Kings of Morning

SEVENTEEN

There had been reports of dust clouds to the west, and scouts had been sent out to investigate, but none had returned. For three days now, the Great King had been ordering parties of cavalry into the west to find his enemy, and in all that time none of them had come back, save one.

But the Macht were out there somewhere, as Kouros could testify.

He rode in the swaying palanquin with his father, the motion of the elephant easier on his wounded shoulder and knitting ribs. He bore the pain better than he once would have, and he found the Great King looking at him now and again in a kind of reappraisal. The feverish paranoia of earlier days had gone. Rakhsar was dead, and for the first time in his life, Kouros felt at ease. There was no-one else now. The intrigues were over at last.

They were far back in the endless column, which was itself one of several unending snakes of men and animals trickling their way across the flat, fecund country west of the Bekai River. The city of Carchanish, sixty pasangs behind them, had been transformed into an enormous supply dump. Foodstuffs, waggons, fresh horses, armour and weapons were flooding into a vast stockaded second city which had been constructed on the east bank of the river. This was their base of operations. If they did not contact the enemy some time in the next few days, that base would have to be brought forward, with all the labour that entailed. And this was one of the reasons why the progress of a large army was so agonisingly slow.

I never knew that the waging of war could prove so tedious, Kouros thought.

Rakhsar’s face, as the blade went into his belly. That sneer gone at last. Kouros dwelled on the image, warming himself at it like a man at a fire.

His father was watching his face, as if he knew what his eldest son was thinking. Kouros shifted on the padded cushion, his ribs flaring into pain. He could not meet his father’s eyes, even now.

Horses galloping past. They stamped to a halt, and there was shouting, an unthinkable breach of protocol so close to the King’s person.

‘What are they at?’ Ashurnan muttered, disturbed from a reverie.

‘My lord — my lord!’ A familiar voice.

Both Kouros and Ashurnan lifted aside the gauze curtains of the palanquin and looked down. It was Dyarnes, helm off and komis thrown down around his chin.

‘What is this, Dyarnes?’ Ashurnan demanded.

‘Forgive me, my king, but we have sighted the enemy — they are directly to our front and already in line of battle.’

‘What?’ Ashurnan sputtered. He looked up at the sun in some bewilderment. It was early morning, and the column had barely gotten under way. The men at the rear had not even begun marching out of last night’s camp yet.

‘How close are they?’

‘We must form the line at once, lord. With your permission, I deem it imperative that we bring in the other columns and deploy for battle.’

‘Are they advancing?’

‘Not yet. They’re just standing there.’

‘How many?’ this was Kouros, hissing with pain as he leaned over the rail of the palanquin. The elephant tossed his head under them and the whole construction rose up and down like a boat on a wave.

‘They are not many, my prince — not a fifth of what we have brought.’

Then why stand and wait for us? Kouros wondered.

‘Bring in the columns — deploy the troops,’ Ashurnan snapped. ‘We must attack as quickly as possible, before they can get away. Move up your leading elements, Dyarnes, and send a courier to the rear. The men behind us will have to run. We must crush them, Dyarnes — do you hear me? They must not escape. And bring me my chariot.’

So this was what happened when the enemy was tracked down at last.

Chaos.

Kouros could not remain on the Great King’s elephant without the Great King, nor was he fit to ride a horse, so he joined his father in the royal chariot. This was an immense affair drawn by four black Niseians and crewed by a driver and two bodyguards, Honai chosen by the Great King himself. A parasol overhung it to keep the sun off their heads, and there were holsters of javelins in front of either wheel.

The vehicle was beautifully sprung, ornamented with enough precious stones and chased silver to buy a city, and it had loops of red Bokosan leather to steady oneself by. The floor, also, was red leather, criss-crossed straps embroidered with golden wire. And rearing above it, the purple imperial banner was suspended from a cross-piece of varnished oak. It had been built to catch the eye, to provide a focal point on the battlefield, and to reassure the assembled thousands that their lord was in their midst, watching them.

It thundered up the roadway now, scattering everything in its path, preceded and followed by a hundred picked cavalry from all over the empire, though most wore the blue-enamelled armour of Arakosia. The Great King himself took the whip, and flicked it over the rumps of the straining Niseians with a smile in his beard.

Kouros studied his father discreetly. For days the old man had been withdrawn and uncommunicative. He had not been told that Rakhsar and Roshana were dead, but he seemed to know nonetheless. He had watched Kouros with that odd new look, and bade him join him on the back of the elephant, an honour not bestowed lightly.

Could it be respect? The Arakosans had gone out to look for Kouros and brought him back more dead than alive. Ashurnan had expressed no concern, asked no questions. But he had treated Kouros differently ever since.

And for once, Kouros had enjoyed writing a letter to his mother.

The column had fractured all around them, and companies of infantry were spreading out across the plain on all sides, some running, all being screamed at by officers both mounted and afoot. There seemed to be little order involved, but the milling mobs were at least all moving the right way. Every one of them had their faces turned to the west, and the sun was behind them. Even the simplest peasant conscript could be told to keep the sun on his back. The army was disordered, chaotic and confused, but it was advancing in the right direction; a flood of men pouring across the earth in the rising dust.

Let the King of the Macht try and halt this tide, Kouros thought. And he gripped the hilt of the cheap iron kitchen knife in his sash. He had kept it as a kind of talisman. His brother’s blood was still black upon it.

The green country around them was leached away. The land rose slightly, becoming a plateau many pasangs wide standing somewhat above the fertile plain. The ground was stonier here, crossed by the dry ruin of ancient watercourses, and the dust was choking, kicked up by men and animals to tower in the sky. This was empty country, a pocket of scrub savannah which was as ancient as the tells of the green river valleys. Too arid for crops, or even to support a herd of goats, these raised pockets of desert were known as gaugamesh in the Asurian tongue: a place blighted by the god Mot, where no man might grow things.

This is where we fight? Kouros wondered. He squeezed the waterskin that hung in the chariot, and thought of the tens of thousands all around him, and the dry country which they were traversing.

By tonight, if they find a river they will drink it dry.

There were Honai in a line up ahead, the occasional flash of sun-caught metal through the dust. The chariot came to a halt amid a cloud of cavalry and one by one the imperial couriers filed in behind it, young men of the lesser nobility whose fathers had paid a fortune so that their sons might gallop across battlefields carrying the Great King’s orders. Alongside them clustered a knot of scribes and other attendants, who were dressed as though they were still in the palace. Their finery was utterly incongruous in that sere landscape.

Ashurnan stood gripping the rail of his chariot and peering into the dust. A hundred paces in front of the wheels, the ten thousand spearmen of the Honai were forming up with a speed and precision that belied the chaos of the rest of the field. Eight ranks deep, their line stretched some pasang and a half, though both ends were invisible. But it was reassuring to see those tall warriors standing stolidly in front of them. This was to be the centre of the army, the very heart. Everyone else would take their dressing from the Great King’s chariot, and would link up with that formidable phalanx.

‘This will be a knife fight,’ the Great King said to Dyarnes, who was standing by the chariot with his helm in the crook of one arm. ‘It will be won or lost at close quarters. But we must use our archers at the start, once the dust settles somewhat. When the general advance is signalled they will be firing blind, and after that we must throw in our people at the enemy and overwhelm them. There will be no fancy manoeuvring today, not in this place. The dust hides everything. And double the couriers, Dyarnes. A lot of them will become lost today. I want two riders bearing each message.’

‘Yes, lord. At what point do you wish the advance sounded?’

‘As I said, wait until the dust settles. The men must be able to see the enemy in order to close with him. As soon as the Macht line is visible, I want you to start with the outer formations — we should outflank on both sides. But hold back the Arakosans, Dyarnes. They are to be kept for the killing blow.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

The sun broke through the dust now and again, providing vignettes of war; masses of ranked troops trudging west, shuffling into position. A forest of spears all catching the light in the same moment, like a flashing gleam of teeth. And all around, the sodden thunder of marching feet, an echo that trembled the very flesh of the earth.

Kouros drank water from the skin, his mouth dry and sour. Thanks to his injuries, he was not wearing armour, though the bronze helm on his head had already caught the heat of the sun and felt as though it were a hot vice bearing down on the bone of his skull. The Great King wore merely a black diadem, and bright blue silk robes that concealed a breastplate underneath. He bore a plain steel scimitar which could have belonged to any man on the field, and which had seen much use. Kouros abruptly found himself wondering if it were the same sword with which Ashurnan had killed his own brother, thirty years before. He touched the knife in his own sash.

We are alike in that, at least, he thought, and licked his dry lips again.

The dust began to sink in the centre of the army, as the men found their places and stood with their shields at the shoulder, leaning on their spears. Kouros could hear them talking to one another. Asurian of half a dozen different dialects, some so strange as to barely constitute the same language. Good Kefren in the ranks of the Honai up front. A column of leather-armed skirmishers went past with armfuls of javelins and the crescent-shaped shields of their calling, short-legged hufsan from the mountains who seemed as cheerful as men walking to a wedding.

The whole world is here, he thought. He remembered the slight, pale youth on the black horse who had called himself Corvus. There was Kefren blood in him — he had never suspected that.

What kind of man is he, to think he can fight the whole world?

Blue sky again, and the sun was high in it. It must be midday at least.

‘There they are,’ Ashurnan murmured. He reached out one hand and set it briefly on Kouros’s arm. ‘There they are.’ The golden glow of his face had gone. He looked sick and old and tired.

‘They’re so close!’ Kouros exclaimed.

A swift-footed man could have run between the armies in minutes. Kouros was able to make out the red chitons of the enemy spearmen, the bronze-faced shields painted with some pattern he had never seen before, a bird of some kind. They stood as immobile as a wall, all across the plain, their length punctuated by hanging banners.

‘I will break that line today.’ Ashurnan said quietly. He motioned to the scribe with his hip-desk who stood behind the chariot.

‘An order for Dyarnes. He is — ’

A swooping sound, as though some monstrous hawk had stooped for the kill. Instinctively, they all looked up. To their front, something exploded into the front ranks of the Honai and there were shouts of pain.

‘What is it? What is happening?’ Kouros demanded, hugging his ribs as though afraid they would fly apart.

A file of the Honai had been hurled into ruin, men lying dead, others dropping their shields and spears to assist the wounded.

Kouros looked up again, baffled, and saw a shower of what looked like arrows arcing up from behind the Macht line. But they were not arrows. Each was longer than a man. They came down in a black, monstrous hail.

And struck the ranks of the Great King’s bodyguard.

The shafts were as thick as a man’s arm, the heads cast in black, barbed iron. They punched through shields and breastplates as though the bronze were paper, and skewered two and three and four men at a time, knocking down whole files like wooden skittles bowled over by a child’s ball.

Ashurnan’s face was transformed by outrage. Dozens of these great bolts were now hurtling down out of the unclouded sky.

‘Message to Dyarnes!’ he shouted above the growing cacophony. ‘Advance — advance at once with all the infantry!’

An explosion of dirt and stone, and the Niseians yoked to the chariot reared in fear as one of the massive bolts slammed into the ground at their feet. This was not warfare as they understood it. They began to dance and bite and neigh.

The ranks of the Honai were buckling and reforming, the files knocked apart only to be brought together again. They were the best soldiers in the empire, and would not retreat or break, but they could not hit back either. They could only die helplessly under the obscene barrage.

Ashurnan’s bodyguard, an armoured Honai who towered over his lord, thrust both Kouros and the Great King behind him.

‘Move us out of here,’ he barked to the driver. ‘This is no place for the King.’

The chariot wheeled round, the four horses pulling with a will, the driver lashing their backs with the long whip. They cantered away from the Honai phalanx, and the Arakosans followed them. Up and down the immense line the word went out that the Great King was retreating, that he was wounded, that he was dead. But the rumours were quashed by the sudden order to advance.

Like a great stone starting to roll downhill, the vast army of the empire began to move forward, a juggernaut bent on vengeance.

Rictus was thirsty. There was still water in the skin at his back, but he was saving it for later. He knew that as soon as the fighting began he would forget his thirst. If he survived, he would be desperate for that water afterwards. If he did not, someone else would drink it.

Cheers and whistles went up through the ranks as the first of Parmenios’s machines sent their deadly missiles soaring off towards the dust-choked line of the massing enemy. They gave way to a kind of awed silence as the ballista bolts struck home. The Macht spearmen watched as the Honai were battered by that relentless aerial assault. They saw shields tossed high in the air, men cartwheeling, impaled on the heavy bolts like frogs on a skewer.

Beside Rictus, Fornyx gave a low whistle. ‘That is no way for brave men to die,’ he said.

‘They can die any way they like — there are more than enough left over for us all,’ Rictus rasped.

‘What are those troops? They’re just reforming like nothing has happened.’

‘Those are the Honai,’ Rictus said. ‘The Bodyguard. They’re the best he’s got.’

Fornyx smiled. ‘Just as well Corvus has us facing them, then.’

There were three thousand Dogsheads in battle-line opposite the Great King, and they were the centre of Corvus’s line as the Honai were the centre of the enemy’s. Rictus had fought the Honai at Kunaksa. It had been one of the hardest fights of his life, and he had been young then.

But I know more now.

‘Something’s stirring,’ Fornyx said, and there was a rustle of talk through the ranks. Men eased their shields off their shoulders so that their arms took the full weight of the bronze-faced oak. They moved their spears from side to side to loosen the sauroters in the hard ground. A few files across from Rictus someone was pissing where he stood, and the acrid reek of it carried down the ranks, along with the inevitable catcalls and jeers.

‘How does that bastard have enough water in him to piss it out?’ Fornyx asked. ‘I’m dry as an old crone’s cunny. I don’t even have spit.’

The dust flagged up the enemy movement, drawing all their eyes. It was almost imperceptible at first, until the formations began to loosen up and draw apart.

‘He’s coming on willingly enough,’ Rictus said. ‘Corvus was right about that, at least. I’ll bet half his men are still on the road behind, or running up into position.’

‘Fuck,’ Fornyx said with feeling. ‘I’d be running if I had Parmenios’s pins raining down on me.’

‘Ready arms!’ Rictus cried, and up and down the line the centurions took up the cry. The Dogsheads closed up, each man’s shield protecting the spear-arm of the fellow to his left. The phalanx clenched itself like a fist.

‘Stand fast and wait for my word!’ Rictus shouted. ‘File-closers, take the count!’

Starting out on the left, the men began to count down their numbers starting from the front man in the file. The numbers were called out like some repetitive ancient ritual, and it almost seemed like one to Rictus, who had heard it so many times on so many far-flung battlefields.

‘Arrows!’ Someone shouted. ‘’Ware arrows!’

‘Shields up!’ Fornyx bellowed.

They came down in a black rain, Kufr broadheads lancing out of the sky. The Dogsheads lifted the heavy shields and leaned into them, like men sheltering from a storm. The arrow-cloud smote the bronze with an unholy metallic racket, like hammers in a tinsmith’s shop. But even over that noise, Rictus could still hear the distinctive meaty slap as some of them found flesh.

Men were going down, cursing and groaning. It felt as though someone was poking the face of Rictus’s shield with a stick. An arrow came down close enough to his toes to throw dust upon them. Another passed through the transverse horsehair of his helm-crest. He shared a look with Fornyx. The younger man was grinning into his black beard. An arrow skittered off the wing of his armour and bounced away into the faces of the men behind.

‘I thought it looked like rain,’ Fornyx said, and down the line the comment spread, and men managed to laugh at it as their comrades fell about them.

The volleys passed. To the front, the dust had hidden everything again, but out of that dust came the sullen roar of the enemy advance.

‘Wounded to the rear!’ Rictus cried. ‘Close up — close up, lads. We’re about to earn our pay!’

They burst out of the dust thirty paces ahead, a boiling mass of wild-eyed men bearing crescent shields and short spears, no order to their ranks, but stark momentum in their sheer numbers.

‘Spears!’ the order went up, and the aichmes were levelled at the oncoming tide. The phalanx tightened over the bodies of its own dead and wounded. Rictus ducked his face behind the rim of his shield, gritted his teeth, and dug his right heel into the hard ground.

‘See you in hell, brother,’ Fornyx said, teeth bared and set like those of a dog.

‘See you in hell,’ Rictus repeated.

And then the enemy wave slammed into them.

‘The Dogsheads are engaged,’ Parmenios said to Corvus, wiping his hand across his gleaming bald scalp. ‘He moved some of his levies across the front of the Honai, but the move disorganised them some. They should not prove to be a problem for Rictus.’

‘He’s saving his best,’ Ardashir said, and patted the neck of his restless horse.

‘But he is throwing everything else in as fast as he can,’ Corvus said. ‘Good. That is as it should be. Parmenios, you’re sure he had his heavy horse out on our right?’

‘I’m sure. There’s a dried up river-bed out on our left — he doesn’t want his cavalry to break their necks in it. All but a tithe of his horse is facing the Companions. But Corvus — ’

‘Speak up. It’s quite a noise they’re making down there.’

‘He has a hundred thousand men coming up the roads from the east. Once they’re in position, they’ll swamp us.’

‘One thing at a time. Repoint your machines, Parmenios. I want you to start bombarding his cavalry. It doesn’t have to be a heavy fire — just enough to stir them up.’

‘At once.’ Parmenios wheeled his mule, kicking it savagely, and trotted away to the rear, where hundreds of his engineers were working upon the great ballistae. They had piled rocks under the front timbers of the machines to elevate their fire, and a steady train of fast-moving carts were galloping up from the baggage train with fresh missiles to feed them.

A courier cantered up, his face a mask of dust. He had to spit and wipe his mouth before he could speak.

‘My king, Marshal Teresian sent me to say he is heavily engaged out on the left. He is holding, but the enemy is trying to outflank him.’

‘Go to Druze. Tell him to peel off a mora to help Teresian. What’s your name?’

‘Deiros, my king.’

‘Deiros, you must tell Marshal Teresian to hold the line of the riverbed. He cannot retreat from that position. Is that clear?’

‘Yes, my king.’

‘My name is Corvus, lad. Now get going.’

The youngster sped off, eyes alight as though he had been somehow honoured. Ardashir chuckled.

‘You call them lad, now?’

‘I feel old enough to be their father, some of them.’

‘When do you want me to move?’

Corvus grinned, and instantly years fell off him. ‘When I join you, Ardashir. You think I’d let the Companions go into battle without me?’

Ardashir gathered his reins. ‘Brother, remember one thing; if you go down, we all go down.’

‘Where is your faith, Ardashir? If old Rictus can fight in the front rank, then so can I.’

‘You knew?’

‘I always know.’

For pasangs across the plateau of Gaugamesh there now extended a brute mass of struggling men. The slender line of the Macht had received a succession of hammer-blows as the imperial forces came up, formation after formation, and launched themselves at it. Had they coordinated their attacks, then Corvus’s line would have broken, chopped apart by sheer numbers. But the levies of the empire pitched into the battle as soon as they came off the line of march, and one by one their attacks were blunted by the stubborn professionalism of the Macht spearmen.

Out on the left, they were fighting along the banks of the dry riverbed, Teresian’s morai thrusting down into the crowded ranks of the Kufr struggling up the crumbling, sunbaked sides of the bank. On that flank some enterprising Kufr commander had thrown a fresh levy out to the north, seeking to outflank the position, but just as it seemed they were on the verge of success, Druze and a thousand of his Igranians pitched into them, swinging their drepanas to terrible effect and shrieking the high war cry of their own hills. The levy was broken, and hurled backwards.

These were small farmers and tradesmen of the Middle Empire. They had been marching for weeks, learning the ways of an army, sure of their own numbers and the authority of the high-caste Kefren officers who led them. But they had not reckoned on the utter bloody confusion of battle. They had never before seen what the sweep of a drepana could do to a man’s body when wielded by an enemy who had been fighting for years, and was well-versed in the chaotic savagery of war. They saw their friends and neighbours slashed to quivering meat around them, and streamed away in disorder.

Druze met Teresian to the rear of the line. Six thousand Macht were standing fast here, and the riverbed at their feet was filling with bodies so that the Kufr were climbing over their own mounded dead to come at the spears. The dust shrouded everything, and the roar of the battle was unlike anything that even the veterans had experienced before.

Druze drew close so he could be heard, his dark head next to Teresian’s straw-bright one.

‘I secured your left for now, but they’ll try again,’ he shouted. ‘There are too many — they’re going to pour round that flank soon. I’ll leave you my mora, but I have to get back to Corvus. He needs me in the centre.’

‘I need more of your men, Druze,’ Teresian told the Igranian. ‘That, or cavalry. There’s nothing behind me — they cave in my flank and the whole line will fold.’

‘Refuse your left, but stay anchored to the riverbed.’

Teresian nodded grimly. ‘Tell Corvus if he has any tricks left to pull, we had best see them soon.’

Druze took his forearm in the warrior’s grip. ‘Hot work, brother.’

‘Fucking thirsty too. We need water; my men are chinstrapped.’

‘I’ll see what I can do. Would you like me to wash your face and put you to bed, or do you want to play for a while?’

‘Fuck you, you black-eyed Igranian cocksucker.’

They grinned at each other, and Druze ran off, back to the centre of the Macht lines.

In the centre the blows were falling fast and hard. The first attack had been beaten off in minutes, but had been followed almost instantly by a second, and a third. It seemed that there was an endless procession of enemy formations streaming forward to slam into the ranks of the Dogsheads. The Macht stood their ground and fought each one to a standstill, until they had to retreat several paces just to get clear of the corpse-choked ground. Then they stood fast again, and watched another line of screaming Kufr come charging out of the dust.

This was not phalanx fighting — it was not the othismos as the Macht understood it. The Kufr ran up to the line of shields and hacked at them with axes and short swords, while the wicked aichmes of the spearmen jabbed out in short, economical thrusts to cripple and slay them. The leather corselets of the levy infantry were little protection against a Macht spearhead, and many of the enemy did not wear helmets either. They ran up to the line and battered upon it, and died. Some got lucky, and caught tired or already wounded men and saw their blades strike home, but most died to no result, except to make the men in the shield line more tired, to break off a few more spearheads. To bring down a few here and there and make a gap which was closed moments later.

Extravagant it might have been, but it was slowly becoming effective. The Dogsheads were being worried to death, worn down in increments. And each and every one of them was aware that the Great King’s Honai were still out there opposite them, waiting in the anonymity of the dust.

‘He may be attacking everywhere, but he’s going to make a real play for it here,’ Rictus told Fornyx. They stood panting, spitting white and leaning on their spears. There was a momentary lull in the fighting, but they could hear the cries of the Kefren officers in the ochre cloud to their front and knew it would not last long.

‘Then I wish he’d fucking get on with it,’ Fornyx said. ‘I could do with a lie down.’

‘He’ll send in the Honai when he’s ready, and try to break clear through. He does that, and he has a free path to the baggage behind.’

Fornyx looked Rictus in the eye. ‘We’re doing just fine. Do you really think his Honai can break us, Rictus — us?’

‘They are ten thousand, Fornyx, and they fight like we do, shield to shield. We’ve been at it all morning while they’ve been leaning on their spears. Just because Parmenios managed to skewer a few of them doesn’t mean they’re not ready to pitch in. No — they’ll be right in our lap soon. We have to be ready for that.’

‘Corvus should be told.’

‘You can be sure he knows. The boy’s not stupid — he placed us here for a reason.’

‘He put us here to die, it seems to me.’

‘He put us here to stand, and die. To give him time to work his magic elsewhere. That’s why he wanted me out of the line for this one.’

‘Little bastard,’ Fornyx said. ‘I might have known. Remember Machran, Rictus? He did the same damned thing.’

‘Because we’re the best he has.’

‘Chief, here they come again,’ the man beside Rictus cried.

‘Stand to!’ Rictus shouted, the words cracking in his dry throat. ‘Shields up, level spears — ’

And so it began again.

The afternoon drew on. All along the battlefront, the troops of the Great King were being steadily sent in to the meat-grinder. As well as attacking constantly on every front, the imperial forces were still coming in from the east in an unending stream, shaking out into line of battle, and then going forward. Sometimes those advancing were shaken and disordered by the fleeing remnants of the men who had been up at the spears before them, but they went in anyway. In this respect the dust was a blessing for the Kefren officers. Their men were walking into the battle blind, unable to see the true extent of the carnage ahead. Not until they began stepping on their own heaped dead did they realise what lay before them, and by then it was too late.

The smell of blood rose in the air, the stink of sweat, urine and ordure. The fighting took men and squeezed everything out of them, along with their lives. Already the flies were black about the bodies, and men in the midst of combat would find the carrion insects buzzing about their mouths and eyes as they fought, one more torment in a world of them.

Kouros flapped his good hand in front of his face as though it would rid him of the smell. He had perfume on his komis, and tugged the fine material tight about his mouth, trying to breathe. Trying not to breathe. It was not as he had expected.

He had been in battle before now, but his previous experiences had been nothing compared to this. He had taken part in ragged running fights with bands of runaway slaves, road-bandits and misguided rebels, but those skirmishes had been more akin to hunting than to warfare proper. He had never in his life before seen men stand and fight as the Macht were fighting now, destroying legions of levies, piling the ground black with bodies, and then dressing their lines, ready for more.

‘What are they?’ he asked aloud. ‘What kind of things can they be, to stand like that?’

It was his father who answered him. ‘At Kunaksa, we slew their leaders and took their baggage. We had them surrounded and outnumbered five, six to one. But still they attacked, and routed my entire army. They were thirsty, exhausted, half dead on their feet — I can still see it now — and they kept coming down that hill. They beat us that day because they thought they were already dead men. Only the Macht fights like that. Like a cornered animal, bereft of reason. That is why they are so dangerous.’

Kouros stared. The dust came and went in rolling clouds. He caught glimpses of the fighting lines to their front, a vast river of murder. He could not imagine what it must be like, up there at the spearheads. It must be very like hell itself.

‘My lord, we have word from the Arakosans out on the left.’ This was Marok, Dyarnes’ second-in-command. A tall, dark Kefre, like a lean version of Kouros, he was the one who loved women and horses, and who had more of both thanks to the generosity of the King’s heir. He glanced at Kouros and nodded his head in a half bow of acknowledgement.

‘The Macht have begun loosing off their great arrows again, into the ranks of the cavalry. The Arakosans are taking casualties. Their Archon, Lorka, asks your permission to advance.’

Ashurnan raised a hand, and Marok went silent and bowed deeply. The Great King was looking west intently, trying to pierce the curtain of dust.

At last it opened a moment. Another attack had been beaten off; there were hundreds of figures streaming in panic from the Macht line. But that line was not as tidy as it had been. It bulged and bent here and there, and there were gaps in it now as the enemy hauled away his wounded and brought men out of the rear to fill the gaps at the front. The red-clad ranks did not seem as thick as before.

Ashurnan looked at the sky. He was sure of it now.

The sun was still high, but it was westering. Soon he would have it in his eyes.

‘Couriers,’ he snapped. At once, half a dozen mounted Kefren were at the back of the chariot, their mounts stamping and snorting under them.

‘Go to Lorka and the Arakosans. Tell him he is to advance at once. He must assault the Macht right wing and then swing behind them. I will send follow-up levies behind him.’

Two couriers wheeled their horses round and burst into a canter. They took off as if racing each other.

‘Marok,’ the Great King said. ‘Go to Dyarnes. Tell him he is to take in the Honai. I want him to assault the centre and break it. He will be supported with everything I can send up. I want him to split the enemy and keep going, right to the baggage if he can. Is that understood?’

Marok blinked. Some of the colour left his face. He bowed. ‘Yes, Great King.’

‘And Marok, tell Dyarnes not to jeopardise himself. He is to remain behind the main assault.’ The Great King smiled. ‘You, Marok, will lead the attack in person.’

Marok looked quickly at Kouros, then back at the King. He bowed. ‘You honour me, lord.’

‘Break the Macht line, Marok. Show me your loyalty.’

Marok turned away and walked slowly back to the Honai lines, tugging on his helmet as he did so.

‘A good man,’ Ashurnan said. ‘Ambitious.’ He looked at Kouros and smiled a scimitar smile.

‘A favourite of your mother’s, I believe.’

Two massive bodies of troops now began to grind into motion. On the left the Arakosan cavalry broke into a trot, eight thousand heavy horsemen in several columns. Their ranks were ragged and disordered, for Parmenios’s missiles were still plunging out of the air, and few could miss such a packed target. There were scores of horses lying on the ground, kicking the last of their lives away, and the Arakosans were seized by rage at the screams of the beautiful Niseians. When the order to advance was given they surged forward with a will, a massive tide of flesh, bone, bronze and iron. For fully two pasangs they covered the earth, and before the dust of their own advance covered them they seemed from afar to resemble a tumbled avalanche of lapis lazuli stones, so bright was their blue armour. The buried thunder of their advance carried clear across the battlefield, like the anger of some earthbound god.

The Honai heard it as they took up their spears and began to advance, to the sound of horn-calls and long flutes. Ten thousand tall Kefren in polished bronze. Their armour also caught the sun, and it seemed that a host of blazing statues had come to life and were advancing across the field. The levies moving forward on their flanks gave a great cheer, and it was taken up all along the imperial lines, until a hundred thousand voices were shouting together in a moment of pure exultation. The mood of the entire battlefield shifted. The weary Macht lifted their heads in a moment of cold doubt, and the fresh levies who were still coming in from the east heard that sound and stepped forward with a will, sure that they had just heard the sound of victory rolling towards them out of the dust.

‘Give us a drink, will you, Rictus? I’ve a tongue like a block of wood.’

Rictus leaned his forehead against his spear. He tried to spit, but nothing came out.

‘I sent it back with Kesero after he was wounded. There’s none left.’

‘Damn it. I’ll die thirsty.’

‘So will we all, brother.’

‘Look at them. Someone in this country can teach drill.’

They stared at the advancing ranks of the Honai, marching in perfect time to the flutes, a shrill, unearthly noise.

The Dogsheads stood surrounded by mounds of dead, the enemy’s and their own. They had thinned out the line to keep connected to Demetrius’s conscripts on their right and Teresian’s veterans on their left. They stood four deep now, half their regular formation. Behind them, the wounded were lying in a carpet of broken, writhing humanity, painted black with flies. The carts could not load them up fast enough to take them back to the baggage train.

Behind the wounded were a few hundred of Parmenios’s engineers, manning ballistae and looking distinctly nervous. Behind that there was nothing but empty plain all the way back to the waggon-park holding all the army’s supplies, some two pasangs to the rear.

‘We’re a bit thin on the ground,’ Rictus said mildly. He had never felt so tired in his life before. A few nicks and scratches were all that the fury of the battle had so far inflicted upon his flesh, but he was bone weary.

I am too old, he thought. Corvus was right.

And yet, when he lifted his head and looked at the Honai advancing towards him, marching to the sound of flutes, something in him leapt.

I am as much made for this as is the head of a spear.

A sense almost of happiness.

‘I don’t think much of their music,’ he said aloud. And then, louder, ‘What say you we make some music of our own, brothers?’

Half a dozen of them took him up on it at once, and began the slow, mournful chant of the Paean, the death-hymn of the Macht. It went down the line like smoke on the wind, and rose higher, fighting down the shrill pipe of the approaching flutes.

Thousands took it up, not only the Dogsheads, but the morai to left and right in the line. It rolled out of the Macht army like the murmur of a storm, and grew. The men straightened at their spears, lifted their heads from behind their shields and sang, until the singing was the loudest thing on that enormous tortured plain, and the sound of it carried clear across that deadly space, even to the ears of the Great King himself.

‘Close shields! Level spears!’ the orders rang out, but the singing went on, drowning out the Kufr flutes and horns.

The Honai gave a great collective snarl, and quickened their pace.

The Macht were still singing when the Great King’s warriors smashed into their line.