Authors: Paul Kearney
Old Buridan, grey
in the russet glory of his beard, a friend from what seemed a past life. Mynon,
extremely capable, the best intriguer of the lot, perhaps the brightest of them
all, and utterly untrustworthy anywhere but on a battlefield, for all his smiles.
A clutch of
half-known faces. Phinero, very like his dead brother, a hound with good teeth
and little brain. Mochran, a dogged old campaigner, one of the few remaining
old crew who had been centon-leaders time out of mind. His shaggy head was
devoid of imagination, but he would hold to the letter of an order until he
bled white.
Aristos, a younger
pup well pleased with his elevation. His uncle, Argus, had indulged him too
much, put him forward for Second despite arrogance and ineptitude. He had been
told to hold the bridges, but had left his men behind to do it while he sat
here, ready to kick off this new Kerusia. A rod for my back, Jason thought with
an inward sigh.
Four others:
Dinon, Hephr, Grast and Gominos. Just names and worn young faces. Jason knew
nothing of them. At the moment his body craved sleep, and his thoughts were
still dwelling on the face of the Kufr woman he had lately vis ited.
They were talking,
half of them at once, mostly the younger ones. Buridan and Mynon and Mochran
watched them with a kind of detached wariness. Rictus looked out of a window at
the pitiless blue of the sky. It was hot, so hot it got a man to shouting in an
instant, weather for argument and lovemaking.
Again, the Kufr
girl’s pale face, those dark eyes.
Jason thumped the
long table, not hard, but enough to rattle the jugs, to shut them up. He
pinched his eyes as though squeezing water out of them; they stung like
lemon-juice under his fingers.
“Mynon,” he said
into the sudden quiet. “Talk to me. And I swear by Antimone’s cunt, that if any
one of you interrupts him, I shall kick you up and down this room.”
Mynon smiled a
little. His one brow rose up his forehead, the red skin peeling above it, his
black eyes sunken in lines of weariness. Still, he held onto that sneering
jauntiness which was his trademark. He produced a slate and a knob of chalk and
looked the table up and down.
“We have the
paychests; the Kufr ran before us too quickly to take them along. But a man
cannot eat gold. And for that reason, we cannot stay here.”
A splutter of
argument. Mynon and Jason looked at one another.
“We will bleed
this city dry in a matter of days, the countryside round about in less than a
month. We stay here, we starve, and we starve the Kufr all about us. Is that
clear enough for you, brothers?”
“I’d like you to
be Quartermaster, Mynon. You have a knack for it, a head for figures and the
like. Do you accept?”
Mynon considered,
head to one side in that bird-like way of his. He shrugged fractionally. “All
right.”
“You will retain command
of your mora. We need your experience in the battle line too.”
“Who are you,
Jason, to be elevating and appointing without so much as a say so from the rest
of us?” Aristos spoke up, his freckled face burnt dark by the sun, bright hair
shining. Another strawhead. Some of the younger ones rapped the table with one
knuckle in agreement.
Who am I indeed?
Jason wondered. For a cold moment, he saw himself packing a horse and taking
off across the Empire alone, making hell’s leather for the west and the shores
of the sea. But that would leave his Dogsheads here, and Buridan. That would
leave behind the best part of what he had earned for himself in this life. A
name, and respect for that name. If he left that behind, he would be worthless.
Go back to soldiering in the Harukush? Why? He had the adventure of his
lifetime here and now.
“Aristos makes a
fair point,” he said lightly. “Shall we vote on it, then? I put myself forward
to take Phiron’s place. Who will have me?”
His own hand went
up first, those of Buridan and Rictus in the same second; then old Mochran, and
Mynon. And then a pause. Finally Phinero joined them. “I don’t see no one else
here I’d take orders from,” he said with a shrug.
Aristos made no
sign of acceptance or anger. He flapped his hand on the table. “You have a
majority, Jason. You are our warleader.” He had a smile even less pleasant than
Mynon’s. “Some proprieties must be preserved, or else what are we?”
“We’re in shit up
to our necks, so we’d best start shovelling,” Buridan growled. “What’s the
plan, Jason?”
He got up from the
table and paced over to one of the great openings in the wall. From here one
could look down on the garden-rooves of Kaik, green squares retreating down the
hill’s steep slope amid a sea of brown brick, all shimmering in the heat. A
steady train of refugees was leaving the city, heading along the roads to the
west. Running before the storm. His men had wrecked I Ins city simply by
entering it and taking what they needed—not loot, or women so much—but water,
food, a place to lay their heads. This army would wreck many more before they
made it home, he thought. And home is where we must be going. There is nothing
for us here, in the Empire.
For the first
time, perhaps, he understood the real abilities of Phiron and Pasion. They had
collected these centons, had fed and watered and supplied them, had held them
together to the end. Until one Kufr’s death had turned their certainties
upside-down.
“We go home,”
Jason said simply. “That is all we can do. “The Great King has shown he cannot
be trusted or negotiated with, so we will not try.” He turned back to face the
others, the sunlight behind him making of his form a black shadow, faceless.
“We must march to
the sea.”
There was a square
below the Governor’s Palace, built up on one side like a massive terrace to
make level the slope of the hill. All around it, the fired-brick buildings of
the city reared up three and four stories tall, and on their rooves could be
seen date palms, juniper bushes, vines, a cool green horticulture three and
four spear-lengths above the cobbles of the square itself, ivy and ferns
trailing their tendrils down the faces of the houses. In the centre of the
square was an oasis of cedar and poplar trees, a sizeable copse surrounded by
the beating heat of the open stone around. This was where the city’s markets
had been held, and there was still the wreckage of a hundred, two hundred
stalls scattered far and wide across it, melons rolling underfoot, pomegranates
broken open like bloody relics of battle, pistachios scattered like pebbles on
a sea’s shore. Here, a great many of the exhausted Macht had set up a camp of
sorts, burning the market-stalls in their campfires and roasting anything
four-footed they could find over them. There were public wells at the four
corners of the square, and running up to each of these were ceaseless queues of
thirsty men bearing buckets, pots, and skins to fill for their centons. It was
orderly, in a way, though to the terrified inhabitants of the surrounding
district it must have seemed as though some great shambling beast of the
apocalypse had wandered into their world and collapsed with a tired groan.
Perhaps six thousand men were bedded down on the cobbles, their heads pillowed
on the ragged red rolls of their cloaks. They had all claimed their own centoi
again, and congregated round the black cauldrons like acolytes stunned by their
oracle. The pots were not being cooked in, but were full of drinking water. The
alleyways and streets leading up to the square were already stinking with the
army’s effluent, and centurions were clustering here and there, haranguing each
other about where each centon should piss. Tired men were almost as ready now
to fight each other as they had been to fight the Kufr, the uncertainty of
their plight finally looming through the receding haze of thirst and
exhaustion.
Gasca had been to
the Carnifex to have a wound stitched, but the charnel-house stench of the
buildings set aside for the wounded drove him away. Groups of gagging Kufr had
been pressed into disposal of the bodies, and were hauling them out of the city
on flat-bed wagons, to be burned down by the river. The walking wounded
rejoined their centons as soon as they could; in this heat, an injury gained in
the filth of the Kunaksa went bad very fast, and the flies choking the air
about the infirmaries were too fat and blue and insistent to keep from every
wound. Men were lying with maggots crawling upon their flesh, their eyes sunk
in blackened sockets of pain. Their comrades stayed with them as long as they
could bear it, but their fate was written in their eyes; already they could see
the land beyond the Veil.
The youngest, the
fittest, the most venturesome of the Macht were scattered throughout the city,
ostensibly to gather what supplies they could find. In reality there was a lot
of discreet looting going on. But from what Gasca had seen, it was not gold or
jewels the men were after, but footwear, clothing, weapons. Anything which
might speed their pilgrim way across the Empire. A mora was guarding the city
gates, but some of the Macht were making off across the walls, leaving Kaik,
their centons, their comrades, and striking out alone across the vastness of the
Empire, believing in the madness of their hearts that they could somehow trek
all the weary pasangs back to the Harukush. No one stopped these fools, and
nearly all who remained recognised them for that. But all the same, the army
was creaking and fraying and breaking down. There were a few would-be orators
in the main square, arguing that their contract was null and void now, and they
were no longer beholden to anyone but themselves. They would hold to their
centons for now, but some of them had begun to think in terms of their cities.
Lines were developing, even among the Cursebearers.
Gasca found the
Dogsheads close to the shade of the trees in the centre of the square, and was
handed a waterskin without a word. Bivouacked around them were the Dolphins and
the Blackbirds; these three centons had worked as one since the Abekai
crossing, and stuck together.
Astianos lifted up
a hand to shade his eyes. “You get it seen to?
“There were too
many. It’s not much more than a scratch anyways.”
“I’ll stitch it
for you later, if you like.”
“You can kiss my
arse.”
Astianos grinned.
He was Gasca’s opposite, as dark as the strawhead was light, and he had few
teeth left to fill out his smile. “Bend over, sweetie, and I’ll see what I can
do.”
“Even a Kufr arse
would be something to look upon right now,” big Gratus said with feeling. He
was Gasca’s file leader, and lay now with his hands clasped on his stomach.
“Go take your
pick; they’re all around,” said another.
“But let us watch,
Gratus,” old Demotes cackled. “I want to see what a Kufr makes of that skinny
little dog’s dick of yours.”
Desultory,
reflexive, the profanities were thrown out upon the air. These men had lately
fought two great battles, and had found themselves cut off two and a half
thousand pasangs from home, but give them a drink of water, and a few hours
sleep, and they would be trading insults again, just for the fun of it. Their
shoulders had been right next to Gasca’s through the Abekai, through Kunaksa.
Their aichmes had kept him alive, and he had taken blows meant for them on his
own shield. They had shared water with him when their own mouths were cracked
and dry for the lack of it. Sitting down upon his cloak, Gasca reflected that
the men on either side of him were more his brothers than those he had grown up
with. Whatever happened, he was glad he had come here, and had known this. He
thanked Antimone silently, whilst laughing at the obscenities thrown among them
like balls for boys to catch and fling back. It may be I’m meant to be here
after all, he thought.
Rictus found him
as the afternoon had begun to shade into the swift-dwindling twilight of the
lowlands. He stepped over sleeping bodies and picked his way across a carpet of
battered humanity until he stood over Gasca and held up a small skin. “Palm
wine,” he said. “Are you ready for it, or is this crowd still drinking water?”
“Make a space
there,” Astianos said, shoving the man sleeping next to him. “I’ve drunk enough
water to float my back teeth. I’ll have a slug of that, centurion, if you’re willing.”
Rictus tossed him the skin and squatted cross-legged before Gasca. He wore the
Curse of God over a Kufr chiton, and was barefoot.
“Jason told me you
had come through it,” he said.
“Strawhead luck,”
Gasca replied. They watched one another, not quite sure what to say. At last
Rictus spoke. “This is a long way from the Machran Road.”
“I never thought I’d
miss snow,” Gasca admitted.
“Did you piss
yourself this time?”
Gasca grinned. “Me
and every other one of these bastards here.” They smiled at each other, but the
smiles did not take.
“I just wanted to
be a spearman, like you,” Rictus said at last. “That’s all.”
Gasca gestured to
the black cuirass that fitted Rictus’s torso like a second skin. “You were born
for that, and for what you’re doing now. It’s plain to me. I don’t mind it at
all.”
Rictus stared at
him. He seemed in need of something, some word, a kind of forgiveness perhaps. “They’re
going to make me a skirmisher again, my own mora of lights. I don’t suppose you’d
want to come and—”
Gasca shook his
head. “My place is here, with this crowd. I belong here, Rictus, holding a
spear and following the man in front. It’s all I want.”
Rictus nodded. He
looked very young in the failing light, though as the dusk grew about them all
and the campfires took life from the dark, it was possible to see the lines and
bones graven in his face.
“Have a drink,
centurion. Antimone’s tits, what is this we have here? A love affair? Take it
somewheres else.” Astianos grinned, and thumped the wineskin against Rictus’s shoulder.