Free The Ten Thousand by Paul Kearney

centurions
looked at the wine-ringed table-top, frowning. At last Mynon said; “Fine words.
Eloquent. I put them in my head and admire them. You always had a way with
words, Pasion, even as far back as Ebsus. You could make men believe their own
shit didn’t stink, if you had a mind to, but we’ve all grey in our beards here,
and rhetoric to us is like a middle-aged wife. You can admire it, flirt with
it, but you’re not going to let it fuck with you. Take my advice and speak
plain now, or you’re going to start bleeding spears.”
    Someone guffawed,
and there was a chorus of assent. As Pasion looked down the table he realised
that Mynon was right. Mercenaries would put up with many things and, contrary
to popular myth, they would not desert the first time their pay was late.
Stubborn bastards, proud as princes, and sentimental as women, they could be
held to the colour by many things beyond money. Sometimes they would believe in
promises, if those promises were grand enough, and if they flattered their own
vanity. Mercenaries had their own kind of honour, and a fierce pride in their
calling. It was only to be expected. Once a man donned scarlet, he became ostrakr, and abandoned whatever city had spawned him. It had to be so, or
else allegiances to different warring cities would tear every centon apart. To
replace that allegiance, the mercenary committed himself to his centon and his
comrades. They became his city. The centurion was their leader, but could not
commit his men to any contract until they had voted for it among themselves. It
was the law of the Assembly writ small, and it gave each mercenary company the
cohesion and brotherhood that all men craved in their hearts. To become a
sellspear, a man might forsake his ancestors, his memories, the very place that
gave him birth, but in return he was admitted to this brutal brotherhood and
given a new thing to fight for. A city in miniature, clad in bronze, and
dedicated to the art of warfare.
    “Very well,”
Pasion said at last. “You scorn rhetoric, so I will give you fact. More words,
but these are set in iron. I will tell you this now, and it will never leave
these walls.” He looked the table up and down, checking that he had each of
their attentions. Had he been a less restless man, he would have loved the
stage, the faces hanging on each word he chose to give and withhold.
    “We are not
gathered here for some city fight. We are making an army, a full-sized army,
and all of it composed of mercenaries. Brothers, we have a journey before us, and
its destination lies far, far outside the Harukush.”
    There was a pause
as this sank in.
    “Brothers, we are—”
    “ Phobos, ”
Orsos swore loudly. “You mean to take us into the Empire.”

FIVE
    TAKING SCARLET
    For Jason of
Ferai, the morning clatter of the Marshalling Grounds was a piercing agony he
could as well have done without. Rasping his tongue across the roof of his
mouth he sent one hand out to find the water jug and the other down to his
waist, where his money-pouch still hung, as flaccid as an old man’s prick. He
poured the contents of the jug over his head in the bed, getting some down his
rancid throat and causing his bed-mate to squeal and dart upright in outrage.
    “It’s only water,
my dear. You had worse over you last night.”
    The girl rubbed
her eyes, a pretty little thing whose name he had not bothered to learn. “It’s
dark out yet. You’ve the bed for another turn of the jar if you want it.”
    Jason rose and
kissed the nape of her neck. “Consider it a bonus. A turn alone.”
    She threw his
scarlet rag of chiton at him, and stood up, stretching. “Have it your way.”
    Jason stood up
also, the room doing its morn-ing-after lurch in his eyes. The girl was
striking flint on tinder and making a hash of it. He took the stones from her
and blew on the spark he clicked out, first time, then lit the olive-lamp from
it. The grey almost-light of the pre-dawn receded. It was night in