Paul Kearney - Kings of Morning

It was his father who answered him. ‘At Kunaksa, we slew their leaders and took their baggage. We had them surrounded and outnumbered five, six to one. But still they attacked, and routed my entire army. They were thirsty, exhausted, half dead on their feet — I can still see it now — and they kept coming down that hill. They beat us that day because they thought they were already dead men. Only the Macht fights like that. Like a cornered animal, bereft of reason. That is why they are so dangerous.’

Kouros stared. The dust came and went in rolling clouds. He caught glimpses of the fighting lines to their front, a vast river of murder. He could not imagine what it must be like, up there at the spearheads. It must be very like hell itself.

‘My lord, we have word from the Arakosans out on the left.’ This was Marok, Dyarnes’ second-in-command. A tall, dark Kefre, like a lean version of Kouros, he was the one who loved women and horses, and who had more of both thanks to the generosity of the King’s heir. He glanced at Kouros and nodded his head in a half bow of acknowledgement.

‘The Macht have begun loosing off their great arrows again, into the ranks of the cavalry. The Arakosans are taking casualties. Their Archon, Lorka, asks your permission to advance.’

Ashurnan raised a hand, and Marok went silent and bowed deeply. The Great King was looking west intently, trying to pierce the curtain of dust.

At last it opened a moment. Another attack had been beaten off; there were hundreds of figures streaming in panic from the Macht line. But that line was not as tidy as it had been. It bulged and bent here and there, and there were gaps in it now as the enemy hauled away his wounded and brought men out of the rear to fill the gaps at the front. The red-clad ranks did not seem as thick as before.

Ashurnan looked at the sky. He was sure of it now.

The sun was still high, but it was westering. Soon he would have it in his eyes.

‘Couriers,’ he snapped. At once, half a dozen mounted Kefren were at the back of the chariot, their mounts stamping and snorting under them.

‘Go to Lorka and the Arakosans. Tell him he is to advance at once. He must assault the Macht right wing and then swing behind them. I will send follow-up levies behind him.’

Two couriers wheeled their horses round and burst into a canter. They took off as if racing each other.

‘Marok,’ the Great King said. ‘Go to Dyarnes. Tell him he is to take in the Honai. I want him to assault the centre and break it. He will be supported with everything I can send up. I want him to split the enemy and keep going, right to the baggage if he can. Is that understood?’

Marok blinked. Some of the colour left his face. He bowed. ‘Yes, Great King.’

‘And Marok, tell Dyarnes not to jeopardise himself. He is to remain behind the main assault.’ The Great King smiled. ‘You, Marok, will lead the attack in person.’

Marok looked quickly at Kouros, then back at the King. He bowed. ‘You honour me, lord.’

‘Break the Macht line, Marok. Show me your loyalty.’

Marok turned away and walked slowly back to the Honai lines, tugging on his helmet as he did so.

‘A good man,’ Ashurnan said. ‘Ambitious.’ He looked at Kouros and smiled a scimitar smile.

‘A favourite of your mother’s, I believe.’

Two massive bodies of troops now began to grind into motion. On the left the Arakosan cavalry broke into a trot, eight thousand heavy horsemen in several columns. Their ranks were ragged and disordered, for Parmenios’s missiles were still plunging out of the air, and few could miss such a packed target. There were scores of horses lying on the ground, kicking the last of their lives away, and the Arakosans were seized by rage at the screams of the beautiful Niseians. When the order to advance was given they surged forward with a will, a massive tide of flesh, bone, bronze and iron. For fully two pasangs they covered the earth, and before the dust of their own advance covered them they seemed from afar to resemble a tumbled avalanche of lapis lazuli stones, so bright was their blue armour. The buried thunder of their advance carried clear across the battlefield, like the anger of some earthbound god.

The Honai heard it as they took up their spears and began to advance, to the sound of horn-calls and long flutes. Ten thousand tall Kefren in polished bronze. Their armour also caught the sun, and it seemed that a host of blazing statues had come to life and were advancing across the field. The levies moving forward on their flanks gave a great cheer, and it was taken up all along the imperial lines, until a hundred thousand voices were shouting together in a moment of pure exultation. The mood of the entire battlefield shifted. The weary Macht lifted their heads in a moment of cold doubt, and the fresh levies who were still coming in from the east heard that sound and stepped forward with a will, sure that they had just heard the sound of victory rolling towards them out of the dust.

‘Give us a drink, will you, Rictus? I’ve a tongue like a block of wood.’

Rictus leaned his forehead against his spear. He tried to spit, but nothing came out.

‘I sent it back with Kesero after he was wounded. There’s none left.’

‘Damn it. I’ll die thirsty.’

‘So will we all, brother.’

‘Look at them. Someone in this country can teach drill.’

They stared at the advancing ranks of the Honai, marching in perfect time to the flutes, a shrill, unearthly noise.

The Dogsheads stood surrounded by mounds of dead, the enemy’s and their own. They had thinned out the line to keep connected to Demetrius’s conscripts on their right and Teresian’s veterans on their left. They stood four deep now, half their regular formation. Behind them, the wounded were lying in a carpet of broken, writhing humanity, painted black with flies. The carts could not load them up fast enough to take them back to the baggage train.

Behind the wounded were a few hundred of Parmenios’s engineers, manning ballistae and looking distinctly nervous. Behind that there was nothing but empty plain all the way back to the waggon-park holding all the army’s supplies, some two pasangs to the rear.

‘We’re a bit thin on the ground,’ Rictus said mildly. He had never felt so tired in his life before. A few nicks and scratches were all that the fury of the battle had so far inflicted upon his flesh, but he was bone weary.

I am too old, he thought. Corvus was right.

And yet, when he lifted his head and looked at the Honai advancing towards him, marching to the sound of flutes, something in him leapt.

I am as much made for this as is the head of a spear.

A sense almost of happiness.

‘I don’t think much of their music,’ he said aloud. And then, louder, ‘What say you we make some music of our own, brothers?’

Half a dozen of them took him up on it at once, and began the slow, mournful chant of the Paean, the death-hymn of the Macht. It went down the line like smoke on the wind, and rose higher, fighting down the shrill pipe of the approaching flutes.

Thousands took it up, not only the Dogsheads, but the morai to left and right in the line. It rolled out of the Macht army like the murmur of a storm, and grew. The men straightened at their spears, lifted their heads from behind their shields and sang, until the singing was the loudest thing on that enormous tortured plain, and the sound of it carried clear across that deadly space, even to the ears of the Great King himself.

‘Close shields! Level spears!’ the orders rang out, but the singing went on, drowning out the Kufr flutes and horns.

The Honai gave a great collective snarl, and quickened their pace.

The Macht were still singing when the Great King’s warriors smashed into their line.