The army marched out of its camps two days later, on a bright summer morning in the month the Kufr called Osh-Nabal, the time of the high sun. Rictus watched the endless columns filing across the Bekai bridge, Druze and his Igranians already fanning out towards the foothills of the Magron beyond. The shimmering haze of the river-plain blurred the bright sun-caught flashes of bronze and iron on the marching men. A contingent of hufsan spearmen marched with them, volunteers who had joined the great adventure to see where it might lead. The army was no longer truly Macht. The empire was no longer entirely Kufr. He wondered if it was for the best, or if it really made any difference at all to the farmers and peasants of the fertile lowlands. They still paid their taxes and saw their sons go off to war as they always had. The more things change…
‘Will we follow them?’ Kurun asked beside him. The boy was staring at the marching columns with a kind of hunger, the endless curiosity of the young.
‘We’ll follow them,’ Rictus said. ‘How could we not?’ He set a hand on the boy’s shoulder and bent his head to hide the sudden dazzle in his eyes.
TWENTY-TWO
They had been gathering people ever since leaving Hamadan, accumulating a ragged tail of leaderless troops, fleeing nobles, masterless slaves. As they came down into the sun-baked lowlands of Asuria, they numbered in their thousands, a cavalcade of remnants looking for a way to become whole again.
At the head of the straggling column Kouros sat upon the big bay Niseian which had carried him clear through the mountains, and reined in at the sight below, his breath caught in his throat at the panorama that opened out before him.
Asuria, the heart of the empire. It was an endless green country which rolled away beyond the edge of sight, gridded with the darker green of irrigation channels, glinting under the sun. In the distance, he could see the grey line of Ashur’s walls, the sea of terracotta roofs beyond it, and the two ziggurats, lonely mountains afloat on the haze, the Fane of Bel catching the sun with a brief flash of gold.
Lorka, Archon of the Arakosans, drew up beside him in his kingfisher-blue armour. He touched his forehead and then opened his palm to the sun in thanks to Bel.
‘So long as Ashur stands, there is hope,’ he said to Kouros. ‘You are Great King now — it must be proclaimed. The people must know that the world continues as it did, that all things will one day be the same again.’
Kouros nodded. ‘Bring your men into the city — I will see that they are found quarters.’
‘And the others?’ Lorka gestured to the river of people who were plodding past them, head down and exhausted with the long trek over the Magron.
‘They are rabble. Let them find a place where they may. I will ride ahead, Lorka. Make sure that the bullion waggons are within the city walls by nightfall.’
‘As you wish, my lord. I will detail a small escort to see you through the gates. Remember me to your mother, and tell her I send my respects and rejoice that I may soon see her again.’
Kouros looked at the Arakosan sharply. ‘My mother — yes, of course.’
He kicked his mount savagely, and started down towards the city at a gallop with a skein of Arakosan riders in tow.
They entered the western gates without ceremony or remark. The tall barbican of enamelled tile was the same colour as the Arakosans’ armour, and the traffic went in and out of it as though nothing had changed. Farmers still brought their crops to market, merchants still led braying mule-trains, slaves still filed along in chained gangs.
There was one difference, though — there were no Honai on guard, just some leather-clad hufsan of the city watch.
Kouros let his horse pick the way through the crowd, massaging his still-stiff torso with one hand. Apart from the magnificence of his steed and his armed escort, there was little to set him apart personally from a thousand other prosperous minor nobles or merchants. His clothing was well made but hard-worn, and he wore no komis; his face was brown and wind-burnt like that of a peasant, and for a weapon he bore nothing more grand than a filthy kitchen-blade of blackened iron. These things would have seemed important to him, once, but no more.
They rode up the Huruma amid the spray of the fountains, the palace ziggurat looming ever closer and taller above them, casting a shadow as large as that of a stormcloud. Only when Kouros set his horse to climb the King’s Steps did the guards come awake, and he found himself surrounded by a knot of hufsan with whips and scimitars. He thought of the gleaming Honai who should have been there, now dead on the barren plain of Gaugamesh, and something like grief rose in his throat. He did not speak, and let his Arakosans do the talking for him. They cursed and swore at the hufsan in common Asurian, the language of the masses, but the hufsan guards were adamant; no-one save the Great King himself might mount the Steps on horseback.
Finally, as the Arakosans began to draw their swords, Kouros spoke. In high Kefren he said, ‘I am Kouros, son of Ashurnan. My father was Great King of the empire, and I am his heir. The crown is mine; this ziggurat is mine. This city and everything in it belongs to me, as do your lives. If you do not let me pass I will summon my army into the city and have you impaled at this very spot. Will you let me pass, or will you wait here to die?’
Something in his tone stilled them. The guards muttered among themselves, looking at the bright steel in the hands of the Arakosans. They noted the Niseian warhorses, and the effortless confidence of the Black Kefre who spoke to them. Finally they gave way.
Kouros began pacing his horse up the wide-spaced steps that led to the summit of the ziggurat.
This would have been the highlight of my life, once, he thought. Now it is just another road.
They had word of him on the summit before he arrived, so swiftly did the rumour-mill grind in the ziggurat. He dismounted to find an honour guard awaiting him, gaudily armoured Kefren who looked as though they had never held a spear before. There was a disordered flurry, a kind of silent, low-key panic as some sense of ceremony was grasped at. Kouros stood by his patient horse and smiled a little as he saw his mother approach, decked out like a queen in a city’s worth of silk and jewels, flanked by Charys, the brutal-faced head eunuch, and little Nurakz, the harem secretary. A train of beautiful young women brought up the rear, as butterfly-like as ever. They blinked in the sunlight and held up little parasols to protect their complexions.
‘My son — is it really you?’
She glided up close to him as smoothly as if she ran on wheels, and took Kouros’s face in her cold ring- bright hands.
‘Bel’s blood, your poor face. You are burnt black with the sun.’
‘The Mountains will do that to a man. Did you get the despatches?’
‘They arrived five days ago. I did not think to find you so close behind them — what are you wearing? Was there no-one to greet you into the city?’
He shook his head free of her hands. ‘We must talk.’
‘You must bathe.’ She clapped her white hands. ‘Charys, see to prince Kouros — see that — ’
‘I am King now, mother. I need no crown for that. I saw my father die, as I saw Rakhsar die. The throne is mine.’
She stared at him for a long, wordless moment, the heavy cosmetics stark in the sunlight, her eyes unreadable. At last she bowed to him, and as she did, so did everyone else in the courtyard.
‘My lord King,’ she said. ‘Tell me what you wish, and it shall be done.’
They changed the bathwater three times before he got to the end of the dirt ingrained in him. It was his mother’s bath in the harem, not that in the royal bedchambers, for the Great King’s apartments were being refurbished and aired in readiness for their newest occupant. Kouros did not greatly care. He had not stopped to
