Corvus (10 page)

“You are a long
way from home,” he managed.

Ardashir bowed his
head in acknowledgement. “A friend came this way, and I followed him.”

“Ardashir’s people
make up most of the Companion Cavalry,” the one-eyed man, Demetrius, said. “They
were among the first to fight for Corvus, and have come all this way -”

“They are my
friends, all of them,” Corvus said, his high, clear voice cutting the older man
short. “They have fought by my side on a dozen battlefields. The Macht have
never been a people to appreciate the potential of cavalry, and a man does not
become a horse-soldier overnight. To create a mounted arm, I had to look over
the sea. Rictus, in your youth you battled your way across half the Empire. You
of all men should be able to appreciate the valour of the people within it.”

Corvus was
taut-faced, staring at him. Here was a test, Rictus realised. He spoke to
Ardashir again.

“I fought the
Great King’s Honai at Kunaksa, and the Asurian cavalry at Irunshahr. I do not
have to be convinced of your people’s prowess.”

Druze leaned close
to Ardashir and reached up to shake the Kefren by the shoulder. “Prowess or
not, he still beat you, you big yellow streak of shit.”

The table erupted
in laughter, Ardashir laughing as loud as the rest. He clinked cups with Druze,
the two of them as familiar with each other as any two fighting comrades can
be. Rictus wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He found Corvus still
watching him, smiling without humour. Then the pale-faced youth raised his own
cup to Rictus and drained it. It would seem the test had been passed.

“Rictus has
drilled his Dogsheads to a level not equalled by any other troops I have seen,”
Corvus said, raising his voice. The long table fell silent instantly.

“They are only a
half-mora of spearmen, but I intend that their example shall be followed
throughout the army. Here and now, I name Rictus of Isca as one of my marshals,
equal to all of you here. Demetrius, Teresian, you will consult with Rictus on
the drilling of your own men. If we can field a phalanx that fights as well as
did the Ten Thousand, then there is nothing in all of the Harukush that can
stand against us.”

There was a
general buzz of consent, and Fornyx slapped Rictus on the back, leaning in
close to speak in his ear.

“Congratulations,
marshal. Before you let me kiss your elevated arse, look at your colleagues. I
think you just pissed in their wine.”

One-eyed
Demetrius, and rawboned Teresian. They drank silently, looking over the rim of
their cups at Rictus, and he realised that he had just made his first enemies
in Corvus’s army.

THE
MAN AT THE GATE

The green branch
got Rictus up to
the city walls. It was snowing, a wet, dark snow that was the child of the
decaying season. Impenetrable though the Curse of God might be, it held no
warmth, and Rictus was shivering under his scarlet cloak as he stood with the
olive branch held up in one hand, the blank pocked stone of the ramparts
looming over him. There was activity up there on the walkway; he could see the
conical gleam of helms moving, but as yet the massive city gates remained
closed.

It had been
a year and a half since
last he had stood here, the tail end of the summer, just before he left for the
Nemasis contract.

The gates had been
open then, the sun warm and the land as rich and ripe as a plucked pomegranate.

The roads had been
thick with people and handcarts and animals making their way to the Summersend
market. For most of the country folk around about it was a once-a-year trip, to
sell what they had grown and reared and woven, and in return to buy what they
could not make for themselves on their farms. They would go home with the
redware pottery that was unique to the city, or perhaps a new axehead, or a
slave, or perhaps even a scroll of poetry to read aloud in the dark hours of
the winter.

Hal Goshen was the
hub of men’s lives for sixty pasangs around, as much a part of the landscape as
the mountains that reached white and remote on the northern horizon. It did not
seem possible that a thing of such permanence could be taken away, erased from
the world because of the will of one man.

But that might
well happen now, if Rictus could not raise an answer out of these walls.

He tried again. “I
am Rictus of Isca, and I am known to you and to your Kerusia. I am here to
speak for the eastern general, Corvus, whose army is behind me.” Nothing. His
temper flared.

“Open the fucking
gate, will you? I’m one man, and it’s fucking freezing out here.”

A snap of laughter
from above. Finally there was the crack of a reluctant bolt, and a postern in
the gate swung open, admitting a heavily cloaked figure. The postern slammed
shut behind him.

“I hope Aise has
the goats down from the high pastures,” the figure said. “There will be drifts
up there by now that would bury an ox.” The man was lean as a whip, with long lank
grey hair, and a gold stud in one nostril. When he smiled he had the white
teeth of a much younger man - he had always been proud of them, Rictus
remembered, and the effect his smile had on women.

“Phaestus,” he
said. “Thank the goddess. I was thinking it was about time I got an arrow in my
neck.”

“I have bows
trained on you,” Phaestus said, “not that they’d be much use against a
Cursebearer. So it’s true then; you and the Dogsheads have thrown in with the
conqueror of the east.”

“It’s true, though
we didn’t have much choice in the matter.”

The two men looked
wordlessly at one another for a long drawn out minute. Rictus was a
guest-friend; he had dined in Phaestus’s home, brought trinkets for his
daughters, and told tales of old campaigns to his son. The two men had hunted
boar together in the hills, and had shared wine around a campfire, Fornyx
making them roar with his filthy jokes.

“Ah, well, it
seems he is adept at making men choose,” Phaestus said at last. “Even you. What
do you make of him, Rictus? Is he the all-powerful champion we’ve heard?”

Rictus thought of
Corvus, the short, slight youth with the painted fingernails, and said
truthfully, “Well, he scares me, as no man I’ve met ever has.”

Phaestus looked
genuinely shocked at this. “Phobos!”

Rictus grasped the
older man’s shoulder gently and led him away from the walls. “I come to bring
you his terms.”

“Does he have Aise
and the girls - is that it?”

Rictus shook his
head. “Listen to me, Phaestus. And look south. Take in what you see and be
honest with yourself.”

The white snow had
blanketed the farmland south of the city, rendering it a blank field broken
only by the outlines of walls, the barely discernable grids of sleeping
vineyards and olive groves. But some four pasangs away from where the two men
stood there was a black stain on the world, an ordered rash of lines that could
just be differentiated into ranks of men, of horses. A massive host whose lines
extended five pasangs from end to end, a distance greater than the width of the
city they faced.

“He has
twenty-five thousand men, Phaestus, every one of them a veteran, fed on
victory. Do not try to tell me that your citizen soldiers can contend with
that. I know what the strength of Hal Goshen is. I know your centurions and
their drills.”

“I don’t doubt it.
But Hal Goshen is not alone in this thing, Rictus. What of Machran, and the
League? Karnos himself almost had you in his employ at the end of the summer,
and you walked away. But the League will come to our aid.”

“The League is too
late. They’ve spent the last two years debating what to do about Corvus and
have ended up chasing their own tail. There is no army coming to your rescue,
Phaestus, so put that out of your mind. He has moved too fast for them. I tell
you now in friendship: accept his terms.”

Phaestus’s face
was as livid as his hair. “What are the terms?” he said.

“The same as those
he has given to a dozen cities in the east. You must give up your independence
and join him, accept him as absolute ruler. You must pay a tithe of all your
wealth and income to his treasury, and you must send him five hundred spearmen
every year to fight in his wars.

“You do these
things, and Hal Goshen will not be touched - he will not even enter the city,
but will appoint a governor.” Rictus took Phaestus by the arm again, squeezing
flesh down upon bone. “I have spoken to him of this. You will be the governor,
Phaestus. You have my word on it. And if you prove loyal, then your son
Philemos will follow you.”

“He’s establishing
dynasties now, is he?” Phaestus snapped. “Petty little kings, to serve under
him, the Great King of all. What are we now, Rictus, no better than Kufr? A
free man bears his spear and has his voice heard among his peers - that is how
the Macht have always lived.”

“Times are
changing,” Rictus said, angry now, though not with Phaestus. “I warn you, as a
friend, if you do not submit to him, he will take Hal Goshen, and he will
destroy it, to make an example. You and your son will die and your womenfolk
will be enslaved. Hal Goshen will disappear as Isca did. He will do it,
Phaestus, believe me.”

Phaestus looked at
him with a mixture of wonder and contempt.

“The great leader
of the Ten Thousand, whom I termed my friend. Rictus of Isca, reduced to the
errand boy of a barbarian. Run back to him, Rictus, and tell him -”

“For Antimone’s
sake, Phaestus, don’t come all high and mighty on me now. We stand in a cold
hard world, and honour is something we leave for the stories. You are being
offered something priceless here. There can yet be honour in what you accept,
and you will save your city a nightmare.”

Phaestus looked
like a man in doubt as to whether he was about to sob or shout. He shook his
head.

“I never yet truly
understood the nature of a mercenary. You redcloaks are a dying breed, and we have
made you into a kind of legend. But in the end, all that matters is the weight
of the purse you are offered. What you consider honour, I spit upon, Rictus.”

Rictus seized him
by the throat, his grey eyes blazing. “Watch what you say, old man. You do not
know of what you speak. Have you ever watched a city burn? I have. I have seen
my people led off to the slave market, my family butchered. If your pride seeks
to consign your own folk to the same fate then I swear to you I will make
special effort, when your walls are breached. I will find you and kill you
myself, and your precious son. And your last sight on this earth will be that
of my men raping your wife and daughters.” He tossed Phaestus aside as a dog
will discard a dead rat.

“I came to you out
of friendship. I advanced your name with Corvus because I knew you to be a just
and honourable man, one who would rule wisely. You love this city, as do I. Its
fate is in your hands now.”

Phaestus rubbed
his throat, eyes hot and white. “You think I would enjoy setting myself up as a
tyrant, the slave of a greater tyrant? You do not know me as well as I thought
you did, Rictus. And it seems I do not know you at all.”

“Take his terms to
the Kerusia, then - see what the other elders have to say, and put it to the
assembly.”

Phaestus’s lip
curled. “How did he buy you? Are you to have the pickings of his conquests?
Antimone watches us, Rictus. Her black wings beat over our heads all our lives.
You and Corvus will answer for what you are doing.”

“I’ll take my
chances with the gods. You think on the offer I have made, and ask whether your
ideals are worth the death of a city. Corvus expects answer before nightfall.
If there is none, the army will assault your walls at dawn.”

Rictus turned on
his heel and walked away. Neither Phaestus nor the men on the walls could see
the agony written across his face.

Hal Goshen capitulated
that
evening. A leading elder of the Kerusia, Sarmenian, was proclaimed governor by
Corvus. The city accepted a small staff of clerks from the conqueror’s
entourage, and agreed to forward provisions to the army for the remainder of
the present campaign. Five hundred glum-faced youths wearing their fathers’
armour marched out to join the army on the plain below, and were folded into
Demetrius’s command.

Of Phaestus there
was no sign. He had relayed the terms of the city’s surrender to the Kerusia,
and then disappeared, fleeing Hal Goshen with his family, making for the hills.
In his absence, and on Corvus’s insistence, he was declared
ostrakr
by
the Kerusia, before that body disbanded itself. Like Rictus, he no longer had a
city to call his own.

It was perhaps the
most efficient example of conquest Rictus had ever seen. Not a drop of blood
had been spilled, and yet a great city had fallen. And with the fall of Hal
Goshen, the way was open to the western heartlands of the Harukush. The cork
was out of the bottle.

The army of Corvus
shook out into march column next morning, a river of men that blackened the
face of the lowlands. The great camp in which they had passed the preceding
days was dismantled and abandoned - the leather tents, the field-forges, the
barrelled provisions all packed up and loaded onto the waggons of the baggage
train. Then the thing began to move. The clouds broke open and yellow sunlight
made of their passage an immense, barbed snake slithering west, the endless
companies passing by the walls they had not been called upon to breach.

In their midst,
Rictus trudged silently at the head of his men, and his black armour reflected
not a gleam of the autumn sun. He did not look back.