The centurions looked at the wine-ringed table-top, frowning. At last Mynon said; “Fine words. Eloquent. I put them in my head and admire them. You always had a way with words, Pasion, even as far back as Ebsus. You could make men believe their own shit didn’t stink, if you had a mind to, but we’ve all grey in our beards here, and rhetoric to us is like a middle-aged wife. You can admire it, flirt with it, but you’re not going to let it fuck with you. Take my advice and speak plain now, or you’re going to start bleeding spears.”
Someone guffawed, and there was a chorus of assent. As Pasion looked down the table he realised that Mynon was right. Mercenaries would put up with many things and, contrary to popular myth, they would not desert the first time their pay was late. Stubborn bastards, proud as princes, and sentimental as women, they could be held to the colour by many things beyond money. Sometimes they would believe in promises, if those promises were grand enough, and if they flattered their own vanity. Mercenaries had their own kind of honour, and a fierce pride in their calling. It was only to be expected. Once a man donned scarlet, he became ostrakr, and abandoned whatever city had spawned him. It had to be so, or else allegiances to different warring cities would tear every centon apart. To replace that allegiance, the mercenary committed himself to his centon and his comrades. They became his city. The centurion was their leader, but could not commit his men to any contract until they had voted for it among themselves. It was the law of the Assembly writ small, and it gave each mercenary company the cohesion and brotherhood that all men craved in their hearts. To become a sellspear, a man might forsake his ancestors, his memories, the very place that gave him birth, but in return he was admitted to this brutal brotherhood and given a new thing to fight for. A city in miniature, clad in bronze, and dedicated to the art of warfare.
“Very well,” Pasion said at last. “You scorn rhetoric, so I will give you fact. More words, but these are set in iron. I will tell you this now, and it will never leave these walls.” He looked the table up and down, checking that he had each of their attentions. Had he been a less restless man, he would have loved the stage, the faces hanging on each word he chose to give and withhold.
“We are not gathered here for some city fight. We are making an army, a full-sized army, and all of it composed of mercenaries. Brothers, we have a journey before us, and its destination lies far, far outside the Harukush.”
There was a pause as this sank in.
“Brothers, we are—”
“Phobos,” Orsos swore loudly. “You mean to take us into the Empire.”
Five
TAKING SCARLET
For Jason of Ferai, the morning clatter of the Marshalling Grounds was a piercing agony he could as well have done without. Rasping his tongue across the roof of his mouth he sent one hand out to find the water jug and the other down to his waist, where his money-pouch still hung, as flaccid as an old man’s prick. He poured the contents of the jug over his head in the bed, getting some down his rancid throat and causing his bed-mate to squeal and dart upright in outrage.
“It’s only water, my dear. You had worse over you last night.”
The girl rubbed her eyes, a pretty little thing whose name he had not bothered to learn. “It’s dark out yet. You’ve the bed for another turn of the jar if you want it.”
Jason rose and kissed the nape of her neck. “Consider it a bonus. A turn alone.”
She threw his scarlet rag of chiton at him, and stood up, stretching. “Have it your way.”
Jason stood up also, the room doing its morn-ing-after lurch in his eyes. The girl was striking flint on tinder and making a hash of it. He took the stones from her and blew on the spark he clicked out, first time, then lit the olive-lamp from it. The grey almost-light of the pre-dawn receded. It was night in the room again. He pinched the girl’s round white buttock. “Any wine left?”
“There’s the dregs of the skin, bought and paid for.”
“Like you.”
“Like me.”
“Join me in a snort.”
They sat back down on the bed, naked and companionable, and squirted the black wine into one another’s mouths.
“So when is it to happen?” the girl asked. Her fingers eased the bronze slave-ring about her throat.
“What’s to happen?”
“This war of yours.”
“I wish I knew. What’s the word in the stews?”
The girl yawned. She had good teeth, white as a pup’s. “Oh, Machran is to be attacked by all your companies, and sacked for every obol.”
“Ah, that war. It may wait a long time yet.”