him. He was himself again.
‘I did not plan it that way — why would I? They stood beside you, Rictus, to the end. If you had not been there, they would have broken, and they would have survived. The Dogsheads.’
‘They would have stood with Fornyx as they did with me.’
Corvus shook his head. ‘A man will give his life for a legend. You should have done what I asked, and commanded the reserves. You disobeyed me.’
‘I did, and you let me do it. Do you know why, Corvus?’
The King looked at him, hovering somewhere between anger and compassion.
‘Because you knew why I did it. This was one party I could not miss. The greatest of battles. The start of a legend, perhaps. You would have done the same yourself. That is why you allowed me to take my place with my men. It appealed to the romantic in you.’
Corvus smiled tightly. ‘As you say, I would have done the same myself.’ He bowed his head.
Rictus stared into his wine, listening to the sound of the night-time city being painted bright and garish by the celebrations below.
‘Did any survive?’ he asked, a question he had not dared frame since his senses had come back to him.
‘Forty-six,’ Corvus said. He straightened and drank again. ‘Forty-six out of close on three thousand. There’s a legend for you. How the Dogsheads died at Gaugamesh. How that story of theirs ended there, right in front of the eyes of the Great King.’
‘There are worse ways to die,’ Rictus said, in a low rasp.
‘It was a glorious way to die. I hope when my end comes it shall make such a story.’
‘How did we come through, overall?’
Corvus was blinking hard. He rubbed his toe in the puddled wine on the floor.
‘We lost something over six thousand men, dead or too maimed to ever fight again.’
‘That’s quite a butcher’s bill.’
Corvus smiled a little. ‘It was quite a fight, brother. An empire fell that day.’
‘You really think that’s the end of the fighting?’
Corvus shook his head. ‘There will be plenty more fighting. But we will never face another general levy. I’ve invited all the governors of the lowland cities here. I intend to confirm them in their posts if they will swear me allegiance. Things will go on much as they did before. The Juthan have pacified southern Pleninash in their march to join us. Proxanon is a good man — you’d like him. Never smiles, but can set the table in a roar all the same. Drinks like a man who has just discovered his own mouth.
‘His son will bring five thousand of his people across the Magron with us, as part of the army. It will help make up our losses. Plus, we have reinforcements arriving from the Harukush within the month — I received a letter today, from your friend Valerian at Irunshahr. More green spears headed east. They’re already over the Korash Mountains. By the time we leave for Asuria, the army will be bigger than ever.’
But it will not be the same army, Rictus thought. Not for me. The Dogsheads are gone, finished. That part of my life is finally over.
Corvus seemed almost to pick up some current of his thought. He did that often with people; he seemed to be able to read them in some uncanny way. Now he said, ‘Do not leave me, Rictus.’
‘What?’
‘Fornyx is dead, the Dogsheads are gone, the battle is won. I can see it in your eyes. I saw it in you every time I visited you in that blue-roofed cart they hauled you east in. You wanted to die. That’s why I got in Buri, and set Kurun to watch over you. And lovely Roshana. I set them to keeping you alive, but death is still in your eyes.’
‘Perhaps these eyes have seen enough.’
‘They have not seen Ashur, the ziggurats of the Great King, the heart of empire. Stay with me, Rictus, I beg you.’
Startled, Rictus looked the younger man square in the face. ‘What can I do for you, Corvus, that a dozen other men could not? You don’t need my name any more — your own is greater now, greater by far. You have become a legend yourself.’
‘Legends need their friends,’ the younger man said. He hung his head.
Kurun was looking back and forth between Rictus and Corvus with such fierce concentration that Rictus almost had to smile.
‘A man like you will never lack friends.’
Corvus stood up. Something harder crept back into his face. ‘Perhaps you are right. Perhaps that is what it truly means to be a king. I would have liked to talk to Ashurnan about it. I would have spared him, had he lived. At least he died like a man should, sword in hand, facing hopeless odds.’
‘It was we who faced the hopeless odds at Gaugamesh,’ Rictus retorted. ‘It is we who prevailed against them. Do not forget the men who died to bring you here.’
‘I never forget them,’ Corvus said simply. ‘Any of them. I mourn them as you do, Rictus. But I will not give up on life because they are gone. A whole world awaits us — we have but to begin walking and it will open under our feet. To realise that — it is what it means to live.’
He turned, still unsteady, but sombre now.
‘Would you be happy in the Harukush now, brother, in that little upland farm? Even before I knew you, you never really lived there — it was just somewhere to rest between campaigns. For men such as you and me, there is only the next turn in the road to look forward to.’
He looked back and smiled, boyish again. ‘Stay here a while, and see how it suits you. Within the month, I shall be taking the army east once more, across the Magron Mountains and into Asuria itself. Follow me if you like. I shall leave the princess Roshana in your care; I don’t think the girl cares much for armies.’
He lifted the wine jar in a final toast as he left, and raised his voice to a shout.
‘I will see you in Ashur, Rictus. I shall make kings out of us all ere the end!’
TWENTY-ONE
It was just past midsummer when the Macht army left Carchanis for what most assumed would be the final stage of the expedition.
By that time, eight thousand replacements had arrived from the west, large-eyed boys in their fathers’ armour who had been on the road from Sinon for the better part of two months. To begin with, they were folded into Demetrius’s command, whilst he transferred several morai of his conscripts — veterans now — to Teresian. Thus was the Macht spearline brought back up to strength.
There were other changes also. Marcan, son of Proxanon, the Juthan king, now led five thousand of his own people as an integral part of the army, and the Juthan prince was named a marshal, part of the regular high command. The move caused surprisingly little upset within the ranks of the Macht, though the Juthan camped separately from the rest of the infantry and there was as yet little mixing between the two races.
King Proxanon led the rest of his army back the way they had come, having signed a formal treaty of alliance with the Macht. He had finally secured his kingdom, which had been at war with the empire almost continually over the last thirty years.
The other cities of the Middle Empire varied in their response to Gaugamesh. Many sent representatives to Corvus at Carchanis, pledging allegiance. These were sent back to their homes with lavish gifts, and each was accompanied by a half-mora of Macht spearmen under a veteran centurion.
Some did not respond at all, and a few sent letters of open defiance. In the end, Corvus had to leave some six thousand men behind in Carchanish under Demetrius, an independent all-arms command which the one-eyed marshal was tasked with using to bring all of the rest of the Middle Empire to heel. He accepted readily, since in effect Corvus was making him de facto ruler of a vast swathe of the Asurian Empire.
The night after the appointment the old soldier finally married his camp-wife, a sour-faced little woman who
