The bone fields, p.21
The Bone Fields, page 21
Finally, she inhaled and mastered herself. ‘I think I should go now. It’s for the best.’
Nausea welled in him, but he had no more fight. He nodded numbly and sighed in surrender. ‘As you wish.’
He kept his eyes on the horizon as she shifted hesitantly from his vision. Her heels tapped a few yards up the slope and then stopped, and for a heartbeat he thought she might throw herself back to him, but when her voice came, it was bleak and hollow.
‘Freyja’s dead.’
He turned and knew she was calibrating his response, but all he could think of to say was, ‘I’m sorry. She was one of the best.’
It was not enough. If ever he had needed the gift of oratory, it was at that moment and she looked at him in disappointment.
‘She was much more than that,’ she said quietly. ‘But perhaps it’s for the best that she never saw Valhalla’s subjugation.’
She made to depart again, when another question arrested her. ‘Have you heard from Oliver?’
‘Oliver? I had an email from him a few months ago asking what I was up to, but otherwise I’ve not heard from him for over a year. What makes you ask?’
She held her response. They were only days from battle on a foreign plain. They needed every ounce of focus and commitment. How could she tell Tyler of the deaths of Oliver’s parents, of her suspicions that he had been forcibly subsumed into the Pantheon Schola system? It would blow Tyler’s mind. He would raise hell trying to locate the lad at a time when his troops needed stable command more than ever.
‘No reason,’ she said. ‘I just wondered.’
And with that, she left him.
‘Mikhail, it’s good of you to spare me the time.’
‘Come now, Marcella, I think we can do away with the pleasantries. What can I do for you?’
Her emotions were under control. Her tears were gone, her shock locked away. Now her woman’s heart was encased in cold, unforgiving iron.
All those years of deceit. All those thousands of conversations when she could have been trusted with the knowledge.
She felt like such a fool.
‘I have a favour to ask of you.’
The line was poor. No doubt Malutin was deep in rural Hungary overseeing preparations with Attila.
‘Have a care what you ask,’ he growled. ‘I’m days away from a showdown with Hakan’s Sultanate and I’m not about to let politics get within a furlong of my Huns’ battle plans.’
‘Of course not. I would never dream of proposing anything of strategic disadvantage to you.’
Malutin harrumphed down the phone. ‘I mean to take Mehmed down this time. Without the limit of a single Battle Hour, my Horns will tire him into submission.’
‘I will be watching with bated breath.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘It’s the Titans that interest me.’
‘Those maggots. I’ve told Attila to play with them, give Zeus a bloody nose, but it’s Mehmed I want, not Alexander.’
‘Justly so. Alexander is insignificant in the grander scheme of things. But my favour does concern his troops.’
‘Spit it out.’ Malutin’s voice was laced with suspicion.
‘I want the head of the King Killer.’
Malutin barked with laughter. ‘Has he become an irritant?’
‘His profile is much too high for any single soldier in the Pantheon. The feeds of his cavalry charging at Sveinn are still being shared everywhere.’
‘His cavalry? His damn cavalry is eleven horses! I have six hundred. We can destroy him with our first charge. Marcella, he’s nothing. Why are you troubling yourself?’
‘Trust me when I say he has set a precedent that must not be allowed to take root.’
‘We’ve already agreed another King must die at Hortobágy. So there will be another King Killer, one of my trusted Huns who will have buried their blade deep in Mehmed’s heart.’
‘Then the Titan King Killer will not be missed.’
Malutin was silent for several seconds, mulling over her request and wondering what she wasn’t telling him.
‘What’s in it for me?’ he demanded eventually.
‘What’s always in it for people like us. Brief your syndicates. Massage the odds. Create the demand and set your bluffs. Wager on his death at a certain hour in the Battle, on a specific regiment of your Huns to claim his head. Select the weapon and the precise manner of his death. Do whatever you damn well want to guarantee a small fortune for yourself and your allies. Just make sure he’s dead before the Battle is done. You said yourself your cavalry can kill him on demand.’
Malutin took his time answering. ‘Money is money, but I have associates who would be only too grateful for advance intel on a guaranteed action. I will consider it.’
‘I will be indebted to you.’
Malutin had been about to end the call, but he paused at this. ‘Your debt, Marcella, is something to be valued.’
‘So I will give it. You may ask me any favour if you do my bidding during this fight.’
She could sense him teetering on the brink. Finally, he relented.
‘You will have his head.’
Part Three
Discovery
XXIV
‘If half a thousand cavalry pour over that horizon, we had better know what we’re damn well doing,’ growled Dio from his station just behind Heph, and softly enough for his Captain’s ears only.
The Palatinate was formed up in battle order on the plain of Hortobágy, a hundred miles east of Budapest, and Heph thought he had never before seen light like it. An ocean of sky extended in all directions and afternoon sun bounced off helmets and breastplates, hoplons and sarissas, uninhibited by cloud or shade. He had ensured his unit drank a bellyful of water before departing camp, but the heat was not severe enough to threaten dehydration, nor the climate dry enough to induce thirst. Indeed, the grass was green and the streams they passed were full.
The light, however, glared down on them and forced their heads to bow and their eyes to scrunch. Even Boreas had lowered his neck despondently.
Although the land was featureless, the Vigiles unit that had led them from camp in an electric Jeep had halted them here in the shallowest of natural bowls. Ahead and to their left, the plain rose just enough to inhibit their views and conceal what might lie beyond. Heph guessed they were facing north, but the sun was still too high to gauge with any confidence.
The klaxon would sound at three, the usual start time selected in order to accommodate the privileged Pantheon audiences in their multitude of time zones. Far to the east, it would already be evening in Tokyo and Shanghai, where the ultra-rich would be gathering for expensive dinners and private viewings. In New York they would be breakfasting on salmon and bagels and on America’s west coast, the Curiate would be hauling themselves awake in the last hours of darkness to hit the caffeine and settle in front of their live feeds.
For the first time everyone had cleared their diaries beyond the usual hour, because on this occasion there would be no cessation of the conflict. No klaxon to signal an end to hostilities. The struggle might continue all afternoon. The sun might dip, the shadows extend, the light fade and still the troops might wage war. For the Caelestia had decreed that once blades were drawn, none should be sheathed until one of three Kings lay dead, his blood spilled by a sword in hand, his killer standing over him.
Heph touched his heels to Boreas’ flanks and wheeled to peer down the Titan lines. His eleven riders were stationed on the left flank of the Palatinate, providing the flimsiest of screens for Nicanor’s Phalanx. Beyond the forest of sarissas, Alexander had surrounded himself with his Companions, Menes to the fore. Next to them were Parmenion’s peltasts, arranged loosely, javelins in hand. And when Heph squinted into the distance, one hand up to shield his eyes, he could just see the mass of the new Hellenic regiment on the far flank. Their lines weaved in unmilitary fashion and their hoplons were propped against their legs while they waited, but they looked a formidable enough number. He thought of Calder somewhere amongst them. How strange that she wore bronze today and stood once more under the same banner as him.
He could not see the Sacred Band. Perhaps they were hidden amongst the Companions or maybe they loitered in the small stand of trees that anchored the Titans’ far flank.
On another day, Heph would have been impressed with the Palatinate’s number. The assimilation of Valhalla had instantly swelled the Titan headcount to two hundred and forty. Then the combined total of Blood Credits won by both Palatinates during the last Season had totalled over two hundred, allowing Alexander to harvest every pupil in the Titan Schola who could handle a blade, and even some from the erstwhile Valhalla Schola. Taking into account a forty Credit expenditure on the new horses and a series of two-Credit elite troop recruitments, the Palatinate still boasted nigh on four hundred blades. Nicanor’s Phalanx had six additional rows of twelve, Parmenion’s peltasts were almost fifty strong, and the rag-tag remnants of the Companions had been transformed into a hoplon-count of sixty.
It was a mighty force, but it dwindled in comparison with what awaited them. And every Titan knew it.
Alexander stood in the centre of his revitalised Palatinate and fear radiated from him. One King must die that day and the weight of this knowledge buckled him. He had been manic in camp, barking wild-eyed orders, but on the march out he had fallen silent and trudged solemnly after the Vigiles, displaying no more authority than the greenest Schola recruits in the back lines of the Phalanx. Two sturdy Companions carried the Lion and Star of Macedon banners. In previous Battles, when the Rules were understood and the enemy in sight, they would have driven them into the ground and protected their King with their lives. But today there was no sign of the foe. No movement for as far as the eye could see. So the banner bearers stood uncertainly, waiting for a command from their sovereign.
Alexander spotted Heph out of line and signalled furiously for him to return to his station. Heph ignored him long enough for most of the Palatinate to witness his insolence, then clucked and turned Boreas back.
Dio drew up next to him on Xanthos. ‘I don’t like it,’ he whispered. ‘If this is the Field, then where the hell is our opposition?’
For once the roar of helicopters was absent, but the sky was filled with the whir of drones zipping backwards and forwards to record every angle. Spread along the horizons were Vigiles camera teams, but this time they stood in the open backs of Jeeps.
Heph nodded towards them. ‘Look at those guys. Static filming stations were used for the previous Battles, but now they’re in vehicles.’
‘Maybe this isn’t the Field.’
‘Or maybe this Field is a hell of a lot bigger than we assumed.’
In the commanders’ briefing earlier, he had learned that the perimeter of the Field would be marked by lines of red flags and no Pantheon trooper should set foot outside it. Sure enough, beyond the copse of trees on the far brow of the natural bowl, flags broke the horizon like a physical fence line, but in all other directions, they were absent.
‘Christ, this is good horse country,’ Dio said, squinting at the unbroken grassland.
‘Just what we didn’t need.’
‘My thoughts exactly. Where are the bogs and forests and mountains of Scotland when you need them? The sort of terrain that might break up six hundred bastard Huns. And, remind me, how many mounted troops can Mehmed boast?’
‘Seventy – and they’re called Sipahi. Easily differentiated from the Huns because they’re big-horse heavy cavalry, wearing chainmail that hangs to their knees and helmets that rise to points. They’ll carry small round shields, lances and curved scimitars. If they care for authenticity, they may even have feathers in their helms. Even their horses are armoured.’
‘To be frank, Heph, I’m just planning to kill anyone who’s not wearing Titan bronze.’
‘You should know your enemy, my friend. It might save your life. I’ve been to your home. I’ve seen your library. I know you’re as much a student of history as I am.’
In the days before the call to depart Edinburgh, Heph had shut himself off in his West End apartment and googled the hell out of the Sultanate and the Huns. He had watched every unauthorised film clip that had somehow slipped online; blurry, distant images of wild horsemen and squares of Sultanate infantry. He had peered at each charge, each melee, hitting the replay button time and again.
Then he had done a deeper dive into the known history of Mehmed’s armies in the sixteenth century. He could find little on the Yaya infantry regiments, but the few illustrations he had discovered suggested they were lightly armoured with steel breastplates and carried spears and small, manoeuvrable shields. The Janissaries were the heavy infantry, bedecked like their cavalry kin in knee-length chainmail, iron wrist-guards and the same pointed helmets. The history books said they used to be Christian slaves, trained as captives and indoctrinated in the ways of the Sultan until they became Mehmed’s most fervent soldiers. They had been feared throughout the Sultan’s empire and now they were a force to be reckoned with in the Pantheon.
In camp during the preceding days, Heph had gathered his little cavalry and attempted to furnish them with his findings. He wanted them to be able to recognise the different units of their opponents and to understand their fighting strengths. They listened with rapt attention, but he was dubious that he had been a good enough teacher.
The organisation of the Huns, he admitted, was altogether more indecipherable. They all wore black robes, thick fur hats and boots and were minimally armoured. It was rumoured that the men amongst them despised facial hair and would scratch or burn their cheeks to hinder growth. Heph suspected this was just an online story, stirred up by the obsessives on the fan-sites who yearned for good old Pantheon villains, but it made him uneasy nonetheless.
Like his new cavalry, the Huns rode with no stirrups and only cloth saddles, but they had the benefit of years of training behind them, and their mounts were tough little steppe ponies, agile and well-balanced. Battle tactics constituted a howling, screaming, lightning-fast chaos, but trawls through more Pantheon fan-sites revealed that Attila’s Palatinate was divided into three sections, based loosely on the concept of two horns surrounding an enemy, before a heavy attack punched through the centre.
Uptar commanded the First Horn, which also formed Attila’s personal guard – his most loyal troops. Ellac led the Second Horn, armed with curved composite bows. Heph remembered his visit to Mongolia to witness the skills of Genghis’ mounted archers and he feared Ellac’s Second Horn would be just as proficient. He imagined them swirling five hundred yards beyond reach, loosing lethal volleys of arrows, then galloping away while twisting and sending reverse parting flights into the Titan lines.
And then there was Bleda, a name that had only recently grown infamous amongst online fans after she allegedly accused her commander of misconduct and oversaw his long, hideous death, along with four of his loyalists, impaled on stakes driven into the soil of Hortobágy. Now she was captain of Attila’s Black Cloaks, the most feared and wildest troops in the whole Pantheon. They would come with spears and curved blades, brandishing ropes to lasso hapless foe and drag them away. No one knew what happened to those unfortunate enough to be ensnared like this, but many of the Huns wore human skulls as their face masks.
It was little wonder that in classrooms, chatrooms, staffrooms and coffee houses across the world, the same phrase was repeated: Win or die, but don’t ever get captured by the Black Cloaks.
A shout broke Heph from his thoughts.
The Heavies had spotted movement and arms began to point. He followed their fingers and saw three riders approaching from the horizon at a slow trot.
‘What have we here?’ growled Dio and he glanced back at the Companion Cavalry arranged in column. Lenore and Spyro met his eyes. Zephyr glowered behind his helmet, but the newbies shifted nervously and strained to make out the approaching riders.
‘Huns,’ said Heph. ‘The horses are too short and stocky to be anything else.’ He squinted hard into the light. ‘One of them’s carrying the Crowned Eagle banner. My god, I think this could be Attila coming.’
‘Finally. I was starting to think we’d have to start without them. So where’s his wild army?’
Heph was silent, examining the empty grassland beyond. No rising dust. No sparkle of sun on blades. ‘I don’t think he’s bringing his troops.’
‘Then what the hell does he want?’
‘Maybe it’s a tradition in these parts. Some sort of Kingly pow-wow before it all kicks off.’
A commotion was breaking out down the line near the Titan flags as those around Alexander came to the same conclusion.
‘I spy more company,’ said Dio, dragging Heph’s attention back to the horizon. Sure enough, another group of three riders had appeared to the east and approached at the same steady pace. ‘Still think he’s not bringing his troops?’
Heph raised his hand to shield his eyes from the glare. ‘I already said you should know your enemy. Those are big beasts and they sure aren’t carrying Huns.’
Shouts from along the line forced him to turn. Alexander was jabbing a thumb at him and hollering.
‘You better see what his highness wants,’ said Dio, but Heph was already encouraging Boreas to move.
He trotted along the front of the Phalanx, inclining his head to Nicanor as he passed.
‘A horse!’ shouted Alexander when Heph was in earshot.
‘My lord?’
The King was crimson and sweating beneath his ornate armour. ‘You think I’m going to trudge out there and address those bastards on foot? I am the Lion of Macedon. I am their equal.’
Heph shifted his weight and waved for Dio to join them.
‘Lend him Xanthos,’ he said quietly once Dio was beside him.
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘Just for this. Nothing’s going to happen.’
