Corvus

ELEVEN

Rictus stood at the forefront of his men with his helm cradled in one arm. His shield was leaning against his planted spear in the front rank. All of the Dogsheads were in battle-line, shields resting against their knees, helms off, enjoying a last feel of the air on their faces, a look at the sky.

They were back of the front line, and the ground was a little drier here on the rising slope leading east along the Imperial Road to the camp. Up front, the ranks of spears had already trampled the sodden earth into an ankle-deep mire simply by getting into formation. Most of the men were barefoot despite the chill of the day, for the plain ahead of them would suck the best-strapped footwear off a man’s feet in a few minutes of fighting.

In front of the red-cloaked mercenaries, Corvus’s army had shaken out into battle formation, a line of infantry some two pasangs long.

Not long enough, Rictus thought. He’ll be outflanked on one side, maybe both. What the hell does he have in mind?

The cavalry had left their horses back in camp and stood beside the Dogheads. There were some two thousand of them under Ardashir, the orphaned prince. They were shieldless, armed with lances and drepanas, clad in the short corselet of the horseman. They were not equipped for phalanx fighting; against a line of heavily armoured spearmen they would be massacred.

Though it had to be admitted, they did lend an exotic sort of variety to the sombre, mud-coloured army. They seemed to vie with one another to own the gaudiest cloaks and most outrageous helmet-crests. And most of them were Kufr, head and shoulders taller than the Macht, their skin seeming almost to glow in the pale autumn sunlight. Ardashir their leader stood out in front of them, leaning on the long, wicked lance of the Companions, his cloak folded around him.

Corvus was on horseback, riding along the front of his troops and making a speech that Rictus could not hear. The men clashed their shields in response to it, and a full-throated roar travelled the length of the line.

Nine thousand heavy spearmen, over half of them conscripts from the conquered cities of the eastern seaboard led by one-eyed Demetrius, the rest dependable veterans under young Teresian. On their left, two to three thousand Igranians under Druze, whose left arm was in a sling, but who was not going to miss this for the world.

As if he could feel Rictus’s contemplation, Druze turned around, out on the left, and raised his javelin in salute, his dark grin visible even at that distance. Rictus raised a hand in return.

On the right, nothing. Corvus had his right flank up in the air, and that was the flank held by Demetrius and his conscript spears. It was as though he was inviting them to collapse. True, the dismounted Companions were there to the rear, but they would not be able to stop a serious rout.

Across the flashing gleam of the waterlogged plain, the army of the Avennan League had almost finished shaking out its line. They had been at it for hours now; the men’s freshness would be gone.

It was one thing to set up a line when a single city’s troops were involved, when the men knew each other and their officers. It was quite another to co-ordinate the interlocking phalanxes of twenty different cities, with their own rivalries, their petty politics, their vying for prestige and advantage. Rictus had seen it on a small scale over a lifetime of warfare; he could imagine what a colossal pain in the arse it would be to command twenty thousand half-drilled citizen soldiers with their own ideas about how they should be deployed. Even Demetrius’s conscripts were better trained than the spearmen he saw standing in half-dressed lines opposite.

But they had numbers on their side. More than that, they were fighting for something they believed in. That counted for a lot in war. It was why the Ten Thousand had been victorious at Kunaksa; the choice had been to win or die.

Fornyx blew his nose on his fingers and flicked the snot away. He was still angry about the antics of the night before, about fighting here in this swamp, about being held in the rear.

“Well,” he said, “you got your war.”

“Yes, I got it,” Rictus answered.

“What does the little bastard intend to do, do you think, Rictus? He was closeted with Demetrius and Teresian all morning. You think he means to give battle?”

“Truthfully? I don’t know. He won’t refuse one – that’s not in his nature. But look at that ground, Fornyx – you want to advance across that?”

“It’s not fit for man nor beast,” Fornyx grimaced.

“Well, then I suppose Corvus has a plan.”

“That’s all right then.”

Corvus had travelled the length of the line from north to south. He halted now in front of Druze, and bent in the saddle to speak to the chief of the Igranians. They saw Druze nodding, and Corvus set a hand on his shoulder, then cantered through the open formless crowd of the skirmishers, raising a hand to acknowledge their cheers, pointing at one or two of them and reining in to exchange witticisms which set many of them roaring with laughter.

“He can work a crowd, the little bugger, I’ll give him that,” Fornyx admitted.

Leading a line of mounted aides like a kite trailing its tail, Corvus cantered over to the Dogsheads and reined in. Like Rictus, he had not slept at all the night before, but he looked fresh as a bridegroom.

“At least it’s not raining,” he said, dismounting and clapping his horse on the neck with great affection.

“You think they’re going to join battle?” Fornyx asked him bluntly.

Corvus smiled. “Brother,” he said, “before the sun climbs to noon, they’re going to be right in our laps.”

Druze’s Igranians moved out, an orderless crowd of ambling men picking its way across the flooded farmland like a great herd of migrating animals. It still wanted some two hours until noon, and the sun was at their backs. There was no urgency to them; they were like men strolling home after meeting at the assembly.

Rictus could see them talking amongst themselves as they advanced, and lightly armed as they were, they did not break up the soft ground as a formation of spearmen would. He saw them as a mass of dark speckles on the land, swallowed up here and there by the sunlit glare of the lying water.

“Stay by me,” Corvus said to him, his face grave now, eyes fixed on the enemy line only some two and a half pasangs away, the tented camp rising like a mud-coloured city behind it. “I want your Dogsheads ready to slot in anywhere along the line.”

“What’s Druze to do?” Fornyx asked him.

“He’s going to pick a fight.”

The Igranians picked up speed, like a flock of birds all of one mind. They were moving out to the south, to threaten the enemy’s right flank; the unshielded side.

There was a corresponding ruffle of movement in the lines of spearmen there; a row of bronze shields caught the sun one after another in a series of bright flashes. Then Druze led his men in to javelin range -a hundred paces, maybe – and Rictus saw their right arms go back, their bodies arced for the throw. It was too far away to see the missiles go home, but the glitter of enemy shields catching the sun came and went, flickering like summer lightning upon the sea.

“That’s really going to piss them off,” Fornyx said, with a grin of sheer relish in his beard.

“I thought they needed a prod,” Corvus said. “The morning’s a wasting.”

There was always something almost joyful about watching a battle from a distance, Rictus thought. First, you were glad you were not there, in the middle of it with the iron tearing at your own flesh. But it could almost be like a sport, too. One could study the moves of the players with detachment, see the evolutions of the phalanxes with a clear eye, rise above the packed murderous terror of the othismos and survey things with real clarity.

And with a flash of epiphany, Rictus realised something about Corvus.

That is how he sees it, all the time. That detachment, that clear-sightedness.

The enemy spearmen were breaking ranks by centon, sending out detachments to try and come to grips with Druze’s men, but the lightly armed Igranians evaded them like wolves dancing away from the horns of a bull. As the centons withdrew again, the Igranians closed in. For a few minutes they had actually closed with the enemy hand to hand. Fornyx whistled softly at the sight.

“Those bastards have balls like walnuts.”

“An Igranian must kill a mountain-lion before he is considered a man,” Corvus said. “They belong to an older time, when the Macht did not feel the need to congregate in cities. Igranon itself has no walls; it’s little more than a glorified trading post.”

“A hard people to tame,” Rictus said, raising one eyebrow.

Corvus shook his head. “I did not tame the Igranians, Rictus; I merely earned their respect. Their trust.” He watched the distant fight with his curious pale eyes. “You have that, and they will follow you anywhere.”

The Igranians broke off the battle, wheeling away from the League army. They had cut several centons to pieces; Rictus had been able to make out men running back to their own lines without shields.

In rear of the enemy battle-line, there was now a strong column marching from north to south.

“He’s reinforcing his right,” Corvus said. “Good.” He turned to one of his aides, seating on a snorting horse. “Marco, go to Teresian, and tell him it is time.”

“Yes Corvus.” The fellow kicked his horse into a whinnying canter and the mud from its hooves spattered them all as he took off.

“The curtain rises,” Corvus said. “Look, brothers. We finally woke them up.”

The enemy army was on the move, that vast snake of men undulating forward over the plain. Faint at first, and then louder, there came the sound of the Paean.

The advance was ragged, halting. Some of the League’s contingents were better ordered than others and had to mark time while their comrades caught up. In the middle, a great body of spearmen remained in good order throughout, many thousands. They were the core. The men on the flanks were not as well drilled, but they presented a fearsome sight for all that.

“That is Machran, in the centre,” Corvus said. “See the sigils?” It was too far for Rictus to make out, but he nodded.

“Their polemarch is Kassander, an ex-mercenary and close friend of Karnos himself. He has trained the spearmen of Machran well – so far as a citizen army goes. Karnos is wise enough to know he is an orator, not a soldier, but he’s a good judge of men, by all accounts, and he can charm the birds off the trees when he has a mind to.

“I want him to die today.”

“I’m sure he feels the same way about you,” Fornyx drawled, and Corvus laughed.

Their own army had begun to move now. On the left, Teresian was taking forward the veteran spears, four thousand men in eight ranks. Their line extended some half pasang, and they too began to sing the Paean as they advanced. Rictus watched their dressing with the close attention of a professional, and he had to grudgingly admit to himself that they were not half bad.

The conscript spears under Demetrius remained immobile, stubbornly refusing to move. Alarmed, Fornyx grabbed Corvus by the arm, his black beard bristling.

“Half your spearline is still asleep, Corvus.”

“No. This has all been set in train by my hand, Fornyx. Be patient. Enjoy the view. When was the last time you were able to stand and watch history being made?”

It was quite a sight, indeed. Thirty thousand men were on the move now across the plain in various formations. To the south, Druze’s Igranians were pulling back, and the League’s reinforced right wing was making good time, though their ranks were not all they might be; the soft ground was scrambling them. Teresian’s veterans were marching out to meet them, veering left as they advanced. An oblique. Only good, disciplined troops could accomplish such a manoeuvre.

Finally, Demetrius’s conscripts began to move. Their line was as untidy as that of the enemy, and there was a widening gap between them and Teresian. The two bodies of spearmen advanced separately on the enemy. In the centre there was nothing but a growing hole.

“Phobos,” Fornyx whispered.

Valerian joined them, out of breath. He hauled off his helm, his lopsided face burning with urgency. “Rictus – Corvus – for the love of God, look at the line! We’re broke in two before we even begin!”

Corvus held up his hand. “Do not concern yourself, centurion – get back to your men and stand-to. I shall be wanting you presently.”

His whole attention was fixed on the moving bodies of men out on the plain. There was none of his flashing levity now; he was as solemn as a statue.

But his eyes blazed, like a gambler watching the fall of the dice.

“Rictus!” Valerian protested.

“Do as he says,” Rictus said quietly. “Shields up, Valerian.”

The young man stamped off unhappily, but a few moments later the order rang out and the Dogsheads lifted their shields onto their shoulders, donned their helms, and worked their spears side to side to loosen the sauroters in the sucking ground. Rictus’s heart began to quicken in his chest, pushing against the confines of Antimone’s Gift. He and Fornyx stood silent, watching as Corvus sent couriers out to right and left, young men on tall horses beating the animals into gallops that sent clods of muck flying through the air like birds.

“Rictus,” Corvus said, turning back to the mercenaries. “What is it the Dogsheads can do that citizen soldiers cannot?”

“We can die needlessly, that’s for damned sure,” Fornyx murmured.

“We can advance at the run,” Rictus said.

Corvus nodded. “I like to read. Have you heard of Mynon?”

“He was a general of the Ten Thousand. He made it home.”

“He wrote it all down, some fifteen years ago, before dying in some stupid little war up near Framnos. I read his story, Rictus; they had it in the library at Sinon, copied out fair by a good scribe. He talked of Kunaksa, how it was won, what you all did that day.”

The Paean rose and rose, tens of thousands of voices singing it now all across the plain. Druze was taking his men in again, harassing the enemy’s southern flank once more, and Teresian’s spears were going in alongside him. The enemy line was skewed and slanted to meet this threat.

A gasping courier reined in before them.

“Ardashir is ready, Corvus.”

Corvus cocked his head to one side, like a crow eyeing a corpse.

“Tell him to go.”

The courier galloped off like a man possessed, a youngster bursting with the enthusiasm of his age.

“At Kunaksa, the Kefren had thousands of archers, who should by rights have shot the Ten Thousand to pieces before they closed – am I right?”

“What is this, a fucking history lesson?” Fornyx demanded.

“We went in at a run. They hit us with the first volley, but by the time they’d readied a second we were already at their throats,” Rictus said. He had not been a spearman that day, but he remembered watching, seeing the morai go in.

“Citizen soldiers cannot advance at the run, or they lose their formation,” Corvus said, and he shrugged.

“Now watch.”

There was a long line of movement out to their right, in the ranks of the dismounted Companions. Ardashir led a solid mass of his command forward, following in the wake of Demetrius’s slowly advancing conscripts. There was something odd about them, Rictus noted.

“Kufr,” Fornyx said. “He’s taking in all the Kufr. Corvus, this won’t -”

“Shut up,” Corvus said.

Some sixteen hundred Kufr, tall Kefren of the Asurian race, who had, like all their fellows, been brought up to do three things. They had been taught how to ride a horse, how to tell the truth… and how to shoot a bow.

They cast aside their brightly coloured cloaks, left them lying on the mud, and from their backs they pulled the short recurved composite bows of Asuria. They had quiver-fulls of arrows at their hips, and at a shouted command from Ardashir they nocked these to their bowstrings.

Ardashir raised his scimitar, a painfully bright flash of steel. He held it upright one moment, watching the battlefield to come, the advancing League spearmen on the plain before him. They were perhaps four hundred paces away.

In front of him, Demetrius’s gruff voice rang out, and the conscripts halted.

A shouted command in Asurian, the tongue of the Empire, and following it a heartbeat later came the sweeping whistle of the arrows, some one and a half thousand of them arcing up in the air over Teresian’s spears, to come down like a black hail on the advancing enemy.

That is the sound, Rictus thought. That is what I heard that day.

A staccato hammering as the broadheads struck bronze, the individual impacts merging to form a hellish, explosive din of metal on metal.

Scores of men went down. The line of advancing shields buckled, faltered, the ranks merging, breaking, gaps appearing up and down, men tripping over bodies, men screaming, cursing, shouting orders.

And moments later the second volley hit them.

It was like watching a vast animal staggered by the wind. Some men were still advancing, others had halted and were trying to lift the heavy shields up to counter this unlooked-for hail of death. Others were standing in place with the black shafts buried in their limbs, tugging on them, looking to left and right, shouting in fear and fury. Centurions were seizing the irresolute, thumping helmed heads with their fists, moving forward out of the mass of stalled spearmen, urging them on.

A third volley.

The ground was thick with the dead and the wounded. These soldiers were small farmers, tradesmen, family men. There were fathers and sons on the field, brothers, uncles. Some of the untouched spearmen were dropping their arms to help relatives, neighbours. Hundreds fell back, but a core came on regardless of casualties. They were Macht, after all.

Corvus was watching it all with a kind of grim satisfaction, but at least he did not seem to relish the developing massacre. If he had – if he had shown any kind of pleasure at the sight – Rictus would have killed him on the spot.

“And now, Demetrius,” Corvus said quietly.

Rictus had lost count of the volleys, but the others had not. The conscript spears began advancing again, five thousand of them moving to meet what had been a line of six thousand League troops. The odds were evened out now, but more than that, the League forces were little more than a mob, a snarled-up confusion of armed men struggling in a mire which their own feet were deepening with every minute.

“That should do it on our right,” Corvus said. He turned to look south.

Teresian was about to make contact with the enemy right, and Druze was supporting him, worrying at the end of the enemy line, his cloud of skirmishers partially enveloping it. He was working round the back of the League army while they advanced steadily to meet the spearmen to their front.

Even as they watched, they heard the roar and crash as the two bodies of heavy spears met, bronze smashing against bronze, spearheads seeking unprotected flesh. Two bulls meeting head on -Rictus could feel the ground quiver under his own feet at the clash of armour.

As soon as the enemy was committed to the attack, Druze led his men north behind the line. The Igranians split in two. Half pitched into the rear of the enemy phalanx that was now irretrievably entangled with Teresian’s veterans. The other half – almost fifteen hundred men – kept going north, parallel to the League battle-line – towards the rear of the enemy centre.

That centre was now almost upon them. These were the best of the League troops, the levies from Machran under Kassander. Seven thousand men in good order, they had paused as Corvus launched his army on the wings, seemingly unable to believe that there was nothing facing them but the empty plain. Now they were advancing again. They could pitch in to either one of the two separate battles that were now raging to north and south.

Corvus turned to Rictus. “I have a job for you, brother, you and your Dogsheads.” He pointed at the long line of shields bearing the machios sigil.

“I want you to take your Dogsheads and hit those fellows as hard as you can.”

“You’re not serious,” Fornyx breathed.

“You have only to halt them in their tracks, hold them a little while, bloody their noses a little. You have to buy me time.” He gestured to the north and south. “We will beat them on the flanks, and then come and meet you in the centre. And Druze is already in the rear of the Machran morai – as soon as he sees you going forward, he will attack. And Ardashir will support you also.”

“I’m like to lose half my men,” Rictus said, staring Corvus in the face.

“Fight smart, Rictus – don’t get enveloped. All you have to do is poke them in the eye.”

The thunder of the battle rose and rose. The critical point of it was approaching – Rictus could feel it, like he could feel the loom of winter in his ageing bones. Was Corvus trying to have him killed? He did not believe it. No – he was simply moving the knucklebones on the board, using what he had. Sentiment did not even, enter into it.

Rictus pulled on his crested helm, reducing his world to a slot of light.

“Very well,” he said.

“One more thing,” Corvus added, tossing up his hand as though it were an afterthought.

“What?”

“I’ll be going in with you.”

For Karnos the world had become a strange and fearsome place. He was the fifth man in an eight-deep file, one cog in the great machine that was the army of Machran, which in turn was but part of the forces assembled here today. He alternated between an inexplicable exhilaration and bowel-draining apprehension.

This, the greatest clash of armies in a generation, was his first battle.

In earlier years he had drilled on the fields below the Mithos River along with the other men of his class, but since his elevation to the Kerusia he had not so much as lifted a spear. He was Speaker of Machran, as high as one could be in the ruling hierarchy of the city, but on the battlefield he was the same rank as all the other sweating men in the spear-files. Here, Katullos the Cursebearer commanded a mora – Kassander, the entire levy – but he, Karnos, commanded only himself. He found it unbelievable now that he had overlooked something so basic -incredible that he was included in this anonymous horde like every other citizen.

Gestrakos and Ondimion, who had set the world alight with their intellect and their art, had fought as humble foot-soldiers also, so he was in good company. But that did not ease the weight of his armour, the burden of the bronze-faced shield and the dozen aches and scratches that his barely-worn cuirass inflicted on his torso.

He was fat, unfit, and desperately aware of his own martial ignorance. His only consolation in all of this was that he was fifth man from the front. No-one had ever told him that the men in the middle of the files took the heaviest casualties, which was why the most inexperienced were placed there, sandwiched between the veteran file leaders and closers.

And around him was the army, these myriads which surely no -

“Advance! On me – one, two – left!”

Kassander’s voice, somewhere in front and to his right. He was only a few paces away, but packed in the ranks of the phalanx he might as well have been on the far side of the world.

The man behind Karnos cursed him. “Get in step, you fat fuck. And watch that sauroter; you poke me with it one more time and I swear I’ll break it off and jam it up your arse.”

Laughter rattled along the files. “Ostros, don’t you know who you’re talking to?”

“That’s the Speaker, you stupid fuck!”

“Karnos – tell us – how many slave-girls do you have a night, eh?”

“You horny old bastard – I hear tell you’ve nothing but naked cunny to wait on you night and day!”

Breathing heavily, Karnos found the air to shout, “they smell better than you rotten bastards, that’s for damned sure.”

“I’ll take a bath, Karnos, and then you can suck my cock.”

The anonymity of the crowd, the faceless helmeted heads; here was the citizenship of Machran, where all men were equal under bronze. It made Karnos remember a time when he had been nothing more than a quick-thinking slave dealer with a big mouth and a memory for faces. For a few minutes, tossing the filth and the insults back and forth, he was almost enjoying himself.

A great sound erupted from the front ranks, like a massive groan. The men in the rear began shouting forward. “What the fuck’s going on – you lads -what do you see?”

“They have archers,” someone yelled back. “The Afteni and Arkadians are getting hammered.”

“Phobos! They’re really getting fucked! Where the hell are the Arienans? Bastards should be on our right.”

They were still advancing, but slowly now, stop and start. Finally the halt was called. Karnos could see nothing but the men in front and to either side – he could not so much as turn around, and the close-fitting helm filled his head with a sound like the rush of the sea. As he stood, he worked his feet in the mud, feeling himself sinking into it. His feet were numb with cold, but despite that the chiton he wore under his cuirass was soaked with sweat, and his throat was parched – and the battle had not yet begun.

Yes, it had. He could hear it now. A surf of noise rising up around him – it was almost impossible to guess which direction it came from. He heard sharp above the roar the screams of men in a last extremity of pain and fear, and a hammering of metal.

“Front rank, level spears!” came the order. Kassander again. “Centurions, hold together -prepare to advance – advance!”

And they were off again, but more quickly this time, the files shuffling into a fast march with the centurions calling out the time. “One, two, one, two – pick it up there!”

“It’s redcloaks – mercenaries!” someone shouted at the front.

His head bobbing from side to side in the bronze helm, Karnos caught glimpses of the world beyond the phalanx, and saw something coming towards them, something with glittering teeth and shining in bronze and scarlet. He heard the Paean being sung – but not by his own side. What in the hell was -

An enormous crash. He was brought to a full stop, piling into the man in front. Behind him, the weight of the three men of the file crushed him, the cuirass fighting the pressure. He thought he would faint. He could see faces – helmed men facing the wrong way – Phobos -they were facing him! And then the adder-strikes of spearheads. He saw an aichme come lancing through the ranks in front of him to bury itself in a man’s head and then snap off. The man was borne along by the press for a few minutes, and then slid out of sight. The file closed the gaps, the pressure unrelenting.

This is it, Karnos thought. This is what the stories are for, what the poetry is about. I am here in the middle of it at last.

The pressure and the fear emptied his bladder, and the piss ran hot down his legs, but he barely noticed.

“Level your fucking spear!” the man behind him shouted, and he hefted the weapon horizontal on his shoulder, feeling the sauroter tear into flesh behind him as he brought it up. He rested the long weapon on the wing of the file-leader’s cuirass for a second, getting used to the balance of it, and then thrust forward into the red-cloaked mass that faced him. The spearpoint jarred, the whole shaft quivering in his fist as he struck a shield.

He tried again, aiming for a helm-slot, but struck empty air. A spear came the other way, the two shafts clashing together as they met. The aichme dunted him in the forehead, rasped along the crestbox and snapped his head back. He would have fallen were it not for the men behind him pushing into the small of his back. His eyes were full of tears. There was something wet inside his helm and he did not know whether it was blood or sweat.

He stabbed again, angry now, and from his chest there came that hoarse animal roaring that had no thought behind it but was a base response, a defiant bellow of rage. Thousands of men were making it -it was part of every battlefield. It rose now and filled the air above them, as deafening as the blacksmith’s clatter of iron on bronze. This was the othismos, the bowels of war itself.

They were advancing, step by step, and mixed in with the wordless bellowing were cries of triumph. Karnos stepped over a body, glanced down quickly and saw a red cloak on the ground. He stepped on the man’s body and it moved under his feet, still warm.

He vomited, with the sensation and the heat of the press and the singing sound in his head. The vomit ran down his fine ornate cuirass unheeded, one more stink among many. The fluids of mens’ insides were running into the muck at their feet, and making of it a terrible mire. They plunged their dogged way through it, calf-deep.

The sandal was sucked off Karnos’s right foot, but trailed behind him, its strap entangled in his greave, until someone behind him trod on it and snapped it free. They were still advancing. Up front, someone shouted, “They’re pulling back!” and a growl of triumph tore through the files. But seconds later someone else shouted, “Arrows – they’re shooting at us!”

The long black clothyards of the Kefren poured down upon them. As if in a dream, Karnos saw an arrow strike the helm of the man in front and flick up into the air, jerking his head to one side. Most of the men were wearing cuirasses of stiff, layered linen, and Karnos watched in horrified fascination as the arrows came arcing down like black snakes and clear through the wings of the armour, burying themselves in men’s shoulders, smashing collar-bones.

A new cry, from behind this time. A javelin flew over Karnos’s head – he saw the cold gleam of the iron point not a foot from his eyes. The file-closers were shouting. “About face! The bastards are behind us, brothers!”

The phalanx was losing its cohesion, men turning this way and that, desperate to see what was going on. The advance stalled and the lines intermingled. Packed close together by the threats to front and rear, the men of Machran stood irresolute, frightened, angry. The centurions were bellowing orders like men possessed, but the spearmen in the ranks seemed as unresponsive as cattle.

The sweat running down the small of Karnos’s back went icy cold. This was not how it was supposed to be. There was no order now, and even the centurions were beginning to look about themselves in growing panic. How had -

A crash to the front – the fearsome red-cloaked mercenaries had hammered into their face again, laying on the pressure. The air was crushed out of Karnos’s chest as the crowd tightened, recoiling on itself. Some men tripped and went down, unwounded, and were then trampled to suffocation in the deepening mud at their feet.

Karnos looked at the sky, the black arrows raining across it. The press of men tilted this way and that, battered on all sides. He heard the roar and clash of a fresh onset off to his left, and the entire phalanx shuddered as though it had taken a body-blow. Someone shouted that the left wing had been routed, and then a few moments later some other idiot insisted it was the right wing.

It did not matter – they were pinned here like a turtle on its back. The cohesiveness of the phalanx might have gone, but the pure brute weight of meat and metal remained. It was being packed tighter on itself.

Karnos’s feet were dragged from the mud, sucking as the press shifted and took him with it. He gasped for air, and beat down the impulse to scream for space, for room to move and breathe. For the first time, the reality of his own death began to crowd his mind.

And the pressure began to ease. The sea-roar of noise – in his helm changed, picked up a note. Oh, thank Antimone, the crowd was opening out. The tide had turned, it seemed; this was the way it was supposed to happen after all. Victory was still there, in the air. In his relief, he felt he could almost taste it.

Men were throwing down their shields and tearing off their helms, shouting about betrayal and defeat. The phalanx, which a few moments before had seemed a brute, packed, immovable thing, now began to fall apart. As men abandoned their bronze burdens, so they became more mobile, and somewhere out at the edges of the formation, or what was left of it, they were running.

They were running away. Karnos stared in disbelief so utter that it cancelled out the bowel-draining fear. “No! No!” he screamed. All Machran was here in front of him, seven thousand men, the heart of the greatest city in the Macht world – and it was bleeding to death in the churned muck, or in flight right in front of his horrified eyes.

He sagged as the men about him moved away. A shield, dropped by his neighbour, struck his anklebone an agonising blow. He raised his head to shriek his pain and his anger at the cold sky, and the falling arrow lanced cleanly through the right wing of his cuirass, sinking into his shoulder with an impact that sent him reeling on his back into the bloody mire below.