Corvus

by Paul Kearney

  “Sinon is where the march of the Ten Thousand ended, where their epic came to a close.” Now he looked at Rictus.

  “Not in glory, but in squalor. When the last centons of these heroes finally straggled down to the shores of the sea, what did they do?

  “They set about each other like squabbling dogs. They killed one another for gold, for insults given and taken on the long march west. They were riven into pieces before they even saw the sea. They were Macht, and they had defeated the armies of the Great King over and over in open battle. They had humbled an Empire, but they could not govern themselves.”

  A flash of something passed over Corvus’s face, something between contempt and anger. It chilled Rictus’s spine to look upon it. This boy, he was -

  “That is the fatal flaw within the Macht,” Corvus ploughed on. His face was a mask without colour, the strange violet eyes within it bright as those of some feral animal.

  “Unless they face death from without, then they will spend their lives fighting each other - farmyard cocks all crowing on their separate dunghills. This is what we are, here in the Harukush, the poorest patch of stone in the world.

  “In the Empire the Macht are a thing of legend and wonder, a tale told to frighten children. We are the fearsome beast of the night, the things which crossed the sea to wreak havoc, and then disappeared. I know - I have heard these stories across the Sinonian. But here -” Disgust crossed his face. “Here we are a million struggling dwarfs, all pissing and moaning about where we shall have space to shit.”

  He lifted his chin, stood straight. He was slight as a girl, but Rictus had no doubt in that moment that he could have killed any one of those in the tent who stood up against him. Men smelled fear and weakness, as surely as dogs did. And in Corvus there was none. He was a creature of singular determination.

  “I am here to unite the Macht, to make of them one people, one purpose, We were put upon this world to rule it, and that is what we shall do. To make us all of one will, I must conquer all. I intend to bring all our people under one ruler.”

  He smiled with a moment’s disarming irony.

  “I will wear the black Curse of God, Rictus; on the day that I am named King of the Macht.”

  NINE

  THE GHOST IN THE TENT

  “PHOBOS, WHAT A damned awful stupid time of year to be in harness,” Fornyx said in disgust. “My second winter campaign in as many years. This is no way to run the shop.”

  He and Druze stood in the mire with their cloaks over their heads and stared at the flat grey world of the rain. In the country to their front the water had gathered in broad sword-pale lakes in which the black outline of trees stood forlorn and stark. The mountains were invisible, the sullen shadow of the clouds gnarled over the north and west, the sky brought low to meet a colourless landscape. And the rain did its best to bring the two together in one new element composed of equal parts water and mud.

  “Six day’s march to Machran,” Druze said with that sinister, oddly winning smile of his. “Or maybe not.”

  “And still he pushes us on, your lord and master,”

  Fornyx said. “What did we make, day before yesterday - six pasangs? The baggage spent a whole day just travelling the length of the column - and as for the supply lines, well...”

  “I wish it was snow,” Druze said. “Snow I am used to. But this lowlander’s winter of yours, it sucks at a man’s marrow, neither one thing nor the other.”

  “You’ll get used to it,” Fornyx said with a grin. “You’ll have to, if you’re not to retire back to banditry in the hills.”

  “There are worse trades, my friend. My people, they have strong places carved out of the very rock of the world, back in the Gerreran Mountains above Idrios. We hole up in those in the winter like bears, eat ourselves fat and greasy and fuck, our women until they walk bow-legged.”

  Fornyx snorted with laughter. “Not a bad way to pass the winter. Me, I like the idea of a fishing town on the Bay of Goshen, where the sky is blue all through the dark months and a man can sit at one of those wine shops on the water and stare out at the Sinonian while eating fresh octopus and grilled herrin.”

  They stared silently at the rain for a long while, their feet ankle-deep in mud.

  “I have wine in my tent...” Fornyx said at last, grudgingly.

  “We are here to watch the enemy,” Druze said.

  “Look at them - they’re not going anywhere. The bastards are as mired in shit as we are.”

  Out at the limits of visibility it was possible to make out a shadow on the world, dark as a forest. Within that shadow were the lights of struggling campfires.

  They covered the land for many pasangs. As the rain-curtain shifted and drifted aimlessly, it was possible at times to make out the lines of the enemy’s tents, but that was all. There was no movement, not a single ominous snake of men on the march. The enemy army was as motionless as a felled tree.

  “A cup or two would not hurt,” Druze admitted. “All right, then.”

  “And a game of knucklebones perhaps - Kesero had one on the go when I left.”

  “Not for me. You red-cloaked bastards cleaned me out last night.”

  The two men turned and began making their slow, plodding way back down the long slope they had ascended in the morning. They were barefoot; the mud sucked even the most heavily strapped footwear off men’s feet. Some two dozen Macht were standing in the rain waiting for them: half Druze’s Igranians, the rest scarlet-cloaked Dogsheads of Fornyx’s centon. One of these spoke up.

  “Any more of this and we can float over the walls of Machran in fucking boats.”

  “That’s the plan,” Fornyx said. “Didn’t you know? Back to camp, lads - there’s nothing doing out here that needs watching.”

  The little band of men followed their leaders back along the flooded length of the Imperial road, wading through the cold water with the stoicism of those who have seen it all before. To the east, the vast bivouac of Corvus’s all-conquering army sat like a flooded squatter’s camp, motionless in the unending downpour.

  * * *

  RICTUS, ALSO, WAS staring at the rain. He stood in the doorway of Corvus’s command tent and watched the rills of brown water curl and thicken about the corduroyed pathways of the camp. As far as the eye could see the horizon was an unending mass of brown tents. The latrines had flooded out, and the stink of ordure hung over them. This was no place to remain long. Men sickened when they gathered together in great numbers. It was as if they produced an air unwholesome to their own existence.

  He thought of Aise and the girls. Up in the highlands the snow would be thick and deep, the world closed down in mountain winter. They were safe, now - nothing and no-one would be able to make it through the drifts to Andunnon until the spring thaw. There was that to be thankful for.

  “Some warmth in a cup,” a voice said.

  It was Ardashir, the tall Kufr. He proffered the brimming goblet to Rictus with a smile.

  “Corvus is out digging drains with his Companions, to set an example. He will be a while.” The Kefren marshal was liberally plastered with mud himself.

  “I did my turn of digging this morning,” he explained.

  Rictus took the wine. Thin, watered stuff, but welcome all the same. The roads had been washed out and the supply-trains were not making it through. The entire army was on half rations. Another reason they could not stay here.

  “It would seem Antimone is on Karnos’s side for the present,” he said, sipping the execrable wine.

  “Your Antimone, goddess of pity and of war. A strange deity. Myself, I believe that Mot, the dark blight of the world, is passing over.”

  “Different gods, same rain,” Rictus grunted. He walked away from the uplifted side of the tent and stood at the map table. They were so close.

  Some two hundred and thirty pasangs separated them from the walls of Machran.

  That, and the army which Karnos had managed to cobble together with incredible speed
to throw in their path. It was not yet the full muster of the League, but it was a respectable showing all the same. Perhaps twenty thousand men were encamped on the other side of the hill, enduring the same rain as their enemies, and he did not doubt that more would be marching in over the next few days, mud or no mud.

  “We should hit them hard, now, before the other hinterland cities send their contingents,” he said. “This waiting is... unwise.”

  Ardashir came to the table, towering over Rictus like a totem. “In this weather?”

  “Men have fought in worse.”

  “I know they have, Rictus. But we talk not only of men. What of horses?’ Cavalry cannot operate in this swamp. We must delay now until the plains dry out. Corvus foresaw that this might happen. He talks of glory, and he means it, but there is always a stone cold reasoning behind what he does. Until we have hard ground to fight on, the army cannot go on the offensive. If it does, then it will simply be two bodies of spears slogging it out, and in that contest, numbers will be more telling.”

  “I had not thought of your horses,” Rictus conceded, throwing back his wine. “It is not something a Macht would usually take into account.” He looked the tall Kefren up and down.

  “Tell me, Ardashir - tell me honestly - what-in hell are you doing here?”

  Ardashir grinned. He had a kindly face, but so elongated and strange did it appear that it was easy to miss the humanity in his eyes.

  “Corvus is my friend, the best I have. I would follow him anywhere.”

  “That’s not an answer.”

  “It’s one answer.”

  Then Ardashir inclined his head. “Very well. Then know this; my father was Satrap of the province of Askanon, maybe ten years after you and your Ten Thousand passed through it. He was a good man, an honourable man, but even good men can have worthless brothers.” The Kefren’s face changed. It was if the bones of it became more pronounced; a mask that was truly alien - like those of the Honai that Rictus had faced at Kunaksa.

  “He killed my father, took my sister - his niece - to wife against her will, and proclaimed himself Satrap. I was a child, smuggled out of my father’s palace in Ashdod by our family steward. He took me to Sinon, where my uncle could not touch me, it being a Macht city. And there I spent much of my boyhood, in poverty. When Kurush our steward died, I was left alone. All that remained of the life before was this -” Here he unsheathed the curved sword which hung at his flank. It was a plain Kefren scimitar with an hourglass hilt, and set in the pommel was a small incised ruby. He rubbed his thumb across it. “Our family seal. This was my father’s sword. All I have of him.”

  His face brightened. “And I met Corvus, playing on the shore outside Sinon one fine day some twelve years ago. He was an undersized child, half my height, but he was the leader of all the local boys, and he made me, a Kufr, part of his friends. I have never forgotten that.” He looked down at Rictus.

  “Corvus does not care about Macht and Kufr. He cares about friendship. Once he gives it, he will never betray you.”

  Rictus stared up at the tall creature who stood before him. He had learned how to judge men over the years, and to judge soundly. He knew that Ardashir was not lying. More, he found himself liking this quiet Kufr, this dispossessed prince who had followed his mad friend west in pursuit of an insane idea.

  He looked down at the map table again, seeing writ across it the fate of his world, his people.

  “There is Kufr blood in Corvus, isn’t there?” he said.

  Ardashir nodded. “His mother was a hufsa, one of the mountain tribes. But she was an educated and refined woman. You and I can see it in him, as can all those who have known a little of both worlds; but most Macht have never met a Kufr; they think we are all horse-faced demons with glowing eyes.” He smiled.

  “So who was his father?”

  “I never knew him, and nor did Corvus. He had left or died before the boy was born.”

  Rictus looked across the interior of the tent to where the Curse of God, the armour that Corvus would not wear, sat perched on its stand like some amputated statue. A sudden insight went like a shiver down his back.

  Corvus’s father had been a Cursebearer.

  He might have said something, but as if summoned by their talk, Corvus himself entered the tent, flapping the rain off his cloak and bantering with Teresian, who was with him. The leader of the army was as plastered with mud as if he had been rolling in it; his teeth and eyes gleamed out of a brown face. His smile widened as he saw Rictus and Ardashir at the table.

  “Ha! Steering clear of the muck, are we? And winecups in your hands! Come, Ardashir, this is a disgrace; lend me a gulp, will you?” He drank deep out of the Kufr’s cup.

  “Not Minerian, Rictus, sorry to say. But it all leaves us in the same way, whatever the vintage - Teresian, pour us more. I swear I have mud in my very gullet.”

  Corvus’s spirits seemed undimmed by the rain and the morass his army found itself in. He threw off his cloak and one of the page boys came forward from the shadows to catch it - Rictus had not even known he was there.

  “Thank you, Sasca,” Corvus murmured, and when he set a hand on the page’s shoulder the boy’s face lit up.

  “What word of the Dogsheads?” Corvus asked Rictus, making for the banked red coals of the brazier and standing so close to it they could smell the singeing wool of his chiton.

  “Fornyx and your man Druze report that the enemy camp is about as lively as ours - no coming or going. No-one can make a move in this weather.”

  Corvus seemed profoundly satisfied by this news. “Excellent. Ardashir, the supply train?”

  “It’s making slow progress some twenty pasangs up the road. The wagons are up to their axles and the oxen are dying on their feet. It will be at least another two days before it reaches us.”

  “Ah.” Even this did not dim his high spirits. “Brothers, we must not let a little rain dampen our mood. There may be a way to have some fun out of this downpour. Teresian, the wine stands by you; pass it round, man.”

  Fun? Rictus thought. He looked at Ardashir and the Kufr shrugged.

  “I feel the urge to get to know my enemies better,” Corvus went on. “There they are over the hill by the thousand, and we have not so much as said hello to one another. This Karnos is a fascinating fellow, by all accounts - like you, Rictus, a self-made man of a certain age. I’m thinking I should get a better look at him.”

  “I know Karnos - I’ve spoken to him many a time,” Rictus said. “He’s a braggart, an upstart slave-dealer with a silver tongue.”

  “That tongue of his certainly has a way of getting things done,” Corvus replied, still in a good humour. “Look across the way and name me one other member of the Machran Kerusia who could have got their levies out on the road as quickly as Karnos did. No, he’s a man of some substance this fellow, not just a crowd-pleaser.” He paused. “I think I would like a look at him.” “What shall we set up - some kind of embassy?” Teresian asked, narrow-eyed.

  “We could pitch a tent between the armies,” Ardashir suggested.

  Corvus held up a hand. “I was thinking of something a little more personal. I want to get a look at him tonight.”

  They were all foxed by his words, and then it dawned on Rictus. “You want to enter the enemy camp.”

  Corvus cocked his head to one side, and flakes of mud fell off his face. He peeled off some more, held it in his hand. “Why not - covered in this, all men look alike.”

  “Corvus, my brother -” Ardashir began.

  “Not you, Ardashir - no amount of mud could cover your origins.” Corvus was smiling, but the humour had dimmed in him. He was in earnest.

  “You, Rictus - will you come with me?”

  A moment of silence, the rain drumming on the roof of the great tent.

  “You think it wise?” Rictus asked evenly.

  “I did not say it was wise. I said it was what I intended to do. And as you are one of my marshals, I should like yo
ur company.”

  Another test. Rictus held the younger man’s eyes. Something like perfect understanding passed between them.

  “Very well,” he said with as much nonchalance as he could muster. “Shall it be we two alone, then?”

  “The fewer the better. But I wish Druze to join us - he has a gift for escapades.”

  “And when shall we leave?”

  Corvus stretched in front of the brazier so that its red glow underlit his face, making it seem less than ever like that of a normal man.

  “We’ll wait for darkness,” he said. “And Rictus -”

  “Yes?”

  “We’ll travel light. Your cuirass will stay here, and that scarlet cloak with it.”

  Rictus nodded. Both Teresian and Ardashir were protesting, claiming it was a hare-brained venture, unnecessary risk. They did not use the word madness, but it was in their thoughts all the same. Both Corvus and Rictus ignored them. The leader of the army and his newest marshal needed to find trust in one another, and they both knew it.

  His life will be in my hands, Rictus thought, as mine has been in his. I have only to raise my voice in the enemy camp, and he will be captured, and this army of his will fall apart. He knows this.

  He had to marvel at Corvus’s audacity. This boy -

  No; he was not a boy. That way of regarding him was no longer tenable. In fact he was no younger than Rictus had been when he had been elected leader of the Ten Thousand. Sometimes, with the selective memory of a middle-aged man, Rictus forgot that he, too, had been something of a prodigy.

  He took off his cloak, and began unclicking the fastenings of his black cuirass. He stared at the other Curse of God in the tent, perched on its armour-stand like some silent ghost. Who wore you? He wondered. Were you one of us, who made the March beside me?

  He placed his cuirass beside its fellow, and for a moment all the occupants of the tent fell silent, looking at them.

  These were the keystone of the heritage of the Macht. No Kufr had ever possessed or worn one of them in all of recorded history. Antimone’s Gift was a black mystery at the heart of the Macht world. Sometimes, Rictus thought that if one could puzzle out the origins of these artefacts, then one would have unravelled the enigma of the Macht themselves. He had come to think, during the long march all those years ago, that the Macht were somehow not part of this world they inhabited. At least, they had not been here in the beginning.