The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [82]
“This way.”
Head leads us toward the river, toward the horses. There’s a detail for that, too: a cavalry officer works grimly through the downed animals, cutting throats. Some scream; some scrabble their legs, running nowhere. Other medic teams are spread across the field, heads down, like berry pickers. I find Head close to me, keeping an eye.
“No,” he says, as I stoop for a closer look at something; someone. Theban. “Walk on.”
I stop.
“Walk on.”
The Theban is looking at me.
“Walk on, cunt.”
I kneel down and unshoulder my kit. Overhead, vultures orbit the field, singing, waiting for us to leave.
“You cunt.” Head kneels down beside me. The Theban’s eyes move back and forth between us. Head feels for a pulse at the side of the throat, thumbs up the brows for a better look at the eyes, tweaks the man’s feet. He moves up the legs, pinching. He’s at the chest before the Theban grunts. “Help me.” Together we roll him on his side. Blood all down the back. “Paralyzed,” Head says. “Slashed spine. Were you running away, fucker?”
“No,” the Theban says.
We roll him back so he can look at the sky. “Walk on,” Head says to me. “Come on. You don’t want to see this.”
I don’t move.
“Close your eyes,” Head tells the Theban. He doesn’t. “I’m doing you like one of our own,” he says, and sinks his knife where he recently felt for the pulse. We both jump back from the blood that leaps out. The Theban’s hand slaps the ground a few times and then stops. His eyes never close.
“That’s not my job,” Head says. “Don’t make me do that again.”
“Head!”
The young medic has something; he’s waving us over. I kneel down again.
“I don’t have time for this.” Head turns away. “You’re on your own.”
In my kit I have a tablet and stylus. I roll the Theban back onto his side and unlace the leather corset. It falls away in pieces where the weapon severed it. The lips of skin are plum-coloured. I pull them apart to discover a flap of yellow fat. It’s bone I want; I need my knives, then something to clean my hands on so I can write and draw.
I don’t know how much time passes.
“Here you are.”
“Minute.” I’m teasing out a long thread of something from deep in the cavity.
“What is that?” Head kneels beside me, squinting.
“I don’t know. I’m seeing where it goes.”
“Look at that.” Another voice, another shadow kneeling beside me. The young medic. “All those bits came out of just this one here?”
I’ve laid a lot of viscera out on the ground.
“Are you all right?” the medic says.
“I need more tablets.”
Head nods at the medic, who jogs off. “He’ll find you what you need. What—fuck off.” A stench rises; I’ve hit bowel. “You do this?” he says.
“You do this.”
“Not after they’re dead.” Head looks around the field. I try to stand up. “Steady.” He catches my arm. My feet are pins and needles from squatting so long. “They’re building the pyres. You almost done?”
“No.”
“He’s got to go with his people.”
“I haven’t started the head.”
Shouting at the edge of the field, behind us; some argument. “Ah, no.” Head starts kicking dirt over the viscera. “No, no, no. Roll him back, quick. Help me. Put your shit away.”
“I’m not done.”
“Look,” Head says. “I know who you are and why you’re here. I understand what you do, sort of. But soldiers are not going to get this. You left the sex alone, at least. But you have to stop now.”
“I was getting there.”
“Women’s work.” He looks over his shoulder. “Oh, fuck me.” He heaves the Theban onto his back so we can’t see the hole I’ve made there. “Kneel,” he hisses.
“Majesty,” I say.
“Dismiss.” Alexander’s looking at the Theban. Head runs; runs. I stay. “Is he dead?”
“Yes.”
“Because,” Alexander says, “sometimes you think they’re dead but they’re not. You have to finish them.”
“Yes.”
Hephaestion has stopped a dozen paces away. His face is white.
“I fought here,” Alexander says. “East field. Is he dead?”
What’s been smoking up my thoughts is clearing now. Behind Hephaestion I see Antipater and Philip himself. They, too,