Huy, looking at lake and cliff, saw them only as points on which to anchor his flanks.
Ahead, in front of the walls, the land was open, with low scrub and a very few big shady trees; it sloped gently from cliff to lake shore, a Roman mile wide. It was a clear front from which no surprise could spring, although it undulated in a series of low rises like the swell of a sleepy ocean.
In their rear were the buildings and streets of the lower city, a maze of low clay walls and flat roofs, while further back rose the massive stone walls of the temple, and above them showed the tops of the sun towers.
This then was a good place in which to fight the last battle, this attenuated front with firm flanks and an open line of retreat.
Lannon strode along the ranks. There was a spring and purpose in his step that belied his tired eyes and grief- sick face; the face of a man who had seen his family burn to death while he stood by. Huy followed a pace behind him, walking with the long-legged crabbing gait which was so familiar to them all. The axe was on his shoulder, and the armour shaped to his bowed back was highly polished and sparkled in the sunlight. Bakmor and a group of officers followed him.
The legions were drawn up into their battle formations, and Huy could find no fault with the placing. The light infantry thrown out in a screen, each man armed with a bundle of javelins as well as his side arms. Behind them were placed the heavy infantry, big men armed with axe and war-spear, carrying a great weight of armour, these men were the backbones of the legions. When hard-pressed, the light infantry could retire through their ranks, and let the enemy spend themselves upon this solid reef of armour.
In the rear were the archers. Drawn up in neat blocks from which they could deliver massed flights of arrows over the heads of the infantry.
Behind them again were the baggage boys, ready with the bundles of fresh javelins and arrows, bags of cold meat and corn cakes, amphorae of water and wine, spare helmets, swords and axes, and those other items which the battle would expend or destroy.
At first Lannon’s procession along the ranks was in silence. The men at ease, resting on their weapons, many with their helmets removed, some of them munching a last mouthful of food, all of them with that surface calm of the veteran who has walked many times with old Dame Death, who knows well her whore’s face and the smell of her breath. Many of them still showed the recent marks of her claws upon their bodies, but there was no sign of fear on their faces, no shadows in their eyes.
Huy felt a humbleness when he met their steady gaze, a pride when one of them grinned and called out, ‘We’ve missed you, Holiness.’
‘It’s good to be back,’ Huy told him, and there was a growl of assent from those who heard him. Huy passed on, a ripple of animation followed him now.
Quick banter, in which Lannon and the officers joined.
‘Leave a few for us, Sunbird,’ a grizzled old centurion shouted.
‘I think there will be enough for all of us,’ Huy grinned at him.
‘Too many?’ another voice called out.
‘Not enough,’ Lannon answered. ‘For none of those who oppose us is named Ben-Amon.’
They cheered then lustily, and it was taken up all along the line from cliff to lake. New waves of sound and shouting followed them as they went to take their place at the centre of the line upon a rise of higher ground where they could see over the whole field.
Above their heads the standards stood, gaudy with gleaming gold and silken multi-coloured tassels, and at their backs the hundred men of the temple guard. Huy looked over the precisely laid-out cohorts with the sun sparkling on their helmets and weapons, and thought that these were good men with which to fight the last battle, good men in whose company to die.
He loosened his helmet and lifted it from his head, holding it in the crook of his arm.
‘Wine here!’ he called, and baggage boys came scampering to them with bowls and amphorae. It was the best of Huy’s own stocks, rich and red as the blood which would soon soak this field.
Huy saluted his officers with a raised bowl, then turned to Lannon. They looked at each other for a long moment.
‘Fly for me, Bird of the Sun,’ said Lannon softly.
‘Roar for me today, Lion of Opet,’ Huy answered him and they drank and broke the bowls and laughed together for the last time. The men about them heard them laugh, and taking courage from it they looked to the north.
Manatassi came in the middle of the bright hot morning. He came on a front that filled the plain from lake shore to cliff foot. He came singing with 500,000 throats, and the rhythmic slapping of bare feet and war rattles which rolled across the sky like the thunder of the heavens. He came in orderly ranks, spaced to give each man fighting space, but the rank behind pressed hard upon that ahead, ready to close any gap in the line, to show a solid unbroken front.
He came in rank upon countless rank, so there was no end to his advance, and the singing was deep and murmurous.
He came like the shadow of storm clouds moving stately and slow across the land, he came dark as night and numerous as the grass of the fields, and the singing took on a harsher more menacing sound.
Huy settled his helmet and tightened the strap. He untied the leather sheath from the vulture axe and watched Manatassi advance on a million moving legs like a single vast black animal topped with a froth of feather head dresses, and the spear blades sparkled like multiple insect eyes in the blackness.
He had never in all his life seen a sight to compare with Manatassi in his full power. This is a worthy foe with whom to fight the last battle, he thought, for there will be no dishonour in defeat by such a one.
Manatassi rolled on deliberately past the markers which Huy had placed on his front to measure the range; 200 paces, 150 - and the dust from a million stamping feet rose as a bank of fire-golden smoke over the horde, blanketing them so that they seemed to appear endlessly out of the moving shifting loom of it.
