The Ten Thousand(122)

“Drink with me, just once,” Rictus said quickly. “Come into the city with me, for an hour, no more. Please, Jason.”

Jason looked at him, lips pursed. There, just there, was the boy still in him, the earnest look in the eyes, the fear of abandonment.

“All right, then. One drink, to seal our farewells. That’s if our comrades have left the city with any to spare.”

Sinon was a running hive of humanity, the streets clogged with paid-off mercenaries and those who were trying to relieve them of their pay. The men were running riot through the city, their gold allowing them to satisfy every appetite they had nurtured in the long months of marching and fighting. A scarlet night, lamps lit at every window and doorway, wine running in the gutters, mobs of Macht howling out greetings to one another. They shouted tearful protestations of friendship, bade lugubrious farewell to old comrades, and indulged in not a few brawls as long-held grievances were finally aired. Brightly painted whores helped their drunken clients through the crowds. Men robbed each other at knifepoint, or rifled through the bundles of the incapacitated. They gorged themselves on wine, on the food of the eating houses, on the charms of the prostitutes. They were making up for the hardships, the wounds, the friends buried under cold stone in the mountains or burned on pyres in the heat of the lowlands. They were, as one of them cried, guzzling at Antimone’s tits while they could.

“And who’s to blame them?” Jason asked. He and Rictus stood at a streetside wine-shop and lifted the deep bowls the owner had filled. “No cheap shit,” Jason had told him. “We are Macht generals, leaders of an army. Bring out your best and nothing less.”

They clinked the earthenware bowls together. Jason was about to volunteer a toast when Rictus said, “To a new life.”

Jason smiled. “To a new life.” They drank deep, savouring the taste, the warmth of the good wine as it touched their throats. They emptied the bowls and called for more. The drink brimmed red as blood in the flickering lamplight, whilst up and down the street beside them the pantomime of the night went on. Rictus cocked his head to one side, listening. “It sounds almost like the city is being sacked.”

“Na,” Jason said equably. “She’s not being raped; she’s just getting it a little rough, is all. The good city fathers are pissing in their beds, I’ll bet, but they’ll be glad enough of the gold once their teeth have stopped chattering. The men will spend a city’s ransom in the streets tonight. If they want to break some crockery along the way, well, they’ll have paid for it, fleeced like sheep by every hard-hearted whore and sharp trader in the place. It’s the easiest thing in the world, to part a drunken soldier from his money.”

“Perhaps we should do something.”

“Like what—make a speech? There’s nothing we could do would make them see sense. It’s their money. Let them have a night where they don’t have to count it, or collect every crumb that falls.”

“There is that,” Rictus said. The wine was sliding into place behind his eyes; he felt he could speak more easily, make more sense than he had before.

“What will you do now, Rictus? Will you keep to the colour, or have you hefted a spear long enough already?”

Rictus shrugged. “There’s nothing for me in the Harukush. My city is gone, my family all dead. You are the closest thing to a brother I have in the world, and you’re about to disappear too. I suppose I’ll carry a spear. It’s all I know.”

“Then take my advice. Stay here for now. If you remain in Sinon you’ll be able to have the pick of a centon in a matter of days. Right now, there are more mercenaries in this city than in half the Harukush put together, and the best of them at that.”

Rictus smiled. “Well, it’s something to think on.”

They clinked their bowls again, as if they had made a bargain. Used to short commons and plain water, Rictus was quickly becoming drunk. “You know—” he said, leaning closer to Jason.

“Here he is, brothers. The strawhead general. Well, Rictus, how does the night find you?”

It was Aristos, standing hands on hips in the Curse of God. Gominos bulked large beside him, and a group of their men straddled the street to their rear.

“Speak up boy—or are you too drunk?”

Rictus straightened up from the streetside bar. In one moment, all the wine in him burned away, seared to nothing by a white-cold rush through his limbs. His fist fastened on the knife at his belt. Neither he nor Jason were wearing their cuirasses. Rictus had left his with Whistler, and Tiryn had Jason’s strapped to her mule.