Paul Kearney: The ten thousand

Jason smiled. “To a new life.” They drank deep, savouring the taste, the warmth of the good wine as it touched their throats. They emptied the bowls and called for more. The drink brimmed red as blood in the flickering lamplight, whilst up and down the street beside them the pantomime of the night went on. Rictus cocked his head to one side, listening. “It sounds almost like the city is being sacked.”

“Na,” Jason said equably. “She’s not being raped; she’s just getting it a little rough, is all. The good city fathers are pissing in their beds, I’ll bet, but they’ll be glad enough of the gold once their teeth have stopped chattering. The men will spend a city’s ransom in the streets tonight. If they want to break some crockery along the way, well, they’ll have paid for it, fleeced like sheep by every hard-hearted whore and sharp trader in the place. It’s the easiest thing in the world, to part a drunken soldier from his money.”

“Perhaps we should do something.”

“Like what-make a speech? There’s nothing we could do would make them see sense. It’s their money. Let them have a night where they don’t have to count it, or collect every crumb that falls.”

“There is that,” Rictus said. The wine was sliding into place behind his eyes; he felt he could speak more easily, make more sense than he had before.

“What will you do now, Rictus? Will you keep to the colour, or have you hefted a spear long enough already?”

Rictus shrugged. “There’s nothing for me in the Harukush. My city is gone, my family all dead. You are the closest thing to a brother I have in the world, and you’re about to disappear too. I suppose I’ll carry a spear. It’s all I know.”

“Then take my advice. Stay here for now. If you remain in Sinon you’ll be able to have the pick of a centon in a matter of days. Right now, there are more mercenaries in this city than in half the Harukush put together, and the best of them at that.”

Rictus smiled. “Well, it’s something to think on.”

They clinked their bowls again, as if they had made a bargain. Used to short commons and plain water, Rictus was quickly becoming drunk. “You know-” he said, leaning closer to Jason.

“Here he is, brothers. The strawhead general. Well, Rictus, how does the night find you?”

It was Aristos, standing hands on hips in the Curse of God. Gominos bulked large beside him, and a group of their men straddled the street to their rear.

“Speak up boy-or are you too drunk?”

Rictus straightened up from the streetside bar. In one moment, all the wine in him burned away, seared to nothing by a white-cold rush through his limbs. His fist fastened on the knife at his belt. Neither he nor Jason were wearing their cuirasses. Rictus had left his with Whistler, and Tiryn had Jason’s strapped to her mule.

“Ah, hell,” Jason said. “Aristos, the fighting is done with. Have a drink and pluck that spear-shaft from up your arse.”

Aristos stepped forward. His face was flushed, his eyes bright; he, too, had been drinking. “I heard tell young Rictus here was going to see me dead,” he said. “Did I hear wrong, or was he just yapping?”

Rictus stepped forward but Jason held him back, moved in front of him. “What’s on your mind, Aristos?”

“I want my money, Jason. We all do. I brought over a thousand men out of the mountains and they haven’t so much as smelled the gold that’s due to them. Pay us, and we’ll leave you be. We’ll call it settled, no hard feelings.”

“Pay you for what?” Rictus hissed. “For desertion, for stealing our food, for running away? Come here and I’ll pay you myself, in coin you’ll understand.”

“Shut up,” Jason snapped. “Aristos, the money is all gone-we shared it out already. If you want gold, you can talk to any drunk soldier in the city, for they’re the ones who have it now. They’re paid off, Aristos. The thing is over.”

Aristos seemed taken aback. He hesitated a second, the men behind him murmuring. Then he smiled, and drew his sword. “I’ll have yours, then.”

“Come take mine,” Rictus snarled, drawing his knife. “Come and try, you piece of shit.” He shoved Jason aside and lunged forward. Aristos did the same. They came together like two stags clashing antlers, each searching for the other’s sword-arm with his free hand. The iron of their weapons snicked together and they slashed and side-stepped, then stepped in again, breast to breast. A flurry of blows, clicked aside or dodged. Blood sprang out like a badge along Rictus’s collarbone, a long slice. He dashed aside another blow with his knife, the metal screeching. He stabbed, and the point careered harmlessly off Aristos’s armour.

“Enough!” Jason bellowed. He elbowed into the fight, thumping Rictus aside, and kicking Aristos in the chest. Both younger men went down on their backs, breathing like sprinters. Jason stood between them. “Enough of this,” he said. “Gominos-take your friend here and-”

Up sprang Rictus and Aristos again, their faces flooded with fury, all reasoning gone. They charged each other once more. Jason got between them. For a second he had them at arm’s length one on each side of him, and then they had come together again. Jason was knocked sideways. He fell heavily to the beaten earth of the street, and lay there with the lees of the wine running about his legs. He opened his mouth to speak, and then coughed. His feet scrabbled uselessly along the ground. He pulled his hand away from his side and saw the dark shine there. It was spewing out of him. “You’ve killed me,” he said, wide eyed and incredulous, and fell back.

Aristos’s men streamed forward, Gominos at their head. Rictus and Aristos stood looking first at each other, and then at Jason, appalled. Rictus tossed his knife to the ground and knelt down beside the prone man. “Jason, Jason.”

They stood around him. Rictus clamped his hand to the deep hole in Jason’s side. His face was as white as marble.

“Damn you,” Jason whispered. “I had a life. Ah, Phobos. Antimone, keep me.” His voice trailed away.

“Tiryn,” he breathed, almost inaudible. And then he died.

All around them, the clamour of the city went on, the night bright and gaudy and tattered with the celebrations of the Ten Thousand. Aristos and Gominos and their men stood mute, frozen, staring. Rictus closed Jason’s eyes, then bent and kissed his forehead.

“You were the best of us,” he whispered.

Of its own accord, his hand went out and found the hilt of his knife. He stood up, and when he turned to face the Macht in the street they backed away from the light in his eyes, as men will give space to a mad dog. Three strides he took, the movement a swift flash, and the blade gleamed in the air as he swept it out before him. Aristos dropped his own weapon, startled. His hands scrabbled for his throat, to the great, gouting hole that had opened there. He gargled words through the blood, staggered, went down on his knees. One scarlet hand grasped Rictus’s thigh. Then he fell to his side in the street, struggling to stillness in the steaming puddle of blood which was both Jason’s and his own. Rictus watched him, and finally tossed the knife onto his body. He looked up at Gominos, at the rest of Aristos’s men who stood silent and still before him.

“Now, it’s over,” he said.

The flames of the pyre were nearly out; that which had burned in the midst of them was now no more than blackened ash. A wind came off the sea and lifted the ash into the air, sending it scattered about the heads of the assembled men like a flock of dark birds.

On the beach stood several hundred spearmen, shields on their shoulders, scarlet cloaks on their backs. Some wore the Curse of God. All had torn their chitons in the grief-mark. As the flames sank, so they began to sing the Paean, the death-song of the Macht, the hymn that had accompanied them into battle so many times. Standing at a slight distance from them were a tall, fair-headed young man and a veiled Kufr woman.