Well, the thing was done now, at least. The camp was full of drunken men reliving their own versions of the day’s events, pouring thankful libations of wine into the ground for Phobos, for Antimone, in thanks at having survived with eyes and arms and balls intact.
The Dogsheads were more subdued. They had lit two huge fires kindled from broken enemy spears, and were standing around them in their red cloaks passing wineskins with the thoughtful purpose of men who mean to drink deep. They raised a cheer at seeing Rictus, however, and the mood around the fires brightened. Valerian and Kesero were there, Kesero limping with a linen rag knitted about the big muscles of his right thigh, Valerian untouched and as earnest as always.
“You had us worried when we saw you taken into the butcher’s tent,” he said to Rictus. “For a second, we thought you might be in trouble.”
“No trouble,” Rictus assured them. “An aichme’s love-bite is all.”
“Our employer has his victory,” shaven-headed Kesero said. “I hope it makes him happy.”
“Machran is finished now,” one of the other men put in: Ramis of Karinth, Kesero’s second, a high-coloured strawhead who was already drunk. “We must have killed or maimed half the men they had on the field.”
“I believe we did,” Valerian said with a half-smile. “Now I know what a great battle is like. And I know why the stories make of them such glorious and terrible things.”
His mutilated face gave the smile a bittersweet cast. Rictus set a hand on his shoulder. Yes, he thought, I believe Rian could do worse.
“What’s our story now, boss?” another voice broke in. Praesos of Pelion, a good steady fellow like to make centurion in a year or two, if he survived.
Rictus collected his swimming thoughts. “I’m on my way to Corvus now. We’ll see what’s what. There will be a shitload of clearing up tomorrow, for one thing – we must police the battlefield, burn the dead, collect what arms were left on them, and reorganise.”
“Not many of us made it into the enemy camp,” Praesos said. “Every other bugger in the army was there before us, leaving their wounded on the ground. By the time we got round to it, it was picked clean or under guard.”
“We don’t fight for plunder,” Valerian snapped at him. “We look after our hurt and dead first of everything – it’s the way it is done.”
“Well said, brother,” Kesero grinned, “but you can’t blame the lads for being a little put out. We do the right thing, and it leaves us with empty purses while Demetrius’s fucking conscripts raped the place.”
“Aye – what about some pay?” someone called out, back from the firelight and the golden shimmer of the flame-caught rain.
“I’ll see what I can do,” Rictus said.
“He threw us into the biggest shithole of the day,” Kesero said, “and we came out smiling. I think he owes us a bonus.”
There was a growled murmur of agreement about the fires.
“He came in along with us,” Valerian said. “Remember that. He was in the front rank right beside me. He did not do it for a joke – that’s why he was there.”
“We’re mercenaries,” Rictus said quietly. “We voted for the contract. Our job is to kill and be killed; to look after one another when alive, when hurt and when dead. That comes first of everything. A man who has issue with that can take off the red cloak and walk away when this contract is done -but not before.”
“And when is this contract done, Rictus? On the fall of Machran?” Kesero asked.
“That’s what I agreed with him.” At that moment, Rictus could not quite remember the terms of the agreement, but it sounded right enough to his addled mind.
Kesero winked. “Then we’re going to be rich men very soon,” and he grinned so that his silver-wired teeth glittered white in his face.
The tension about the fires broke in ribaldry and laughter. After all, they were alive and standing, and they were victors of the greatest battle ever fought in the Harukush. In their minds they had already begun to bury the worst of the day’s memories, leaving what could later be polished up and made part of a better story.
Rictus knew this – he had done it himself. But he knew also that the black memories were kept by Phobos to fester in the depths of a man’s heart. He could never be rid of them; they became part of who he was.
“The supply wagons will be emptied and will take the more severely wounded back to Hal Goshen,” Corvus said, pacing up and down as was his wont. “The looting of the enemy camp is to stop – Teresian, you will see to that. Post more men – your oldest and steadiest. Karnos has stockpiled several day’s rations, and we will use them ourselves while our supply train is away.”
He paused as Rictus and Fornyx emerged from the darkness beyond the tent-flap, and his face broke open into a grin of delight.
“I knew a little thing like a slashed arm would not keep my old warrior down. Rictus, you look as pale as Phobos’s face – Teresian, give up your seat there. Brothers, the wine is standing tall in your cups; we can’t have that.”
Rictus sat heavily in the leather-framed camp chair. Corvus’s scribe, a plump, powerfully built little man named Parmenios, came forward with a waxed slate, his stylus poised.
“Marshal, how many of your men are still fit to fight?”
“Three hundred, give or take.”
Parmenios scratched the slate. His black eyebrows rose up his forehead a little. “A heavy accounting,” he said.
“I’ve heard it called worse,” Rictus snapped. His mind was a throbbing bruise. More than anything else he longed to lay his head down upon his arms on the map-strewn table in front of him.
Teresian offered him a cup of wine. “Drink with us, Rictus.”
They were all holding their cups off the table, looking at him. Poised for a toast, he realised. One-eyed Demetrius, the grim ex-mercenary, spoke for them.
“Today we saw how men fight, and die.” He lifted his cup higher.
“To the Dogsheads.”
“The Dogsheads,” the others repeated. Humourless Teresian, the suspicion gone from his grey eyes. Dark, smiling Druze, with his arm in a sling to match Rictus. And Ardashir, his strange long face solemn. They all drained their cups and then flicked out the dregs for Phobos, mocking Fear itself.
Rictus caught Corvus’s eye, and the strange young man winked at him.
The Dogsheads had been sent on a suicidal attack for sound military reasons; it was harsh, but rational. But Corvus had also thought this far ahead. Their obedience, their self-sacrifice had finally won round the doubters among his officers. Rictus had at last earned his place as one of Corvus’s marshals.
You conniving little bastard, Rictus thought, and he raised his empty cup to Corvus in a small salute.
“Back to business,” Corvus said briskly. “The roads are turned to soup with this god-cursed rain, and men who have abandoned their armour can run faster than those who have preserved it. The Igranians have done what they can, but I’ve no wish to scatter the army on a wild hunt along the Imperial road. We’re fairly certain that Karnos was expecting reinforcements before battle commenced. It remains to be seen if they will now remain in the field or return to their cities.”
“What of Karnos? Any news?” Rictus asked.
“Their dead are out there in heaps,” Ardashir said. “If he is one of them he will take time to find.”
Corvus waved his hand back and forth. “Dead or alive, he brought the League here to its destruction. At least a third of the enemy army is still on the field, and Machran lost most heavily of all the League cities, as I had intended. If we appear before the city walls within the next month, I will be surprised if they do not accept our terms.” “Machran itself,” Demetrius said, with an odd look of awe on his face.
“Machran folds, and the rest go down with it -they will not fight on once we have our feet planted on the floor of the Empirion,” Corvus said. “We are very close, brothers.”