Corvus

by Paul Kearney

  Rictus looked up and saw to his left the white dome of the Empirion rise up out of the maze of streets before him, untouched and inviolate, whilst to his right was the bulk of Kerusiad Hill in the distance, whitewashed villas clinging to it like tiers of swallow’s nests. The gates were taken, and behind the Dogsheads fresh morai of spearmen were moving in support.

  But the men of Machran were not yet beaten. They reformed on the far side of the square, and began to advance again. They were led by a Cursebearer, whose black armour was like a hole in the sunlight. He raised his spear and shouted for them to advance, and hundreds followed him, roaring.

  “We need that bastard dead,” Fornyx said. “They see a Cursebearer go down, and I think we’ll have them.”

  The Dogsheads lowered their spears, those who still had them, and charged. They kept their lines intact as they moved, where the enemy hurtling towards them had lost formation, becoming a mob of crazed men in bronze.

  But they had momentum. As the two sides crashed into one another the Dogsheads were halted in their tracks by the savagery of the Machran assault, and all up and down the square the thing restarted in earnest.

  The struggle in the gatehouse had been bitter; this one verged on insane. As men went down dying they clutched at the legs of their enemies, reached up under the short chitons to tear at their genitals. Rictus had a sandal pulled off his foot and brought his heel down on a snarling face, then stabbed the sauroter into an eye-socket.

  The enemy Cursebearer was almost opposite now, and he left his own line and hurled his spear-butt in the man’s face. It clanged off his helm, making him look round. Rictus swung his shield and smashed it into the torso of a soldier opposite, kicked him in the knee-joint and drew his drepana. He stabbed downwards as though it were an oversized knife, not looking to see the damage it did. He hauled it free of quivering meat, trusted Fornyx to finish the job, and lunged into the enemy line, utterly unaware of the animal snarling from out of his own mouth, intent on coming to grips with the man in the black cuirass.

  Their shields clashed. The other man stabbed down with his spear-butt and the sauroter point struck the rim of Rictus’s shield, clinked off the bronze, and skittered from the surface of his armour. The press had tightened again, and Rictus could not raise his sword. He let go of it, reached up and caught the Cursebearer’s spear. The sauroter sliced open his palm, but he was able to wrest it out of the other man’s grip. The man was tired. His neck was corded and gaunt under the helm, a big vein pulsing blue in the shadow of the cheek-guard.

  Rictus flipped the spear-butt round, the two of them swaying breast to breast in the packed mass of the melee. He looked into the other man’s eyes through the helm-slot, felt a strange flash of recognition, and then stabbed downwards, into the man’s neck. The sauroter went so deep as to bury the bronze, and the Cursebearer slid bonelessly to the ground.

  Something like a wail went up from the Machran men all around. “Karnos is dead, Karnos is dead!” they shouted.

  It was the breaking point. The line fell apart, and into the gaps the Dogsheads lunged with methodical professionalism. Men were speared as they turned to flee, tripped up and stabbed before they could get past the reach of the spears, hemmed in by the mass of men boiling behind them. The battle in the square disintegrated; in moments, heartbeats, it transformed, became a slaughter.

  “Fornyx,” Rictus said, panting. “Keep the push on - don’t let them reform.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine. Go on. I’ll catch up.”

  Fornyx led the Dogsheads up the square with a roar that belied his wiry frame. The Machran defenders were in rout, and the Dogsheads broke formation to take up the pursuit. Behind them came hundreds more of Teresian’s and Demetrius’s centons, and looking back Rictus saw horsemen in the gateway now as well, the lead elements of Corvus’s cavalry.

  He bent over and vomited onto the bloodsoaked stones, dropped his shield, and dragged off his helm, gasping for air.

  Then he staggered over to the dying Cursebearer lying amid a mound of his own men, the spearshaft protruding obscenely from above his collarbone and his blood running down the black armour in a steady stream.

  He knelt down and pulled off the man’s helm.

  Karnos looked up at him with wide, white eyes, and after a moment, he smiled, blood oozing from his lips.

  “Rictus of Isca? Am I dead already?”

  “Karnos.” The round face was gone. Karnos had become a different man, familiar and changed all the same. A gaunt warrior who wore Antimone’s Gift as though he had been born for it.

  “You will be soon,” Rictus said. He took the dying man’s hand, feeling an indefinable sadness. He had not thought much of the silver-tongued slave dealer who had once tried to employ him, but the man who lay before him now was someone else. “You fought well. I did not think you had it in you.”

  “Rictus?” Karnos’s white face twisted into a picture of astonishment. The blood gurgled in his throat. He gripped Rictus’s hand until the bones creaked. “But you died, weeks ago. On the wall.” “Almost. I made it off the wall the quickest way I could.”

  Karnos shut his eyes a moment. “Oh, Phobos, you filthy swine.”

  “What is it, Karnos?”

  “Listen to me.” Karnos coughed up a gout of blood, choking on it, and Rictus wiped it from his mouth, leaned close to catch the man’s failing breath.

  “I have your children in my house. Your children, you understand? I am sorry, Rictus. I sought to use them against you. They are on the Kerusiad Hill.”

  “My children?”

  “Forgive me. Phaestus and I, we thought -”

  Rictus’s face was a white, bloodstained mask of shock and fury. “My family?”

  “You know the house - the big villa with earth-coloured walls. They are there, safe.”

  “My wife!” Rictus said, his voice rising. “What about my wife? What have you done, Karnos?”

  But Karnos was already dead.

  THE PANIC SPREAD across the city in waves. Broken remnants of the Arkadians and Avennans were already streaming off . the walls, heading for the Mithannon, whist the men of Machran fought on hopelessly.

  Their polemarch, Kassander, rallied a dozen centons below the towering dome of the Empirion itself, and led them back into the fray, but Corvus’s forces were already in command of most of the Avennan Quarter, and the siege towers had broken the defence to the east, in the Goshen.

  Fully half the circuit of the walls had been taken by the enemy or abandoned by the defenders, and more of the besiegers were pouring through the gates by the minute, a tide “that seemed unstoppable. The citizens of Machran began flooding north and west, away from the fighting. Tens of thousands of people were on the move in the streets, in places packed as tight as the ranks of a fighting phalanx.

  “THE CITY HAS fallen,” Sertorius said. “That’s it, lads, I’m telling you: The whole thing is about to come crashing around our ears. Bosca, for Phobos’s sake, clear a way there - Adurnos, help him.”

  They were going against the flow, a small determined fistful of men battling against the current of the panicked crowds, clearing a path for themselves with the threat of their drawn swords, and sometimes with the flat of them slapped into someone’s face. The streets leading into the Goshen Quarter were a madhouse of screaming women and shrieking children, bloodied men fleeing the lost battle of the walls.

  Above them, Kerusiad Hill rose on its crag like a vision beyond the smoke and roar of the streets below. They were under two pasangs from Druze’s siege-towers.

  “Left here,” Sertorius shouted above the din. “Up this way.” They turned off the main thoroughfare, and the crowd was less packed. Men and women were trundling handcarts down from the hill piled high with their belongings and wailing children too small to keep their feet. Sertorius led his men against the current of the exodus, feeling the hill rise under him.

  “It’s not far now,” he said. “Phae
stus is in that house on the right, up ahead, the one with the yellow roof tiles. We do him first.”

  “And that little shit of a son he has,” Bosca snarled. “I want some fun with him before he goes!”

  “As long as we make it quick,” Sertorius said. “Remember, the real prize is at the top of the hill. And don’t forget the slaves - I want them too. They’re gold on the hoof, brothers.”

  The men around him growled in anticipation.

  The rented villa had stout doors of iron-studded wood, locked shut against the chaos of the streets. At a nod from Sertorius, Bosca and Adurnos swooped on a family pushing a handcart, tossed the children off the vehicle, and when the man protested beat him down, leaving him a broken bundle in the street with his family shrieking around him.

  “Now, lads, after three,” Sertorius said.

  They crashed the handcart into the heavy doors, running it up with a roar, and the bolt wrenched free of the wood. They whooped happily, and poured inside with drawn swords. A dark-haired man who was in their path stood frozen and was cut down with barely a pause.

  “Phaestus! Phaestus, you cheating bastard. It is I, Sertorius, come for you!”

  They careered through the house like mad children, kicking over furniture, pawing through drawers and cupboards. Not a lamp was lit in the place; aside from the dead man near the entrance the place seemed deserted.

  It was Adurnos who found him, and shouted for the others to join him. They crowded at the door of the room, breathing heavily.

  “The fucker got away from us boss,” Adurnos said moodily.

  Phaestus lay like a wax image on the bed, a blanket drawn up to his chin. His face was white as old ivory. Sertorius leaned over and touched it.

  “Cold as a fish. Antimone got to him before we did.”

  “Let’s torch the place,” Bosca suggested. “There’s not so much as a mouse in it - they’ve cleared out long since.”

  “No, no burning,” Sertorius said. “I’ll not give this son of a bitch a pyre. Let him lie here and rot.” He straightened.

  “Let’s get us that cart again, lads, Karnos’s house is just up the hill a ways, and I don’t mean to be done out of my fun a second time.”

  They turned and ran back through the empty house like a dark, flapping gale, a curse spoken by Phobos and given form.

  RICTUS WAS EXHAUSTED, but kept going out of pure will. He had thrown away his shield and helm, picked up a discarded drepana, and was fighting his way east through the streets like a salmon wriggling upstream. In his wake followed Valerian. There had been other Dogsheads with him, but they had become separated.

  Fornyx was still leading the bulk of the men in the destruction of Kassander’s last stand.

  There was no other kind of ordered resistance left in the city, but the entire population of Machran appeared to be on the streets, most people trying to make their way north, to the districts Corvus’s army had not yet captured. They had no plan in their minds beyond that. Half-crazed by hunger and fear, they had no kind of plan at all.

  The red cloak and the Curse of God cleared a path for Rictus, people recoiling from him as he strode along. Or perhaps it was the look on his face. He no longer cared if Machran stood or fell, if it went up in flames and was burnt to ash. He knew only that he had to find out whether Karnos had been speaking the truth. If his family were in this city he would tear the place down brick by brick to find them. He would have struck down Phobos himself if the god had stood in his path.

  KASSIA AND RIAN closed the door shut, slid the heavy bolt across and leaned their backs against it.

  “Better in here than out there,” Kassia said, setting a hand on Rian’s shoulder. “The slaves were fools.”

  “They weren’t slaves any more,” Rian said. “It was their choice, to stay or go as they wished.”

  Philemos stood to one side with a short stabbing sword, his soldier’s cuirass too big for him. His eyes were red-rimmed. “We’ll stay here until things settle down. I can go out and look, later, see what’s been going on.”

  Polio shook his head. “Young master, do you hear that?”

  They went quiet. The agony of the city rose up Kerusiad Hill, people wailing and screaming in their tens of thousands, their feet raising a murmur from the earth.

  “That is the sound of a city’s fall,” Polio said, and his face gnarled with grief. “Karnos has failed. Have you looked to the east? They brought towers to the walls. But the fighting there is over now - the enemy is inside the city.”

  He drew a deep breath. “I will abide here, and wait for Karnos. If he is alive, he will return. For the next few days, there is no more dangerous place in the world than the streets outside this door -especially for the women. Ladies, you must trust to these walls.”

  “My mother wants to leave as soon as it’s dark - we have people we know in Arienus,” Philemos said. He looked at Rian.

  “You are the head of your household now,” Polio told him. “It is for you to decide what is to be done. Your mother must realise that, Philemos.”

  The boy nodded. “It comes hard. It’s new to me.”

  Rian reached out and took his hand.

  Kassia stood with tears running silently down her face, but she managed a laugh. “Listen to us, conjuring up the worst picture we can! Polio, if ever any two men were going to live through a disaster, then they are Karnos and my brother. They’ll be back here, you’ll see. Even if Machran falls, those two cannot be kept down.”

  Polio nodded gravely. “Lady, I believe you’re right.”

  “So what do we do?” Rian asked. “Sit tight and wait for order to be restored?”

  “Yes,” said Polio. From the folds of his snow-white himation he produced a long iron knife. “One more thing - all of us should arm ourselves.”

  “A kitchen knife will not do much,” Kassia said.

  “Better than nothing,” Rian told her. “Kassia, even if the city is lost, my father’s men will be out there. Fornyx and Kesero” - she darted a swift, strange look at Philemos - “and Valerian. The Dogsheads will find us.”

  “Friends in both camps,” Kassia said with a small, bitter smile. “I’m sorry, Rian - I forget sometimes. You have ties to the men outside the walls.”

  “I have ties within them also, Kassia,” Rian said.

  CORVUS RODE ACROSS Avennan Square with an escort of Companions. Ardashir was beside him, and thronged throughout the square were hundreds of spearmen from the commands of Teresian and Demetrius. These were too spent to join in the general pursuit careering through the streets of the city.

  Many of the men were sitting on their shields with their helms off, mouths hanging open. At the moment, they were too glad to be merely alive to yet feel the triumph of the city’s capture. But as Corvus entered the square and took off his helm, they scrambled to their feet, and began to smite their spears on their shields and cheer.

  Hundreds of them, perhaps thousands, standing cheering in that great corpse-choked open space, the Empirion rearing up white behind them and the agony of the city a backdrop to their delight. Corvus raised a hand and the cheers redoubled. They began chanting his name. The sound carried across the city in a wave, unmistakeable, crushing the hope out of the last few defenders still fighting despair.

  Fornyx pushed through the mass of cheering spearmen. He had his hand on the shoulder of a tall, broad-shouldered fellow who had the sigil of Machran painted on his armour. The crowd of spearmen made way for them, shaking their spears in the tall man’s face. He ignored them, walked along as though in some kind of reverie, and only when he stood before Corvus did he look up and seem to snap out of it.

  “Corvus,” Fornyx said, his face split wide in a grin. “I have a prize for you. This fellow here is named Kassander, and he is the polemarch of Machran. His men laid down their arms at the foot of the Empirion not ten minutes ago. They were the last. I promised them their lives and their freedom, for they fought well. I trust you will respect my promise.”


  “Gladly, Fornyx,” Corvus said. He bent in the saddle and grasped the Cursebearer’s hand. “It was well done. I should have done the same thing myself.”

  He turned to Kassander, who stood stolid and uncaring, though he did look up at the youth on the black horse with a wistful kind of curiosity.

  “I am glad to see you alive, Kassander,” Corvus said to him. “I have heard you are a good man.”

  Kassander grunted. He was a picture of carnage, soaked in blood, and he was missing the upper part of one ear. The blood from the sliced flesh had formed a black bar down the side of his neck.

  “What of your friend Karnos? Do you know where he might be?”

  The question seemed to pierce the fog. Kassander swallowed, looked up at the sky, winter-blue. There was not a cloud to be seen, but Phobos was a pale round wisp high up in it, a ghost with a cold smile.

  “Karnos is dead. He is lying here somewhere. Your mercenaries killed him. He wore a black cuirass, but I suppose that will be stripped off him by now.”

  Corvus’s face fell. “That is a pity. There was a time I would have wished him dead, but not now. You and he put up a rare fight, Kassander. I salute you for it.”

  Kassander turned bloodshot eyes upon Corvus. “The city is yours now, and we are all in your hands. They say that Antimone shows us the hearts of men not only in defeat, but in victory also. Your name will be tied to this victory forever, Corvus, and what you and your men do to Machran now will follow you for as long as there are Macht to remember it.”

  Corvus nodded. “I know this - it is something I have always known. You need not fear for Machran, Kassander. It will be my capital now, and its people are my people also.”

  Kassander cocked his head to one side, squinting in the sun. “Are they?”

  “We are all one people,” Corvus said softly. “We’ve been fighting amongst ourselves too long.”

  Kassander rubbed a hand over his face, streaking it with blood. “Then let us put an end to it,” he said.