Paul Kearney - The ten thousand

“They were quarrelling over who would have the women-these two younger ones. They had a fight over it last night, then got drunk and slept the time away. Now they are arming, meaning to take you sometime today, before you get much closer to Machran.”

The two husband-brothers stared at one another, white-faced, and then at their new wives. The look on the women’s faces reminded Gasca of a rabbit he once caught alive in a snare.

“And how were you privy to their discussions?” the fat merchant asked.

“I have been travelling with them. I, too, was drinking last night at their fire.”

“A roadsman,” the thin merchant spat, and he whipped out his slim-bladed eating knife. “It’s out of his own mouth.”

“Stay,” his colleague said. To Rictus he said, “What brings you here to warn us?”

“I have seen my fill of killing-that kind of killing. I will fight them with you, if you’ll have me.”

Gasca rose from the fire and went to the roadside again. The sun, mighty Araian, had climbed out of her bedclothes; she broke out now in a wrack of crimson and golden cloud, and the glare of the thin snow was broadening moment by moment. He looked about himself, at the wide spaces around them, then at the hills ahead which framed the road, the ruins of long-sacked Memnos rising white and dark with shadow and snow.

“We must pack up,” he said. “If they catch us on the move we’ll have no chance. We must make for the hills, put our backs to something. Those broken walls; we can climb them and fight from a height.” He turned again. “What weaponry do they have?”

“Spears, swords, javelins. No bows, or shields either, not even a pelta.”

“Are they up and about?”

Rictus considered. He was eerily calm. He does not care, Gasca thought. He thinks to do the right thing, but most of him could care less if he lived or died today.

“They’re slow, hung-over. You have time. Not much, but enough perhaps.”

“We’ll do as the boy says,” the fat merchant said abruptly, rising. “Time to be moving.”

“We’ll outrun them,” one of the young husbands said desperately. “It’s thirty pasangs to Machran; I can run that.”

“And your wife?” the merchant asked. “These children? If we splinter up, they’ll take us in mouthfuls. Fighting together, on good ground, we can hurt them, enough perhaps to make them think again.”

“You care only for the wares on your donkey’s back.”

“Among other things. Run if you wish. They have legs too. You’ll be dead before sundown, and your wife will be a raped slave.”

They packed up their bedrolls, the younger women snivelling, the children subdued by their elders’ fear. They left the fire burning and struck out for the south at a fast pace. The fat merchant was the slowest. Gasca took his donkey’s halter and tugged the animal on while the big man clung to the animal’s tail, sweating. They left the road, and the going became much harder as they forged up the hillside to the ruins above. When the youngest child began to fall behind, Rictus slung her up on his back, and she clung there with a wide smile on her face, hooting triumphantly to the other urchins. The thin merchant paused to catch his breath, and looked back into the lowland below. He cried out, and they all paused, turned their heads. A group of men had come out of the trees, moving fast, black as crows against the snow.

The company’s fear lent them speed. They passed though the massive broken arch which had once been Memnos’s main gate and raised a startled flock of sparrows out of the stones. The snow was deeper here, high as a man’s calf. Gasca dropped the donkey’s leading rein and ran ahead, his shield and helm bruising his back as they bounced there. The ruins were extensive, and had there been no snow it might even have been possible to hide the party amid them and avoid any fight at all; but now their tracks were clear as a line of flags. He cast about like a hound near a scent-line, and nodded as he found what he was looking for.

“The walls,” he said, rejoining the others. “There’s a stair leading up to a good section of them, and a tower that’s still got a doorway. We go up there, the men defend the stairtop, and the others hide in the tower.”

“What about our animals?” the thin merchant asked, gasping.

“They must stay below.”

“I’ll be ruined,” the thin merchant groaned. But he did not argue.

From the wall-top they could see for pasangs. Their attackers were still toiling up the snowy slope below. The road was empty; no fellow travellers to provide allies or diversions. The world was a vast, bright stage ringed by mountains, snow blowing off their peaks in ribbons and banners, the sky above them flawless, pale blue, blue as a baby’s eye. Only the pine forests provided a darker contrast, the shadow deep beneath their limbs.

“Look,” Rictus said. He stood beside Gasca and pointed. There was a light in his eye.

Machran. To the south the mountains opened out in a vast bowl, perhaps fifty pasangs across, and within this ramp of highland the country was a patchwork of wood and field, the lower hollows of it untouched by snow, and green, green as a dream of spring. Machran itself was a sprawl, a smudge, an ochre stain upon the rolling mantle of this world, and from it the smoke of ten thousand hearths rose in a grey smear to sully the sky. From these heights it looked as though a man with a fair wind behind him might lope there in a matter of minutes. Gasca found himself smiling.

A shout from below. Their attackers had seen them standing up here. There were indeed eight of them. They had knotted their cloaks up over their elbows; sheepskins, fox-hide caps with the fur still on, and high boots. Their beards were black, long and tangled as the tail of a cow.

“Goatmen,” Gasca said, using the contemptuous term reserved for those who had no city, who frequented the high places of the Harukush and were reputed to sleep in caves and hold their women in common. “You travelled with these?”

“I chanced across them,” Rictus said.

“I’m surprised they didn’t kill you out of hand.”

“They tried,” Rictus said, still in the same quiet tone. “Isca trained me. They came round to thinking that might be useful.”

“Ah, Isca,” Gasca said. He had heard the stories. It was hardly the time to hear them again. “You will need that training today.”

They took their place at the stairtop. It was broad enough for two, but slippery with trodden snow. Gasca put on his father’s bronze helm, and immediately all sounds became washed out by the sea-noise within. He had thought to leave it off, but knew how fearsome a crested helm would look to the men below. It would make of him a faceless thing, and hide whatever fear might fill his eyes.

He took the weight of his shield off his shoulder and balanced it on his arm. The bronze-faced oak covered him from shoulder to thigh. “They’ll start with the javelins,” he told Rictus. “Get behind my shield until they’re done.”

“I’d rather stand free.”

“Suit yourself.”

Behind Rictus and Gasca stood the fat merchant, face still shiny with sweat, and one of the husband-brothers. At the rear, the thin merchant and the other husband. Only Rictus and Gasca had spears. The rest were armed with knives and cudgels, the eternal stand-by of all travellers, but of little use today unless the enemy made it up onto the wall.

A harsh braying from below. The thin merchant cursed in the name of Apsos, god of beasts.

“They’ll eat the damn donkeys. Goatmen- worse than animals themselves.” Behind the six men, the sounds of wailing children came from the doorway of the ruined watchtower.

“I wish those brats were mutes,” the thin merchant said.