Kings of Morning

ELEVEN

From Irunshahr the army uncoiled and began to march east. The raven banner snapped in the wind on the topmost tower of the fortress, and they were cheered to the echo by the three thousand Macht left behind to hold Corvus’s latest acquisition. At their head was Valerian, the Dogshead with the ruined face who had once loved Rictus’s daughter.

His appointment was a promotion, but he had not taken it well. All his adult life, Valerian had marched with Rictus and Fornyx and the Dogsheads. He was one of the originals, an almost extinct breed. But now he was to live in a palace with three whole morai to command and a city to administer, and it seemed almost like a punishment. Because he was going to miss out on the great fight to come, a battle to ring down the ages as Kunaksa had.

On Corvus’s orders, Rictus had persuaded him to take the command. There had been a time when he would have liked nothing better than to see his daughter marry the scarred young man with the gentle spirit, who had seemed already a son to him. But that was all in the past now. Rian was swimming strong within the tide of her own life, and Valerian was a good enough man not to resent it. He was also utterly trustworthy. Even Rictus had not been able to come up with a more fitting occupant for the post. If it came to it, Valerian would die on the walls of Irunshahr rather than open the gates to anyone save Rictus and his king.

But it was something of a blow, nonetheless, to march away once more with the ranks of those he trusted that little bit thinner. And the Dogsheads felt it too. Kesero, the big, bluff whorechaser who had been the banner-bearer these ten years, was moved up to second-in command under Fornyx.

Rictus’s status within the army was increasingly nebulous, but it was generally recognised that if Corvus were ever brought low, it would be Rictus’s task to take command. Even Demetrius did not dispute that. But it did leave Rictus sometimes feeling a little bereft. Fornyx commanded the Dogsheads just as well as Rictus ever had, which was hardly surprising, since Rictus had moulded and trained up the younger man from an early age. And Rictus found himself as much a quartermaster-general and military sounding-board to Corvus as anything else.

The role of wise counsellor was beginning to grate on him. He might find it difficult to crack his limbs into movement some cold mornings, but he still had a good fight or two left in him. He could still stand in the front rank if he had to.

Down the Imperial Road the infantry marched, ten abreast, while the cavalry and Druze’s Igranians went ahead and spied out the lie of the land, and noted those regions which were rich in foodstuffs and livestock. As the infantry marched east, so herds of cattle and goats were hustled west, to join the moving larder in the midst of the baggage train. And Corvus sent small mounted parties out to the south, also, to watch for any word of King Proxanon and his five legions.

Two weeks, they travelled like this, living off the land like a tide of locusts, but such were the riches of Pleninash that they did not leave starvation in their wake, and Corvus kept the men on a tight leash. Only once did he have to rear up the gibbet and gather the army in to witness punishment. Three men, conscripts, had left the line of march to raid a farm and force themselves on a hufsa woman they found there. Their centurion hunted them down, and Corvus hanged them without hesitation or pity, and left their bodies dangling for the crows while the whole army was marched past. This was the same affable young man who went up and down the column every day inquiring after their welfare, who told them dirty stories around the campfires at night. His face as the men died on the gibbet was marked by many; a grim white mask that seemed somehow not human at all.

There was no more straggling after that, and there were no more unanswered names at the morning roll calls.

If there was a thing missing, which rattled with every member of the army, high and low, it was the absence of the enemy. Along the Imperial Road, which led them like a ribbon tied to the beating heart of the empire, the troops took the surrender of two more large cities. Anaris and Edom, thriving metropolises built on high tells in the Kufr way, and visible for scores of pasangs across the flat plains. They both surrendered as Irunshahr had, opening their gates without a fight and soon after opening their granaries and their treasuries also.

There was satisfaction at these gains, and the men appreciated the fact that they never had an empty belly after the day’s march, but the sense of epic adventure that had taken them across the Korash was missing. Centurions reported mutterings around the communal centoi as the men cooked their evening meals. They would march forever, and take city after city — but to what end? They were paid what they always had been, and no-one was becoming rich despite the staggering wealth on display in every city they passed. There had to be more to the expedition than this. At the moment, their pockets were no fuller than they would have been serving in the Harukush, and since the Haneikos there had been barely a battle worth the name.

‘They’re bored, ’ Rictus told the other marshals one evening, stamping into the King’s tent and shaking the rain from his cloak. It had come on dark and thick and wet this past few days, though still stiflingly hot, and the bronze was greening with verdigris; mould was attacking every strap of leather, and the very fabric of their clothes was beginning to rot on their backs.

‘They’re eating like pigs, and they haven’t had to bleed in a battle-line these two months and more,’ Demetrius retorted. ‘Don’t the stupid fucks know when they’re well off?’

‘They can be fickle as girls, soldiers, especially veterans,’ Fornyx said. He was nursing a cup of wine and staring into an unnecessary brazier, keeping an eye on the skewered frogs that sizzled above the coals. He sighed and finished his drink, tipping out the last of it onto the floor of the tent. ‘For Haukos, to give us patience.’

‘No word from the east?’ Rictus asked. He held out his hand, and Teresian gave him a brimming cup.

‘Not so much as a fart,’ the strawhead grunted. He’ll still be in the Magron. I’ve heard how the Great King travels. He brings his harem, they say. How many wagonloads of girls do you suppose he’s hauling over the mountains?’

‘I’ve a mind to go and help him haul,’ Fornyx said, with feeling. ‘I’ve cobwebs in my crotch, it’s been so long.’

‘I know what you mean,’ dark Druze spoke up from the corner. ‘I tell you, brothers, there are a few fellows among the latest conscripts who are beginning to look good to me.’

They laughed at that, and were still laughing when the King entered the tent, his black hair plastered flat by the rain and his face more than ever like a mask of immutable bone. He was muddied to the waist, and clods of clay dropped off his bare legs as he stood motionless a moment, his gaze taking them all in with one flat sweep.

A page came forward to take his cloak, and he smiled mechanically at the boy, but his eyes were far away.

‘Make yourselves at home,’ he said mildly, but there was something in his tone that made them all take to their feet.

‘Parmenios and I have been wrestling waggons out of the mud down the road a way,’ he said, still in the same mild tone. ‘It seems to me my teamsters are growing careless.’

Rictus handed the King his own wine, and Corvus raised the cup, and downed the contents at a gulp. Then he tossed the cup away.

‘We are becoming comfortable. We march, we pluck a city from the world like a man takes a fig from a tree.’ He strode forward, squeezed water out of his hair, refused the linen towel offered by another of the pages, and stood over the long table that was set up in the tent at the end of every day’s march. Inked on the long map across it was the progress of the army.

There was something different about the King this evening. A crackling, damped-down energy which could be sensed by them all, as a dog smells approaching thunder.

‘Do you remember how hard they fought at the Haneikos, brothers? How you, Rictus, and Fornyx and Teresian, went at it shield to shield in the river, and dammed the water with the bodies?’

He turned away from the table. His eyes were shining, and a strange smile bent his mouth.

‘It was glorious, was it not?’

He thumped his fist on the table, so hard the timber jumped.

‘I said to you once, Rictus, that if it were not for the glory of it I would not be here at all. I meant it.’

‘I know you did,’ Rictus said quietly.

‘If I was content with coin and power and a crown I could have stayed in Machran. I did not enter the empire to become rich, brothers. I came to earn a name, to make a story.’

He pointed at Rictus. ‘This man is a legend. He led home the Ten Thousand, or what was left of them, brought them to the shores of the sea and so found his way into all the books of history that will ever be written.

‘Before Rictus commanded the Ten Thousand, they were led by another man, named Jason of Pherai. Do any of you here, save Rictus, know his name?’

Blank looks. The smell of burning frog.

‘Of course not. He died in a tavern brawl in Sinon. Yet it was he who took on the leadership of the Macht after their generals were killed at Kunaksa, he who brought them back west as far as the Korash.

‘He was my father.’

Almost a decade, they had known this young man, and to none save Rictus and Fornyx had he ever said as much. The marshals stared at their king in astonishment.

‘I knew no man better — ’ Rictus began.

‘He is forgotten! Do you see how easily it happens, brothers? How quick we fall through the cracks in history, our names lost, our deeds as good as dust?’

Again, that strange smile, something unearthly about it.

‘That will not happen to us, to me or to you. I will not allow it.’

The table was thumped again. ‘Marcan’s people have sent us word. The Great King is over the mountains. His muster is complete. As we stand here, he is crossing the Bekai River at Carchanis, some four hundred pasangs away.’

A cloud of exclamations. The marshals crowded up to the map-table. Wine-cups were cast aside. Fornyx swept his burning frogs from the brazier with a wave of his hand and stood rubbing his beard, his eyes as wide as a deer’s.

‘Those waggon-loads of girls make better time than we thought,’ he said.

‘Any word on numbers?’ Demetrius asked.

‘We can assume there will be a lot of them,’ Corvus said with a human grin. Mercurial as ever, he seemed to have warmed to their reactions in a moment.

Only Rictus and Ardashir stood back from the table, watching the King, silent.

‘Brothers, this changes everything. The Great King is not on the Imperial Road. He has struck north, following the line of the Bekai and gathering the last of his levies as he goes. Carchanis will be his base of operations, and the river will guard his left flank and rear. He has only to wait for us in line of battle and the thing will begin.’

‘If he’s come this far, he won’t leave the river in his rear — he’s not stupid enough for that.’ This was Demetrius, head tilted to one side to bring his eye to bear on the map. ‘He’ll come out, Corvus. He’ll march west, to give his cavalry room to shake out.’

‘I believe he will,’ the King said.

‘Four hundred pasangs — that’s fifteen days’ march, less if the two armies are converging,’ Fornyx mused. He was biting his beard.

‘We can expect to see his skirmishers any day now,’ Druze said, and his dark face was split by a wide white grin.

‘This is news the army must hear,’ Corvus said briskly. ‘Brothers, there is no time to lose. Our stroll through the empire is about to become more earnest. I want you all to go to your commands and break word of this around the centoi.’

‘They’ll piss themselves when they hear this,’ Teresian said, and he cackled.

‘At dawn I want you all back here. We shall have a council of war before the tent is struck. After that we must pick up the pace, and the columns must be tightened up. Druze is right; if the main host of the enemy is at Carchanis, then he will have sent a screen of light troops ahead to look for us. It must be destroyed. Ardashir, you must warn the Companions. Druze, your Igranians will work with them. That is all. Now, get out of here and get into that rain. There is a lot to do before morning.’

The marshals trooped out, talking amongst themselves. Ardashir turned to Rictus and said in a low voice. ‘He has forgotten something.’

‘No, he hasn’t,’ Rictus replied.

The tall Kefre looked profoundly troubled.

‘I mean to say it, Ardashir,’ Rictus said.

Ardashir touched his arm, as if for reassurance, and then left in the wake of the others.

Corvus bent over the map table like a man lost in a book. He righted a wine-cup, and smeared the red dribble it had leaked across the vellum.

‘All pages are to leave,’ he said in a clear voice, and the two boys at the door, who had listened agog to all that had passed, ducked out of the tent.

The rain was a thunder on the leather canopy above their heads. Corvus did not turn around.

‘You did not leave with the others, Rictus.’

‘I have no command. Fornyx runs the Dogsheads now. I am merely — ’

‘A mascot?’ Corvus turned, and smiled to take the sting out of the word.

‘I am your advisor; I am — ’

‘Sometimes I feel you are Antimone’s shadow, always looking over my shoulder.’

‘You did not tell them everything, did you Corvus?’

The King poured himself some wine, filled a second cup and left it standing on the table. Rictus did not touch it.

‘I told them what they wanted to hear, what the army needed to hear. And it was the truth.’

‘But not all of it.’

‘Damn it Rictus, men have shrewish wives easier to put up with than you!’

‘And fathers.’

‘You are not my father.’

‘But I did know him. He was my best friend, and a better man than I. He is not forgotten, and nor will you be.’

‘My thanks for the reassurance. Now say what you mean to say.’

‘Do not let your hunger for glory take these men to needless deaths, Corvus. There was no mention made just now of King Proxanon and the Juthan legions. Why is that?’

Corvus leaned both hands on the table and stared at the stained vellum upon it, the lines and names, the inked-in mountains and rivers. A whole world, a vastness of ambition, contained upon a tabletop.

‘I thought it would be Fornyx who noticed first.’

‘Sometimes you can make even him believe. But I know you better than any of them, Corvus, save Ardashir.’

‘Do you? I suppose that is so. You are the only one I ever feel I have to explain myself to, Rictus.’

He sighed, as if resigned, but Rictus did not think that was what he felt.

‘The Great King received word of our agreement with Proxanon. He has detached an army to attack Jutha. The legions cannot join us in time. They are already committed to battle somewhere west of the city of Hadith, three weeks away.’

‘Where is Marcan?’

‘I sent him south, to rejoin his people, and to tell his father of my plans. He may yet be able to tie in with us.’

Rictus breathed out softly. ‘And what are the Great King’s numbers, Corvus? Do not tell me you don’t know.’

‘He detached a sizeable force to attack Proxanon, but the Jutha still reckon the main body at some two hundred thousand spears.’

Now Rictus approached the table, took the wine-cup, and gulped half the contents down, baring his teeth at the sharp taste.

‘Even with the recent reinforcements, we can only put some thirty-five thousand into the line.’

‘Thirty six,’ Corvus corrected him.

‘And you mean to seek battle.’

‘I do.’

Rictus glared at the younger man. He rapped his knuckle against the black cuirass that Corvus wore, the twin of his own. ‘This does not make you immortal, Corvus.’

The King smiled tightly. ‘It helps.’

‘We cannot do this. We must wait for Proxanon to come up. We need those extra spears. Antimone’s blood, Corvus, they will double our numbers!’

‘We will not wait. There is no guarantee that Proxanon will prevail in the field. We may find ourselves with a victorious imperial army in our rear as well as the horde of the Great King to our front. Better to move now, and move fast. Numbers do not count for as much as surprise. And I’m hoping to give the Great King a very nasty surprise indeed, Rictus. I will announce it in the morning — we will move by forced marches from now on.’

He was elevated, exalted even. Two spots of colour burned on that terrible pale face.

‘If we beat the Great King’s army on our own — on our own, Rictus — then we will have broken his hold on the empire. It will fall apart. And what is more, it will be a Macht army which has prevailed, without allies, without help from the Kufr or anyone else.’

Exasperated, Rictus exploded. ‘For God’s sake, Corvus — you’re half Kufr yourself!’

The winecup came up in a blur, smashing against Rictus’s cheekbone, staggering him. Wine sprayed in the air, soaked his cloak, and ran in rivulets dark as blood down his black cuirass.

He straightened, blinking the stinging liquid out of his eyes. Twenty years earlier, even ten years, he would have launched himself at Corvus for that, king or no. But now he simply stood there with his head ringing, and a great sadness crowding his mind.

Corvus raised both hands to his mouth like a woman. ‘Rictus — Rictus, my brother, I am so sorry!’

Rictus turned away.

‘I’ve had harder blows from whores,’ he said. And then he stumbled out into the rain-lashed night, blind with the wine and the hot, growing light of his own anger.