The Household troops, the Honai, were ten thousand strong in themselves, and in eight ranks they had a frontage of some thirteen hundred paces. Unlike the other Kefren contingents, they did not rely on the horse or the bow, but on the spear. Like the Macht, they were close-quarter killers, trained to prevail in the most demanding mode of warfare known.
They were magnificent. Ashurnan had never seen them gathered all together before, and now it seemed that there could not be a force in the world to contend with them. All through the passage of the mountains, they had hid their wargear under leather campaign casings, but these were discarded now, and the effect made Ashurnan rein in his horse and stare, Great King though he was. Their arms and armour were gilded and inlaid with every precious metal and gem known to exist; the sun caught these now and made their line a scintillating blur of varicoloured light. They did not seem things made of flesh at all.
And more troops were coming up minute by minute, thousands of them. Kefren from Asuria, hufsan from the mountains, Qaf from the north, Juthan Legions marching in dour ranks, and files of brightly clad cavalry from the Oskus valley. A world in arms, it seemed; an army which could no more be fought than could the passage of the moons.
Ashurnan wheeled his horse and stared back down the long slope towards the river valley of the Bekai. Far in the distance, the tall hill of Kaik could be made out, a shadowed hummock on the edge of the plain, and beyond it the westering sun had begun to lengthen the shadows. Closer to hand there was the enemy, a line of armoured troops with the sun behind them, who had come here to kill him and take his throne.
Arkamenes is there, he thought. My brother sits his horse somewhere in that line, and watches, and wonders where I am.
In the harem there had been many wives, and many children, all sired by great Anurman. The boys had been taken away soon after birth, so that the court might not poison their upbringing. They had been reared as sons of simple fathers, and hence had been taught those things the Kefren still held essential to hold true the course of life: to wield the bow, to ride a horse, to speak the truth. Such things were their heritage, and no matter how depraved and indolent the ruler of the Empire might become, he had the knowledge of those values buried in his soul, to reproach him when he fell short. Such simple things.
To tell the truth.
At age thirteen, Ashurnan had been brought back to Ashur, and told of his true parentage by matter-of-fact tutors his mighty father had hired to complete his education. Illiterate as the hufsan couple who had fostered him, he had been thrown into a world of palace protocol, vicious conspiracy, simmering feuds, and poison—the weapon of choice for wives, concubines, eunuchs, and courtiers. No bows or horses here, and precious little of the truth, either. That was the palace.
The Great King stood above it all, or at least Anurman had, and at his shoulders he had two creatures he trusted. The Macht, Vorus, and the Juthan, Proxis. These two were faithful as dogs, and were treated like dogs by the Kefren nobility, outraged beyond fury by the Great King’s reliance on them. All this, Ashurnan had known, had seen at first hand and heard at second whilst growing into his manhood within the confines of the ziggurat. His father had been a distant, stern figurehead, hardly connected to him at all, but Vorus had looked in on him from time to time, to make reports he supposed. He had hated Vorus, knowing that Anurman, his own father, loved this alien Macht as though he were his son. He would see the two of them together at state occasions, Vorus elevated to commander of Ashur’s very garrison, made greater than the highest-caste Kefre of the Great King’s own blood. He had hated Vorus for his patience, for his honesty, for his loyalty. The very qualities any King needs in a friend.
Arkamenes, my brother. Ashurnan reined in and sat his horse a hundred paces forward of his Household’s line, the foremost man in the army. His companions he waved back as they approached, to remonstrate with him about security, no doubt. He sat there and watched the ranks of the enemy thicken, a hedge of spears and shields, a mass of pushing and jostling and stumbling people all intent on finding some patch of earth upon which they could stand and muster their courage. These were Kefren opposite. He saw the banners of Tanis, of Artaka there, and with a tightening of his mouth he beheld the sigils of Istar, and his cousin Honuran.
What price bought you? he wondered, for he had loved Honuran, had counted him a true friend. They had stayed together as best they could through the palace upheavals, Ashurnan the serious, Arkamenes the proud, Honuran the trickster. A little triumvirate of resistance, dedicated to foxing their tutors and making some space outside the palace for themselves. They had all lost their virginity on the same whore, had planned it that way so as to avoid the slick and murderous concubines of the palace. They had drunk in wine-shops of the lower-city together, their bodyguards fretting and nervous at every door. They had hunted together, boated down the Oskus, broken horses as a team, been beaten by their tutors with all their rumps bare in the air at the same time. Boyhood, and friendship. One thought it was supposed to mean something. Perhaps it did. Perhaps I was too serious—the Heir of the Great King. Did I wrong you, Arkamenes? It was not through spite, only ham-fistedness.