Paul Kearney - The ten thousand

They had stacked the crates too high. One was teetering over now, like to fall on the bent figure of a Juthan below it. Always fast on his feet, Rictus dashed to the creature’s side with a shout and shoved it out of the way. He reached up at the falling crate and the wood of it struck him hard in the breastbone. He knew in that moment that it was too heavy for him.

The Juthan he had knocked aside rounded upon him, eyes glaring, fists clenched. Then it saw what he was doing. The Juthan ducked in under Rictus’s arms and set its own strength to work. Between them, they edged the crate to one side. It missed them both, falling to the cobbles with a crash. It broke open to reveal bundled sheaves of aichmes, iron and bronze spearheads wrapped in straw.

Rictus straightened, staring at the Juthan and rubbing his bruised ribs. He smiled.

The yellow eyes regarded him carefully. The thing shrugged, then went back to work. But after that, when a heavy piece of cargo was lowered his way, Rictus often found this Juthan close by, and they would handle it together.

Several hours of staring seemed to sate the curiosity of the dockyard crowds. Before the middle of the night, while the work went on unabated at the quays, they dispersed, and the Kefren spearmen who had been set there to control them relaxed their guard, setting their shields on the ground and doffing their helms to reveal the strange, long-boned faces of their kind. Tiryn stepped through their scattered line with her attendants ten paces behind, her bodyguard bright-eyed and watchful, the maidservant veiled and impassive as only a Juthan could be. There were untold pasangs of docks and wharves down here at the waterfront, and almost every one it seemed had been given over to the Macht ships and the thousands of their occupants and crews who had not marched up the hill to the Aadan. How many of them have sailed here, really? Tiryn wondered.

She approached the nearest ship and the hill of casks, crates, and sacks that cluttered the dock-side before it. The Juthan were here, of course, as they were anywhere in the Empire where heavy work needed to be done. They were humming their deep songs as gangs of them hauled on the tackles of the dockyard cranes. How odd, how disconcerting to see them working side by side with these strangers. The Macht labouring here wore no armour, of course. They were all sizes and all ages. Greybeards with nut-brown skin and corded forearms worked side by side with slim-shouldered youngsters. Was it true, as Amasis had told her, that the Macht had no castes?

There-look at that. One of the younger Macht, tall for their kind, and with pale-coloured hair, was drinking from a waterskin. When he had finished he offered it to the squat figure of a Juthan beside him. And the Juthan took it, squirting liquid into the red gape of its maw. Tiryn stepped forward, fascinated. Her bodyguard, a tall Kefren warrior long past his youth, appeared at her side. “Lady, is this fitting?” he murmured.

“Leave me be, Hurth.” She walked forward, long skirts trailing and grimed from the passage of the streets. The Macht and the Juthan stopped to watch her.

“How can you share this thing’s water?” she asked the Juthan in the common Asurian of the streets. “It is an animal. Can you not smell it?”

The Juthan bowed low, having noted the jewellery she bore, the bodyguard standing hand on sword behind her.

“Mistress, I was thirsty.”

Tiryn found herself catching the eyes of the Macht who was watching this exchange with wariness and curiosity. In the light of the dock-side cressets it was possible to see how gaunt it was, dressed in not much more than rags, and scarred about the mouth. A slave, then. But the eyes were undaunted. There was humour in them. The thing said something, and then had the effrontery to hold its waterskin out to her.

Hurth stepped forward and slapped the skin our of the Macht’s hand, snarling. All about them work on the dockyard stopped. Macht and Juthan all paused to view the little incident. Others of the Macht came crowding forward, and some bore knives. Others were untangling slings from their belts, eyes hot and bright. A splash of shouting in their language, and in the middle the Juthan standing like stone, as if waiting.

“That’s enough, Hurth. Leave him. He-he meant no harm, I think.”

Hurth drew his sword and backed away. “Insolence,” he said. “But there are too many of them. We should leave, lady.”

They retreated from the wharf, pursued by catcalls and whistles. A half-cobble soared through the air to land at their feet. Tiryn jumped, and the Macht about the ships laughed. All save the one with the waterskin. He bent to retrieve it, and watched their hasty departure with thoughtful eyes.

Twelve men stood on a bare hill, every one in black armour with a red chiton underneath. Above them, the sky was blinding blue, and around them a host of untold thousands went about its business, covering the land about like some windswept plague of legend. Off to the west, the glitter of a great river could be made out. There the land was green and there were trees worthy of the name, but here the dust tumbled in ochre clouds before the wind, and only thorn and greasewood and creosote shrubs fought their way out of the cracked dirt.

“From Tanis to Geminestra is four hundred pasangs, give or take,” Phiron said. He knelt beside the map, scanning the calfskin as a man might search a foreign horizon. In his hand a length of withered stick served as a pointer. “It’s desert, scrub land-rather like the plains about Gast back home.”

“Only a little warmer,” Jason said, and there was a rattle of laughter about the map-table. Phiron waved the flies from before his face. There was a drop of sweat hanging from his nose, more glistening along his cheekbones.

“Fuck this heat,” someone murmured venomously.

“I second that. We will march at night. I have already discussed this with our principal. We will lie up in the heat of the day. By all accounts, the Gadinai Desert is not to be trifled with.”

“Four hundred pasangs,” Orsos the Bull said. “Ten days’ march, if all goes well.” He had shaved his head, and the scalp was burnt pink. His face shone as if oiled.

“Fifteen,” Phiron corrected. When the centurions stared at him he raised both hands palm upwards, like a stallkeeper accepting a bad bargain. “The Kufr cannot march as fast as we can, it seems.”

“You march slower, you eat and drink more,” Jason said. “This is their country; what makes them so bad at walking across it?”

“They are not us,” Phiron said simply.

He looked up from the map, eyes screwed narrow against the glare. One hand eased the rub of his cuirass against his collarbone. “We will start out tonight. Pasion, you have the manifest. We will be in the middle of the column-”

“Eating his Royal Highness’s dust,” Orsos growled.

“Indeed. But the main part of the Kufr forces will be in our rear. We keep our own baggage train with us, in our midst. Brothers, whether we are part of this Kufr host or not, I intend to proceed as if were on our own. Skirmishers out to the flanks, heavy infantry in hollow square. Baggage animals in the centre.”

“We need to sweat,” Mynon said, blackbird eyes darting over the map. “The men are out of shape after the voyage, and they need to get the last of our employer’s wine out of their guts.”

“Agreed,” Phiron said “Pasion? You are close-mouthed this morning.”

“You keep your mouth shut and less flies get in it,” Pasion retorted. He was rubbing the side of his jaw, like a man with toothache. “I was just thinking. So, we’ve divided the army into ten battalions, morai, with ten generals to command them; but we’ve only enough spearmen for nine. We should perhaps think of making up those numbers out of the skirmishers.”