The Ten Thousand(12)

Rictus took the skin and drank. He drank as though it were the last thing he would ever do. And while his cheeks were still puffed full of wine, he poured a stream of it from the mouth of the skin so that it might puddle on the ground.

“That’s good wine—” the thinner merchant cried.

“Shut your mouth,” the fatter one told him, and Gasca nodded when he met his eyes. There were proprieties. There was decency. A man could not weigh the price of all things, and yet ignore their value.

Teeth bared for a moment against the vileness of the wine, Rictus looked at Gasca, and jerked his head towards the thickets on the western margins of the road. “Back in there, maybe two pasangs, or one and a half, there are eight men about a dead campfire arguing over the best time to ambush you.”

Silence about their own fire. The procuress asked, “And they’re friends of yours, are they?”

“If they were, would I be here?”

The fat merchant rubbed his fingertips through his beard. “Eight you say? Why did they not attack us before now? Dawn and dusk are the best time for these things.”

“They were quarrelling over who would have the women—these two younger ones. They had a fight over it last night, then got drunk and slept the time away. Now they are arming, meaning to take you sometime today, before you get much closer to Machran.”

The two husband-brothers stared at one another, white-faced, and then at their new wives. The look on the women’s faces reminded Gasca of a rabbit he once caught alive in a snare.

“And how were you privy to their discussions?” the fat merchant asked.

“I have been travelling with them. I, too, was drinking last night at their fire.”

“A roadsman,” the thin merchant spat, and he whipped out his slim-bladed eating knife. “It’s out of his own mouth.”

“Stay,” his colleague said. To Rictus he said, “What brings you here to warn us?”

“I have seen my fill of killing—that kind of killing. I will fight them with you, if you’ll have me.”

Gasca rose from the fire and went to the roadside again. The sun, mighty Araian, had climbed out of her bedclothes; she broke out now in a wrack of crimson and golden cloud, and the glare of the thin snow was broadening moment by moment. He looked about himself, at the wide spaces around them, then at the hills ahead which framed the road, the ruins of long-sacked Memnos rising white and dark with shadow and snow.

“We must pack up,” he said. “If they catch us on the move we’ll have no chance. We must make for the hills, put our backs to something. Those broken walls; we can climb them and fight from a height.” He turned again. “What weaponry do they have?”

“Spears, swords, javelins. No bows, or shields either, not even a pelta.”

“Are they up and about?”

Rictus considered. He was eerily calm. He does not care, Gasca thought. He thinks to do the right thing, but most of him could care less if he lived or died today.

“They’re slow, hung-over. You have time. Not much, but enough perhaps.”

“We’ll do as the boy says,” the fat merchant said abruptly, rising. “Time to be moving.”

“We’ll outrun them,” one of the young husbands said desperately. “It’s thirty pasangs to Machran; I can run that.”

“And your wife?” the merchant asked. “These children? If we splinter up, they’ll take us in mouthfuls. Fighting together, on good ground, we can hurt them, enough perhaps to make them think again.”

“You care only for the wares on your donkey’s back.”

“Among other things. Run if you wish. They have legs too. You’ll be dead before sundown, and your wife will be a raped slave.”

They packed up their bedrolls, the younger women snivelling, the children subdued by their elders’ fear. They left the fire burning and struck out for the south at a fast pace. The fat merchant was the slowest. Gasca took his donkey’s halter and tugged the animal on while the big man clung to the animal’s tail, sweating. They left the road, and the going became much harder as they forged up the hillside to the ruins above. When the youngest child began to fall behind, Rictus slung her up on his back, and she clung there with a wide smile on her face, hooting triumphantly to the other urchins. The thin merchant paused to catch his breath, and looked back into the lowland below. He cried out, and they all paused, turned their heads. A group of men had come out of the trees, moving fast, black as crows against the snow.

The company’s fear lent them speed. They passed though the massive broken arch which had once been Memnos’s main gate and raised a startled flock of sparrows out of the stones. The snow was deeper here, high as a man’s calf. Gasca dropped the donkey’s leading rein and ran ahead, his shield and helm bruising his back as they bounced there. The ruins were extensive, and had there been no snow it might even have been possible to hide the party amid them and avoid any fight at all; but now their tracks were clear as a line of flags. He cast about like a hound near a scent-line, and nodded as he found what he was looking for.