‘It’s a relief to be going at last,’ Ardashir said. He stood over Rictus, as stately as a sunlit stork. ‘This time in the city has brought it all home to him. He’s at his best when on the move, nothing but that damned tent over his head.’
Rictus smiled. ‘He can’t be on the move forever, Ardashir. One day he will sit down and realise he can go no further. On that day, I will be glad to be elsewhere.’
‘On that day he will need you more than he ever has before.’
‘No. My time is past. I’m too broken and old now to ever stand in a spearline again. I am no further use to him.’
‘My, you’re a stiff necked bastard — as bad as he is.’
‘Keep an eye on him for me.’
‘Will you be coming east, Rictus, or will you stay here? You know that wherever you stay, Corvus will set you up like a king.’
‘I’ve no desire to be one. I am not Demetrius — I don’t have a wife whispering ambitious noises in my ear.’
‘Then you will come east — good — that relieves my mind.’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Rictus snapped. And then, ‘Yes, I suppose so. I’m to bring Roshana to him anyway, once Ashur falls.’
‘Does she know what her fate is to be?’
‘I don’t speak Kufr — I haven’t asked. It would not surprise me, though. She’s not stupid.’
‘If it happens, then Ashurnan’s grandson may one day be Great King. The more things change — ’
‘The more they stay the same.’ Rictus smiled up at the tall Kefre. ‘You be careful, Ardashir. You and Druze are the only people left with the army he still listens to.’
‘I’ll be careful — it’s in my nature. I leave the heroic gestures to you Macht. The Kefren are a more pragmatic people.’
‘I have learned that. I am glad that I have one to call a friend.’
Ardashir bent and embraced Rictus in his chair. ‘Stay alive, brother,’ he said. ‘If Bel is merciful, the next time we meet it will be in Ashur itself.’
‘Perhaps.’ Rictus rose to his feet as Ardashir bowed to him. Kurun propped him up on one side and on the other he leaned upon a thornwood stick, a black, gnarled length of iron-hard wood polished to a high ebony shine. A parting gift from Corvus, one of many.
‘Ardashir.’ Rictus called the Kefre back as he was turning to leave.
‘Come with me a moment. There is something I want you to see.’
He limped into the antechamber, where his gear had been stowed. His armour, his weapons, the curios and equipment he had hauled halfway across the world. They half-filled the room, hung from the walls and assembled on shelves. It seemed like quite a collection, but it was not much to show for a life.
At the far wall were two black cuirasses, Antimone’s Gift, polished and shining in the lamplight. Sometimes they reflected the flames, and sometimes they did not. It was one of the mysteries about them. The two cuirasses were exactly the same; neither had so much as a scratch upon them, though they had both seen hard service. There was no way to guess their age; they were as changeless as the waves of the sea.
‘They brought me Fornyx’s armour, after they found his body,’ Rictus said. ‘His is the one on the right, though they can’t really be told apart. I’ve been thinking on it, and it seems to me you should have it. Fornyx would have had it so. After Gaugamesh they policed up a dozen of these from the dead, and I know Druze and Teresian and Demetrius were given them by Corvus. But he never gave one to you, his best friend.’
‘Because I am Kufr,’ Ardashir breathed. ‘Rictus, I am honoured by the thought, I truly am. But I cannot take this thing. It would not be right.’
‘Bullshit. If Corvus can wear one, then I’m damned sure you can. You’re a marshal of the army — you should be a cursebearer no matter what blood runs through you. Kurun — go get it.’
The boy left Rictus’s side and put his hands out to lift the right-hand cuirass off its stand. Then he shrank away. ‘I cannot,’ he said to Rictus. ‘It frightens me.’
Rictus grunted and limped forward himself. He took the cuirass by its wing and lifted it easily with one hand, then tossed it to Ardashir.
The Kefren marshal caught it with an expression of outright fear blazed across his face, as if he expected the touch of it to burn him. He held the armour away from his body in both hands, as one might hold a baby which had soiled itself.
‘It won’t bite, you damned fool,’ Rictus growled. ‘Put it on. Kurun — help him, and stop being such a girl about it.’
The snap of the clasps was loud in the room, along with the heavy breathing of the two Kufr. Rictus leaned on his stick and watched while Ardashir clicked down the wings over his shoulders and stood, shocked, as the armour moulded to his shape, extending to fit his long torso.
‘Bel’s blood — it is alive!’
‘No — it’s just a piece of craft we don’t understand. Men made these things once, but then forgot how.’
‘I thought your goddess gifted them to the Macht.’
Rictus shrugged. ‘Call me cynical.’
They stood looking at one another. ‘What will your people say when they see a Kufr wearing the Curse of God?’ Ardashir asked.
‘They will get used to it. Times are changing, Ardashir. The army is made up of all three races now. And every man who was at Gaugamesh and the Haneikos knows you have earned the right to wear that armour.’
Ardashir embraced him. ‘You have come a long way, my friend,’ he said.
‘So have we all.’
The army marched out of its camps two days later, on a bright summer morning in the month the Kufr called Osh-Nabal, the time of the high sun. Rictus watched the endless columns filing across the Bekai bridge, Druze and his Igranians already fanning out towards the foothills of the Magron beyond. The shimmering haze of the river-plain blurred the bright sun-caught flashes of bronze and iron on the marching men. A contingent of hufsan spearmen marched with them, volunteers who had joined the great adventure to see where it might lead. The army was no longer truly Macht. The empire was no longer entirely Kufr. He wondered if it was for the best, or if it really made any difference at all to the farmers and peasants of the fertile lowlands. They still paid their taxes and saw their sons go off to war as they always had. The more things change…
‘Will we follow them?’ Kurun asked beside him. The boy was staring at the marching columns with a kind of hunger, the endless curiosity of the young.
‘We’ll follow them,’ Rictus said. ‘How could we not?’ He set a hand on the boy’s shoulder and bent his head to hide the sudden dazzle in his eyes.
TWENTY-TWO
They had been gathering people ever since leaving Hamadan, accumulating a ragged tail of leaderless troops, fleeing nobles, masterless slaves. As they came down into the sun-baked lowlands of Asuria, they numbered in their thousands, a cavalcade of remnants looking for a way to become whole again.
At the head of the straggling column Kouros sat upon the big bay Niseian which had carried him clear through the mountains, and reined in at the sight below, his breath caught in his throat at the panorama that opened out before him.
Asuria, the heart of the empire. It was an endless green country which rolled away beyond the edge of sight, gridded with the darker green of irrigation channels, glinting under the sun. In the distance, he could see the grey line of Ashur’s walls, the sea of terracotta roofs beyond it, and the two ziggurats, lonely mountains afloat on the haze, the Fane of Bel catching the sun with a brief flash of gold.
Lorka, Archon of the Arakosans, drew up beside him in his kingfisher-blue armour. He touched his forehead and then opened his palm to the sun in thanks to Bel.
‘So long as Ashur stands, there is hope,’ he said to Kouros. ‘You are Great King now — it must be proclaimed. The people must know that the world continues as it did, that all things will one day be the same again.’