Corvus (28 page)

Corvus raised a
hand, almost like a salute, and then walked off into the darkness.

In the days
of marching that
followed, the land rose under their feet and the rain began to ease. They came
upon signs of the retreating League army: broken wagons, dead mules and discarded
items of personal gear littering the roadside.

With the
improvement in the weather the men’s spirits lifted, and they made better time.
By now, all the food that they had raided from the League camp’s stockpiles had
been eaten, and they were on short rations. Corvus finally sanctioned a series
of foraging expeditions, led by the mounted troops of the Companions. The two
thousand cavalry split up into half a dozen strong columns and criss-crossed
the countryside for pasangs on either side of the Imperial road.

They were gone for
several days, though couriers were sent back to the main body by Ardashir to
keep Corvus informed of any enemy movements he had sighted.

The army had
become a vast, hungry, short-tempered horde, kept in check by the personality of
its leader and his senior officers. Those who had campaigned before were
philosophical about the shortages, but the new conscripts were especially
restive. Watching Demetrius at work in the camp during the evenings, prowling
his lines like a cyclopean schoolmaster, Rictus was reminded of his own efforts
to keep the Ten Thousand in check on their long march west. It was like holding
a wolf by the ears.

Ardashir’s columns
returned in time for the first lowland snow of the winter, a skiffle of white
that was soon trampled into the earth by the passing thousands.

His horse-soldiers
made their way into camp on foot, leading their mounts, for the big animals
were weighed down with the pickings of the countryside round about. Herds of
goats and cattle and pigs trotted with them, and that night the army feasted as
though it were a festival; the men erected spits above their campfires and
gorged on fresh meat, baked flatbreads, and the fragrant green oil of the
Machran hinterland. Morale lifted, and centons gathered about the night-time
fires began to talk of the riches of Machran and what their share of them might
be.

Arkadios hove into
view on their horizon, and the army formed up for battle before its walls. The
usual terms were offered, and accepted with stiff formality by what remained of
the city’s Kerusia.

But it was a
hollow gain. The fighting men of the city had left for Machran, along with a
large part of the population. Arkadios was a shell of itself, and the garrison
that Corvus left there was met with sullen hostility. The woman of the city
spat at the soldiers of Corvus, and assured them that their stay would be
short.

The army marched
on, making good time now, and the conscript spears were at last beginning to
cohere in their new morai. They kept pace with the veterans, listened to their
stories, and began to take something like pride in themselves. After all, they
were part of something grand and important, witnesses to one of the great
moments of history.

More than that,
they were now part of an army which had a tradition of victory. The Macht had
been fighting amongst themselves for time out of mind; it was no unnatural
thing to make war against their own kind. And they were at least on the winning
side.

They had not yet
considered where victory might take them, or what it might do to the world they
knew.

Corvus was hurling
the army across the hinterland like a spear. On all sides, cities whose men had
been bloodied in the battle of Afteni stood unconquered, but he ignored them
all, even ancient Avennos to the south. He had momentum now, and they were
shackled by the inertia of their defeat.

Ardashir’s
foraging columns reported no sign of organised resistance, in the lands round
about. The hinterland cities had shut their gates and were awaiting events. They
were waiting to see what would happen before the walls of Machran.

Rictus and his
Dogsheads were in
the van with the Igranians as usual, when a mounted patrol came cantering down
the long slope ahead and reined in just in front. Corvus was there, and
Ardashir, the two of them as bright-eyed as if they had been drinking.

Corvus threw up a
hand. “Rictus, come forward. There’s something over the hill you have to see!

Fornyx, pass word
down the line - all senior officers to the front of the column at once.”

Fornyx raised a
hand. “Off you go,” he said to Rictus. “Don’t keep the little fellow waiting.”

“Go piss up a
rope, Fornyx,” Rictus said, and took off up the hillside at a trot, his heavy
shield banging on his back.

He stopped,
gasping, at the crest of the hill. A knot of horsemen had gathered there, and
Corvus had dismounted. Rictus knew the spot - there was a stone waymarker here
at the side of the road.

Machran loomed in
the distance, a vast stain upon the land, the smoke from ten thousand hearths
rising up to cloud the air above it. A famous view - Ondimion’s plays had
scenes set on this spot, and Naevius had made a song about it.

Corvus and
Ardashir stood marvelling at the sight.

“Machran at last,”
Corvus said. “After all this time.”

Rictus suddenly
realised. “You’ve never seen it before.”

“Never - just read
the plays and heard the songs and listened to men speak of it over their wine.
I have maps of this city; I know its geography as though it were written across
my dreams. I know the men who rule it, their names and families. But this is
the first time I have seen it for myself - Ardashir too. I have been travelling
years to stand at this spot, Rictus.”

“I wish you joy of
the sight,” Rictus said with a smile. Here was the boy again, alight with the
wondrous marvels of the world. There was something… unspoilt about Corvus. It
was more than the mere enthusiasm of youth - it was a kind of appetite. He
would always find the new experiences of his life to be vivid and memorable and
worth the cost, like a man who has a fine nose for wine, who finds in it
subtleties and fragrances that others miss. What was the line Gestrakos had
used? Eunion was fond of quoting it.

“
A man who has
a passion will always find life to his taste,
” Rictus said aloud.

Corvus turned to
him at once. “
A man who cares for nothing is a man already dead
,” he
said, finishing the couplet. “Rictus, you surprise me. I had not thought you a
philosopher.”

“A friend quoted
me that, a long time ago.”

“Then he was a
wise man. For soldiers, the sayings of Gestrakos are a window on our lives.”

The head of the
column reached them, and Fornyx raised a hand to halt the Dogsheads. Behind
them, the line of marching men ran as far as the eye could see, and the weak
winter sun ran along it, raising sparks and flashes off spearheads, helms, the
brazen faces of shouldered shields.

“We are what -
four pasangs from the walls?” Corvus estimated. “I will pitch the command tent
on the slope ahead. Rictus, your men shall bivouac forward a pasang, and Druze’s
Igranians with you. The rest will file in behind. I must inspect the line of
the walls close-to before I decide how to post the rest of the army.”

“They’ve seen us,”
Ardashir said. “Look; they’re closing the gates.”

Rictus could just
make out the fall of shadow in the wall as the massive South Prime Gate was
slowly pushed shut in the distance. It was something he had never seen before:
Machran shutting its gates. He looked at the endless snake of the high
fortifications running across the land for pasangs, and shook his head at the
thought of assaulting such a place.

“The countryside
is empty,” Ardashir said, shading his pale eyes with his hand. “There’s not a
man or a beast to be seen for pasangs. It would seem Karnos has prepared the
city somewhat.”

“I expected no
less,” Corvus said. He mounted his horse, and the animal - a coal-black gelding
which made him look small as a child on its back - threw up its head and
snorted as it caught his mood.

“Bring up the
baggage train, and deploy the army along this ridge, just in case he wants to
come out.”

“He won’t come
out,” Rictus said.

Corvus nodded. “I
know - but we must show willing, and besides, it’s a grand thing to see an army
file into line of battle. It will give the men on those walls something to
think about.”

He bent and patted
the neck of the restive gelding, crooning to it with words of Kefren. Then he
straightened and flashed a wide grin at them all.

“Brothers,” he
said, “today the siege of Machran begins.”

THE
GATES CLOSE

Karnos stood on
the heights of
South Prime Tower, in whose bowels the great gate was grinding shut, groaning
and screeching like a sentient thing. There were two dozen men down there with
their shoulders set to it, and half a dozen more were ladling olive oil over
the seized up hinges.

To left and right,
the walls of the city were crowded with people, thousands of whom had climbed
the battlements to catch a sight of the army forming up in the distance. For
months it had been a mere idea to them, a subject for gossip and speculation
and argument. Now it was there, assembling on the lip of the great bowl-shaped
vale in which Machran stood. A man might walk briskly from the walls to the
front ranks of the enemy in half an hour.

It had come to
this at last, this brutal reality.

Dion and Eurymedon
stood beside Karnos on the tower’s topmost outpost. Two old men who looked even
older this bright winter’s day as the undefeated army of Corvus deployed in
line of battle before the city, as if to taunt them.

Behind the trio of
Kerusia members were Murchos of Arkadios, whose city was already lost, and
Tyrias of Avennos, or Scrollworm to his friends. Kassander was down at the
gates, cursing and cajoling the men working there.

“I do not know
what he is thinking,” Dion said, and there was the quake of age in his voice. “He
forms up as though we’re about to give him battle.”

“Or invite him in,”
Murchos grunted, striding forward to lean on the grey stone of the battlement.
He rubbed shards of snow off the stone irritably. “Arrogant bastard. He means
to begin the investment right here and now, in the middle of winter.”

“He has never been
one to dawdle,” Karnos said. “Ah, the impetuousness of youth.”

“Let him sit there
while the snow comes down on him, and see how he likes it,” Tyrias said. “He’s
overreaching himself. We can sit here all winter and watch him shiver.”

“Have the
messengers gone out?” Eurymedon asked. He was a cadaverous, grey-bearded man
with a long red nose. He looked as though he either had a cold, or liked to
stave one off with wine.

“They went out
last night,” Karnos said with a touch of impatience. “What good they will do us
remains to be seen.”

“They’re a fart in
the wind,” Murchos said. “Those who are willing to fight are already here
within the walls. The rest will wait on events. There will he nothing done now
until the spring, perhaps even later.”

“Agreed,” Karnos
said. “We’re on our own, brothers, for a few months at least. We put up a good
showing through the winter, bleed this boy’s nose for him a little, and the
hinterland cities will get over their fright and see that their fate rests here
with us as surely as if they were standing on these stones.”

“There are many
cities that would like to see Machran humbled,” Eurymedon said with a sniff.

“We’ll see how
they feel once this conqueror’s foraging parties start faring afield for
supplies,” Karnos told him. “Once their granaries get raided a few times,
things will turn around, you mark my words.”

He hoped he
sounded more convincing to the others than he did to himself.

All afternoon the
army of the
conqueror marched and counter-marched. When his challenge was not taken up,
Corvus put his host into camp square across the Imperial road, and as the
winter afternoon dwindled swiftly into night, so the people of the city looked
out to see a second city come to life in a thousand gleaming campfires to the
south and east.

Stragglers from
the outlying farms hammered on the East Prime Gate that night and pleaded to be
admitted to the city, but were denied entry for fear that they were in the pay
of the enemy. They were told to try the Mithannon Gate, which was farthest away
from Corvus’s camp, and they cursed the men on the walls and held up their
children to show the cautious gatekeepers. The Goshen road was cut, a mora of spearmen
encamped across it, and their farms were being raided for food and livestock.
If they stayed outside the walls they would starve, they shouted up. They were
told to wait for daylight, and try the Mithannon, and some kind soul threw a
few flatbreads and a skin of wine down to them.

Karnos remained on
the walls until well after dark, unwilling to be seen to leave before the city
crowds. Eventually the numbers on the walls thinned with the advent of night
and the growing chill in the air, and soon there was no-one about the
battlements except the armoured men whose job it was to walk them.

Kassander joined
him. His face was thinner than it had been, but he still had the slow easy
smile which belied’the quick workings of his mind.

“I’ll be bored to
death before this thing is done,” Karnos said. “Especially if the Kerusia keeps
those two ancient vultures hanging at my heels.”

“Anyone would
think they didn’t trust you,” Kassander said.

“They’re afraid.
Frightened men feel a need to try and know everything. When they were ignorant
they were happier.”