Out on the left, they were fighting along the banks of the dry riverbed, Teresian’s morai thrusting down into the crowded ranks of the Kufr struggling up the crumbling, sunbaked sides of the bank. On that flank some enterprising Kufr commander had thrown a fresh levy out to the north, seeking to outflank the position, but just as it seemed they were on the verge of success, Druze and a thousand of his Igranians pitched into them, swinging their drepanas to terrible effect and shrieking the high war cry of their own hills. The levy was broken, and hurled backwards.
These were small farmers and tradesmen of the Middle Empire. They had been marching for weeks, learning the ways of an army, sure of their own numbers and the authority of the high-caste Kefren officers who led them. But they had not reckoned on the utter bloody confusion of battle. They had never before seen what the sweep of a drepana could do to a man’s body when wielded by an enemy who had been fighting for years, and was well-versed in the chaotic savagery of war. They saw their friends and neighbours slashed to quivering meat around them, and streamed away in disorder.
Druze met Teresian to the rear of the line. Six thousand Macht were standing fast here, and the riverbed at their feet was filling with bodies so that the Kufr were climbing over their own mounded dead to come at the spears. The dust shrouded everything, and the roar of the battle was unlike anything that even the veterans had experienced before.
Druze drew close so he could be heard, his dark head next to Teresian’s straw-bright one.
‘I secured your left for now, but they’ll try again,’ he shouted. ‘There are too many — they’re going to pour round that flank soon. I’ll leave you my mora, but I have to get back to Corvus. He needs me in the centre.’
‘I need more of your men, Druze,’ Teresian told the Igranian. ‘That, or cavalry. There’s nothing behind me — they cave in my flank and the whole line will fold.’
‘Refuse your left, but stay anchored to the riverbed.’
Teresian nodded grimly. ‘Tell Corvus if he has any tricks left to pull, we had best see them soon.’
Druze took his forearm in the warrior’s grip. ‘Hot work, brother.’
‘Fucking thirsty too. We need water; my men are chinstrapped.’
‘I’ll see what I can do. Would you like me to wash your face and put you to bed, or do you want to play for a while?’
‘Fuck you, you black-eyed Igranian cocksucker.’
They grinned at each other, and Druze ran off, back to the centre of the Macht lines.
In the centre the blows were falling fast and hard. The first attack had been beaten off in minutes, but had been followed almost instantly by a second, and a third. It seemed that there was an endless procession of enemy formations streaming forward to slam into the ranks of the Dogsheads. The Macht stood their ground and fought each one to a standstill, until they had to retreat several paces just to get clear of the corpse-choked ground. Then they stood fast again, and watched another line of screaming Kufr come charging out of the dust.
This was not phalanx fighting — it was not the othismos as the Macht understood it. The Kufr ran up to the line of shields and hacked at them with axes and short swords, while the wicked aichmes of the spearmen jabbed out in short, economical thrusts to cripple and slay them. The leather corselets of the levy infantry were little protection against a Macht spearhead, and many of the enemy did not wear helmets either. They ran up to the line and battered upon it, and died. Some got lucky, and caught tired or already wounded men and saw their blades strike home, but most died to no result, except to make the men in the shield line more tired, to break off a few more spearheads. To bring down a few here and there and make a gap which was closed moments later.
Extravagant it might have been, but it was slowly becoming effective. The Dogsheads were being worried to death, worn down in increments. And each and every one of them was aware that the Great King’s Honai were still out there opposite them, waiting in the anonymity of the dust.
‘He may be attacking everywhere, but he’s going to make a real play for it here,’ Rictus told Fornyx. They stood panting, spitting white and leaning on their spears. There was a momentary lull in the fighting, but they could hear the cries of the Kefren officers in the ochre cloud to their front and knew it would not last long.
‘Then I wish he’d fucking get on with it,’ Fornyx said. ‘I could do with a lie down.’
‘He’ll send in the Honai when he’s ready, and try to break clear through. He does that, and he has a free path to the baggage behind.’
Fornyx looked Rictus in the eye. ‘We’re doing just fine. Do you really think his Honai can break us, Rictus — us?’
‘They are ten thousand, Fornyx, and they fight like we do, shield to shield. We’ve been at it all morning while they’ve been leaning on their spears. Just because Parmenios managed to skewer a few of them doesn’t mean they’re not ready to pitch in. No — they’ll be right in our lap soon. We have to be ready for that.’
‘Corvus should be told.’
‘You can be sure he knows. The boy’s not stupid — he placed us here for a reason.’
‘He put us here to die, it seems to me.’
‘He put us here to stand, and die. To give him time to work his magic elsewhere. That’s why he wanted me out of the line for this one.’
‘Little bastard,’ Fornyx said. ‘I might have known. Remember Machran, Rictus? He did the same damned thing.’
‘Because we’re the best he has.’
‘Chief, here they come again,’ the man beside Rictus cried.
‘Stand to!’ Rictus shouted, the words cracking in his dry throat. ‘Shields up, level spears — ’
And so it began again.
The afternoon drew on. All along the battlefront, the troops of the Great King were being steadily sent in to the meat-grinder. As well as attacking constantly on every front, the imperial forces were still coming in from the east in an unending stream, shaking out into line of battle, and then going forward. Sometimes those advancing were shaken and disordered by the fleeing remnants of the men who had been up at the spears before them, but they went in anyway. In this respect the dust was a blessing for the Kefren officers. Their men were walking into the battle blind, unable to see the true extent of the carnage ahead. Not until they began stepping on their own heaped dead did they realise what lay before them, and by then it was too late.
The smell of blood rose in the air, the stink of sweat, urine and ordure. The fighting took men and squeezed everything out of them, along with their lives. Already the flies were black about the bodies, and men in the midst of combat would find the carrion insects buzzing about their mouths and eyes as they fought, one more torment in a world of them.
Kouros flapped his good hand in front of his face as though it would rid him of the smell. He had perfume on his komis, and tugged the fine material tight about his mouth, trying to breathe. Trying not to breathe. It was not as he had expected.
He had been in battle before now, but his previous experiences had been nothing compared to this. He had taken part in ragged running fights with bands of runaway slaves, road-bandits and misguided rebels, but those skirmishes had been more akin to hunting than to warfare proper. He had never in his life before seen men stand and fight as the Macht were fighting now, destroying legions of levies, piling the ground black with bodies, and then dressing their lines, ready for more.
‘What are they?’ he asked aloud. ‘What kind of things can they be, to stand like that?’
It was his father who answered him. ‘At Kunaksa, we slew their leaders and took their baggage. We had them surrounded and outnumbered five, six to one. But still they attacked, and routed my entire army. They were thirsty, exhausted, half dead on their feet — I can still see it now — and they kept coming down that hill. They beat us that day because they thought they were already dead men. Only the Macht fights like that. Like a cornered animal, bereft of reason. That is why they are so dangerous.’
Kouros stared. The dust came and went in rolling clouds. He caught glimpses of the fighting lines to their front, a vast river of murder. He could not imagine what it must be like, up there at the spearheads. It must be very like hell itself.
‘My lord, we have word from the Arakosans out on the left.’ This was Marok, Dyarnes’ second-in-command. A tall, dark Kefre, like a lean version of Kouros, he was the one who loved women and horses, and who had more of both thanks to the generosity of the King’s heir. He glanced at Kouros and nodded his head in a half bow of
