The Ten Thousand(56)

On the other side the world had changed. The quiet starlit night was fractured apart.

“Phobos!” Rictus swore. The boy was right. Two pasangs away, not three, more campfires were extending the perimeter minute upon minute. How many taenons? A hundred, two hundred? It was a sea of campfires back to the foothills.

It was an army.

The Great King had come west over the mountains.

Twenty pasangs back at a hard run, the men blowing and winded now, heads down. When Whistler and a few of the older ones began to lag behind, Rictus split his command, going forward with the youngest and fleetest. They stumbled in the dark and went headlong, got up and started running again. The two moons rose, and in the blushed silver light they made better time. It seemed in the moonlight that they were making no distance at all, but were mere staggering men running on the spot, while all around the dark world sat still under their feet. But at last the other campfires hove into view: the lights of their own camp. Running down into it, swallowing vomit, Rictus knew by the comparison that the army camped back in the shadow of the Magron was many times larger than their own. Gasping, he told his men to make for their own lines. He tossed Morian his weapons and kept running, making for the taller cressets that blazed above the rest of the Macht camp, marking the large tent of Phiron where the Kerusia met. When he reached it he bent over and spewed out what remained of his last meal, whilst in front of the tent two of Arkamenes’s Honai stood watching in disgust, flanking the open tent-flap. From within there came the sound of music, a woman singing, and voices engaged in stately conversation.

Rictus staggered askew, spitting out the foul taste of his vomit, mind wheeling. The sight of the Honai had completely thrown him. Was he not in the right place? He wiped his mouth on his arm and went up to the tall Kefren. “Phiron,” he said. “Get Phiron.”

The guards stared at him, alien eyes set within the bronze masks of their helms. “Phiron,” Rictus repeated faintly, and sank to one knee.

A voice spoke up, louder than the blood thundering in his ears. He was taken by the arm and shaken roughly. Not Phiron but Jason, the ivy-leaves of a party in his hair, wine on his breath. He wore his finest chiton, still scarlet, but embroidered with gold sigils on the shoulders. In his pale eyes there was instant recognition.

“What’s happened? Speak, Rictus.”

Rictus regained his feet, swaying. Jason’s hands grasped his shoulders, transfixing him to the spot.

“What are the Kufr doing here?”

“Arkamenes is within—Phiron is hosting him. You picked a rare night to puke on his doorstep. Now speak it out.”

“Twenty-two or three pasangs to the east, there is an army encamped. It is huge—many times bigger than ours.”

Those eyes, strange in so dark a face. Pale as flint. Jason studied him for a long moment, breathing wine into his face. Gods, he could do with some wine. But he was collecting himself now, his heart hammering out a less insane beat.

“You’re sure, Rictus?”

Rictus smiled. “I know an army when I see one.”

“How close did you get? How many camp-fires? Were you seen?” The questions were shot out like barbed darts. Rictus answered them as well he could. When Jason was satisfied he released him. Even in the torchlight it was possible to see how his face had lost colour.

“They stole a march on us it seems—a campaigning season of marches. I thought Ashurnan did not have it in him.”

“The snows in the Magron,” Rictus said. “They must have melted early.”

“Yes. You’ve done well, lad. Antimone had her eye on you tonight, on us all. Now it’s Phobos we have to worry about. Follow me.”

“Where? In there?” Rictus asked, dismayed.

“In there. You’re going to stand up straight in front of Phiron and our generals and the Kufr and tell all this over again, and you’ll not miss a beat.”

Rictus rubbed at the vomit on his front. His chiton stank with sweat and his legs were spattered dark with the muck he had run through. “I could use some wine,” he said in a low tone. Jason grinned.

“You and me both. Come now.”

He might have been an after-dinner freak-show. Phiron’s tent had been hung with tapestries and hangings looted from half a dozen cities; it was lit with many-armed lamps of gold and silver. The couches of the great and the good were circled round an empty space below them, through which musicians and slaves came and went. Now Rictus stood in this space, stinking, filth-stained, rank, and told them all that the enemy had come over the mountains and was half a day’s march to the east. An enemy in his many tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands. He was brought wine and sipped it standing as one after another of the generals questioned him, many sharp with disbelief, and even angry, as though Rictus were playing some joke on them. Orsos and Castus denounced him as a spy, planted by their foes; they were rather drunk. Phiron and Pasion, side by side, questioned him as parents would a prodigal son. And Arkamenes sat rigid, watching, listening to Phiron interpret, his eyes glowing with a light that was utterly inhuman. Behind him, on a lower couch, a Kufr woman reclined. As he spoke, Rictus was sure she understood some of his words, for she reacted before Phiron translated. Her eyes were stark with fear.