Corvus (32 page)

“Where’s Valerian?”

“Down the wall
towards the other tower - same story down there.” Fornyx spat. “The towers are
killing us.”

Rictus stood up straight.
The ramparts had been flooded with his men and Druze’s. Now the tide had gone
out. There was only a wrack of flotsam and jetsam left - and bodies, so many
bodies. They choked the catwalks so thickly that they were entangling the feet
of the living. The Machran troops who had manned these walls were nearly all
dead, but more were on their way, hundreds more.

“The attack has
failed,” he said. He looked around.

Some two dozen
Dogsheads were standing in a tight phalanx. Stones and arrows were raining down
on them, clanging off their helms and shields. Everyone else was making for the
ladders. The Companions in the second wave had not yet climbed them in any
numbers. The traffic was all the other way now.

“This is the
rearguard. I stand here. Fornyx, get the rest back down the wall. Have good men
at the ladders - for Phobos’s sake don’t overload them, or we’ll all die up
here.”

“Don’t play it the
hero, Rictus - Phobos!” They all ducked as another ballista bolt soared over
them.

“We’ve got to get
us some of those,” Druze said wryly.

“Go, brother,”
Rictus said. “And try not to fall on your ass.”

Back to the task
at hand. The strength was going from Rictus’s right arm, the blood hanging from
it in snot-thick threads. He butted his attackers back with the heavy shield,
the drepana darting out in quick, economical lunges, wounding more often than
killing. A jet of anger as he regretted his cheap stabbing sword, still back in
camp.

The men at
his shoulders stood with
him unquestioning. In the dark and chaos of the fighting he could not even be
sure of their names, though they saved his life again and again, as he saved
theirs.

They worked
together, fighting for each other against the flood of foes that came
barrelling down the catwalk. They fell back step by stubborn step, retreating
over their own dead, closing up the gaps left by the fallen. It was a kind of
fighting they knew well, and they understood also that behind them their
brothers were queuing up at the ladder-heads on the walls.

To break now would
mean the end of them all. They bargained away their own lives for the sake of
the army, for the Dogsheads, for their centon.

For none of those
things. They did it for their friends.

Finally they could
retreat no more. Of the men who had climbed up the ladders with the setting of
the moon, perhaps half made it back down again. The last ladder broke, and fell
in shattered bloody splinters amid the terrible wreckage at the foot of the
wall.

On the battlements
above, Rictus stood at bay with a pair of bloodied companions, the dead piled
around their feet. There was a grey in the air that heralded the dawn, and he
could see the vast city that was the cynosure of the Macht world rising in
front of him on its hills, brightening moment by moment.

He tossed down his
broken sword, his arm almost too numb to feel it leave his fist. His shield
followed, and finally he lifted off his battered and pitted helm, feeling the
cold air on his face, cooling the sweat upon it.

The enemy soldiers
halted, panting. One of them, a centurion by his crest, raised a broken spear.

“Nicely fought.
Toss that fine black cuirass over here and we’ll let you live.”

Rictus looked at
his two companions, who had also doffed their helms and were breathing in the
cold air like thirsty men gulping water.

“Fromir. And
little Sycanus of Gost. I thought it was you.”

“I think they have
us, chief,” Sycanus said.

“It doesn’t look
good,” Rictus admitted. “I thank you, brothers, for standing by me.”

“It seemed like
the right thing,” Fromir, a bulky man with thick, curly hair said.

“Mention it if you
get out of this - you’re due a bonus.”

“Fuck the bonus,”
Sycanus said with a mirthless grin.

“Hand over the
armour!” the enemy centurion shouted. He raised a hand.

Rictus looked up
and saw the men at the top of the overlooking tower cock back their arms with
javelins in their grasp. Even now, the defenders were wary of coming to grips
with three men who wore the scarlet.

“Alive or dead, I’m
having it, old man - your choice.”

My choice? I
suppose it is, Rictus thought.

He looked over the
wall at Corvus’s retreating, broken centons as they straggled back over the
plain to their camp; hundreds, thousands of them.

He climbed up onto
a merlon and balanced there, a welter of memories pelting through his mind.
Aise, Rian and Ona - the sweetest joys he had known in his life.

Fornyx and Jason.
His brothers.

The Ten Thousand
singing the Paean, marching in time to face their deaths.

Rictus looked at
the centurion, and smiled. “I gained this armour at a place called Kunaksa,” he
said. “If you want it, you can come and take it.”

He stepped out
into empty space, and plunged from the tall stone wall of Machran.

FLOTSAM
OF WAR

“Dead?” Corvus repeated
. “He cannot
be dead.”

Fornyx stood in
front of him, his blade-scarred helm in one arm, his tattered scarlet cloak
folded over the other, and the Curse of God slathered with blood across his
chest. He looked like some sculptor’s ideal of war incarnate.

“The last ladder
broke before he made it down off the wall. If he had been captured we would
have heard of it by now.” He bowed his head a second. His voice was raw. “Rictus
is gone.”

Corvus sank back
onto the map-table, eyes staring at nothing. He had a bloodied linen clout tied
about his upper thigh, and another on his forearm.

“Druze, what do
you say?”‘ he asked.

Druze stood like a
whey-faced ghost, his arm strapped to his side. “Fornyx got me down, or I would
be dead too. We were among the last. When we took to the ladders Rictus was
still fighting with maybe a dozen of his men, covering the retreat. None of
them made it.”

Corvus rubbed his
forehead. Fornyx glared at him.

“When the
Dogsheads took your contract - if you want to call it that - we numbered over
four hundred and sixty, Corvus. Today, rather less than a hundred of us are
still standing. And Rictus is dead. Did you mean to destroy us, or was it
something you had just not factored into your deliberations? I’m curious. Tell
me.”

Corvus looked up.
In the tent about him all the senior officers of the army were gathered, as sombre
as men at a funeral. He looked their faces over one by one.

“Where is
Ardashir?” he asked.

“He has not been
found,” Druze said heavily. “But there are very many bodies out there at the
foot of the walls.”

“Phobos,” Corvus
whispered. His eyes filled with tears. He turned from them and leaned on the
map table, the dressing on his forearm darkening as fresh blood stained it.

One-eyed Demetrius
stepped forward. “It was a close thing, Corvus - the diversion worked. When
they saw your banner at the South Prime they rushed every man they could there
- had we possessed more ladders, I think Rictus’s assault would have succeeded.”

“It was meant to
succeed,” Corvus said with a strangled groan. “Fornyx, despite what you think
of me, I do not send men out to die for nothing.”

“These things
happen in war,” Teresian spoke up. “Now we know better what we face.”

“The towers,”
Druze said, “And the machines they have upon them. They crucified us on those
walls.”

“Parmenios,”
Corvus said. He wiped his eyes. “Do you have numbers yet?”

The fat little
secretary came forward with a waxed slate and a stylus. Despite his paunch, he
was powerfully built about the shoulders, and he had the hands of a man who
built things. He tapped the slate. “These are provisional - such is the confusion
-”

“Tell me!”

“Just under a
thousand men, dead or so badly wounded as to be lost to the army for good. The
Dogsheads and Igranians suffered worst, though Demetrius’s conscripts also took
heavy casualties.”

“They fought well,”
Corvus said, collecting himself. “Demetrius, I congratulate you. Your command
is a thing to be proud of.”

Demetrius bowed
his head slightly in acknowledgement, his single eye shining.

Corvus approached
Druze. “Forgive me, brother,” he said brokenly.

Druze smiled, that
quicksilver darkness. “There is nothing to forgive. This is the first time I
have known defeat under you. It is Phobos’s doing - he means to humble us.”

Corvus leaned over
the table again. He raised his voice slightly.

“I cannot afford to
lose the services, or the example, of men such as you, Fornyx. Since you and
Rictus joined this army I have given you the hardest post of all; but it was
the post of honour. I thought there was a possibility we could end this thing
with one quick assault. It had to be tried, and I knew that I wanted my best at
the tip of the spearhead. I miscalculated, and you paid for it with your blood.”

He turned around.
His eyes were bright and rimmed with red, and the high angular bones of his
face seemed more pronounced than ever in the shadow of the tent. “You all paid
for it, and I will not forget that. We were beaten last night, but we are not
defeated. We will prevail against Machran -the city has shown that she is a
worthy adversary.”

He laid a hand on
Fornyx’s chest, and wiped some of the dried blood off the black cuirass. “I
made you pay too high a price. Rictus was a man none of us could afford to
lose.” He smiled, and his eyes welled up again.

“Fornyx, I loved
him too, more than you know.”

Fornyx’s face
remained hard as flint and his voice when he spoke was harsh as that of a crow.

“I wish to send a
green branch to Machran to ask for his body. His wife would wish it of me.”

“Do as you think
best.”

“It is an
admission of defeat, to ask for the dead,” Demetrius rumbled.

“Then it is
stating no more than the obvious,” Corvus replied. “The men of Machran fought
well last night - let them have their triumph. If they now believe themselves
invincible, then by Phobos we will use that against them.”

“They have one
more Cursebearer on the walls of the city today,” Fornyx spat. “Think on that,
if you will.”

A
thin veil
of sleet came slanting
down out of a blank sky as winter settled itself comfortably about the lowlands
surrounding Machran. On the horizons the mountains were white, their peaks lost
in cloud. It was a day when a man prefers to set his back to the door and stare
into a good fire.

Karnos stood in
the arched shadow of the South Prime Gate as the huge oak and bronze doors were
swung back by a dozen armoured men. Behind him, a centon in full panoply stood
in ranks, most with the sigil of Machran on their shields, but Avennos and
Arkadios were represented too. Murchos of Arkadios stood beside him wrapped in
a piebald goatskin cloak against the cold. He wiped his nose on the fur and
stamped his feet to keep the blood flowing.

“I don’t like this
- he’s a tricky bastard, Corvus.”

“It’s three men,
Murchos - what can three men do, even if they wear the scarlet? We have a
hundred here - and the rest of the bugger’s army is back in camp nearly two
pasangs away. Unless they grow wings and fly, they’re not going to interfere.
And besides, I want to know what the great Rictus has to say.”

“Nothing good. It
was he who brought the surrender terms to Hal Goshen, don’t forget.”

“After last night,
I hardly think they’re here to demand that. Relax yourself, Murchos - you’re
worse than Kassander.”

The gates were
wide open now, and Karnos walked through them, close-wrapped in a wool cloak of
his own. Murchos followed him, a bear of a man made more feral by the rough
goatskin. And behind the pair the centon of spearmen advanced, some ninety
armoured men in close ranks.

Three men in red
cloaks stood awaiting them in the shadow of the walls, one holding aloft a
branch of. olive wood with a few thin leaves clinging to it. Around them,
scores of corpses still lay contorted on the cold ground, the residue of Corvus’s
diversionary attack of the night before. The three looked like the sole
survivors of some disaster as they stood there amid the tumbled bodies of the
dead.

None of them were
Rictus, Karnos noted at once, disappointed. He slid his good arm out of his
cloak and raised his hand.

“Close enough,
friend - what is it you’ve come to say?”

The branch-bearer
was a lean, wiry man with a black beard. He walked forward a few steps, his
feet cracking the ice which had gathered in the frozen rutted mud of the
roadway. Blood, too, had frozen in puddles hard as gemstones, but he avoided
stepping on it. He let his cloak fall back and Karnos saw that he was a
Cursebearer; he studied the man’s face more intently.

“Fornyx?”

The man smiled. “You
have a good memory for faces, Karnos. We only met the once, I think.”

“You’re Rictus’s
second, aren’t you?”

“I was.” A spasm
of pain crossed the lean man’s features. “I come here to ask you a favour, one
soldier to another.”

Karnos’s eyebrows
shot up his forehead. “After last night, I find this a strange time to -”

“Rictus of Isca
died on your walls last night. I have come to ask you for his body.”

Karnos’s mouth opened,
but nothing came out. He looked like a landed fish. Murchos sprang forward. “What’s
that you say?”

Fornyx’s face was
a study in sinew and bone. His eyes flashed. “You heard me. I ask your
permission to search through the bodies on your walls.” His jaw worked as
though he wanted to bite back the words as he spoke them. “I lay no claim to
his armour. I want only to be able to burn him decently, for his wife’s sake.”