlands of Pleninash. They seemed to go on for ever, flat and lush, with
man-made tells pimpling up out of the heat-haze, each one a city. This teeming
world, this alien place, and here he and these half-dead men were lost in it.

“We beat those
bastards. We beat them fair and square,” Rictus said, and it was as if the
younger man had caught the current of his thought.

“If we beat them
once, we can do it again.”

THE LAND OF THE RIVERS

Tiryn opened her
eyes on a brown, heavily-beamed ceiling. A gecko was sidling across it, head
turning this way and that every time it paused.
A
faint roaring came on the air, the sound of many voices,
but at a distance. It was quiet. She lay in a decent bed, with sheets and a
coverlet of linen, and there was light flooding in a west-facing balcony,
drapes drawn back and shutters wide open. Dust danced in the sunlight, motes of
it hanging in the air. The heat of the lowlands filled the room and she was
thirsty, above all else, thirsty.

She made as if to
rise, but the racking pains in her shoulders and arms caused her to lie back
again. At once, there was movement on the far side of the room. A Juthan girl
came forward, yellow eyes gleaming as she passed from shadow into light. She
dipped a gourd into a clay pot hanging in one corner, and cradling Tiryn’s head
said, “Drink. Slowly now.” She spoke Asurian with the guttural accent of the
Juthan, but her hands were gentle. Tiryn sipped the water slowly, relishing
every drop, her mouth suddenly a thing of movement again.

“Where am I?”

“You are in Kaik,
the city,” a strange voice said with an even stranger accent, the words clumsy
and ill-used. A man approached the bed, a Macht. He was dark of skin,
hazel-eyed, and he wore the felt tunic of a
hufsan
peasant.

“Do not be afraid.
I saw you once, before.”

Before. Before
what? She dimly remembered being carried or dragged in a huge moving crowd.
Before that, the wagon-wheel; before that, the knowledge of defeat.

“You are safe
here,” he said. A flicker of something passed on his face. “You are
safe,”
he repeated.

“Arkamenes is
dead,” she said. She switched into the Macht tongue she had learned for months
on the long road east. “What has happened? What is to happen?”

At that, the Macht
smiled. He had a good face, though it was worn to the bone by privation and
worry. “I don’t know,” he said in his own tongue.

“Why am I here?”

“Would you rather
we had left you where we found you?”

She felt heat in
her skin, a blush mounting up her face. She was naked under the bedclothes, her
body clean but bruised and aching. Dressings had been tied in neat, tiny knots
about her wrists where the ropes had galled her. All of that came back to her
now, that long night, that black obscenity. She shut her eyes and tears welled
under them. “Better you had left me,” she said.

He came closer.
She felt his hand in her hair, a light touch, with nothing but pity behind it.
She turned her head away.

“This Juthan will
look after you,” he said, his voice gruff now, the anger back in it. But it was
not directed at her. “You need rest. Do not worry about things. Do not think or
remember. Drink the water, eat, and enjoy the sunlight.”

She looked at him
again, baffled by the compassion in his voice. He smiled at her, eyes dancing.
In better times he would have humour about him, a lightness. Now there was a
shadow.

“Who are you?” she
asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Jason of Ferai,
once centurion of the Dogsheads centon, now a general of the Macht that remain.
You are…”

“Tiryn.”

“That was it. You
told me once.”

“A long time ago.”

“Not so long. It
seems long, sometimes. Last week seems a long time ago to me.” He smiled again.
There were indents of purple flesh below his eyes. He looked like a man who had
forgotten how to sleep.

“Why did you help
me? I am Kufr; you are Macht.”

Again the anger.
The tiredness sparked it out of him, she felt that quickness, that flare. She
liked it.

“I would not have
left a dog like that.” Her heart fell. He rubbed one big-knuckled hand over his
face, and chuckled, rueful. “Or a beautiful Kufr.” Then he sat on the side of
her bed. The sudden closeness of him startled her, that smell they had, the
Macht. It was not like that of a Kufr; it was earthier, both repulsive and
oddly interesting. Not quite that of an animal, for all she had thought in the
past.

“I need you to
teach me your language,” Jason said simply. “We are lost in your world now and
must learn your tongue in order to make our way through it.”

Some strange
little hope within her withered. But she nodded slightly. She wanted him to
move away; he was too close. The memories were fighting round the corner. Soon
they would be back in full flood.

He sensed it
somehow and rose at once, backing away a step. “You’re alive,” he said quietly.
“Many thousands died on those hills, but you are still here. Thank Antimone for
that, at least.”

“Who?” she asked
thickly, throat closing, eyes burning.

“Our goddess, the
guardian of the Macht. She is the goddess of pity. Her tears salt every
battlefield. She watches over every crime.”

“A goddess? I was
told you worshipped a monster with black wings.”

Jason nodded. “She
is that too. Sleep now, Tiryn. There are ten thousand of us guarding your bed.”
He turned away, his bare feet padding lightly on the warm stone of the floor as
he left.

Strange to say, it
was an actual comfort to Tiryn, that thought. She could sleep now. These ten
thousand who had been to her little more than animals, let them be her
guardians. Her own race had forfeited all loyalty.

The Kerusia met in
the Governor’s house near the summit of Kaik’s hill. It was a tall-ceilinged
structure of fired brick, massive black beams of river palm and cedar
supporting the roof, and high windows letting in a little of the humid air to
move lazily above their heads. They gathered round the long table where the
Kufr Governor had been wont to entertain, and by each man there was an
earthenware jug of lukewarm water from which he sipped almost continuously,
without thinking, the parched flesh of his body soaking it up without pause or
distraction.

Jason was too
tired to stand, too tired almost to register the names of those present. He
knew their faces, and those faces were marked in his mind with ink-stabs of
impression.

Rictus, perhaps
the best of them all, though Jason would never have told that Iscan straw-head
such to his face. Jason had seen greatness before now, on a small scale
perhaps, but he could smell it out. This overgrown boy had it. Except he was
nothing like a boy any more. Kunaksa had burnt out what remained of his
innocence.