“I hope so, chief. Antimone’s tits, I hope so. The last good fight I had was with a whore in Maronen.”
Druze grinned. He clapped the youth on the shoulder. “That’s right, brother – and I hear she won.”
A crackle of laughter ran along the ranks. The Igranians stood easily, tightening their belts, retying sandals, fingering the cruel iron points of their javelins. Each man carried a bundle of them, and these they now untied, checking the shafts for warp, stabbing them into the ground to clean the blades. They wore the felt tunics of the inner mountains for the most part, and rough wool chlamys whose folds they now tied up under their left armpits to leave their throwing arms free.
A pasang away on the road their path was blocked by a body of spearmen. These had formed up in four ranks and extended four to five hundred paces. At least sixteen hundred men, Druze thought, measuring them with his bright black eyes.
“They’ll be out of Goron, that city on the crag to the west,” he said. All humour left his face. He watched the enemy phalanx closely, noting their intervals, they way they stood, how they held their spears. These small details meant something. If spearmen kept their shields on their shoulders long before battle was joined, it meant they were nervous. If they left the ranks to piss or shit instead of doing it where they stood, it meant they were not well-drilled.
“These lads are not bad,” he said, noting the stillness in the enemy formation, and the fact that slaves to their rear were passing water-skins up the files.
The flanks of the phalanx were protected by woods, half a bowshot on either side of the road. Hazel woods, stark with winter but with enough brush remaining to act as a concealer. There might be more men in those trees, hunkered down on the cold ground with the snow numbing their bellies.
“Send back word to Corvus,” Druze said. “We’ll hold here for now. Gabinius, take a couple of fists down to the treeline and see if there’s anything more than rabbits in there. I want no surprises.”
“You got it, chief.” The thatch-haired youth sped off at a run, calling out to the men nearest him. Eight of them peeled out of the line and followed him down the roadside at an easy lope, black against the snow-covered ground. Druze blew on his hands.
“A cold day to die,” he said.
Down the vast column, Rictus strode along with the tireless pace of the old campaigner. As far as the eye could see the road was choked with marching men in both directions, and from their labouring bodies a steam rose in the chill air so that they were marching in a fog of their own making. There was little to see except the backs of the men in front.
They were two day’s march out of Hal Goshen, and Corvus was pushing the pace hard. The men’s armour was piled in the baggage wagons and they carried only what they had to on their backs, using their spears as staffs. The Dogsheads were an unmistakable scarlet vertebra in the backbone of the army.
Horses cantering past on either side of the trudging infantry, like ghosts from a swifter world. A knot of them reined in, the snow flying from their hooves, the animals snorting and white-streaked with sweat. Huge horses, larger than any the Macht countries ever bred. Atop one, a gaudily cloaked figure raised a hand. The Kufr, Ardashir.
“Rictus! Corvus wants you and the Dogsheads at the front of the column at once. Get your gear from the wagons and arm up – we have work to do!”
The Kufr’s long, shining face broke out in a grin, and as he sped off again his long black hair flew out behind him like his horse’s mane.
Fornyx grimaced. “I was just getting ready to piss.”
“Piss in your own time,” Rictus told him. “Valerian, Kesero – break ranks, off the road. Time to earn our pay, brothers.”
The line of the army’s march had mushroomed out, formations wheeling left and right of the road and taking up position in extended ranks, out to the trees. This was the old Imperial road of Machran, which had come all the way from Idrios, and the cities along its length kept it maintained and cut back the brush and woodland on either side of it to foil the designs of brigands and goatmen. Rictus led his centons off the road and marched them smartly past the waiting files of the army, aware of the hundreds of eyes watching his red-cloaked men.
“Tighten it up, you plodding fucks,” Fornyx quipped in an undertone. “Let’s make it look good for the crowd.”
There was a gap, where the vanguard had halted, and then beyond it were Druze’s Igranians and a body of the Companion Cavalry. The personal raven banner of Corvus snapped busily in the wind.
“There you have it,” Corvus said, dismounting and joining Rictus as his men reformed into line. “Goron’s citizen’s have decided to make a fight of it. Two morai of spearmen and a cloud of light troops hidden in the trees. Druze has sounded out the position; it can’t be turned without a long flank march over the hills, so we’ll pitch straight into it. You will assault with your Dogsheads, Rictus, with one of Teresian’s morai following you in. Druze will flush out the woods with his Igranians, and when the line is ruptured, I’ll take in the cavalry. Any questions?”
Rictus blinked rapidly, looking at the wall of spearmen ahead. Their shields were emblazoned with the gabios sigil for their city and their line had the not-quite-straight aspect of citizen soldiers.
It was a good plan – the boy with the painted nails knew what he was doing.
“I’ll hit their left,” he told Corvus. “Tell Teresian to take his mora in right, but slow, so I hit first. That’ll scramble them for him.”
“I’ll link with you on the left as you go in, and cover your flank,” Druze said. There was none of his mocking humour on display now; he was in deadly earnest. For the first time, Rictus warmed to him.
“All right, then. Let us join the Dance,” Rictus said, the age old aphorism of the Macht going into battle.
“Now we’ll see how Rictus of Isca fights,” Corvus said. And he had on his face an expression of such bright, intense happiness that he did not seem quite sane.
The Dogsheads fell into position in minutes. On their right, Teresian’s men took rather longer to dress their lines. These were Corvus’s regulars, and Teresian himself was going to take the mora in. One thing about Corvus’s officers; they all liked to lead from the front.
A few observations were exchanged between the two bodies of spearmen, with reflections on the chastity of one another’s mothers and other witticisms, until Fornyx put a stop to it.
“Save it for the buggers up ahead, you mouthy bastards,” he called out.
Rictus stepped forward of the line. For a moment he stood there, a black armoured statue in a red cloak, face hidden by the close helm, the transverse crest bristling in the wind. Then he raised his spear, and as the Macht behind him stepped out he joined the front rank, and the five understrength centons of the Dogsheads began their advance.
It began as a murmur, a hum upon their breath. But then Valerian struck out with the Paean, a lone, ringing voice in the midst of the phalanx. Others joined him, until the entire formation was singing it, the measured, mournful beat of the ancient melody keeping their feet in time. To their right, Teresian’s mora joined in.
And to their front, the men of Goron took up the song also, so that the whole battlefield was singing it, as though the two sides were coming together in harmony instead of mutual murder. It made of the coming fight a proper thing, a ceremonial event.
For Rictus, the Paean was something different. He no longer joined in the singing, and had not since returning from the Empire all those years before. He had never forgotten the second day of Kunaksa, when the Ten Thousand had sung that song, believing they were marching to their doom but advancing anyway, to make themselves worthy of memory. It had kept them going that day, had reminded them of who they were.