Paul Kearney - The ten thousand

“And I say you shut your mouth, or I will demote you.”

“You can’t do that!” Aristos said, wide-eyed.

“I can. The generals were not voted in by the men. I simply gathered up the Second in every mora when we were down on our tits at Kunaksa. At the proper time, the men should have a say in their generals, but now is not that time. Do you agree?”

After a long moment, Aristos nodded.

“Then my orders are still to be obeyed. There will be no more sacking of Kufr cities. That is to be made clear all the way down the line. We’re in a hole as it is, without digging it any deeper.

Make it clear. I will begin instituting field punishments for any man who thinks otherwise.” He paused, looking them up and down, remembering Phiron and Pasion, Orsos and Castus, and the other dead men who had once stood where these striplings stood now. He felt old, he felt as though they were all diminished in some way. That sense of brotherhood that had taken them so far was gone now. He wondered if even Phiron could have brought it back after this.

“Brothers,” he said, “we are Macht. Remember that.”

Some of them returned his gaze. Old Mochran nodded, the memories in his eyes also. Young Phinero, who had loved his dead brother. Even Mynon had the grace to look somewhat ashamed. Rictus was lost in simmering rage, unreachable. Aristos and his supporters-the words meant almost nothing to them.

“Dismissed,” Jason said heavily. “Mynon and Rictus, stay behind if you please.”

He looked up at the stars-his stars. He smiled, remembering. They were half a pasang out of camp, the better to have their debate without the whole army hearing it. To the west, the Macht bivouacs were a square of campfires, a pasang to a side. And to the east, Ab-Mirza still burned on the horizon, behind them now. He had marched the army hard today, made them sweat out the wine they had looted from the city. Jason closed his eyes, remembering that awful moment when he had felt the army slip out of his control and become a mob. Aristos and his mora had poured through the gates without discipline or order or thought for anything except satisfying their basest desires. Buridan’s men, the best in the army, had come upon what they thought was a battle, and had joined in the slaughter.

And he, Jason, had sent them in there.

It was no battle. Aristos’s and Rictus’s troops had been killing Kufr women and children and old men at that point, spilling blood for the sake of it. By the time order had been restored the city was aflame, a burning charnel-house. Nothing for it then but to leave it burning, to walk away.

Jason did not know why it bothered him so. Rictus had seen Isca go up; no doubt his family had been slaughtered-his father, if tonight were anything to go by-so he had an excuse. But Jason had been at the death of a city before this-a Macht city, too. He could not fathom why this one bothered him so.

“Phobos,” he whispered, baffled and angry. Now at least the Kufr knew what it was like to have a Macht rape them. Another phenomenon for this changing world.

“It was my fault,” Rictus said. He was rubbing his eyes as though their brightness pained him. “They got away from me and wouldn’t come back, except for a few. It was my mora started it. Aristos is right. I am not fit to command.”

“You lead too near the front,” Jason told him brusquely. “You must stand back a little and grip the centons behind the assault. They are the key. You are a general, Rictus, and you were the first man through the gate. This is not a story out of legend we are making here. A general must hang back and consider the larger play of things. Do you understand?”

“I wish to be demoted.”

“Shut up. Go back to your mora and make them obey you. Get out of my sight.”

Rictus left them, trudging into the dark with the slow gait of a tired old man.

“That boy has strange ideas,” Mynon said. “Perhaps it is the Iscan in him.”

“He wants to think well of men, to believe they are better than they are,” Jason said. “His men love him for it; Buridan told me. When they let him down, he takes it bad. He’s young. He’s learning.”

“Nothing like learning the hard way,” Mynon said, yawning. “You’re wondering what’s left in the larder, I suppose.”

“Most of what was in Ab-Mirza got burned, which fucked the supply situation all to hell. What do we have, Mynon? Be nice.”

“Three days’ full rations. We go on half, stint the slaves, and we can make it a week. The place is picked clean for pasangs around, and from what I hear-”

“Our Macht friend has an army galloping up our arse. I know. He’s two days behind us now, and there’s cavalry with him. It’s eight hundred pasangs to the mountains. If we push it, we can do it in twenty to twenty-five days. In the mountains, we will turn and fight. Until then, we march as hard as we can.”

“Our bellies flapping.”

“It’s tongues I’m worried about now, as much as bellies. Rictus was right; we make a habit of cutting loose like we did yesterday, and we’ll be nothing more than rabble inside of a month. Those young pups would be happy that way, but it would mean the death of the army, pure and simple.”

“Some would say the best part of the army is dead already,” Mynon said, sombre for once.

“Antimone is still with us, Mynon, believe me. We are still-”

“Macht. I know. I was here earlier. What was it Orsos used to say? It was a quote, from Sarenias I think. ‘Brothers, let us go into the dark together, in the shadow of Antimone’s wings’.”

They stood, remembering, the fire cracking at their feet, beginning to sink now. Around them the teeming insect life of the lowlands chittered and clicked, filling the night with meaningless sound.

“We do not belong here,” Jason said softly.

“I know. I see the same stars overhead and wonder why they are not different. Even the water tastes strange to me here. I think sometimes, Jason, that the Kufr have more right to this world than we.”

Jason tried to laugh, but the humour died in his throat. “The water? Yesterday the gutters of Ab-Mirza were full of blood. It poured over the walls. How many thousands, Mynon? More than died at Kunaksa, I think. Whatever wrongs have been inflicted on us, we have repaid them many times over.”

Before dawn, the army was on the march again, the men sullen and subdued, like a drunk remembering the antics of the night before. Jason had the centurions go through the camp and have all the loot from Ab-Mirza flung in the embers of the campfires. Those Kufr women which had been brought along in capture yokes were freed and left by the wayside like naked, whey-faced ghosts. The men marched with empty bellies and sore heads; up and down the column the centurions bellowed at them to pick up the pace. When pack-animals failed, whole centons were detailed to bear their loads. Dozens of men were assigned to the heavier of the wagons and levered them through the muck of the Pleninash lowlands by main force, thrashing the exhausted mules and oxen that strained alongside them. Half the army, it seemed, laboured under a sense of disgrace. The other half simmered with resentment, like a man wrongfully accused. Up and down the trudging ranks men argued amongst themselves. Periodically some would fall out of the column to brawl in the mud of the wayside, until the centurions broke it up.

“I wish it all to the back of the fucking Veil, this fucking country,” Gratus said, slapping his neck. He peeled something black from his skin, regarded it with distaste, and wiped his bloody fingers in his hair. “I mean, we’re not into high summer yet, and this heat would make a fish sweat. How do they bear it?”