Kings of Morning

EIGHTEEN

Druze stood panting and lathered in dust before Corvus, Ardashir and Demetrius. He took a swallow from a proffered waterskin and rinsed his mouth. When he spat the water out it was brown.

‘He’s doing it — he’s committed the Honai at last. They charged into the Dogsheads like the end of the world. Corvus, he is about to cut us in two.’

Corvus nodded. He did not look in the least surprised.

‘How are the Dogsheads faring?’

‘They’ve lost near half their number, but you know what they are. They’ll not retreat, not with Rictus there to hold them.’

A flash of something like anger passed over Corvus’s face. ‘That damn fool,’ he said, exasperated. ‘He’ll end up dying there.’

‘You should have told him,’ Ardashir said.

‘That I was sacrificing his men — again? I needed the Dogsheads to hold for a long time — that’s why I put them there. I had to get the Honai moving. But I did not mean them to stand to the last.’

‘There will be none of them left if we don’t start things in motion,’ Druze said. ‘The Honai can fight — they fight like us, and they’re the biggest bastards I’ve ever seen.’

Corvus nodded as though some internal argument had been decided.

‘Very well. Druze, get you back to your command. Hold them in readiness. But they are not to move before my order — understood? This is all about the timing.’

‘Corvus,’ Druze said, looking up at the pale man on the tall horse. ‘They’re dying fast, Rictus’s people.’

‘Wait for my command, brother,’ Corvus said crisply. Druze stared at him a moment more, then nodded, and took off into the dust-shrouded chaos of the battlefield at a flat sprint, his drepana bouncing on his back.

‘Demetrius?’

The one-eyed veteran stepped forward.

‘Now is the time. The Arakosans are on their way. Your boys are about to earn their pay. You know what to do.’

‘I know what to do,’ Demetrius said heavily.

‘Whatever happens, they must not break. If they do, the Arakosans will chop them to pieces. They must stand together. Green as they are, they must be able to understand that.’

‘If I cannot make six morai of spears stand and fight on a battlefield, then you can have my other eye,’ Demetrius snapped. ‘But it won’t be just the cavalry — he’s sending other troops out on the right as well.’

‘By the time they arrive, the thing will be over, one way or another.’

Demetrius nodded. ‘It had better be,’ he said grimly.

Corvus leaned in the saddle until his face was close to the frowning veteran. ‘Have faith, brother.’

Demetrius pursed his lips, and uttered something like a laugh. Then he stumped off to where his command waited in formation behind the Companions. Six thousand inexperienced spearmen, the only reserve Corvus had on the field.

‘Time for me to go,’ Corvus said to Ardashir, donning his helmet with the horsehair plume. ‘Don’t get caught by the Arakosans, Ardashir, but make them charge home. If it means you must — ’

‘I know what it means,’ Ardashir interrupted him. ‘I will sacrifice the mora if it comes to that — we will all do as we are bidden today, my friend.’

‘I wish Rictus had done as he was damn well told. He should have been commanding the reserve, not Demetrius.’

‘Rictus would have been in the thick of the fight wherever you put him. That is his nature.’

Corvus nodded, the crest bobbing on his helm.

‘See you in hell, brother.’

‘See you in hell.’

Rictus was on his knees, his shield held over his head while he scrabbled in the bloody mire for a weapon to fight with. His spear was shattered, his drepana was broken, and were it not for the Curse of God, he would already have been dead several times over.

He found a short sword, old fashioned, the type his father would have carried, and levered it out of the sucking muck while all around him the fight went on, and he was buffeted by the men struggling around him. The dust had turned to mud under them, thickened by their blood, and other, nameless things. Rictus was plastered brown with it, his armour’s cold gleam obscured.

He was on his feet again. He could feel the old wounds all over his body complaining, but ignored that winter-pain and gripped the slimy hilt of the sword in his fist while the heavy shield dragged at his left shoulder.

He was no longer in the front rank, but the front rank was fast becoming a mere concept. They were nothing more than a line of struggling men, sometimes two ranks deep, sometimes three. Like seaweed being moved ever farther up the beach by successive waves.

It had been a shock, when the Honai had crashed into them, for the Dogsheads had not yet fought Kufr like these. To begin with, the Great King’s bodyguards were all picked for size; they towered over the Macht by a head and more. And they wore heavy armour; solid plate bronze polished bright, with heavy round shields like those of the Macht themselves.

But more than any of these things, they were willing to stand and die.

Rictus had lost contact with Fornyx in the press, and did not know if his friend was dead or alive. He had seen men knocked unconscious by the first clash, and then speared as they were held upright between the two pushing lines. The Macht had held doggedly, for despite their lesser size, they were stronger than the slender Kefren, and though the Honai were the best trained of any troops in the Great King’s army, they had not seen the years of hard service that the Dogsheads had.

So they died fast — at first. Rictus himself had speared some senior officer through the eye-slot of his helm in the first moments, and had thus shattered his spear. The drepana had buckled against a brazen breastplate soon after. It was meant for cutting, not thrusting, and it had snapped like a biscuit. After that he had retreated into his own men, his feet balancing on corpses and the awful nameless sludge bulging through his sandals.

He backed clear out of the line for a moment, breathing hard. Looking up, he could see nothing of the sky; they fought in a tent of dust which hid everything more than twenty paces away. But he could hear the sound of battle beyond his sight, the all-encompassing roar of it from which individual screams sometimes rose in a high pitch of agony. The sound reminded him of Kunaksa, it was so intense, so utterly huge. He had known nothing like it in the last thirty years, not even at Machran.

He looked behind him. Parmenios’s engineers had loaded their ballistae and were standing with their swords to hand. If — when — the Honai broke the line, they would not delay the Great King’s elite for more than a few minutes.

Rictus tugged a man out of the line. The fellow was wide-eyed, with the rigour of the othismos still upon him, brown foam flecking the corners of his mouth. Rictus had to shake him, hard.

‘Who are you — your name, man!’

The spearman had to think about how to respond.

‘Serenos of Pontis.’

‘Serenos, drop your shield and your spear. I want you to go south, to our right, and find one of the marshals or the King himself — you understand? Tell them that the centre is about to break. We need reinforcements — anything we can get — we need them now. Listen to me — do you understand?’

The man nodded dumbly.

‘Good lad — now, go, and be quick, for Phobos’s sake.’

Stark relief on the man’s face as he ran off. For a second, Rictus envied him. There was a part of him that also wanted nothing more than to be able to disappear into the dust and wait for the noise to go away. All men felt that in battle. There was only one cure for it.

He bent, picked up the man’s discarded spear, hefted it a moment thoughtfully, and then limped back into the fighting.

By some miracle he found himself close to Fornyx. He pushed forward into the front rank to replace a falling man, and immediately took a spearhead in the shoulder. It jolted him backwards a step but skewed off his armour, carving a track through the mud embossing his cuirass. He growled like an animal, the sound lost in that raging tumult, and shortened his grip on the spear. Past the mid-point he stabbed with it, the first thrust striking a shield, the second gauged more carefully, taking the glaring Honai at the neck and severing the bulging vessels there. It was like up-ending a bottle of wine. The Honai glared and raged a moment more, then gripped his neck, astonished, and sank down into the mud. Rictus plunged the sauroter onto the nape of the Kufr’s neck, and saw the sputtering square hole it made as he yanked the weapon out again. Then it was forgotten, as the gap was filled, and another impossibly tall golden-skinned monster with blazing eyes was trying to kill him.

The Macht were pushed back. They exacted a terrible toll on the Honai as they retreated, for in their eagerness the Great King’s elite were pressing forward heedless of losses, and their formation began to open a little. When that happened, the aichmes of the close-knit Macht would stab out with the swiftness of a kingfisher’s strike. It was death for one of the Honai even to lower his shield to shout to a comrade.

But the Dogsheads had been fighting for hours now, and they were stepping on their own wounded as they fell back. The Honai dispatched the fallen without pity as they passed over. They outnumbered the Macht to their front some four to one and no amount of skill or valour could hope to hold out much longer against those odds.

‘Break on the left!’ a single shout, almost lost in the roar. But Rictus felt the thing shift around him. On both sides the Macht were falling back, not as part of a line, but in knots and fragments of still fighting men.

‘Stay together!’ he bellowed. ‘Face your front, you bastards!’

The line was gone, engulfed like a broken dyke. Now the Honai were pouring through, chopping it up still further. The Dogsheads were an elite even among veterans; they knew that to turn and run meant instant death. So they fell back with their face to the enemy. They died with their shields still on their arms even when surrounded and stabbed to carrion by half a dozen of the enemy at a time. Their bodies piled up in mounds of bronze and scarlet.

Some centons hung together, what was left of them, and a tattered grouping gathered under the banner and faced out in all directions, fighting back to back now. Fornyx was the banner-bearer. He had lost his helm, and one eye was gone, nothing left but a torn hole, but he stood holding up the oak staff from which hung their ragged flag; the same one which had flown at Kunaksa, thirty years before.

Rictus joined him, and around the pair of cursebearers other broken remnants of the Dogsheads coalesced, until there were several score brought to bay in a rough oval, a crowded mass of grim, exhausted men with the light of death in their eyes. There was no quarter given or asked, nor any thought of surrender.

Rictus dropped his shield and, taking Fornyx’s free arm, he set it over his own shoulders and took some of the younger man’s weight. Fornyx grinned, his teeth black with blood and dust.

‘Where have you been, you strawhead bitch? Back of the line having a sit-down, I’ll bet.’ He tilted his head until it rested briefly against Rictus’s helm.

‘I knew things were in good hands,’ Rictus told him. He pulled off his helm, and even the hot air seemed cool to him after the confining bronze. He kissed Fornyx on his bloody cheek.

‘Antimone found us at last, brother.’

‘Aye. She’s been looking for us this long time.’

‘We will go into her darkness together, Fornyx.’

But Fornyx did not respond. His weight grew as his legs buckled. His one eye was still open and that black grin was carved on his mouth. Rictus lowered him to the bloody churned earth at their feet. Only then did he see the blood trickling in a black bar from a gash in Fornyx’s thigh. The blood was pooled about his feet; he had stood there a long time.

Rictus closed the staring eye, and then took the banner from his friend’s hand.

Lord, in thy glory and thy goodness, send worthy men to kill me.

He set a hand on Fornyx’s head, the kind of touch a father might bestow on his sleeping child. Then he straightened, the world livid, dazzling in his eyes, and in a low voice he began to sing the Paean once more.

It went unheard. The island of Macht was engulfed, the Honai crashing over it in their hundreds. They clambered over bodies still breathing and stabbed downwards at the dying men without looking to see where their spearheads went. Their faces were set towards the west, and the open space beyond the mounded corpses which was the rear of the Macht army. Unstoppable now, they surged on, hundreds, thousands of the tall Kefren cheering as they advanced at an eager trot.

They had broken the Macht line, and Corvus’s army was now split in two.