Friendship. I do not have it. My father was a lucky man. I take his leavings, worthy as they are, and out of them I spin what I can. But I was never one to make great friends, it seems.
The glory had left him now. Ashurnan sat his horse and looked out at the enemy battle line with eyes as cold as glass, noting the depth of rank, the armour, the level of drill. My brother, he thought. I made you ruler of one third of this empire, in fact if not in name—and it was not enough. I did it for love, for boyhood friendship. I was mistaken. I shall kill you now, and weep not one tear when I stare upon your corpse.
He kicked his mount’s ribs savagely, and as the animal reared in fear and startlement he calmed it with kind words, ashamed of himself.
The bow, the horse, the truth. Very well. Even if it is only to please the memory of a dead father, it is good enough.
He stared back down the sloping ground to where his brother might be, then scanned the enemy line, hunting out the legend, the much-vaunted mythical Macht. The familiar half-made ranks of Kefren troops opposite had been a kind of comfort; one saw this calibre of soldiery all over the Empire, and they were faintly risible compared to the stern ranks of the Honai. He had a half-smile on his face as he peered up the enemy line, the anger and betrayal in his heart fuelling a kind of arrogance, the shield which few saw through, and which meant he would never make the friends his father had.
The Macht.
Harder to make out because they were not moving. They stood in patient files on the enemy right, eight ranks of heavy infantry resting their shields on the ground so that they leaned against the right knee. Their bronze was different. Ashurnan could not quite puzzle it out, until he realised that it was old metal, tarnished and dimmed. These men had carried their harness a long time. It was not a matter of burnishing; it was a matter of years. And there was no decoration to it. They did not take joy in their turn-out. They wore their panoplies with all the pride and elan of labourers set to a day’s heavy shifting. Ashurnan’s mouth began to sneer under the komis as he regarded them, and then his lips straightened. Their formation was perfect, as though someone had gone running along their front with a plumb line. They stood at ease, almost unmoving. They were watching the armies moving into place to their front, but none of the Kefren’s flinching restlessness went through their ranks. They seemed almost bored.
Ashurnan turned his horse around and cantered back to his own lines, his mind brewing all manner of phantasms. To kill his brother—that was the self-evident mission of this campaign. But now there was another filtering into place within his thoughts. These Macht; they could not remain within the bounds of the Empire. They, too, must be utterly destroyed. This legend must be brought to heel here in the mud of the Middle Empire.
The Great King’s levies, drawn by a skein of frantic couriers, drew together on the sloping ground east of the city of Kaik. Here, the land rose out of the floodplain of the Bekai River and crested into a series of low heights that might once have been the foundations of ancient cities, but which now had disappeared utterly and were mere shapeless mounds. The heights had a name though; locally they were known as the Kunaksa, the Goat’s Hills, and goats had indeed grazed there in happier times. Now they provided dry footing for the Great King’s battle line, and a vantage point from where the whole expanse of the plain could be made out right back to the river itself. Below, in the sodden ground of the farmlands, the traitor’s army had finished deploying and now occupied a solid front of some six pasangs. The Macht out on the right made a line of shields just over a pasang and a half long, and curled round their open flank was an amorphous crowd of light infantry, skirmishers with spears and javelins and no armour to speak of. The traitor Arkamenes had set a renegade Juthan legion on the Macht left. There were his personal troops, his Honai, and behind that a mounted Bodyguard of perhaps a thousand heavy cavalry. Further left, there were the levies from Artaka, the Tanis garrison, and more Juthan troops. Between forty and fifty thousand all told. On this wide plain their formations were as perfect as could be imagined. He was short on cavalry and archers, but had a solid wall of heavy infantry to fight with. If their morale held, that line would take a lot to stop.
So thought Vorus, looking down on them. Again and again, his eyes were drawn back to the unyielding, insouciant line of blank bronze that was the Macht. Something ached near his heart, a kind of pride. The Macht heavy spearmen had retained their cloaks. They knew that battle might not be joined today and that they would most likely have to sleep in line, so they had brought the scarlet badge of their calling on their backs. They would die tomorrow with their red cloaks on their shoulders. For a single, insane moment, Vorus wished with all his heart that he was down there with them, part of that sombre spectacle.