The Juthan turned his head and looked at the one-eyed veteran. ‘No, we are not Macht. But the Great King has been trying to destroy us for thirty years, and has failed. We must be doing something right.’
His Machtic was heavily accented, but almost perfect. Rictus found himself wondering where he had learned it.
Teresian spoke up. ‘Corvus, my king, I am with you in this thing, to the death. But if we are to do it, then let us do it alone. War without allies is a simpler thing. And if these Juthan once betrayed the Great King, who is to say that they will not one day do the same to us?’
Marcan’s yellow eyes flashed. He made as if to get up, but Corvus pressed on the Juthan’s shoulder. He remained in his seat.
‘The Juthan fight for their freedom,’ he said plainly. ‘And that is something the Great King has never been willing to give them — not after three decades of rebellion. What would they have to gain?’
‘Times change,’ Fornyx spoke up. ‘No offence to our grey-skinned friend here, but what if Ashurnan changes his mind and decides to recognise his people’s kingdom in return for their fucking us up the ass?’
‘I wouldn’t fuck you if yours was the last ass in the world,’ the Juthan growled, and the table lit up with laughter. Druze thumped the wood.
‘Well said! But Fornyx makes a good point. Do we have any guarantees beyond the word of this fellow’s king, whom none of us have ever met?’
‘We have conditions,’ the Juthan said. He looked up at Corvus and the King nodded.
‘We will fight only in the Land of the Rivers. We cannot leave our own borders undefended by following you clear over the Magron. And we claim the city of Tal Byrna, which currently belongs to the Tanis satrapy. It guards the approaches over the Abekai River, the underbelly of Jutha. With it in our possession, our country would be made secure.’
‘We would do well to remember,’ Corvus said, ‘that while the Great King has not been able to subdue the Juthan, neither have they been able to win the war for their freedom. Our coming into the empire is their best bet to finish it, and obtain their independence once and for all.’
‘And we also have something to take on trust,’ the Juthan added. ‘Who is to say that, the army of the Great King defeated, you will not take it into your heads to add Jutha to your possessions? It was once one of the richest and most productive satrapies of the empire.
‘Your king has given his word that will not happen, and I believe him. You must believe our king’s word also. The Juthan will fight by your side in the Middle Empire until the Great King is driven out. After that, you are on your own again.’
‘Plainly spoken,’ Rictus said, and all eyes turned to him. ‘Let me speak plainly also. I admire your people. I saw them at Kunaksa — they have no lack of courage. But if you do betray the Macht, you must know what kind of enemy we are, and what kind of man leads us. It would not end well for your people. This is not a threat. I state it as mere fact.’
For the first time the Juthan dropped his eyes. ‘I hear you,’ he said. ‘Your name is known in my country.’
Corvus and Rictus looked at one another across the table, and Rictus nodded minutely. Corvus patted Marcan’s huge shoulder.
‘I believe it is settled. You may go back to Proxanon, my friend, and tell him we welcome his help, and we embrace his people as brothers in our great enterprise.’
Marcan smiled strangely, shaking his head. ‘I will send back the rest of my embassy, but I stay here with you.’ He looked at Demetrius, whose one eye was still glowering.
‘The King thought there might be a problem of trust between us at first, so I am to remain here to assuage your suspicions, as a hostage.’
‘What’s a single Juthan to him, more or less?’ Demetrius snapped.
‘This Juthan means more to him than most. King Proxanon is my father.’
EIGHT
Beneath their feet, the land changed, becoming stonier, a mangy pelt of grass giving way to upland heather, stretches of black mere, oozing peat bogs, and stone. More and more grey rock strewn across the earth and pushing up through it, the bones of the world uncovered, tawny with lichen, warm to the touch under the sun of early summer.
They left three morai, almost three thousand men, in and around the ruins of Ashdod, under orders to mop up any enemy remnants that might still be hiding out in the surrounding villages; and Parmenios dropped off part of his immense waggon train and a mora of his engineers to begin the work of reconstruction. Ashdod was to be rebuilt as the capital of the new Macht province, and this time her walls were to be reared up not in mud brick, but quarried stone. Five thousand of the newly enslaved citizens of the city would provide the labour for the undertaking. The rest of the army was moving on.
Into the mountains.
The Korash were not the Harukush, and the pass that ran through them from Ashdod to Irunshahr was wide enough for an army to take in normal marching order. Perhaps forty thousand fighting men followed the meandering gash through the peaks, their way cleared by the tireless Parmenios and his work gangs, both slave and free. Druze’s Igranians went ahead to reconnoitre the route, and on the flanks of the marching columns Ardashir’s Companion Cavalry picked their way, the Kefren riders caching their lances with the baggage train, and stringing their great recurved compound bows instead.
It was summer, but there was still snow in blinding fields across the pass, some of it knee deep. And as the year warmed, so the ice higher up the slopes melted, and the men below had to keep their eyes open for sudden avalanches.
But they were Macht, most of whom had been weaned in the shadow of the Harukush. They were not starving, pursued and hauling waggonloads of wounded, as the Ten Thousand had been, fleeing in the opposite direction thirty years before.
Rictus knew this. And he kept to himself the spasm of helpless memory which had struck him as they entered the mountains.
They had been less than a week on the High Road, and were making good time, when it began to snow. It was no winter blizzard, but a fine-skeined drizzle of grainy snowflakes that dotted the men and melted, and greyed out the way ahead.
The world was blank, nothing more than the stones underfoot and the steam of the straining men in front. Voices were lowered, as if some primitive instinct had kicked in, and even the progress of the tens of thousands of men and beasts who trailed through the mountain pass for pasangs became subdued as the snow fell on the sounds and muffled everything.
But Rictus, wiping his eyes as they watered, thought he saw something out in the snow.
He rode a horse from time to time now, an animal as quiet and biddable as the livery-master could find, and he kicked it into an unwilling trot, doubling the column, looking for Corvus.
The King was never in the same place for long. Though his baggage and his personal bodyguards might keep rigidly to their allotted positions on the march, he travelled up and down throughout the day, on foot and on his big black Niseian, dismounting to talk to the men and their officers, galloping upslope to check on Ardashir and his flanking cavalry, or forging ahead to meet with Druze.
A conscript with blistered feet, finding the going hard, might look up to find the King marching beside him, asking after his health, wanting to know his name and where he hailed from. A few minutes’ talk, and then the King would be off again, but the footsore soldier would bask in the glory of his moment, envied by his comrades, forgetting his weariness, and willing now to charge mountains for the strange young man who led them.
Thus Rictus found Corvus. He was marching along with a file of Demetrius’s newest recruits, the ones who had been sent east to fill in the gaps after the Haneikos battle. These youngsters had a thin time of it, for they
