Authors: Paul Kearney
Within the yellow
cloud to the east, Vorus rode his old mare deep in thought, his eyes narrowed
against the dust. Inside the smoking fume of their passage he felt detached
from the army he led, and let the mare pick her way in the wake of the vanguard
with little more than a nudge of his heels every now and again to keep her on
her way. The scouts told him he was three days’ march behind his quarry, and no
matter how hard he pushed the troops, it seemed that gap never narrowed. He was
leading a dust-caked, phantom army of trudging ghosts, chasing something even
more phantasmal than themselves. Chasing an idea perhaps, a marching symbol
which with every step it took, broke open new thoughts among the people it
passed, among the people who had merely heard of it, and sowed garbled stories
of its journey. He was chasing down a myth.
So it seemed,
every evening, when he read the letters sent at horse-killing pace by Ashurnan
to plague the few moments of rest he allowed himself after the army had bedded
down for the night. The Great King had kept fifty thousand soldiers as his
bodyguard, hoarding the new levies which were still arriving in Pleninash and
encamping them around Kaik as if the Macht could somehow still surprise him
there. He had lost something: a kind of courage perhaps. Even through the
long-winded flowery language of the scribes, Vorus could read it. Ashurnan
wanted this thing done and over with and forgotten. He wanted to forget,
perhaps, the carnage of Kunaksa. His brother’s death. Why else send the corpse
of Arkamenes back to Ashur for a Royal funeral? Vorus would have fed it to the
jackals.
But there were
still enough here to do the job. The column in which Vorus rode was twelve
pasangs long. The van of it went into camp two hours before the rearguard every
night. And he still had the Asurian cavalry, six thousand of them. Every day
they rode out on the flanks and to the front, not so eager as they had been
once, nor so brilliantly turned out, either. Many were now mounted on local
scrub ponies, for the tall Niseians had died by the hundred at Kunaksa. But
they were still the best he had.
As for the rest,
there was a remnant of the Honai, which Vorus kept as his reserve and commanded
himself; the
hufsan
levies, still intact, though they hated the humid
flatness of the lands they were trekking across; and the three Juthan Legions,
twelve thousand of the squat, dour-handed warriors under Proxis. Close to fifty
thousand warriors, all told. And Vorus had Kefren officers out among the plains
cities day and night, conscripting more. He would need them. He would need them
all.
He left the column
and kicked his unwilling horse into a canter, eating up the ground alongside
the marching files. Near the head of the army he found the Juthan contingent,
their grey skin tawny with dust, halberds resting on their shoulders, shields
slung on their backs. He trotted along their ranks, staring into the lines of
squat, dust-caked warriors, as intent as if his eyes could somehow fathom what
was travelling through their heads. He almost ran into Proxis, who sat by the
side of the road on his slate-coloured mule, watching the legions pass by.
“We’re low on
water,” Proxis told him.
“Anaris is ten pasangs
away, and there are wells there. We halt before the city for the night.”
“The plains cities
have been supplying the Macht with fodder and water, all of them along the
road, all of them since the sack of Ab-Mirza.”
“I know.” The
knowledge had angered most of the army, and had made relations with the
city-governors tetchy. Feeding one army was bad enough, but when a second, five
times larger, turned up in the wake of the first, there was not much left to go
around.
“Will you punish
them?” Proxis asked. “The Great King would wish it so.”
“I will not sack
our own cities, not until Ashurnan expressly orders me to do so. They are our
people, Proxis.”
“Are they now?”
the Juthan said, and a grimace flitted across his broad face. “You’ve heard the
rumours from Junnan?”
“I have heard
them.” Vorus sat very still in his saddle. He did not look at his old friend,
but studied the marching files of Juthan as they marched past. Slave-soldiers,
hoping to earn their freedom through service in war; as Proxis had done twenty
years before, saving a general’s life on the battlefield. The general had been
Vorus.
“It may be that
once the Macht are destroyed you will have to move on to the Juthan,” Proxis
said.
“Many things may
happen,” Vorus said stiffly. “We cannot foresee all of them. We can only keep
putting one foot in front of the other.” If the rumours were true, then the
Juthan had risen in open rebellion, and the entire ancient province of Jutha
was lost to the Empire. The slave-race had rediscovered their pride at last,
and from the Gadinai Desert to the Jurid River they had expelled all Imperial
garrisons, even those rebel ones Arkamenes had installed in his passage though
the province. Rumours of battles, of bloodshed on a massive scale. The Empire
was creaking on its foundations.
“You have always
been my friend,” Proxis said. “You made me free.”
“You earned your
freedom. You saved my life at Carchanis.”
Proxis rubbed his
mule’s ears. He seemed about to say something, then stopped. That Juthan
reserve came down again. “As you say, we can only keep putting one foot in
front of the other.” He swung his mule around and joined the column of Juthan
troops, becoming part of that dun coloured crowd of trudging warriors. Vorus
watched him go, knowing now that some decision had just been made, and there
was nothing he could do about it.
Out of the western
horizon, the white-tipped peaks of the Korash Mountains rose now to stand stark
against every sunset. This was the province of Hafdaran. At long last, the
endless lowlands of the Middle Empire had been left behind. The land grew more
broken and rugged, with knots and fists of stone thrusting up through the soil
on all sides. Here, the irrigation systems of the plains came to a halt, for
the earth was poorer, and the local Kufr grazed herds upon it rather than
planting crops. These were
hufsan
folk in the main, the hill-peoples of
the Empire, and they lived in unwalled towns and sprawling villages rather than
fortified cities. They herded goats, sheep, upland cattle, and scrub ponies. As
the land rose, so the air grew cooler, and the Macht found themselves able to
breathe a little easier. The wind came off the mountains in dry waves,
flattening the upland grass and reminding them of their homeland. To the
thousands of marching men, it seemed that they must be drawing closer to
journey’s end, though those who had some notion of geography knew this to be
wishful thinking. As the crows flew, it was still twelve hundred pasangs to
Sinon.
The fortress-city
of Irunshahr rose up on a spur of outlying rock from one of the lower Korash
peaks. It overlooked the Irun Gates, the only way through the mountains to the
wide lands of the Outer Empire beyond. Within sight of the city the Macht
halted, set up camp, and sent out foraging parties to scour the land around for
anything four-footed which might be put in the pot. To their rear, Jason posted
the morai of Aristos and Mynon to keep an eye on the pursuing Kufr army. They
had marched over a thousand pasangs in the last five weeks, following the Imperial
Road as if it had been constructed to speed their passage out of the Empire. In
the lowlands it was summer now, while up here in the hills the gorse was in
full blossom, and there were bees by the million crawling around the
heather-strewn slopes and amid the rocks. Overhead, the great raptors of the
Korash foothills circled endlessly, wide-winged sentinels of the mountains.
“This is good
ground,” Jason said. All the generals of the army were clustered about him on
the hillside, leaning on their spears.
“This is where we
fight. We have two days before the enemy comes up. I want a position prepared
here, where the hills break up into stone. We will place our line along these
heights and let him come to us. If we break up his army here, he will take a
long time to reorganise, and we will use that time to get through the
mountains.” Jason paused and looked his companions up and down.
“Any thoughts,
brothers?”
Mynon spoke up. “The
city has closed its gates behind us. We’ll need to watch our rear. Irunshahr
has a garrison; they may well sortie out in the middle of the battle, just to
annoy us.”
“Agreed. Aristos,
your mora is to remain to the rear of the main battle line, both as a reserve,
and to guard against any mischief. Rictus, your lights will be back there with
him, and behind you will be the baggage train. The enemy still has a large
force of cavalry. I don’t want your men engaging them, or they’ll get cut up
like at Kunaksa. Leave the horse to the spears. Clear?” Rictus nodded. He and
Aristos looked at one another for a second. Jason saw the hatred between them,
and wondered if he were being a naive fool, making them work together. Even men
who loathed each other sometimes found the unlikeliest of likings developing on
the battlefield. He hoped it might be so.
“The main body
will deploy on this hill south of the road,” Jason went on. “My mora will be on
the extreme left, next to the road. Mochran, you will be the right-most mora.
Watch your flank; there’s nothing beyond your right but grass and stones. Every
mora is to keep one full centon to the rear of its line, as a reserve. No one
breaks rank without orders, not even if their entire army turns and runs. Don’t
forget their cavalry. We lose formation, and they’ll hunt us down one by one.
Tonight we sleep in camp, everyone eats a good meal, and we sleep like babies.
In the morning we take up our positions, wait for the Kufr to come to us, and
with luck they’ll soon be crying like babies.” There was a rustle of laughter,
an echo of fellowship.
“If the line
breaks,” Jason went on, “then we reform it. We plug the holes, and we stand on
these stones and fight until the day is won, or we are all dead. There is
nowhere to run to. Any questions?”
“Who looks after
the baggage?” Rictus asked.
“I’ve culled two
centons from the front-line morai, lightly wounded, footsore, and chronic
shifters. They’ll stay with the wagons.”
“And the gold,”
big Gominos said, grinning.
They stood looking
at one another, until Aristos said, roughly; “Let’s get the damn thing done
then,” and the group of men broke up. Jason remained on the hilltop as they
walked down the slope to their waiting morai. Even now, they separated into two
distinct groups which seemed to take form around Aristos and Rictus. Once the
spearheads were levelled, he prayed they would come together.
THE LAST OF THE WINE
Mid-morning
brought the army in sight of the hills before Irunshahr. On the ridge-line
before the city Vorus finally found his quarry standing at bay, a line of heavy
infantry over a pasang long, their ranks undulating about every outcrop of
weather-beaten stone to the south of the Imperial Road. Here, then, was where
it would end.
He reined in, the
placid mare chewing at the bit under him, throwing up her head as if she, too,
could smell what was on the wind. He turned to Proxis. “We have them.”
“So we have,”
Proxis said. He had been drinking, but his eyes were clear. “My legions are in
the van—we’ll take up the left, and then the rest can file in to our right.”
“Very well. I’ll
send the cavalry out that way, and see if we can feel round their flank. The
gods go with you, Proxis.” Vorus extended his hand.
The Juthan leaned
over in the saddle and took it in the warrior-grip, fingers curled round Vorus’s
wrist. “May they watch over us both,” he said.
Noon came and
went. Up on the hillside the lines of Macht infantry relaxed, eating their
midday meal in shifts, barley bannock and cheese and the last of the wine.
Below them the Kufr marched and counter-marched, their officers chivvying the
tired troops along, the regiments fed into the line as they came up the
Imperial Road. When at last they were in place it was mid-afternoon, and for a
while the two armies stared at one another as in between them the bees
clustered about the heather and the scrub juniper, and skylarks sang above
their heads, heedless of anything but the warmth of the sun and the clear
infinity of blue sky about them.
It reminded Vorus
of his youth, late spring in the hills about Machran when at long last the
snows eased their grip on the northern world. It had been a long time since he
had breathed upland air and smelled gorse-blossom on the breeze. As he sat his
horse to the rear of the Kufr centre, he felt a moment of pure clarity, a sense
of exactly how the world was turning under him. At that moment he wanted to
dismiss these soldiers of his to their homes and send word to the Macht that
they might march away in peace. What was it, this notion of duty, of loyalty,
of Empire, that kept them standing here in their tens of thousands, that would
see this lovely summer’s day soon broken up into a wilderness of bloody
slaughter? What would it gain the world, the mountains, the very stones under
their feet, to have these thousands shed their blood upon them?
In the next moment
he had the answer. Twenty years of duty, of loyalty, of service. Those were
worth something. If a man could not keep hold of those qualities, keep them in
sight through all the murderous absurdities of his condition, then he was not
much of a man at all.
Vorus turned to
the banner-bearer beside him, a tall Kefre with skin of gold. “Signal the
advance,” he said.
In the Macht
baggage camp the wagons were loaded and waiting, and the patient oxen stood
flicking their ears at the flies. The Juthan slaves were strapping up the last
packs of the mule-train watched by a small skeleton guard of Macht, older men,
wounded men, and those for whom the flux had become a debilitating condition
which had sucked the flesh off their bones. Tiryn sat atop her wagon and peered
east, to where the land rose and the momentary glitter of the Macht spearheads
could be seen at the top of the ridge-line. Kunaksa in reverse, she thought.
Today, we have the high ground.