"The ten thousand" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kearney Paul)

FOUR

There was a legend that the Macht had once been ruled by a single King, a mighty soldier, a just ruler, an architect of ambition and vision. He had gathered together all the scattered cities of his empire and connected them with a series of great roads, hewn with titanic labour out of the very faces of the mountains. Bas Mathon on the coast, he had linked to Gan Cras in the very heart of the Harukush range. Thousands of pasangs of highway he had carved across the northern world, the better to speed the passage of his messengers, his governors, his armies. But they also sped the feet of his enemies. An unruly, restless and stiff-necked people, the Macht had overthrown him, broken down his palace at Machran, and splintered his empire into a hundred, two hundred different vying polities. The cities had elected their own rulers, one by one. They had forged alliances and broken them, and they had bludgeoned their own passage through history, heedless of any larger call on their allegiances. The empire of the Macht was no more; the idea of a single King ruling all the great cities of the Harukush came to seem fantastic, then risible; a tale to he scoffed at in taverns. But the roads still stood. Some fell into disrepair, but the most important ones survived, and men still walked them to trade their wares and make their wars and indulge the lust of their wanderings. The King who had made them became a figure of myth, and in time even his name was forgotten, and the stones he had set up to commemorate it were worn smooth by the wind and rain of centuries.

The greatest of these roads led to the city of Machran, which had once been the capital of this vanished empire. Even today, it was the most populous and formidable of all the Macht city-states, and almost alone out of all others it had never fallen to siege or assault. What central institutions the Macht as a people possessed were housed in Machran, and competing cities might send embassies there for mediation, or to hire mercenary spearmen to bolster their flagging battle lines. For Machran attracted the shiftless, the penniless, the adventurous, and the downright criminal in ways no other city could, and these men put up their services for sale at the great hiring fairs held thrice yearly. In Machran, it was said, everything was for sale, and a man might find himself bought and sold there before he knew it.

The road which Gasca and his companions had tramped for so many days came to an end at the grey walls of the city. Once faced with white marble, the battlements had been battered by the centuries and the greedy hands of men. Now most of the good marble had gone except for yellowing pockets here and there, lonely teeth in a blackened mouth. For all that, the walls were impressive, perhaps five times a tall man’s height, the gatehouse in which the road ended twice that. Gasca could glimpse the wood and iron scaffolds of ancient war machines atop the wall-towers. Ballistas and mangonels and other engines which were but half-known names to him. The flitting sunlight snapped in spikes off the bronze of helms and spearheads as sentries paced the catwalks.

The road broadened into a muddy field before the towering gatehouse, the stone flags of it lost in ankle-deep mud and the droppings of every animal tamed by man. Carts, wagons, and pack mules stood surrounded by a jabbering crowd of men, women, and children who glared and talked and gesticulated and seemed on the point of some communal violence while the bored guards in the gateway waved them through, beating the slower beasts of burden with the flat of their spearheads. Gasca, Rictus, and their company were swallowed up in this crowd, repaying thumps and shoves with interest until they had passed through the dark echo of the gatehouse itself. On the other side the city reared up over them, as sudden and startling to witness as a precipice. They stumbled out of the way of the entering hordes and gathered themselves together, a final headcount. Gasca bent his head back and gaped without shame, a perfect picture of the country boy in town for the day-if one ignored the armour on his back and the weapons he bore.

Well, he thought, there is, at least, no shit rolling down the middle of the street.

The company was scattering. The procuress actually kissed Gasca on the mouth, then cackled and strode off, the urchin children now secured to her waist with thin lengths of cord. These were so cowed by the sight of the great city however that they clung to her side. She was taking them to the slave-market in the Goshen Quarter. One child turned and waved at Gasca as he went, huge frightened eyes in a filthy face.

The young husbands shook his hand one after the other in the finger-grip of the artisan. Their wives had donned veils, the informality of the road abandoned, and they were as demure as matrons now. No more squealing in the blankets by a campfire for them.

The thin merchant spoke briefly to his colleague and departed without a word for the men who had bled for him. He was perhaps still bemoaning his lost ass.

“Ungrateful sod,” Rictus said mildly.

“You boys will stay with me until you can shift for yourselves,” the fat merchant said. “I will hear of nothing else. On the Street of Lamps, in the Round Hill Quarter, you must go to the Beggar’s Purse, nigh the amphion, the speaker’s place, and tell them that you are guests of Zeno of Scanion. You tell them that, and you’ll save yourself an obol or two. I will meet you there later and we shall wet our throats in memory of the Defence of Memnos.” He grinned.

“Zeno of Scanion,” Gasca said, smiling, “it shall be so.”

“Ah! Till later then. Be careful, boys. No goat-men here, but plenty of jackals. One hand to your money and the other on a good knife.”

Zeno-now they knew his name at least-left them with a wink and a wave. He was bowed under a heavy pack, for the goatmen, though they had slaughtered the donkeys, had not had the time to loot all the merchants’ wares.

Staring, Rictus and Gasca moved aside to let the torrent of humanity move past and around them. On all sides, like white cliffs, buildings rose faced with marble. The streets were shadowed by them, made into narrow channels through which the people of the city flowed and whirled and turned. Rictus and Gasca were like twigs in a millrace, snagged for a moment by their own irresolution while the current broke around them.

“That’s the Empirion,” Gasca said, pointing. “I’ve heard of it. Gestrakos himself lectured there, back before my city had even been founded.” This was a white dome, the sun blazing off it and the golden statue that surmounted it. The structure looked like some lost element of a dream brought to earth; it did not seem that its foundations could be planted on the same ground that bore their feet.

Handcarts rattled by them in convoy, bearing all manner of foodstuffs. Boys hauled them, while their fathers or elder brothers walked alongside, quirting the fingers of the avaricious with olive-wood wands. Machran had a vast hinterland about it, some of the richest soils in the Macht. It was famed for its olives, its figs, and its wine. The only place in the Harukush where the stuff did not have to be sweetened with pine resin, it was said.

“All these people. There’s the whole Gosthere Assembly here in this one street. But I see no scarlet cloaks,” Gasca said. “Where might all the mercenaries be found?”

“We should ask, I suppose,” Rictus said. But he stood motionless, strangely intimidated by the great city, the teeming crowds who afforded him not so much as a greeting or a glance, but who all, it seemed, had somewhere important to be.

“What say you we wander and let our feet have their say?”

“A fine idea,” Gasca said sourly, “for those not bowed under the weight of a panoply and carrying thread stitched in their leg.”

“Give me your shield then. We’ll hobble at any pace you care to set.”

“A lame soldier,” Gasca said, handing over his father’s shield. “What a prize I’ll be for some centurion to sign up.”

“It’s a good gash. It’ll heal quick. Here; look at mine.” Rictus lifted up the hem of his filthy chiton so that Gasca could see the purple scar on his ribs. It was oozing clear fluid and looked only half-healed.

“How long have you had that?” Gasca asked, shocked.

“Long enough to grow tired of it. Come; let’s find someone who knows about the hiring of soldiers. This place is making me weary already.”

They forged a pass through the press, twigs in the millrace. Rictus led the way, using the blunt bowl of the shield to shove the unwary out of his path. It helped that both of them were tall, raw-boned men of the inner mountains. Here, the Macht as a people were shorter and darker of hair and skin. The women were very pretty though, and they did not veil their faces in public as many of the mountain folk did, but strode about the streets as freely as any man, sometimes showing their arms and legs as well. In among the foot-walkers and cart-haulers there were also closed boxes with curtained windows, carried by men on poles. Rictus wondered what they contained, until he saw one curtain twitched aside and a fat white-faced woman shouted abuse at her bearers, her thick fingers alight with rings. He broke into a laugh, for he had never seen anyone borne about in a box before.

It was Gasca who had the best view about them, he being taller than almost every other head in the street. He tugged Rictus to a halt in the middle of a broad, column-lined thoroughfare. On either side of them there was a clangour of metal on metal, for amid the columns were scores of one-man shops, each with a blackened smith hammering out metal on small anvils before which they knelt cross-legged. These were not farriers, or armourers, but silversmiths, and their hammers tapped out intricate designs on argent sheets which were to become some fripperies to ornament a rich man’s house.

“Look, Rictus-up front. Do you see him?”

Rictus leaned on his spear-the butt was becoming splintered-and peered through the coursing crowds. A black shape, like a shadow cast on a bright day.

“A cursebearer. What of him?”

“I’ve never seen one before.”

“Really? A sheltered life you’ve led.”

“If my eyes are right, he wears scarlet too-at least I think so. We should speak to him.” He paused. “Can we speak to him? Can one do that?”

“He’s not a god, just a man who inherited his father’s harness. Come; if he’s truly wearing scarlet then we must have a talk.”

“Where did you see a cursebearer before?” Gasca demanded, a little put out at Rictus’s non-excitement.

“We had maybe half a dozen of them in Isca, the mora commanders, mostly.”

They pushed through the crowd none too gently, and received angry glances. “Strawheads!” someone called out, the ancient insult. Rictus smiled at the shouter and saw him blench, then kept going, but using the shield with a little more gentleness. Along his side of his chiton the blood was expanding in little circles, and he had sweat shining on his forehead.

“Sir-a word if we might!” he called out, for their quarry was getting too far ahead of them, people making way for the black armour.

The cursebearer halted in his tracks, turned round. He was a lowlander, shorter than them, middle-aged, with a peppery beard and deep-hollowed eyes. He had a scarlet cloak hung on one shoulder, the end of which was wrapped around his left forearm. No weapons of any kind. The man did not speak, but looked Rictus and Gasca up and down appraisingly, as a man would upon buying a horse. The two of them stood silent before him, breathing through their mouths, feeling the appraisal, lost for any more words.

The cursebearer saw two tall boys who were almost men. They might have been brothers. Both were light-skinned and fair of hair, the colouring of the inner mountains. One had grey eyes, the other blue. The blue-eyed fellow was broader, heavier, and had an open, friendly face. Grey-eyes looked underfed and ill-rested. In his glance there was some knowledge of the world, hard come by.

“What is this word you want?” the cursebearer asked. He had thick eyebrows, black as soot, and they moved more than his mouth, which was a thin-lipped gash in his beard with bad teeth behind it.

It was Rictus who must needs reply. Gasca was still staring at the black cuirass which the man wore. It seemed to soak up the very daylight, a midnight black so lightless it appeared a hole in the fabric of the afternoon. This was the Curse of God, one of the ancient armours which dated back to the origins of the Macht as a people. None knew how they had been created, but the legends said that Gaenion the Smith had made a wager with God Himself, betting that he could fashion a darkness which not even his wife’s gaze could penetrate. His spouse was Araian, the lady of the sun, and she was both an inquisitive and indolent creature. When she rose from her bed her eyes saw all things, and when she left the skies of Kuf in the evenings she would tell God Himself of the day’s doings.

Gaenion won his wager, but God took the black stuff he had forged and gave it to Antimone, Goddess of the Veil, for she was enamoured of darkness, and her two sons, Phobos and Haukos, loved to ride the horses of the air through the sky when Araian had left it for her bed.

Antimone wove Gaenion’s hammered darkness into a chiton with which to clothe the first man of the Macht, whom God had set down upon the surface of Kuf naked and afraid. Antimone, in pity, gave this first man, whose name was Ask, the chiton to protect him, for Gaenion’s fabric, though light and flexible, was more impenetrable than stone. When God realised what Antimone had done, He was angry, for He had intended that Ask and his kind should treat the other denizens of the world with respect, and show them courtesy through fear of their own vulnerability. But now Ask was unafraid, with Antimone’s Gift to clothe him, and he set out to master the creatures of Kuf which God had created. And so, through Antimone’s pity, Creation itself had been set awry. So God cursed the black armour of Antimone, and stirred up the hearts of all the other races of Kuf against Ask and his people. The Macht would be warriors without compare, He decreed, but they would never know peace, and they would have need of their black armour over the course of the world’s turning, for they would pay in blood for their desire to master the earth.

Antimone was punished also. She had erred in pity, in softness of heart, and so God set her down on Kuf itself to watch over the Macht in all their travails down the millennia. She would foresee the fate of those she loved, but would not be able to change it, and so would weep bitter tears, for she would be witness to every crime that man would commit in his tenure of the earth.

Her sons, Phobos the elder and Haukos the younger, wished to follow their mother to Kuf, but God forbade it as part of Antimone’s punishment. So they drew as near as they dared, riding their great black horses in shadow across the night sky, when Araian the sun was not there to tell God of their doings. Phobos hated the Macht for causing his mother’s exile from heaven, and his white face leered down upon men from the depths of the night sky. But Haukos had inherited his mother’s soft heart. To his pink countenance men prayed for intercession with Antimone, and hence, with God Himself.

Such was the legend.

Whatever their origin, there were some five thousand sets of Antimone’s black armour abroad in the world, and those who bore them were known as cursebearers. The armour was passed down through families for centuries, though many had changed hands in battle. None were ever given up willingly, and a city might go to war for possession of a single black cuirass. Ageless and indestructible, some said that in them resided the very essence of the Macht as a people, and were they to disappear, then so would mankind.

“We saw your scarlet cloak, and the harness you bear, and wondered if you might be hiring,” Rictus said to the man who stood before them now with one of these ancient artefacts on his back.

The man cocked his head to one side. “If I am, I do not hire in the middle of the street. Nor do I like to be shouted at there by boys who still have their mother’s milk about their gums.” One eyebrow rose at this, a mockery, though the rest of his face remained grave.

Gasca took a step forward, but Rictus tilted out his spear to bar his way.

“You’re right, of course,” he said to the cursebearer. “You have our apologies. Would it be acceptable for us to ask you-to ask you where it would be appropriate to look for employment?”

The man smiled at this. “You’ve not done much apologising in your time, boy. But you want employment you say. As mercenaries?

“Yes, sir.”

“And is this all the panoply you possess?”

“What you see is all we have,” Gasca said. “But it has done good service before now.”

“No doubt. But it’s not enough to get you both in the phalanx. One of you, perhaps, but the other will have to apply to the light arm, or else be a camp servant. Go to the northern gate, the Mithannon they call it. Outside the walls there’s a marshalling square surrounded by tents and shacks. That’s where they hire spears in this town.”

“Thank you,” both Rictus and Gasca said at once, eyes bright as those of children promised some treat.

The man chuckled. “You came to the head of the snake. I am Pasion of Decanth. Drop my name there and you may not get as hard a time. It’s late in the day to be touting your wares. Leave it till the morning, and you’re less likely to be manhandled.”

“Thank you,” Rictus said again.

“You’re from Isca, boy, aren’t you?”

“I… How do you know?”

“The way you met my eyes. Most men outside the scarlet drop their gaze for a second on meeting a cursebearer. You’ve had Iscan arrogance bred into you. Let slip that at the hiring-it will do no harm. Now I must go.” He nodded at them both, then turned and resumed his way through the crowd, the people parting before him as though he were contagious.

“We have luck with us,” Gasca said. “That’s a meeting the goddess had a hand in if ever anyone did. And I have seen the Curse of God at last.”

“I didn’t come all this way to be a camp servant,” Rictus said.

“Let us go to that merchant’s inn. We’ll set ourselves up there and see about joining a company tomorrow. We shall eat and drink and wash and find ourselves a bed.”

Rictus smiled. He looked tired, older than his years, pinched with hunger and bad memories. “Lead on then. And take this shield for a while- fair’s fair.”

The Mithannon faced north towards the Mithos River, a grey flash of cold mountain-water that ran parallel to the walls of the city for five or six pasangs. The open plain there had long ago been flattened out and beaten into a dirt bowl around which there clustered irregular lines of wooden shacks and stalls, hide tents made semipermanent with the addition of sod walls, and hundreds of low-roofed ramshackle shelters brought into being with the connivance of a bewildering variety of materials. The place seemed a mockery of the stone and marble majesty of Machran itself, but if one looked closer there was an order to the encampments. They ran in distinct lines, and some were cordoned off with rawhide and hemp ropes mounted on posts. Flags and banners snapped everywhere, a kind of ragged heraldry splashed across them, painted on signposts, daubed on the skewed planks of shacks and cabins. And everywhere in the midst of these crude streets there walked knots and files of men dressed in scarlet of some shade or other. These were the Hiring Grounds, and the Marshalling Yards, and the Spear-Market, and half a dozen other names besides. Here, men might join the free companies, those soldiers who sold their spears to the highest bidder and who owed allegiance to nothing except their comrades and themselves.

In the quarter of the city closest to the Mithannon there was the greatest concentration of wine-shops and brothels in all Machran. Here, the gracious architecture degenerated into a hiving labyrinth of lesser buildings, built of fired brick and undressed stone, roofed with reed-thatch from the riverbanks rather than red tile, and lacking windows, often doors. Men had built upwards here, for lack of space in the teeming alleyways about them. It seemed, looking up from the splash and mire of the noisome streets, that the buildings leaned in on each other for support, and a mason with a plumb-line might look around himself in despair.

Up in the swallow’s eyrie of one of these there was an upstairs room. A man might spit through the gapped planks of the floor there onto the heads of the drinkers below, but somehow the place stood, stubborn and askew and seething with all manner of babel that wine could conjure out of men’s mouths. It was a place where conversations could be had in shouts, and still no one an armspan away would make sense of them.

“When is Phiron to return?” one of the men asked. This was Orsos of Gast, whose face had writ across it the dregs of every crime known to man. He was known as the Bull to friends and enemies alike. Now his deep-set eyes glinted with suspicion. “I have a firm offer from Akanos, me and my centon. Time is money, Pasion. Promises never fattened a purse.”

The cursebearer named Pasion cast his gaze down the long, wine-stained table. Twenty centurions sat there in the faded red chitons of mercenaries. Any one of them alone would have made a formidable foe; gathered together they were a fearsome assemblage indeed. A jug of water sat untouched on the tabletop. Pasion knew better than to buy them wine before the talking was done.

“He is in Sinon,” Pasion said casually, “Putting the final touches to our arrangements. With fair winds and good weather, he’ll be here in a week at the outside. What’s the matter, Orsos; do you have trouble holding your men to the colour?”

“Not since I stopped shitting yellow,” the Bull said, and about the length of the table there were grunts of humour.

“Then have some patience. Pity of the goddess, this is the biggest fee you’ll ever earn and you’re havering over the matter of a few days here and there. If this thing comes off, we will all of us be rich as kings.”

Greed warmed the air of the room a little. The men leaned forward or back as the mood took them, chairs creaking under a bulk of scarred muscle. From below, the raucous slatternly din of the wine-shop rose up through the floorboards.

“Quite a little army your Phiron is digging up, Pasion,” another of the men said. This fellow was lean as whipcord, with one long brow of black across his forehead, and eyes under it that made a blackbird’s seem dull. He had a trimmed goat’s-beard, and a moist lip. No father would trust his daughter to that face.

“I hear that this is only the tip of the spear, this host of ours gathered here. There’s more down in Idrios, and others in Hal Goshen. We’ve near two thousand men in the colour, here in Machran, and that’s the biggest crowd of hired spears I’ve ever heard tell of. What employer is this that can hire such myriads and keep them kicking their heels for weeks as though money were barley-grain to him?”

“Our employer’s name is not to be spoken,” Pasion snapped. “Not yet. That is one of the terms of the contract. You took the retainer, Mynon, so you will abide by it.”

“If you do not mean to take Machran itself I would do something to reassure the Kerusia of it,” another man said, a dark-skinned, hazel-eyed fellow with the voice of a singer. “They’re more jittery than a bride on her wedding night, and wonder if we have designs on their virtue. There’s talk of a League being gathered of the hinterland cities: Ponds, Avennos and the like. They don’t like to see so many of our kind gathered together for so long in one place.”

“Agreed, Jason,” Pasion said. “I will talk to them. Brothers, you must keep your men outside the walls, and in camp. We cannot afford friction with the Kerusia, or any others of the city councils.”

A rumble went down the table. Discontent, impatience. The room crackled with pent-up irritability.

“I’ve had my centon here the better part of a month,” an older man said, his beard white as pissed-upon snow and his eyes as cold as those of a dead fish. This was Castus of Goron, perhaps the wickedest of them all. “I’ve lost eleven men: two maimed in brawls, one who’s gotten himself hung by the magistrates, and eight who took off out of boredom. Most of us here can say the same to some degree. It’s not lambs we lead, Pasion. My spears are losing their temper. Where in Phobos’s Face are you taking us anyway, if we’re not to annoy Machran itself? The capital can muster some eight thousand aichme, given time. If we’re to strike, it must be very soon, before these farmers get themselves together.” There was a murmur of agreement.

Pasion smashed his fist down on the planks of the table.

“Machran is not our goal,” he said with quiet vehemence. “Nor are any of the other hinterland cities. Hammer that into your heads and those of your men. You’ve taken money from my hand- that makes me your employer as much as anyone else. If you cannot hold to your half of the contract, then refund me your retainers and be off. Go pit your wits in some skirmish up north. I hear Isca has been sacked at last, so there’s not a decent soldier up there to stand in line. Rape some goatherder women if you will, and boast of killing farmers’ sons. Those who stay with me will find real flesh for their spears, a true fight such as we’ve not seen in the Harukush in man’s memory. Brothers, stay to the colour here and I promise you, we shall all become forgers of history.”

The centurions looked at the wine-ringed table-top, frowning. At last Mynon said; “Fine words. Eloquent. I put them in my head and admire them. You always had a way with words, Pasion, even as far back as Ebsus. You could make men believe their own shit didn’t stink, if you had a mind to, but we’ve all grey in our beards here, and rhetoric to us is like a middle-aged wife. You can admire it, flirt with it, but you’re not going to let it fuck with you. Take my advice and speak plain now, or you’re going to start bleeding spears.”

Someone guffawed, and there was a chorus of assent. As Pasion looked down the table he realised that Mynon was right. Mercenaries would put up with many things and, contrary to popular myth, they would not desert the first time their pay was late. Stubborn bastards, proud as princes, and sentimental as women, they could be held to the colour by many things beyond money. Sometimes they would believe in promises, if those promises were grand enough, and if they flattered their own vanity. Mercenaries had their own kind of honour, and a fierce pride in their calling. It was only to be expected. Once a man donned scarlet, he became ostrakr, and abandoned whatever city had spawned him. It had to be so, or else allegiances to different warring cities would tear every centon apart. To replace that allegiance, the mercenary committed himself to his centon and his comrades. They became his city. The centurion was their leader, but could not commit his men to any contract until they had voted for it among themselves. It was the law of the Assembly writ small, and it gave each mercenary company the cohesion and brotherhood that all men craved in their hearts. To become a sellspear, a man might forsake his ancestors, his memories, the very place that gave him birth, but in return he was admitted to this brutal brotherhood and given a new thing to fight for. A city in miniature, clad in bronze, and dedicated to the art of warfare.

“Very well,” Pasion said at last. “You scorn rhetoric, so I will give you fact. More words, but these are set in iron. I will tell you this now, and it will never leave these walls.” He looked the table up and down, checking that he had each of their attentions. Had he been a less restless man, he would have loved the stage, the faces hanging on each word he chose to give and withhold.

“We are not gathered here for some city fight. We are making an army, a full-sized army, and all of it composed of mercenaries. Brothers, we have a journey before us, and its destination lies far, far outside the Harukush.”

There was a pause as this sank in.

“Brothers, we are-”

“Phobos,” Orsos swore loudly. “You mean to take us into the Empire.”