Corvus

by Paul Kearney

He raised his head, and for the first time looked Rictus eye to eye. “You have my word on that.”

  His face was pale, and there was something odd about his eyes. But before Rictus could quite grasp it, the youth had lowered his gaze again.

  “Phobos,” Fornyx cursed.

  “Go left,” Rictus murmured out of the corner of his mouth. These young men were not going to back down. The morning was going to end in blood after all.

  Louder, Rictus said; “Leave now. No more questions, no more talk. Leave, or die here.” Both he and Fornyx raised their spearheads to throat height and assumed attack stances.

  Not one of the men moved. The hooded youth sighed, reached into his sleeve and brought forth a cheap wooden flute, the kind soldiers whittle for themselves in their encampments.

  “I will not fight you, Rictus,” he said calmly - he was too calm. Even as Rictus and Fornyx advanced, neither he nor any of his men stirred, but the youth put the flute to his lips - they were as red as a girl’s- and played a shrill melody, a fragment of a marching tune Rictus had heard half a hundred times before.

  And instantly, the forest came to life all around them.

  Men rose up out of the snow, from behind trees, out of the brush. They had been lying under white cloaks, hiding in the thickets. Their appearance set the woods alive with frightened birds.

  In a moment, Rictus and Fornyx were surrounded by dozens, scores of armed soldiers, blue-faced with cold. Some had bows, others javelins, and yet more unsheathed their drepanas so that cold iron glittered in the snow-brightness.

  They stood silent and watching, like legendary warriors brought to magic life out of the very soil of the earth.

  “Damn,” Fornyx said. “The little bastard.”

  There was the white, draining shock of it, the knowledge it was all over, his whole life finished at last.

  So this is how it ends, Rictus thought. For me, for Fornyx, for all of us. He thought of Aise and the girls, and what would happen to them now, and he fought down the automatic impulse to charge, to skewer this flute-playing boy and drown him in his own blood. He had to buy time.

  “Stack arms,” he said to Fornyx.

  “My arse,” his friend snapped, wide-eyed with fury behind his helm.

  “Do it, Fornyx.”

  The two men stabbed their spears butt-first into the ground so that the sauroters buried themselves. His right hand free, Rictus took off his helm, and the cold air bit his face.

  “You have us at a disadvantage,” he said to the flute-player. “And you have my name right. I am Rictus, and this here is my second, Fornyx.” He looked about himself, heart thundering, face stiff with the effort to keep it impassive. But he managed a little flourish of contempt.

  “You think you brought enough men?”

  The youth reached up and threw back his hood. He was smiling. He walked down the slope as though descending the steps of a palace, until he stood so close that Rictus could have reached out and set both hands about his throat.

  His eyes were weirdly pale, a shade of violet that did not seem quite natural. He had black hair past his shoulders, as gleaming black as a raven’s wing, and his white skin had a sheen of gold about it.

  He was as beautiful as a maiden, but had the scar of an old sword-stroke at the corner of his left eye.

  “I have wanted to meet you for a long time, Rictus of Isca,” he said.

  “I am called Corvus.”

  FOUR

  MEN OF PHOBOS

  IT IS A FINE LINE, sometimes, Rictus thought, between guest and hostage. The key to it is left unspoken, buried in courtesies. The fist inside the glove.

  They were escorted back down into the glen of Andunnon as though the men about them were for their own protection, and the strange youth who called himself Corvus walked beside them, as though he were a friend of theirs. Some of his companions relieved Rictus and Fornyx of the weight of their shields, helms and spears, but they were allowed to keep their swords. Courtesy.

  “This is a beautiful place,” Corvus said, as the woods thinned and the column came out into the open sunlight of the valley bottom. “A man could be happy here. I do not wonder that you wanted to keep your home a secret, Rictus.”

  “I am curious as to how I failed in that regard,”

  Rictus said tartly.

  The youth nodded. “There’s a lot to be said between us. I hope you will perhaps count me a guest here and not an intruder. It is no part of my intent to harm you or your family.”

  “If talk were commerce, all men would be rich,” Fornyx said, and spat into the snow. “A guest does not bring a full centon of warriors to test his host’s hospitality.”

  “If I had brought any fewer, you would both have fought me,” Corvus said, holding up one long-fingered hand as though to catch something. “I had to take away hope of winning to make you listen to what I have to say.”

  “They’re a patient bunch,” Rictus said, gesturing to the ranks of soldiers who marched on all sides. “How long were they buried in the woods?”

  “They are my Igranians,” Corvus said. “From Igranon in the high eastern Harukush. It’s so cold up there they think this is a mild spring in comparison. They are my light troops, my foot cavalry. Druze is their chieftain, and one of my marshals.”

  “I hope they brought their own bread,” Fornyx drawled. His tone was mocking, insolent, but his face was white and drawn as a fever-victim, and his fist was knotted on the hilt of his sword.

  “In this valley, my hounds stay on the leash,” Corvus said gravely.

  THEY MADE GOOD time. As the column approached the farm, they saw that Aise and Eunion had not yet left, Garin and Styra were in the front yard packing up bedrolls. The two shrank together as the long line of armed men came into view and began splashing across the shallows of the river. Then they bolted like hares, sprinting for the north. Corvus swept an arm forward and at once the dark smiling fellow Druze led off some two dozen of his men at a run. They skeined out into two lines that flanked the farmhouse and surrounded it. The two fleeing slaves were tripped up, pinioned, and prodded back down the valley towards the house. Rictus and Fornyx looked at one another. These Igranians’ discipline was almost as good as that of the Dogsheads. High mountain tribesmen they might be, but they had been well-drilled.

  The main body of the centon halted short of the farmyard and stood there in rough ranks. Corvus turned to Rictus.

  “Call to your family. Tell them there is no need for alarm. I’ve brought good food and wine on the horses - if you will permit me, Rictus, I would like to dine with you this morning.” The sun caught him full in the face; his skin seemed more colourless than ever, and his eyes were as pale as tinted glass.

  The house was in disarray, blankets, pots and lamps all askew, things strewn over the floor in the panic of packing. It was dark inside as they entered - the fire had gone out - and Aise, Eunion and the children were in a huddle at the far wall. Eunion had his old boar spear levelled, and Aise was clutching a hatchet.

  “Wife,” Rictus said, his voice harsh, “get the fire lit, and clean up this mess. We have guests.” A cup broke under his foot as he strode over to them. He set a hand on Ona’s head and touched Aise’s shoulder. Softly, he said, “This is not what you think.” He wiped a tear from Rian’s cheek, her face white and defiant in the gloom.

  “Father, are they here to kill you?”

  “They’re here to talk, my honey. And we must be clever about this. Set the table and light the lamps.” To Aise he said nothing, but they gripped each other’s hands bone-tight for a long moment.

  “Do as your father says,” Aise said at last, her voice as hoarse as a crow’s. Her gaze did not leave Rictus’s face. “He knows best. We are in his hands.”

  Outside again, Rictus spoke to Corvus and his waiting men. “You might want to give them a moment. They’ve had an unsettling morning.”

  “My apologies,” Corvus said, grimacing. “Grakos, unload the horses. Druze, the men ma
y stand easy and break out their food. Then you will accompany me inside, as soon as Rictus here is willing to extend an invitation.” He bowed slightly to Rictus.

  He had old-fashioned manners, a kind of courtesy that Rictus had not seen for a long time, as though he had stepped out of an earlier age. His accent was strange also. Rictus had heard Machtic spoken by men from every corner of the Harukush, and a few from beyond it, but he could not place this Corvus at all.

  “What is this, some kind of game?” Fornyx demanded. “We are your prisoners - what’s all this talk of invitations?”

  “I mean everything I say,” Corvus said mildly. “If Rictus does not wish us to enter his house, then we will remain outside. It’ll be colder, mind.”

  Fornyx shook his head, torn between anger and sheer bafflement.

  “I’m willing to let you in,” Rictus said, with the ghost of a smile. “My wife may have other ideas though.” Despite himself, he was beginning to believe that this strange young man meant what he said.

  “We’ve brought good wine, Minerian from the western coast,” Druze said. “Inside or out, it’ll still taste better than anything you can drink within a hundred pasangs.”

  “Minerian? You hear that Rictus?” Fornyx said. “If we’re to die, at least our bellies will be thanking us.”

  “Let us not talk of death today,” Corvus said, and a coldness came into his pale eyes. For a moment he seemed a much older man.

  AISE DID WELL. She had always been good at bringing order out of chaos, and she had never been anything other than level-headed even in the most brutish moments of their life together. When Rictus finally, formally invited Corvus and his companion Druze into the farmhouse, the place was as neat and ordered as if this were any other morning of the year. The fire was a yellow blaze in the hearth, and the good lamps had been hung from the ceiling beams and were burning sweetly. There was food and wine on the table, and the two dogs were being held back in the corner by Eunion. Their low sing-song growling was the only discordant note in the proceedings.

  Aise came forward bearing a dish of salt. She had piled her hair up on her head and was wearing the sleeveless scarlet chiton Rictus had bought her one drunken night long ago, when they had both been young and full of fire. Her eyes were made up with kohl and stibium; it recalled something of her old, heart-stopping beauty, and it brought Corvus and Druze up short. Corvus bowed to her as though she were a queen, lifted a pinch of salt to his lips and said, “Antimone’s blessings on you and your house, lady.”

  “You are most welcome,” Aise said, and Rictus loved her in that moment for the pride and the courage of what she had done. If they were all to die today, then he was glad he had seen her like this one last time.

  “You must be seated - I have -” but Aise trailed off. Corvus had gone straight to the corner and had knelt down in front of the dogs.

  “What beauties these are. Release them, friend. They have no quarrel with me.” Startled, Eunion let go his grip on the hounds’ collars and they sprang forward, sniffing, growling, baring their teeth and licking Corvus’s face, alternately. He laughed, sounding like a little boy as he played with their ears and scratched their flanks. Old Mij rolled over like a puppy, tongue lolling.

  Rictus caught Druze’s eye and the black-bearded man shrugged with a wry smile. “Dogs, horses, he has a way with them.”

  “And men?” Fornyx asked.

  “You’ll find out. It’s what we’re here for.”

  Corvus rose, the hounds dancing around him as though he was their long-lost master. “Forgive me, Rictus. I have not yet met the rest of your family.”

  Ona stared at him silently, sucking her thumb -she had not done that for years. Rian, in her pale, defiant pride, looked every inch a younger version of her mother - a woman, no longer a girl - and Rictus felt a jolt of pure fear as Corvus took her hand and kissed it.

  “Your household is filled with beauty,” he said to Rictus, his gaze still fixed on Rian. “You are a fortunate man. Druze, the gifts.”

  Druze set a skin of wine on the table, and then a net of oranges and fat lemons from the far eastern coast.

  “Let’s eat,” Corvus said briskly.

  IT WAS PERHAPS the strangest meal Rictus had ever shared. They sat about the long pine table and passed the dishes up and down it to one another in perfect amity, as though there were not a hundred soldiers squatting outside, as though Corvus was a family friend who had chanced by.

  Rictus and Fornyx sat in their black cuirasses, which lent a certain sombre glory to the proceedings, and Druze poured them all cups of the good Minerian as though he were the master of ceremonies. There was little in the way of talk, until Rian, having ripped her bread to shreds on her plate, said; “Are you really him? The Corvus we hear about, the man from the east?”

  “I am he,” Corvus said, sipping his wine.

  “How do we know that? You don’t look like him - you could be some bandit who’s trading on his name,” Rian said defiantly.

  Corvus looked at her. His red-lipped smile was like a scar across his face. “What does he look like, this Corvus you’ve heard about?”

  “He’s - he’s tall, for one thing. And he rides horses, I hear tell, and leads an army of thousands, not some mountain band of brigands.”

  Corvus set a hand on Druze’s shoulder. “I would not call my Igranians brigands, lady. At least, not any more.” The two men grinned at one another. Druze leaned across the table, black eyes shining. In a mock whisper he said, “We were once, it’s true - it is in our blood. But things are different now. There’s no money in banditry anymore.” And he laughed as if at some private joke.

  “You’re too young to be the man in the stories,” Rian persisted.

  Corvus shrugged. “Ask your father about the truthfulness of stories. The farther the truth travels, the less it becomes the truth. That’s the way of the world. I was brought up with tales of the Ten Thousand and Rictus of Isca who brought them home from the land beyond the sea. He was a hero, a giant of myth to me - when I was a boy. But your father is a real person, one solitary man who sits here drinking wine with us. Every legend begins with the ordinary and the everyday, as the acorn begets the oak.”

  “You’re too short!” Rian exclaimed, colour rising up her face. Aise set a hand on her arm. “Enough, daughter. You will eat in silence now.”

  Corvus seemed to have taken no offence. “My mother was a wise woman, like yours,” he said. “She always told me that a man is as tall as he thinks he is.” He raised his cup to Rian. “And besides, lady, I am tall in the stories, am I not?”

  The stilted meal ended, and Aise led the girls out of the room, Rian still smouldering. Eunion took himself off to a corner where he affected to read a scroll, though he fooled none of them; he was as prick eared with curiosity as a bald-headed cat. Rictus, Fornyx, Corvus and Druze remained about the table, watching one another, until finally Fornyx, who had drunk deep of the superb wine, rose with in irritated hiss of breath and turned to Rictus. “Get me out of this damned thing, will you?” And he slapped at the black cuirass on his back.

  “Let me,” Corvus said, rising as swiftly as a dancer. And before Fornyx could protest, he was working on the clasps of the armour, opening them with sharp clicks. He lifted the cuirass off Fornyx and held it in his hands a moment.

  “It amazes me, every time I touch one of these,” he said. “The lightness of it, the strength inside. What are they made of, Antimone’s Gift? Do you ever wonder, Rictus?”

  “Gaenion made the stuff of them, they say,” Druze put in. “Out of the essence of darkness itself. And because she wove them into chitons for us, Antimone was exiled from heaven, to watch over us in pity, and to take us behind her Veil in death. I’ve heard it said that the life and fate of the Macht are woven into them in patterns we cannot see.” Druze had awide, broad-nosed face, that of a farmer, and he had the olive colouring of the eastern tribes. But his eyes missed nothing, and the hilt of the drepana hanging from
his shoulder had seen much use.

  Corvus was turning the cuirass this way and that to catch the fire while Fornyx stood looking at him owlishly.

  “You see the way it takes the light sometimes - a gleam here or there. And yet at other times it will reflect nothing, but will be as black as a hole in the earth itself.”

  Fornyx took his cuirass back, swaying a little.

  “With all the conquering you’ve been doing, I’d have thought you would have one of your own by now,” he said to Corvus.

  The strange youth’s face hardened, became a pale mask. “I have one,” he said softly. “I choose not to wear it.”

  “Why so?”

  “A man must earn his right to the Curse of God, Fornyx.”

  Fornyx snorted, and then wove his way to the end wall where he placed his cuirass on its stand there. He set a hand on it.

  “They do not care who wears them,” he said over his shoulder. “They fit your bones like a second skin, whether you’re fat or thin, tall,” he turned round with a sneer, “or short.”

  Corvus seemed all at once to grow very still, and in the room the only sound was the crackle of the fire, and the breath slowly exhaling from Druze’s mouth.

  “Rictus, your friend has savoured too much of the wine,” Corvus said quietly. “He forgets himself.”

  “I forget myself, do I?” Fornyx snarled. He strode hack to the table. “You short-arsed little fuck - how about I break you in two over my knee?”

  Rictus stood up. “Enough.” One look halted Fornyx in his tracks.

  “We’ve played your game,” he said to Corvus. “Now I want to know your intent. Are you here to kill us, or make some kind of offer? We’re mercenaries, not seers. Be straight, and get it over with.”

  Corvus nodded, and some life came back into the mask-like face. He really was as fine-boned as a girl, Rictus thought. It did not seem possible he was the man who had been conquering the cities of the eastern coasts for going on three years now, the unstoppable conqueror of rumour. A leader of armies.