Kings of Morning

TWELVE

Kouros stood like a piece of statuary with the sweat sliding in worms down the small of his back. The armour he wore had been made for him a few years before, and had once fitted him like an ornate second skin, but he had lost weight in the last few weeks, and now there were angles in his bones that were not so well padded as they had been. And he had forgotten how heavy the helmet was.

But he stood motionless beside his father’s throne, for he was part of a larger tableau here today, and all of it was on display for the baying myriads of the army, who had been assembled to witness something rare: the execution of a high-caste noble. It was not often they were able to see someone so elevated pay for a mistake, and though the assembled crowds were as silent as the Great King’s presence demanded, still there was that whispering susurration, a surreptitious chatter. No-one could silence an army completely, for in their thousands the soldiers were invulnerable, anonymous.

But there was a hush of sorts, nonetheless, as Dyarnes strode forth upon the dais in armour so bright it pained the eye to look upon, and called for silence in a voice almost as brazen.

‘Bring him forth,’ he cried.

Darios had been fettered with silver chains, as befitted his station, and he walked across the dais in a himation of blinding white linen, his hair loose, face impassive.

The Great King sat silent and motionless on the throne as the traitor approached. His komis was drawn up around his face and only his eyes were visible, as hard to read as frosted glass.

Darios stood and surveyed the crowd with contempt. Then he collected himself, turned, and went on his knees before the Great King. Ashurnan gave away no flicker of interest.

The executioner stepped forward, a massive hufsan from the Magron, bearing a scimitar as long as a man’s leg. He stood waiting.

Dyarnes spoke up again. He had a fine, ringing voice when he cared to exercise it, and he looked as tall and indomitable as some bronze-clad god in the shining sunlight.

‘The traitor Darios, having betrayed our army at the River Haneikos, surrendered the city of Ashdod, and then deserted his own troops, is likewise charged with entering into communications with the enemy. His fate is death, by decree of the Great King. Your eyes shall witness it, so that you may know what it is to betray your lord.’

‘I have something to say,’ Darios spoke up.

Dyarnes looked quickly at the Great King. Upon the arm of the throne one hand moved slightly, a sideways flick of negation.

‘The prisoner will not speak,’ Dyarnes said, and his voice was thick and raw. ‘Executioner.’

The scimitar caught a flash of fire from the sun as it arced through the air, and Darios’s head left his body in a clean-shorn instant. Kouros watched with close fascination, and was certain the eyes blinked in surprise before the head thumped to the timber of the dais.

The assembled soldiers roared their approval. The execution of their own rendered them dumb, but to see a high caste Kefre lose his head was as good an afternoon’s entertainment as many had known in all their lives. They cheered even as the Great King rose from his throne.

Ashurnan stepped forward, studied the medals and ribands of blood that lay scattered across the dais as though he could make an augury of them, and then turned without a word, the cheers still shaking the air, and disappeared into the hangings behind the throne, and the towering tent beyond.

The executioner raised the head into the air by its topknot, and now the eyes were dead as glass.

‘Behold!’ he cried in common Asurian, ‘The fate of all traitors!’

‘Set it on a spike at the gates to the royal enclosure,’ Kouros said, studying Darios’s features, as fascinated as a boy pinning butterflies.

‘My prince — ’ Dyarnes and Darios had been friends. For a second the commander of the Honai had raw grief carved across his face.

‘Those are the Great King’s orders.’ Kouros set a hand on the other man’s arm for a second, judging the gesture necessary.

‘Yes, my prince.’ Dyarnes retrieved the grisly relic from the executioner, and then walked off the dais with his friend’s head cradled in his arm, the blood from the severed veins and windpipe still streaming fast, darkening the bright shine of his armour.

One segment of the Great King’s tent had been lifted up to catch the breeze and let in the bright summer sun, Bel’s blessing on the world. Ashurnan stood at this gap now in a simple robe of blue silk, the diadem a black band across his forehead. Above him, the immense structure creaked and swayed in the wind like a ship at sea. It was so large that living trees were accommodated within, with lanterns hung all along their branches, and in one corner there was a stream of clean water whose banks had been walled off for two pasangs beyond the tent so no other mortal might pollute it.

This was campaigning in style. Now that they were down from the mountains, and the worst of the march was over, with intelligence pouring in from the west and south; now the Great King could unbuckle a little, and enjoy the comforts his two hundred personal waggons had hauled all the way from Ashur.

Now the details and suspicions which had dogged him for all those weary pasangs could be dealt with.

Kouros doffed his helmet with a barely suppressed sigh of relief and joined his father.

The royal enclosure was partitioned off from the rest of the immense camp by a stockade and ditch, which the Honai patrolled in their hundreds. Within that wooden wall were the stables, the harem, the cook-tents, and herds of the Great King’s own personal animals, to be slaughtered at his word alone. The round hill with its palisade was the ziggurat, replicated here in the Middle Empire on a smaller scale, but with a hierarchy as rigid as in its stone-built original.

Beyond the stockade, the camp of the army rolled out like a sea to every horizon. At night when the campfires were lit, they rivalled the stars above, and the glow of them could be seen in the sky from fifteen pasangs away. The men camped according to geography, so that within the immense encampment were many different districts, and distinct rivalries.

The Arakosans kept themselves apart, and as cavalry they took the best ground with easy access to pasture beyond. The hufsan of Asuria huddled together in narrow lines as though replicating the slums and alleyways of Ashur. And the small farmers and craftsmen of Pleninash slept in sprawling formless crowds, for they had only just come in, many of them, and they were still being regimented by their officers. For them, the coming of the Great King had been a cataclysm to overturn their world.

It could almost have been an entire people on the move, a dispossessed city staining the face of Kuf with its masses, and sucking dry the fertile farmland for many pasangs around. Despite the hundreds of provision-bearing waggons that lumbered into the great camp every day, the army could not remain in one place for long, or there would be no more food to gather in. Even Pleninash had its limits, when encumbered with a horde such as this.

‘You know why I had Darios killed,’ Ashurnan said to his eldest son, not turning around.

‘He failed. He let the Macht over the Korash and — ’

‘He was your mother’s creature. He had been for a long time.’ Ashurnan turned now, and the light behind him made of his face a black shadow with azure coins for eyes.

‘This is not the palace now, Kouros. We do not intrigue for trifles here. This is war. Soon you will be on a battlefield facing the Macht for the first time. There is no more time for conspiracy.’

He glided forward. Kouros had to steel himself not to retreat before his father, so strange and fey did the older Kefre seem in that moment. It was as though he were half in another world.

‘You will be King, Kouros. Be satisfied with that. It may happen tomorrow, or it may happen in ten years, but you will wear the diadem. There is no-one left to challenge you. Why can you not be content with that?’

Ashurnan’s tone was genuine, but there was anger simmering in it too. Kouros fought down a stammer as he replied.

‘I serve you, father. I know now I am not yet ready to sit on the throne — these last weeks have taught me that much. It is just that Rakhsar — ’

‘Rakhsar is dead, or lost. He is gone, and Roshana with him.’ There was no mistaking the grief in the old man’s voice now. He walked away. A gold-leafed table sat upon a brilliantly woven carpet, and around it the green grass of Pleninash spread out, shorn as fine as the carpet-weaver’s work, yellowing now without the sun. Ashurnan poured himself wine, raising a hand to halt the advance of the old chamberlain, Malakeh, who stood with a pair of household slaves not ten paces away, his staff of office balanced on a stone so he could still make it ring when he chose.

‘Drink.’

Kouros did so, watching his father over the rim of the cup, sweating.

‘Now I will drink,’ Ashurnan said, with an odd smile. Kouros passed him the cup. The Great King sipped the wine, but did not seem to enjoy it.

‘Your mother’s reach is long, Kouros. I do not think you know just how long. Darios was once my friend, and she turned him.’

‘He was still your friend — ’ Kouros said earnestly.

‘One cannot serve two masters. You might want to tell Dyarnes that, also.’

The sweat turned cold on Kouros’s back. ‘Dyarnes?’

‘He and Darios rose through the ranks of the Honai together. Their wives are cousins. But you will have known that.’

He had not. It was a little something Orsana had chosen not to share with him.

‘A king must be his own man, Kouros. And if there is something my forty years on the throne have taught me, it is that he needs his friends also. I do not have a talent that way — and nor do you. Your grandfather did. He never feared an assassin in his life, and he did not scruple to drink wine no-one else had yet tasted. Because he had friends he trusted about him.’

‘Kings can trust no-one — you told me that once.’

‘I did not. I believe those are your mother’s words. There is wisdom in them, though. But your mother has not known life above the snowline like I have. She has ladies in the harem and at the court who would spill their last breath for her. For myself, if I need a friend, I buy one. You will be like me, Kouros. The throne will not make you happy.’

Kouros was shocked. His broad, heavy face worked in genuine perplexity. His father had never before spoken to him thus.

‘If I could go back to the early years, before Kunaksa, then I would know what it was like to trust others. I trusted my brother — I loved him, for all that he was a self-centred, unlovable fellow. He brought the Macht into our world, and you know the result. We are still paying the price for that today. A brother’s betrayal. My forbearance.’

Ashurnan turned away, set the chased crystal of the wine-glass on the gold table.

‘I killed him with my own hand, Kouros. And there is not a day in my life since I have not seen his face as my sword took the life out of it.’

‘It was the right thing to do,’ Kouros grunted. He had a bewildering urge to set his hand on the Great King’s shoulder, as though Ashurnan were a normal father, and he a normal son.

‘Of course it was. But it has never left me. We grew up together, you see, as real brothers do. It is why, when I had sons of my own, I swore to keep them as separate as I could.’

He turned back again. He was smiling.

‘Do you remember — can you remember — how you and Rakhsar used to play together, and look after little Roshana, all of you naked and filthy in the gardens like three little hufsan brats? I carried all three of you in from under the trees one day, just like that, and sat on the throne with you all in my arms, and blessed God and the women who had borne you. I thought myself as lucky as any man in the world.’

‘I was too young. I do not remember,’ Kouros said, looking down. He did not want to remember.

‘I resolved to go back on my own decision, to raise you all together as a family should be raised. Perhaps I was a fool. I probably was. In any case, your mother kept me to my word. She was first wife, and Ashana was a gentle soul who bowed to her commands.’

‘My mother is a great woman,’ Kouros growled.

‘Yes, she is. She brought me ten thousand Arakosan cavalry. One does not gainsay a woman with a dowry like that.’

‘You insulted her with that other one. You would have supplanted her. You humiliated her!’

‘I was in love,’ the King said quietly. ‘Have you ever been in love, Kouros?’

Kouros bent his head, blinking, his jaw working as though he had a lump of gristle between his teeth. It was a question no-one had ever asked him before, but he knew the answer instantly.

‘No,’ he said, the word choked out of him.

His father watched the workings of his face, his own dark with sadness.

‘Son, you lie.’

Kouros turned away, eyes burning, the rage rising in him, the black desire to choke the life and light out of something, someone, anything.

‘Do not turn your back on me.’ The snap of command.

Ashurnan’s eyes flashed.

‘You will not understand this truth until it is too late, but you will hear it now. Kouros, if you hunt down your brother and sister — if you kill them — then I promise you that you will never know a moment of true peace for the rest of your life. Even throned in glory over all the empire, that remorse will eat at you, and you will grow old and empty with the gnawing of it. Listen to one who knows.’

‘One cannot be a king, and do what one wants — you did tell me that,’ Kouros snarled.

‘What eats at you will one day put a canker into your reign. You are young, Kouros. You do not have to be the man your mother wants.’

‘I am my own man!’

‘We are none of us our own man. We only try to do what is right and honourable, and in time that honour becomes part of us. Once it is lost, it is gone forever. Hear me in this, son.’

Kouros faced his father, the blackness rising in him, that familiar sweetness. It would be so easy to bring up the iron brim of his helmet and swing it at the old man’s head. He knew he had the strength in him for that one blow, and one blow was all it would take.

But instead he strangled the impulse, as he daily murdered so many others. He leaned close and kissed his father on the cheek.

‘Do you think I have it in me to be a good man?’ he asked, child-like, unable to hold in the question.

‘You are a better man than Rakhsar.’

And that was all he was given.

He bowed deeply, his heavy face impassive, and left the Great King’s tent without ceremony. The Honai straightened as he passed them. Beyond them, the immense encampment hummed and steamed and smoked to the far horizon. He felt that the blackness in his soul could have eaten it all and asked for more.

Mot’s Blight is in me, he thought. It must be done. My mother is right. The old man is too soft for the days ahead.

He called his guards to him, and then stalked off to his own complex of tents, where he would find something suitable to defile.

My dearest son,

I write in some haste and with my own hand and I will add no polish to my words, but know they come to you with all your mother’s love. If the seal upon this letter is broken, you must hold the messenger to account. If it is not, and it has reached you before the two moons rise on the month of Granash, then you may reward him.

Kouros looked at the sweating, filthy, horse-smelling hufsan courier who had brought this letter, along with a bucket of others as a blind.

‘What is your name?’

The hufsan was light-boned as a girl, and he looked as though he had not slept in days. His brown skin had a greyish tint.

‘Jervas of Hamadan, my prince.’

‘You have done well. Eleven days from Ashur to Carchanis — it must be something of a record.’

‘Thank you, my prince. I killed nineteen horses — ’

‘You stopped at Ab Mirza, as we had arranged?’

‘Yes, lord. The second letter is hidden in the rim of the scroll bucket. The seal is intact, I swear it.’

‘Excellent. Now leave me, Jervas of Hamadan. My chamberlain will see to your needs. Remain close at hand. There will be a return journey soon.’

The hufsan sagged a little. ‘Thank you, my prince.’ He withdrew, taking the acrid stink of horse-sweat with him.

Kouros began to read again, but was distracted. ‘Anarish!’

The chamberlain tucked aside the tent flap and bowed.

‘Get that girl out of here. Her snivelling is making my head hurt.’

The naked, weeping girl was led away, red, bloody stripes livid upon her skin. Kouros’s face closed, as it always did when he was deciphering his mother’s code. He knew it off by heart, but still had to mouth the words aloud as he rearranged them, and occasionally he had to count upon his fingers down the alphabet.

Rumour outruns horses, they say, and I am certain as I write that Darios has failed to hold the passes of the Korash. If that is so, your father will take the opportunity to remove him. He has had his suspicions about Darios for many months now.

That leaves our position weakened. You must make sure of Dyarnes if you can, and if not, then Marok, his second in command. I know Marok’s wife, or one of them, and he is well pleased with his gifts. But you must not approach him directly. It is enough to hold him in play.

I shall hold the capital. It has turned out well. The nonentity, Borsanes, whom your father left in command, has acceded to all my wishes. We now have Arakosans we can trust within the walls, and more are on their way to Hamadan as we speak.

Not a word of the war — the real war. Orsana lived in a bubble that was rarely pricked by events beyond her own private horizon.

Rakhsar must be found. As long as he is at large, there is a danger — you know this. I have agents out all over Pleninash, but as yet there is no firm word of him. He has estates near Arimya, and I have sent some people there also, though I doubt he would be so foolish as to visit the place. You must sound out the senior officers of the levies. Rakhsar may be in touch with some of them. In any case, he will be active and on the move — it is not in him to sit still, nor to choose discretion over a gaudy gesture. Trust our Arakosans — they are your people and will not betray any son of mine. Use them to help you track your brother down.

Our Arakosans. They were hers and hers alone. Kouros did not deceive himself otherwise. She had agents watching him as surely as she had them out looking for his brother.

He put the letter aside. It hurt his head to decode it, to have his mother’s voice in his ears from a thousand pasangs away.

She charges me high rent for the nine months she bore me, he thought with bitter humour.

The second letter he found after a few minutes scrabbling around the interior rim of the despatch-bucket. Under the leather lining it lay, still sealed with cheap tavern wax, the intaglio design the same as that he wore on his signet ring. He smiled as he looked upon it, and then peered out the flap of the tent’s private chamber.

‘Anarish, no-one enters until I say otherwise.’

The chamberlain did not so much as blink. ‘As you wish, lord.’

No code here, and a handwriting as florid and graceless as Orsana’s was minute and spiderish.

Brother!

Give you joy, I am still alive and still able to put it in a tavern girl when I have a mind to. I write from a town named Orimya, west of Carchanis. From what I hear you are encamped on the western bank of the Bekai River, two or three day’s ride to the east. I rejoice to find you so close, but am alarmed to find myself square in the path of such a juggernaut as the Great King’s army. I trust that when the inevitable collision occurs you will not do anything so absurd as fight. There are common soldiers enough for that.

I approach my news the long way round — my apologies. I have tracked our quarry down at last. There is an estate north of here near the city of Arimya which our friend appears to own, though he will never have seen it. I set people to watch the place weeks ago, just in care, and these associates tell me he is there now. It appears he has lost all sense. Or perhaps he merely tired of life below the ziggurat. In any case, I will be in position within two days, and soon your worries will have a stopper on them. You may even wish to join me yourself — the house is but two hard day’s ride from the encampment of the army. In any case, I will remain at the place to await further instructions once the principals are secured. I know you wish to see them yourself before any final decisions are made.

Wish me Mot’s luck, brother. I feel him drawing early upon the world this year. They say he shadows the advance of the Macht, and his darkness is upon their faces.

A last point. The courier who bears this note is a worthy fellow, who had to cast over half of eastern Pleninash to track me down. I have sounded him out, and my nose tells me his affections are worth winning. He is a born horseman, with discretion and good sense. Such qualities should be recognised. You should use him to send me your reply. His former employer has no further claim on his loyalties, by the way.

K

There it was. Rakhsar had been run to ground at last.

Kouros sprang to his feet and began pacing up and down the tent feverishly. There was not space enough for his joy; he swept out of the place, startling the chamberlain, drawing surprised jolts from the guards.

The darkness outside, barely a darkness at all. The world fairly blazed with light. Both moons were up and Firghe was almost full. Between them the stars swept in a gleaming horse-tail of diamond. And below, the campfires of the army stretched for as far as the eye could see, as great as a city, a crop of lights sown upon the sleeping earth and now in full flower.

I am the better man, Kouros thought. He told me so, and it is true. And Rakhsar will know it too before he dies. And Roshana -

Roshana will feel me in her flesh. She will know my strength. I will bring her pleasure in the pain. I will own her. I will collar her. She will kneel naked at my feet and beg for my touch before I am done with her.

‘Anarish!’ he roared, all aglow, the breath filling his lungs like wine. ‘Send the courier to me. And have the horses saddled and packed for a journey. Dismiss the night’s guards and send me the morning shift. Be quick, Anarish!’

The black light within his soul was in full flower, cackling and dancing with glee.