Corvus (44 page)

He stepped forward
and ran a hand down the lightless surface of the armour in front of him.

“But I didn’t ask
you here to listen to me rant about the future. I wanted to ask you a favour,
Rictus.”

“Just ask.”

Suddenly Corvus
looked as wide-eyed and young as a boy confronting his father with a
confession.

“Help me put it
on,” he said.

He touched the
armour again gently, as a man might stroke the arm of a woman too beautiful to
notice him.

“I must do it now,
tonight. I intend to be crowned wearing it tomorrow, and I must know - I have
to know that I can wear it. Do you understand?”

Fornyx looked
mystified, but Rictus understood perfectly.

“Let me see, then.”

The armour came up
off its stand, light as leather, harder than any stone. Rictus opened the two
halves of it and Corvus slid his arm into the gap. He was sweating.

The clasps snapped
shut, and then the wings came down and clicked into place. Corvus stood tugging
at the neck of the cuirass. “It’s too big,” he rasped.

“Wait a second,”
Rictus said, remembering the first time he had donned his own cuirass, on the
Kunaksa hills. This boy’s father had told him to put it on.

Corvus’s face
changed. “It’s shifting. I can feel it.”

“It will mould to
your body. It only takes a second.”

Something lit up
in Corvus’s strange eyes. “It’s done, Rictus. It fits as though it was made for
me.”

Fornyx clapped the
shoulder of the youth’s black armour. “There you go; a Cursebearer at last.
What a vision we are, three men in black and scarlet.”

Corvus wiped his
eyes. “Thank you, Rictus. I have been travelling a long time, to feel I have
the right to this. I was never sure -”

“You are Macht. It
was made for you to wear,” Rictus said. “After tomorrow you will be our king.
Be worthy of the armour and the crown.”

Corvus looked up
at him. “These last weeks, since we took Machran, I have been receiving
delegations from every city worthy of the name. Men that reviled me now put
their signatures to edicts congratulating me.”

“They’ve had
enough of war for a season,” Fornyx said. “They’re ready for something new,
anything so long as the fighting ends.”

“I trust men like
Kassander more - men who fought me openly, who kept trying until the very end.
Men like that are worth something.”

Rictus thought of
Phaestus, of Karnos. If they were alive right now he would kill them himself.
And yet he had a daughter who loved Phaestus’s son.

“I’ve heard it
said that only Antimone truly knows the hearts of men,” Rictus said, “and that
is why she weeps.”

“When I turned up
at your farm that morning, Rictus, I never thought that it would lead to where
it did,” Corvus said. “I wish it could have been different.”

“It’s been a long
road,” Rictus said. “None of us know what’s around the next bend in it.”

He thought of
Jason, this boy’s father. Eunion, that good and gentle man. And Aise, whose
life had ended in torment. All because of him.

Their lives, their
deaths; they would be with him always in a blackened corner of his soul.

“We just keep
marching,” Rictus said softly. “That is what we do. We carry the Curse of God
on our backs and go into the dark together.”

“There are times
when I am not sure what it means, to be one of the Macht,” Corvus said. “And I
know I do not yet know what it means to be a king.

“Tomorrow the
leaders of the Macht will all be there to see the circlet put on my head, men
from fifty cities, a crowd of thousands. But what that means, for me and them,
I am not yet sure.”

Rictus looked down
at him, this terrible, earnest young man with the strange eyes.

“It will come to
you,” he said. “In time.”

The snows were
gone from the deep
glens, though the mountains still blazed white on the blue horizon. They waded
across the river, feeling the bite of the water, the ice not quite done quickening
in it.

Rictus walked
through the ruined doorway of what had once been his home. The walls still
stood, blackened and broken, stone upon stone. He picked his way through the
wreckage and knelt in front of the beehive hearth, in which Aise had baked the
bread. The hearthstone was still in place. There were blades of grass rising
through the joins between the flags.

He lifted aside a
beam and it crumbled to charcoal in his hands. Broken pottery crunched
underfoot. He startled a blackbird, which launched itself from the ruin with an
indignant clatter.

He passed through
what had been the side door, to the space where he and Aise had slept.

And knelt there,
remembering. Something glittered in the sunlight, and he stooped and rummaged
through the ashes. A piece of aquamarine blue glass, a shard of memory. He
clenched it in his palm and bent over with the sudden pain of the pictures it
conjured up in his mind.

At last he rose
again, breathing hard, his eyes burning. He looked up, and there were swallows
in the air above him, carving gleeful arcs out of the sky. They were dropping
mud as they swooped, building in the crevices of the walls.

He left the house,
walked out to join the others in the sunshine and the placid glimmer of the
river. Above him the woods hung on the slopes of the glen, new leaves unfurling
green-tipped on the beech and oak and birch thickets. The place was alive with
birdsong.

Rian took his
hand. He lifted Ona up into his embrace, and the child put her arms about his
neck.

He looked at Fornyx
and Philemos.

“We’d best get
started, I suppose. There’s a lot to be done.”

The End

Aichme:
A
spearhead, generally of iron but sometimes of bronze. The spearhead is usually
some nine inches in length, of which four inches is the blade.

Anande: The Kefren
name for the moon known as Haukos; in their tongue it means
patience.

Antimone:
The veiled goddess, protector and guardian of the Macht. Exiled from heaven for
creating the black Macht armour, she is the goddess of pity, of mercy, and of
sadness. Her Veil separates life from death.

Antimone’s Gift
/ the Curse of God:
Black, indestructible armour given to the Macht in the
legendary past by the goddess Antimone, created by the smith-god Gaenion
himself out of woven darkness. There are some five to six thousand sets of this
armour extant upon the world of Kuf, and the Macht will fight to the death to
prevent it falling into the hands of the Kufr.

Apsos:
God
of beasts. A shadowy figure in the Macht pantheon, reputed to be a goat-like
creature who will avenge the ill-treatment of animals and sometimes transform
men into beasts in revenge or as a jest.

Araian:
The
Sun, wife of Gaenion the smith.

Archon:
A
Kufr term for a military officer of high rank, a general of a wing or corps.

Bel:
The
all-powerful and creative god who looks over the Kufr world. Roughly equivalent
to the Macht “God,” but gentler and less vindictive.

Carnifex
:
An archaic term for an army surgeon, or any would-be healer who travels with
armed men. Its ancient meaning denotes a butcher or executioner; an example of
Macht humour.

Centon:
Traditionally the number of men who could be fed from a single centos, the
large black cauldron mercenaries eat from. It approximates one hundred men.

Chamlys:
A
short cloak, commonly reaching to mid-thigh.

Chiton:
A
short-sleeved tunic open at the throat, reaching to the knee. The female
version is longer.

Drepana:
A
heavy, curved slashing sword associated with the lowland peoples of the Macht.

Firghe:
The
Kefren name for the moon Phobos, meaning
anger.

Gaenion:
The smith-god of the Macht, who created the Curse of God for Antimone, who
wrought the stars and much of the fabric of Kuf itself. He is married to
Araian, the sun, and his forges are reputed to be upon the summit of Mount
Panjaeos in the Harukush.

Goatherder
tribes:
Less sophisticated Macht who do not dwell in cities but are nomadic
hill-people. They possess no written language, but have a large hoard of oral
culture.

Goatmen:
Degenerate savages who belong to no city, and live in a state of brutish filth.
They wear goatskins by and large, and keep to the higher mountain-country of
the Macht lands.

Hell:
The
far side of the Veil. Not hell in the Christian sense, but an afterlife whose
nature is wholly unknowable.

Himation:
A
long, fine cloak, sometimes worn ceremonially.

Honai:
Traditionally, a Kefren word meaning
finest.
It is
a term used to describe the best troops in a King’s entourage, not only his
bodyguards, but the well-drilled professional soldiers of the Great King’s
household guard.

Hufsan / Hufsa:
Male and female terms for the lower-caste inhabitants of the Empire,
traditionally mountain-folk of the Magron, the Adranos and the Korash. They are
smaller and darker than the Kefren, but hardier, more primitive, and less
cultured, preferring to preserve their records through storytelling rather than
script.

Isca
: A
Macht city, destroyed by a combination of her neighbours in the year before the
Battle of Kunaksa. The men of Isca were semi-professional warriors who trained
incessantly for war and had a habit of attacking their neighbours. Legend has
it the founder of Isca, Isarion, was a protege of the god Phobos.

Kefren:
The
peoples of the Asurian heartland, who led the resistance to the Macht in the
semi-legendary past, and then established an Empire on the back of that
achievement. Throughout the Empire, they are a favoured race, and have become a
caste of rulers and administrators.

Kerusia
: In
Machtic, the word denotes a council, and is used to designate the leaders of a
community. In mercenary circles it can also refer to a gathering of generals,
sometimes but not always elected by-common consent.

Komis:
The
linen head-dress worn by the nobility of the Asurian Empire. It can be pulled
up around the head so that only the eyes are visible, or can be loosed to
reveal the entire face.

Kuf:
The
world, the earth, the place of life set amid the stars under the gaze of God
and his minions.

Kufr:
A
derogatory Macht term for all the inhabitants of Kuf who are not of their own
race.

Mora:
A
formation of ten centons, or approximately one thousand men.

Mot:
The
Kufr god of barren soil, and thus of death.

Niseian:
A
breed of horse from the plains of Niseia, reputedly the best warhorses in the
world, and certainly the greatest in stature. Mostly black or bay, and over
sixteen hands in height, they are the mounts of Kings and Kefren nobility, and
are rarely seen outside the Asurian heartland.

Obol:
A
coin, made of bronze, silver, or gold.

Ostrakr:
The term used for those unfortunates who have no city as their own, either
because they have been exiled, their city has been destroyed, or they have
taken up with mercenaries.

Othismos:
The name given to the heart of hand-to-hand battle, when two bodies of heavy
infantry meet.

Paean:
A
hymn, usually sung upon the occasion of a death. The Macht sing their Paean
going into battle, to prepare themselves for their own demise.

Panoply:
The name given for a full set of heavy infantry accoutrements, including a
helm, a cuirass, a shield and a spear.

Pasang:
One
thousand single paces. Historically, one mile is a thousand double-paces of a
Roman Legionary, thus a pasang is half a mile.

Peplos:
A
woman’s garment, very like a cloak but generally finer and lighter.

Phobos and
Haukos:
The two moons of Kuf. Phobos is the larger, and is pale in colour.
Haukos is smaller and pink or pale red in colour. Also, the two sons of the
goddess Antimone. Phobos is the god of fear, and Haukos the god of hope.

Qaf:
A
mysterious race native to the mountains of the Korash. They are very tall and
broad and seem to be a strange kind of amalgam of Kufr and ape. They are
reputed to have their own language, but appear as immensely powerful beasts
that haunt the snows of the high passes.

Rimarch:
An
archaic term for a file-closer, the last man in the eight-man file of a
phalanx, and second-in-command of the file itself.

Sauroter:
The lizard-sticker. The counterweight to the aichme, at the butt of the spear,
generally a four-sided spike somewhat heavier than the spearhead so the spear
can be grasped past the middle and still retain its balance. It is used to
stick the spear upright in the ground, and also to finish off prone enemies. If
the aichme is broken off in combat, the sauroter is often used as a substitute.

Sigils:
The
letters of the Macht alphabet. Usually, each city adopts one as its badge and
has it painted upon the shields of its warriors.

Silverfin
,
Horrin:
Silverfin roughly correspond to a kind of ocean bass, and horrin to
mackerel.

Strawhead:
A derogatory term used among the Macht for those who hail from the high
mountain settlements. These folk tend to be taller and fairer in colouring than
the Macht from the lowlands, hence the name.

Taenon:
The
amount of land required for one man to live and raise a family. It varies
according to the country and the soil quality, a taenon in the hills being
larger than in the lowlands, but in general it equates to about five acres.