Paul Kearney - The ten thousand

“If the line breaks,” Jason went on, “then we reform it. We plug the holes, and we stand on these stones and fight until the day is won, or we are all dead. There is nowhere to run to. Any questions?”

“Who looks after the baggage?” Rictus asked.

“I’ve culled two centons from the front-line morai, lightly wounded, footsore, and chronic shifters. They’ll stay with the wagons.”

“And the gold,” big Gominos said, grinning.

They stood looking at one another, until Aristos said, roughly; “Let’s get the damn thing done then,” and the group of men broke up. Jason remained on the hilltop as they walked down the slope to their waiting morai. Even now, they separated into two distinct groups which seemed to take form around Aristos and Rictus. Once the spearheads were levelled, he prayed they would come together.

Mid-morning brought the army in sight of the hills before Irunshahr. On the ridge-line before the city Vorus finally found his quarry standing at bay, a line of heavy infantry over a pasang long, their ranks undulating about every outcrop of weather-beaten stone to the south of the Imperial Road. Here, then, was where it would end.

He reined in, the placid mare chewing at the bit under him, throwing up her head as if she, too, could smell what was on the wind. He turned to Proxis. “We have them.”

“So we have,” Proxis said. He had been drinking, but his eyes were clear. “My legions are in the van-we’ll take up the left, and then the rest can file in to our right.”

“Very well. I’ll send the cavalry out that way, and see if we can feel round their flank. The gods go with you, Proxis.” Vorus extended his hand.

The Juthan leaned over in the saddle and took it in the warrior-grip, fingers curled round Vorus’s wrist. “May they watch over us both,” he said.

Noon came and went. Up on the hillside the lines of Macht infantry relaxed, eating their midday meal in shifts, barley bannock and cheese and the last of the wine. Below them the Kufr marched and counter-marched, their officers chivvying the tired troops along, the regiments fed into the line as they came up the Imperial Road. When at last they were in place it was mid-afternoon, and for a while the two armies stared at one another as in between them the bees clustered about the heather and the scrub juniper, and skylarks sang above their heads, heedless of anything but the warmth of the sun and the clear infinity of blue sky about them.

It reminded Vorus of his youth, late spring in the hills about Machran when at long last the snows eased their grip on the northern world. It had been a long time since he had breathed upland air and smelled gorse-blossom on the breeze. As he sat his horse to the rear of the Kufr centre, he felt a moment of pure clarity, a sense of exactly how the world was turning under him. At that moment he wanted to dismiss these soldiers of his to their homes and send word to the Macht that they might march away in peace. What was it, this notion of duty, of loyalty, of Empire, that kept them standing here in their tens of thousands, that would see this lovely summer’s day soon broken up into a wilderness of bloody slaughter? What would it gain the world, the mountains, the very stones under their feet, to have these thousands shed their blood upon them?

In the next moment he had the answer. Twenty years of duty, of loyalty, of service. Those were worth something. If a man could not keep hold of those qualities, keep them in sight through all the murderous absurdities of his condition, then he was not much of a man at all.

Vorus turned to the banner-bearer beside him, a tall Kefre with skin of gold. “Signal the advance,” he said.

In the Macht baggage camp the wagons were loaded and waiting, and the patient oxen stood flicking their ears at the flies. The Juthan slaves were strapping up the last packs of the mule-train watched by a small skeleton guard of Macht, older men, wounded men, and those for whom the flux had become a debilitating condition which had sucked the flesh off their bones. Tiryn sat atop her wagon and peered east, to where the land rose and the momentary glitter of the Macht spearheads could be seen at the top of the ridge-line. Kunaksa in reverse, she thought. Today, we have the high ground.

And she caught herself, shocked, as she realised who we had become in her mind.

Jason had given her a knife, a long, wicked iron blade with a leather-wrapped handle. It felt huge and unwieldy in her fingers, and she disliked it for the smell of someone else’s sweat in the leather, the nicks on the blade in which old blood had collected, so wedded to the metal that the iron would have to melt before it was wholly gone. When would this thing start? When would it-

Now-there it was. The roar of many voices from the far side of the hills. Something, at least, had begun. She fingered the edge of the knife. Whatever else happened today, she promised herself, she would be ready for it. She would bury this iron in her own heart before she was tied to another wagon-wheel.

Restless, like a horse that smells fire, Rictus strode up and down the loose-ordered ranks of his mora. The men were shuffling from foot to foot, blowing their noses, twisting the shafts of their javelins in their palms. To stand wholly still was impossible it seemed, at least, if one were not wearing the panoply of a spearman. The men tossed skins of water to and fro, more for something to do than because they were thirsty. There was little talk. When Rictus paused in his pacing, he could hear the men breathing, those hundreds of lungs speeding up their work as the cold white loom of the battle rose through the men’s blood. At times like this a man’s heart would beat and beat until it seemed almost to be a shadow thudding in the corner of his eyes.

To the left of Rictus’s men, a mora of heavy spearmen stood like graven images, helms on, shields resting on the ground before them, propped against their knees. To their front, Aristos was striding up and down in much the same way as Rictus. He had taken off his helm, the better to listen to that mighty surf of sound on the other side of the hill. Even through it, the bees were loud in their endless work among the stones, a peaceful industry which knew nothing of the murderous chaos to come. It was a day to take apples and cheese and wine and a sweetheart, and find a sun-warmed hollow in the shelter of the stones, there to eat and drink and make love and stare up at the hovering skylarks above, and count the passing clouds.

Phobos, Rictus thought, I hate this.

Up near the western crest of the hill, Gasca stood third in the file amid thousands of others. He tilted his head to left and to right, like someone striving to see a cockfight over the shoulders of a crowd. There was stone under his feet, something good and solid to bear him at last. He barely felt the weight of his panoply. This beats slogging up a muddy hill, he thought. This time, let them come up here and try and push us off these stones.

“They’re on their way, brothers,” the file-leader, big Gratus said. “Kufr to our front, spindly bastards a girl could kick over. Juthan on the right, a big damn crowd of them, and out on the left I see that bastard cavalry of theirs.”

“Fuck, I hate cavalry,” someone said.

“They won’t come up here-too many stones for them to stub their toes on. I hope Aristos and his lot are ready to take on horses, because you mark my words, they’re heading out round the flank for the baggage.”

“How many of this crowd are there, Gratus?” someone back in the file asked.

“Maybe five times what we have here. Enough to go around, at all events. All right, brothers, here comes Jason. Shields up as he passes.”