“He’s a professional, and thus dislikes being brigaded with amateurs,” Phiron said, watching him go. “Can’t say as I blame him. We march on the word of a Kufr, and from now on will eat and drink on his say so.”
“If we run short, there are always other ways of making up the difference,” Jason said. He rolled up the scroll and set the closer in place. “Thank you for this, Phiron. I’ll put it to good use.”
“What? No, no. I know what you’re saying, Jason. But we cannot pillage lands we hope to win to our side. Arkamenes will look after us— it’s in his own interest after all. I do not fear being betrayed or neglected, not by him. At least, not while he still lacks a crown.”
The two men looked at one another, understanding. Jason sighed. “I was happier when I was ignorant—as ignorant as I shall keep my centurions. I never thought being a general would entail so much talk.”
“It is always the way. He’s offering us help with the baggage, you know.”
“Help?”
“Eight hundred Juthan with broad backs. I’ve heard they’re hardy as mules.”
“I’d keep them out of our lines, for now, Phiron. Our men are not yet used to the Kufr cheek-by-jowl.”
“As you say. We may be glad of them before long though. We march out tonight, Jason, whatever the Kufr do.”
“And if they are late?”
“If they are late, then they can eat our dust.”
From Tanis, the Gadinai Desert stretched out flat and brown, a parched plain that extended all the way to the Otosh River in the north, broken by wadis and gullies that the flash-floods of the rainy spring carved out deeper every year. To the south, the Gadean Hills stretched in line after line of broken, pale-coloured stone. White cliffs marked them out from afar, and dotted through them were the timeworn quarries from whence the very stuff of Tanis’s mighty walls and towers had been hewn, in block after gargantuan block. Kefren shepherds roamed the hills, tending their goats as they had for time immemorial. Further south, tribes of hill-bandits made their lairs in the maze-like confusion of the bluffs and canyons.
These watched, amazed, from the highest of the crumbling escarpments, as now a great rash spread over the desert, a river of men, dark under the sun save where the light caught the points of their spears. They raised a dustcloud behind and around them, a tawny, leaning giant, a toiling yellow storm bent on blotting out the western sky. It seemed a nation on the march, a whole people set on migrating to a better place. The sparse inhabitants of the Gadinai drew together, old feuds forgotten, and watched in wonder as the great column poured steadily onward, as unstoppable as the course of the sun. It was as grand as some harbinger of the world’s end, a spectacle even the gods must see from their places amid the stars. So this, then, was the passage of an army.
Nine
SERVANT OF KINGS
The news was brought to Vorus with a quiet tap on the door of his apartments. He grunted out some response, the dreams of the night still fogging his mind, and in came the morning-maid with her head bowed and a sealed scroll of parchment quivering like a bird upon the silver tray she held out.
He rose in the bed, the silk sheets whispering off his torso to reveal the broad form of an athlete—he had always been vain about his physique—and took the message from the tray. “I’ll eat in the garden, Bisa.”
“Yes, lord.” The girl, a low-caste hufsa, bowed and left with the soft slap of bare feet on the mosaic floor. From outside, Vorus could hear the birds squabbling in the fountain, and the rill of the water got him thinking on other things. He reached the silver pot out from under the bed and stood pissing into it while breaking the seal of the letter. Astiarnes of Tanis—a good man. He remembered—
“Phobos!” He puddled the floor before collecting himself, and the parchment flapped in his fingers. “Kyrosh!”
A tall Kefren with skin the colour of birch-bark glided through the door. He bowed deep, azure eyes gleaming. In his hand he held a wand of ivory. “Lord.”
“My best, and the Macht cuirass. A closed litter, and the swiftest bearers we know. No, wait; we must put on a show. I must go to the Palace, Kyrosh.”
“It shall be arranged, my lord. I shall send in the dresser. Might I recommend the Arakosan silk?”
“No.” Vorus was thinking clearly now. His face had become calm. “My chiton, the scarlet. And the Curse of God. My old gear, Kyrosh.”
The Kefren blinked, and licked his thin lips. He moved forward a pace. “Lord, for the Palace?”
“Do as I say. And get that litter.”