Corvus (6 page)

After two pasangs
they doffed their helms and halted to listen. The snow had stilled the woods,
the birds, the river itself. The trees were silent and listening with them. A
cock pheasant creaked and coughed away to the west, the sound carrying like a
shout.

And then the other
sound. Men’s voices, and something large making its way through the snow and
the brush above them.

“I count four, or
could be five,” Fornyx said.

“Five,” Rictus
said. “And at least two horses.”

“We should have
javelins, or a bow.”

Rictus smiled with
sour humour. “We wear the red cloak and the Curse of God. They’ll piss down
their legs at the very sight of us. Helm up, brother, and guard my left - you’re
quicker on your feet than I am.”

“Every time you
say that. Just once, couldn’t I —”

“Fornyx.” This
last came out of Rictus’s mouth in a whispered hiss. Fornyx grimaced, ducked
behind a tree and donned his helm. The two men nodded silently at one another,
grasping their spears at the mid-point.

They could make
out men talking now, strange accents, a bark of laughter, and the truckle of
air through a horse’s nose. The trail down the hillside was buried in snow, but
still made a clear way through the trees, a white ribbon uncoiling across the
slopes of the forest.

Up close now. They
could smell the sweat of the horses.

Again, the
cock-pheasant rasped, as though counting down the moments. Behind his tree,
Rictus breathed deep and even, as his father had taught him in boyhood, as he
had in turn taught so many men who had fought under him.

The spear-grip in
his hand was more familiar to him than the feel of his wife’s breast. The black
cuirass was feather-light on his back. The world was a bright slot of light. He
had known these sensations all his life. They were what his life was about.
They were what made him alive.

He stepped out
from behind the tree.

That first moment
, counting bodies.
How they are standing, what is in their hands, what they are wearing - the weak
points. Who is the leader? Deal with him first.

They were
soldiers, all of them. He saw that at once, despite the dun-coloured cloaks,
the winter-gear. They had swords - the heavy curved
drepana
of the
lowland cities - hung at their hips, and from the pommel of the nearest horse
hung three bronze helms, like outsized onions. But no red cloaks on display -
they were not mercenaries.

The men froze as
Rictus and Fornyx materialized in front of them, gleaming faceless statues of
ebony and scarlet, spears held easily at the shoulder. Rictus’s eyes flicked
back and forth within the helm-slot. He breathed out a little, relaxing
somewhat, looking at the deeds and intentions of their eyes. No need for death,
not right away.

“Good morning,
lads,” he called out, the bronze robbing his voice of tone and warmth. “What’s
up here for you in the snow and the hills this time of year?”

One of the men edged
closer to the lead pack-horse, where a bundle of javelins was slung. Rictus
stepped forward two paces and levelled the aichme of his spear at the man’s
throat.

“You’ll not be
needing those, friend. Not today.”

A black-bearded
man held up his hands in the air.

He had a broad,
likeable face which was at once good-humoured and sinister. He might have been
Fornyx’s younger brother.

“The Curse of God,
here in the middle of nothing and nowhere - now there’s a prodigy! Lower your
spear, brother. We mean you no harm. We are merely travellers, on our way to
better things.”

Rictus cocked his
head, the spear stone-steady in his fist. He was aware of Fornyx at his left,
breathing quiet clouds of breath into the still air. No-one else was stirring -
they had sense enough for that, at any rate. One brisk movement would resolve
the morning in carnage, and they knew it.

“Who are you?”
Rictus asked the dark-bearded man.

The man bowed his
head, grinning. “I am Druze, and these are my friends, my comrades in arms
Grakos, Gabinius, and a couple of other rascals. We were seeking the quickest
way to Hal Goshen and seemed to have gotten ourselves turned around in the
night. Our apologies if we have trespassed upon your ground. We mean no harm.
We may take a rabbit or two out of your woods, but that’s all.”

He was lying. The
straight road to Hal Goshen lay up along the ridge, impossible to miss. Only an
imbecile could wander off it, and this man was no fool. Rictus knew that just
by the sloe-black twinkle in his eyes. He was not afraid, either, or even
apprehensive. That was worrying.

One of the man’s
friends trudged down the slope from the rear of the party, also holding up
empty palms. This was a smaller fellow, and slender. He wore the short woollen
chlamys of the mountain folk, with the hood pulled up so his face was hard to
make out except for a bright gleam of the eyes as the sun caught them in
passing.

“Perhaps you would
like us to turn back,” he said, setting a hand on Druze’s shoulder. The nails
had been painted scarlet some time ago, but the paint had worn and flecked. He
looked as though he had been scrabbling in blood.

“If you do, then I
cannot see us arguing with two men such as yourselves. Even the five of us are
no match for two Cursebearers. So consider yourselves the victors.” A smile
under the hood. “There is no need for blood to be splashed on such a bright
morning.”

“Agreed. Turn back
out of this valley, and we will part in amity,” Rictus said. He lowered his
spear but kept his left shoulder towards the strangers, the shield covering
him.

“So be it,” the
small man said. “Though, if I could, I would like to know the names of those
who turn us back on our tracks.”

“You think me a
fool?” Rictus asked lightly. They were all young, these five men, and the
speaker perhaps the youngest of them all, yet their gear had seen much service,
and they stood with the easy, yet alert poise of trained soldiers. These were
no mere citizens. Something about all this was wrong.

“I hear tell that
Rictus of Isca lives in this glen,” the hooded youth said. “He’s a much storied
man, and a Cursebearer to boot. If I were to encounter him, I’d like to know I
had, just for the telling of the tale later.”

“Cursebearers do
not just spring up out of the ground, especially so high and far from civilized
life,” Druze added, spreading his hands like a reasonable man. “You cannot
blame us for being curious.”

“Perhaps Rictus
prefers to keep himself to himself,” Fornyx said.

“He has every
right to do so,” the hooded man replied. “Believe us when I say we wish him no
ill. I have been reading stories of the Ten Thousand since I was a boy. It
would be a banner-day in my life, were I to meet their leader face to face.”

He raised his
head, and for the first time looked Rictus eye to eye. “You have my word on that.”

His face was pale,
and there was something odd about his eyes. But before Rictus could quite grasp
it, the youth had lowered his gaze again.

“Phobos,” Fornyx
cursed.

“Go left,” Rictus
murmured out of the corner of his mouth. These young men were not going to back
down. The morning was going to end in blood after all.

Louder, Rictus
said; “Leave now. No more questions, no more talk. Leave, or die here.” Both he
and Fornyx raised their spearheads to throat height and assumed attack stances.

Not one of the men
moved. The hooded youth sighed, reached into his sleeve and brought forth a
cheap wooden flute, the kind soldiers whittle for themselves in their
encampments.

“I will not fight
you, Rictus,” he said calmly - he was too calm. Even as Rictus and Fornyx
advanced, neither he nor any of his men stirred, but the youth put the flute to
his lips - they were as red as a girl’s- and played a shrill melody, a fragment
of a marching tune Rictus had heard half a hundred times before.

And instantly, the
forest came to life all around them.

Men rose up out of
the snow, from behind trees, out of the brush. They had been lying under white
cloaks, hiding in the thickets. Their appearance set the woods alive with
frightened birds.

In a moment,
Rictus and Fornyx were surrounded by dozens, scores of armed soldiers,
blue-faced with cold. Some had bows, others javelins, and yet more unsheathed
their drepanas so that cold iron glittered in the snow-brightness.

They stood silent
and watching, like legendary warriors brought to magic life out of the very
soil of the earth.

“Damn,” Fornyx
said. “The little bastard.”

There was the
white, draining shock of it, the knowledge it was all over, his whole life
finished at last.

So this is how it
ends, Rictus thought. For me, for Fornyx, for all of us. He thought of Aise and
the girls, and what would happen to them now, and he fought down the automatic
impulse to charge, to skewer this flute-playing boy and drown him in his own
blood. He had to buy time.

“Stack arms,” he
said to Fornyx.

“My arse,” his
friend snapped, wide-eyed with fury behind his helm.

“Do it, Fornyx.”

The two men
stabbed their spears butt-first into the ground so that the sauroters buried
themselves. His right hand free, Rictus took off his helm, and the cold air bit
his face.

“You have us at a
disadvantage,” he said to the flute-player. “And you have my name right. I am
Rictus, and this here is my second, Fornyx.” He looked about himself, heart
thundering, face stiff with the effort to keep it impassive. But he managed a
little flourish of contempt.

“You think you
brought enough men?”

The youth reached
up and threw back his hood. He was smiling. He walked down the slope as though
descending the steps of a palace, until he stood so close that Rictus could
have reached out and set both hands about his throat.

His eyes were
weirdly pale, a shade of violet that did not seem quite natural. He had black
hair past his shoulders, as gleaming black as a raven’s wing, and his white
skin had a sheen of gold about it.

He was as beautiful
as a maiden, but had the scar of an old sword-stroke at the corner of his left
eye.

“I have wanted to
meet you for a long time, Rictus of Isca,” he said.

“I am called
Corvus.”

MEN
OF PHOBOS

IT IS A FINE
LINE
, sometimes, Rictus thought, between guest and hostage. The key to it
is left unspoken, buried in courtesies. The fist inside the glove.

They were escorted
back down into the glen of Andunnon as though the men about them were for their
own protection, and the strange youth who called himself Corvus walked beside
them, as though he were a friend of theirs. Some of his companions relieved
Rictus and Fornyx of the weight of their shields, helms and spears, but they
were allowed to keep their swords. Courtesy.

“This is a
beautiful place,” Corvus said, as the woods thinned and the column came out
into the open sunlight of the valley bottom. “A man could be happy here. I do
not wonder that you wanted to keep your home a secret, Rictus.”

“I am curious as
to how I failed in that regard,”

Rictus said tartly.

The youth nodded. “There’s
a lot to be said between us. I hope you will perhaps count me a guest here and
not an intruder. It is no part of my intent to harm you or your family.”

“If talk were
commerce, all men would be rich,” Fornyx said, and spat into the snow. “A guest
does not bring a full centon of warriors to test his host’s hospitality.”

“If I had brought
any fewer, you would both have fought me,” Corvus said, holding up one
long-fingered hand as though to catch something. “I had to take away hope of
winning to make you listen to what I have to say.”

“They’re a patient
bunch,” Rictus said, gesturing to the ranks of soldiers who marched on all
sides. “How long were they buried in the woods?”

“They are my
Igranians,” Corvus said. “From Igranon in the high eastern Harukush. It’s so
cold up there they think this is a mild spring in comparison. They are my light
troops, my foot cavalry. Druze is their chieftain, and one of my marshals.”

“I hope they
brought their own bread,” Fornyx drawled. His tone was mocking, insolent, but
his face was white and drawn as a fever-victim, and his fist was knotted on the
hilt of his sword.

“In this valley,
my hounds stay on the leash,” Corvus said gravely.

They made good
time. As the column
approached the farm, they saw that Aise and Eunion had not yet left, Garin and
Styra were in the front yard packing up bedrolls. The two shrank together as
the long line of armed men came into view and began splashing across the shallows
of the river. Then they bolted like hares, sprinting for the north. Corvus
swept an arm forward and at once the dark smiling fellow Druze led off some two
dozen of his men at a run. They skeined out into two lines that flanked the
farmhouse and surrounded it. The two fleeing slaves were tripped up, pinioned,
and prodded back down the valley towards the house. Rictus and Fornyx looked at
one another. These Igranians’ discipline was almost as good as that of the
Dogsheads. High mountain tribesmen they might be, but they had been
well-drilled.

The main body of
the centon halted short of the farmyard and stood there in rough ranks. Corvus
turned to Rictus.

“Call to your
family. Tell them there is no need for alarm. I’ve brought good food and wine
on the horses - if you will permit me, Rictus, I would like to dine with you
this morning.” The sun caught him full in the face; his skin seemed more
colourless than ever, and his eyes were as pale as tinted glass.