Paul Kearney - Kings of Morning

And besides, when those same nobles came to offer him obeisance in his vast, multi-coloured, towering tent, its gilded poles as thick as the masts of a mighty ship, one could see that the effect was worth the effort.

The Great King on the move was like some force out of nature, as impressive as the grandest storm, and these petty princes and Archons and local lords were to be the officers in his levies. On their loyalty, or respect, or fear would turn the fate of the battle to come. Let them look upon the grandeur that was Ashurnan, and tremble. It would stiffen their resolve when the Macht came marching towards them in full panoply of war.

The grandeur that was Ashurnan. The Great King sipped from his cup, cold water sprinkled with the juice of limes, crackling with ice from the straw-insulated chests further down the column. Most of the folk in this great host had never seen ice; they were creatures of the lowlands, and their lives had been spent in the shimmering, irrigated fields of the Heart of Empire. But now when they raised their heads and looked beyond the dust, they could glimpse snow on the rim of the world, the white peaks of the mighty Magron, and in their foothills the King’s summer capital, Hamadan, where for centuries the Asurian Kings had gone to escape the stifling heat of the low country. Hamadan was the fortress-key to the Asurian Gates, the only path an army could take through the Magron to the Middle Empire beyond. And it was there, in the land of the Rivers, that Ashurnan felt the matter would be decided.

He did not believe Darios would be able to hold the line of the Korash; his army had been blown to chaff. No, the thing would happen in ancient Pleninash, somewhere on the Imperial Road between Kaik and Irunshahr.

Somewhere on the same line of march that the Ten Thousand had taken, a generation before.

That same bloodied highway was going to see another bloodletting, but this one would be greater even than Kunaksa. Ashurnan could feel it in his thinning bones, and he felt no relish at the prospect. He still remembered vividly being woken from sleep after the first day at Kunaksa, when he had thought the thing won, only to be told that the Macht, leaderless, alone, betrayed, were nonetheless attacking, and putting to flight the best the Empire could throw at them. He remembered those sombre men in bronze and scarlet advancing remorselessly over their own dead, marching in cadence, singing as they came. And a chill ran up his backbone at the memory.

Kouros reined in his horse with a jerk, the animal jittery under him, catching his mood. He rode a Niseian, as did many Kefren with money or high blood, but he disliked the beast. Coal-black and fiery tempered, like all its kind, it had been bred for the hunt, for war; two activities Kouros knew little of. He carried a whip, which few Kefren horsemen did, the high-born of the empire having been brought up with horses since childhood. There was a semi-mythical bond between the high-caste Kefren of Asuria and the Niseians. Legend had it that the tall black horses were a gift to the world from Bel himself, and their sire was the west wind.

Darker myths even said that the big horses’ forbears had been brought east by the Macht in their youth, but this was not a tale that found much favour among the Niseian breeders.

Kouros did not name his horses, nor did he ride for pleasure. The animals were a necessary accessory to him, nothing more, and nothing could make his eyes glaze over faster than a group of petty lords discussing studs and bloodlines. They were animals, that was all. Kouros’s world was to do with people. Horses were nothing more than transport.

He sat upon his horse now, biting his thumbnail, looking down on the dust-shrouded Imperial Road leading north-west to Hamadan. To the south and east more dust-clouds rose, like tawny stormclouds anchored to the earth. More columns of marching troops. They were converging from all over Asuria, and more were behind them. His spies told him that the Arakosan main body was still a week to the east, eight thousand heavy cavalry bright as kingfishers in the blue-enamelled armour of their people. His mother’s people.

His people.

His mother never let him forget his Arakosan blood. She came from a line of kings as ancient as that of Asuria, and considered herself as royal as any scion of Asur. Minosh, satrap of Arakosia, was her cousin, and they had been close as children, the palace in Bokosa housing a more easy-going regime than that of Ashur. Minosh was a satrap of the Great King, a loyal servant. But he was also a great ruler in his own right. Minosh had to be wooed, if Kouros’s claim to the throne were to be set in stone.

Especially now, with Rakhsar on the loose.

Kouros bared his teeth in anger, thinking on it, and when the horse began to dance and snap under him he seized the reins and yanked back hard. He used a hard wolf-bit on his horses, which was essentially a bronze blade laid against the tongue. It was not unusual for him to turn his mount over to the grooms with blood dripping from the animal’s mouth.

Rakhsar, free and alive. He thought he had stopped every bolthole, covered every contingency.

His mother had flown into a rage at the news. It had meant she must stay in Ashur through the heat of the summer, to watch over the city for Rakhsar’s mischief.

She had stripped one of her slaves at random and whipped the girl’s flesh from her white back in front of him. He had not so much as dared to wipe the blood from his face, but stood there dumb and motionless while the screaming slave died under her blows. Orsana had stood afterwards with her black hair skeined over her face, eyes socketed in blood, the hem of her robe soaking it up from the puddle mosaic of the floor.

How can you be King? She had shrieked, and Kouros had felt terror he had not known since childhood. She had whipped the slave, but the blows had been meant for him.

After that it had been a relief to leave the city, to join his father’s army and eat dust day after day, to ache with the constant riding, to sweat like a serf in the daily swordplay his weapons-master insist he practice.

But still, his thoughts were constant — where was Rakhsar? And Roshana.

He had loved Roshana once. She had been kind to him when as children they had occasionally been allowed to play together. Those moments had been like miracles to him.

But her love for her brother curdled his feelings for her, for between Rakhsar and Kouros there had been nothing but black, unalloyed hatred from the first. It was as if they had the instincts of wild dogs, sensing a rival in the pack. It was unreasoning from the beginning, and then as they grew older there had been too many more reasons to ever begin to question it.

But he had wept, in private, over Roshana, for she was one of a handful of people who had shown him kindness without hope of gain, for no other reason than pure decency.

It was why he hungered now to catch and degrade her, to force himself on her in front of her twin, to wipe that knowing sneer off Rakhsar’s face one last time, and then expunge it from the world forever.

Tears rose in his eyes as he pitied himself, remembering the utter loneliness of his childhood. There had been one other in those days, a single other who had shared his world for a time. But his mother had disapproved. Orsana’s disapproval meant mutilation, death, exile. No-one was allowed to come close to her son, who would one day be ruler of the world.

His mother loved him, but that love frightened him, for it was entangled in expectation and ambition and bloody, unyielding determination. She loved him, but if he could not be King, then he did not like to think what that love could do.

There were times when he wished she was… gone.

And he thought of what it would be like to be King, to do as he pleased, and the thought settled his mind, calmed him. He even patted the rancid, foam-flecked neck of his horse as though he cared.