Paul Kearney - Corvus

A third volley.

The ground was thick with the dead and the wounded. These soldiers were small farmers, tradesmen, family men. There were fathers and sons on the field, brothers, uncles. Some of the untouched spearmen were dropping their arms to help relatives, neighbours. Hundreds fell back, but a core came on regardless of casualties. They were Macht, after all.

Corvus was watching it all with a kind of grim satisfaction, but at least he did not seem to relish the developing massacre. If he had – if he had shown any kind of pleasure at the sight – Rictus would have killed him on the spot.

“And now, Demetrius,” Corvus said quietly.

Rictus had lost count of the volleys, but the others had not. The conscript spears began advancing again, five thousand of them moving to meet what had been a line of six thousand League troops. The odds were evened out now, but more than that, the League forces were little more than a mob, a snarled-up confusion of armed men struggling in a mire which their own feet were deepening with every minute.

“That should do it on our right,” Corvus said. He turned to look south.

Teresian was about to make contact with the enemy right, and Druze was supporting him, worrying at the end of the enemy line, his cloud of skirmishers partially enveloping it. He was working round the back of the League army while they advanced steadily to meet the spearmen to their front.

Even as they watched, they heard the roar and crash as the two bodies of heavy spears met, bronze smashing against bronze, spearheads seeking unprotected flesh. Two bulls meeting head on -Rictus could feel the ground quiver under his own feet at the clash of armour.

As soon as the enemy was committed to the attack, Druze led his men north behind the line. The Igranians split in two. Half pitched into the rear of the enemy phalanx that was now irretrievably entangled with Teresian’s veterans. The other half – almost fifteen hundred men – kept going north, parallel to the League battle-line – towards the rear of the enemy centre.

That centre was now almost upon them. These were the best of the League troops, the levies from Machran under Kassander. Seven thousand men in good order, they had paused as Corvus launched his army on the wings, seemingly unable to believe that there was nothing facing them but the empty plain. Now they were advancing again. They could pitch in to either one of the two separate battles that were now raging to north and south.

Corvus turned to Rictus. “I have a job for you, brother, you and your Dogsheads.” He pointed at the long line of shields bearing the machios sigil.

“I want you to take your Dogsheads and hit those fellows as hard as you can.”

“You’re not serious,” Fornyx breathed.

“You have only to halt them in their tracks, hold them a little while, bloody their noses a little. You have to buy me time.” He gestured to the north and south. “We will beat them on the flanks, and then come and meet you in the centre. And Druze is already in the rear of the Machran morai – as soon as he sees you going forward, he will attack. And Ardashir will support you also.”

“I’m like to lose half my men,” Rictus said, staring Corvus in the face.

“Fight smart, Rictus – don’t get enveloped. All you have to do is poke them in the eye.”

The thunder of the battle rose and rose. The critical point of it was approaching – Rictus could feel it, like he could feel the loom of winter in his ageing bones. Was Corvus trying to have him killed? He did not believe it. No – he was simply moving the knucklebones on the board, using what he had. Sentiment did not even, enter into it.

Rictus pulled on his crested helm, reducing his world to a slot of light.

“Very well,” he said.

“One more thing,” Corvus added, tossing up his hand as though it were an afterthought.

“What?”

“I’ll be going in with you.”

For Karnos the world had become a strange and fearsome place. He was the fifth man in an eight-deep file, one cog in the great machine that was the army of Machran, which in turn was but part of the forces assembled here today. He alternated between an inexplicable exhilaration and bowel-draining apprehension.

This, the greatest clash of armies in a generation, was his first battle.

In earlier years he had drilled on the fields below the Mithos River along with the other men of his class, but since his elevation to the Kerusia he had not so much as lifted a spear. He was Speaker of Machran, as high as one could be in the ruling hierarchy of the city, but on the battlefield he was the same rank as all the other sweating men in the spear-files. Here, Katullos the Cursebearer commanded a mora – Kassander, the entire levy – but he, Karnos, commanded only himself. He found it unbelievable now that he had overlooked something so basic -incredible that he was included in this anonymous horde like every other citizen.

Gestrakos and Ondimion, who had set the world alight with their intellect and their art, had fought as humble foot-soldiers also, so he was in good company. But that did not ease the weight of his armour, the burden of the bronze-faced shield and the dozen aches and scratches that his barely-worn cuirass inflicted on his torso.

He was fat, unfit, and desperately aware of his own martial ignorance. His only consolation in all of this was that he was fifth man from the front. No-one had ever told him that the men in the middle of the files took the heaviest casualties, which was why the most inexperienced were placed there, sandwiched between the veteran file leaders and closers.

And around him was the army, these myriads which surely no -

“Advance! On me – one, two – left!”

Kassander’s voice, somewhere in front and to his right. He was only a few paces away, but packed in the ranks of the phalanx he might as well have been on the far side of the world.

The man behind Karnos cursed him. “Get in step, you fat fuck. And watch that sauroter; you poke me with it one more time and I swear I’ll break it off and jam it up your arse.”

Laughter rattled along the files. “Ostros, don’t you know who you’re talking to?”

“That’s the Speaker, you stupid fuck!”

“Karnos – tell us – how many slave-girls do you have a night, eh?”

“You horny old bastard – I hear tell you’ve nothing but naked cunny to wait on you night and day!”

Breathing heavily, Karnos found the air to shout, “they smell better than you rotten bastards, that’s for damned sure.”

“I’ll take a bath, Karnos, and then you can suck my cock.”

The anonymity of the crowd, the faceless helmeted heads; here was the citizenship of Machran, where all men were equal under bronze. It made Karnos remember a time when he had been nothing more than a quick-thinking slave dealer with a big mouth and a memory for faces. For a few minutes, tossing the filth and the insults back and forth, he was almost enjoying himself.

A great sound erupted from the front ranks, like a massive groan. The men in the rear began shouting forward. “What the fuck’s going on – you lads -what do you see?”

“They have archers,” someone yelled back. “The Afteni and Arkadians are getting hammered.”

“Phobos! They’re really getting fucked! Where the hell are the Arienans? Bastards should be on our right.”

They were still advancing, but slowly now, stop and start. Finally the halt was called. Karnos could see nothing but the men in front and to either side – he could not so much as turn around, and the close-fitting helm filled his head with a sound like the rush of the sea. As he stood, he worked his feet in the mud, feeling himself sinking into it. His feet were numb with cold, but despite that the chiton he wore under his cuirass was soaked with sweat, and his throat was parched – and the battle had not yet begun.