A spear-blow to his shield-rim stretched the metal. The men in the front ranks had their heads down as though sheltering from a storm. Many had gashed and bleeding spear-arms from the thrusts of their own comrades behind them. Gasca rested his spear on the shoulder of the file-leader, three ranks ahead; it seemed insufferably heavy. The file-leader’s spear broke off in the body of a Kufr maniac who threw himself at the line of shields, and he flipped the shaft round, tearing up the thigh of the second-rank man as he did so. With the sauroter now facing forward, he began stabbing out with as much energy as before. In this mass of sharp bronze and iron the flesh of men was a fragile thing, to be scored and sliced without comment or complaint. They were expendable parts in the machine, and they would endure their role without complaint until the thing was done. That was part of the philosophy of the othismos.
Ten thousand Macht, pressing forward with all the professionalism of their calling. The Kefren spearmen could not hold back that mass of murder. The deep formations of troops here on the left, stacked up to absorb the Macht assault, became a weakness rather than a strength. Reserve regiments, moving forward to the aid of their comrades, became close-packed by the ordeal of the men at the front, packing lines of bodies against the enemy spearheads.
The Kufr army was pulling back; no, it was in flight—but the flight was so constricted as to be a mere shuddering of movement, no more.
But the Macht felt it. A lessening of pressure, like pushing on a stiff-hinged door past the point of equilibrium. A knowledge that the back of this thing is broken.
Those in the Kefren front rank were showing their backs now, pushing and clawing at the men behind them to get away from the spears. These whose courage had failed were stabbed to bloody quivering meat and their toppling bodies entangled the legs of the next rank; the struggling mob that resulted was cut down without mercy. Gasca found himself hiccoughing with a manic kind of laughter as he stabbed out over the shoulders of the men in front of him. The pressure from the rear had eased somewhat, and the Macht ranks were opening up as the enemy to their front disintegrated. Now Gasca felt the rasp of his tongue about his teeth, the taste of salt about his lips: sweat and splashed blood. His legs were scarlet to the knee, and the ground under all their feet stood pocked with puddles of blood where it was not carpeted with the enemy dead. The Great King’s left wing had been smashed asunder.
A gap opened up between the fleeing Kufr and the remorseless, ordered ranks of the Macht. The order to halt was ferried down the line by men whose throats could barely sustain speech. And the phalanx halted, the men breathing hard, many bending to vomit. Up through the opening files came light-armed skirmishers with skins of water hanging from their shoulders. These were passed up and down the line. Gasca managed a few swallows before passing it on, and closed his eyes as the stale, warm liquid set his tongue to moving in his mouth again.
Now the centurions left the ranks and came to the fore. Jason was up front with them, gesticulating, his black armour all ashine with blood, half his helm-crest hacked away. The Kufr left wing was a mob of retreating figures running downhill in their thousands, cavalry mixed in with infantry, officers beating their men with the flat of their swords. The ground they left behind them was littered with cast away shields and weaponry, and straggling wounded by the hundred were dragging themselves at their rear, limping on spear-shafts or crawling on hands and knees, crying out to their fellows not to leave them behind. A few centons of Macht skirmishers went chasing after them, hurling javelins into their spines or finishing off the wounded where they crawled and screamed on the ground. A centurion called them back, cursing them for ill-disciplined fools, and they came trotting up the slope again shame-faced and with arms bloody to the elbows. A few had severed heads hanging from their belts. Gasca wondered where Rictus was, and if he had been anywhere near the meat of the fighting. He would have a story to tell him tonight, by Antimone’s Veil.
A trembling took him, and he had to clench his teeth tight against the sob which ballooned in his chest. A whimper made it out his mouth, and another. He disguised it with a fit of coughing, but then felt a thump on the back of his cuirass. Old Demotes, his white beard dyed rust-red as it trailed out the bottom of his helm. “It’s all right, lad. It’s the Goddess. She must have her say. Let her out, and you’ll be better off.”
“Back in line—back in line you fuckers!” someone was shouting. It was Orsos, running up and down the relaxed ranks with his helm off and his spear resting on his shoulder. His shaven head gleamed white with sweat in the sunlight and there was spittle flying from his mouth. “Jason! Jason—we’ve cavalry coming up on our right and rear, maybe ten morai of them. Wheel your men about to the right. We’re taking the rest into the Kufr centre. Do you hear me, Jason?”