Paul Kearney - Kings of Morning

‘It must be near dawn by now,’ Rakhsar said, wiping his face.

‘They will sound the chime when the sun rises,’ Kurun told him tiredly. ‘That’s when the shift changes. That would be the best time to try for the outside.’

He was fading away. The torchlight seemed to be circling a loom of widening shadow. His face was gripped by strong fingers, and shaken.

‘Stay with us, boy. When we stand under the sun, you can sleep all you want.’

‘He is bleeding, master,’ Ushau said.

‘Set him down.’ Roshana’s voice, quick and sharp.

Kurun was laid down on the stone. They opened his legs and peeled the soaked chiton from his thighs. He cried out, but the scream was smothered by Ushau’s huge palm, and the other held him down while Rakhsar and Roshana examined him. Rakhsar’s upper lip peeled back from his teeth. ‘Bel in his heaven, what a mess.’

‘Maidek,’ Roshana said, ‘Can you do something?’

The skull-lean Kefre knelt beside them. He looked Kurun’s injuries over with some interest, like a man at a market-stall.

‘They closed the wound with fire, mistress, but missed part of it. I would bind the boy’s legs together for now. He will need to be sewn up, but I cannot do that here. I need — ’

A brass clang rattled through the air, as though some titan had dropped a metal pot out of the sky. Rakhsar stood up. ‘Your butchery can wait, Maidek,’ he said. ‘That’ll be the chime the boy spoke of. Ushau, clamp him tight.’

The light grew, grey and cool across the massive chamber ahead. It revealed gangs of hufsan, who were now straightening from their labour upon orderly rows of squared stone, heaps of rubble. A swarm of talk rose. Suddenly the place seemed crowded, as more apron-clad hufsan trooped in from outside, and from stairways and ramps leading down from the dark bulk of the ziggurat above. The tall gateway loomed beyond, brightening moment by moment. There was an inrush of cooler air that brought the dust of the stoneworkers with it to grit their teeth, and something else. The mingled stinks of the world beyond, the promiscuous perfume of the city itself.

‘The boy was right,’ Roshana said. ‘That is the light of the dawn.’

‘Up. Move,’ Rakhsar snapped. ‘Follow me.’

He had sheathed his sword, but kept his hand on the hilt as they trailed through the work-gangs, gathering rock-dust, the sweat and toil of the slave-city pressing in on them with the milling crowds of workers. The fresh, cool air of the city beyond drew them on, filling their lungs. Rakhsar uttered a strangled laugh as they stepped out of the ziggurat, into the morning cacophony that was Ashur, and looked around themselves like an island of idle fools in a sea of busy people.

‘I smell grilled frog,’ Rakhsar said to his sister, grinning. The sweat lay like pearl beads on his forehead. ‘What say you we treat ourselves to one, and then find a place to lay our heads for a while?’

He strode off, and the rest trailed after him like the tail of a kite. Ushau looked down on Kurun and tapped a knuckle against the boy’s chest.

‘You are a good little fellow,’ he said. Then he held Kurun close, and followed his master, and they were lost in the coursing torrent of faces, bodies, flapping feet and waving hands that was the Imperial City, while behind them the ziggurats were lit up, level by level, by the burgeoning light of the dawn.

Ashurnan felt the palanquin move under him, with the stately pace of the elephant that bore it. He drew back the fine weave of the curtains to look up the road ahead, and once again his fist clenched involuntarily as he took in the line of wagons, pack-animals, cavalry and marching men that stretched to the bright, dust-hazed horizon.

Dust in his beard. Dust in his shoes. Dust in the very food he ate. Asuria itself was impregnating every part of him; his own country, the heart of empire, the place his ancestors had walked and ruled for years beyond count.

His father Anurman, whom some named the Great, had deigned to speak to him of the empire once. One did not rule it, any more than a mariner dictated every movement of a ship at sea. One steered it. And sometimes, it took patience to get it back on course when the waves were in your teeth.

I am older now than my father was when he died, Ashurnan thought. I have ruled longer than he did. I have fought fewer wars, but those in which I have taken part have been greater than any he ever saw. Does that make me a better king than my father, or a lesser?

Once again, his thoughts travelled back down the dusty pasangs of the Royal Road, to his capital.

Where are you now, Rakhsar? In some highland castle, fomenting rebellion? Or down in the marshes, peering into some peasant’s fire? No — that is not your style.

Again, his fist clenched and unclenched.

I should have given him a command, taken him with me. He has an energy Kouros lacks, and courage.

But that was his heart talking. He had been as generous with his own brother, and Kunaksa had been the result.

It has always been Kouros, he thought. I cannot stand against both the Macht and Orsana. I have not the strength.

But he found himself smiling, despite the gloom of his ruminations. It had been a long time since he had been part of an army on the march. There was no denying that it brought back good memories as well as bad, a tincture of youth.

One war at a time, he thought.

At long last, the Great King himself had set forth from Ashur on campaign, with the first contingent of the Imperial Levy, and the bulk of the Household. This was but a tithe of the force that would eventually form up on the far side of the Magron Mountains, but still it choked every road leading west for dozens of pasangs. Ten thousand Honai, five thousand Arakosan cavalry who had crossed the Oskus only the week before. Twenty thousand of the local levy, small farmers called up to the banners of the King, the year’s second harvest thickening in the fields behind them, their wives and sons left to gather it in as best they might.

And that was just the beginning. To the rear of these fighting men marched another army. Teamsters, smiths, leatherworkers, carpenters, herdsmen, slaves by the thousand, and an amorphous gaggle of wives and children who could not bear to be parted from their menfolk. These were nearly as numerous as the clanking columns who bore spear and shield, and every night since leaving Ashur they had straggled into camp hours after the vanguard of the army, spent and dust-painted, but ready to attend to the needs of those who had been called upon to bear arms, to fight the Great King’s war for them.

And that still did not include the Great King’s own entourage. In his youth, Ashurnan had been stubborn, proud and fit enough to travel almost as lightly as one of his junior generals; a half dozen mule-carts carried everything he needed to live in comfort in the field. But he was old now, and his sense of what befitted a king’s campaigning had changed. Two hundred wagons carried his personal tents, his furniture, his carpets, his stores of food and drink, his favourite concubines (Orsana had picked them for him, and he had not argued the matter).

His Household was an army in itself, moving ahead of the rest of the troops to escape the tower of dust they kicked up (for this was not real campaigning, not yet; the Macht were still thousands of pasangs away), and he had his scouts and stewards out on the roads ahead to make sure there was a suitable campsite each night. In the past, Great Kings had stayed with local nobles on their travels, but Ashurnan had learned early in his reign that to put up the King and his fellow travellers for even one night could beggar the richest satrap in the empire.