A generation ago, the city of Voortyashtan was the stronghold of the god of war and death, the birthplace of fearsome supernatural sentinels who killed and subjugated millions. Now the city's god is dead and the city itself lies in ruins. And to its new military occupiers, the once-powerful capital is just a wasteland of sectarian violence and bloody uprisings.
So it makes perfect sense that General Turyin Mulaghesh—foul-mouthed hero of the battle of Bulikov, rumoured war criminal, ally of an embattled Prime Minister—has been exiled there to count down the days until she can draw her pension and be forgotten. At least, it makes the perfect cover story.
The truth is that the general has been pressed into service one last time, dispatched to investigate a discovery with the potential to change the world—or destroy it.
***
I was of two minds when I learned that Robert Jackson Bennett would be making a return journey to the world and the wares he so successfully peddled in City of Stairs. On the one hand, he hardly scratched the surface of Saypur and the Continent it opted to occupy in that multiple award-nominated novel; on the other, I feared a sequel would bring to an end to the endless reinvention that has kept the aforementioned author's efforts so incredibly fresh. And it does... until it doesn't.
For all that City of Blades shares with City of Stairs, Bennett's decision to bench book one's embattled protagonist Shara Komayd in favour of General Turyin Mulaghesh sets the two texts apart from the start.
In the several years since the ungodly conflict which capped that last narrative, the hero of the Battle of Bulikov has entirely retired—from the adoration of the army, from the appraisal of the public eye, and, last but not least, from the expectation that she should be a reasonable human being. It follows that we find Mulaghesh on an isolated island; drunk, damn near destitute, and struggling to adjust to life with one less limb than she might like.
But just when she thought she was out, the Prime Minister pulls her back in! When a messenger arrives to request that Mulaghesh do one last secret service for Saypur, she sees an opportunity to resolve some of the hellish memories and awful losses that haunt her:
She couldn't erase the past, but maybe she could keep it from happening again. Some young men and women, Continental and Saypuri, never made it home because of her. The least she could do was make sure others didn't fall to the same fate. It'd be a way to make the dead matter. A way to put back some of what she'd broken. (p.313)
What the messenger doesn't tell Mulaghesh—wisely, I'd add—is where she's to be sent: Voortyashtan is, after all, the "ass-end of the universe [and] armpit of the world." There, there's "a one in three chance of her being murdered or drowning or dying of the plague" (p.23)—fittingly for a country famed first and foremost for its apparently-departed Divinity: Voortya, the god of war and death.
It is twenty-three years since a Macht army fought its way home from the heart of the Asurian Empire. The man who came to lead that army, Rictus, is now a hard-bitten mercenary captain, middle-aged and tired. He wants nothing more than to lay down his spear and become the farmer that his father was. But fate has different ideas. A young war-leader has risen to challenge the order of things in the very heartlands of the Macht. A solider of genius, he takes city after city, and reigns over them as king. What is more, he has heard of the legendary leader of The Ten Thousand.
His name is Corvus, and the rumours say that he is not even fully human. He means to make himself absolute ruler of all the Macht. And he wants Rictus to help him.
***
It is all too easy for those of us who live in the past’s long shadow to fall into the trap of thinking history a particularly passive pursuit. The preserve of academics and ancients, with long books and longer beards.
But no.
Maybe now, but in the thick of it, I think not, because history does not simply happen: it is made. It is shaped. Created, and then, over time, finessed into fineness, like a spearpoint thrust through the years. As to those who hone history - just so - they do not somehow stand outside of it. On the contrary, they become a part of it. In a very real sense, these men and women of whispered myth and inherited legend become history, and not always to their credit, nor indeed their pleasure.
Rictus is one such specimen. Twenty-odd years on from the great tale of the Ten Thousand – in which an army of Macht mercenaries that he led (towards the end) fought into and inevitably out of the vast continent beyond the hills of the Harukush – Rictus, to his chagrin, has become as much myth as man. As his friend and fellow soldier Fornyx marvels:
“What you saw, in your youth. The places you marched, the world you wandered across. You were part of a legend, Rictus, and you saw sights few of the Macht have ever imagined. The land beyond the sea, and the Empire upon it. For all of us it is nothing more than a story, or the words in a song. But you were there.”
He was there, yes. This much is indisputable. But Rictus is one of a rare few who remembers what it was to be in the midst of that mess of men. He remembers “the shattering heat of those endless days on the Kunaksa hills, the stench of the bodies. The shrieking agonies of the maimed horses. And the faces of those who had shared it with him. Gasca, dead at Irunshahr [and] Jason, whom he had loved like a brother, who had come through it all only to be knifed in a petty brawl in Sinon, within sound of the sea.” It was not such a pretty picture, whether then or in memory.
In any case, Rictus has moved on. Hardly a young man when the Ten Thousand marched, he has since grown old, made a home, and fallen in love with a family fashioned from both blood and the brotherhood of battle. Summers he still spends campaigning for coin with his Dogsheads, an army of motley mercenaries in an age with no seeming need for real redcloaks... but this matters little to Rictus. After all, he lives now for winters, when he can come back to Aise and Rian and Ona on the farm, and set his spear by the door.
Rictus dreams of the day when he can put his weapon away for good, but that day is not this day, because this winter, Rictus returns home to find rumour rife. There is talk – endless spoken speculation – about a man called Corvus, a would-be conqueror named after “a black carrion bird” who has blazed a trail inland from Idrios, declaring himself overlord of all the Macht cities whose armies he has effortlessly overcome. His next stop is likely to be Hal Goshen, which stands barely a handful of pasangs away from Rictus’ farm.
So, something wicked this way comes? Well... Corvus – if he exists – is either something wicked, or something wickedly different, but whatever his purpose, whatever his principles, Rictus doesn’t intend to involve himself in this murderous myth-making. He’s secured his place in the history books already.
But then, cruel and unusual, the rumour comes a-calling: Corvus and a centon of his men arrive at Rictus’ homestead, and pressgang the old legend into service. With his family in immediate danger, Rictus has little choice in the matter... and sure, he’s curious too. Passing fascinated with this powerful young man who seems to be “standing on the threshold of some change in the world,” just as Rictus did in his youth. Corvus, as it transpires, does not make war in order to destroy the Macht, but to finally unite this fragmented force. If he succeeds, the Macht will be one people for the first time since time immemorial. This is another chapter of history in the making, and Rictus, though older and wiser, is old enough now, and just wise enough, to know it. Thus, he takes up his spear, and marches mercilessly – with the Dogsheads and many other thousands of men – on his own people, side by side with this strangely persuasive invader.
Corvus may take place in the same timeline as The Ten Thousand, and star the same central character, but – and here rears a more meaningful inheritance – it is a remarkably self-contained story. What the reader needs know about its predecessor, Paul Kearney imparts precisely, concisely. Even at the outset of this summarily standalone sequel the events of The Ten Thousand have faded to myth and old man’s memory, such that returning readers and complete newcomers will be equally well met, and warmly welcomed besides, because Corvus is a markedly more intimate novel than the first volume of this disparate trilogy.
The return to Rictus’ perspective is like coming home to gruff uncle, worn and torn by a long war abroad, but no less beloved for his far-distant hardships, meanwhile Kearney spends a pleasantly surprising span attending to matters of character, little and large alike. Assuredly, our main man and the unstoppable invader occupy the larger part of the limelight, but Aise also has an arc, as do various players on the other side of the divide, like Kassia, Kassander, and particularly Karnos, a common man’s man who single-handedly raises an army to stand against Corvus.
It would be unfair to say that The Ten Thousand lacked character, exactly, but Kearney’s considerations are certainly more minute herein than as regards the mass of mercenaries from the last part. Where its antecedent revolved around immense armies, Corvus is concerned with individuals, so there is an easier foothold for the reader from the offing, and a gathering impression of personal jeopardy as the narrative inches on... but I’m afraid it also follows that the big picture appears a little diminished. Furthermore, this sequel is somewhat less... eventful than The Ten Thousand: of the two big ol’ battle scenes – already a scant number next to the innumerable encounters strung together in book one – only the second, a long siege on a comparatively complicated battlefield, feels genuinely momentous. Tragic, in fact, because even here Kearney punctuates the Macht’s phalanx fighting with a more discrete dilemma, which – to twist the knife one final time – occurs mere minutes away from the frontlines.
The storm of Corvus’ last gasping act is as harrowing as it is exhilarating, then, in large part thanks to the character-focused calm before, during and after it. The author’s willingness to wholeheartedly savage his supporting cast is important, but without the emotional moments aforementioned, the cacophony of noise which concludes Corvus would have been a fraction as impactful, with little meaning to speak of beyond the visceral immediate experience. This, as I see it, has always been the single most significant issue of histories: lacking little guys with little problems – without context, and character – the big pictures they present often err on the unfathomable. In Corvus, however, Kearney brings his players home handily. What with its far narrower focus, it may be a surprising species of successor to a tale of The Ten Thousand’s scope and scale, but be assured that we have here a truly bravura book, as ambitious in its way as the magnificent myth before it.
On the world of Kuf, the Macht are a mystery, a seldom-seen people of extraordinary ferocity and discipline whose prowess on the battlefield is the stuff of legend. For centuries they have remained within the remote fastnesses of the Harukush Mountains. In the world beyond, the teeming races and peoples of Kug have been united within the bounds of the Asurian Empire, which rules the known world, and is invincible. The Great King of Asuria can call up whole nations to the battlefield. His word is law.
But now the Great King's brother means to take the throne by force, and in order to do so he has sought out the legend. He hires ten thousand mercenary warriors of the Macht, and leads them into the heart of the Empire.
***
War. War never changes.
Of course, one could as easily – and as righteously – state that war changes everything.
In The Ten Thousand, the ugly truth – and indeed, it is a fearsome-looking thing in this book, and this series, the truth – lies sprawled and spewing somewhere in the midst of this blood-muddied mulch:
"The army marches, there is a slaughter, and a form of words is made to make the world change. But the world does not change; the water still flows, the seeds still sprout, and those who work the soil continue to work it, a little poorer, a little thinner and sadder than before. The storm moves on, and in its wake the world goes once more about its business. This is war, this passing storm on the land. This stink on the air, this dust-cloud which hems the sky. These creatures marching in their thousands, changing everything and changing nothing with their passage. This is war."
These creatures, as Northern Irish author Paul Kearney has it, are the Macht, "a seldom seen people of extraordinary ferocity and discipline whose prowess on the battlefield is the stuff of legend," and the Macht live to fight: to triumph against the enemy, or die well (if one can possibly die in such a fashion, and there are no guarantees here) in the trying.
They have warred with the vast Asurian Empire before, have the Macht, only to be beaten back by an overwhelming force, and some centuries have passed since they dared cross the sea to meet their sworn enemies in battle. They've occupied themselves with feudal in-fighting in the interim; a meaningless business, given the greater threat, but a business it is, for the Macht are a mercenary folk, by and large. Small armies exist here and there, but most of the Macht's fighting forces are united under the crimson rather than some cause: a colour beholden to no better motivation than gold – and where there is demand, it follows that there must be a supply to meet it, or exceed it.
To wit, The Ten Thousand begins, in earnest, in the immediate aftermath of one such clash: with a sole survivor – Rictus – of the rape of his great city, Isca. Having failed to beat back the attackers, the strawhead’s only hope is for a good death, but in the process of earning one, an admiring opponent grants him an unexpected reprieve.
Rictus lives on, then – and it's as well, for he is our through-line from first to last in the ambitious narrative Paul Kearney tells in The Ten Thousand, and beyond – but for now, he has nothing. He is "alone. Cityless. Ostrakr." And exiles such as he "sometimes chose suicide rather than wander the earth without citizenship. To the Macht, the city was light and life and humanity. Outside, there was only this: the black pines and the empty sky, the world of the Kufr. A world that was alien."
All Rictus has to hold on to hereafter is the colour: the crimson of the mercenary men he aims to join, alongside another young soldier he meets on the road to Machran, where he and Gasca are hired. Their mission is a mysterious one, to begin with – the force mustering in this city is large enough to seize even Machran, the capital of these fragmented lands (if capital it has) – but soon they take to the sea, these ten thousand men, with Rictus and Gasca in their midst. And when at last land is sighted, it is the land of the Kufr, of course.
In this kingdom across the sea, you see, a rebellion is afoot. The Great King's brother Arkamenes means to seize the throne by force, and to that end he has called upon the legendary forces of the Macht. With his inexhaustible riches he has bought these mythical mercenaries, these businessmen who deal in death, and they have been paid handsomely; some of the men certainly have their qualms as regards the march to the Asurian capital, where Arkamenes means to take Ashurnan's place, yet the bottom line is solid, so they keep their concerns to themselves.
I would not hesitate to say that the Macht are an incredible creation, except that they are not an original creation so much as a tremendous and oddly timely recreation, given the present-day relevance and prevalence of PMCs: of a factual historical force – aking to the 300 Frank Miller and latterly Zack Snyder recently repopularised – which waged the self-same campaign we find the Macht engaged in amid this low fantasy landscape. These Greek mercenaries were also known as the Ten Thousand, and by way of Xenophon's Anabasis – that bastion of classical Socratic philosophy as it relates to the subjects of government and leadership – they can be traced back to fully four centuries before the common era. Paid in full, they took to Persia – enemy territory, in other words – under the orders of Cyrus the Younger, who planned to force his way into power over the entire Achaemenid Empire.
The tale did not end well. Cyrus was killed in the great battle at Babylon, and the Ten Thousand whose fate you will find discussed in the history books were stranded, now leaderless and practically purposeless, deep in the realm of their old enemy. This marching republic, for so it was, had to take charge of themselves thereafter, and a similar, if not identical conundrum awaits the Ten Thousand of Paul Kearney's darkly fantastic fictionalisation.
Considering how closely The Ten Thousand follows Xenophon's account of the originating events, the most significant narrative beats of Kearney's inspired adaptation will be familiar – perhaps to a fault – to an audience who know the story, but even these readers are apt to be impressed, because there is a richness and a texture to this rendering that the renowned record is largely absent, never mind its seven fulsome volumes, or its contemporary currency in academic circles. Like the revolutionary mercenary army at its heart, The Ten Thousand is a "picture brought bright and colourful out of myth," brilliantly depicted and embellished in all the right ways by its ambitious author, a former history student himself.
Heedless of whether Kearney created them whole-cloth or not – and to a certain extent of course he has – the Macht are truly an awesome force to behold:
"They raised a dustcloud behind them, a tawny, leaning giant, a tolling yellow storm bent on blotting out the western sky. It seemed a nation on the march, a whole people set on migrating to a better place. The sparse inhabitants of the Gadinai drew together, old feuds forgotten, and watched in wonder as the great column poured steadily onward, as unstoppable as the course of the sun. It was as grand as some harbinger or the world's end, a spectacle even the gods must see from their places amid the stars."
Perhaps the most remarkable thing Kearney brings to the table – a table sumptuously laid in any case – is his characterisation of the Macht as mercenaries; as men going about the business of making money above all else. As beaten but not broken soldiers of fortune as opposed to idealistic war-makers, I know of no equal for them in fantasy fiction. As one spearman asserts:
"There was no extravagance to the fighting; no glory, Gasca realised. These men were doing their job. They were at work. They did not raise battle-cries, or scream curses. They pushed with their comrades, they looked for openings, and they stabbed out with a swift, economic energy, like herons seeking minnows. [...] The Kefren could not match this remorseless efficiency."
Meanwhile another observer, the Great King himself, notes that:
"Their bronze was different. Ashurnan could not quite puzzle it out, until he realised that it was old metal, tarnished and dimmed. These man had carried their harness a long time. It was not a matter or burnishing; it was a matter of years. And there was no decoration to it. They did not take joy in their turn-out. They wore their panoplies with all the pride and elan of labourers set to a day's heavy shifting. Ashurnan's mouth began to sneer under the komis as he regarded them, and then his lips straightened. Their formation was perfect, as though someone had gone running along their front with a plumb line. They stood at ease, almost unmoving. [...] They seemed almost bored."
You could sharpen a spear on Kearney's prose, so pointed is it, yet at times it is poetic as well; as above, so below. Meanwhile the author builds his world brilliantly – majestically, but not oppressively – atop the foundations of a true story, terrific in its own right. The pace is perfect, and the pitch is too, to boot. Though his characterisation of certain purveyors of the ensemble of perspectives on offer herein could be better – I speak of Gasca and Tiryn specifically – I do not think that The Ten Thousand need necessarily look to individuals to make its indelible mark. The power it possesses, and the gruesome scar it carves, is not the result of any one man, after all, but ten thousand of them... armed to the teeth and armoured from head to toe, warring for a wage.
Even if grim militaristic fantasy like this isn't your usual purview, please: take a chance on The Ten Thousand. Unlike the men of the Macht, and their historical equivalents, you've little other than time to lose. The series certainly continues in Corvus, to conclude in Kings of Morning, but The Ten Thousand was originally conceived as a standalone narrative rather than the first volume in a trilogy, and it functions as such. If "black flies laying their eggs in the eyes of the dead" and the like prove too much for you, then no harm, no foul... you need not read on.
If you have the stomach for it, however, you won't be able to stop yourself, because for what it is, even if what it is is not for everyone, The Ten Thousand is an utterly gripping reading experience. Powerful... poignant... profound, even.
