Paul Kearney - The ten thousand

“He can be sitting in hell for all I care,” Jason snorted. “What is he to us, now? He can’t loot Sinon as he has been these Kufr villages. May he rot there.”

“He deserted the colour,” Rictus said in a low voice. “The penalty for that is death.”

The others stared at him. “You won’t keep to that now, not now?” Mynon asked.

“When he left he took food out of our mouths when we needed it most. He could have warned us of the Qaf had he chose, and perhaps saved hundreds of lives. He betrayed us. He must die for it.”

The cold, even tone of these words silenced them all. The fire cracked and spat, blue salt-flames hissing out of the driftwood.

“Let it go, Rictus,” Jason said at last. “We’ve come too far to end it by killing our own.”

“One man, Jason-it is just one man. When it is done it will be over for me, and not before.” Rictus rose and walked away from the firelight, down to the breaking waves of the sea.

They came upon Sinon in the late afternoon, after tramping through the shallows of the Haneikos River as it foamed and flashed in its broad bed. On the southern bank of the river the Imperial Road ended and on the far side a dirt track took its place, rutted by the wagons of those who carried on the trade between Sinon and the Empire. As the army set its feet on the bare earth of that road, so they left the Asurian Empire at last, and were back in the lands of the Macht. Before them the walls of Sinon reared up mustard-pale in the sunlight, and out from them the great encircling arms of the harbour projected, cradling within them the docks and wharves at which were moored the masts of half a thousand ships, their spars like a forest of spears against the shining water. Built on a hill, the fortress-port reminded them of the cities of the Middle Empire, each perched on its ancient tell.

Before the city walls the army grounded spears and set out its camp for the last time, whilst a steady stream of curious folk trickled out of the city to look at them, and the more enterprising of the traders clustered on the fringes of the camp, setting up makeshift stalls, hawking food, drink, clothing, and the services of women. Here, the Macht looked once more on their own people, not soldiers, but ordinary folk, and women. They had nothing to barter with save the weapons in their hands, and Rictus had to quickly ban the traders from the camp, lest their goods be taken from them by force. After living off the land for so long, the remnants of the Ten Thousand found old habits hard to break. They would have scattered into the city at once, were it not for the gold in the beds of the mule-carts.

This, the generals who were left to the army counted out coin by coin that night, in the midst of the assembled men. It was put to them that some should be held back to hire ships for their return to the Harukush, but this suggestion was howled down. They wanted it all in their hands, now, to do with as they pleased.

So there would be no ships. They would not sail back to the Harukush en masse. The army was no more. They had come back to their own people and were now disbanding, the centons breaking up, some disintegrating entirely, others being formed anew by friendships of the road. They wanted no more to do with generals, or a Kerusia. They wanted the old ways of their mercenary life, where battle was a struggle of a few hundreds here and there, and was fought among their own kind, according to rules they knew and understood. They wanted no more orders from on high. They respected the generals, especially Rictus and Jason. They wished them well, and would be glad to have them lead a centon if they had a mind to, but they would have no more truck with big marching armies, with great campaigns. All this became clear as the men crowded round in their thousands for assembly. Their last assembly.

“They want to go back to their little dunghills and crow upon them,” Jason said, standing to one side of the cloaks whereon the gold had been piled. Centurions were now calling the men forward one by one and putting coin in their hands, the men grinning like fools.

Rictus was thinking of the stones that had been piled up on cloaks such as these in the mountains. They had voted for him then in their thousands. Now the process was in reverse. As soon as a man took coin from the cloaks he was free to go, and most that had been paid were already on their way into the city, their pitiful belongings bundled up in their cloaks, the gold like an ember in their hands.

“It’s over,” he said.

“Did you expect something different?”

“I don’t know. Yes, I suppose I did. Something more than this.”

“They’re the scum of this earth,” Jason said with great affection. “They’re at their best when times are hard, but give them something to spend, and they’ll squander it with all the wisdom of half-witted children. Most of these will be destitute in a month, and ready to try their hand at soldiering again, you mark my words. It’s a tale as old as man himself.”

Rictus clinked the coins in his palm. They were heavy, stamped on one side with the face of the Great King, and on the other the Kufr god Bel was killing the Great Bull.

“One of those will buy a farm and the tools to farm it, if you have a mind,” Jason said lightly.

“That’s what you’ll do now?”

“That’s what I’ll do. In my free hours I shall learn how the Kufr speak. I shall perhaps sit down in the evenings and try to write out some of my memories. And I shall try and make children.”

“What will they be like, I wonder, those children?” Rictus mused.

“Let us hope they take after their mother in stature, at least,” Jason grinned. “I must say goodbye now, Rictus. Tiryn waits for me outside the camp. She’s found us a mule from somewhere, and the poor beast is like to fold under the load it’s carrying.”

“Drink with me, just once,” Rictus said quickly. “Come into the city with me, for an hour, no more. Please, Jason.”

Jason looked at him, lips pursed. There, just there, was the boy still in him, the earnest look in the eyes, the fear of abandonment.

“All right, then. One drink, to seal our farewells. That’s if our comrades have left the city with any to spare.”

Sinon was a running hive of humanity, the streets clogged with paid-off mercenaries and those who were trying to relieve them of their pay. The men were running riot through the city, their gold allowing them to satisfy every appetite they had nurtured in the long months of marching and fighting. A scarlet night, lamps lit at every window and doorway, wine running in the gutters, mobs of Macht howling out greetings to one another. They shouted tearful protestations of friendship, bade lugubrious farewell to old comrades, and indulged in not a few brawls as long-held grievances were finally aired. Brightly painted whores helped their drunken clients through the crowds. Men robbed each other at knifepoint, or rifled through the bundles of the incapacitated. They gorged themselves on wine, on the food of the eating houses, on the charms of the prostitutes. They were making up for the hardships, the wounds, the friends buried under cold stone in the mountains or burned on pyres in the heat of the lowlands. They were, as one of them cried, guzzling at Antimone’s tits while they could.

“And who’s to blame them?” Jason asked. He and Rictus stood at a streetside wine-shop and lifted the deep bowls the owner had filled. “No cheap shit,” Jason had told him. “We are Macht generals, leaders of an army. Bring out your best and nothing less.”

They clinked the earthenware bowls together. Jason was about to volunteer a toast when Rictus said, “To a new life.”