by Kearney Paul
From the stockaded encampment of the Macht a group of riders emerged, in full armour but without spears. One bore the raven banner, black on scarlet. They were all clad in the Curse of God, and all were magnificently mounted on tall Niseians, save one, an older man who rode a humble bay mare. This company picked its way slowly from the Macht camp towards the canopy of silk and its twin files of spearmen. When it was halfway there, the gates of Ashur swung slowly open again, and emerging from the shadow of the barbican there trooped a knot of horsemen escorting an ornate chariot, over which flew the purple and gold standard of Asuria.
The two groups drew together, and as if by unspoken agreement, they dismounted behind their respective spearmen. Then they joined each other under the twisting, breeze-bulged silk, standing on either side of a long table.
On the Macht side, Corvus, Ardashir, Teresian, Druze, Parmenios, and Rictus.
On the Kefren side, Gemeris, Lorka, and Orsana.
Corvus spoke first. ‘I mourn for your loss, lady. No mother should ever have to bear the death of a son.’
Only Orsana’s eyes were visible. She wore a black komis to hide her grief.
‘I thank you. It has been hard to bear, but when my son saw the odds against him, he decided to spare his people the ordeal of further war. He took his own life and died as he had lived, a brave man.’ The eyes above the folds of the komis were bright with tears.
Corvus bowed to her. ‘I regret his father’s death, and I regret his. Whatever your people might think of me, lady, I do not come to destroy, but to renew. To bring our peoples together.’
‘You brought enough of them together at Gaugamesh,’ Lorka flashed. ‘How did that work out?’
‘Peace.’ Orsana held up a hand. ‘If we speak of nothing but past offences, then we may as well go back to the gates and close them. King Corvus, I am here freely, as the last representative – the last suitable representative – of the imperial family. I come to surrender to you the city of Ashur and its environs, on the terms which you set before us six days ago, when your herald approached our gates. I thank you for your forbearance during the negotiations, and rejoice that we finally meet face to face to finalise this matter. Gemeris.’
The Honai beside her stepped forward and set a gem-studded golden box upon the table. Orsana opened it. Within lay a series of plain iron keys, massive as horseshoes, and ancient-looking.
‘These are the keys to the treasury of Ashur. They are yours. I pass my stewardship of the city to you.’
Ardashir took the box, closed it and hefted it under one arm. He bowed to Orsana.
Corvus came round the table, surprising them all. He took Orsana’s hand, startling her, and raised it to his lips.
‘Lady, know that I value you beyond price for the dignity and wisdom you have shown over the past days. I beg you to remain in the ziggurat, to retain all your wealth and offices. I will treat you as though you were my own mother, and I ask only that you continue to furnish me with your counsel as you have counselled Great Kings before me.’
Orsana collected herself. She grasped Corvus’s hand in both her own.
‘Nothing would please me more,’ she said.
THE ARMY ENTERED the city with the Companion cavalry in the lead, decked out as if for parade, every link and rivet of their armour polished to high brilliance, the Niseians shining and stamping at the sound of the trumpets and the drums. The preparations had been set in hand for days, ever since the death of the unlamented King Kouros had been announced, and now the roadways were strewn with petals, and garlands were hung like banners at every corner. The people of Ashur were overjoyed to finally know that they were to be spared siege and sack and all the horrors of war. They cheered without prompting, and scattered flowers over the heads of Corvus’s army as if it were a homecoming and not an invasion.
Corvus took fifteen thousand men, a third of the army, into Ashur. The rest remained outside, and waggons of wine and provisions were sent out to them in endless convoys, the gift of the people of Asuria – though it was Parmenios and Gemeris, working together, who had organised that side of things.
The negotiations had been protracted not by doubts as to their eventual success, but by the protocols attending a Great King’s death. The Macht had been halted in the very act of bringing their rams to the gates by hurried riders pleading for more time. The Great King was dead, and the decencies had to be observed, but the Macht terms were broadly acceptable. Could the city not be given a little more time?
Time in which much of the contents of the treasury had been loaded onto swift carts and sent off to Arakosia. Time in which the last surviving officials who had been loyal to Ashurnan were removed from their posts and from their heads.
By the time the terms had finally been agreed, the city was officially over its mourning for a king the people had never known, and the black banners were taken down and laid aside. Preparations were almost complete for the housing of the garrison both sides had agreed was suitable for the Imperial Capital – capital of Corvus’s empire now, not of Asuria’s. And so the dazed Macht soldiers marched into the greatest city of the world to the music of bronze trumpets, the roar of approving cheers, and a shower of summer flowers. They had never known anything like it.
‘Perhaps it was worth it after all,’ Ardashir said, grinning. He caught a flower in mid flight and blew a kiss to the hufsa girl who had thrown it.
Rictus looked up at the soaring shadow of the ziggurat that lay ahead and blinked in wonder. There were indeed things in the world still worth seeing.
‘So this was your home,’ he said to Kurun, who was sat on the horse’s rump behind him, clinging to his shoulders.
‘This was my home,’ Kurun said, and he stared up in almost as much awe as the gawping Macht.
The parade continued into the heart of the city and travelled along the Huruma itself. When they came to the fountains, several of the Macht scooped up the sacred water in their helmets and doused themselves with it, and some of the horses drank there, which produced ugly little scenes on the fringes of the crowd. But for the most part the inhabitants of Ashur were as fascinated by the fabled Macht as the conquerors were by what they had conquered.
At the foot of the ziggurat the procession paused. The Honai were drawn up here, stiff as wooden soldiers, and Orsana waited with a cluster of high-born officials, most in Arakosan blue.
Corvus bowed to them from his horse, but he did not dismount. He set his Niseian at the King’s Steps and the beast began to climb them. One of the Honai broke ranks with a cry, but was restrained by his fellows. Corvus paused when he was above all their heads, the white horsehair crest of his helm catching the sun, the black Niseian prancing under him, and the Curse of God gleaming ebony on his chest. They saw him grin, happy as a boy. Then he waved at his marshals, gesturing.
They followed him up the steps on their horses. Only Rictus stood his ground, for behind him, Kurun was weeping. ‘It is not right,’ he was saying. ‘This is not right.’ The Kefren notables at the foot of the steps stood rigidly in the sun, and Orsana lowered her head in their midst.
The marshals ascended the ziggurat on their horses, and the crowds below watched them in amazed wonder, while the assembled Macht infantry cheered and clashed their spears against their shields, a brazen thunder.
‘It is not the way it is done,’ Kurun said, wiping his nose.
‘What do you care?’ Rictus asked, half irritable at the boy’s sudden switch in mood. ‘It’s not your throne.’
‘It is my country.’
Up they went. The Honai at the foot of the steps dispersed. One looked up at the disappearing Macht on the ziggurat, and broke his spear over his knee, flinging the fragments away. The Kefren officials fanned out into the Macht formations, seeking the centurions. They bore with them lists and maps, showing where each mora was to be billeted. At once, two full morai began marching off for the Slave-Gate, seeking a humbler entrance to the ziggurat. The crowds, the heat, the noise al
l rose to a degree which could be equalled only by the midst of battle. Suddenly Rictus wearied of it all.
‘Let’s give you a view you never had before,’ he said to Kurun, and set his own horse at the King’s Steps.
‘You cannot!’
‘Stay on the horse, Kurun. This is a new world we are in, and we’ve as much right to walk these stones as any other bastard.’
Three thousand steps. They dismounted ere the end to take the weight off their sweating horse, and Rictus walked the last half pasang leaning on Kurun’s shoulder and feeling all his old wounds complain bright and loud. But at the top there was a breeze, a coolness like on the side of a mountain in summer, and they caught the smell of growing things, thyme and lavender and honeysuckle, a whole garden in bloom. Kurun’s face was running with tears. Looking down at the boy, Rictus remembered that not all bad dreams came from battlefields.
‘The world is changed,’ he said. ‘Whatever happened to you here is over. You are a free man, Kurun.’
‘Then, as a free man, I want you to walk with me in the gardens of the King, Rictus, sir.’
‘We can walk anywhere you like.’
A STRANGE SYMBIOSIS took place over the following days. Macht spearmen and Kefren Honai stood on guard side by side throughout the palace, mismatched guardians of the new regime. Orsana withdrew to the harem, though Corvus visited her more than once to pay his respects and discuss the running of the city. In the streets below, the Macht mingled with the local population, haggling in the bazaars and making full use of the brothels in the wall-districts. They had the plunder of a continent to spend, and while their ignorance led to a few scuffles, for the most part they were regarded with tolerant curiosity. The city swallowed fifteen thousand of them as though they were a teardrop fallen in a river, and the urban rhythms of Ashur barely changed. The farmers brought their last crop of the year into the markets, the caravans resumed from the east, and imperial slaves still went about their errands bearing the purple-striped tunic of the kings. In the bowels of the ziggurat, thousands still toiled in the dark to see the gardens above watered, the elite of the new empire fed and clothed. Everything had changed, and nothing had.
The lady Roshana was finally escorted into Ashur at the beginning of autumn, borne on a litter and cheered with genuine enthusiasm by the ever-ready rabble of the lower city. She was dressed as an Asurian princess, her eyes painted, a komis of creamy silk masking her face. She was Ashurnan’s daughter, and the people turned out to cheer for her in memory of their dead king as much as anything else. She was transported to the summit of the ziggurat and installed in the King’s apartments, ready for the great day to come. Corvus was to be crowned with Ashurnan’s diadem and married to his daughter in the same ceremony, the one leading to the other. When that happened, his claim on the Asurian Empire would be complete, and an epoch of history would end – or would begin, depending on how one looked at it.
RICTUS WAS SUMMONED to the King’s presence one night, not long before the coronation-wedding. It was Osh-fallanish, the month of cool wind. Kurun had taught him that. He had taught him enough Kefren words to greet and bargain at the stalls of the lower city, enough to salute the Honai in their own language, which damped down some of the hostility still in their eyes. He still could not get used to seeing them stand guard over a Macht king.
The chambers of the King had been stripped out of all their luxuries, for Corvus had never been in any sense a sybarite. Rictus had to smile as he saw the humble camp furniture from Corvus’s campaign tent arranged in the vast echoing emptiness of the Great King’s apartments. He touched the plain brass lamp which stood there with its four dangling wicks, thinking on the nights it had lit up the map table on campaign with them all bent over it, following Corvus’s finger across the features of the world.
He had a bigger table now, marble-topped, with curling legs of pure gold. There were papers heaped across it, and the wooden scroll cupboard sat to one side, a battered contraption that had been with Corvus longer than Rictus had.
The King was not alone. He sat by the balcony in a plain wooden chair with a cup of wine in his lap, and opposite him sat Orsana, wife and mother to two dead kings. She had lowered her komis and her white face turned to Rictus as he limped towards them, his thornwood cane clicking on the floor.
Rictus came to a halt and bowed, at a loss how to proceed.
‘So this is Rictus,’ Orsana said. She spoke in Machtic, her accent light and sibilant, but the words perfectly clear.
‘He is an old man. But then it is thirty years since the coming of the Ten Thousand.’ She stood up and spoke to Corvus in Kefren. There was a fluid exchange between them in the language, informal, affectionate. She offered her cheek and Corvus kissed it. Rictus bowed again as she glided past him. The doors boomed out of time with each other as she left the room, the Honai and Macht guards having not yet synchronised their efforts.
‘How is the leg?’ Corvus asked him.
‘It keeps me upright.’
‘Well, sit, and give it a rest.’
A breeze billowed up the gauze curtains. They sat silent a moment, looking out at the city below, a thousand lights still burning in the darkness, Phobos rising over the Magron like a leering head. It was indeed a view fit for kings.
‘We have not spoken in a long time,’ Corvus said. ‘That is my fault. I felt you blamed me for Fornyx’s death, for the destruction of the Dogsheads.’
‘They were a military resource. You used them to great effect.’ Rictus’s voice was cold.
‘I went too far. Perhaps I expected too much. Rictus, I was wrong – I know that now. You must forgive me for this.’
‘Forgive you?’ Rictus tapped his stick on the floor. ‘We’re soldiers, Corvus. We don the scarlet and we take our chances. Gaugamesh was a victory, and it cost a lot of blood, as victories do. There is no more to be said.’
Corvus stared into his wine. ‘Ardashir tells me you intend to leave.’
‘Ardashir talks too much – he’s damn near as bad as Fornyx was.’
‘Will you not stay to see me crowned?’
‘I have already seen you crowned, Corvus. Do you remember, the night before you were made high King of the Macht? Fornyx and I were with you then, and it was that night you put on Antimone’s Gift for the first time.’
‘How could I forget? You were like a father to me, Rictus.’
‘I know. But the son outgrows the father, as you have. I have nothing left to teach you, Corvus.’
‘That is not quite true. You did one thing before we left Carchanis that taught me a lesson beyond price.’
‘Oh?’
‘You gave Fornyx’s cuirass to Ardashir. You allowed a Kufr to wear the Curse of God.’
‘So?’ Rictus growled. ‘He deserved it. He is one of us, whether he is Macht or no.’
‘No other man could have made that gesture but you. The army would not have stood for it. But because it was Rictus, they knew it had to be the right thing. With that single act, you changed the way they thought of the Kufr. You made me look at the empire itself differently. For that, I will always be in your debt.’
‘There is no debt. You owe me nothing, and nor does any man. I know why you asked me here, Corvus, and it will not work. I am not some kind of talisman, or mascot that you must keep by you. My time in the scarlet is over.’
‘Then stay for just a little while more, as a friend. See me crowned Great King. See me marry Roshana.’
Rictus shifted uncomfortably in his chair. He tapped the floor with his stick again, an old man’s tic which he hated. He had caught himself doing it time after time.
‘Look after her, Corvus. She is a fine young woman, and she is not so strong as she thinks.’
‘I suppose she reminds you of your daughter,’ Corvus said with a smile.
‘No... not my daughter.’ Rictus grimaced, stamping down on the unbidden memories.
‘Protect her. I do not trust Ashurnan’s widow, this Orsana. T
he woman came over to you too easily. There is no bitterness. I would feel happier if she hated you a little.’
‘You think my charm worked too well?’
‘I think your charm may have met its match. When I got your father killed, all those years ago, your mother hated me. I offered to protect her, and the child she carried, but she walked away into the unknown. She despised me and all the Macht.’
‘I know,’ Corvus said quietly. ‘But as I grew up, she talked of you often. She knew my father loved you like a brother. As the years passed, she grew less bitter. You were very young, she said, and it was something you would have to carry with you for the rest of your life.’
They were silent again, looking out at the vast foreign city, remembering a time long past, their minds full of the faces of the dead.
‘Orsana will put the diadem on my head,’ Corvus said at last. ‘I need her goodwill, Rictus. But I will listen to this last advice from you. I will be careful – and nothing shall touch Roshana. You have my word on it.’
‘Then I’ll stay to see the Great King crowned, if only to honour the memory of his mother.’
Corvus inclined his head. ‘There is one more thing – Roshana has no kin left in Ashur, nor anyone she was close to in her life here. She has asked that you stand for her at our wedding, that you give her into my hand.’
Rictus kept staring at the spangled darkness beyond the balcony.
‘I should be proud to,’ he said at last.
TWENTY-SIX
KINGS OF MORNING
THE LONG HOT zenith of the year was past, and the first of the autumn rains were sweeping across the city like scentless smoke. They soaked the tented pavilions which had been erected in every public space, and the wind tugged down the flower-chains decorating the length of the Sacred Way.