That night the Macht camped before the towering battlements of Tal Byrna, the fortress-city of southern Jutha, made rich by the caravan trail that passed through it on the way to the Land of the Rivers. This had been a Juthan fortress once, in the far-off misty days when the Juthan had been a free people living under their own kings; then it had become a Kefren stronghold, garrisoned to hold southern Jutha for the Empire. Now, militarily speaking, it was a husk, a beautiful towered shell with half a million Kufr quivering inside it and barely a soldier left to man its walls. There were countless mud-brick villages in the region around it, and the richest farmland outside Pleninash, farmland watered by the tributaries of the Abekai and the irrigation systems of the Imperial Engineers. While the Macht gathered their dead and stockpiled the masses of enemy wargear left on the field, the Kufr elements of the host crossed the river and sent out a dozen foraging parties to gather food for the army. These covered southern Jutha like hungry locusts, sucking up the resources of the entire region to feed the hungry masses of Arkamenes’s hosts.
“To the victor, the spoils,” Phiron said. “What’s the butcher’s bill, Pasion?”
“Larger than it ought to have been,” Pasion said sharply. “Almost two hundred dead or too crippled ever to lift spear again. And twice that wounded, though most of those will come back to the colour, given time.”
The campfire crackled between them in the dark, and behind them Kufr servants, a whole company of them, were rearing up Arkamenes’s tent, a laborious job which would take them half the night. In the morning, Arkamenes would receive the surrender of the city within it, and he wanted everything just so.
“It had to be done,” Phiron said with unwonted gentleness. “Arkamenes was right. And now we have put the fear of God into these fellows. This one battle may have saved us a dozen more.”
“I see it; I’m not some strawhead fresh off the mountain. It’s good to take the measure of our enemy, too.”
“Don’t put too much store by their performance today. These were a levy, no more. The Imperial troops will be another thing entirely. And this lot had no cavalry. In the plains ahead we will be up against horsemen by the thousand, and our skirmishers will not be able to run riot.”
“Beef up the centons then. There’s good gear piling up head-high outside the camp. The cuirasses are too big, but the shields and spears and helms are a fair enough fit. Draft in a thousand of the Hounds to bolster the battle line.”
“I will,” Phiron said. Then he set a hand on Pasion’s shoulder. “This was a good beginning, brother.”
“It is only a beginning,” Pasion said with a tight smile.
The Dogsheads were fewer in number that night, the crowd about the steaming centos somewhat thinner as the cooks ladled out the stew. Two dozen of them had fallen to the river or the Kufr in the morning and many of the remainder were carrying wounds, mostly punctures to the upper body, or lost eyes. Jason had gone the rounds of the hospital tents and now he and Buridan stood back as his centon wolfed down the good, hot food, the best that could be gleaned from the farms and storehouses of southern Jutha. The desert was behind them, they had a victory under their belt, and the army’s quartermasters were busy accounting for every captured spearhead. Plus, there had been an issue of palm wine, the sweet, thick, intoxicating brew of the Middle Empire. As the men settled about their plates and jugs, so a raucous recalling of the fight began, all fear forgotten, blows dealt and received now part of a story that all had a hand in telling. This, while the stink of the Kefren army’s corpses was beginning to rise from the water channels and dyked fields that surrounded them. They had trampled half a harvest beneath their feet and pitched their tents on the other half, but the granaries of the countryside round about seemed inexhaustible. Round, bee-hive mounds of fired brick built on columns of stone to keep them from the vermin, they held enough millet and barley to feed a score of armies. Herds of pigs and cattle and goats had been rounded up by the bloody-handed skirmishers. Many of these were now spitted and turning above broad fires, which in turn were fuelled by the felling of the innumerable palm trees which lined the irrigation channels. We may be freeing this country, Jason thought with a pang, but we’re laying waste to it too. The Juthan have exchanged one master for another. That is the way of things. There is no such thing as real freedom, not here, on this continent.
The young Iscan, Rictus, was standing slopping stew into his mouth and listening to the boasting of his strawhead friend. He had filled out a little, and was dressed in a red Kufr tunic that had been cut down to size. He looked up as Jason approached and nodded, that Iscan arrogance dripping off him. Even by firelight, Jason could see the dried blood that still caked his hands.