Kings of Morning (30 page)

I never knew that the waging of war could prove so tedious, Kouros thought.

Rakhsar’s face, as the blade went into his belly
. That sneer gone at last. Kouros dwelled on the image, warming himself at it like a man at a fire.

His father was watching his face, as if he knew what his eldest son was thinking. Kouros shifted on the padded cushion, his ribs flaring into pain. He could not meet his father’s eyes, even now.

Horses galloping past. They stamped to a halt, and there was shouting, an unthinkable breach of protocol so close to the King’s person.

‘What are they at?’ Ashurnan muttered, disturbed from a reverie.

‘My lord – my lord!’ A familiar voice.

Both Kouros and Ashurnan lifted aside the gauze curtains of the palanquin and looked down. It was Dyarnes, helm off and komis thrown down around his chin.

‘What is this, Dyarnes?’ Ashurnan demanded.

‘Forgive me, my king, but we have sighted the enemy – they are directly to our front and already in line of battle.’

‘What?’ Ashurnan sputtered. He looked up at the sun in some bewilderment. It was early morning, and the column had barely gotten under way. The men at the rear had not even begun marching out of last night’s camp yet.

‘How close are they?’

‘We must form the line at once, lord. With your permission, I deem it imperative that we bring in the other columns and deploy for battle.’

‘Are they advancing?’

‘Not yet. They’re just standing there.’

‘How many?’ this was Kouros, hissing with pain as he leaned over the rail of the palanquin. The elephant tossed his head under them and the whole construction rose up and down like a boat on a wave.

‘They are not many, my prince – not a fifth of what we have brought.’

Then why stand and wait for us? Kouros wondered.

‘Bring in the columns – deploy the troops,’ Ashurnan snapped. ‘We must attack as quickly as possible, before they can get away. Move up your leading elements, Dyarnes, and send a courier to the rear. The men behind us will have to run. We must crush them, Dyarnes – do you hear me? They must not escape. And bring me my chariot.’

S
O THIS WAS
what happened when the enemy was tracked down at last.

Chaos.

Kouros could not remain on the Great King’s elephant without the Great King, nor was he fit to ride a horse, so he joined his father in the royal chariot. This was an immense affair drawn by four black Niseians and crewed by a driver and two bodyguards, Honai chosen by the Great King himself. A parasol overhung it to keep the sun off their heads, and there were holsters of javelins in front of either wheel.

The vehicle was beautifully sprung, ornamented with enough precious stones and chased silver to buy a city, and it had loops of red Bokosan leather to steady oneself by. The floor, also, was red leather, criss-crossed straps embroidered with golden wire. And rearing above it, the purple imperial banner was suspended from a cross-piece of varnished oak. It had been built to catch the eye, to provide a focal point on the battlefield, and to reassure the assembled thousands that their lord was in their midst, watching them.

It thundered up the roadway now, scattering everything in its path, preceded and followed by a hundred picked cavalry from all over the empire, though most wore the blue-enamelled armour of Arakosia. The Great King himself took the whip, and flicked it over the rumps of the straining Niseians with a smile in his beard.

Kouros studied his father discreetly. For days the old man had been withdrawn and uncommunicative. He had not been told that Rakhsar and Roshana were dead, but he seemed to know nonetheless. He had watched Kouros with that odd new look, and bade him join him on the back of the elephant, an honour not bestowed lightly.

Could it be respect? The Arakosans had gone out to look for Kouros and brought him back more dead than alive. Ashurnan had expressed no concern, asked no questions. But he had treated Kouros differently ever since.

And for once, Kouros had enjoyed writing a letter to his mother.

T
HE COLUMN HAD
fractured all around them, and companies of infantry were spreading out across the plain on all sides, some running, all being screamed at by officers both mounted and afoot. There seemed to be little order involved, but the milling mobs were at least all moving the right way. Every one of them had their faces turned to the west, and the sun was behind them. Even the simplest peasant conscript could be told to keep the sun on his back. The army was disordered, chaotic and confused, but it was advancing in the right direction; a flood of men pouring across the earth in the rising dust.

Let the King of the Macht try and halt this tide, Kouros thought. And he gripped the hilt of the cheap iron kitchen knife in his sash. He had kept it as a kind of talisman. His brother’s blood was still black upon it.

The green country around them was leached away. The land rose slightly, becoming a plateau many pasangs wide standing somewhat above the fertile plain. The ground was stonier here, crossed by the dry ruin of ancient watercourses, and the dust was choking, kicked up by men and animals to tower in the sky. This was empty country, a pocket of scrub savannah which was as ancient as the tells of the green river valleys. Too arid for crops, or even to support a herd of goats, these raised pockets of desert were known as
gaugamesh
in the Asurian tongue: a place blighted by the god Mot, where no man might grow things.

This is where we fight? Kouros wondered. He squeezed the waterskin that hung in the chariot, and thought of the tens of thousands all around him, and the dry country which they were traversing.

By tonight, if they find a river they will drink it dry.

There were Honai in a line up ahead, the occasional flash of sun-caught metal through the dust. The chariot came to a halt amid a cloud of cavalry and one by one the imperial couriers filed in behind it, young men of the lesser nobility whose fathers had paid a fortune so that their sons might gallop across battlefields carrying the Great King’s orders. Alongside them clustered a knot of scribes and other attendants, who were dressed as though they were still in the palace. Their finery was utterly incongruous in that sere landscape.

Ashurnan stood gripping the rail of his chariot and peering into the dust. A hundred paces in front of the wheels, the ten thousand spearmen of the Honai were forming up with a speed and precision that belied the chaos of the rest of the field. Eight ranks deep, their line stretched some pasang and a half, though both ends were invisible. But it was reassuring to see those tall warriors standing stolidly in front of them. This was to be the centre of the army, the very heart. Everyone else would take their dressing from the Great King’s chariot, and would link up with that formidable phalanx.

‘This will be a knife fight,’ the Great King said to Dyarnes, who was standing by the chariot with his helm in the crook of one arm. ‘It will be won or lost at close quarters. But we must use our archers at the start, once the dust settles somewhat. When the general advance is signalled they will be firing blind, and after that we must throw in our people at the enemy and overwhelm them. There will be no fancy manoeuvring today, not in this place. The dust hides everything. And double the couriers, Dyarnes. A lot of them will become lost today. I want two riders bearing each message.’

‘Yes, lord. At what point do you wish the advance sounded?’

‘As I said, wait until the dust settles. The men must be able to see the enemy in order to close with him. As soon as the Macht line is visible, I want you to start with the outer formations – we should outflank on both sides. But hold back the Arakosans, Dyarnes. They are to be kept for the killing blow.’

‘Yes, my lord.’

T
HE SUN BROKE
through the dust now and again, providing vignettes of war; masses of ranked troops trudging west, shuffling into position. A forest of spears all catching the light in the same moment, like a flashing gleam of teeth. And all around, the sodden thunder of marching feet, an echo that trembled the very flesh of the earth.

Kouros drank water from the skin, his mouth dry and sour. Thanks to his injuries, he was not wearing armour, though the bronze helm on his head had already caught the heat of the sun and felt as though it were a hot vice bearing down on the bone of his skull. The Great King wore merely a black diadem, and bright blue silk robes that concealed a breastplate underneath. He bore a plain steel scimitar which could have belonged to any man on the field, and which had seen much use. Kouros abruptly found himself wondering if it were the same sword with which Ashurnan had killed his own brother, thirty years before. He touched the knife in his own sash.

We are alike in that, at least, he thought, and licked his dry lips again.

The dust began to sink in the centre of the army, as the men found their places and stood with their shields at the shoulder, leaning on their spears. Kouros could hear them talking to one another. Asurian of half a dozen different dialects, some so strange as to barely constitute the same language. Good Kefren in the ranks of the Honai up front. A column of leather-armed skirmishers went past with armfuls of javelins and the crescent-shaped shields of their calling, short-legged
hufsan
from the mountains who seemed as cheerful as men walking to a wedding.

The whole world is here, he thought. He remembered the slight, pale youth on the black horse who had called himself Corvus. There was Kefren blood in him – he had never suspected that.

What kind of man is he, to think he can fight the whole world?

Blue sky again, and the sun was high in it. It must be midday at least.

‘There they are,’ Ashurnan murmured. He reached out one hand and set it briefly on Kouros’s arm. ‘There they are.’ The golden glow of his face had gone. He looked sick and old and tired.

‘They’re so close!’ Kouros exclaimed.

A swift-footed man could have run between the armies in minutes. Kouros was able to make out the red chitons of the enemy spearmen, the bronze-faced shields painted with some pattern he had never seen before, a bird of some kind. They stood as immobile as a wall, all across the plain, their length punctuated by hanging banners.

‘I will break that line today.’ Ashurnan said quietly. He motioned to the scribe with his hip-desk who stood behind the chariot.

‘An order for Dyarnes. He is –’

A swooping sound, as though some monstrous hawk had stooped for the kill. Instinctively, they all looked up. To their front, something exploded into the front ranks of the Honai and there were shouts of pain.

‘What is it? What is happening?’ Kouros demanded, hugging his ribs as though afraid they would fly apart.

A file of the Honai had been hurled into ruin, men lying dead, others dropping their shields and spears to assist the wounded.

Kouros looked up again, baffled, and saw a shower of what looked like arrows arcing up from behind the Macht line. But they were not arrows. Each was longer than a man. They came down in a black, monstrous hail.

And struck the ranks of the Great King’s bodyguard.

The shafts were as thick as a man’s arm, the heads cast in black, barbed iron. They punched through shields and breastplates as though the bronze were paper, and skewered two and three and four men at a time, knocking down whole files like wooden skittles bowled over by a child’s ball.

Ashurnan’s face was transformed by outrage. Dozens of these great bolts were now hurtling down out of the unclouded sky.

‘Message to Dyarnes!’ he shouted above the growing cacophony. ‘Advance – advance at once with all the infantry!’

An explosion of dirt and stone, and the Niseians yoked to the chariot reared in fear as one of the massive bolts slammed into the ground at their feet. This was not warfare as they understood it. They began to dance and bite and neigh.

The ranks of the Honai were buckling and reforming, the files knocked apart only to be brought together again. They were the best soldiers in the empire, and would not retreat or break, but they could not hit back either. They could only die helplessly under the obscene barrage.

Ashurnan’s bodyguard, an armoured Honai who towered over his lord, thrust both Kouros and the Great King behind him.

‘Move us out of here,’ he barked to the driver. ‘This is no place for the King.’

The chariot wheeled round, the four horses pulling with a will, the driver lashing their backs with the long whip. They cantered away from the Honai phalanx, and the Arakosans followed them. Up and down the immense line the word went out that the Great King was retreating, that he was wounded, that he was dead. But the rumours were quashed by the sudden order to advance.

Like a great stone starting to roll downhill, the vast army of the empire began to move forward, a juggernaut bent on vengeance.

R
ICTUS WAS THIRSTY.
There was still water in the skin at his back, but he was saving it for later. He knew that as soon as the fighting began he would forget his thirst. If he survived, he would be desperate for that water afterwards. If he did not, someone else would drink it.