ancient watercourses, and the dust was choking, kicked up by men and animals to tower in the sky. This was empty country, a pocket of scrub savannah which was as ancient as the tells of the green river valleys. Too arid for crops, or even to support a herd of goats, these raised pockets of desert were known as gaugamesh in the Asurian tongue: a place blighted by the god Mot, where no man might grow things.
This is where we fight? Kouros wondered. He squeezed the waterskin that hung in the chariot, and thought of the tens of thousands all around him, and the dry country which they were traversing.
By tonight, if they find a river they will drink it dry.
There were Honai in a line up ahead, the occasional flash of sun-caught metal through the dust. The chariot came to a halt amid a cloud of cavalry and one by one the imperial couriers filed in behind it, young men of the lesser nobility whose fathers had paid a fortune so that their sons might gallop across battlefields carrying the Great King’s orders. Alongside them clustered a knot of scribes and other attendants, who were dressed as though they were still in the palace. Their finery was utterly incongruous in that sere landscape.
Ashurnan stood gripping the rail of his chariot and peering into the dust. A hundred paces in front of the wheels, the ten thousand spearmen of the Honai were forming up with a speed and precision that belied the chaos of the rest of the field. Eight ranks deep, their line stretched some pasang and a half, though both ends were invisible. But it was reassuring to see those tall warriors standing stolidly in front of them. This was to be the centre of the army, the very heart. Everyone else would take their dressing from the Great King’s chariot, and would link up with that formidable phalanx.
‘This will be a knife fight,’ the Great King said to Dyarnes, who was standing by the chariot with his helm in the crook of one arm. ‘It will be won or lost at close quarters. But we must use our archers at the start, once the dust settles somewhat. When the general advance is signalled they will be firing blind, and after that we must throw in our people at the enemy and overwhelm them. There will be no fancy manoeuvring today, not in this place. The dust hides everything. And double the couriers, Dyarnes. A lot of them will become lost today. I want two riders bearing each message.’
‘Yes, lord. At what point do you wish the advance sounded?’
‘As I said, wait until the dust settles. The men must be able to see the enemy in order to close with him. As soon as the Macht line is visible, I want you to start with the outer formations — we should outflank on both sides. But hold back the Arakosans, Dyarnes. They are to be kept for the killing blow.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
The sun broke through the dust now and again, providing vignettes of war; masses of ranked troops trudging west, shuffling into position. A forest of spears all catching the light in the same moment, like a flashing gleam of teeth. And all around, the sodden thunder of marching feet, an echo that trembled the very flesh of the earth.
Kouros drank water from the skin, his mouth dry and sour. Thanks to his injuries, he was not wearing armour, though the bronze helm on his head had already caught the heat of the sun and felt as though it were a hot vice bearing down on the bone of his skull. The Great King wore merely a black diadem, and bright blue silk robes that concealed a breastplate underneath. He bore a plain steel scimitar which could have belonged to any man on the field, and which had seen much use. Kouros abruptly found himself wondering if it were the same sword with which Ashurnan had killed his own brother, thirty years before. He touched the knife in his own sash.
We are alike in that, at least, he thought, and licked his dry lips again.
The dust began to sink in the centre of the army, as the men found their places and stood with their shields at the shoulder, leaning on their spears. Kouros could hear them talking to one another. Asurian of half a dozen different dialects, some so strange as to barely constitute the same language. Good Kefren in the ranks of the Honai up front. A column of leather-armed skirmishers went past with armfuls of javelins and the crescent-shaped shields of their calling, short-legged hufsan from the mountains who seemed as cheerful as men walking to a wedding.
The whole world is here, he thought. He remembered the slight, pale youth on the black horse who had called himself Corvus. There was Kefren blood in him — he had never suspected that.
What kind of man is he, to think he can fight the whole world?
Blue sky again, and the sun was high in it. It must be midday at least.
‘There they are,’ Ashurnan murmured. He reached out one hand and set it briefly on Kouros’s arm. ‘There they are.’ The golden glow of his face had gone. He looked sick and old and tired.
‘They’re so close!’ Kouros exclaimed.
A swift-footed man could have run between the armies in minutes. Kouros was able to make out the red chitons of the enemy spearmen, the bronze-faced shields painted with some pattern he had never seen before, a bird of some kind. They stood as immobile as a wall, all across the plain, their length punctuated by hanging banners.
‘I will break that line today.’ Ashurnan said quietly. He motioned to the scribe with his hip-desk who stood behind the chariot.
‘An order for Dyarnes. He is — ’
A swooping sound, as though some monstrous hawk had stooped for the kill. Instinctively, they all looked up. To their front, something exploded into the front ranks of the Honai and there were shouts of pain.
‘What is it? What is happening?’ Kouros demanded, hugging his ribs as though afraid they would fly apart.
A file of the Honai had been hurled into ruin, men lying dead, others dropping their shields and spears to assist the wounded.
Kouros looked up again, baffled, and saw a shower of what looked like arrows arcing up from behind the Macht line. But they were not arrows. Each was longer than a man. They came down in a black, monstrous hail.
And struck the ranks of the Great King’s bodyguard.
The shafts were as thick as a man’s arm, the heads cast in black, barbed iron. They punched through shields and breastplates as though the bronze were paper, and skewered two and three and four men at a time, knocking down whole files like wooden skittles bowled over by a child’s ball.
Ashurnan’s face was transformed by outrage. Dozens of these great bolts were now hurtling down out of the unclouded sky.
‘Message to Dyarnes!’ he shouted above the growing cacophony. ‘Advance — advance at once with all the infantry!’
An explosion of dirt and stone, and the Niseians yoked to the chariot reared in fear as one of the massive bolts slammed into the ground at their feet. This was not warfare as they understood it. They began to dance and bite and neigh.
The ranks of the Honai were buckling and reforming, the files knocked apart only to be brought together again. They were the best soldiers in the empire, and would not retreat or break, but they could not hit back either. They could only die helplessly under the obscene barrage.
Ashurnan’s bodyguard, an armoured Honai who towered over his lord, thrust both Kouros and the Great King behind him.
‘Move us out of here,’ he barked to the driver. ‘This is no place for the King.’
The chariot wheeled round, the four horses pulling with a will, the driver lashing their backs with the long whip. They cantered away from the Honai phalanx, and the Arakosans followed them. Up and down the immense line the word went out that the Great King was retreating, that he was wounded, that he was dead. But the rumours were quashed by the sudden order to advance.
Like a great stone starting to roll downhill, the vast army of the empire began to move forward, a juggernaut bent on vengeance.
Rictus was thirsty. There was still water in the skin at his back, but he was saving it for later. He knew that as soon as the fighting began he would forget his thirst. If he survived, he would be desperate for that water afterwards. If he did not, someone else would drink it.
Cheers and whistles went up through the ranks as the first of Parmenios’s machines sent their deadly
