The army was restless about its fires, the Honai sitting on the bowls of their shields, their eyes catching the firelight like the polished bulbs of brass lamps. In the hufsan lines, the mountain folk were singing their dark croon of lament for the dead, celebrating and remembering those of their kin who had fallen during the day. The Juthan sat in quiet circles, their halberds on their knees, talking in their sonorous tongue. Farther back, on the less broken ground to the south, the cavalry were quartered. These had seen the brunt of the day’s fighting, and up and down the horse-lines the Arakosans and the Asurians were tending their animals. They took their mounts down to the river to drink in shifts of a thousand, and many of the Arakosans did not come back from these trips. Vorus suspected that they were deserting in large numbers, for their assault on the Macht flank had broken them, and hundreds had no horse to ride at all. They had been in the centre of the day’s carnage, and seemed haunted by it. None of the rest of the troops who remained on the hills had yet fought the Macht, and the Arakosans were telling gloomy tales of slaughter to visitors from other quarters of the camp who came to find out how exactly these creatures made war. All of the army had seen the left wing disintegrate under the Macht assault, and had heard the Paean sung in great and bloody splendour. That part of the battle was already becoming a kind of legend.
In the morning, Vorus promised himself, we will make another.
“They’ll attack at dawn,” Jason said, the cracked mud falling from his face as it dried. He buckled on the Curse of God without looking at his fingers, staring out at the Kufr campfires burning in their sleepless arc across the hills.
“Mynon, we need new mora commanders. Get the senior centurion in each and bring him here. Buridan will do for mine. I know Mochran and Phinero will do too. Get them here fast; we don’t have time to fuck about.”
Mynon seemed about to say something; his keen eyes were almost buried by the frowning bridge of his brows. Then he nodded and trotted off.
“You, Rictus, take one of these,” Jason said, gesturing to the neat lines of black armour upon the ground.
Rictus stood looking down on them, priceless relics with no one to claim them.
“They should have been worn,” he said.
“Then they’d be in Kufr hands by now. It was a sound decision. Take one for Antimone’s sake. For the sake of those that wore them. They do not bite.”
All around the pair the Macht had gathered a little closer to watch and listen. Bad news was the easiest thing in the world to disseminate about an army. It flew on the swiftest of wings. Antimone saw to that; it was part of her curse. This news had travelled through the centons like a wildfire. Their leaders were dead, some of the ablest and most popular men in the army. There had not been a panic, but the ranks had broken all the same. The army had begun to revert to is constituent parts, the centons clustering together, the line abandoned, the men talking in quiet groups among themselves. They did not even have the communal centoi to gather around any more, nor any wood to burn. They stood in the darkness, separate entities whose loyalties now took little reckoning of any overall command. They were on the edge of disintegration, and Jason knew it.
“Take one, Rictus,” he repeated, more gently now. The big, blood-masked strawhead stood looking down on the dead generals’ cuirasses as though they were the naked wife of a friend.
“I have no right to it,” Rictus said. Tears had cut white streaks down his face and in the light of the two moons he looked like some warpainted savage from the Inner Mountains.
“You have every right. I intend to mark out the new morai commanders with these. It will give them authority in the eyes of the men. Now take one and fucking put it on.” Jason’s voice cracked on the last words. Around them, the men of his old centon stood murmuring. Finally Gasca spoke up. “Take it Rictus. You’re as good as any of those as wore it before.” And there was a rumbling of assent from the Dogsheads around him. Whistler raised a spear. “Take it lad. You earned it fair, coming back alive from those murderous bastards.”
So Rictus bent and grasped the shoulder-flaps of the nearest cuirass. He did not know whose it was; Antimone’s Gift was the same for every owner, and could not be modified or customised in any way. Whatever material it was made of shrugged off violence and age and the tools of men. It remained inviolate and anonymous.
And it was light-so light that Rictus was startled. He straightened more quickly than he had intended as it came up in his hands, hardly heavier than a winter cloak. The two moulded plates of it cinched together under the left arm with strange little black clasps, and then the shoulder flaps, the wings they were called, were tugged down into place and clicked into others of these fastenings on the breast. Rictus tugged at the neck of the armour where it cut into the flesh of his neck, and Jason pulled his hand away.
“Wait a moment.”
As the cuirass took warmth from his body, so it seemed to ease upon his bones. Rictus looked up, astonished, and Jason smiled. “They mould to the form they find within them. Something inside them shifts and melts and then hardens again. Give it a while, and you’ll barely know you wear it.”
I am a Cursebearer, Rictus thought. It may be that I will be one for only a few hours, but I will die with Antimone’s Gift upon my back, fighting fearful odds, in the company of my peers. Father, you could have wished nothing better for me.
“Don’t forget the helm,” Jason added, gesturing to the line of transverse-crested helmets the generals had left behind. “We must all of us look the part if we’re to play this thing out to the end.”
The centurions Jason and Mynon had picked to be the new generals of the army trickled in, grim, blasted looks upon their faces. As they did, Jason handed each one of them a black cuirass, and they hesitated as Rictus had before donning them.
“Reform the line,” Jason told them. “We attack them now, under cover of darkness. We break this army of theirs and make through it for the river.”
“It’s twelve pasangs, Jason,” Mynon said quietly.
“We take the Bekai crossings and hold them, and base ourselves in Kaik. There, we resupply. One more thing: we take back our baggage on the way. I want our bloody pots back.”
“They’ll cut us to pieces on the plain with their cavalry,” Buridan said, a rumble in his beard.
“Their cavalry did a lot of fighting today, even the Great King’s bodyguard itself. And no one takes cavalry into battle in the dark. We have three or four hours until dawn; we must use that time.”
“The wounded?” one of the new generals asked. This was Phinero, whose brother Pomero had died in the Great King’s tent not two hours before.
“Five morai up front, one on each flank, four in the rear. The wounded in the middle. Those who cannot walk must find someone to carry them or take their own lives.”
A pause. No one dissented. They were all half-crazed with thirst and exhaustion, and did not expect to live for much longer themselves. “This is how we move out,” Jason began.