Corvus (23 page)

And God had turned
His face from them all, from the goddess of pity and the race on whose behalf
she had intervened upon the face of the earth.

So said the legends.
Phaestus was nothing if not a rational man, but he was astute enough to know
the value of myth. The black armours which dotted the Macht world were an
undeniable reality, and had not been made by any craft that now existed. So
there was that seed of truth at the root of the legends. If there was one,
there might be others.

He had talked to
Rictus of it, back in the days when he had been an honoured guest at Andunnon
and the two had sat by the fire after a few days’ hunting in the hills.
Together, they had speculated idly that they might one day make an expedition
into the lost interior of the Deep Mountains, to look for that lost city with
walls of iron. Something to occupy their retirement.

Antimone, Lady of
Night, Phaestus thought, how did it come to this?

They kept to
the high ridges to
steer clear of the drifts, and found, themselves in a blue and white world,
where the wind took their breath away and set the snow clouding in a blizzard
off the rocks and stones at their feet. The sky was empty except for the pale
red disc that was Haukos, always reluctant to quit the sky in winter, but to
the north the great peaks of the Harukush - legendary even among the Kufr -
barred the horizon like a white wall. Down from them the wind swooped, and the
bite of it was as bitter as a plunge into a midwinter sea.

There were six of
them: Phaestus, Philemos, and four others who had come out of Hal Goshen with
them. One of these, Sertorius, had been at various times in his life a
mercenary, a hunter, a slave-dealer, and a pimp. It was in this latter guise
that he had come to the attention of Phaestus, in his duties as chief
magistrate of the city.

The two had known
each other for many years, and from their confrontations there had arisen a
grudging mutual respect. In his own way, Sertorius was as proud and
stiff-necked as Phaestus, and as disgusted by the tame surrender of his city.
It was he, and his silent little band of henchmen, who had smuggled the Speaker
of Hal Goshen, his family and some of his household out of the city - and with
a surprising degree of discretion.

Ostrakr, the
sentence had been, but Phaestus had no doubt that he was not intended to
survive. His rival, Sarmenian, had ached for the chief magistracy for too long
to be magnanimous in victory.

Sertorius had been
well paid for his troubles, but this current exploit he was doing for free.
Like Phaestus, he was a man without a city now, and were he to walk through the
gates of Machran, he wanted to do so with something to show for his trouble,
something which would ease the transition.

He was a
lowlander, a black-haired, brown-skinned man with eyes the colour of a thrush’s
back and a convict’s gall-marks on his wrists. His face was seamed and scarred
with knife-fights and wickedness and he had a wide gap between his front teeth.
He was not the company Phaestus would have chosen for a trip into the highlands
in winter -still less the three hulking street-thugs that were his companions -
but the choice had not been wide, and Sertorius had at least a brassy,
hail-fellow-well-met way of getting along with others which had come in useful
with the goatherder folk the night before.

What Sertorius and
his men lacked, however, was a knowledge of the mountains, and they stumbled in
the wake of Phaestus and his son, holding onto the tails of the mules and
complaining endlessly about the cold.

“Two good day’s
travel,” Phaestus told them, reining in his contempt with the practice of a
politician. “That’s all. Two days, and then we shall have a roof over our
heads, for a day or two at least.”

“If the weather
holds,” Sertorius said, the words hissing through his gapped teeth. “I hope the
prize we seek is worth it, Phaestus.”

“Believe me, my
friend, it will be well worth the trip. But we must make it to Machran as
quickly as we can. The last I heard, Corvus was banking on a swift winter
campaign. The fighting is going on even as we speak.”

“Then we’re well
out of it,” Adurnos, one of Sertorius’s henchmen muttered.

“If it hurts the
little fucker who took our city, then I’m all for it,” Sertorius said. “But
remember, Phaestus, I was paid only to get you out of Hal Goshen. This here
trip is my own charity.”

“And your own
self-interest,” Phaestus told him. “This way you turn up at Machran with
something that Karnos wants. You arrive there empty-handed, and you’ll be
starting at the bottom again.”

“The bottom’s
where I feel comfortable,” Sertorius said with a laugh.

Struggling along
the knife-ridge later in the day, with the sun setting at their left shoulders
and the wind masking all conversation, Philemos drew his father close.

“I don’t trust
them.”

“Nor do I. But so
long as their interests and ours coincide, they will serve us faithfully.
Sertorius is a rogue, but he has a keen sense of what’s good for him.”

“They’re animals, father;
scum from the sewers. What’s to stop them turning on us?”

“Philemos,”
Phaestus said, smiling, “I am their introduction to Karnos, to the fleshpots of
Machran. And more than that, look at them. They’re lowland city criminals - if
you and I walked away from them now they would perish up here. They need us as
we need them. They are outside their own world.”

“So are we,” his
son said. “Father, I would sooner we had gone to Machran and joined the League
army - to fight in open battle. What we’re doing here -”

“What we do here
is worth a thousand men on the battlefield,” Phaestus snapped. “Not everything
comes down to standing in a spearline, boy. And you’ll get your chance at that
before we’re done.” His face softened at the look on his son’s.

“Philemos, you
were born to be more than phalanx-fodder, as was I. If you are to be a man, you
must learn from me. A man cannot always follow the dictates of what he
perceives to be his honour -sometimes that will lead him to his ruin.”

“Father, you could
have been ruler of Hal Goshen under Corvus - it was your honour that has
brought you here.”

Phaestus smiled. “Well
said. I shall make a rhetorician of you yet.” He turned away, and the smile
curdled on his face.

It was not honour.
It was ambition, and outrage, and bloody-minded hatred. To be offered something
like that, like a coin dropped on a beggar’s plate -and by Rictus, who despite
everything was nothing more than a brute mercenary.

It could not be
borne. It was the manner in which the offer had been made, as much as the offer
itself.

I am a better man
than Rictus, he thought. And I will prove it.

TEST
OF LIFE

There was something
in Aise which
responded to winter. She respected it, with the good sense of a woman who had
lived her life in the blue and white world of the high hills. But there was
more to it than that.

It was not that
she enjoyed the sensations of the season - although she did - it was more that
the vast labour of the year was done, at long last, affording a chance to stand
and look around, and to lean back from the earth upon which she threw all the
life she had within her, year upon year.

She did not like
winter - no fool could - but there was a certain satisfaction about it, seeing
all which had been set in train throughout the year lead up to the moment of
truth. That was winter in the highlands; the test of life itself.

The barley had
been scythed, threshed and winnowed, and the grain stored in the three-legged
wooden bin at one end of the yard. When Aise felt cold, or out of sorts, she
would open the bin and scoop out a bucketful, then pound it to flour in the
great hollow stone that Rictus and Fornyx had dragged out of the river years in
the past. They had been two days getting it from the water to where it now sat,
and every time she thumped the iron-hard log into it she thought of them that
summer, sitting grinning at one another with the muck of the riverbank all over
them and that great stone between them. Now it sat in the yard as though it had
been there since time immemorial, a totem of their permanence here.

A clinking of
bronze bells, the nattering bleat of the goats. Rian was walking slowly across
the yard with a leather bucket of goat’s milk, which was steaming in the chill
of the morning. Ona chattered along beside her, bright as a starling, and
around the two girls the dogs flounced like puppies, sure of their share of the
milk.

In the house Styra
was tending the fire - at this time of year it was never allowed to go out.
Garin had been chopping wood since dawn, and was sat before the hearth, talking
to her. The talk ceased when Aise entered, and Garin rose with a sullen look
about him. He and Styra had become a couple very quickly - slaves were wont to
do such things, casting around for what comfort they could in life - but he had
never forgiven Aise for selling Veria, and his work was falling off. He spent
more time out in the woods now, trapping and tree-felling and hunting,
sometimes with Eunion, sometimes alone.

It is Rictus he
stays for, Aise thought. My husband has a way of garnering loyalty, even when
he is not trying.

Eunion came to the
table with a cloak wrapped about him, a few strands of white hair standing out
from his head like a dandelion gone to seed. He was yawning, and in the morning
his face seemed as wrinkled as a walnut.

“You should not
sit up so late,” Aise said, kneading the barley dough into flat cakes for the
griddle. “You read too much, Eunion.” She hated that Eunion was getting old.
She could not imagine life here without him. She would be lost, and that made
her all the more terse.

“I was reading.
One of these months I will go to Hal Goshen for a better lamp, a three-flame
one with a deep well. My eyes smart like blisters.”

“They look more
like cherries. Have some milk. I will have bannock made soon. Rian!”

Rictus’s daughter
stuck her head in the front door. “Yes, mother?”

“Draw me a gourd
of oil from the jar, and set the plates. Where is Ona?”

“Playing with the
dogs.”

“Bring her in.”

The household
gathered about the table. When Rictus and Fornyx were not here they all ate
together, slaves and free alike. Aise rose, flushed, from the fire with barley
bannock hot to the touch, and poured the oil over the pale, flat cakes. There
was soft cheese to go with them, and goat’s milk with the animals’ warmth still
in it. Eunion munched on an onion, and winced as his ageing teeth met their
match in the purple bulb of it.

“I was reading
about the Deep Mountains,” he said to the table.

“Which story? The
one about the city of iron?” Rian asked eagerly.

I will have to
brush her hair tonight, Aise thought. It is as matted as a horse’s mane - and I
do not believe her face has felt water this morning.

“Yes,” Eunion went
on, gesturing with the onion. “It seems to me there’s something to be said for
the theory that the first Macht wanted to keep themselves hidden, hence the
remote location of the legendary city of iron.

“But more than
that. When I read the myths, I find that Antimone is there with them at the
beginning, not just as the goddess we know and pray to, but as a creature who
lived upon the face of Kuf in their midst. Who knows - she may even have been
one of us - a Macht woman of great learning and wisdom that subsequent
generations imbued with the godhead. When it comes to the black armour -”

“Eunion, you read
too much that is not there,” Aise said, looking up from her bowl. “It’s one
thing to spend the whole night ruining your sight in front of a bunch of old
scrolls, but quite another to be filling the children’s heads with - with -”

“Blasphemy?”
Eunion said.

“Well, yes.
Antimone watches over us all eternally. She was never a mortal woman; that’s
absurd. You’re just playing with ideas, and Rian has enough of those in her
head already.”

Eunion grinned. “Aise,
I merely flex my mind. It is a muscle, like those in your arm. If you do not
exercise it, it will atrophy, and we would all be no better than goatmen.”

“Drink your milk,
old man, you talk too much.” But she smiled.

“Goatmen! Tell us,
Eunion,” Rian wriggled in her chair, “how was it that they came to be?”

“Gestrakos tells
us that -”

The dogs growled,
low in their throats, and padded away from the table towards the open door of
the farmhouse. Eunion fell silent.

“Maybe they smell
wolf on the wind,” Garin said.

The family sat
quiet, listening. The two hounds both had their hackles up and their teeth
bared.

They walked
stiff-legged outside, and began baying furiously.

“We have visitors,”
Eunion said, and rose up from the table with a swiftness that belied his years.
Garin rose with him, wiping his mouth.

“Spears?”

“Yes - go get
them.”

“The pass is
closed,” Aise said. She could feel the blood leaving her face.

“Perhaps father
has come back!” Rian said.

“The dogs know
better,” Aise told her. “Stay here.”

Eunion and Garin
were lifting their spears from beside the door, short-shafted hunting weapons
with wide blades, made to fight boar and wolf.

“Aise -” Eunion
said, but she shook off his hand.

“I am mistress of
this house.”

She stepped
outside, into the brilliant snow-brightness of the blue morning.

Just in time to
see the death of her dogs.

The baying was cut
short. Half a dozen men stood black against the snow on the near riverbank. As
Aise watched, she saw one raise his arm again and spear one of the animals
through and through. Blood on the snow, a colour almost too vivid to be part of
this world. Aise stood frozen. Eunion and Garin surged out of the doorway
behind her, saw the black shapes of the men scant yards away, and the bodies of
the two hounds. Garin gave a wordless cry of grief and rage. The men looked up.
Wrapped in winter furs, they were unrecognisable. A voice said, “That’s her,”
and they came on at a run.