slung on the back of a horse like a sack.
On the back of another horse, a Kefren girl with a close-cropped head watched, and let the tears cut white lines down the filth caking her beautiful face.
FIFTEEN
Kurun opened his eyes.
To utter strangeness. He did not know where he was. He was lying on his back, and above his head there was a darkness that moved and creaked and bulged. It was like being in a womb with the wind beating upon it.
Lamp-light. The steadying glow of a wick flickering in a clay saucer. That, at least, was familiar.
And pain. It was not urgent, but a mere background singing. He seemed to remember that it had once been much worse.
He turned his head, and saw Roshana at his side. She was in a willow-woven chair, and her head was resting on his bed, by his arm. He lifted his hand and touched her hair, a velvet spikiness which was pure pleasure to run his fingers through.
I am alive.
He could not add up any rational series of events to bring himself to this moment, but in this moment, he did not care. It was enough that he and Roshana were alive and he could brush her hair with his fingers. It was more than enough.
She opened her eyes. No other part of her moved, and she suffered him to stroke her hair as they stared at one another.
I love you, he thought. He smiled.
She took his hand in her own and their fingers entwined, his brown and strong and calloused, hers slim and blue-veined and soft.
‘Rakhsar is dead,’ she said softly. And the moment soured. The memories began to assemble in their ghastly ranks, and it came back to him.
‘Ushau?’
‘Dead. We are all that is left, Kurun.’
Her eyes were bloodshot and he saw now that her temple was bruised, a purple stain that rose into her hairline. Instinctively, he tried to rise, but the shocking burst of pain in his side left him open-mouthed. Sweat broke out on his body. He clenched her hand in his until he thought he could feel the slender bones creak.
There was a flare of light that dazzled Kurun. When he opened his eyes again, they were no longer alone. Two others stood over the bed. One was Kefren — or at least he seemed Kefren. There was a strange cast to his features that could not be easily slotted into any of the types which Kurun had known since a child in the ziggurat. He was slight and lean, but there was something in his eyes that belied his size; an authority remarkable in one so young.
The other was huge, a hulking, broad-shouldered fellow with grey hair and a scarred face. He was old, but looked as though he could fell a horse with one blow. He was not Kefren, nor hufsan.
‘Macht,’ Kurun whispered. ‘You are Macht.’ His blood ran cold and he flinched in the bed.
Roshana cupped his face. ‘Don’t be afraid, Kurun. They saved us. Their surgeon stitched your wound.’
‘Where is this place?’ Kurun demanded. He lapsed into low Asurian, such was his terror.
The smaller man replied in good Kefren, the language of the court. ‘You are in the encampment of the army of King Corvus of the Macht.’ He smiled, and the severe set of his bones seemed to soften. ‘You are my guests here. You have no reason to be afraid.’
The big Macht said something in a guttural language Kurun could not understand and the small Kefre cocked his head like a bird to listen, then looked down on Kurun once more. He shook his head.
‘The surgeon says you must keep to your bed for three more days, Kurun, and he has had his knife in so many folk that we must respect his knowledge. Roshana here will wait on you — she has insisted.’ The young Kefre smiled again, looking at Roshana as she crouched by the bed. He had good eyes. When he was younger he must have been beautiful, as pretty as a girl. But there was little of that left in the lean face now.
As he stared upon Roshana, the eyes were still those of a boy.
‘I will look in on you both again later,’ he said. ‘There are men outside the tent who will attend to everything you need — you have only to ask.’
‘Are they Kefren?’ Roshana asked him, looking up like a cornered deer.
‘Yes. They are Kefren of my Companions. You may trust them with your lives, as I have.’
He left the tent. The Macht followed him, but paused at the flap and looked them both over. He wore a red chiton and on his feet were heavy studded sandals pale with dust. He, too, let his eyes linger on Roshana, but not in the same way the other had. It was as though the sight of her face pained him. Then he was gone.
They were only one day and a night in the tent when a group of Macht threw back the flaps and began dismantling it around their ears. Roshana had created a komis out of an old blanket and she threw it across her face and shouted questions at them, which made them shrug and grin, the more brazen winking at her as she hovered protectively over Kurun’s bed. The leather panels of the structure were untied and rolled away with startling speed, and then the ash poles which supported them were lifted out of their post-holes and disappeared also.
Kurun levered himself upright in the bed, ignoring the pain, astonished by what the dismantling of the tent revealed.
They were surrounded by a sea of men.
As far as the eye could see, whole hillsides were covered with moving figures, horses, mules, carts and waggons. Everywhere, tawny-coloured tents similar to their own were coming down, like mushrooms collapsing in on themselves. And thousands upon thousands of Macht were coming and going, loading vehicles, saddling horses, forming up in regimented lines. It was mid-morning, and their activities began to raise the dust out of the ground so that the whole immense scene was fading out minute by minute before their eyes.
Then Kurun’s bed was raised high in the air by four brawny Macht — in full armour, save for their helms. A tall Kefre stood by barking instructions in their harsh tongue.
‘What are you doing? What’s happening?’ Roshana demanded, with a hint of the palace princess.
The Kefre pointed with one hand. ‘We are on the move, lady. You and the boy have been assigned a waggon. I suggest you get into it.’
‘But we were told — ’
‘The army is on the march, my girl, and we’ve no time to argue. Now go get in the waggon or I’ll have to snap you up and toss you in it myself.’ He smiled to soften his words.
‘I demand to see your officer. I demand to see the King!’
‘The King’s busy, lady. Don’t you know there’s a war on?’
The waggon was well-sprung, and drawn by four mules. Two Macht sat up front, one with a spear, one with a whip, and they chattered incessantly to one another, drank from a wineskin with the hair still on, and spat over the mules’ rumps. The dust thickened like a fog, and within that fog was a bedlam of noise. The trundle of iron-rimmed wheels, the braying of mules and neighing of horses, men shouting at one another, the crack of whips. And above all else, a growing rhythm, a cadenced thunder so vast it was felt in the flesh rather than heard by the ears.
Tens of thousands of marching feet, tramping over the earth of the Middle Empire by rank and file, in massed centons and morai.
The Macht army was on the move.
For the rest of the day, the waggon lurched along interminably. The mules were allowed to halt briefly to
