The Ten Thousand(119)

Talking to frightened Kufr peasants in the farms they passed, Tiryn learned that the Juthan had set up a king for themselves, a soldier named Proxis. There were rumours of great battles with the Imperial armies along the Jurid River. And Ancient Artaka was still in revolt, shielded from reprisal by the bulwark of Jutha. All over the Empire, it was said, slaves were rising up against their masters, and chaos was threatening the line of Asur. Perhaps what men whispered around their night-time fires was true: the Empire’s day had come and gone. The world was being crafted anew according to some unknown whim of the gods above and below. Mot had destroyed the harvest of Pleninash, and there was hunger in the Land of the Rivers, the most fertile provinces in the entire world. The march of the Ten Thousand had been ordained by God, the Macht the instrument with which he had visited his wrath upon the earth.

“Imaginative fellows,” Jason said when Tiryn apprised him of the peasants’ stories. “I never thought I would be an instrument of God. Still, it’s something to know we’ve shaken the foundations of a world, the Juthan and us. I always thought those yellow-eyed folk were too quiet.”

“It’s why they were made slaves, far back in the past. They loved their freedom too much,” Tiryn said.

“Then I wish them luck. May they be a thorn in the Empire’s side forever.”

“You dismiss a world you know little about,” Tiryn said quietly.

“I do. I am an ignorant fool. I have walked half the earth with nothing in my heart but the craft of killing. I am changing, though. Be patient, Tiryn. Speak to me now, and tell me new words.”

“The word for a plough is kinshir. The word for a hoe is atak.” She paused. “The word for a child is oba.”

Jason looked at her, and smiled. “Good words. I shall have need of them all one day.”

The days passed, and the army came upon signs of Aristos’s passage ahead of them. Burnt-out villages, looted farmsteads, smoke on the far horizon. Every time they came to a large town, Tiryn had to speak with the inhabitants and assure them that the main body of the Macht would not behave as these forerunners had done. The men were in no mood for looting at any rate. They took what the folk of the country gave them and moved on, intent now on the way ahead, the end of the road. There were some five and a half thousand of them left alive. The wounded, the sick had all died in the mountains, and those who were left were the hardiest or the luckiest of the fourteen thousand that had taken ship with Phiron the year before. They moved in a compact column not two pasangs long, the single-axled carts hauled along in their midst and clattering on the stones of the Imperial Road. They had no armour left worth speaking of, their shields were piled in the mule-carts, and they marched with their spears to hand like nothing so much as a procession of staff-bearing pilgrims pursuing some crack-brained vision. Most still had their scarlet cloaks; the only badge they bore now. Centons had been amalgamated from half-strength remnants, and the Kerusia had more or less ceased to function. They followed Rictus and Jason, obeying their orders without question— for there were not many orders left to obey. They had only to march, to put one foot in front of the other, to keep their ranks and eat up the pasangs day after day with their eyes fixed on the west.

Whistler commanded the light troops now and took them ahead every morning at dawn to sniff out the way ahead. Seventeen days out from Kumir the army found itself marching up a long incline, a line of high ground dotted with woods and cropland, the earth rising up to bring close the horizon. Rictus and Jason, at the front of the column, saw some of Whistler’s men come running back down this hill, sprinting like men who carry news. As they drew closer, it could be seen that these were the youngest and fleetest among the Hounds, mere boys most of them, with hard eyes now wide and bright. They were shouting as they ran, waving their arms as though afraid they would not be seen.

“What is it?” Rictus demanded as one collapsed at his feet, chest heaving. “Geron, isn’t it? Take your time.”

“The sea!” the boy cried, gulping for air as though the words would choke him. “The sea!”

The words went down the column more quickly than a racing horse. They were repeated. The entire army took them up. Rictus bent over the gasping, grinning, hiccupping boy. “Geron, are you saying—”

I he column broke up. Men began running up the long slope ahead. At its top, more of the Lights could be seen now, waving their spears in the air, hallooing down at their comrades. The Macht became a crowd of running men, hundreds, thousands leaving the road to begin running westwards towards the men on the hill ahead. The mule-carts were abandoned. Men tripped up and were knocked aside. Jason and Rictus and Tiryn stood together over the boy Geron as he climbed to his feet. “General, up ahead, you can see it from the hilltop, I swear. You can even smell it on the air.”