Paul Kearney - The ten thousand

“We’re running south,” Rictus said. “See the sun setting on our right? The Harukush are behind our heads, and before us-”

“Aye-what’s that out before us, I wonder?” Gasca said. He had a light in his eye which had not been there since they had left Machran, and Rictus was glad to see it.

“The Sea,” Rictus told him. “This is the Tanean we’re floating upon. In the legends, it is said that it was created by Antimone’s salt tears, as she wept to be exiled from heaven. And then the smith-god Gaenion, in pity, reared up the land of Artaka on its far shores and filled it full of spices and fragrances and flowers to comfort her.”

“That’s where we’re going, it seems,” Gasca said. He grinned crookedly. “This land of spices and flowers you speak of-if it’s so damn nice then why did God let the Kufr have it and stick us with the black mountains of the Kush?”

“I think God has other plans for the Macht,” Rictus said.

“I think God has it in for us,” Gasca told him. “He gave us the shithole of the world to fight over, by all accounts, and the best bits He saved up for the damned Kufr. Perhaps our legends have it all wrong and we’re the pimple on this world’s arse, stuck out in the snow-covered rocks, whilst the rest of the crowd have it easy with all the flowers and the spices and such. Ever think of that, philosopher?”

Rictus smiled, but said nothing. He leaned on the wooden bulwark at the bow and watched the bowsprit as it reared up and down, like a willing horse at the canter. He watched the waves come rolling in to be smashed aside by the ship’s stem, and savoured the sight, the smell, the clean salt water on his skin. There was a presentiment upon him, a knowledge that he must remember this time on the wide waters of the world. A gift of the goddess perhaps. Always, her gifts were double-edged. This one gave him a keen delight in the living movement of the ship, and the massive turning of the waters below it. He knew now to make a memory of this, for when it was gone, he would not see it again.

At his throat, he fingered the coral pendant he had taken off Zori’s corpse. It had come from here, from the depths of the sea. In Machran it would have bought him a week’s worth of whores, or a good knife, but he had held onto it. It was the only thing he had left of that quiet glen where his father had brought him up to be a man.

The wind stayed fair for the south, and before it the fleet coursed along at the clip of a trotting horse. Aboard all the ships, the mariners repaired the storm-damage with the phlegm of those accustomed to the vagaries of the sea, and the mercenaries washed their filthy scarlet chitons in salt water so that they chafed at thigh and neck and bicep.

In the evening, for the first time, the captains allowed fires to be lit in the sand-filled hearths amidships. Over them the scattered companies of the Macht set the rust-streaked centoi of the communal messes, and they threw into these whatever they could hunt up from the holds of their ships. The centons gathered about each fire-frapped cauldron as darkness drew in on the face of the waters, and the sailors looked on from their stations in the bow and around the steering-oars. They had eaten their fill of biscuit and cold salt pork earlier in the day and now watched with some interest as their red-clad passengers went through the ritual of the evening meal as thought they were all safe and sound on land. Myrtaios had raised some concern at all the bodies on deck, protesting that it made the vessel top-heavy, but Pasion had overridden him. It was a comfort to those who found the face of the sea a dangerous, inimical place, and besides, the men were as gaunt as beggars after puking their guts up for the better part of a week.

There were two centons on Pasion’s ship: Jason of Ferai’s Dogsheads, and Mynon’s Blackbirds. The raised platform at the rear of the vessel- they called it a steerdeck, the mariners, every object on board, it seemed, had a name in a language of their own-was a fine place to lean and look down on the two hundred or so men below who crammed the vessel amidships with the centos in their own midst, a bubbling, steaming darkness that had fire licking about it.

The cooks had finished ladling out the inevitable boiled stew, and the men had eaten at least half of it. Mynon and Jason joined Pasion on the steerdeck and surveyed the packed space below.

“Lean and hungry,” Mynon said.

“Better that than fat and bored,” Pasion retorted.

Jason smiled. It was an old exchange, a ritual almost. “Tell me,” he said. “How many have we lost, Pasion?”

The cursebearer frowned. “Hard to tell in all truth, Jason. Even the sailors can’t be sure.”

“Pasion-”

“All right. As of now, it looks as though at least a dozen ships went down in the storm.”

“Goddess,” Mynon swore, genuinely shocked. “Men or mules?”

“The big freighters, for the most part-in a bad sea, Myrtaios tells me, the side-hatches can be smashed open. But we figure at least three of the troop-carriers.”

“Six centons,” Jason said tonelessly. “The bulk of six hundred men. Fuck.”

“Why this voyage?” Mynon demanded. “We could have made the crossing at Sinon and barely had time to puke over the side. Instead we’re here ploughing along the sea-lanes of the world, and we’re hundreds of men the poorer for it.”

“Tanis is the only port where we can get ashore in strength without fighting a war to do it. You’ve seen ship-borne assaults before, Mynon; men floundering ashore, drowning in their armour, picked off in the shallows. Believe me, Phiron knows what he is doing. Besides-” Here Pasion paused, as if he had been about to say too much. At last he went on. “If we make landfall in Artaka, then our journey will be shortened somewhat, and we’ll avoid the Korash Mountains, a hard bitch to get through by all accounts.”

“The Korash Mountains? Where in the hell of the world is Phiron taking us?” Mynon demanded, dark monobrow thunderous above his black-beaded eyes. “I thought he was on another ship. Is he with the fleet at all?”

“He went on ahead,” Pasion said hoarsely. “There were problems in Sinon. He was worrying about our logistics, and so went on ahead in a fast galley. He’ll be at Tanis waiting for us.”

Jason shook his head. “Pasion, we’re dancing in the dark here. Enough of the secrets. We’re out at sea with nowhere to desert to, so be clear with us now. This is not a bundle of centons any more. When we get off these bastard ships, we’ll be all in it together, with just the Kufr to rub up against. This is us, here. This is all we have.”

Pasion bent his head. Below, in the waist of the ship, the men had begun to sing. Some old song of the mountains. His tongue probed the aching, rotten teeth that had kept him up at nights more times than he cared to remember. He thought of them as his conscience, or at least some joke of Antimone’s, set in his skull to keep him from sleeping sound with so much on his mind.

“I had only the one despatch from Phiron,” he said at last. What was the name of that song? Even he, a lowlander, knew the tune. “He had met with our principal at last. He thought the arrangements for our reception in Tanis were not all they might have been, hence his early departure from Sinon. That’s all I know, brothers.”

“No,” Jason said. “There’s more. We’re to be fighting in the Empire, that much has been plain-but who is this principal of yours? What’s the mission, Pasion? We’ve come far enough to know.”

Pasion told them.

Land came into sight three days later. So said the sailors at the mastheads. For the men on deck there was the merest hint of a darker line on the hem of the sky, and with it, some intensification of the smells on the air. They had not known that land could be smelled as though it were a meal preparing, or a fart let go in a corner. They smelled land, and packed the decks of the fleet as though by their presence there they could make it approach the more quickly. When it did, they found it to be a mustard-pale shore clinging to the hem of the world, a line of sand, it appeared. For men bred to mountains, it seemed a strange and unseemly thing that a whole new world could be opening up on the horizon before them and yet seem as flat as a man’s hand for as far as the eye could see. Flat and brown, with no hint of spice or flower to redeem it.