Paul Kearney - Corvus

“The curtain rises,” Corvus said. “Look, brothers. We finally woke them up.”

The enemy army was on the move, that vast snake of men undulating forward over the plain. Faint at first, and then louder, there came the sound of the Paean.

The advance was ragged, halting. Some of the League’s contingents were better ordered than others and had to mark time while their comrades caught up. In the middle, a great body of spearmen remained in good order throughout, many thousands. They were the core. The men on the flanks were not as well drilled, but they presented a fearsome sight for all that.

“That is Machran, in the centre,” Corvus said. “See the sigils?” It was too far for Rictus to make out, but he nodded.

“Their polemarch is Kassander, an ex-mercenary and close friend of Karnos himself. He has trained the spearmen of Machran well – so far as a citizen army goes. Karnos is wise enough to know he is an orator, not a soldier, but he’s a good judge of men, by all accounts, and he can charm the birds off the trees when he has a mind to.

“I want him to die today.”

“I’m sure he feels the same way about you,” Fornyx drawled, and Corvus laughed.

Their own army had begun to move now. On the left, Teresian was taking forward the veteran spears, four thousand men in eight ranks. Their line extended some half pasang, and they too began to sing the Paean as they advanced. Rictus watched their dressing with the close attention of a professional, and he had to grudgingly admit to himself that they were not half bad.

The conscript spears under Demetrius remained immobile, stubbornly refusing to move. Alarmed, Fornyx grabbed Corvus by the arm, his black beard bristling.

“Half your spearline is still asleep, Corvus.”

“No. This has all been set in train by my hand, Fornyx. Be patient. Enjoy the view. When was the last time you were able to stand and watch history being made?”

It was quite a sight, indeed. Thirty thousand men were on the move now across the plain in various formations. To the south, Druze’s Igranians were pulling back, and the League’s reinforced right wing was making good time, though their ranks were not all they might be; the soft ground was scrambling them. Teresian’s veterans were marching out to meet them, veering left as they advanced. An oblique. Only good, disciplined troops could accomplish such a manoeuvre.

Finally, Demetrius’s conscripts began to move. Their line was as untidy as that of the enemy, and there was a widening gap between them and Teresian. The two bodies of spearmen advanced separately on the enemy. In the centre there was nothing but a growing hole.

“Phobos,” Fornyx whispered.

Valerian joined them, out of breath. He hauled off his helm, his lopsided face burning with urgency. “Rictus – Corvus – for the love of God, look at the line! We’re broke in two before we even begin!”

Corvus held up his hand. “Do not concern yourself, centurion – get back to your men and stand-to. I shall be wanting you presently.”

His whole attention was fixed on the moving bodies of men out on the plain. There was none of his flashing levity now; he was as solemn as a statue.

But his eyes blazed, like a gambler watching the fall of the dice.

“Rictus!” Valerian protested.

“Do as he says,” Rictus said quietly. “Shields up, Valerian.”

The young man stamped off unhappily, but a few moments later the order rang out and the Dogsheads lifted their shields onto their shoulders, donned their helms, and worked their spears side to side to loosen the sauroters in the sucking ground. Rictus’s heart began to quicken in his chest, pushing against the confines of Antimone’s Gift. He and Fornyx stood silent, watching as Corvus sent couriers out to right and left, young men on tall horses beating the animals into gallops that sent clods of muck flying through the air like birds.

“Rictus,” Corvus said, turning back to the mercenaries. “What is it the Dogsheads can do that citizen soldiers cannot?”

“We can die needlessly, that’s for damned sure,” Fornyx murmured.

“We can advance at the run,” Rictus said.

Corvus nodded. “I like to read. Have you heard of Mynon?”

“He was a general of the Ten Thousand. He made it home.”

“He wrote it all down, some fifteen years ago, before dying in some stupid little war up near Framnos. I read his story, Rictus; they had it in the library at Sinon, copied out fair by a good scribe. He talked of Kunaksa, how it was won, what you all did that day.”

The Paean rose and rose, tens of thousands of voices singing it now all across the plain. Druze was taking his men in again, harassing the enemy’s southern flank once more, and Teresian’s spears were going in alongside him. The enemy line was skewed and slanted to meet this threat.

A gasping courier reined in before them.

“Ardashir is ready, Corvus.”

Corvus cocked his head to one side, like a crow eyeing a corpse.

“Tell him to go.”

The courier galloped off like a man possessed, a youngster bursting with the enthusiasm of his age.

“At Kunaksa, the Kefren had thousands of archers, who should by rights have shot the Ten Thousand to pieces before they closed – am I right?”

“What is this, a fucking history lesson?” Fornyx demanded.

“We went in at a run. They hit us with the first volley, but by the time they’d readied a second we were already at their throats,” Rictus said. He had not been a spearman that day, but he remembered watching, seeing the morai go in.

“Citizen soldiers cannot advance at the run, or they lose their formation,” Corvus said, and he shrugged.

“Now watch.”

There was a long line of movement out to their right, in the ranks of the dismounted Companions. Ardashir led a solid mass of his command forward, following in the wake of Demetrius’s slowly advancing conscripts. There was something odd about them, Rictus noted.

“Kufr,” Fornyx said. “He’s taking in all the Kufr. Corvus, this won’t -”

“Shut up,” Corvus said.

Some sixteen hundred Kufr, tall Kefren of the Asurian race, who had, like all their fellows, been brought up to do three things. They had been taught how to ride a horse, how to tell the truth… and how to shoot a bow.

They cast aside their brightly coloured cloaks, left them lying on the mud, and from their backs they pulled the short recurved composite bows of Asuria. They had quiver-fulls of arrows at their hips, and at a shouted command from Ardashir they nocked these to their bowstrings.

Ardashir raised his scimitar, a painfully bright flash of steel. He held it upright one moment, watching the battlefield to come, the advancing League spearmen on the plain before him. They were perhaps four hundred paces away.

In front of him, Demetrius’s gruff voice rang out, and the conscripts halted.

A shouted command in Asurian, the tongue of the Empire, and following it a heartbeat later came the sweeping whistle of the arrows, some one and a half thousand of them arcing up in the air over Teresian’s spears, to come down like a black hail on the advancing enemy.

That is the sound, Rictus thought. That is what I heard that day.

A staccato hammering as the broadheads struck bronze, the individual impacts merging to form a hellish, explosive din of metal on metal.

Scores of men went down. The line of advancing shields buckled, faltered, the ranks merging, breaking, gaps appearing up and down, men tripping over bodies, men screaming, cursing, shouting orders.

And moments later the second volley hit them.

It was like watching a vast animal staggered by the wind. Some men were still advancing, others had halted and were trying to lift the heavy shields up to counter this unlooked-for hail of death. Others were standing in place with the black shafts buried in their limbs, tugging on them, looking to left and right, shouting in fear and fury. Centurions were seizing the irresolute, thumping helmed heads with their fists, moving forward out of the mass of stalled spearmen, urging them on.