They reached a small stream bed, stopped to drink, refill their water-skins. Warm and dirty with a distinct aroma of goat shit. After five hours of dry marching, the feel of it against the skin almost as sweet as the taste of it in the mouth.
Running water, some small rocks to sit on, two big rocks providing a bit of shade. What more could a man want in life? Tobias went to consult with Skie.
‘We’ll stop here a while, lads. Have some lunch. Rest up a bit. Sit out the worst of the heat.’ If it got any hotter, their swords would start to melt. The men cheered. Cook pots were filled and scrub gathered; Gulius set to preparing a soupy porridge. New boy Marith was sent off to dig the hole for the latrine. Tobias himself sat down and stretched out his legs. Closed his eyes. Cool dark shadows and the smell of water. Bliss.
‘So how much further do you think we’ve got till we get there?’ Emit asked.
Punch someone, if they asked him that one more time. Tobias opened his eyes again with a sigh. ‘I have no idea. Ask Skie. Couple of days? A week?’
Rate grinned at Emit. ‘Don’t tell me you’re getting bored of sand?’
‘I’ll die of boredom, if I don’t see something soon that isn’t sand and your face.’
‘I saw a goat a couple of hours back. What more do you want? And it was definitely a female goat, before you answer that.’
They had been marching now for almost a month. Forty men, lightly armed and with little armour. No horses, no archers, no mage or whatnot. No doctor, though Tobias considered himself something of a dab hand at field surgery and dosing the clap. Just forty men in the desert, walking west into the setting sun. Nearly there now. Gods only knew what they would find. The richest empire the world had ever known. Yellow sand.
‘Not bad, this,’ Alxine said as he scraped the last of his porridge. ‘The lumps of mud make it taste quite different from the stuff we had at breakfast.’
‘I’m not entirely sure it’s mud …’
‘I’m not entirely sure I care.’
They bore the highly imaginative title The Free Company of the Sword. An old name, if not a famous one. Well enough known in certain select political circles. Tobias had suggested several times they change it.
‘The sand gives it an interesting texture, too. The way it crunches between your teeth.’
‘You said that yesterday.’
‘And I’ll probably say it again tomorrow. And the day after that. I’ll be an old man and still be picking bloody desert out of my gums.’
‘And other places.’
‘That, my friend, is not something I ever want to have to think about.’
Everything reduced to incidentals by the hot yellow earth and the hot yellow air. Water. Food. Water. Rest. Water. Shade. Tobias sat back against a rock listening to his men droning on just as they had yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. Almost rhythmic, like. Musical. A nice predictable pattern to it. Backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards, backwards and forwards. The same thinking. The same words. Warp and weft of a man’s life.
Rate was on form today. ‘When we get there, the first thing I’m going to do is eat a plate of really good steak. Marbled with fat, the bones all cracked to let the marrow out, maybe some hot bread and a few mushrooms to go with it, mop up the juice.’
Emit snorted. ‘The richest empire the world has ever known, and you’re dreaming about steak?’
‘Death or a good dinner, that’s my motto.’
‘Oh, I’m not disputing that. I’m just saying as there should be better things to eat when we get there than steak.’
‘Better than steak? Nothing’s better than steak.’
‘As the whore said to the holy man.’
‘I’d have thought you’d be sick of steak, Rate, lad.’
‘You’d have thought wrong, then. You know how it feels, looking after the bloody things day in, day out, never getting to actually sodding eat them?’
‘As the holy man said to the whore.’
Tiredness was setting in now. Boredom. Fear. They marched and grumbled and it was hot and at night it was cold, and they were desperate to get there, and the thought of getting there was terrifying, and they were fed up to buggery with yellow dust and yellow heat and yellow air. Good lads, really, though, Tobias thought. Good lads. Annoying the hell out of him and about two bad nights short of beating the crap out of each other, but basically good lads. He should be kind of proud.
‘The Yellow Empire.’
‘The Golden Empire.’
‘The Sunny Empire.’
‘Sunny’s nice and cheerful. Golden’s a hope. And Yellow’d be good when we get there. In their soldiers, anyway. Nice and cowardly, yeah?’
Gulius banged the ladle. ‘More porridge, anyone? Get it while it’s not yet fully congealed.’
‘I swear I sneezed something recently that looked like that last spoonful.’
‘A steak … Quick cooked, fat still spitting, charred on the bone … Mushrooms … Gravy … A cup of Immish gold …’
‘I’ll have another bowl if it’s going begging.’
‘Past begging, man, this porridge. This porridge is lying unconscious in the gutter waiting to be kicked hard in the head.’
A crow flew down near them cawing. Alxine tried to catch it. Failed. It flew up again and crapped on one of the kit bags.
‘Bugger. Good eating on one of them.’
‘Scrawny-looking fucker though. Even for a crow.’
‘Cooked up with a few herbs, you wouldn’t be complaining. Delicacy, in Allene, slow-roasted crow’s guts. Better than steak.’
‘That was my sodding bag!’
‘Lucky, in Allene, a crow crapping on you.’
‘Quiet!’ Tobias scrambled to his feet. ‘Something moved over to the right.’
‘Probably a goat,’ said Rate. ‘If we’re really lucky, it’ll be that female goa—’
The dragon was on them before they’d even had a chance to draw their swords. ›
Big as a cart horse. Deep fetid marsh rot snot shit filth green. Traced out in scar tissue like embroidered cloth. Wings black and white and silver, heavy and vicious as blades. The stink of it came choking. Fire and ash. Hot metal. Fear. Joy. Pain. There are dragons in the desert, said the old maps of old empire, and they had laughed and said no, no, not that close to great cities, if there ever were dragons there they are gone like the memory of a dream. Its teeth closed ripping on Gulius’s arm, huge, jagged; its eyes were like knives as it twisted away with the arm hanging bloody in its mouth. It spat blood and slime and roared out flame again, reared up beating its wings. Men fell back screaming, armour scorched and molten, melted into burnt melted flesh. The smell of roasting meat surrounded them. Better than steak.
Gulius was lying somehow still alive, staring at the hole where his right arm had been. The dragon’s front legs came down smash onto his body. Plume of blood. Gulius disappeared. Little smudge of red on the green. A grating shriek as its claws scrabbled over hot stones. Screaming. Screaming. Beating wings. The stream rose up boiling. Two men were in the stream trying to douse burning flesh and the boiling water was in their faces and they were screaming too. Everything hot and boiling and burning, dry wind and dry earth and dry fire and dry hot scales, the whole great lizard body scorching like a furnace, roaring hot burning killing demon death thing.
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