The Ten Thousand (5 page)

Rictus took the
skin and drank. He drank as though it were the last thing he would ever do. And
while his cheeks were still puffed full of wine, he poured a stream of it from
the mouth of the skin so that it might puddle on the ground.

“That’s good wine—”
the thinner merchant cried.

“Shut your mouth,”
the fatter one told him, and Gasca nodded when he met his eyes. There were
proprieties. There was decency. A man could not weigh the price of all things,
and yet ignore their value.

Teeth bared for a
moment against the vileness of the wine, Rictus looked at Gasca, and jerked his
head towards the thickets on the western margins of the road. “Back in there,
maybe two pasangs, or one and a half, there are eight men about a dead campfire
arguing over the best time to ambush you.”

Silence about
their own fire. The procuress asked, “And they’re friends of yours, are they?”

“If they were,
would I be here?”

The fat merchant
rubbed his fingertips through his beard. “Eight you say? Why did they not
attack us before now? Dawn and dusk are the best time for these things.”

“They were
quarrelling over who would have the women—these two younger ones. They had a
fight over it last night, then got drunk and slept the time away. Now they are
arming, meaning to take you sometime today, before you get much closer to
Machran.”

The two
husband-brothers stared at one another, white-faced, and then at their new
wives. The look on the women’s faces reminded Gasca of a rabbit he once caught
alive in a snare.

“And how were you
privy to their discussions?” the fat merchant asked.

“I have been
travelling with them. I, too, was drinking last night at their fire.”

“A roadsman,” the
thin merchant spat, and he whipped out his slim-bladed eating knife. “It’s out
of his own mouth.”

“Stay,” his
colleague said. To Rictus he said, “What brings you here to warn us?”

“I have seen my
fill of killing—that kind of killing. I will fight them with you, if you’ll
have me.”

Gasca rose from
the fire and went to the roadside again. The sun, mighty Araian, had climbed
out of her bedclothes; she broke out now in a wrack of crimson and golden
cloud, and the glare of the thin snow was broadening moment by moment. He
looked about himself, at the wide spaces around them, then at the hills ahead
which framed the road, the ruins of long-sacked Memnos rising white and dark
with shadow and snow.

“We must pack up,”
he said. “If they catch us on the move we’ll have no chance. We must make for
the hills, put our backs to something. Those broken walls; we can climb them
and fight from a height.” He turned again. “What weaponry do they have?”

“Spears, swords,
javelins. No bows, or shields either, not even a pelta.”

“Are they up and
about?”

Rictus considered.
He was eerily calm. He does not care, Gasca thought. He thinks to do the right
thing, but most of him could care less if he lived or died today.

“They’re slow,
hung-over. You have time. Not much, but enough perhaps.”

“We’ll do as the
boy says,” the fat merchant said abruptly, rising. “Time to be moving.”

“We’ll outrun
them,” one of the young husbands said desperately. “It’s thirty pasangs to
Machran; I can run that.”

“And your wife?”
the merchant asked. “These children? If we splinter up, they’ll take us in mouthfuls.
Fighting together, on good ground, we can hurt them, enough perhaps to make
them think again.”

“You care only for
the wares on your donkey’s back.”

“Among other
things. Run if you wish. They have legs too. You’ll be dead before sundown, and
your wife will be a raped slave.”

They packed up
their bedrolls, the younger women snivelling, the children subdued by their
elders’ fear. They left the fire burning and struck out for the south at a fast
pace. The fat merchant was the slowest. Gasca took his donkey’s halter and
tugged the animal on while the big man clung to the animal’s tail, sweating.
They left the road, and the going became much harder as they forged up the
hillside to the ruins above. When the youngest child began to fall behind,
Rictus slung her up on his back, and she clung there with a wide smile on her
face, hooting triumphantly to the other urchins. The thin merchant paused to
catch his breath, and looked back into the lowland below. He cried out, and
they all paused, turned their heads. A group of men had come out of the trees,
moving fast, black as crows against the snow.

The company’s fear
lent them speed. They passed though the massive broken arch which had once been
Memnos’s main gate and raised a startled flock of sparrows out of the stones.
The snow was deeper here, high as a man’s calf. Gasca dropped the donkey’s
leading rein and ran ahead, his shield and helm bruising his back as they
bounced there. The ruins were extensive, and had there been no snow it might
even have been possible to hide the party amid them and avoid any fight at all;
but now their tracks were clear as a line of flags. He cast about like a hound
near a scent-line, and nodded as he found what he was looking for.

“The walls,” he
said, rejoining the others. “There’s a stair leading up to a good section of
them, and a tower that’s still got a doorway. We go up there, the men defend
the stairtop, and the others hide in the tower.”

“What about our
animals?” the thin merchant asked, gasping.

“They must stay
below.”

“I’ll be ruined,”
the thin merchant groaned. But he did not argue.

From the wall-top
they could see for pasangs. Their attackers were still toiling up the snowy
slope below. The road was empty; no fellow travellers to provide allies or
diversions. The world was a vast, bright stage ringed by mountains, snow
blowing off their peaks in ribbons and banners, the sky above them flawless,
pale blue, blue as a baby’s eye. Only the pine forests provided a darker
contrast, the shadow deep beneath their limbs.

“Look,” Rictus
said. He stood beside Gasca and pointed. There was a light in his eye.

Machran. To the
south the mountains opened out in a vast bowl, perhaps fifty pasangs across,
and within this ramp of highland the country was a patchwork of wood and field,
the lower hollows of it untouched by snow, and green, green as a dream of
spring. Machran itself was a sprawl, a smudge, an ochre stain upon the rolling
mantle of this world, and from it the smoke of ten thousand hearths rose in a
grey smear to sully the sky. From these heights it looked as though a man with
a fair wind behind him might lope there in a matter of minutes. Gasca found
himself smiling.

A shout from
below. Their attackers had seen them standing up here. There were indeed eight
of them. They had knotted their cloaks up over their elbows; sheepskins,
fox-hide caps with the fur still on, and high boots. Their beards were black,
long and tangled as the tail of a cow.

“Goatmen,” Gasca
said, using the contemptuous term reserved for those who had no city, who frequented
the high places of the Harukush and were reputed to sleep in caves and hold
their women in common. “You travelled with these?”

“I chanced across
them,” Rictus said.

“I’m surprised
they didn’t kill you out of hand.”

“They tried,”
Rictus said, still in the same quiet tone. “Isca trained me. They came round to
thinking that might be useful.”

“Ah, Isca,” Gasca
said. He had heard the stories. It was hardly the time to hear them again. “You
will need that training today.”

They took their
place at the stairtop. It was broad enough for two, but slippery with trodden
snow. Gasca put on his father’s bronze helm, and immediately all sounds became
washed out by the sea-noise within. He had thought to leave it off, but knew
how fearsome a crested helm would look to the men below. It would make of him a
faceless thing, and hide whatever fear might fill his eyes.

He took the weight
of his shield off his shoulder and balanced it on his arm. The bronze-faced oak
covered him from shoulder to thigh. “They’ll start with the javelins,” he told
Rictus. “Get behind my shield until they’re done.”

“I’d rather stand
free.”

“Suit yourself.”

Behind Rictus and
Gasca stood the fat merchant, face still shiny with sweat, and one of the
husband-brothers. At the rear, the thin merchant and the other husband. Only
Rictus and Gasca had spears. The rest were armed with knives and cudgels, the
eternal stand-by of all travellers, but of little use today unless the enemy
made it up onto the wall.

A harsh braying
from below. The thin merchant cursed in the name of Apsos, god of beasts.

“They’ll eat the
damn donkeys.
Goatmen—
worse than animals themselves.” Behind the six
men, the sounds of wailing children came from the doorway of the ruined
watchtower.

“I wish those
brats were mutes,” the thin merchant said.

“I wish you were a
mute,” his fat colleague murmured.

The goatmen sidled
up to the wall-bottom, watching out for missiles. When it appeared the
defenders had none they grew more brazen, edged closer. Two spoke together and
pointed up at Gasca, in full panoply, as stark and fearsome as some statue of
warfare incarnate.

“If I had some rag
of red about my shoulders they’d walk away,” he muttered to Rictus. There was
no response from the Iscan. Despite the cold, Gasca was sweating, and the heavy
shield dragged at his left bicep. Wolves he had killed, and other men he had
broken down in brawls, but this was the first time he had ever hoped to plunge
a spearhead into someone’s heart.

He jumped, as
beside him Rictus shouted with sudden venom. “Are you afraid? Why be afraid?”
For a second, fury flooded his limbs as he thought the Iscan was talking to
him; then he realised that Rictus was shouting at the goatmen below. He turned
his head, and saw through the confined eye-spaces of his helm that Rictus was
red-faced, angry. More than angry. He was feral, hate shining out of his eyes.
Gasca shifted away from him out of sheer instinct, as a man will give space to
a vicious dog.

“Is it too much,
to fight men face to face, who have weapons in their hands? Can you not do
that? Or will we send out children with sticks, and let them taste your valour?
Come—you know me. You know where I hail from. Come up here and taste my spear
again!” Now Gasca was thrust aside, and Rictus stood alone at the top of the
steps. There was spittle on his lips. He opened out his arms as if to pray.

The javelin came
searing up from the men below. Gasca, by some grace, saw it coming, even with
his circumscribed vision, and managed to lift his shield crab-wise. It clicked
off the rim of the bronze, pocking it.

“What in the gods
are you doing?” he shouted at Rictus. He had half a mind to shove this madman
down the steps.

“Now keep your
shield up,” Rictus said, and his face was rational again.

A flurry of
javelins. They came arcing in: one, two, three. Two bounced off Gasca’s shield.
The third struck the ground between his feet, making him flinch. His panoply
seemed impossibly heavy. He wanted to rip off the damned helm and see what was
going on. His eye-slots seemed absurdly small.

But now Rictus was
smiling. In his hand he held two javelins. The tips were bent a little; soft
mountain-iron.

“Well thrown. Now
have them back.” His arm swooped in a blur. He had looped the middle-strings of
the weapon about his first two fingers and as he loosed it the javelin spun,
whining. It transfixed one of the goatmen below, entering under his beard and
emerging from his nape for half a foot. The man crumpled, and his comrades
scattered around him as though his bloody end were contagious.

The second sped
into them three seconds later. This one missed a man’s head by a handspan but
struck the fellow next to him just above the knee. He yelped, dropped his
spear, and grasped his spitted limb with both hands, mouth wide and wet.

“Even odds now,”
Rictus said, perfectly calm.

“Boy, the goddess
has you under her wings,” the fat merchant said behind them.

“Isca trained me
well. They’ll rush the stairs now. We stop the rush, and they’ll break. Then we
go after them. Agreed?” The men around him mumbled assent.

“They come,” Gasca
said, and raised his spear to his shoulder.

The rank smell
rose before them as they scrabbled up the snow-covered stone of the stairway.
Jabbing with their spears, snarling, they did not seem like men at all. Gasca
crouched and took the impact of one blow on his shield. It jolted him, but the
heavy wood and bronze shrugged off the spearpoint. His mouth was a slot of
spittle as he breathed in and out, and all fear left him; there was no time for
it. He felt his own spear quiver in his hand as he grasped it at the balance
point and poked downwards. The goatmen were trying to come to grips with the
defenders, get under the spearheads. One got a fist about Gasca’s spearpoint
but he ripped it back through the man’s hand, the keen aichme shearing off
fingers as it came free of his grasp. The man shrieked. Then Rictus stabbed out
with his own weapon, transfixing the fellow through the mouth, the shriek
transforming horribly into a gargle. He toppled backwards. Behind him, two of
his fellows roared and swore as his carcass rolled down the stairs and took
their legs out from under them. A tumble of foul-smelling flesh encased in fur,
flashing eyes, a snap as a spear-shaft broke under them. They rolled clear to
the ground below, and bounced to their feet again as enraged as before.

Three remained on
the stair. One had eyes that were different colours. Gasca was able to see
this, notice it, store it away. He had never known that his own senses could be
so keen. Two spearpoints jutted up. One came below the rim of the shield,
scoring the metal. Gasca felt a sting in his thigh, no more. He thrust his own
spear down at them and felt it go into something soft. Recovering the thrust,
he felt warm liquid trickling down the side of his leg. Thrust, recover, catch another
point on the shield. A goatman came up bellowing, dropped his spear and sought
to grasp Gasca’s shield in his fists and pull it away. Gasca felt his balance
go, and fear so intense flooded him as he felt himself fall that he urinated
hotly where he stood.