The executioner stepped forward, a massive hufsan from the Magron, bearing a scimitar as long as a man’s leg. He stood waiting.
Dyarnes spoke up again. He had a fine, ringing voice when he cared to exercise it, and he looked as tall and indomitable as some bronze-clad god in the shining sunlight.
‘The traitor Darios, having betrayed our army at the River Haneikos, surrendered the city of Ashdod, and then deserted his own troops, is likewise charged with entering into communications with the enemy. His fate is death, by decree of the Great King. Your eyes shall witness it, so that you may know what it is to betray your lord.’
‘I have something to say,’ Darios spoke up.
Dyarnes looked quickly at the Great King. Upon the arm of the throne one hand moved slightly, a sideways flick of negation.
‘The prisoner will not speak,’ Dyarnes said, and his voice was thick and raw. ‘Executioner.’
The scimitar caught a flash of fire from the sun as it arced through the air, and Darios’s head left his body in a clean-shorn instant. Kouros watched with close fascination, and was certain the eyes blinked in surprise before the head thumped to the timber of the dais.
The assembled soldiers roared their approval. The execution of their own rendered them dumb, but to see a high caste Kefre lose his head was as good an afternoon’s entertainment as many had known in all their lives. They cheered even as the Great King rose from his throne.
Ashurnan stepped forward, studied the medals and ribands of blood that lay scattered across the dais as though he could make an augury of them, and then turned without a word, the cheers still shaking the air, and disappeared into the hangings behind the throne, and the towering tent beyond.
The executioner raised the head into the air by its topknot, and now the eyes were dead as glass.
‘Behold!’ he cried in common Asurian, ‘The fate of all traitors!’
‘Set it on a spike at the gates to the royal enclosure,’ Kouros said, studying Darios’s features, as fascinated as a boy pinning butterflies.
‘My prince — ’ Dyarnes and Darios had been friends. For a second the commander of the Honai had raw grief carved across his face.
‘Those are the Great King’s orders.’ Kouros set a hand on the other man’s arm for a second, judging the gesture necessary.
‘Yes, my prince.’ Dyarnes retrieved the grisly relic from the executioner, and then walked off the dais with his friend’s head cradled in his arm, the blood from the severed veins and windpipe still streaming fast, darkening the bright shine of his armour.
One segment of the Great King’s tent had been lifted up to catch the breeze and let in the bright summer sun, Bel’s blessing on the world. Ashurnan stood at this gap now in a simple robe of blue silk, the diadem a black band across his forehead. Above him, the immense structure creaked and swayed in the wind like a ship at sea. It was so large that living trees were accommodated within, with lanterns hung all along their branches, and in one corner there was a stream of clean water whose banks had been walled off for two pasangs beyond the tent so no other mortal might pollute it.
This was campaigning in style. Now that they were down from the mountains, and the worst of the march was over, with intelligence pouring in from the west and south; now the Great King could unbuckle a little, and enjoy the comforts his two hundred personal waggons had hauled all the way from Ashur.
Now the details and suspicions which had dogged him for all those weary pasangs could be dealt with.
Kouros doffed his helmet with a barely suppressed sigh of relief and joined his father.
The royal enclosure was partitioned off from the rest of the immense camp by a stockade and ditch, which the Honai patrolled in their hundreds. Within that wooden wall were the stables, the harem, the cook-tents, and herds of the Great King’s own personal animals, to be slaughtered at his word alone. The round hill with its palisade was the ziggurat, replicated here in the Middle Empire on a smaller scale, but with a hierarchy as rigid as in its stone-built original.
Beyond the stockade, the camp of the army rolled out like a sea to every horizon. At night when the campfires were lit, they rivalled the stars above, and the glow of them could be seen in the sky from fifteen pasangs away. The men camped according to geography, so that within the immense encampment were many different districts, and distinct rivalries.
The Arakosans kept themselves apart, and as cavalry they took the best ground with easy access to pasture beyond. The hufsan of Asuria huddled together in narrow lines as though replicating the slums and alleyways of Ashur. And the small farmers and craftsmen of Pleninash slept in sprawling formless crowds, for they had only just come in, many of them, and they were still being regimented by their officers. For them, the coming of the Great King had been a cataclysm to overturn their world.
It could almost have been an entire people on the move, a dispossessed city staining the face of Kuf with its masses, and sucking dry the fertile farmland for many pasangs around. Despite the hundreds of provision-bearing waggons that lumbered into the great camp every day, the army could not remain in one place for long, or there would be no more food to gather in. Even Pleninash had its limits, when encumbered with a horde such as this.
‘You know why I had Darios killed,’ Ashurnan said to his eldest son, not turning around.
‘He failed. He let the Macht over the Korash and — ’
‘He was your mother’s creature. He had been for a long time.’ Ashurnan turned now, and the light behind him made of his face a black shadow with azure coins for eyes.
‘This is not the palace now, Kouros. We do not intrigue for trifles here. This is war. Soon you will be on a battlefield facing the Macht for the first time. There is no more time for conspiracy.’
He glided forward. Kouros had to steel himself not to retreat before his father, so strange and fey did the older Kefre seem in that moment. It was as though he were half in another world.
‘You will be King, Kouros. Be satisfied with that. It may happen tomorrow, or it may happen in ten years, but you will wear the diadem. There is no-one left to challenge you. Why can you not be content with that?’
Ashurnan’s tone was genuine, but there was anger simmering in it too. Kouros fought down a stammer as he replied.
‘I serve you, father. I know now I am not yet ready to sit on the throne — these last weeks have taught me that much. It is just that Rakhsar — ’
‘Rakhsar is dead, or lost. He is gone, and Roshana with him.’ There was no mistaking the grief in the old man’s voice now. He walked away. A gold-leafed table sat upon a brilliantly woven carpet, and around it the green grass of Pleninash spread out, shorn as fine as the carpet-weaver’s work, yellowing now without the sun. Ashurnan poured himself wine, raising a hand to halt the advance of the old chamberlain, Malakeh, who stood with a pair of household slaves not ten paces away, his staff of office balanced on a stone so he could still make it ring when he chose.
‘Drink.’
Kouros did so, watching his father over the rim of the cup, sweating.
‘Now I will drink,’ Ashurnan said, with an odd smile. Kouros passed him the cup. The Great King sipped the wine, but did not seem to enjoy it.
‘Your mother’s reach is long, Kouros. I do not think you know just how long. Darios was once my friend, and she turned him.’
‘He was still your friend — ’ Kouros said earnestly.
‘One cannot serve two masters. You might want to tell Dyarnes that, also.’
The sweat turned cold on Kouros’s back. ‘Dyarnes?’
‘He and Darios rose through the ranks of the Honai together. Their wives are cousins. But you will have known that.’
He had not. It was a little something Orsana had chosen not to share with him.
‘A king must be his own man, Kouros. And if there is something my forty years on the throne have taught me, it is that he needs his friends also. I do not have a talent that way — and nor do you. Your grandfather did. He never feared an assassin in his life, and he did not scruple to drink wine no-one else had yet tasted. Because he had friends he trusted about him.’
