Corvus

EIGHTEEN

The white, clean world of the highlands was behind them, and they were trudging downhill now, always downhill, through the small farms and olive groves of the Machran hinterland. The olive trees were black in the winter light, and seemed scarcely alive at all; gnarled relics of a forgotten summer.

They camped beneath them when they could, for shelter against the rain, and Aise cupped her bound hands full of the dead leaves of the year gone by, brittle shavings with the shape of spearheads. She smelled them, inhaling a last scent of the world’s warmth.

The party grouped about the fire, Ona and Rian huddling up to her like pups seeking warmth. Ona was pale and empty-eyed, but now and again her furious barking cough would make the men start and curse.

“Shut that fucking brat up,” the one named Bosca snapped. He rubbed the scar at his eye where Styra had exacted payment for her rape and murder. “Boss, do we really need to be hauling that little shit with us? She’s not even of an age to fuck.”

Sertorius was rebinding the straps that bound his thick-soled sandals to his feet. He did not look up. “Take it up with Phaestus, or stow it.”

“If we have to move quiet, she’ll be the bane of us all.”

Sertorius raised his head at that. He looked at Aise, then shrugged. “We’ll see when the time comes.”

Phaestus stumbled into camp, his son at his elbow. His face had become ossified, a skull in which his bright eyes burned. He half-fell in front of the fire, and Philemos reached for the flaccid wineskin.

“Easy on that,” hulking Adurnos said. “It’s the last one.”

“He needs some warmth in him,” Philemos protested, and uncorked the skin, holding the nozzle to his father’s mouth. Phaestus choked and swallowed, the red liquid running down his neck in trickled lines.

“You’ve done well to get this far,” Sertorius said to Phaestus. “For a while there I thought we’d be leaving you for the kites and ravens.”

Phaestus mastered his heaving breath. “I have enough in me yet for the job to get done.”

“He should be on the mule,” Philemos said, wiping his father’s mouth.

“The mule can barely manage that barking brat as it is,” Adurnos grunted. “Another few days and it’ll go the way of the last one.”

“Good eating, though,” Bosca said with a grin. Adurnos and Sertorius laughed.

Philemos stared across the fire at Aise and her children. They were hollow-eyed scarecrows, flesh worn close to the bone, hair matted with filth. The company had been ten days on the road, and the pasangs had left their mark upon them all, but the three captives had fared worst.

He scrambled through the grey leaf-litter and knelt in front of Aise, holding out the skin.

“It might help her.”

Aise nodded, her eyes flickering with gratitude. She held Ona in her arms and put the spout of the wineskin to the child’s mouth. Rian raised the skin, almost empty now. She looked at Philemos.

“Thank you.” The words a cracked whisper, no more.

“That’s your share you’re giving her, boy,” Bosca said loudly. “You want to waste it on the little rat-cunt, it’s your affair, but don’t expect no more.”

“Fair enough,” Philemos said without turning around. His dark curls hung in mud-fastened strings either side of his face. He looked at Aise, at Ona, swallowing the wine and whimpering, and lastly at Rian, who returned his gaze squarely, her eyes grey as the shank of a spearhead.

His mouth worked, but he took the skin back from Aise without saying anything.

The day died about them, the fire brightening against the blue darkness of the world.

“There’s farmers here have places for pigs to have a roof over their heads, and yet here we are sleeping on dirt for I don’t know how many nights,” Bosca said. “I don’t see the wisdom of it, is all – we’re not up in the fucking mountains anymore.”

“We don’t know what’s been going on since we were up in the hills,” Phaestus said. “Or how far Corvus’s army has come.” He wheezed wetly as he breathed, and when Philemos set a hand on his arm he managed a laugh.

“I’ve been hunting in the highlands these twenty years, and now a two week jaunt has me like this. Phobos must have a sense of humour.”

“Phobos hates all men,” Sertorius said, chewing reflectively on a strip of roast mule meat. “Not just you. You’re old, Phaestus – that’s all there is to it. You were a right hard bastard when you were younger, but I think Antimone’s wings beat over you now.”

“My father will outlive you all,” Philemos said fiercely, the fire glinting out of his eyes.

“Maybe he will, but I doubt it,” Sertorius said, tilting his head to one side. “Phaestus, we’re back down in civilized lands now – how far do you make it to Machran?”

Phaestus pushed his son away, sat up before the fire, drew his knife, and began pushing the unburnt butts of the sticks into the bright core of flame.

“Two days. Maybe less, if we make good time.”

“Well, Antimone’s tits! That’s some news to savour at least. I take it back, Phaestus – you have years of life in your bones yet. Two days! It’s enough to warm a man’s heart.” Sertorius grinned. He leaned over and clapped Phaestus on the shoulder.

“What way lies Machran?”

Phaestus’s jaw worked. The air sawed in and out of his mouth. “You see the tree to my right, Sertorius? That way is north, by Gaenion’s Pointer.”

Sertorius kept looking at him.

“You can make your way in the world by that star. For us it means that west is to my left. Where Rictus’s wife sits – that is the way to Machran.”

Sertorius’s head jabbed from one side to another, like that of a blackbird eyeing up a worm. He winked at Phaestus.

“And it’s just like that.”

Phaestus nodded. “Just like that.” He seemed like a man too tired to care.

“Old friend, this calls for something beyond the ordinary.” Sertorius stood up, strolled to the edge of the firelight and took the mule by the halter. The animal blew through its nose and he stroked it. “My little secret-keeper. Give us a kiss.” He nuzzled the mule’s nose.

“You are one funny bastard, boss,” Adurnos said.

Sertorius ran his hands over the mule, his eyes dark as sloes in the firelight. Then he stood leaning against it with an arm across its withers. The emaciated animal stood patiently, ears down.

“I trust this poor beast more than any of you – you know why? The fucker doesn’t talk.”

He whipped around, reached into a pack on the ground, and began rummaging through it.

“That’s the last of the food, chief,” Bosca said, uncertain, frowning.

“That’s why I said no-one should touch it but me,” Sertorius retorted. He straightened, grinning. “Look what I brought from the great Rictus’s country retreat, boys. Been saving it until we were well out of all that fucking snow.”

It was a full skin of wine.

Sertorius tossed it towards the fire. “Go on, lads -I’d say we’ve earned it.”

Bosca and Adurnos cackled like huge girls, scrabbled over the wineskin for a few moments until Bosca gave in to Adurnos’s snarling bulk. The big man’s broken nose made him snuffle and snort as he squeezed the skin into his mouth, eyes closed.

“Go easy on that friend,” Phaestus rasped. “There’s enough for all.”

Adurnos paused for breath, the wine dribbling red across his teeth.

“Fuck you, old man,” he said.

Aise sat with her back to the tree. The firelight still touched her feet, but the rest of her was in darkness. Ona slept, snuffling and whimpering, against her, while on her other side Rian was as taut as a strung bow.

Aise and Rian were bound with ropes of rawhide, strung to long wooden pickets hammered deep into the ground at Sertorius’s side. Their wrists were bloody and inflamed, scabbed and welted like raw meat, but they scarcely felt the pain any more.

Phaestus was asleep, wrapped in his own blankets and those of his son. He moaned and muttered in his sleep, muscles working in his face, every sinew tight against the skin. He had taken the flux a few days out of Andunnon, and Aise knew that he had been passing blood for some time now. Philemos hovered over him like a protective hound, watching the three other men at the fire.

They were all drunk now, these three, the wineskin drained almost flat. The strong yellow wine that Aise and Rian had trodden out in the big tub the summer before, the grapes popping and breaking under their bare feet. A last remnant of a life destroyed.

Sertorius, Bosca and Adurnos. They were sat side by side, their boasting and horseplay done with, the wine working in their minds, setting their thoughts to other things.

A silence fell across the little campsite, broken only by the snap and spit of the wet wood in the fire, Phaestus’s stertorous breathing, and the whimpering of the sleeping child at Aise’s side.

“What’s so special about this Rictus fellow that his bitches will make a difference to Machran?” Bosca asked. In the firelight, his bearded face was a mask of fur.

“You never heard of the great Rictus of Isca?” Sertorius said. “Ignorant fuck; he led the Ten Thousand. He’s a hero, a stone-hard red-cloaked mercenary with his own army.”

“So he’ll chuck it all away for the sake of these?” Bosca asked. “What is he, soft in the head or something?”

Sertorius grinned. “He’s a thing you can’t understand, Bosca, a family man. A man of honour. Phaestus here reckons Rictus would do pretty much anything to keep his women safe.”

Big Adurnos was running his eyes over Aise and Rian. “They’re not so pretty as they was, but I like the young one. I bet she’s never been popped. They start late, the girls up in the hills.”

“You think?” Bosca said with a yellow grin. “Phobos! I can’t remember the last time I dipped into a virgin’s cunny.” He turned to Sertorius. “What do you say, boss? We’ve been good boys -how about allowing us a little taste before we have to hand them over?”

Sertorius blinked slowly. He looked at Aise and Rian across the fire, his eyes black and cold as stones. He seemed to be rolling the idea around in his head.

“I can’t see what the harm would be,” he said at last.

Philemos shook Phaestus violently. “Father -father, wake up!”

Rian shrank closer against her mother. Her face was set and white beneath the filth encrusting it. “No,” she whispered.

The three men on the other side of the fire got to their feet.

“You can go first, boss,” Adurnos said. “Fair’s fair – you held on to that wine for us.”

“We’ll do the older one while you have the girl,” Bosca said. “She’s got a nice face on her yet.”

Aise and Rian struggled to their feet, constrained by the rawhide ropes anchoring their wrists. Ona woke up and uttered a thin cry, then clung to her mother’s knees.

“No!” Philemos shouted. He slapped his father about the face. Phaestus stirred sluggishly.

The boy rose with a snarl, drawing his knife.

“Don’t you touch them, you fucking animals!”

Sertorius grinned. “Careful, son – you might nick yourself with that thing.” “Out of the fucking way, you little shit,” Bosca growled.

Phaestus was awake. He struggled to his hands and knees, saw what was going on, and levered himself erect using his spear. Then he stood holding the aichme out level.

“What’s all this, Sertorius?”

“Nothing to get in a twist about, my friend. Call off your son. His heart’s in the right place, but I don’t like having a knife pulled on me by anyone, and if he don’t put it away there will be blood. I warn you fair and square.”

A second’s silence. Sparks cracking in the fire.

“Phaestus,” Aise said calmly. “Are you going to allow this?”

Phaestus stood still. The weight of the spear made his arms quiver, and there was sweat running down the side of his face.

“Father -”

“Shut up, Philemos. Put the knife away. You stand against Sertorius and you’ll be dead before you can so much as blink.”

“Listen to the old man, boy,” Sertorius said. “You have quality in you – I can see that. This is not worth the fight.”

“Father,” Philemos said again. He stared at Phaestus and there were tears in his eyes. “You cannot allow it.”

“This is a time of war, Philemos. These things happen. It is the way of the world.”

Philemos turned and looked at Aise and Rian. They were frozen, mute.

“Not the girl,” he said at last, desperation cracking his voice. “Leave her alone.”

Bosca guffawed. “So that’s his game, eh? He wants the tenderest meat for himself.”

Philemos walked over to the women crouched on the far side of the firelight. He knelt beside them.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Aise. Then he took his knife and cut the bindings that anchored Rian to the pickets. He grabbed the stub of the rope and dragged her after him, standing by his father. Raising his voice, he said; “This one’s mine.”

“You cocky little bastard – you think you can keep the choice cut for yourself?” Adurnos snapped. He started forward, reaching for his own knife.

The spearhead swung round, bringing him up short. Phaestus stood holding it out at waist height.

“My boy knows what he wants. Let him have it.” Phaestus’s face was set and hard. “Take the woman, if you have to. The girl is Philemos’s.”

Sertorius slapped his thigh. “Good for you, lad!” he chortled. “I didn’t think you had it in you!”

He strode past the fire, lifted Aise to her feet and slashed her picket-rope. He looked into her eyes. “You’ll have to do us all.”

“Mother!” Rian screamed, and Ona began to wail.

Aise bent and kissed her youngest daughter. “It’s all right, honeybun. Go to Rian. It’ll be all right.”

Rian tried to lunge at Sertorius, but Philemos held her back. “Don’t, for God’s sake.” Ona tottered over to her sister and Rian buried her face in the child’s shoulder, sobbing.

“Come on, sweetheart,” Sertorius crooned. “Come out into the dark with us. We’re not barbarians; we’ll spare your brats the sight.”

The three men gathered around Aise. Bosca gripped her dress at the shoulder and pulled at it. There was a ripping sound, and the material slid down her torso.

“Nice,” Adurnos said. He grabbed at one of her breasts and dug his fingers in. “I’m first,” Sertorius said.

The three of them dragged Aise beyond the firelight, out into the wet darkness of the olive trees.