Corvus (15 page)

* * *

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 your 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.

And he knew, now,
why Corvus hesitated to wear the black armour. He was half Kufr, and even his
undoubted courage must flinch at the thought of a creature of Kufr blood
donning the Curse of God.

Who knows? Rictus
surmised. Maybe it will not even let him wear it. How would that look? So he
lets it sit here, a temptation and a reproach.

And he suddenly
had a blink of insight into the engine that drove Corvus on.

He wants to rule
the Macht, because he wants to feel that he is truly one of them. If the
Harukush acclaims him its ruler, how can he not be one of us?

Eunion was right,
Rictus thought. He is a dreamer. But there is more to it. This is what drives
him on, this thing gnawing at his guts. He has surrounded himself with
fatherless boys and made of them a family. He wants to belong.

Perhaps that is
his other secret; to take the orphaned and make them feel part of something
again.

* * *

They left the
camp at dusk, three
mudstained men in nondescript woollen chlamys, barefoot in the chill suck of
the mud, their hoods pulled over their faces like the
komis
of the Kufr.
They bore the lowland drepanas that Karnos’s troops would carry, and Druze had
painted across his leather pelta the
machios
sigil of Machran.