Paul Kearney - The ten thousand

Jason strode past the front of the phalanx, helm off, nodding to those file-leaders he knew best. As he passed, so the Macht reached down for their shields and slid their arms through the bronze bands in the centre, gripping the strap at the rim.

“Hold fast,” Gratus said. “Spears stand until we get the word.”

The Paean began, out on the right, and it swelled as the eight thousand men on the hill took it up centon by centon. The Kufr army began to march up the rocky slope towards them, the neat lines of spearmen splintering and reforming, rippling around the larger boulders. To their rear, the archers opened their ranks and began sticking arrows in the ground at their feet, the swifter to pluck them for their bows.

Down the Macht line the centurions bellowed out the order: “Level spears!” The first three ranks of the phalanx brought down their spearheads and gripped the weapons at shoulder-height. This time, Gasca was one of those who would be shearing the sheep from the start. His aichme thrust out just to the right of Gratus’s helm. Behind him, he could sense the men of the rear ranks bracing themselves, jamming their bare feet amid the rocks, seeking purchase for the pushing match to come. He closed his eyes for a second, and saw the terrorised eyes of the Kufr girl at Ab-Mirza. All around him, the noise of the approaching Kufr army rose up, the tramp of their feet, the catcalls and cheers and inchoate screams of them. And then the hissing sound in the air above as the first wave of arrows swooped down and began the day’s killing.

The Kufr line was the better part of four pasangs long. Vorus sat his horse in the centre rear, his head turning left and right as he tried to keep track of the various elements in the army. The archers were firing volley after volley now, and the main body of the heavy infantry was well up the hills, about to engage. The Asurian cavalry was out of sight, hidden by the rising ground to the north, but he could still hear the low rumble of the moving horses, even over the clamour near at hand. He meant to outflank the Macht on the right with the cavalry, and on the left with the Juthan Legions. In the centre he simply meant to hold them. He knew now that there were no troops in the Empire who could hope to prevail against the Macht in a stand-up fight, not even the Honai of the Great King. In the centre, he would feed in his troops line by line, and keep the enemy spearmen pinned in place, buying time with their lives. On the flanks, the decision of the day would turn. He had agreed the plan with Proxis the night before.

The Kufr centre made contact with the Macht. They were eye to eye up there, for the Macht were on the upslope. The spearheads of the Macht phalanx jabbed in and out, a long glitter caught in the sun. Before them, the Kufr formation rippled in and out as the front ranks fell, or recoiled, and then lunged forward again. Now the armies were joined together, two fighting dogs with their teeth locked in one another’s throats. This was the time.

Vorus turned to one of his couriers. They sat their horses around him like eager children, the tall Niseians stamping under them.

“Go to Proxis. Tell him to move in.”

“Yes, general,” and the Kefre took off, his mount scattering clods of turf as it went.

Another one came in to replace him, his horse foaming and blown. “General, Archon Tessarnes is south of the Imperial Road with his command. He is in the enemy rear, and means to attack at once.”

“Very well. Have yourself some water.” Vorus felt a wave of relief flood him. The cavalry were in place. The building of the thing was done. He had set it up and loosed it according to plan. Now it was up to those at the spearheads.

The Asurian cavalry broke into view over the embanked line of the Imperial Road, a shining mass of horsemen two pasangs wide and many ranks deep. They were behind the Macht phalanx, ready to gut it from the rear. They were singing as they came, and the heavy Niseians were surrounded by a fog of their own sweat as the ranks separated out. They came on at the gallop, losing riders here and there whose mounts had tripped on the rough ground, but holding together, a brute mass of muscle and flesh and bone, a gold-flecked tide.

Rictus saw them burst into view and was staggered by their numbers, the momentum they carried with them, the true weapon of all cavalry.

“No,” he said aloud. “Oh, no.”

They curved in, wheeling like fish in shoal. Before them now was the rear of the Macht phalanx on the rocky hillside ahead. Bad ground for cavalry. But the Asurians seemed not to care. They gave a great triumphant cheer and kept the pace, spreading out and drawing their bright swords. The horses grunted as they hit the slope and powered on.

At last, Aristos’s mora was on the move; to his right came Rictus, his men spreading out and already beginning to throw their javelins into the press of horsemen. Rictus sprinted over to Aristos, who was labouring along at a run in front of his men, his helm bobbing on his head.

“Thin out your line! Go in four deep or you’ll just get bogged down!” He was ignored.

The heavy mora crashed into the right flank of the horsemen. The Asurians had wheeled several squadrons round to meet their advance, but the movement robbed them of all momentum. They were virtually at a standstill as the spearmen struck. The horses recoiled, staggering backwards, rearing, screaming as the lines of spearheads did their work. Aristos and his mora cut into the Asurians like an arrowhead seeking flesh. But like the arrowhead, their own momentum was burying them. They had engaged perhaps a third of the horsemen. The rest had kept going. Up on the hilltop, the bulk of that cavalry was about to hit home.

Rictus raised his fist. “Hold!” Behind him, his men came to a ragged halt. Javelins were still being thrown over his shoulder. He stopped, eyes wide, and looked around his portion of the battlefield.

Too late. The cavalry had made it to the top of the hill, and had crashed into the rear of the Macht spearmen. Thousands of horsemen. The left-hand portion of the Macht line seemed to simply disappear, engulfed.

Whistler came up beside him, panting. “Oh, Phobos,” he groaned.

Lower down the hillside, Aristos’s mora were embroiled in a bloody, futile contest with perhaps two thousand Asurians. The cavalry had surrounded them. The riders hacked with great courage at the heavily armoured spearmen, whilst underneath them their mounts were slaughtered by the keen aichmes. But Aristos had missed the main body. He was entangled now; he would be fighting there for precious time to come.

“Throw away your javelins,” Rictus said. “We use the spear today.”

“Last time we took on cavalry we got our arses fucked,” one of the men said.

“This time it’s we who take them up the arse. Brothers, they’re killing us up on that hill. That’s Jason’s mora there on the left, and they’re destroying it. I’ll walk up there alone if I have to.”

“My arse, alone,” Whistler said, and tossed his bundled javelins aside. There was a clatter all around as scores, hundreds of men did the same.

“Lead us, Rictus,” someone called out.

They started up the slope at a swift run, short spears in their right hands, peltas on their left arms, fear and hatred blazing out of their eyes.

Gratus had gone down, and so Gasca was now in the second rank, with Astianos in front of him. His spear had snapped in half, the fore part of it lost in some screaming Kufr’s head, so he had reversed it and was now stabbing out with the sauroter, the splintered end of the shaft slicing out slivers of his palm as he thrust it into the faces of the Kufr in the enemy line before him. Under his feet, Gratus had crawled back from the forefront of the fighting, one eye stabbed out from his head so that it flopped on his cheek. He had made it back a little, the spearmen straddling him, protecting him, but then had died. Less spectacularly he had been pierced through the thigh as well, and had bled to death with his comrades fighting around him. Now they were standing on his corpse, their feet shunting it back and forth as they struggled to keep the line intact. His was not the only corpse the Macht spearmen were standing upon, but he had been well-liked, and his death had infuriated his comrades. Before them, the Kufr marched up the hill only to be cut down. Now they were climbing over mounds of their own dead, their heels set in the flesh of their comrades.