Kings of Morning

NINETEEN

‘Time to go, ’ Ardashir said calmly. He was looking at the oncoming torrent of Arakosan cavalry, which was approaching at a gallop, thousands of horsemen on beautiful Niseians, a glorious and terrible sight. He leaned in the saddle and set a hand on his banner-bearer’s arm.

‘Shoron, signal retire.’

The Kefren trooper, clad in scarlet like all of Corvus’s army, tilted the banner horizontal three times. At once, Ardashir felt the movement of the ranks behind him. ‘Quickly, brothers!’ he cried. ‘We don’t want to be in the middle of this one!’

Almost a thousand Companion cavalry began filing out to the open flank in trotting lines, the warhorses bucking nervously under them. Ardashir let the mora file past and raised his hand in salute to the spearmen standing ready behind them, hidden from the enemy up until now. Demetrius raised his own fist in response and barked an order which was repeated all down the line by his centurions. The morai levelled their spears. Six thousand men, six ranks deep, one and a half pasangs long.

Ardashir broke into a canter, almost the last to leave the front of the phalanx. The Arakosans were perhaps two hundred paces away, a mass of horseflesh at full charge, the very earth quivering under their feet like a tapped drum. Nothing would stop them now; it was too late for them to pull up.

At the sudden sight of the spearline some tried to rein in, and went down, bowled over and crushed by the hordes coming up behind them. The outer companies tried to wheel left, but Ardashir’s troopers were already curving round in a great arc to meet them and hammer in that flank. They were held on their course by their own momentum.

The horses balked at the sight of the steady line of spearmen; at the last moment they refused the contact. But the hundreds behind them could not see what was happening to the front rank; they piled into their fellows with a fearful crash. Ardashir saw one massive Niseian hurled end over end through the air, its rider a rag doll flung headlong into the crush.

It was a kind of carnage he had never witnessed before. Hundreds of horses went down, the Macht spearing them without pity, disembowelling the magnificent animals or jabbing out their eyes. Riders were lifted out of the saddle by the thickets of spears impaling them. Here and there the sheer weight of the animals broke in the Macht line, but the spearmen swarmed over the still-kicking beasts and fought while standing upon their beating flesh.

The Arakosans had charged into a wall of spears and armoured men, head-on and unprepared, and their own numbers were piling them upon the wreckage of the leading ranks. It was like watching a man’s face being smashed repeatedly into a stone.

Demetrius’s green spearmen stood their ground, and the Arakosans milled in front of them, horses rearing to bite and kick, their riders slashing with their tulwars and scimitars and light lances. But they were striking down upon a line of shields and bronze, whereas the aichmes of the spearmen were stabbing upwards into the soft flesh of the horses. When the big animals fell they entangled others, crushed their riders, lay thrashing and screaming in a mire of their own entrails.

‘Get your horn, Shoron. Sound the charge,’ Ardashir shouted over that holocaust. He felt sickened, but would not shirk his role in the slaughter.

Shoron lifted his horn from the saddle-pommel and blew the clear hunting call of the western empire, which the Companions had used since before the siege of Machran. Ardashir’s mora smashed into the outer flanks of the Arakosans once again, Niseians fighting one another, Kefren killing Kefren, the red at war with the blue.

The Macht started to sing as the horn-notes died away. With their death hymn in their throats they began to advance, Demetrius out in front and waving them on. He stood atop a dead horse and pointed his spear eastwards like some warlike prophet.

The Arakosans were fighting their own horses now. They had been brought to a standstill and a ridge of their dead lay for over a pasang in front of Demetrius’s morai, while they had now been assailed in the flank by a thousand of the Companions. They were brave men, superb horse-soldiers, but they had never encountered a Macht phalanx before, and no matter how intent they were on attacking, their mounts would not charge that unbroken battlement of bronze and iron.

They broke.

First in one and twos, then clotted groups, many clinging two to a horse. They streamed away from the advancing Macht, and Ardashir’s Companions harried them in pursuit, breaking up any companies which halted and tried to reform. In minutes, they were in full retreat, their officers trying to stem the rout, beating their own men with their swords. That massive sea of horsemen began to pour back the way it had come, with the Macht phalanx advancing inexorably in its wake, and as the Arakosans fled, they slammed into the formations of levy infantry which the Great King had sent in behind them to follow up their assault. A boiling mass of cavalry and infantry was brewed up there in the towering, choking maelstrom, and the whole imperial left flank was thrown into utter confusion. Out of the dust to the west, the sound of the Paean rose out of six thousand voices, and confusion gave way to stark terror. The Arakosans gave up any attempt to rally and began to flee in earnest, galloping through the oncoming infantry which had been meant to reinforce their victory.

Demetrius’s men came upon that vast mob of enemy soldiers, and the Macht went to work with their spears, while Ardashir’s cavalry hung on the flank like a hound tearing at the legs of a maddened bull.

Almost two pasangs away, in the broken centre of Corvus’s army, the Honai were still in full, jubilant cry. Their formations had lost all order in their delight at having annihilated the much-vaunted Dogsheads. They considered the battle won; now they had only to secure the enemy baggage train and the Macht army would have the legs cut out from under it.

Dyarnes was near the rear of his men, still climbing over the clotted dead where the fighting had been thickest, and he paused to grab the shoulder of a fleet youngster with wild eyes.

‘You — get you back to the Great King and tell him we are through the enemy line, and are advancing on his baggage.’

‘The Great King?’ the young Kefre sputtered.

‘Tell his people, you fool — they’re back at the Royal Chariot. Tell them I need further orders. We have this thing won, if I can but wheel some of my troops round to strike the enemy in the rear. The thing is won — you hear me?’

The Honai was grinning now, an open-mouthed grin like that of a cheerful dog.

‘Drop your shield and run.’

The young Kefre took off, tossing away his helm as he sprinted into the dust. Dyarnes chuckled. He was alone save for a cluster of aides. One leaned close and shouted in his ear.

‘Shall we recall the men, lord? Or halt them, at least?’

‘Not yet. Let them have their triumph, Arnosh. I want them well clear of the line before I begin to turn them around.’

‘It’s won sir. We did what the legends said we could not — we broke the Macht.’

Dyarnes bent amid the corpses. They lay so thick he had to stand upon dead flesh.

‘They did not break,’ he muttered, staring at a white, snarling face. ‘They did not run. They stood and died.’

Some new note in the tumult to the west, where he could still see the tail end of the victorious Honai companies. A breath of wind, a lift in the air, and suddenly it was as though a new stage had been unveiled in a close-packed theatre. His view opened out; he found himself staring at a moving crowd of thousands of his own Kefren, the King’s Bodyguard in its moment of hard-won victory. He began to smile at the sight.

But then something else tugged his gaze south, to where the Arakosans were engaged in a sepia thundercloud, fighting their own battle. A wave of relief swept over him as he recognised the sight of cavalry spilling north across the plain, thousands of them. The Arakosans had done their work quickly; they must already have broken through the Macht right wing.

But there was no blue in that massive, arrow-shaped body of horsemen. They were clad in red, the colour of the Macht.

Despite the furnace-heat of the day, Dyarnes felt a nerveless chill steal along his spine.

‘Oh, Bel deliver us,’ he gasped. ‘No — no, no!’

The Companions of King Corvus, four thousand strong, shook out into line of battle, and at the sound of a bright, tugging horn-call, taken up all along their galloping line, they brought down their lances and charged full-tilt into the scattered, disorganised mass of the Honai.

And that was not all. At the same moment, there came from the south a boiling mass of Macht infantry — not spearmen, but lightly armoured swordfighters, bearing wickedly curved blades of iron. They paused fifty paces from the Honai, then threw a shower of javelins. And then they pitched into the Kefren with a roar, the sword-blades catching fire from the westering sun as they arced through the air.

Dyarnes sank to his knees, aghast. The wind changed; the dust-cloud rose again, rolling across the plain to blot out the panorama he had glimpsed. He looked down at his hands, still clean despite the carnage surrounding him. A Macht face, bloodless and stiff, stared up at him in surly triumph.

As quick as that, like a cup slipping through one’s fingers. For a few minutes, he had seen victory with his own eyes.

‘The King,’ he croaked. ‘The King must be warned.’

He looked up at a new note in the thunder of battle. Horses. They were coming closer.

He stood up and drew his scimitar.

And a hundred heavy cavalry exploded out of the dust before him.

They had brought fresh water in skins to the chariot, and wine for those who wanted it. Kouros took a cup, stood on the leather-strapped floor of the vehicle, and rinsed the dust out of his mouth.

The noise around him; that roaring cataclysm. He had almost become accustomed to it. Hard to believe so many men could make such a din for so long.

The sun was a white ball, in a sky the colour of tanned leather. It had crossed the meridian. If it were shining they would have had it in their eyes. How many hours had he been standing here, with his father’s upright form beside him? Four — five? All those months of preparation, the gathering of the army, the logistical nightmare, the endless marching columns. All for these few hours in a lightless sky and a blinding storm of dust. How did one even know what was happening?

He wondered where Roshana was — whether the Macht had killed her, or merely taken her as a slave. For a few moments he dwelled with lubricious pleasure on the thought of her beauty in chains, serving the bestial needs of those animals. The thought cheered him. He drank more wine. His aching ribs took solace in the vintage and he grew more at ease, wondering when it would all be declared over. He craved a bath above all other things. The grit was grating in his very scalp.

There were shadows coming out of the dust, running forms, very like the broken crowds of the levies that had been sent up against the Macht line earlier in attack after attack. They ran past with mouths agape, fighting for breath, eyes like marbles in their heads.

They were Honai.

The wine curdled in Kouros’s mouth. His father was leaning on the front rail of the chariot, saying nothing. The old man tugged down the folds of his komis as though that would help him see through the storm of dust, the running shadows.

Crowds of the bronze-clad warriors were looming up now, many painted with blood, their bright armour dull and scored. They had thrown away their shields to aid their flight; the age-old badge of the broken soldier.

The Honai. It could not be possible.

The Great King himself railed at them, shouting like a junior officer, to no avail. His cavalry escort halted them for a time. They staggered into the chests of the big Niseians, and many collapsed there, sobbing for breath. To run in full armour, in this heat, this dust; it was a killing exertion. But they were staggering on, pushing their way between the ranks of the horsemen, cursing the Arakosans and punching at the heads of the horses blocking their paths.

Finally the chariot bodyguard leapt down from the vehicle and seized one of his comrades by the wing of his cuirass. He swung him off his feet and shouted furiously into the Kefre’s face.

‘What has happened?’

The Honai took a moment to come back to himself; the panic was flooding his eyes.

‘Cavalry. They hit us with thousands of horsemen, and other infantry. We were strung out. We thought it was over.’

‘Have you seen Dyarnes?’

The Honai shook his head dumbly.

‘Bel’s blood,’ the bodyguard said. He released the fellow and after a second the Honai got up, tottered in a confused circle, and then took off, staggering.

‘My lord, we should go,’ the bodyguard said to Ashurnan. ‘If the Honai are broken, then we are exposed here.’

The Great King shook his head. ‘I must know what has happened.’ He turned to his couriers, who sat on their trembling, sweating horses like men eager to begin a race.

‘Go forward. Find Dyarnes, or at least find out what has happened.’ And to another one; ‘Go to Lorka and the Arakosans. Find out what has occurred on the left.’

Kouros tossed aside his cup. ‘Father!’

They were like ghosts. They charged out of the murk like shapes made of shadow and dust, and all at once the dust was swept away by the veering wind, and the sun burst bright upon them, setting alight the bright lance-heads, the swords, the gleam in their eyes.

Kefren on Niseians, a line of them. They might have been imperial cavalry, except that their garments were dyed red as holly-berries and their armour was strangely shaped. At their head rode a pale-faced youth, his eyes blazing under a horsehair crest, his very face shining, as though he had been just that moment incarnated from some terrible dream. His armour was black, as lightless as if it were made of a hole scooped from the very fabric of the world. There was a banner with the device of a raven upon it, sable on white, flying above his head. He raised his sword and cried out wordlessly. And Kouros felt a thrill of terror scale his flesh as he recognised the face.

‘It’s him!’ he cried, and he leapt from the chariot even as the driver whipped the horses.

The cavalry charged into them like a foaming wall. Ashurnan drew his sword and laid about him like a young man while his bodyguard held up a shield to protect him. The chariot snagged, jerked, the Niseians that drew it fighting breast to breast with the horses of the newcomers. The driver had his whip-hand slashed from his wrist, and then his head was taken from his shoulders and he toppled in a fountain of blood.

The Arakosan escort had surged forward, and now the imperial cavalry were battling it out at a standstill all around the royal chariot, the horses biting and kicking, their riders hacking at one another and stabbing with short lances. The battle was here, now, right upon them. Kouros rolled along the ground while his barely knitting ribs grated in his chest and burst his mind wide open with the agony of it. But the fear that flooded him also kept him going.

The couriers were battling at the rear of the chariot, but they were unarmoured and young, inexperienced. The Kefren who fought them seemed transported; they battled like demons, and there were more and more of their fellows streaming in from the west, a veritable army of enemy cavalry which seemed to have somehow sprung up out of the dust.

Kouros stood up. He saw the Great King’s standard tilt and then fall as the chariot was overturned. The horses still harnessed to it panicked and tried to bolt, dragging the vehicle along. His father was still inside it, hanging on with one hand and lashing out with the scimitar.

A horse knocked him down, its hoof striking him in the temple. Kouros barely felt it, but for a few minutes as he struggled to his knees in the midst of the melee, he found himself recording everything he saw with a strange, remote detachment. He saw Ashurnan speared through the chest by an enemy trooper and fall from the overturned chariot to be hidden behind the trampling feet of the horses. He saw the Arakosan escort fighting to the last for possession of the standard, men losing hands and arms to keep hold of it. But the blue-armoured Arakosans were now a mere struggling handful.

He saw the enemy cavalry, horsemen who were Kefren, yet somehow Macht, flood in a tide past the wrecked chariot. There was no-one left to oppose them, no-one left to kill.

He saw Corvus, the pale youth with the terrible eyes, dismount, and lay his cloak over the trampled corpse that had once been Ashurnan, Great King of the Asurian empire, ruler of the world.

And with that, the strange remoteness left him. Kouros staggered to his feet, the Macht cavalry galloping past him in squadrons to spread ruin through the rest of the army. They took with them the standard of Asuria, which had flown on victorious battlefields for years beyond count. It was a trophy now, stained with the blood of the men who had tried to preserve it.

He caught a horse with his good arm, and hung onto the reins like a man down to his last straw as it danced and reared around him. Somehow, he pulled himself into the saddle, wholly ignored. He did not wear armour, he bore no weapon that the enemy could see, and he was plainly injured. They left him alone; he was just one more fleeing Kufr in the dust and the destruction of the Asurian army.

The King is dead, he thought muzzily as he kicked the horse into motion and set the sun at his back. Long live the King.

He joined the mob of men and animals running eastwards, some in flight, some in pursuit.

He did not know where he was going. He knew only that he had to get away from that pale faced youth, the boy who had killed his father.