Sixteen
THE MEN ON THE HILL
Many of the wounded died during the day, and the healthy were reduced to dipping their helmets in some of the less noisome puddles which dotted the hillside, drinking down mud and blood as much as any water. They threw it up again directly, until Phiron forbade the practice.
The Great King’s army continued to follow its own evolutions, with regiments marching here and there in the shimmering heat, and pack-trains of laden mules bringing up supplies from the baggage-camp to the east. From the ridge-crest it was possible to see through the heat-haze to the bright glimmer of the Bekai River twelve pasangs away, but beyond a certain shadow upon the earth about the mound of Kaik, it was impossible to tell what had transpired there. Arkamenes’s army seemed to have vanished from the face of the world, leaving behind only corpses, a windfall of carrion scattered across the earth for as far as a keen eye could see. Juthan soldiers were methodically clearing the plain, stripping and looting the dead, piling up the bodies into pyres. The work went on all day, until the light began to fail and the shattering heat at last eased a little. On the ridge-line of Kunaksa, the Macht stood in stubborn ranks, shields at their knees, helms at their belts, and their throats as parched as burnt bread. They had piled up all of their own dead that they could come at, though there was nothing to burn them with. Every spearhead and belt-buckle that could be gleaned from the battlefield had been gathered. The corpses now lay stacked, almost three thousand of them in several long mounds. Ravens and vultures were already clustered on these knolls of rotting flesh, heedless of any outraged shout or thrown stone. And the soup thickened about the hills as evening drew on and the blood congealed in gobbets about the very stones half-buried in the ground.
The Great King’s standard was set up on the plain some pasang and a half from the Macht lines, and about it hundreds of Kufr had erected a tented compound, labouring through the heat of the day until it seemed that a veritable village had sprung up in the space of a few hours. As the light failed, a trio of Kefren horsemen rode up to the Macht lines under a green branch and gestured with it to the tents below. Phiron shouted assent at them in their own language and they galloped off again, komis held close to their noses.
“Well, there’s the invite,” he said. “Shall we take him up on it?”
“It’s that, or charge his lines,” Castus retorted. His seamed old face appeared to have withered in the space of a day, like an apple in an oven, but his eyes Were as fierce and clear as always. “Can we trust these bastards?”
“We trust them or fight them,” Phiron said simply.
“Let’s move, before it gets too dark to see where the fuck we’re going,” Orsos rasped.
Thirteen of them walked out from the Macht phalanx. They had left off their armour and weaponry and walked in the cool lightness of their sweat-sodden chitons, with short swords in their belts. Many of them bore crudely bound wounds. All were plastered with dried blood and shreds of flesh and bone, and their legs were caked black with filth to the knees. They looked more like defeated slaves than the generals of an army. There was an uneasy murmur in the ranks as they picked their way down the broken hillside to the tents below. The Kufr army had drawn back somewhat for the night and had lit campfires, breaking their lines and laying out pickets every hundred paces. As the light faded and the stars began springing out above the black heights of the Magron, these campfires described an arc some eight pasangs long. In the centre of the arc the Macht army stood by its arms in fireless darkness, the wounded shivering as the heat of the day evaporated and a coolness poured down out of the mountains in the east.
There were horses hobbled by the meeting-tent, but apart from that the plain seemed wholly deserted now, the Juthan having given up their corpse-gathering for the night. The thirteen Macht officers paused at the lightless bulk of the tents until a flap was lifted to let light spill out from within. They entered in single file, Rictus at the rear, his hand on the hilt of his cheap sword.
“Up on the hill, the wounded are dying for want of a cup of water, and this twisted bastard has set us out a feast?” Teremon whispered, venom in the underscored rasp of his voice.
“Behave yourself tonight and the wounded may drink before morning,” Phiron told him. “This is the Great King we deal with now, not some usurper with ideas above his station. Brothers, we must be humble—do you hear me now? We stand in a foreign land, not as some conquering army, but as interlopers.”
“Interlopers, my arse,” Orsos said.
The tent within which they stood was as tall as a great tree, and had been floored with planks of cedar. It was hung with lamps up and down, all burning sweet oil. On a low table to one side a vast array of breads, meats, fruit, preserves, and wines had been set out, as well as a great earthenware bowl full of clear water, as big as a centos. The generals eyed it with some anger, licking their cracked lips, but not one made a move towards it. They stood in two rows behind Phiron.