Kings of Morning (28 page)

‘They’re cooking,’ Roshana said. ‘I can smell it. He’s telling us to go and eat.’

‘I’m not hungry,’ Kurun lied. He did not feel he could stagger as far as the cooking fire.

‘Then I will go.’ She collected the bowls with a click and stood up while the Macht around the fire watched. She hesitated a moment under all those hard, inquisitive eyes, and then strode off.

There was a vast cauldron, so large she could have sat in it with a lid over her head. Within was a steaming mess that smelled more appetising than it looked. The Macht were gathered around it in rows as though the cauldron were the stage of an amphitheatre. A man stirred its contents. He shone with sweat, was shaven-headed and scarred, and when he smiled Roshana saw that his teeth were ornamented with silver wire.

She stood, as out of place as a lamb in a wolf’s den, and held out the two bowls she had been given.

Silence fell around the cauldron. The silver-toothed man grinned at her, and slopped whatever-it-was into the bowls. He held them out to her, and as she reached for them he drew back again, making a face. A splatter of laughter about the fire.

Some of them stood up. They were behind her. Roshana stood rooted to the spot. She felt a hand touch her buttock and squeeze it. Another slid up her bare thigh. She shuddered, cried out.

And was pushed aside. A huge figure entered the firelight and one of the men behind her was taken by the nape of his neck and tossed aside like an errant puppy. The newcomer swung his arm and the Roshana heard the impact of bone on bone. Another one of her tormentors went down clutching his face. The silver-toothed cook quickly handed Roshana the bowls. She spilled half their contents, her hands were shaking so badly.

It was the old Macht, the tall one who had been in the tent. His eyes glittered like grey shards of glass. He snapped out orders that sounded like curses, and the crowd about the cauldron began to break up at once, men getting to their feet with an alacrity that spoke of fear. Then he set a hand on Roshana’s shoulder and guided her away.

They rejoined Kurun at the waggon. The old Macht reached down easily and seized one of the teamsters by the throat, drawing him to his feet. He held him as though he meant to choke him, and the fellow sputtered out excuses and apologies, the meaning clear in any language. The big Macht dropped him as a terrier will discard a dead rat. He nodded to Roshana and Kurun, and then stalked away into the darkness.

They sat with the bowls in their laps, the food almost forgotten.

‘Who is that?’ Kurun asked.

It was the teamster who replied. Rubbing his throat ruefully he jerked a thumb.

‘Rictus,’ he said with a croak.

T
HE CAMP NEVER
went quiet that night. It was so hot in the waggon that Kurun and Roshana lay on the beaten grass beneath the vehicle, a single blanket between them. They did not sleep for a long time, but listened and watched like latecomers to a show at the theatre, trying to make sense of it all. They could hear columns of men marching in the night, and cavalry. The stars were dimmed by the myriads of campfires. The night was bristling with movement.

‘There are so many,’ Kurun whispered. ‘I did not know there were so many. And Kefren fighting with them, too.’

‘The Great King has more, a hundred times more,’ Roshana told him.

‘They are not like these. The Macht frighten me, even more than the Honai did.’

‘That is because they are strange, Kurun. The Macht are not of this world. They are Mot’s curse upon it, sent to punish us.’

‘But they saved us.’

‘They are animals, all of them.’ Roshana bent her head and began to sob silently, and when Kurun set his hand on her shoulder she shook it off.

‘I should have stayed. I made Rakhsar take me with him. I should have stayed. He would have escaped then, Kurun. He could have been away, and free, but now he is dead. My brother is dead.’

Finally she let Kurun take her in his arms, and he held her, rocking her like a child, until the tears dried and she slept. He lay holding her for hours, feeling the blood seep out along the line of his stitches, but bearing the pain, enduring it as he had endured so many other things in his short life.

And he realised it was possible, whatever the philosophers said, to feel despair and hope in the same breath.

T
HE GREAT CAMP
seethed, unquiet as an opened grave. Thousand-strong formations of infantry were moving out of the firelit lines to the open country beyond, where more men waited with banners in the dark, to show them where to stand and plant their spears. The Macht army was deploying in darkness, so that they would greet the dawn light with their ranks fully formed, like some army of myth sprung out of the earth itself.

Pasangs to the east, there was a glow in the sky that eclipsed that of their own camp. Ten thousand fires were burning bright, strewn in a vast carpet across the sleeping earth.

The army of the Great King.

PART THREE

G
IFTS OF THE
K
UFR

SIXTEEN

T
HE
F
IRELIT
P
LAIN

I
N
C
ORVUS’S TENT,
the Marshals stood before the map-table in an armoured line, helms in the crooks of their arms. They were a grim-faced set of men, and they stared at the map and at the varicoloured wooden blocks upon it as though they might read some augury of the future therein.

‘He is encamped some twenty pasangs away, a normal marching camp,’ Corvus said. ‘He knows we are somewhere in the region. But I am betting that he has no idea just how close. Druze and Ardashir have destroyed every patrol they have encountered and the main body is moving out as I speak. Brothers, we have not yet been found out.’

‘You’d better be right,’ Fornyx said. ‘In the morning he’s going to come marching across that plain and see us standing in front of him, and we’ll have to either shit or get off the pot.’

‘He’ll attack – he has to,’ Corvus said. ‘He will be in line of march. He should see us about mid-morning, while half his army is still coming up the road behind him. He will form up what he can at a safe distance – and that is when we will hit him. Parmenios’s machines will strike his ranks at a distance he does not think possible, and so he will elect to close with us as fast as he can. He will commit his troops as they come up, and we will deal with them piecemeal.’

‘I’m glad you’re so familiar with the Great King’s intentions,’ Fornyx said. He looked thoughtful, but did not press the point.

‘And there is no word from the Juthan?’ Demetrius asked.

‘Not for a week now. They are coming up as fast as they can, but they will not make it in time. Brothers, this time tomorrow, it will all be over, for good or ill.’

‘For good or ill,’ Rictus repeated.

‘The dispositions have been made,’ Corvus said briskly. ‘Tonight the men sleep on their arms, those that can. The line is forming five pasangs east of the camp. There’s a wide plain there, no ditches or orchards or vineyards. It’s as flat as a theatre stage. The local people call it
gaugamesh
, barren ground. Rictus, I want the water-carriers out at daybreak, going up and down the line. Tomorrow will be hot, and the men will be standing to arms for some time before the thing begins in earnest.’

Rictus nodded, and exchanged a glance with Fornyx. The Dogsheads were going into battle without him. He had important duties behind the lines. He commanded the reserves, which was something; five thousand green spearmen who had not yet seen battle. But for the most part, his concerns for the morrow were logistical. And he hated it.

Does Corvus no longer trust me? He wondered, and dismissed the thought almost as quickly as it had arrived. The truth might even be the opposite.

‘Brothers,’ Corvus said quietly, ‘I know that we have come a long way together, from the Harukush to this place. But we are only a few days march from the Bekai River. Beyond that, the Magron, and beyond that, a world none of us has ever seen before. They say that there are more people in the city of Ashur alone than in the whole of the Harukush, and that the wealth of the Middle Empire is nothing compared to the riches of the imperial heartlands. Asuria is the richest place in the world. If we defeat these people tomorrow, I tell you it is all ours for the taking. The morning after tomorrow we will all be as good as kings.’ He smiled. ‘Even you, Fornyx.

‘One day to fight through, as we have never fought before – a day of glory which they will talk about for the rest of all time. That is tomorrow. Brothers, tell me honestly, right now; would any of you – any single one of you – wish to be anywhere else but here right now?’

There was no answer needed to that. His words had written it across all their faces.

He has done it again, Rictus thought. This is how he makes men die for him. He paints pictures of glory they all want to be part of.

But Rictus needed no more glory. He had seen enough of that in his life; enough to turn the stomach. When the others left the tent, he remained behind, as he often did.

‘What are you going to do, Rictus – talk me out of it?’ Corvus asked him.

‘No point in that. You’re set on doing it this way, and you are my king. I will support you, Corvus.’

‘Tepid words, brother. I never thought I would see the day when Fornyx was happier with my plans than you.’

‘Perhaps I am getting old.’ Rictus shrugged. ‘Phobos, I
am
old. You were right to take me out of the front line.’

‘You nearly died at the Haneikos, Rictus,’ the younger man said softly. ‘I cannot let that happen. Of them all, I trust you most.’

‘And Ardashir.’

‘And Ardashir. But we grew up together.’

‘Listen to me, Corvus. There is no longer any profit in denying your heritage. Do you think that the five thousand Kufr of the Companions would follow you so loyally if you were all Macht?’

‘Rictus –’

‘Hear me out, without wasting any wine this time. If I cannot speak my mind to you, then I should roll up my pack and march home.

‘Fight the battles as you always have, by all means. But use your mixed blood to win the peace afterwards. If you portrayed yourself more as a... as a –’

‘A Kufr?’

‘As a Kefre, among his own people, then you will find this empire you’re making easier to rule when the bloodletting is done.’

Corvus glared at the older man. ‘I’ve been playing the Macht for long enough, is that it, Rictus? Now that we’re here in the empire, I can revert to my true self – a Kufr. How do you think the army would take that?’

‘You are both Macht and Kufr. The two bloods that are in you made you what you are. Without either, we would not be here now, and the thousands of men forming up to the east of this tent would never have thought to march so far. They follow Corvus, their king.’ Rictus smiled now. ‘And if he is a strange-looking little wight with something of the east about him, then what is that? Men need a hint of difference in the leaders they follow.’

‘Not too much difference. A King of the Macht with Kufr blood – I do not think they are ready for that yet, Rictus.’