The Ten Thousand (34 page)

“Proxis.”

“Look west,
General. What do you see?

A glow on the brim
of the sky, red in the white mist-sea which blanketed the plain. Vorus’s face
hardened.

“They’re burning a
city,” he said. “Where would that be?”

“Ab-Mirza. It’s
sixty pasangs from here; two days’ march.”

“I know it. The
King’s messenger got through, then; they must have made a fight of it.”

“That, or the
Macht are simply setting an example.”

“I don’t think
they would,” Vorus said quietly. “What purpose could it serve? No; there’s been
a fight in that city, Proxis.”

“And the city has
lost. The Governor of Ab-Mirza has brought ruin down on himself. And his
people.”

“Would you suggest
we order all governors to throw open the gates of their cities to these
brigands?” Vorus asked, angry now. “The King was right. We must make them fight
every step of the way.”

“Then they’ll be
treading on Kufr bodies every step of the way,” Proxis retorted. Vorus turned
from the silent spectacle on the horizon. Up here, on the tell, they were above
the mist, and below they could hear but not see the army about them. As though
it were a mere phantom.

“Proxis,” he said
quietly. “My friend, what is the trouble?” He knew it went beyond this morning’s
revelation. The three Juthan behind Proxis stared rigidly out to the west, but
there was something there between the four of them, something Vorus felt had
excluded him.

“Proxis?”

“Nothing. I do not
like to see a city burn, that’s all.” Proxis was stone cold sober, with not a
breath of wine about him, which meant he had not drunk the night before either.
Vorus had known this Juthan for two decades, and he could not remember the last
time Proxis had gone to bed without at least a cupful of something, if the
cupful could be found.

“Join me in my
tent. We’ll have some wine, warm our livers.”

“I have things to
do,” Proxis said with a shake of his head.

“It’s not like you
to turn down a drink, Proxis.”

The Juthan stared
at him. He came up to Vorus’s chin, but was half as broad again about the
shoulders. His yellow eyes had veins of blood shot through them, and in the
dawn light his skin looked dark as charcoal. “Perhaps I will swear off wine. As
a slave I drank every gut-rotting brew I could pour in my mouth,” he said. “Enough
for two lifetimes.”

“You are not a
slave now,” Vorus said hotly.

“We are all
slaves, Vorus. Even you.”

He turned and left
the summit of the tell and the three other Juthan followed him, silent and
sombre as all their race. But now there was something missing—a certain regard
for the general they passed by on their way down the hill. A deference which
Vorus had scarcely remarked before, and only knew of now it was gone.

“Damn him,” Vorus
whispered. “Twenty years too late, he becomes proud. Damn him.”

He looked back at
Ab-Mirza’s ghost, burning in the mist of the far away horizon. We’ll be
treading on bodies now, all right, he thought. Every step of the way.

INTO THE DARK TOGETHER

A campfire, and
about it, eleven men who wore Antimone’s Gift.

“Why should we
not?” Aristos demanded, eyes blazing. “We have the spears to take what we want,
when we want it. This Great King of theirs is hiding off behind the eastern
horizon somewhere. Why should we not rape his Empire as we march through it?
Let us send him a message on the wind and make him smell the stink of his
burning cities. Why should we not?”

Several of the
other generals thumped their fists on their thighs in agreement. Jason noted
their faces. Gominos the stout, Grast the ugly, Hephr the snide and Dinon the
ass-licker. Thus had he labelled them in his mind. Then Mynon spoke up,
bird-eyed Mynon, always drifting with the wind.

“Aristos may have
a point to make, Jason. What does it gain us to negotiate with the Kufr, when
we find their gates closed to us anyway?”

Jason was about to
reply when Rictus spoke up. The boy’s eyes were like two windows of white glass
in his darkly tanned face. The fury could be smelled off him. But he kept his
voice even.

“Every time we
sack a city, a little of the men’s discipline goes. Every time we let ourselves
loose on the innocent and the unarmed, we poison a little of the soldier in us.
We make ourselves into brigands and rapists and murderers. If we are to make it
to the sea, then we must be soldiers before all else. We must have discipline,
and the men must obey their officers. If that goes, that obedience, then we are
finished. And we deserve to be finished, for we will be nothing more than
criminals.”

Aristos snorted
with laughter. “Well, listen to this, a strawhead with a sense of honour! Where
did you pick that up, Rictus? Did your father tell you tales of bravery whilst
fucking his sheep?”

They saw a blur, a
shadow leap across the campfire. Then Aristos was on his back with Rictus atop
him, a knife at the prone man’s throat, drawing blood. The other men about the
fire froze for a second. Then Gominos drew his sword.

“Hold!” Jason
bellowed. He strode forward and grasped Rictus’s shoulder. “Off him, boy— that’s
an order. Rictus!”

Rictus rose and
thrust his knife back in his belt. He looked down on Aristos and said quietly,

“You ever mention
my father again to me, and I will kill you.”

The knot of men
opened up. Aristos rose, hand clenched on his own sword-hilt. The younger
generals drew closer to him. “You had best leash this dog of yours, Jason,”
Aristos spat, a mite unsteadily. “He is like to get a whipping if he keeps
snapping at his betters.”

“Shut your mouth,
you damn fool,” Buridan growled, more bear-like than ever in the firelight.

“Enough,” Jason
snapped. “Aristos, do you contest my authority?”

“I say we vote for
warleader again.”

“On what grounds?”

“On the grounds
that some members of this Kerusia are not fit to command a mora.”

“I agree. But we
are not going to start swapping generals right now, with the Great King on our
tails and the supply-carts half-empty.”

“I say we put it
to the vote, here and now!”

“And I say you
shut your mouth, or I will demote you.”

“You can’t do
that!” Aristos said, wide-eyed.

“I can. The
generals were not voted in by the men. I simply gathered up the Second in every
mora when we were down on our tits at Kunaksa. At the proper time, the men
should have a say in their generals, but now is not that time. Do you agree?”

After a long
moment, Aristos nodded.

“Then my orders
are still to be obeyed. There will be no more sacking of Kufr cities. That is
to be made clear all the way down the line. We’re in a hole as it is, without
digging it any deeper.

Make it clear. I
will begin instituting field punishments for any man who thinks otherwise.” He
paused, looking them up and down, remembering Phiron and Pasion, Orsos and
Castus, and the other dead men who had once stood where these striplings stood
now. He felt old, he felt as though they were all diminished in some way. That
sense of brotherhood that had taken them so far was gone now. He wondered if
even Phiron could have brought it back after this.

“Brothers,” he
said, “we are Macht. Remember that.”

Some of them
returned his gaze. Old Mochran nodded, the memories in his eyes also. Young
Phinero, who had loved his dead brother. Even Mynon had the grace to look
somewhat ashamed. Rictus was lost in simmering rage, unreachable. Aristos and
his supporters—the words meant almost nothing to them.

“Dismissed,” Jason
said heavily. “Mynon and Rictus, stay behind if you please.”

He looked up at
the stars—his stars. He smiled, remembering. They were half a pasang out of
camp, the better to have their debate without the whole army hearing it. To the
west, the Macht bivouacs were a square of campfires, a pasang to a side. And to
the east, Ab-Mirza still burned on the horizon, behind them now. He had marched
the army hard today, made them sweat out the wine they had looted from the
city. Jason closed his eyes, remembering that awful moment when he had felt the
army slip out of his control and become a mob. Aristos and his mora had poured
through the gates without discipline or order or thought for anything except
satisfying their basest desires. Buridan’s men, the best in the army, had come
upon what they thought was a battle, and had joined in the slaughter.

And he, Jason, had
sent them in there.

It was no battle.
Aristos’s and Rictus’s troops had been killing Kufr women and children and old
men at that point, spilling blood for the sake of it. By the time order had
been restored the city was aflame, a burning charnel-house. Nothing for it then
but to leave it burning, to walk away.

Jason did not know
why it bothered him so. Rictus had seen Isca go up; no doubt his family had
been slaughtered—his father, if tonight were anything to go by—so he had an
excuse. But Jason had been at the death of a city before this—a Macht city,
too. He could not fathom why this one bothered him so.

“Phobos
,”
he whispered, baffled and angry. Now at least the Kufr knew what it was like to
have a Macht rape them. Another phenomenon for this changing world.

“It was my fault,”
Rictus said. He was rubbing his eyes as though their brightness pained him. “They
got away from me and wouldn’t come back, except for a few. It was my mora
started it. Aristos is right. I am not fit to command.”

“You lead too near
the front,” Jason told him brusquely. “You must stand back a little and grip
the centons behind the assault. They are the key. You are a general, Rictus,
and you were the first man through the gate. This is not a story out of legend
we are making here. A general must hang back and consider the larger play of
things. Do you understand?”

“I wish to be demoted.”

“Shut up. Go back
to your mora and make them obey you. Get out of my sight.”

Rictus left them,
trudging into the dark with the slow gait of a tired old man.

“That boy has
strange ideas,” Mynon said. “Perhaps it is the Iscan in him.”

“He wants to think
well of men, to believe they are better than they are,” Jason said. “His men
love him for it; Buridan told me. When they let him down, he takes it bad. He’s
young. He’s learning.”

“Nothing like
learning the hard way,” Mynon said, yawning. “You’re wondering what’s left in
the larder, I suppose.”

“Most of what was
in Ab-Mirza got burned, which fucked the supply situation all to hell. What do
we have, Mynon? Be nice.”

“Three days’ full
rations. We go on half, stint the slaves, and we can make it a week. The place
is picked clean for pasangs around, and from what I hear—”

“Our Macht friend
has an army galloping up our arse. I know. He’s two days behind us now, and
there’s cavalry with him. It’s eight hundred pasangs to the mountains. If we
push it, we can do it in twenty to twenty-five days. In the mountains, we will
turn and fight. Until then, we march as hard as we can.”

“Our bellies
flapping.”

“It’s tongues I’m
worried about now, as much as bellies. Rictus was right; we make a habit of
cutting loose like we did yesterday, and we’ll be nothing more than rabble
inside of a month. Those young pups would be happy that way, but it would mean
the death of the army, pure and simple.”

“Some would say
the best part of the army is dead already,” Mynon said, sombre for once.

“Antimone is still
with us, Mynon, believe me. We are still—”

“Macht. I know. I
was here earlier. What was it Orsos used to say? It was a quote, from Sarenias
I think. ‘
Brothers, let us go into the dark together, in the shadow of
Antimone’s wings’ .”

They stood,
remembering, the fire cracking at their feet, beginning to sink now. Around
them the teeming insect life of the lowlands chittered and clicked, filling the
night with meaningless sound.

“We do not belong
here,” Jason said softly.

“I know. I see the
same stars overhead and wonder why they are not different. Even the water
tastes strange to me here. I think sometimes, Jason, that the Kufr have more
right to this world than we.”

Jason tried to
laugh, but the humour died in his throat. “The water? Yesterday the gutters of
Ab-Mirza were full of blood. It poured over the walls. How many thousands,
Mynon? More than died at Kunaksa, I think. Whatever wrongs have been inflicted
on us, we have repaid them many times over.”

* *
*

Before dawn, the
army was on the march again, the men sullen and subdued, like a drunk
remembering the antics of the night before. Jason had the centurions go through
the camp and have all the loot from Ab-Mirza flung in the embers of the
campfires. Those Kufr women which had been brought along in capture yokes were
freed and left by the wayside like naked, whey-faced ghosts. The men marched
with empty bellies and sore heads; up and down the column the centurions
bellowed at them to pick up the pace. When pack-animals failed, whole centons
were detailed to bear their loads. Dozens of men were assigned to the heavier
of the wagons and levered them through the muck of the Pleninash lowlands by
main force, thrashing the exhausted mules and oxen that strained alongside
them. Half the army, it seemed, laboured under a sense of disgrace. The other
half simmered with resentment, like a man wrongfully accused. Up and down the
trudging ranks men argued amongst themselves. Periodically some would fall out
of the column to brawl in the mud of the wayside, until the centurions broke it
up.

“I wish it all to
the back of the fucking Veil, this fucking country,” Gratus said, slapping his
neck. He peeled something black from his skin, regarded it with distaste, and
wiped his bloody fingers in his hair. “I mean, we’re not into high summer yet,
and this heat would make a fish sweat. How do they bear it?”