Jason beat the black flies from his face, grimacing. His grey eyes were cold as a spearhead, but he closed them as he spoke, like a man tired to the marrow. “Kill the severely wounded. Bring along the rest. We’ll cover your retreat. Bring along what spares you can scavenge off the dead; arm heavy, if you can. It’s spearmen we need now, not stick-throwers.”
Rictus shared a glance with Gasca. “Kill them?”
Jason’s eyes broke open, shot with blood. “You heard me. We can’t take them all with us, and the Kufr will torture them. It’s a kindness. Besides, we’ll likely be joining them soon enough.”
Rictus blinked rapidly. “Who am I to be giving such orders?”
“You’re in fucking command is what you are. Agrimos and everyone else above you are dead or maimed. You take these men now, Rictus, and you get a grip of them. Do you hear me? Now start them at it.” Jason strode away. There had been a quake in his voice. Rictus watched him go, aghast.
“Promotion. Ain’t it grand?” Gasca snorted, and drank from the skin again. He wiped his mouth, and with a half-smile said, “Tonight you’ll be a centurion in hell.”
The Great King sat his horse and looked down on the thing that had been his brother. Arkamenes had been a handsome creature in life; his face now seemed nothing more than a mound of meat, for the horses had trampled it. Below what had been the chin a blackberry-dark gash gaped wide, a black mouth smiling at the sky, running with flies.
“Cover him up,” Ashurnan said unsteadily. “Bear him from the field. His bones will be buried in Ashur, where they belong.”
The Honai bent and laid a cloak over the battered remnants of Ashurnan’s brother. The Great King wheeled his horse away and pulled his komis up over his face.
“Midarnes!”
“Yes lord?” The commander of the Household troops drew level, bowing in the saddle.
“Leave the pursuit to the cavalry. Tell Berosh to take our Juthan to the river also, and make sure he takes and holds the bridges. The Household and the Honai are to remain opposite the Macht lines, but are not to engage. Is that understood, Midarnes?”
“Yes, lord.”
Ashurnan looked up at the sky. It was past noon. The morning had ended at last and the day was on the slide, but there was enough daylight left for the things which had to be done.
“I need scribes and couriers, the best we have. We will send word to Istar, to Jutha, to Artaka. The pretender is dead. These provinces must come back to me without delay. If they do, there will be no repercussions. If they do not, I will bring fire and the spear among them.”
“Honuran died on the field,” Midarnes said, “But Gushrun of Tanis has not yet been caught.”
“Find him. Bring him to me. He will be made an example of. I will impale his body upon the very gates of Tanis.”
Midarnes bowed again.
“Amasis also, the chamberlain—he will be back with the baggage. We must take their baggage train, Midarnes, without it these Macht will be without food, without water, without so much as a spare spearhead.”
“It shall be done, my lord. I shall send word to the cavalry. It is rumoured that Arkamenes travelled with a fortune in bullion also, half the treasury of Tanis to pay these mercenaries with.”
“Secure it. The day is far from over.”
The Great King rode sedately up the hillside that he had so recently charged down, surrounded by hundreds of heavy cavalry, Kefren who had pledged their loyalty to him in blood. He warmed to them now as he had not before, for they had followed him down into the great gamble, not knowing it would pay off. He felt slightly dazed, dazed by the victory, by the aftermath of the violence still singing in his ears and shaking in his muscles. Today, he thought, I proved myself my father’s son. I have earned my throne at last. And he gave thanks to God, there in the midst of that vast slaughterhouse, for the way the morning had passed.
“It’s twelve pasangs to the river, and five back to the baggage train,” Phiron said.
“The baggage is gone,” Pasion growled. “We need not trouble ourselves over it. All we have left in this world are the spears in our hands and the bronze on our backs.”
“Then we are still rich men,” old Castus said. “I’d as soon die with wargear on my back as staring up the arse of an ox. What’s the plan, Phiron? Do we stand here and let them come to us, or do we charge down into them and try and make a story out of it?”
Thirteen men, all in the Curse of God except for the youngest among them. Rictus had unstrapped a battered bronze cuirass from a corpse and now wore full panoply for the first time since the day he had fought in the ranks of the Iscan phalanx. Jason had insisted he be admitted to the Kerusia, as his skirmishers had rearmed themselves similarly, and now constituted a Macht mora. Rictus had not become a centurion; he had become a notional general of several hundred men. For all that, he was entirely ignored by the true veterans of the Ten Thousand who despised him for a strawhead upstart, Iscan or no. He held his tongue as the older men debated.