‘Hamadan guards the eastern passes of the Magron,’ Lorka said, rubbing the triangular beard upon his chin. Many of the Arakosans were bearded; it was an archaic trait of theirs.
‘Those men will not be able to halt a field army. They will merely find themselves besieged. When I left them there, I thought the situation in Ashur was better than it is,’ Kouros said. His jaw worked, chewing on the problem.
‘If we cannot stop them at Hamadan, we will not stop them here,’ Borsanes said. He was a thin, drooping Kefre who reminded Kouros of nothing so much as a wilted sunflower. His head seemed too big for his shoulders, and he had a nose a tapir would have been proud of.
‘We will stop them,’ Kouros hissed. ‘If you lack confidence in our chances, Borsanes, then you should go back to whatever backwater my father dragged you from. You are relieved of your post. Now get out before I decide to make an example of you.’
Borsanes sputtered, eyes wide on either side of his remarkable nose. ‘Guards!’ Kouros called at once.
Two Arakosan troopers were at the door in a heartbeat.
‘Escort this fellow out of the city, as he stands. He is to leave by this very gate. Pass the word about the walls; if he is seen trying to return he is to be killed on the spot.’
The Arakosans took hold of Borsanes with some relish and dragged him, protesting and still sputtering, from the room.
Lorka roared with laughter. ‘I do not know if that was your father or your mother I just saw in you, Kouros, but it was worthy of them both.’
‘You may address me as lord,’ Kouros said icily, and Lorka’s face went flat.
‘Of course. I forgot myself, my lord. Forgive me.’
Kouros was clicking the tally sticks down on the table one by one.
‘With the Honai from Hamadan and the drafts of your people who have still to come in, I make it some twelve thousand spears. Those are the real fighters. We can probably round up some of the city low-castes and arm them also to bulk out the numbers.’
‘In Arakosia a slave who saves his master’s life is considered free by all,’ Lorka said. ‘There are thousands of imperial slaves in the city, lord. Perhaps they could be made use of. For the right incentive, a slave will fight near as well as a free man.’
Kouros shook his head. ‘That is an invitation to chaos. I will not consider it.’
Lorka bowed his head. ‘My lord, what of the coronation ceremony, then? It would be a boost to the city’s morale.’
‘Perhaps. But I do not think we have the time.’ Kouros raised his eyes. ‘My mother asked you to bring that up.’
Lorka bowed again. ‘The lady Orsana is kin to me and mine, as are you, my lord. When she bids me speak to her, I do so.’
‘Not any more. From now on, Lorka, if you wish to see the lady Orsana, you will seek my permission first. Are we clear?’
‘Very clear, my lord.’
‘Good. Now let us go through these tallies once more.’
Trying to get things done in Ashur was like trying to prod an elephant into movement with a needle. So convinced were the population of the city’s inviolability that they could barely imagine that it might be attacked, that an enemy could actually enter their gates. The circuit of the walls was in good repair, and fearsomely high, but it stretched for over sixty pasangs, and to defend the perimeter the river Oskus also had to be taken into the equation. It flowed through the eastern quarters of Ashur like a wide brown highway. An inventive attacker might use it to by-pass the walls entirely.
The endless meetings in the audience hall, with Kouros sitting on the throne that had been his father’s; the stifling formality of it all, the time wasted on protocol and ceremony, when every moment counted. It threw Kouros into icy rages, which he took out on a succession of unfortunate slave-girls. He did not yet care to inspect his father’s concubines, nor would he ever let his mother choose more for him, so slaves were sent up to him from the lower city in a steady stream, and night after night they went back down again, bruised and bleeding. In this, at least, he felt he had some control.
Ten days after his entrance to the city, something new was admitted to the echoing audience hall with its lines of courtiers and scribes. Orsana was there that day, seated to Kouros’s right like the queen she was. There was something of a stir as Akanish the chamberlain announced the arrival of Archon Gemeris, a name Kouros knew. He rose from the throne, smiling, as the tall Kefren noble stalked up the length of the hall. He was clad in Honai armour, and the sight of it sent a glad murmur down the walls from the assembled notables and nonentities.
Kouros did not let the man kneel, so glad was he to see him, but took his hand.
‘Gemeris — you are well met. So, you made it down from Hamadan in good time — are all your men with you?’
‘Yes, lord. Something over three thousand of your bodyguard are now within the city walls.’
‘Excellent! We — ’
‘My lord, listen to me.’ Gemeris had marched with Kouros clear across the Magron. He presumed on their acquaintance now, his face stark with urgency.
‘I bear bad tidings as well as good. The Macht king is over the Magron Mountains. He has already taken Hamadan; the city opened its gates to him without a fight. Now he is already on the march for Ashur.
‘My lord, he will be here in a week or less, and his whole army with him.’
TWENTY-THREE
The passes through the Magron Mountains were not like those of the Korash to the north-west of the world. Though the Magron were the highest peaks known on Kuf, wide valleys lay between them, linking up to make as good a thoroughfare as any in the homeland of the Macht. Only in the darker half of the year were any of the passes closed, and even then, small bodies of men had been known to win through at some cost, as the imperial couriers had been doing for centuries.
The Imperial Road continued here, not the broad straight highway it was in the Middle Empire, but a meandering track under yearly assault from the elements. It was regularly washed away by meltwater or buried in avalanches, but the empire kept the road open, each waystation along it home to a work-gang of slaves who spent their entire lives labouring in the mountains to this end.
Rictus and his companions left Carchanis some two weeks after the Macht army had departed. They did so in some style, for Corvus had left the forty-six survivors of the Dogsheads behind to provide a kind of honour guard. Under Sycanus of Gost, a short, muscular veteran who had once stood with Rictus upon the walls of Machran, these men now accompanied him east in the wake of the army. Most of them were past the first flush of youth, as seamed and scarred as any old campaigner could be, but there were a few younger men in their ranks too, eager to get across the mountains and view the fabled heartland of the Kufr empire.
They rigged out the blue-roofed caravan once more, though they swapped the horses that drew it for hardier mules, and accompanied by more mules bearing packs, the company left Carchanis behind, following in the rutted track of the main host and marvelling at the views behind them as they clambered higher into the foothills of the Magron.
For Rictus, it was his first time travelling into a region he had never seen before. For the others, it was a relief to leave behind the heat of the lowlands and breathe the cool blue air of the hills.
The waystations were deserted now, their crews having run away at the approach of the Macht army. And they passed abandoned homesteads of stone and heather-thatch close to the road, their doors kicked in, their interiors rifled. It would seem that some of the new recruits were missing the iron hand of old Demetrius.
