Another morning, and with sunrise the men rising from their bivouacs found that some of their comrades did not rise with them, but lay in their midst stiffened and cold, their faces as peaceful as if they were asleep after a long day’s journey. The centurions did a headcount and reported to Rictus, as they did every morning. He received their news with a grim face. Over three dozen men had frozen to death during the night, and many more had woken to find their feet mere useless frozen blocks.
The firewood was ended, and so the men chewed strips of raw mule and oxen. The hearts and livers of the animals were saved for those of the sick and wounded who remained alive, and Rictus authorised an issue of wine, the last of the barrels still remaining. There was enough to give every man a large mouthful, and then the barrels were broken up and the staves loaded onto the wagons to burn later in the day. The army built cairns over its dead, and marched on. Rictus thought that it had been easier to march into battle at Kunaksa.
Four more days passed, and then a shouting at the forefront of the column brought Rictus running up at a shambling lope, a ragged figure bound about with torn strips of cloth and blanketing, his feet wrapped in the scarlet remains of a dead man’s cloak. Frostbite glowed in white patches upon the backs of his hands and on his face, but that was no matter. Every man in the army was now so afflicted, and many kept shuffling with the column though their flesh had rotted black upon their limbs.
Young Phinero joined Rictus, still fit and hale. The pair passed Mynon, head down and trudging, and Mochran, snow-blind, being led along by one of his centurions.
Gasping, they made their way to where Whistler and the last of Phiron’s Hounds stood on a higher slope overlooking the meanderings of the valley floor. There had been an avalanche here at some time in the past, and all around boulders lay like a god’s abandoned playthings, some as big as a good-sized house, split into leaning pieces by the violence of their fall. The wind was bitter here, winnowing the air and raising scuds of snow from the surfaces of the stone. Rictus fought for air. Hunger had stolen his stamina and now a half-pasang run left him panting like an old man. Even the Curse of God felt heavy on his back.
“What do you make of this, Rictus?” Whistler asked. He held up an iron aichme, snapped off the spear-shaft. Beside him, his men were rifling through the snow and exclaiming as they came upon other relics. One slipped and cursed as his feet skidded along the smooth convex face of a shield.
“This is new,” Phinero said, tugging his cloak from around his face. “Look, Rictus, a sauroter. They make them like this in Machran. I see the maker’s mark. Ferrious of Afteni.”
“Keep looking,” Rictus said. “Fan out. Whistler, run down and halt the column.”
Their feet stumbled over a hoard of weapons and other equipment buried under the snow. Some of the aichmes had blood frozen upon them. They worked their way upslope, until they came upon a rocky knoll set upon the mountainside, too rounded to be a thing of nature. Rictus began to pull away at the stones which surfaced it, wincing as they sliced into his cold hands.
And there, as he tugged away a rock the size of his head, a face staring out.
“Phobos! Phinero, look here!”
They tugged away more stones, and the men cried out as they discovered other bodies piled up beneath them.
“A burial cairn,” Rictus said heavily.
“I know this face—I know this face!” one of the Hounds shouted. “This is Creanus of Gleyr, Gominos’s mora.”
Rictus and Phinero looked at one another. “There’s been a fight here,” Phinero said.
“But who were they fighting?”
“They got the best of it, or they wouldn’t have stayed around to cover their dead.” The bodies were stripped of all clothing, blue and naked save where the deep gashes and bruises of their wounds discoloured the skin. Their mound was taller than Rictus.
“He lost a lot of men,” Rictus said. “This was no skirmish. There’s two hundred dead in here, or more.”
Phinero was staring up at the snow-wrapped heights of the mountains, the wind blowing white banners from their summits. Not so much as a bird stirred in that savage sky. “What in hell did this?”
Rictus began replacing the stones upon the cairn. “When we meet up with Aristos,” he grunted, “I’ll be sure to ask him.”
That night the scattered bivouacs of the Macht drew together, and for the first time since entering the high mountains they camped like an army, with sentries set out every fifty paces and the baggage in the middle of the encampment. The big centoi were left on the wagons, for there was nothing to cook in them, nor anything to heat them with. The men lay close together in the darkness, chewing raw mule meat and speculating about the fate of Aristos and Gominos. Around them, the wind roared down the valleys of the Korash, picking up until it sounded like the howl of beasts lost somewhere out in the storm. On its white wings the snow began to come down harder, until a blizzard blanked out the world and the sentries were brought in lest they be lost within it. The snow raged and thrashed in the grip of the wind, fat, soft flakes that built up into drifts and began to bury the shivering men. When morning came there was no light, no dark, no east or west, only the empty shriek of the wind and the mounting snows, a world swallowed up by the fury of the endless mountains.