All this Gasca and Rictus found out within minutes of joining the food-queue, for their fellow mercenaries became more congenial with the toothsome smell of the day’s main meal eddying about them. They were handed square wooden plates and had a nameless stew ladled within, then grasped the butt of hard bread shoved into their free hand. Spearmen and skirmishers mingled indiscriminately as the meal was distributed, rank set aside. Last to be fed was the centurion himself. This was to make sure that there had been enough for every man. If the cooks ran short, it would be Jason standing there with an empty plate, and there was no excuse acceptable for that, short of an act of Cod.
But Jason was late. The evening of the short day had begun to swoop in before he appeared in their midst, and the wind had begun flapping at the dying flames under the centos. Men gathered around that ruddy wind-bitten light, and when Rictus felt a soft touch on his face he looked up to see that snow was falling, fat flakes spinning out of the dark in the grip of the wind.
Jason stood at the centos scooping cold stew out of his trencher. His second, Buridan, handed him a wineskin and he squirted the black army wine down his throat. He wiped his mouth, looking round at the assembled soldiers. There must have been seven score of them squatting about him, cloaks pulled up against the snow, buttocks stone-cold from the bare ground beneath them. They watched him without a word, spearman and skirmisher alike. The crackling firelight played on the faces of the nearest, but outside it dozens more were standing in darkness. Up and down the Marshalling Yards other centons were gathering in like fashion, like winter moths drawn to the flame-light of the cooking fires.
“Four sennights we’ve been here, or a little more,” Jason said. He had raised his voice so that it carried to those peering in at the rear. “We have waited, and grown soft in the waiting. You’re all poor now, money squandered in the stews of Machran. You’ve drunk each cup to its lees and grown to know the face and arse of every whore in the city. That time is at an end. My brothers, at dawn tomorrow we march out, every company of us. We make for Hal Goshen, on the coast, two hundred pasangs by road. We will cover that distance in six days. At the Goshen there will be ships waiting for us—”
A low murmur ran through the centon, and died away just as quickly when Jason held up his hand. “There will be ships waiting for us, and these ships will take us to our destination.”
“And where might that be?” someone shouted out of the darkness of the rear ranks.
“I’ll tell you when we get there,” Jason said, his voice mild, but his eyes flashing.
“We should vote on this. I never volunteered for no sea voyage,” someone else said.
“We voted to take up Pasion’s contract. We took his money, and we will see it through. Unless, that is, you have the means to repay your retainer, and you wish to leave my centon.” Jason left the last words hanging in the air. No one else spoke up.
“Very well. Assembly is a turn earlier in the morning. You will all be packed and ready to march out. Burn what you cannot take with you—only wargear will be carried on the wagons. And brothers, anyone too drunk or poxed to march in the morning will be dismissed from the company, on the spot.” He paused. The snow whirled around his head, spotting his dark hair white. He looked up at the sky, blinking as snowflakes settled on his eyes.
“I don’t care it if it’s waist-deep. We march in the morning. File leaders, on me. All others dismissed.”
The tight-packed crowd of men broke apart. There was little talk. They walked back to the company lines in the guttering glare of torchlight, spearmen and skirmishers mingled. Buridan called away some two dozen of the light troops to the rear of the lines, where the wagons stood like patient beasts. They hauled out harness from the wagon-beds and filed off after him to the city itself, where all the centon’s draught animals had been quartered this last month.
Gasca was limping as he and Rictus regained the shelter of their shack. Inside, one of the other spearmen had lit an oil lamp and the wick smoked busily, catching at their throats. “How is the leg?” Rictus asked.
Gasca took off his cloak, laid it on the earth floor, and sat gingerly down upon it, breath hissing out through his teeth. “That drill today opened it up a little. I’ll be fine. I’ll strap it up.”
“Let me have a look at it.” Rictus lifted up Gasca’s chiton. The red dye had leached out of it and streaked all his lower limbs. It was hard to tell what was blood and what was not. He touched the black-stitched wound in Gasca’s thigh, feeling the heat of it. Some of Zeno’s stitches had popped free and the whole purple line of it was swollen. Rictus leaned close, sniffing.