Paul Kearney - The ten thousand

No matter. She drew Jason closer to her. His flesh was hot to the touch, and sweat was streaming down his face, but he was shivering convulsively.

I do not know why it is so, she thought, but I esteem this man, this Macht, this barbarian. It may even be that I love him. Rictus knew that. It may be he saw it before I did.

They had gathered in an open space between the fires of the centons, and there had piled up the carcass of a broken wagon and set it on fire. Around this blaze there now gathered several thousand men. The evening was setting in, and the firelight grew brighter as the light fell. The Macht had come to debate on their predicament, to thrash out things in Assembly, as their race had been wont to do since the end of the Kings, far back in the mythical past. Most of the Kerusia were present, wrapped in their scarlet cloaks like the rest of the men, but wearing the Curse of God beneath as a kind of badge. Their numbers were fewer. Jason was wounded and Grast had died at Irunshahr, close by him in the line. Mynon had been kicked by a horse and now wore his broken arm in a sling, but his black eyes were bright as ever. Old Mochran, the last of the elder leaders, stood a little apart from the rest, wrapped in his cloak, his peppery beard sunk on his chest. He had saved the day, wheeling the right-hand morai inwards on his own initiative, trusting that the Juthan desertion was not a ruse. Had it not been for him, the army would most likely have been destroyed at Irunshahr. The knowledge made a little space around him at the bonfire. He stared into the flames, perhaps remembering the pyres on which they had burned the bodies of two thousand comrades. They had been three days at it, and the reek had soiled the air for pasangs around.

The men stood in silent crowds, ready to listen. They were tired and disheartened as they had not been after Kunaksa. They realised now that the thing was almost done. Fourteen thousand of them had taken ship with Phiron the year before. Of those, almost half were gone. They had marched more than three thousand pasangs, and had beaten every army brought against them, but now they felt that their luck was running out. They had had enough. Now all of them wanted to get home by the quickest route, to get over the mountains and march to the shores of the sea. They did not care if they were paupers when they got there; all that they valued now were the lives they lived.

Haukos has left us, Rictus realised, as he stood with the other generals amid the currents of talk. Hope has gone. We are no longer unbeatable.

And he bowed his head. Gasca, you are well out of this.

“We should have stayed at Irunshahr,” big Gominos was saying, as truculent as he was ugly. He reminded Rictus a little of Orsos, but Orsos had been a fine leader of men as well as a rapacious boor. “We could have taken our ease there, had slaves, refitted and rested-”

“We cleared that city out of every bean and husk it had,” Mynon said. “If we’d stayed there, we’d be starving in a week.”

“Starving with a roof over our heads,” Gominos retorted.

“The Great King has more than one army,” Mochran growled. “We stop moving and we die, simple as that. At least here in the mountains we’re less easy to find.”

“So we’re running headlong now after beating his best? Is that it?”

Rictus’s voice, though quiet, cut through the rising quarrel. “Mynon, how do we stand?”

A bird with a broken wing, Mynon set his head on one side. Jason had done the same on occasion; it warranted a kind of detachment. “One week, at full ration. But that’s for the men alone. Fodder for the draught animals is not to be had, not up here. They’ll start dying soon, and then we’ll be pulling the wagons ourselves.”

“We’ve done that before. We’ll hitch the mules to the wagons, and eat the oxen.” Rictus paused. “There are fewer of us now, anyway. Fewer mouths.”

Silence fell. The bonfire crackled and rushed, a soft roar in the blue gathering dark. Around the light of the flames the crowds of men drew closer, as if they could hear what was being said better in the light. Rictus saw Whistler there, and old Demotes from the Dogsheads. How many of them were left now, he wondered. Those nights in the Marshalling Yards of Machran seemed like a different world, and the boy he had been back then was someone else. Rictus raised his hand and touched two things which hung at his throat: Zori’s coral pendant and the tooth of a wolf, clicking together under his fingers. Small things, to hold such a cache of memories.

Aristos stepped forward to warm his hands at the flames. “We’re fewer now, it’s been said. I would go farther. I would say we are not an army any more. We have not been since Kunaksa. Phiron knew how to lead us, and he did it well. When he died, Jason took his place, and he was an obvious choice. He was a good man. But he did not have the skills of Phiron. That is why at Irunshahr, so many of us died.”

Rictus stepped forward, eyes blazing. “Is that why? Search your heart, Aristos. Is that really why?”

“Let me speak, Rictus.” Aristos held up a hand, as regretful and reasonable as one could wish. Out of the assembled men, voices cried: “Let him speak!” The chorus grew. “Let him have a say. Fair’s fair, strawhead.”

Rictus stepped back. He was unarmed, as were they all, but one did not need weapons in the Assembly to fight one’s battles. Words were better and he was not good with them, never had been. Jason was the man for that.

“I have seen a map of the Empire. Brothers, we are in the Korash Mountains. They are not so high as the Magron, but they are further north, and much colder. This valley we have been marching in, it runs all the way through them to the open lands of Askanon and Gansakr beyond. The mountains are some two hundred pasangs from east to west. Once we are through them the way is open to the sea, good marching country with cities on every side. And not the fortress cities of the Middle Empire, but smaller, many of them unwalled. Brothers, once we are beyond the mountains, it is a two week march to the sea. Two weeks.”

A ragged shout went up at this, and men turned to their neighbours, grinning and striking one another on the bicep. They had not dreamed it could be so close, the end of the illimitable Empire. Aristos looked at Rictus, and their eyes met. He knew exactly what he was doing. He raised a hand to still the hubbub.

“Brothers, hear me out. For months now, we have been marching at the pace of the Kufr, held back first by their troops, our so-called allies, and then by the whole impedimenta of warfare as they fight it. These wagons we haul along in our midst-when we fought as centons in the Harukush, which of us had a wagon to carry his baggage for him? Perhaps it made sense in the heat of the lowlands, but we are marching back into our own kind of country now, back to where the seasons are things we know. A cart for the centos, mules for the field-forge-what else did we need? We have been trained by the Kufr to walk at their pace. Brothers, we must strike out again at our own. We must leave all this behind and become again the men we once were. We must strike out at that pace. If we do, I promise you, we shall look once again on the shores of the sea within a month. What say you?”

“I say he talks too fucking much,” Mochran said to Rictus out of the corner of his mouth. But it was no matter. The men were cheering Aristos to the echo. He was offering them hope, a way ahead, something to batten onto, and their cheers were an outpouring of relief.

“I will not serve under him,” Rictus said.

“You must, lad. I believe he’s about to call an election. With Jason out of the way, he’ll swing the vote in the Kerusia. If you want to make the thing go otherwise, you’d best get up on your hind legs and do a little talking yourself.”