Corvus (13 page)

“Send back word to
Corvus,” Druze said. “We’ll hold here for now. Gabinius, take a couple of fists
down to the treeline and see if there’s anything more than rabbits in there. I
want no surprises.”

“You got it,
chief.” The thatch-haired youth sped off at a run, calling out to the men
nearest him. Eight of them peeled out of the line and followed him down the
roadside at an easy lope, black against the snow-covered ground. Druze blew on
his hands.

“A cold day to
die,” he said.

Down the vast
column, Rictus strode
along with the tireless pace of the old campaigner. As far as the eye could see
the road was choked with marching men in both directions, and from their
labouring bodies a steam rose in the chill air so that they were marching in a
fog of their own making. There was little to see except the backs of the men in
front.

They were two day’s
march out of Hal Goshen, and Corvus was pushing the pace hard. The men’s armour
was piled in the baggage wagons and they carried only what they had to on their
backs, using their spears as staffs. The Dogsheads were an unmistakable scarlet
vertebra in the backbone of the army.

Horses cantering
past on either side of the trudging infantry, like ghosts from a swifter world.
A knot of them reined in, the snow flying from their hooves, the animals
snorting and white-streaked with sweat. Huge horses, larger than any the Macht
countries ever bred. Atop one, a gaudily cloaked figure raised a hand. The
Kufr, Ardashir.

“Rictus! Corvus
wants you and the Dogsheads at the front of the column at once. Get your gear
from the wagons and arm up - we have work to do!”

The Kufr’s long,
shining face broke out in a grin, and as he sped off again his long black hair
flew out behind him like his horse’s mane.

Fornyx grimaced. “I
was just getting ready to piss.”

“Piss in your own
time,” Rictus told him. “Valerian, Kesero - break ranks, off the road. Time to
earn our pay, brothers.”

The line of
the army’s march had
mushroomed out, formations wheeling left and right of the road and taking up
position in extended ranks, out to the trees. This was the old Imperial road of
Machran, which had come all the way from Idrios, and the cities along its
length kept it maintained and cut back the brush and woodland on either side of
it to foil the designs of brigands and goatmen. Rictus led his centons off the
road and marched them smartly past the waiting files of the army, aware of the
hundreds of eyes watching his red-cloaked men.

“Tighten it up,
you plodding fucks,” Fornyx quipped in an undertone. “Let’s make it look good
for the crowd.”

There was a gap,
where the vanguard had halted, and then beyond it were Druze’s Igranians and a
body of the Companion Cavalry. The personal raven banner of Corvus snapped
busily in the wind.

“There you have
it,” Corvus said, dismounting and joining Rictus as his men reformed into line.
“Goron’s citizen’s have decided to make a fight of it. Two morai of spearmen
and a cloud of light troops hidden in the trees. Druze has sounded out the
position; it can’t be turned without a long flank march over the hills, so we’ll
pitch straight into it. You will assault with your Dogsheads, Rictus, with one
of Teresian’s morai following you in. Druze will flush out the woods with his
Igranians, and when the line is ruptured, I’ll take in the cavalry. Any
questions?”

Rictus blinked
rapidly, looking at the wall of spearmen ahead. Their shields were emblazoned
with the
gabios
sigil for their city and their line had the
not-quite-straight aspect of citizen soldiers.

It was a good plan
- the boy with the painted nails knew what he was doing.

“I’ll hit their
left,” he told Corvus. “Tell Teresian to take his mora in right, but slow, so I
hit first. That’ll scramble them for him.”

“I’ll link with
you on the left as you go in, and cover your flank,” Druze said. There was none
of his mocking humour on display now; he was in deadly earnest. For the first
time, Rictus warmed to him.

“All right, then.
Let us join the Dance,” Rictus said, the age old aphorism of the Macht going
into battle.

“Now we’ll see how
Rictus of Isca fights,” Corvus said. And he had on his face an expression of
such bright, intense happiness that he did not seem quite sane.

* * *

The Dogsheads fell
into position in
minutes. On their right, Teresian’s men took rather longer to dress their
lines. These were Corvus’s regulars, and Teresian himself was going to take the
mora in. One thing about Corvus’s officers; they all liked to lead from the
front.

A few observations
were exchanged between the two bodies of spearmen, with reflections on the
chastity of one another’s mothers and other witticisms, until Fornyx put a stop
to it.

“Save it for the
buggers up ahead, you mouthy bastards,” he called out.

Rictus stepped
forward of the line. For a moment he stood there, a black armoured statue in a
red cloak, face hidden by the close helm, the transverse crest bristling in the
wind. Then he raised his spear, and as the Macht behind him stepped out he
joined the front rank, and the five understrength centons of the Dogsheads began
their advance.

It began as a
murmur, a hum upon their breath. But then Valerian struck out with the Paean, a
lone, ringing voice in the midst of the phalanx. Others joined him, until the
entire formation was singing it, the measured, mournful beat of the ancient
melody keeping their feet in time. To their right, Teresian’s mora joined in.

And to their
front, the men of Goron took up the song also, so that the whole battlefield
was singing it, as though the two sides were coming together in harmony instead
of mutual murder. It made of the coming fight a proper thing, a ceremonial
event.

For Rictus, the
Paean was something different. He no longer joined in the singing, and had not
since returning from the Empire all those years before. He had never forgotten
the second day of Kunaksa, when the Ten Thousand had sung that song, believing
they were marching to their doom but advancing anyway, to make themselves
worthy of memory. It had kept them going that day, had reminded them of who
they were.

He no longer liked
to sing it when fighting against his own people.

The enemy line
levelled their spears and began to advance to meet the Dogsheads.

“Shoulder!” Rictus
shouted, and his own men brought the long spears up so that the wicked points
of the aichmes were jutting out to their front. The files were six men deep;
usually they fought eight to a file, but Rictus had wanted to lengthen the line
somewhat, and they were still a deeper formation than the more numerous enemy.

The men of Goron
had made an error, trying to cover all the ground between the woods. They had
thinned out their centons, the classic mistake of amateurs worried about their
flanks.

Rictus turned his
head this way and that, taking in the positions. In a few minutes he would be
in the middle of the
othismos
, and blind to everything except the man in
front who was trying to kill him. He saw Druze’s men going into the woods like
a crowd of screaming fiends to his left, and saw the hidden skirmishers of the
enemy rise out of the brush to meet them. His flank was covered.

“Charge!” he
shouted. And the Dogsheads broke into a run.

They kept
formation; they had drilled and drilled this a thousand times over the years.
No citizen army could maintain their ranks at a run; they grew scrambled and
ragged, lost the compact momentum that was the key to phalanx fighting. But
Rictus’s men were professionals, the finest of their calling. They ate up the
ground at a fast lope, still singing, and smashed into the enemy formation with
an appalling crash of bronze.

Shields smashing
against shields. An aichme thrust past Rictus’s eyes. Another went through his
horsehair crest.

He gave a grunt as
the weight of the men behind piled into him, lifting his feet off the ground
for a moment. He jabbed out with his spear, ignoring the shrieking enemy
spearman who was pressed up close to his face, stabbing into the third and
fourth ranks.

He killed the
file-closer with a jab to the eyes, slotting his spearhead into the man’s helm,
the blade grating on bronze and bone as he pulled it out again. Blood sprayed
warm across his forearm. The stench of excrement rose as men lost control of
their bowels.

The Dogsheads
shunted backwards a huge segment of the enemy’s line. Men went down, stumbling,
disappearing in the scrum.

The enemy ranks became
a formless mob of yelling figures, painted with blood, jabbing wildly with
their spears. There was a sound like the clatter of a hundred blacksmiths at
work. A broken spearhead arced through the air, the shaft a splintered flower.

The Dogsheads worked
mechanically, stabbing out at eye-slits, naked throats, raised arms, picking
carefully the flesh they wanted to ruin. This was
shearing the sheep.
A
man had to stand in the ranks and take it. There was no running away for those
at the forefront of the fighting. They lowered their heads into their shields
and dug in their heels.

Rictus heard his
centurions shouting above the clamour of the fight.’ “Push, you bastards, push!”
Fornyx yelled, and the men in the rear ranks set their shields in the backs of
the men in front and obeyed him.

Another shunt
forward, the crushing weight of the men behind and the men in front.

Without the
protection of his black- cuirass Rictus would not have been able to breathe in
that packed mill of murder. Men passed out and were carried upright in the
midst of it. There were bodies underfoot now, abandoned shields, and the ground
was being trampled into muck beneath them, becoming mired with blood and other,
baser fluids.

“One more!” Rictus
shouted with what breath remained in his bruised lungs. “Dogsheads, forward!”

He could feel it,
like a sudden change in the weather. The men of Goron were faltering; the
pressure to his front was growing less. He met the eyes of the man pinned
against him, and saw the doubt and defeat in them. He grinned.

“You are a dead
man,” he said, and laughed.

The enemy line
broke as the Dogsheads pushed forward a third time. First the men at the rear
dropped their shields and ran, and then the panic spread. In seconds, the
battle opened out. The enemy formation lost all order, became a mob in which
every man thought only of himself. The pressure eased. The man pinned against
Rictus backed away one pace, two, still looking into his eyes. He was a good
soldier - it was why he was a file leader. He did not want to run, to drop his
shield in shame and present his back to the aichmes of his foes. He was
weeping.

Finally, when
those behind him had left him, he turned to follow them, to run for the safety
of his city walls. When he turned, Rictus stabbed him through the back of his
neck, feeling the spearhead crunch through the man’s spine. He went down
bonelessly.

Rictus stepped
over him. The entire enemy line was in flight. To the right, Teresian’s men
were following up with a chorus of wild halloos and shrieks of laughter:
wordless, mindless noise, both exultation and relief. Rictus raised his spear,
breathing fast as a sprinter.

“Halt!” He
shouted. “Reform!”

The Dogsheads came
together, tightened their ranks, and stood motionless amid a tide-wrack of
bodies, piles of discarded shields. The men fleeing them were no longer
soldiers, and not worth killing. The only way to catch up with them in any case
would have been to drop their own shields. They had done enough.

Rictus stepped
forward of the front rank, stabbed the sauroter of his spear into the ground
and unhelmed, feeling the blessed chill of the winter’s day ease his throbbing
skull. Fornyx joined him. His black beard was matted with blood.

“It’s always the
third shove that does it,” he said, and nudged a corpse with his foot. It was
the man Rictus had speared through the neck. He wore a bracelet of dried grass
about his wrist, the kind a daughter might plait for her father on a summer
afternoon. Rictus looked away from it.

There was a
thunder on the air, a tremble felt through the soles of the feet. Teresian’s
men opened up their ranks to the right, and through the gap came a torrent of
cavalry, Corvus leading them with his personal banner snapping above his head.
The spearmen roared as the Companions swept past, tall Kufr on big horses with
bright coloured cloaks opening out from their shoulders like flags.

They took off
after the fleeing men of Goron, a cavalcade of death, and began spearing them
from behind as they ran. Soon the open ground leading up to the city in the
distance was black with scattered bodies, and still the Companions hunted them,
killing scores, hundreds, riding them down like greyhounds slaughtering hares.

“That is murder,”
Fornyx said, his teeth bared with distaste.

Druze joined them.
His Igranians were running in the wake of the cavalry, looting the dead,
spearing the wounded, clearing up like jackals in the wake of a pride of lions.
He offered Rictus and Fornyx a wineskin. Bitter highland wine, like that Rictus
made at Andunnon. Druze wiped his mouth. His dark face was shining with sweat.

“I know what is in
your mind,” he said, “but if you fight against Corvus, this is what happens.
These men had only to stay within their walls, accept our terms, and they would
be alive with their families today.”

“War has its
conventions,” Rictus said. “One does not pursue to the death when the foe is
beaten.”

“He is different,”
Druze retorted. “His wars are different. It is why he wins them.”