Corvus (7 page)

The house was in
disarray, blankets, pots and lamps all askew, things strewn over the floor in
the panic of packing. It was dark inside as they entered - the fire had gone
out - and Aise, Eunion and the children were in a huddle at the far wall.
Eunion had his old boar spear levelled, and Aise was clutching a hatchet.

“Wife,” Rictus
said, his voice harsh, “get the fire lit, and clean up this mess. We have
guests.” A cup broke under his foot as he strode over to them. He set a hand on
Ona’s head and touched Aise’s shoulder. Softly, he said, “This is not what you
think.” He wiped a tear from Rian’s cheek, her face white and defiant in the
gloom.

“Father, are they
here to kill you?”

“They’re here to
talk, my honey. And we must be clever about this. Set the table and light the
lamps.” To Aise he said nothing, but they gripped each other’s hands bone-tight
for a long moment.

“Do as your father
says,” Aise said at last, her voice as hoarse as a crow’s. Her gaze did not
leave Rictus’s face. “He knows best. We are in his hands.”

Outside again,
Rictus spoke to Corvus and his waiting men. “You might want to give them a
moment. They’ve had an unsettling morning.”

“My apologies,”
Corvus said, grimacing. “Grakos, unload the horses. Druze, the men may stand
easy and break out their food. Then you will accompany me inside, as soon as
Rictus here is willing to extend an invitation.” He bowed slightly to Rictus.

He had
old-fashioned manners, a kind of courtesy that Rictus had not seen for a long
time, as though he had stepped out of an earlier age. His accent was strange
also. Rictus had heard Machtic spoken by men from every corner of the Harukush,
and a few from beyond it, but he could not place this Corvus at all.

“What is this,
some kind of game?” Fornyx demanded. “We are your prisoners - what’s all this
talk of invitations?”

“I mean everything
I say,” Corvus said mildly. “If Rictus does not wish us to enter his house,
then we will remain outside. It’ll be colder, mind.”

Fornyx shook his
head, torn between anger and sheer bafflement.

“I’m willing to
let you in,” Rictus said, with the ghost of a smile. “My wife may have other
ideas though.” Despite himself, he was beginning to believe that this strange
young man meant what he said.

“We’ve brought
good wine, Minerian from the western coast,” Druze said. “Inside or out, it’ll
still taste better than anything you can drink within a hundred pasangs.”

“Minerian? You
hear that Rictus?” Fornyx said. “If we’re to die, at least our bellies will be
thanking us.”

“Let us not talk
of death today,” Corvus said, and a coldness came into his pale eyes. For a
moment he seemed a much older man.

Aise did well
. She had always been
good at bringing order out of chaos, and she had never been anything other than
level-headed even in the most brutish moments of their life together. When Rictus
finally, formally invited Corvus and his companion Druze into the farmhouse,
the place was as neat and ordered as if this were any other morning of the
year. The fire was a yellow blaze in the hearth, and the good lamps had been
hung from the ceiling beams and were burning sweetly. There was food and wine
on the table, and the two dogs were being held back in the corner by Eunion.
Their low sing-song growling was the only discordant note in the proceedings.

Aise came forward
bearing a dish of salt. She had piled her hair up on her head and was wearing
the sleeveless scarlet chiton Rictus had bought her one drunken night long ago,
when they had both been young and full of fire. Her eyes were made up with kohl
and stibium; it recalled something of her old, heart-stopping beauty, and it
brought Corvus and Druze up short. Corvus bowed to her as though she were a
queen, lifted a pinch of salt to his lips and said, “Antimone’s blessings on
you and your house, lady.”

“You are most
welcome,” Aise said, and Rictus loved her in that moment for the pride and the
courage of what she had done. If they were all to die today, then he was glad
he had seen her like this one last time.

“You must be
seated - I have -” but Aise trailed off. Corvus had gone straight to the corner
and had knelt down in front of the dogs.

“What beauties
these are. Release them, friend. They have no quarrel with me.” Startled,
Eunion let go his grip on the hounds’ collars and they sprang forward,
sniffing, growling, baring their teeth and licking Corvus’s face, alternately.
He laughed, sounding like a little boy as he played with their ears and
scratched their flanks. Old Mij rolled over like a puppy, tongue lolling.

Rictus caught
Druze’s eye and the black-bearded man shrugged with a wry smile. “Dogs, horses,
he has a way with them.”

“And men?” Fornyx
asked.

“You’ll find out.
It’s what we’re here for.”

Corvus rose, the
hounds dancing around him as though he was their long-lost master. “Forgive me,
Rictus. I have not yet met the rest of your family.”

Ona stared at him
silently, sucking her thumb -she had not done that for years. Rian, in her
pale, defiant pride, looked every inch a younger version of her mother - a
woman, no longer a girl - and Rictus felt a jolt of pure fear as Corvus took her
hand and kissed it.

“Your household is
filled with beauty,” he said to Rictus, his gaze still fixed on Rian. “You are
a fortunate man. Druze, the gifts.”

Druze set a skin
of wine on the table, and then a net of oranges and fat lemons from the far
eastern coast.

“Let’s eat,”
Corvus said briskly.

It was perhaps
the strangest meal
Rictus had ever shared. They sat about the long pine table and passed the
dishes up and down it to one another in perfect amity, as though there were not
a hundred soldiers squatting outside, as though Corvus was a family friend who
had chanced by.

Rictus and Fornyx
sat in their black cuirasses, which lent a certain sombre glory to the
proceedings, and Druze poured them all cups of the good Minerian as though he
were the master of ceremonies. There was little in the way of talk, until Rian,
having ripped her bread to shreds on her plate, said; “Are you really him? The
Corvus we hear about, the man from the east?”

“I am he,” Corvus
said, sipping his wine.

“How do we know
that? You don’t look like him - you could be some bandit who’s trading on his
name,” Rian said defiantly.

Corvus looked at
her. His red-lipped smile was like a scar across his face. “What does he look
like, this Corvus you’ve heard about?”

“He’s - he’s tall,
for one thing. And he rides horses, I hear tell, and leads an army of
thousands, not some mountain band of brigands.”

Corvus set a hand
on Druze’s shoulder. “I would not call my Igranians brigands, lady. At least,
not any more.” The two men grinned at one another. Druze leaned across the
table, black eyes shining. In a mock whisper he said, “We were once, it’s true
- it is in our blood. But things are different now. There’s no money in
banditry anymore.” And he laughed as if at some private joke.

“You’re too young
to be the man in the stories,” Rian persisted.

Corvus shrugged. “Ask
your father about the truthfulness of stories. The farther the truth travels,
the less it becomes the truth. That’s the way of the world. I was brought up
with tales of the Ten Thousand and Rictus of Isca who brought them home from
the land beyond the sea. He was a hero, a giant of myth to me - when I was a
boy. But your father is a real person, one solitary man who sits here drinking
wine with us. Every legend begins with the ordinary and the everyday, as the
acorn begets the oak.”

“You’re too short!”
Rian exclaimed, colour rising up her face. Aise set a hand on her arm. “Enough,
daughter. You will eat in silence now.”

Corvus seemed to
have taken no offence. “My mother was a wise woman, like yours,” he said. “She
always told me that a man is as tall as he thinks he is.” He raised his cup to
Rian. “And besides, lady, I am tall in the stories, am I not?”

The stilted meal
ended, and Aise led the girls out of the room, Rian still smouldering. Eunion
took himself off to a corner where he affected to read a scroll, though he
fooled none of them; he was as prick eared with curiosity as a bald-headed cat.
Rictus, Fornyx, Corvus and Druze remained about the table, watching one
another, until finally Fornyx, who had drunk deep of the superb wine, rose with
in irritated hiss of breath and turned to Rictus. “Get me out of this damned
thing, will you?” And he slapped at the black cuirass on his back.

“Let me,” Corvus
said, rising as swiftly as a dancer. And before Fornyx could protest, he was
working on the clasps of the armour, opening them with sharp clicks. He lifted
the cuirass off Fornyx and held it in his hands a moment.

“It amazes me,
every time I touch one of these,” he said. “The lightness of it, the strength
inside. What are they made of, Antimone’s Gift? Do you ever wonder, Rictus?”

“Gaenion made the
stuff of them, they say,” Druze put in. “Out of the essence of darkness itself.
And because she wove them into chitons for us, Antimone was exiled from heaven,
to watch over us in pity, and to take us behind her Veil in death. I’ve heard
it said that the life and fate of the Macht are woven into them in patterns we
cannot see.” Druze had awide, broad-nosed face, that of a farmer, and he had
the olive colouring of the eastern tribes. But his eyes missed nothing, and the
hilt of the drepana hanging from his shoulder had seen much use.

Corvus was turning
the cuirass this way and that to catch the fire while Fornyx stood looking at
him owlishly.

“You see the way
it takes the light sometimes - a gleam here or there. And yet at other times it
will reflect nothing, but will be as black as a hole in the earth itself.”

Fornyx took his
cuirass back, swaying a little.

“With all the
conquering you’ve been doing, I’d have thought you would have one of your own
by now,” he said to Corvus.

The strange youth’s
face hardened, became a pale mask. “I have one,” he said softly. “I choose not
to wear it.”

“Why so?”

“A man must earn
his right to the Curse of God, Fornyx.”

Fornyx snorted,
and then wove his way to the end wall where he placed his cuirass on its stand
there. He set a hand on it.

“They do not care
who wears them,” he said over his shoulder. “They fit your bones like a second
skin, whether you’re fat or thin, tall,” he turned round with a sneer, “or
short.”

Corvus seemed all
at once to grow very still, and in the room the only sound was the crackle of
the fire, and the breath slowly exhaling from Druze’s mouth.

“Rictus, your
friend has savoured too much of the wine,” Corvus said quietly. “He forgets
himself.”

“I forget myself,
do I?” Fornyx snarled. He strode hack to the table. “You short-arsed little
fuck - how about I break you in two over my knee?”

Rictus stood up. “Enough.”
One look halted Fornyx in his tracks.

“We’ve played your
game,” he said to Corvus. “Now I want to know your intent. Are you here to kill
us, or make some kind of offer? We’re mercenaries, not seers. Be straight, and
get it over with.”

Corvus nodded, and
some life came back into the mask-like face. He really was as fine-boned as a
girl, Rictus thought. It did not seem possible he was the man who had been
conquering the cities of the eastern coasts for going on three years now, the
unstoppable conqueror of rumour. A leader of armies.

And yet, when one
looked in the eyes… There was a coldness there, an implacability.

Corvus stood by
the hearth and splayed his long white fingers to the flames, the nail-paint on
them black in the firelight. It was barely midday outside, but here in the
farmhouse it might have been the middle of the night. There was the low murmur
of talk from the men beyond the walls, but no wind in the valley. The Andunnon
River was a mere liquid guess of noise.

Corvus turned
around. He was smiling.

“It is very
simple,” he said. “I am here to hire you, your friend Fornyx, and your men. I
wish you to come and serve in the ranks of my army.”

Rictus took a
seat, squirted more wine for himself into a clay cup, and methodically filled
cups for them all. Druze raised his in salute before sipping at it, black eyes
as watchful as those of a stoat. Fornyx sat down beside him, the two dark men
looking more than ever like children of the same father, though one was hefted
with wide-boned muscle, the other as lean as a blackthorn stick.

“Mercenaries pick
their employers,” Rictus said. “They choose their contracts, and vote on them.
You may wish to hire us, Corvus, but that does not mean you can.”

Corvus approached
the table, lifted a cup, and studied the trembling face of the wine within.

“Oh, I think I
can,” he said softly. “Druze, tell him.”

“Your senior
centurions, Valerian and Kesero, are guests of our army as we speak,” Druze
said, flapping a hand in apology. “Your centons have been rounded up and are in
our camp outside Hal Goshen.”

“Prisoners,”
Fornyx hissed.

“Guests,” Corvus
corrected him. “I have already broached my terms of employment to them, and
they find them agreeable. But they want to know your word on it, Rictus of
Isca.”

There it was. The
glove slipped off, the fist shown at last. This slender cold eyed boy held
Rictus and his family in the palm of his hand.

“What if I said
no?” Rictus asked.

Corvus looked back
down into his cup. “This is a harsh world. A man must do what he can to
safeguard those he loves. And he will do what he must to make the life he has
chosen for himself. I know that Karnos of Machran has approached you and your
centons with a view to employment - employment against me. The Dogsheads are
renowned across our world - how many are they now, Druze?”