Paul Kearney - Kings of Morning

The Arakosans had charged into a wall of spears and armoured men, head-on and unprepared, and their own numbers were piling them upon the wreckage of the leading ranks. It was like watching a man’s face being smashed repeatedly into a stone.

Demetrius’s green spearmen stood their ground, and the Arakosans milled in front of them, horses rearing to bite and kick, their riders slashing with their tulwars and scimitars and light lances. But they were striking down upon a line of shields and bronze, whereas the aichmes of the spearmen were stabbing upwards into the soft flesh of the horses. When the big animals fell they entangled others, crushed their riders, lay thrashing and screaming in a mire of their own entrails.

‘Get your horn, Shoron. Sound the charge,’ Ardashir shouted over that holocaust. He felt sickened, but would not shirk his role in the slaughter.

Shoron lifted his horn from the saddle-pommel and blew the clear hunting call of the western empire, which the Companions had used since before the siege of Machran. Ardashir’s mora smashed into the outer flanks of the Arakosans once again, Niseians fighting one another, Kefren killing Kefren, the red at war with the blue.

The Macht started to sing as the horn-notes died away. With their death hymn in their throats they began to advance, Demetrius out in front and waving them on. He stood atop a dead horse and pointed his spear eastwards like some warlike prophet.

The Arakosans were fighting their own horses now. They had been brought to a standstill and a ridge of their dead lay for over a pasang in front of Demetrius’s morai, while they had now been assailed in the flank by a thousand of the Companions. They were brave men, superb horse-soldiers, but they had never encountered a Macht phalanx before, and no matter how intent they were on attacking, their mounts would not charge that unbroken battlement of bronze and iron.

They broke.

First in one and twos, then clotted groups, many clinging two to a horse. They streamed away from the advancing Macht, and Ardashir’s Companions harried them in pursuit, breaking up any companies which halted and tried to reform. In minutes, they were in full retreat, their officers trying to stem the rout, beating their own men with their swords. That massive sea of horsemen began to pour back the way it had come, with the Macht phalanx advancing inexorably in its wake, and as the Arakosans fled, they slammed into the formations of levy infantry which the Great King had sent in behind them to follow up their assault. A boiling mass of cavalry and infantry was brewed up there in the towering, choking maelstrom, and the whole imperial left flank was thrown into utter confusion. Out of the dust to the west, the sound of the Paean rose out of six thousand voices, and confusion gave way to stark terror. The Arakosans gave up any attempt to rally and began to flee in earnest, galloping through the oncoming infantry which had been meant to reinforce their victory.

Demetrius’s men came upon that vast mob of enemy soldiers, and the Macht went to work with their spears, while Ardashir’s cavalry hung on the flank like a hound tearing at the legs of a maddened bull.

Almost two pasangs away, in the broken centre of Corvus’s army, the Honai were still in full, jubilant cry. Their formations had lost all order in their delight at having annihilated the much-vaunted Dogsheads. They considered the battle won; now they had only to secure the enemy baggage train and the Macht army would have the legs cut out from under it.

Dyarnes was near the rear of his men, still climbing over the clotted dead where the fighting had been thickest, and he paused to grab the shoulder of a fleet youngster with wild eyes.

‘You — get you back to the Great King and tell him we are through the enemy line, and are advancing on his baggage.’

‘The Great King?’ the young Kefre sputtered.

‘Tell his people, you fool — they’re back at the Royal Chariot. Tell them I need further orders. We have this thing won, if I can but wheel some of my troops round to strike the enemy in the rear. The thing is won — you hear me?’

The Honai was grinning now, an open-mouthed grin like that of a cheerful dog.

‘Drop your shield and run.’

The young Kefre took off, tossing away his helm as he sprinted into the dust. Dyarnes chuckled. He was alone save for a cluster of aides. One leaned close and shouted in his ear.

‘Shall we recall the men, lord? Or halt them, at least?’

‘Not yet. Let them have their triumph, Arnosh. I want them well clear of the line before I begin to turn them around.’

‘It’s won sir. We did what the legends said we could not — we broke the Macht.’

Dyarnes bent amid the corpses. They lay so thick he had to stand upon dead flesh.

‘They did not break,’ he muttered, staring at a white, snarling face. ‘They did not run. They stood and died.’

Some new note in the tumult to the west, where he could still see the tail end of the victorious Honai companies. A breath of wind, a lift in the air, and suddenly it was as though a new stage had been unveiled in a close-packed theatre. His view opened out; he found himself staring at a moving crowd of thousands of his own Kefren, the King’s Bodyguard in its moment of hard-won victory. He began to smile at the sight.

But then something else tugged his gaze south, to where the Arakosans were engaged in a sepia thundercloud, fighting their own battle. A wave of relief swept over him as he recognised the sight of cavalry spilling north across the plain, thousands of them. The Arakosans had done their work quickly; they must already have broken through the Macht right wing.

But there was no blue in that massive, arrow-shaped body of horsemen. They were clad in red, the colour of the Macht.

Despite the furnace-heat of the day, Dyarnes felt a nerveless chill steal along his spine.

‘Oh, Bel deliver us,’ he gasped. ‘No — no, no!’

The Companions of King Corvus, four thousand strong, shook out into line of battle, and at the sound of a bright, tugging horn-call, taken up all along their galloping line, they brought down their lances and charged full-tilt into the scattered, disorganised mass of the Honai.

And that was not all. At the same moment, there came from the south a boiling mass of Macht infantry — not spearmen, but lightly armoured swordfighters, bearing wickedly curved blades of iron. They paused fifty paces from the Honai, then threw a shower of javelins. And then they pitched into the Kefren with a roar, the sword-blades catching fire from the westering sun as they arced through the air.

Dyarnes sank to his knees, aghast. The wind changed; the dust-cloud rose again, rolling across the plain to blot out the panorama he had glimpsed. He looked down at his hands, still clean despite the carnage surrounding him. A Macht face, bloodless and stiff, stared up at him in surly triumph.

As quick as that, like a cup slipping through one’s fingers. For a few minutes, he had seen victory with his own eyes.

‘The King,’ he croaked. ‘The King must be warned.’

He looked up at a new note in the thunder of battle. Horses. They were coming closer.

He stood up and drew his scimitar.

And a hundred heavy cavalry exploded out of the dust before him.

They had brought fresh water in skins to the chariot, and wine for those who wanted it. Kouros took a cup, stood on the leather-strapped floor of the vehicle, and rinsed the dust out of his mouth.

The noise around him; that roaring cataclysm. He had almost become accustomed to it. Hard to believe so many men could make such a din for so long.

The sun was a white ball, in a sky the colour of tanned leather. It had crossed the meridian. If it were shining they would have had it in their eyes. How many hours had he been standing here, with his father’s upright form beside him? Four — five? All those months of preparation, the gathering of the army, the logistical nightmare, the endless marching columns. All for these few hours in a lightless sky and a blinding storm of dust. How did one even know what was happening?