Kings of Morning

TWENTY-TWO

They had been gathering people ever since leaving Hamadan, accumulating a ragged tail of leaderless troops, fleeing nobles, masterless slaves. As they came down into the sun-baked lowlands of Asuria, they numbered in their thousands, a cavalcade of remnants looking for a way to become whole again.

At the head of the straggling column Kouros sat upon the big bay Niseian which had carried him clear through the mountains, and reined in at the sight below, his breath caught in his throat at the panorama that opened out before him.

Asuria, the heart of the empire. It was an endless green country which rolled away beyond the edge of sight, gridded with the darker green of irrigation channels, glinting under the sun. In the distance, he could see the grey line of Ashur’s walls, the sea of terracotta roofs beyond it, and the two ziggurats, lonely mountains afloat on the haze, the Fane of Bel catching the sun with a brief flash of gold.

Lorka, Archon of the Arakosans, drew up beside him in his kingfisher-blue armour. He touched his forehead and then opened his palm to the sun in thanks to Bel.

‘So long as Ashur stands, there is hope,’ he said to Kouros. ‘You are Great King now — it must be proclaimed. The people must know that the world continues as it did, that all things will one day be the same again.’

Kouros nodded. ‘Bring your men into the city — I will see that they are found quarters.’

‘And the others?’ Lorka gestured to the river of people who were plodding past them, head down and exhausted with the long trek over the Magron.

‘They are rabble. Let them find a place where they may. I will ride ahead, Lorka. Make sure that the bullion waggons are within the city walls by nightfall.’

‘As you wish, my lord. I will detail a small escort to see you through the gates. Remember me to your mother, and tell her I send my respects and rejoice that I may soon see her again.’

Kouros looked at the Arakosan sharply. ‘My mother — yes, of course.’

He kicked his mount savagely, and started down towards the city at a gallop with a skein of Arakosan riders in tow.

They entered the western gates without ceremony or remark. The tall barbican of enamelled tile was the same colour as the Arakosans’ armour, and the traffic went in and out of it as though nothing had changed. Farmers still brought their crops to market, merchants still led braying mule-trains, slaves still filed along in chained gangs.

There was one difference, though — there were no Honai on guard, just some leather-clad hufsan of the city watch.

Kouros let his horse pick the way through the crowd, massaging his still-stiff torso with one hand. Apart from the magnificence of his steed and his armed escort, there was little to set him apart personally from a thousand other prosperous minor nobles or merchants. His clothing was well made but hard-worn, and he wore no komis; his face was brown and wind-burnt like that of a peasant, and for a weapon he bore nothing more grand than a filthy kitchen-blade of blackened iron. These things would have seemed important to him, once, but no more.

They rode up the Huruma amid the spray of the fountains, the palace ziggurat looming ever closer and taller above them, casting a shadow as large as that of a stormcloud. Only when Kouros set his horse to climb the King’s Steps did the guards come awake, and he found himself surrounded by a knot of hufsan with whips and scimitars. He thought of the gleaming Honai who should have been there, now dead on the barren plain of Gaugamesh, and something like grief rose in his throat. He did not speak, and let his Arakosans do the talking for him. They cursed and swore at the hufsan in common Asurian, the language of the masses, but the hufsan guards were adamant; no-one save the Great King himself might mount the Steps on horseback.

Finally, as the Arakosans began to draw their swords, Kouros spoke. In high Kefren he said, ‘I am Kouros, son of Ashurnan. My father was Great King of the empire, and I am his heir. The crown is mine; this ziggurat is mine. This city and everything in it belongs to me, as do your lives. If you do not let me pass I will summon my army into the city and have you impaled at this very spot. Will you let me pass, or will you wait here to die?’

Something in his tone stilled them. The guards muttered among themselves, looking at the bright steel in the hands of the Arakosans. They noted the Niseian warhorses, and the effortless confidence of the Black Kefre who spoke to them. Finally they gave way.

Kouros began pacing his horse up the wide-spaced steps that led to the summit of the ziggurat.

This would have been the highlight of my life, once, he thought. Now it is just another road.

They had word of him on the summit before he arrived, so swiftly did the rumour-mill grind in the ziggurat. He dismounted to find an honour guard awaiting him, gaudily armoured Kefren who looked as though they had never held a spear before. There was a disordered flurry, a kind of silent, low-key panic as some sense of ceremony was grasped at. Kouros stood by his patient horse and smiled a little as he saw his mother approach, decked out like a queen in a city’s worth of silk and jewels, flanked by Charys, the brutal-faced head eunuch, and little Nurakz, the harem secretary. A train of beautiful young women brought up the rear, as butterfly-like as ever. They blinked in the sunlight and held up little parasols to protect their complexions.

‘My son — is it really you?’

She glided up close to him as smoothly as if she ran on wheels, and took Kouros’s face in her cold ring-bright hands.

‘Bel’s blood, your poor face. You are burnt black with the sun.’

‘The Mountains will do that to a man. Did you get the despatches?’

‘They arrived five days ago. I did not think to find you so close behind them — what are you wearing? Was there no-one to greet you into the city?’

He shook his head free of her hands. ‘We must talk.’

‘You must bathe.’ She clapped her white hands. ‘Charys, see to prince Kouros — see that — ’

‘I am King now, mother. I need no crown for that. I saw my father die, as I saw Rakhsar die. The throne is mine.’

She stared at him for a long, wordless moment, the heavy cosmetics stark in the sunlight, her eyes unreadable. At last she bowed to him, and as she did, so did everyone else in the courtyard.

‘My lord King,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you wish, and it shall be done.’

They changed the bathwater three times before he got to the end of the dirt ingrained in him. It was his mother’s bath in the harem, not that in the royal bedchambers, for the Great King’s apartments were being refurbished and aired in readiness for their newest occupant. Kouros did not greatly care. He had not stopped to bathe even at Hamadan, and he had become used to the grime of travel, the smell of woodsmoke, the hard ground for a pillow.

Hufsa slaves as naked as he wiped him down with wooden strigils and applied sweet oils to his abraded skin, combing out the long black hair that fell to his shoulderblades and tying it up in the customary topknot. He stood to be dried and dressed and was too tired to do more than run one hand in absent speculation across the breasts of the prettiest slave. Standing there as they belted the silk robe about his waist, he began to understand his father a little better. He thrust the knife which had killed his brother into the broad sash they wound about his middle. It was an artefact from another world, a world more real than this.

He joined his mother that evening to eat, reclining amid the marble pillars of the harem and lifting ridiculously small dainties from a platter of beaten gold. He had eaten horsemeat in the mountains, and found it not at all bad. In any case, he had little appetite for anything but wine, and this Orsana served him herself in a crystal cup. Kouros held it up to the lamplight and marvelled at the workmanship, the fragility of it in his brown fingers.

‘War has made a man of you,’ Orsana said from her couch.

‘I see things differently now, it’s true.’

‘I have already sent out a proclamation; the city criers are shouting it all over the streets. Asuria has a new king. My son is alive, and the throne is no longer empty. I will begin preparations for the coronation in the morning.’

‘Make it swift, mother. We do not have time to indulge these things any more. The enemy is hard on my heels. He will be in front of our walls before the summer is out.’

She leaned forward. ‘So soon?’

‘He is a man in a hurry.’

‘What did you save out of the wreck, Kouros?’

He thought of the long nights in the mountains, the waystations lost in a sea of refugees, the broken wreckage of a once-mighty army. It had melted away like a late snow. If he had not witnessed it with his own eyes, he would not have deemed it possible.

‘A few thousand of the Honai survived. I left them at Hamadan to hold the city, and came on with the Arakosans. Lorka will be within the city walls tonight; he has brought some two thousand horsemen with him, and the contents of Hamadan’s treasury. There are thousands more still on the move in the foothills, but they are no more than a common rout.’

The shock sat hard on his mother’s face. He almost enjoyed watching her master it.

‘Is that all?’

‘The Macht did a thorough job. They hunted us all the way to the passes of the mountains. And I have heard that the Juthan have sent an army to join them. There is nothing left beyond the Magron, mother. Asuria is all that remains.’

‘And Arakosia,’ she said instantly. He tilted his cup to her in agreement.

‘We have only the city guard here in Ashur,’ she went on, staring into space. ‘Five thousand hufsan who direct traffic and beat slaves. That is all.’

Kouros lay back on the cushioned couch. It was too soft for him. The weeks in the mountains had accustomed him to the feel of earth and stone under his back.

‘I killed Rakhsar with my own hand.’ He drew the knife from his sash. ‘That, at least, is done.’

‘And Roshana?’

‘The Macht took her, I think; if she lived. She is immaterial now. The intrigues are over, mother. We must think of gathering more men. We must send to Arakosia, somehow scrape up another levy. These walls must be held.’

She nodded, watching him. She looked upon the blood-grimed blade of the knife he held in fascination and disgust.

‘We must meet with Borsanes in the morning,’ Orsana told him. ‘He commands the city guard. Lorka also. I must talk to him as soon as he gets in. The Arakosans have been coming west for weeks now, but in small numbers. There are perhaps a thousand of them in the city, and more at Hamadan.’

‘Enough to stage a palace coup — not enough to fight off an invading army. You must change your sense of scale, mother.’

Suddenly Kouros hurled the beautiful crystal cup away. It soared through the air and smashed in a shower of glass and wine against the pale Kandassian marble of a nearby pillar, staining the stone. Kouros stood up.

‘We are at the end of things here, the finish of everything we have known. Lorka looks to me now; he knows it is I who rule in Ashur. Your intrigues have not prepared you for the waging of war.’

‘And running from a battlefield has suddenly transformed you into a general of genius, I suppose!’

Kouros smiled, where once he would have flown into a fury. ‘You said yourself; war has made a man of me.’

He strode over to Orsana, where she crouched, cat-like, in a billow of silk, the knife still in his hand. From behind a pillar, he saw Charys, the massive chief eunuch, sidle out, as broad as the pillar himself.

Kouros bent and kissed his mother’s cheek, tasting the chalk that whitened it.

‘I’m going to bed, to sleep in the chambers of the King where I belong. I will see Borsanes and Lorka in the morning, and I will notify you of events as they occur. Sleep well, mother.’

Her eyes seemed black in the light of the lamps, as cold as stones on a mountainside.

‘Do not overreach yourself, Kouros. You stand in my world.’

‘Your world is too small,’ he retorted. ‘You have forgotten what life is like beyond it.’

Then he walked out of the harem, sliding the iron knife back into his sash, and not deigning to give so much as a glance at the glowering eunuch whose eyes followed him all the way to the doors.

The city was a changed place the next morning. In the early hours, before even the sun had struck the pinnacles of the ziggurats, the proclamations had gone round with the sprinting, great-lunged city criers. Crowds congested the streets in a feverish hunger for good news. For weeks now, there had been nothing but ominous rumours out of the west. A great battle had been fought, it was generally agreed, but if it had gone well, then the victory tidings would have been spread about without delay. Defeat had been suspected, but never had the high and humble of the imperial capital even dreamed that the Great King himself could be slain in battle. This was the first confirmation they had of the extent of the catastrophe now overtaking the empire. For many, it was the first time they had ever heard Kouros’s name spoken.

He rode through the streets at noon that day with an escort of Arakosan cavalry resplendent in their blue armour. A second Royal Standard had been unearthed out of the palace vaults and flew above him in a billow of rich purple and gold, the sigil of the Asurian kings catching the light in a reassuring blaze. Those who were close to the procession as it paraded down the Sacred Way could see that this new king was wind-burnt and thin. He looked like a warrior, not an aristocrat, and they took some comfort in that, and in the white grin with which he received the tossed flowers that carpeted the stones in front of his horse.

Keen observers might also have noticed that the mounts of the Arakosans were not in good flesh, and their riders had dark, tired rings under their eyes which belied the magnificence of their enamelled armour. But the parade reassured the city populace, or at any event it gave them something else to talk about. It took their mind off the storm approaching over the mountains.

In the days that followed, Kouros found he could not rest in the ziggurat — it held too many memories for him, both of his father and his mother, and it was too stiflingly confined by protocol for him to bear, after all the months on campaign. He elected to meet with his officers at the western barbican in a plain room above the gate itself. He wore a diadem now, though he had not been crowned. His father’s had been black silk. Kouros chose scarlet, perhaps as a kind of nod to the red-clad men who were now tramping across the empire.

He, Lorka, and Borsanes stood there looking down at a map of the city walls, and flicking through a bundle of tally-sticks representing those available to defend them. Kouros gripped one of these birch-wood counters in his hand as though he could squeeze more out of it.

‘It’s no good — we must recall the garrison from Hamadan. There are almost three thousand Honai up there; they will do more good with us than in the hills.’

‘Hamadan guards the eastern passes of the Magron,’ Lorka said, rubbing the triangular beard upon his chin. Many of the Arakosans were bearded; it was an archaic trait of theirs.

‘Those men will not be able to halt a field army. They will merely find themselves besieged. When I left them there, I thought the situation in Ashur was better than it is,’ Kouros said. His jaw worked, chewing on the problem.

‘If we cannot stop them at Hamadan, we will not stop them here,’ Borsanes said. He was a thin, drooping Kefre who reminded Kouros of nothing so much as a wilted sunflower. His head seemed too big for his shoulders, and he had a nose a tapir would have been proud of.

‘We will stop them,’ Kouros hissed. ‘If you lack confidence in our chances, Borsanes, then you should go back to whatever backwater my father dragged you from. You are relieved of your post. Now get out before I decide to make an example of you.’

Borsanes sputtered, eyes wide on either side of his remarkable nose. ‘Guards!’ Kouros called at once.

Two Arakosan troopers were at the door in a heartbeat.

‘Escort this fellow out of the city, as he stands. He is to leave by this very gate. Pass the word about the walls; if he is seen trying to return he is to be killed on the spot.’

The Arakosans took hold of Borsanes with some relish and dragged him, protesting and still sputtering, from the room.

Lorka roared with laughter. ‘I do not know if that was your father or your mother I just saw in you, Kouros, but it was worthy of them both.’

‘You may address me as lord,’ Kouros said icily, and Lorka’s face went flat.

‘Of course. I forgot myself, my lord. Forgive me.’

Kouros was clicking the tally sticks down on the table one by one.

‘With the Honai from Hamadan and the drafts of your people who have still to come in, I make it some twelve thousand spears. Those are the real fighters. We can probably round up some of the city low-castes and arm them also to bulk out the numbers.’

‘In Arakosia a slave who saves his master’s life is considered free by all,’ Lorka said. ‘There are thousands of imperial slaves in the city, lord. Perhaps they could be made use of. For the right incentive, a slave will fight near as well as a free man.’

Kouros shook his head. ‘That is an invitation to chaos. I will not consider it.’

Lorka bowed his head. ‘My lord, what of the coronation ceremony, then? It would be a boost to the city’s morale.’

‘Perhaps. But I do not think we have the time.’ Kouros raised his eyes. ‘My mother asked you to bring that up.’

Lorka bowed again. ‘The lady Orsana is kin to me and mine, as are you, my lord. When she bids me speak to her, I do so.’

‘Not any more. From now on, Lorka, if you wish to see the lady Orsana, you will seek my permission first. Are we clear?’

‘Very clear, my lord.’

‘Good. Now let us go through these tallies once more.’

Trying to get things done in Ashur was like trying to prod an elephant into movement with a needle. So convinced were the population of the city’s inviolability that they could barely imagine that it might be attacked, that an enemy could actually enter their gates. The circuit of the walls was in good repair, and fearsomely high, but it stretched for over sixty pasangs, and to defend the perimeter the river Oskus also had to be taken into the equation. It flowed through the eastern quarters of Ashur like a wide brown highway. An inventive attacker might use it to by-pass the walls entirely.

The endless meetings in the audience hall, with Kouros sitting on the throne that had been his father’s; the stifling formality of it all, the time wasted on protocol and ceremony, when every moment counted. It threw Kouros into icy rages, which he took out on a succession of unfortunate slave-girls. He did not yet care to inspect his father’s concubines, nor would he ever let his mother choose more for him, so slaves were sent up to him from the lower city in a steady stream, and night after night they went back down again, bruised and bleeding. In this, at least, he felt he had some control.

Ten days after his entrance to the city, something new was admitted to the echoing audience hall with its lines of courtiers and scribes. Orsana was there that day, seated to Kouros’s right like the queen she was. There was something of a stir as Akanish the chamberlain announced the arrival of Archon Gemeris, a name Kouros knew. He rose from the throne, smiling, as the tall Kefren noble stalked up the length of the hall. He was clad in Honai armour, and the sight of it sent a glad murmur down the walls from the assembled notables and nonentities.

Kouros did not let the man kneel, so glad was he to see him, but took his hand.

‘Gemeris — you are well met. So, you made it down from Hamadan in good time — are all your men with you?’

‘Yes, lord. Something over three thousand of your bodyguard are now within the city walls.’

‘Excellent! We — ’

‘My lord, listen to me.’ Gemeris had marched with Kouros clear across the Magron. He presumed on their acquaintance now, his face stark with urgency.

‘I bear bad tidings as well as good. The Macht king is over the Magron Mountains. He has already taken Hamadan; the city opened its gates to him without a fight. Now he is already on the march for Ashur.

‘My lord, he will be here in a week or less, and his whole army with him.’