“Ah, hell,” Jason said. “Aristos, the fighting is done with. Have a drink and pluck that spear-shaft from up your arse.”
Aristos stepped forward. His face was flushed, his eyes bright; he, too, had been drinking. “I heard tell young Rictus here was going to see me dead,” he said. “Did I hear wrong, or was he just yapping?”
Rictus stepped forward but Jason held him back, moved in front of him. “What’s on your mind, Aristos?”
“I want my money, Jason. We all do. I brought over a thousand men out of the mountains and they haven’t so much as smelled the gold that’s due to them. Pay us, and we’ll leave you be. We’ll call it settled, no hard feelings.”
“Pay you for what?” Rictus hissed. “For desertion, for stealing our food, for running away? Come here and I’ll pay you myself, in coin you’ll understand.”
“Shut up,” Jason snapped. “Aristos, the money is all gone—we shared it out already. If you want gold, you can talk to any drunk soldier in the city, for they’re the ones who have it now. They’re paid off, Aristos. The thing is over.”
Aristos seemed taken aback. He hesitated a second, the men behind him murmuring. Then he smiled, and drew his sword. “I’ll have yours, then.”
“Come take mine,” Rictus snarled, drawing his knife. “Come and try, you piece of shit.” He shoved Jason aside and lunged forward. Aristos did the same. They came together like two stags clashing antlers, each searching for the other’s sword-arm with his free hand. The iron of their weapons snicked together and they slashed and side-stepped, then stepped in again, breast to breast. A flurry of blows, clicked aside or dodged. Blood sprang out like a badge along Rictus’s collarbone, a long slice. He dashed aside another blow with his knife, the metal screeching. He stabbed, and the point careered harmlessly off Aristos’s armour.
“Enough!” Jason bellowed. He elbowed into the fight, thumping Rictus aside, and kicking Aristos in the chest. Both younger men went down on their backs, breathing like sprinters. Jason stood between them. “Enough of this,” he said. “Gominos—take your friend here and—”
Up sprang Rictus and Aristos again, their faces flooded with fury, all reasoning gone. They charged each other once more. Jason got between them. For a second he had them at arm’s length one on each side of him, and then they had come together again. Jason was knocked sideways. He fell heavily to the beaten earth of the street, and lay there with the lees of the wine running about his legs. He opened his mouth to speak, and then coughed. His feet scrabbled uselessly along the ground. He pulled his hand away from his side and saw the dark shine there. It was spewing out of him. “You’ve killed me,” he said, wide eyed and incredulous, and fell back.
Aristos’s men streamed forward, Gominos at their head. Rictus and Aristos stood looking first at each other, and then at Jason, appalled. Rictus tossed his knife to the ground and knelt down beside the prone man. “Jason, Jason.”
They stood around him. Rictus clamped his hand to the deep hole in Jason’s side. His face was as white as marble.
“Damn you,” Jason whispered. “I had a life. Ah, Phobos. Antimone, keep me.” His voice trailed away.
“Tiryn,” he breathed, almost inaudible. And then he died.
All around them, the clamour of the city went on, the night bright and gaudy and tattered with the celebrations of the Ten Thousand. Aristos and Gominos and their men stood mute, frozen, staring. Rictus closed Jason’s eyes, then bent and kissed his forehead.
“You were the best of us,” he whispered.
Of its own accord, his hand went out and found the hilt of his knife. He stood up, and when he turned to face the Macht in the street they backed away from the light in his eyes, as men will give space to a mad dog. Three strides he took, the movement a swift flash, and the blade gleamed in the air as he swept it out before him. Aristos dropped his own weapon, startled. His hands scrabbled for his throat, to the great, gouting hole that had opened there. He gargled words through the blood, staggered, went down on his knees. One scarlet hand grasped Rictus’s thigh. Then he fell to his side in the street, struggling to stillness in the steaming puddle of blood which was both Jason’s and his own. Rictus watched him, and finally tossed the knife onto his body. He looked up at Gominos, at the rest of Aristos’s men who stood silent and still before him.
“Now, it’s over,” he said.