Paul Kearney - The ten thousand

There was a shudder from behind, and Gasca was jolted off balance. He fought to stay upright, and before him Astianos was shoved forward. He beat back a Kufr with the bowl of his shield, head-butted another, and stabbed out blindly with his spear. “Easy-easy!” he yelled as he and Astianos fell back into the line.

A horse screamed, right in Gasca’s ear it seemed. He half-turned, and as he did the files of men around him broke up, shouting. The whole mass of the formation, which had seemed so locked together a few moments before, was smashed open. The light of the westering sun was cut off by a mass of horsemen careering into the back of the spearmen, knocking them down, hacking at their backs, stabbing them through their napes.

“Rear ranks, face about!” a voice was thundering. It was Buridan, his russet beard trailing below his helm. “Stand fast brothers!”

He had dropped his shield and now hauled a Kufr horseman off his mount. The animal collapsed on him as one of his comrades speared it through the skull. Buridan went down, smashed between the horse and the unforgiving stones. The Macht around him set up a great shout. The Asurians’ horses careered and stamped and reared, butting the line into pieces, bowling men off their feet. In the press it was hard to turn round and face this new assault, harder still to bring the long spears into play. The Macht line was splintered into chaos, and dozens of the heavy spearmen were hacked down before they could even bring their weapons to bear.

“Gasca!” Astianos was down. He had turned to see what was afoot behind him and a Kufr spear had taken him in the armpit. He toppled. At once Gasca moved forward, set his shield over the fallen man and jabbed out with the sauroter spike, his head snapping back and forth, trying to see what was going on beyond the confines of the helm-slot. The line was broken, in front as well as rear. He could not see what was happening.

“Astianos!” but Astianos had already been subbed through and through, and as Gasca en mi lied there a trio of snarling Kufr thrust their spears at him. He beat off the first, killed the second with a thrust to the throat, but the third caught hint in the instant before he could recover, spearing him right through his father’s cuirass, the point breaking off in his flesh. He fell sideways, baffled at the turn of things, his feet scrabbling in the stones. Two more spears came down, transfixing him, fastening him to the earth, he squirmed there, his helm coming off, the upland air cooling his face. Confused, he thought for a moment that he was back with his brothers again, up in the high pastures, and they had bested him at some game. Then the last spearhead came down and, feeling the blow, he remembered where he was.

We have them, Vorus thought. It’s working.

He had seen the left wing of the Macht army shudder as the Asurians charged them from the rear. They were engulfed now, that fearsome beast of bronze and iron. He watched, more intent than he had ever been in his life before, as the Macht line was chopped to pieces. The cavalry burst through it, hacking bloody gaps in the ranks of the spearmen. In the front the Kufr infantry, emboldened by the sudden apparition of the Asurians, pressed forwards.

Vorus turned to his nearest courier. This one was a hufsan, and he was looking up at the ruin of the Macht army like one who has been granted a glimpse of a miracle.

“Go to Archon Distartes. Tell him to send in the reserves-to send in everything.”

“Yes, lord.” The hufsan’s teeth were a white flash in his face as he took off, the dun pony’s hooves twinkling under him.

The Macht on the right were no longer a line, but bristling knots of infantry, fighting back to back. They could not run, for there was nowhere to run to. They died where they stood, fighting as long as their feet could bear them.

I have beaten them, Vorus thought. He watched the Macht dying up on the hill and knew it to be true. Many of them were now fighting with their swords, their spears shattered or lost. He saw a Cursebearer go down, the black armour standing out in that mass of bronze. And for a second he had to bow his head and choke back a kind of grief.

On the left, the Macht morai were creating a terrible slaughter among the Kufr pushing up the hill. Most likely, they were not even aware of the disaster unfolding on their flank. It was time Proxis moved in to finish it. His legions were standing out on the Macht right flank, facing empty air. Once they wheeled in as the Asurians had done, the Ten Thousand would be no more. That story would be ended at last.

Except that the Juthan were not moving. They stood in rank, all twelve thousand of them, and watched the battle lines struggling on the rocky hillside to their right, as stolid and unmoving as mourners at a funeral.

A chill went down Vorus’s spine. Proxis, no, do not do this to me now.

He leaned in the saddle and physically grabbed the courier nearest to him, not taking his eyes off the ranks of the Juthan some pasang and a half away. “You must go to-” He released him again.

“ They’re moving, General,” someone said beside him. “The Juthan are moving off.”

“Slow, as always,” another of his aides said with the hauteur of the high-caste Kefren.

And yes, they were moving at last. Twelve thousand of them, and with them his friend of twenty years.

“Where are they going?” the aide asked, puzzled, not yet realising.

Twenty years, Vorus thought. What was it to you, Proxis-something to be endured? Maybe that was why you drank, to keep the knowledge that you would one day do this toward the back of your mind.

For the Juthan were marching away, legion by legion. They were leaving the battlefield to turn south, marching in perfect ranks. Vorus saw a figure lead them away, seated on a mule.

“Where are they going?” his aide repeated, wild-eyed.

“They’re going home,” Vorus said. “Where else?” And you timed it well, Proxis, he thought. You left it until the perfect moment.

He bowed his head, leaning on his horse’s neck, smelling the salt sweat of the patient beast under him. I have lived too long, he thought. “General.”

He straightened, looked up the hill at the battle once more, that all-encompassing roar of madness and slaughter which meant nothing to him now. More Macht troops had come up to hammer the Asurians from the rear, light-armed by the look of them. That corner of the battlefield was as confused and murderous as anything at Kunaksa. There, the Arakosan cavalry had been fought to a standstill by skirmishers too. He wondered if it was the same commander. Someone capable, at any rate.

The Kufr centre was collapsing. As the Juthan legions peeled away, abandoning them, so the Macht on that flank began to advance, finally aware of their brethren’s plight out on their left. They came down the hillside in a ferocious, perfect line, tramping across the bodies of the dead and the living alike. The Kufr troops could not withstand that torrent of professional fury. They retreated, withdrawing in some order at first, and then casting aside their shields and running without shame. Behind their running backs, the Macht wheeled right, by morai, and moved in on the catastrophe that had overtaken the other half of their army.

Vorus’s young Kefren aide was weeping in grief and fury. “General-my lord. We should move. This field is lost.”

“Juthan bastards!”

Vorus sat upon his horse and stared up the hill at his own people, whom he had tried to destroy. Around him, the Honai stood uneasily, looking behind them at the pale length of the Imperial Road. On the slope ahead the lightly armed companies of archers were already running, their quivers only half-empty.

There is such a thing, Vorus thought, as a tradition of victory. Perhaps that is what does it.