Screens of light cavalry were operating on every front of the army, gathering what information they could and sending it back to the high command in an unending stream of mud-slathered couriers.. Looking south, Vorus could see some now, a pennanted column of them, as gaily dressed as if going to a fair. All the Kefren loved finery, and war called out the dandy in them in a way that even court ceremonial could not quite match. Even the Juthan legions were in gaudy liveries of the various Kefren lords, and the mighty Qaf had painted their faces with all the barbaric enthusiasm of children. Added to this, the various provincial factions called up to the standards wore versions of their national costumes. The Medisai trimmed their harness with feathers from the parrots of the Pan-jir River valley, the Arakosans preferred the white fur of mountain-leopards. The Asurians of the heartland made no bones about it, and had all their wargear inlaid with gold and lapis lazuli dredged from the bed of the Oskus. If one of their nobles went down in the mud a prince’s ransom in bullion and gems would fall with him. Vorus did not approve. In Anurman’s day such extravagance was saved for the court. On the hunt, and in war, his soldiers had left their armour unadorned.
It was our deeds marked us out in those days, Vorus thought, not some brooch or robe or crown. But even Anurman might have donned his finest, were he to go out and meet a Macht army in battle. Such events seemed a part of myth rather than historical reality.
Another courier came galloping up, the muck flying from his horse’s feet like a flock of startled birds and the ranks of the Juthan making an avenue for him. He threw up an arm in salute, a hufsan from the mountains with the dark eyes of his caste. He was grinning, face alight with the joy of his position, the armies massing on the plain, the good horse under him. Simple folk, the hufsan Kefren, and the most vicious warriors in the army, bar the Honai.
“General! I find you! I bring a message from the Archon Midarnes.” The hufsan proffered a leather despatch-case, spattered with mud from his passage. Vorus took it with a nod, breaking the seal. Midarnes was up front some five pasangs, feeling out the terrain with his soldiers’ feet, and claiming space should the army need to shake out into battle line. Dominating the ground, the manuals of Vorus’s youth had called it. For the earth upon which they fought would have its say in their lives and deaths as surely as any tactic of the enemy.
Vorus paused for a second as he realised his hands were trembling. He clenched his jaw, the muscles jumping under his face, and read the scroll.
To Vorus of the Macht, officer commanding the armies of his excellent majesty Ashurnan, King of Kings, Great Kings, Lord of—
He skipped the pleasantries. Midarnes was commander of the Household Guard, and sometimes he let protocol get in the way of haste, for all that he was a capable fellow.
The vanguard of the traitor’s army has been sighted ten pasangs east of the Bekai River. I hold high ground two pasangs to their front, and have put all my forces into line of battle. There is good space here for the rest of the army to deploy to my right and left. The Macht are out on the enemy right, the traitor and his Bodyguard in the centre. They, too, are deploying into line. I shall hold this position until further orders.
Vorus swore under his breath, though he kept his face blank, aware of the Honai guards watching, Proxis’s eyes upon him. He passed the scroll to the Juthan. “Things move fast, my friend.” He looked up at the sky, squinting into the sun and gauging how long it had to meet the flat river-plain of the western horizon.
Proxis, too, uttered some profanities in his own, dark tongue. “This is the King’s work. If we don’t move fast he’ll be up there alone. He has his father’s courage, but as for judgement—”
“Mount up. We must get to Midarnes.”
“It’s too late in the day for battle, surely.”
“Phiron of Idrios commands the Macht, a canny bastard if ever there was one. We must gather up the army at once, and concentrate on Midarnes. Courier—courier, there! Proxis, have you ink and quill?”
Ashurnan had left all his finery behind on the back of another tall Kefre who might have been his twin. This officer, lucky or luckless according to opinion, now stood in the royal chariot, his head shaded by the royal parasol-bearers and the Great King’s standard waving slightly with its long plumes above his head. Ashurnan himself had taken two close companions for a horseback tour of his mustering army. They were coming up into line by their thousands, and he galloped along their front on his grey gelding in the brilliant robes of a staff officer, no more, whilst a gleaming white komis kept most of his face covered, and soon became black with the tiny flies hatching out of the river-mud. He had mud on his arms and legs also, thrown up by the exuberant passage of his horse. Beneath the komis he was grinning like a child, so happy to be young, and a king, and well-mounted to the front of a mighty army that would halt or move or march into battle at his will. He raised his eyes to the sky as his horse sped over the tightly-packed earth of the Middle Empire—his empire—and he gave thanks to the Creator Himself for all this, for the breath of Kuf that had given life to them all, for the ability to be glad at this time, to find worth in the great issues and bloody struggles of the world. For if a man could not savour such a dish, then he was no man at all.