Paul Kearney - The ten thousand

The Great Continent. So it had been known, time out of mind. The Macht had never forgotten their attempt to conquer it any less than the Kufr had. As the Macht fleet came in close to the land, sails reefed and sweeps striking out on the smaller ships, so they found that the very colour of the water under them had changed, becoming brown as an old man’s piss. Birds began to circle the fleet and cluster about the tallest of the yards, shitting white drops on all those below. The Macht mercenaries hunted out their armour and weaponry, and burnished the salt-rust off it, determined to present a fearsome, gleaming front upon landing. And Myrtaios took on board a Kufr pilot to steer the ships of the fleet through the sandbanks and eddying channels of the mighty Artan River, upon whose delta Tanis stood, one of the great and ancient cities of the world. This Kufr stood on the quarterdeck between the twin steering-oars and barked orders in good Machtic to left and right, whilst behind him the better part of a hundred ships followed meekly in line, afraid of grounding their bottoms on the pale sand and yellow rocks of Artaka. Even Jason, standing at the break of the quarterdeck with his black cuirass on his back and iron helm hanging like a pot at his hip, felt the history behind the prosaic moment. He had seen Kufr before, a few, but then he was accounted an educated man. For most of the centons the shape standing immensely, unfeasibly tall at the stern was like some picture brought bright and colourful out of myth. They gaped at it; the golden skin, the weird eyes, the face with human features that were in no way human. And the thing did not even sweat under their regard.

“Perhaps they don’t sweat,” Mynon said, looking on with scarcely more discretion than the newest fish in his centon.

“Ah, don’t tell me you’ve not seen one before.”

“Upon my heart, Jason, I have not. We’re not all well-travelled scroll-scratchers like you.”

And so Tanis opened out before them. The pilot brought them through a broad estuary where the sea turned brown, and on either side the banks began to encroach on the water, narrowing pasang by pasang. Ahead, a tall gleam of white appeared on the brim of the world, and as the day wore on-the long, wearisome day for those who had donned full panoply-so this white grew and lengthened and in some places soared, until there was presented to the men of the ships a sight they had not quite bargained on. They had seen Machran, and thus flattered themselves that they knew what a great city looked like, but what bulked taller on their horizon moment by moment was something else. It was like comparing the mud-forts of children to the project of an engineer.

Tanis. They built with limestone here, a white stone which time pocked and darkened. But still, the passage of the years could not dim the illusion. This was a white city, a gleaming jewel. It reared out of the dun delta which surrounded it. In its midst two dozen towers, and fifty towers within towers, and interlaced battlements, all vast in conception, unreal to see, reared up and up into the clear blue sky, a dream of architects. A marvel. The farther the fleet slipped up the delta of the river, so the higher the buildings became. Men on the ships craned their necks, striving to see the summits of towers which were still pasangs away.

“Our Mother’s God,” Mynon said. His little rat-face was ill-suited to awe, but it was filled to the brim now. His face screwed up, and the awe moved on into baffled resentment. He stared up at the white towers of Tanis like a man whose wife has just betrayed him. “Pasion-I, I-”

“I know,” Pasion said.

“Quite a little mission,” Jason said. And even he, the urbane man of letters, had trouble keeping his teeth together. “Pasion-”

“I know,” Pasion said. His face was as set as some statue hewn from stone. “Ready your cantons to disembark. Leave nothing behind. We will assemble on the quays in full wargear. If we must fight our way off the ships, then so be it. Brothers, see to your men.”

Up the backstays of the leading ship went pennants of coloured linen. The following vessels of the fleet modified their courses, taking in sail and coming forward up the channel, line upon line of them. On every deck the Macht stood in assembled companies with their weapons to hand. And still the shore glided closer and the immense towering heights of Tanis loomed.

The messenger flung himself down at the lip of the dais. Prostrate, he babbled, “Great One, they have arrived. The ships are sailing into the harbours now, in lines as endless as the sea. Hundreds, Great One, and on the decks of every one the warriors of the Macht stand in armour in their thousands, their spearheads bright as stars. It is a sight glorious and fearsome, like some picture of legend-”

“Yes, yes,” Arkamenes said. “Get out. I have eyes in my head.”

He stood up, swaying slightly as he took the weight of the Royal Robes. Amasis drew near a step and raised the space where an eyebrow should have been. “Shall I-”

“God, no. Thank you, Amasis. A king must needs have strong thighs it seems.”

“Those robes would pay for a second army by themselves,” Amasis murmured. Turning to look down the length of the audience chamber, he said, “Do you think we put on a brave enough show?”

There were fully two thousand people in the hall, and the heat was stifling despite the best efforts of the fanbearers posted in lines along the galleries above.

“Where is Gushrun?”

“He stepped out. Even the Governor of Artaka has to piss now and then, it seems.”

Arkamenes smiled. As he had risen from the throne, so the occupants of the hall had bowed themselves before him, and all talk had stilled. There was a clear way down the middle of that vast, echoing chamber, and posted along both sides of it, in a fence of flesh, were two hundred of the highest-caste Kefren of the Bodyguard, the Honai. Armoured in corselets of iron scales, they had been chosen for their height, their strength, their ferocity. The tall, plumed helms they wore made them stand out head and shoulders above anyone else in the crowd-in any crowd.

Arkamenes went to the window at the rear of his throne. It was two spear-lengths in height, and had been glazed with true glass, every finger’s length of it. Through the blurred brightness, he could look down on the wide triple harbours of Tanis below. He could see the fleet make landfall, and watch the beetling crowds on the wharves, kept back by more of his own spearmen so that the fearsome Macht might once more walk the earth of the Great Continent.

“Have his officers brought to me at once,” he told Amasis. “Let them come here on foot, armed or unarmed as they choose. But make haste. This crowd will start fainting anytime soon. And Amasis?”

“Yes, lord?”

“Find out where Phiron is.”

The heat of the land was something they had not expected, not in winter. As they followed the men in front in endless file down the gangways, Rictus and Gasca pursed their lips and looked at one another in silent surmise. This was winter? They felt as though they had come to some place beyond the natural run of the seasons. And as Gasca stood on the quay with his armour on his back, the helm close upon the bones of his face and his spear becoming slick in his grip, he wondered if Rictus might not have some truth in his tales. For this heat could not be right, not at this time of the year. Perhaps there were flowers here indeed, and spices too, whatever they might be.

The centurions went bare-headed, the better to shout and be recognised by those they were shouting at. As ship after ship came in, and more and more men filed off them to stand in rigid rows upon the quays, so the crowds who had gathered to watch grew noisier and more packed. Lines of Kufr spearmen kept them back from the ranks of the Macht, but under their tall helms their eyes were as wide as those of the straining hordes behind them.