The Ten Thousand(83)

“We beat those bastards. We beat them fair and square,” Rictus said, and it was as if the younger man had caught the current of his thought.

“If we beat them once, we can do it again.”





Eighteen




THE LAND

OF THE RIVERS



Tiryn opened her eyes on a brown, heavily-beamed ceiling. A gecko was sidling across it, head turning this way and that every time it paused. A faint roaring came on the air, the sound of many voices, but at a distance. It was quiet. She lay in a decent bed, with sheets and a coverlet of linen, and there was light flooding in a west-facing balcony, drapes drawn back and shutters wide open. Dust danced in the sunlight, motes of it hanging in the air. The heat of the lowlands filled the room and she was thirsty, above all else, thirsty.

She made as if to rise, but the racking pains in her shoulders and arms caused her to lie back again. At once, there was movement on the far side of the room. A Juthan girl came forward, yellow eyes gleaming as she passed from shadow into light. She dipped a gourd into a clay pot hanging in one corner, and cradling Tiryn’s head said, “Drink. Slowly now.” She spoke Asurian with the guttural accent of the Juthan, but her hands were gentle. Tiryn sipped the water slowly, relishing every drop, her mouth suddenly a thing of movement again.

“Where am I?”

“You are in Kaik, the city,” a strange voice said with an even stranger accent, the words clumsy and ill-used. A man approached the bed, a Macht. He was dark of skin, hazel-eyed, and he wore the felt tunic of a hufsan peasant.

“Do not be afraid. I saw you once, before.”

Before. Before what? She dimly remembered being carried or dragged in a huge moving crowd. Before that, the wagon-wheel; before that, the knowledge of defeat.

“You are safe here,” he said. A flicker of something passed on his face. “You are safe,” he repeated.

“Arkamenes is dead,” she said. She switched into the Macht tongue she had learned for months on the long road east. “What has happened? What is to happen?”

At that, the Macht smiled. He had a good face, though it was worn to the bone by privation and worry. “I don’t know,” he said in his own tongue.

“Why am I here?”

“Would you rather we had left you where we found you?”

She felt heat in her skin, a blush mounting up her face. She was naked under the bedclothes, her body clean but bruised and aching. Dressings had been tied in neat, tiny knots about her wrists where the ropes had galled her. All of that came back to her now, that long night, that black obscenity. She shut her eyes and tears welled under them. “Better you had left me,” she said.

He came closer. She felt his hand in her hair, a light touch, with nothing but pity behind it. She turned her head away.

“This Juthan will look after you,” he said, his voice gruff now, the anger back in it. But it was not directed at her. “You need rest. Do not worry about things. Do not think or remember. Drink the water, eat, and enjoy the sunlight.”

She looked at him again, baffled by the compassion in his voice. He smiled at her, eyes dancing. In better times he would have humour about him, a lightness. Now there was a shadow.

“Who are you?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.

“Jason of Ferai, once centurion of the Dogsheads centon, now a general of the Macht that remain. You are...”

“Tiryn.”

“That was it. You told me once.”

“A long time ago.”

“Not so long. It seems long, sometimes. Last week seems a long time ago to me.” He smiled again. There were indents of purple flesh below his eyes. He looked like a man who had forgotten how to sleep.

“Why did you help me? I am Kufr; you are Macht.”

Again the anger. The tiredness sparked it out of him, she felt that quickness, that flare. She liked it.

“I would not have left a dog like that.” Her heart fell. He rubbed one big-knuckled hand over his face, and chuckled, rueful. “Or a beautiful Kufr.” Then he sat on the side of her bed. The sudden closeness of him startled her, that smell they had, the Macht. It was not like that of a Kufr; it was earthier, both repulsive and oddly interesting. Not quite that of an animal, for all she had thought in the past.

“I need you to teach me your language,” Jason said simply. “We are lost in your world now and must learn your tongue in order to make our way through it.”

Some strange little hope within her withered. But she nodded slightly. She wanted him to move away; he was too close. The memories were fighting round the corner. Soon they would be back in full flood.

He sensed it somehow and rose at once, backing away a step. “You’re alive,” he said quietly. “Many thousands died on those hills, but you are still here. Thank Antimone for that, at least.”