Gasca reached for his knife. Once, his father’s best hound had been gored by a stag, its entrails spread far and wide. He had done then what he would do now, not out of anger or vindictiveness, but out of pity. He set the knife at the Kufr girl’s throat, thinking how much a pity it was, for she did not look so inhuman at all. He sighed heavily. The knife was blunt.
“Stop there!” This was Jason of Ferai, doffing his helm and striding forward. He set down his shield. “Lower the blade, son. Lift up her face again.”
Dumbly, Gasca did as he was told, cursing the fact that he had stopped at all. The mora had retaken the camp and lost all order in its search of the remaining tents and wagons. Water, they were after, more than anything, but there was none to be found. The centurions had set them to loading up the wagons with the centoi instead, and as there were no draught animals left alive in the camp it would seem they were to draw these across the river with the yokes on their own necks. Had it not been for the semi-sacred regard the mercenaries held the great cooking cauldrons in, there might have been trouble, a last straw to break the back of their discipline; but for the most part, it had held. The camp was a gutted wreck and there was nothing else in it to ease their passage, but even the most bloody-minded of the Macht would be glad to have those damn pots back.
And this girl... Gasca looked at Jason curiously.
“I believe I know this one,” Jason said. He knelt before the girl and moved her face this way and that, as though studying a sculpture. “Phobos, what have they done?” he whispered, taking in her abused form. Anger lit his eyes. He unstrapped his cloak from the back-belt and threw it down. “Who is it—Gasca? Cut her free, wrap her in that, and bring her with us. Keep her alive, Gasca.”
Gasca set his jaw. “General—”
“Don’t fucking argue with me, strawhead. And don’t try fucking her, either.” At the expression on Gasca’s face he laughed, and thumped the wing of the younger man’s cuirass. “All right then. Just humour me—bring her along. She may be useful. Where’s your friend Rictus?”
Gasca was sawing methodically at the ropes binding the Kufr to the wheel-rim. “Haven’t seen him since he stuck on that black armour. He could be dead, for all I know.”
“That one? Never. He’ll see old bones. You know why? Because he doesn’t care if he will or not. Look after her, Gasca!” Jason rose, collected his shield with an audible groan, and then was off shouting at a group of spearmen who had dropped their weapons to rifle through some sacks.
Rictus stood at the Bekai Bridge with his shield leaning against his knees and his forehead leaning against his spear-shaft. He thought that if the spear slipped, there would be nothing in the world that would keep him on his feet. He would topple down the steep bank, through the mizzling clouds of mosquitoes, and into the brown water. He would drink that water, no matter if every Kufr ever born had pissed in it, and he would die bloated and happy.
His head jerked up, and a spike of pain transfixed his skull as the helm came with it. Another man’s helm, not set to the bones of his own face. The pain woke him from the half-doze. He stamped his bare feet and looked down on the endless column of men crossing the bridge before him and half a pasang away, the same on the other bridge. They were crossing the river again, back the way they had come only some—what—three days ago? It seemed like a month.
Jason found him there, nodding in and out of a kind of sleep.
“Bastards took my scroll, all my gear,” he said. “You’re still this side of the Veil I see.”
“Still this side,” Rictus said thickly, his tongue rasping against his teeth like meat rolled in sand.
“We take the men into Kaik, and we get whatever we can out of the city. But we can’t stay there long. The Empire did not disappear in the night. Rictus, I will need you for light work again.”
Rictus stared at him, bloodshot eyes crusted within the T-slot of the helm. “Why?”
“We will need light troops, more than ever now, and you’re half-good at leading them.”
Rictus said nothing. Talking was too painful. All he could think of was water.
“Join your mora—get into the city. I’ll stand over the rearguard.”
But Rictus did not move. “What do we do now, Jason?” he asked. “Do we look for another employer, set up shop in some city?”
“We’ll talk later,” Jason said. His hazel-green eyes caught the light as he looked back eastwards to the dark heights of the Kunaksa. How many bodies left there? In a few days the place would be fetid. Then he looked west, to the unending plains and farmlands of Pleninash. They seemed to go on for ever, flat and lush, with man-made tells pimpling up out of the heat-haze, each one a city. This teeming world, this alien place, and here he and these half-dead men were lost in it.