Corvus (25 page)

At least you had a
pyre worthy of you, Eunion, Aise thought. Now your ashes will be in the air and
water of this place, like my son’s.

And Rictus, your
precious gold is under the hearthstone where we put it.

Aise bent her head
and followed her captors through the snow to the woods that hung dark and deep
on the slopes of the glen above.

Behind her the
home that she and Rictus and Fornyx and Eunion had made blazed into
destruction, the stone walls toppling as the heat cracked them open, the
hoarded grain, the oil, the olives and the wine -the very stuff of life -
taking light and combusting in a boiling tower of black smoke that blighted the
morning.

And in the flames
at its base the bodies of the dead lay darkening into ash and dust; a grey
taste on the wind, no more.

MUD
AND WATER

The city of
Afteni, famous for its
metal-workers, was now an island in a shallow sea. Built, like most Macht
cities, on rising ground and surrounded by a twenty-foot wall, it found itself
surrounded by water also, a knee-deep lake extending for two thirds of the city’s
circumference.

Since the Battle
of the Afteni Plain, which had seen the scattering - if not the destruction -
of the army of the Avennan League, the clouds had gathered, black over the
lowlands at the foot of the Gosthere Mountains, and had released their burden
upon already saturated farmland. The Imperial Road had disappeared, sunk in
brown water, and the entire plain had gone with it. There was only the endless
dreary expanse of rain-stippled floodwater, with groves of olives and bedraggled
vines and sodden trees straggling above it, cowering from the endless downpour.

And that had
proved a salvation.

Karnos stood on
the battlements of the citadel with a soldier’s oilskin cloak thrown round him,
his own little tent against the wet, and peered east, striving to pierce the
rain-curtain. Unconsciously, his arm came up and he began carefully kneading
the bandaged flesh of his shoulder.

“It itches,
Kassander - that’s a good thing, isn’t it?”

“It doesn’t smell,
which is even better. You are a fast healer, Karnos. You heal like a young dog,
as my mother used to say.”

“And what about
the rest - how are they healing?”

“The last wagon
train left for Machran only this morning, though they will need Phobos’s horses
in the traces to make more than a few pasangs a day in this mire. I pity them.”

“They’re men of
Machran - that’s where they belong.”

“They’re going
back with a tale of defeat. You should beat them to it.”

“I will, as soon
as I am done here. One man on a horse will travel faster. I wish to speak with
Katullos first.”

“Antimone may have
words with him before you do.”

“Nonsense! That
old bugger? If seeing me become Speaker did not kill him, then a spear in his
throat won’t.”

“He wishes to see
you in any case. We must decide what to do with what’s left of the army.”

“I couldn’t keep
the Pontis men here. I tried - I spent all last night talking to that
fish-livered bitch Zennos - but he wasn’t having it. So there’s a thousand men
pissed away.”

“He’s not the only
one.”

“Come on, let’s
get out of this fucking rain. It’s our friend at the moment, I know, but it’s
like a friend you owe money to: uncongenial company.”

“Admirable candour
from someone who has borrowed money from me more times than I care to remember.”

“Ah, don’t be such
a girl. Come, have some wine.”

They retreated to
a tall portico which ran around the base of a tower. There was a brazier
burning there, a table covered with papers, and men were coming and going,
adding to the pile.

“You have become
newly fond of fresh air,” Kassander said, throwing back the hood of his own
cloak.

“I like the view.
I can see half a dozen pasangs down the road when the rain lifts a little - it
means I’ll see that bastard coming.”

“By all accounts
he’s not on his way just yet - the road is washed out in half a dozen places,
where it’s not wholly underwater, and rumour has it there’s sickness in his
camp. He’s afloat in a sea of his own shit some ten pasangs back down the road,
long may he remain there.”

Karnos poured some
wine with his good hand. “Meanwhile we sit here in relative comfort. It warms
my heart to think on it.”

“He did the right
thing with the dead - sent Greynos of Afteni’s body forward under a green
branch and burned the rest with all the proper rites.”

“Yes, he’s quite
the fucking gentleman. In the meantime we are sitting here on a castle of sand,
leaking centons by the day. Kassander, we must think of Machran now. The League
has snapped in our hands like a wishbone.”

“You think we’re
on our own?”

“Stop and listen.”

Kassander sighed
and nodded. Below the endless patter and hiss of the rain was another noise, a
vast hum, like a hive of angry bees.

“That’s the Afteni
assembly in session, ten thousand angry, frightened men standing in the rain at
the bottom of this rock, making a debate about something they have already
decided. They lost six hundred of their best down on the plain, and Greynos,
the only one of their Kerusia with any stones. They are finished, and they know
it, but must spin out the argument while Machran and the other contingents are
still within their walls looking on. It’s like observing the decencies at a
funeral pyre. The eastern cities of the hinterland are lost, Kassander. The
rest are waiting to see what Machran can do.”

“Machran will
never capitulate,” Kassander said, his big, good-natured face darkening. “Not
while I live.”

Karnos touched him
on the arm. “Well said, brother.” He set down his winecup. A young man in the
black sigil-embroidered chiton of the Machran staff coughed politely behind
him.

“Yes, Gersic?”

“Sir, counsellor Katullus
requests that you meet with him at your convenience. He is -” “I know where he
is, Gersic; tell him I’m on my way. And Gersic -”

“Sir?”

“How is his voice?”

The young man,
dark and earnest and with a stitched-up stab wound on his arm, considered. “He
can whisper, sir.”

“Good enough.”
Karnos turned back to Kassander.

“It has come to
something when I view Katullos as an ally, of like mind to myself.”

Kassander raised
his winecup. “Being wounded and left for dead has done wonders for your
reputation.”

“I should have
done it years ago,” Karnos said.

A
small, bare
room, austere enough
to satisfy even an ascetic like Katullos. There were no windows, and a single
lamp burned by the bed. In a corner, the black cuirass sat upon its stand like
a silent spirit, not a mark upon it, though Katullos had been at the very heart
of the fighting.

The old man had
taken an aichme to the throat. They had closed the wound with a hot iron and it
blazed below his chin now like a second, purple-lipped mouth. His magnificent
beard had been shorn off by the carnifex, and his face looked absurdly small
without it. His skin was flushed with fever, but his eyes were clear. His big,
mottled hands picked at his blanket ceaselessly as Karnos took a stool beside
him.

“Lean close,”
Katullos said, a zephyr almost drowned out by the sound of the rain outside and
the rumbling from the assembly.

“Here.” A letter,
folded and sealed. There had been three attempts at the seal before it had
taken -he had done it himself.

“For the Kerusia.
It may help.”

“What does it say?”

Katullos smiled. “To
trust you.”

Karnos sat back
again, frowning, holding the letter like a trapped bird in his hand. “How do I
know that? You have never been a friend to me, Katullos. I may break the seal
and look.”

“Then it is
worthless.”

“Better that than
-”

“Trust me.”
Spittle was leaking from the corner of the old man’s mouth. A few days before,
he had led a mora into battle while wearing the Curse of God. Now he was
reduced to this. Karnos felt a sting of pity.

“We have been
adversaries all our public lives, you and I. What has changed?”

Again, the death’s
head smile. “I once told you I would be there to cheer the day you fell. Now I
see that to do so would be to cheer the fall of my own city. You did the right
thing, fighting when you did. You had your blood spilled for Machran. You love
the city as I do. I did not see it before. I thought you loved only your own
ambition.”

“A man can love
both.”

“No, Karnos, not
now.” He coughed, a long wet rattle in his chest. Karnos could feel the heat
radiating off him, as though his life were burning out in one last, guttering
flare.

“Keep fighting,”
Katullos rasped. “Machran must never surrender. This man means to make himself
king of us all. If Machran falls, he will have his foot on our necks for a
generation.” He sagged. “You see it - but not all men do.”

“I see it - I have
known it a long time.”

“We were at cross
purposes. I was wrong. You are Speaker of Machran; you speak for us all. Break
him before our walls. No other city can do it.”

“We cannot face
him in open battle again, Katullos. The League is falling apart.”

“The walls,
Karnos. Hold the walls. Bleed him white. No-one can take Machran if men are on
her walls, not even Corvus.”

Karnos took one of
the big, restless hands in his own. A jet of pain ran through his shoulder as
he leaned over the dying man in the bed.

“Katullos, you
have my word on it.”

Katullos smiled
again. “That is worth something -I know that now.”

“I’ll have you on
the next wagon heading west -you’ll see the city again, I promise you.”

“I’ll be dead
before then. But take me home, Karnos. Burn me at the Mithos River and scatter
my ashes in the water. Carve my name on the catafalque of the Alcmoi.”

“It shall be done.”

“My cuirass - see
it goes to my family.”

“I will.”

Katullos stared
closely at him. “You are a disgrace to the Kerusia, a demagogue, a rake and a
philanderer. But you are all we have. The rest are sheep.”

Karnos chuckled. “You
flatter me, Katullos…

“Katullos?”

The old man
remained staring, but the breath was running out of him in a long, hoarse sigh.
He was still, the grip of the liver-spotted hand relaxing. Karnos shook his
head.

“Stubborn old
bastard.” He closed the still-bright eyes with his fingers and bowed his head a
moment. Then he looked up, and stared across the room thoughtfully at the Curse
of God which sat silent in its corner.

The men of
Machran marched out the
next day, weighed down with all their gear. The roads had become so bad that no
wagon could take to them, so the battered morai splashed through the mire with
all their wargear on their backs and as much in the way of scanty rations that
Afteni could spare. It was almost two hundred pasangs to Machran, and they
would be hungry long before they were home.

Other contingents
of the League were marching out also. The men of the hinterland cities had
called their own assemblies in Afteni, and voted on what to do next. The
Arkadians and Avennans, who had been keen supporters of the League and allies
of Machran for time out of mind, voted to stick with Karnos and Kassander.

Murchos, polemarch
of the Arkadians, was a burly man with a face like that of a pink, startled
pig, but he was a guest-friend of Kassander and would follow him anywhere, as
his own men would follow him - especially since he was also a Cursebearer.

The Arkadians had
always been a froward, reckless bunch. They threw their knucklebones high when
they gambled, as they were gambling now. They would hold true, all three
thousand of them.

The Avennans were
much the same, though they liked to see their city as the true heart of the
civilized Macht, the place where laws were made. The thought of it being ruled
by an upstart warleader of no family, who employed the Kufr as soldiers, was
anathema to them. They, too, would march with Machran. Two thousand men under
Tyrias, who liked to call himself the Just, but who was known more commonly as
Scrollworm, for he was more at home in a library than on a battlefield, despite
his polemarch’s helm.

All told, some
nine thousand men marched out of Afteni with Kassander leading them west. Nine
thousand men who meant to man the walls of Machran to the end. It was enough.
It would have to be enough.

The rest had gone
their separate ways, the mauled contingents from the other cities trailing out
of Afteni in a less martial fashion, for many of them had thrown away their
arms on the field to aid their flight. And it was understood that Afteni itself
would capitulate to the invader when he finally got his army moving again
through the mud.

It still wanted a
month to midwinter.

Karnos bent low
in the saddle, hissing
with the damnable pain of it. He dropped the reins and shook Kassander’s hand.

“March them hard,
brother. The longer we have to ready the city the easier the thing will be.”

“You should have
an escort, Karnos. You’re not near healing, and if you fall off that horse it’ll
take a file of men to push you back up on it again.”

“I’m thinner than
I was, I’ll have you know.” Karnos tugged the oilskin soldier’s cloak closer
about his neck. “Gersic is enough. He’s a good boy, over-eager, sincere, and
none too bright; just the type I like to have about me. I mean to do it in four
days at most.”

“You have my
letters.”

“Next to my heart,
Kassander. Whatever rumour has run ahead of me, I bear the first official news.
And I will tell it my way.”