The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney Read Free Book Online

wailing children came from the doorway of the ruined
watchtower.
    “I wish those
brats were mutes,” the thin merchant said.
    “I wish you were a
mute,” his fat colleague murmured.
    The goatmen sidled
up to the wall-bottom, watching out for missiles. When it appeared the
defenders had none they grew more brazen, edged closer. Two spoke together and
pointed up at Gasca, in full panoply, as stark and fearsome as some statue of
warfare incarnate.
    “If I had some rag
of red about my shoulders they’d walk away,” he muttered to Rictus. There was
no response from the Iscan. Despite the cold, Gasca was sweating, and the heavy
shield dragged at his left bicep. Wolves he had killed, and other men he had
broken down in brawls, but this was the first time he had ever hoped to plunge
a spearhead into someone’s heart.
    He jumped, as
beside him Rictus shouted with sudden venom. “Are you afraid? Why be afraid?”
For a second, fury flooded his limbs as he thought the Iscan was talking to
him; then he realised that Rictus was shouting at the goatmen below. He turned
his head, and saw through the confined eye-spaces of his helm that Rictus was
red-faced, angry. More than angry. He was feral, hate shining out of his eyes.
Gasca shifted away from him out of sheer instinct, as a man will give space to
a vicious dog.
    “Is it too much,
to fight men face to face, who have weapons in their hands? Can you not do
that? Or will we send out children with sticks, and let them taste your valour?
Come—you know me. You know where I hail from. Come up here and taste my spear
again!” Now Gasca was thrust aside, and Rictus stood alone at the top of the
steps. There was spittle on his lips. He opened out his arms as if to pray.
    The javelin came
searing up from the men below. Gasca, by some grace, saw it coming, even with
his circumscribed vision, and managed to lift his shield crab-wise. It clicked
off the rim of the bronze, pocking it.
    “What in the gods
are you doing?” he shouted at Rictus. He had half a mind to shove this madman
down the steps.
    “Now keep your
shield up,” Rictus said, and his face was rational again.
    A flurry of
javelins. They came arcing in: one, two, three. Two bounced off Gasca’s shield.
The third struck the ground between his feet, making him flinch. His panoply
seemed impossibly heavy. He wanted to rip off the damned helm and see what was
going on. His eye-slots seemed absurdly small.
    But now Rictus was
smiling. In his hand he held two javelins. The tips were bent a little; soft
mountain-iron.
    “Well thrown. Now
have them back.” His arm swooped in a blur. He had looped the middle-strings of
the weapon about his first two fingers and as he loosed it the javelin spun,
whining. It transfixed one of the goatmen below, entering under his beard and
emerging from his nape for half a foot. The man crumpled, and his comrades
scattered around him as though his bloody end were contagious.
    The second sped
into them three seconds later. This one missed a man’s head by a handspan but
struck the fellow next to him just above the knee. He yelped, dropped his
spear, and grasped his spitted limb with both hands, mouth wide and wet.
    “Even odds now,”
Rictus said, perfectly calm.
    “Boy, the goddess
has you under her wings,” the fat merchant said behind them.
    “Isca trained me
well. They’ll rush the stairs now. We stop the rush, and they’ll break. Then we
go after them. Agreed?” The men around him mumbled assent.
    “They come,” Gasca
said, and raised his spear to his shoulder.
    The rank smell
rose before them as they scrabbled up the snow-covered stone of the stairway.
Jabbing with their spears, snarling, they did not seem like men at all. Gasca
crouched and took the impact of one blow on his shield. It jolted him, but the
heavy wood and bronze shrugged off the spearpoint. His mouth was a slot of
spittle as he breathed in and out, and all fear left him; there was no time for
it. He felt his own spear