The Ten Thousand(66)
“We should move back,” Vorus said to Ashurnan. He had taken off his helm the better to dictate to the battle-scribes and now his gaze swivelled back and forth between the advancing Macht on their left and the Juthan legion to their front. The Kefren left wing had been beaten up so badly it was beyond rallying; the plain behind the hill was black with fugitives for two pasangs, thousands of troops throwing down their weapons and their honour in a bid to escape the Macht killing-machine. What had once been their centre was now a flank. Forty thousand men, blown away like dead leaves in autumn. He would not have believed it had he not witnessed it with his own eyes.
“We should perhaps have hired some of these fellows ourselves,” Ashurnan said. There was a smile on his face, and though fear had paled the gold of his shining skin, the humour in his tone was genuine. “No matter. We shall just have to do the thing with what remains.”
“My lord, you must pull further back from the front line,” Vorus grated.
“Look down there, General, to the right of their Juthan troops. You see the horsetail standard? That is my brother. I have a hankering to meet with him. It has been a long time since we looked into one another’s eyes.”
The Macht had started up the Paean again, and their line was lengthening as mora after mora came up to right and left. Their discipline was incredible. Just over a pasang separated the spearheads of their front rank from the Great King’s chariot.
“Bring me my horse,” Ashurnan said. He was not watching the Macht, but the horsetail standard that bobbed above the press of advancing men on the slopes below. “Vorus, I want you to hold on here. Retreat if you must, but slow your countrymen down. Buy me time.”
For what? Vorus wondered, thoroughly alarmed now. The Great King had climbed out of his chariot and was mounting a tall Niseian. An aide brought him his cedar-wood lance. Prancing with impatience around them were the great horses of his bodyguard cavalry, and in their midst the standard-bearer with the winged symbol of the Asurian kings upon a twelve-foot staff.
“I go to greet my brother,” Ashurnan said; he smiled again as he said it. His father’s smile. The protests died in Vorus’s throat.
He bowed. “I will hold them, my lord, or I will die trying.”
Ashurnan leaned in the saddle and grasped Vorus’s shoulder. “Do not die. I have too few friends already.” Then he straightened, raised his hand, and around him the great mass of cavalry, a thousand at least, began to move, the Kefren nobility following their king down the hillside and into the maw of war.
The battle lines had veered round. Both the rebel right and the Great King’s right were advancing, as though following agreed-upon steps in some cataclysmic dance. Arkamenes’s centre was now almost upon the Royal line at the crest of the hill. The Great King led his thousand-strong bodyguard of heavy cavalry straight into this, the roar of that meeting coming even to the Macht spearmen two pasangs to the south. The rebel advance halted, recoiling from the impact of these, the finest cavalry of the Empire, whilst another three pasangs to the north the Asurian cavalry had also made contact with the rebel left. The entire field was now a milling scrum of troops, and where the fighting was heaviest the earth beneath their feet was tormented into a calf-deep morass of sucking mud in which the wounded were trampled and suffocated beneath the feet of those still fighting.
Young Morian had fallen; his neck hacked half-through by a shrieking Kufr horseman. Beside his corpse, Rictus had taken the second blow on his pelta, and the keen blade had sheared off half of it even as he raised his own spear and took his attacker in the armpit, above the leather corselet. The Kufr tilted and slid down the side of his horse, the animal maddened with rage and fear. It reared up and Rictus stabbed it in the belly, a twisted rope of intestine springing out of the hole the aichme made. Then the poor beast lurched away, hooves caught up in its own entrails as it strove to run from the agony, trailing its dying master by one hopelessly entangled stirrup. It careered into two other riders, their mounts already hock deep in the bloody mud. Rictus discarded his shattered shield, staggered forward, and jabbed his spear at these two in turn. He caught one in the thigh, the other about the groin. They shrieked with a sound not remotely human, their eyes bright as some gems dug out of the mountains. Rictus let the flesh-stuck spear go as their horses staggered and tilted and fought the mud. On his hands and knees he crawled over carcasses and through the bloody mire to regain what was left of his centon. Whistler left the ragged ranks to pull him back in, over a rampart of horseflesh. There were spears and shields aplenty about it in the hands of the dead and so Rictus re-armed himself for the third time that morning, his palms sticking to the spear-shaft, some other man’s blood the glue. He looked at Whistler; the older man’s bald head was a cap of blood, his scalp hanging down one ear. But he managed a gap-toothed grin all the same. There was no need to speak.