Corvus

TWENTY

“Dead?” Corvus repeated. “He cannot be dead.”

Fornyx stood in front of him, his blade-scarred helm in one arm, his tattered scarlet cloak folded over the other, and the Curse of God slathered with blood across his chest. He looked like some sculptor’s ideal of war incarnate.

“The last ladder broke before he made it down off the wall. If he had been captured we would have heard of it by now.” He bowed his head a second. His voice was raw. “Rictus is gone.”

Corvus sank back onto the map-table, eyes staring at nothing. He had a bloodied linen clout tied about his upper thigh, and another on his forearm.

“Druze, what do you say?”‘ he asked.

Druze stood like a whey-faced ghost, his arm strapped to his side. “Fornyx got me down, or I would be dead too. We were among the last. When we took to the ladders Rictus was still fighting with maybe a dozen of his men, covering the retreat. None of them made it.”

Corvus rubbed his forehead. Fornyx glared at him.

“When the Dogsheads took your contract – if you want to call it that – we numbered over four hundred and sixty, Corvus. Today, rather less than a hundred of us are still standing. And Rictus is dead. Did you mean to destroy us, or was it something you had just not factored into your deliberations? I’m curious. Tell me.”

Corvus looked up. In the tent about him all the senior officers of the army were gathered, as sombre as men at a funeral. He looked their faces over one by one.

“Where is Ardashir?” he asked.

“He has not been found,” Druze said heavily. “But there are very many bodies out there at the foot of the walls.”

“Phobos,” Corvus whispered. His eyes filled with tears. He turned from them and leaned on the map table, the dressing on his forearm darkening as fresh blood stained it.

One-eyed Demetrius stepped forward. “It was a close thing, Corvus – the diversion worked. When they saw your banner at the South Prime they rushed every man they could there – had we possessed more ladders, I think Rictus’s assault would have succeeded.”

“It was meant to succeed,” Corvus said with a strangled groan. “Fornyx, despite what you think of me, I do not send men out to die for nothing.”

“These things happen in war,” Teresian spoke up. “Now we know better what we face.”

“The towers,” Druze said, “And the machines they have upon them. They crucified us on those walls.”

“Parmenios,” Corvus said. He wiped his eyes. “Do you have numbers yet?”

The fat little secretary came forward with a waxed slate and a stylus. Despite his paunch, he was powerfully built about the shoulders, and he had the hands of a man who built things. He tapped the slate. “These are provisional – such is the confusion -”

“Tell me!”

“Just under a thousand men, dead or so badly wounded as to be lost to the army for good. The Dogsheads and Igranians suffered worst, though Demetrius’s conscripts also took heavy casualties.”

“They fought well,” Corvus said, collecting himself. “Demetrius, I congratulate you. Your command is a thing to be proud of.”

Demetrius bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement, his single eye shining.

Corvus approached Druze. “Forgive me, brother,” he said brokenly.

Druze smiled, that quicksilver darkness. “There is nothing to forgive. This is the first time I have known defeat under you. It is Phobos’s doing – he means to humble us.”

Corvus leaned over the table again. He raised his voice slightly.

“I cannot afford to lose the services, or the example, of men such as you, Fornyx. Since you and Rictus joined this army I have given you the hardest post of all; but it was the post of honour. I thought there was a possibility we could end this thing with one quick assault. It had to be tried, and I knew that I wanted my best at the tip of the spearhead. I miscalculated, and you paid for it with your blood.”

He turned around. His eyes were bright and rimmed with red, and the high angular bones of his face seemed more pronounced than ever in the shadow of the tent. “You all paid for it, and I will not forget that. We were beaten last night, but we are not defeated. We will prevail against Machran -the city has shown that she is a worthy adversary.”

He laid a hand on Fornyx’s chest, and wiped some of the dried blood off the black cuirass. “I made you pay too high a price. Rictus was a man none of us could afford to lose.” He smiled, and his eyes welled up again.

“Fornyx, I loved him too, more than you know.”

Fornyx’s face remained hard as flint and his voice when he spoke was harsh as that of a crow.

“I wish to send a green branch to Machran to ask for his body. His wife would wish it of me.”

“Do as you think best.”

“It is an admission of defeat, to ask for the dead,” Demetrius rumbled.

“Then it is stating no more than the obvious,” Corvus replied. “The men of Machran fought well last night – let them have their triumph. If they now believe themselves invincible, then by Phobos we will use that against them.”

“They have one more Cursebearer on the walls of the city today,” Fornyx spat. “Think on that, if you will.”

A thin veil of sleet came slanting down out of a blank sky as winter settled itself comfortably about the lowlands surrounding Machran. On the horizons the mountains were white, their peaks lost in cloud. It was a day when a man prefers to set his back to the door and stare into a good fire.

Karnos stood in the arched shadow of the South Prime Gate as the huge oak and bronze doors were swung back by a dozen armoured men. Behind him, a centon in full panoply stood in ranks, most with the sigil of Machran on their shields, but Avennos and Arkadios were represented too. Murchos of Arkadios stood beside him wrapped in a piebald goatskin cloak against the cold. He wiped his nose on the fur and stamped his feet to keep the blood flowing.

“I don’t like this – he’s a tricky bastard, Corvus.”

“It’s three men, Murchos – what can three men do, even if they wear the scarlet? We have a hundred here – and the rest of the bugger’s army is back in camp nearly two pasangs away. Unless they grow wings and fly, they’re not going to interfere. And besides, I want to know what the great Rictus has to say.”

“Nothing good. It was he who brought the surrender terms to Hal Goshen, don’t forget.”

“After last night, I hardly think they’re here to demand that. Relax yourself, Murchos – you’re worse than Kassander.”

The gates were wide open now, and Karnos walked through them, close-wrapped in a wool cloak of his own. Murchos followed him, a bear of a man made more feral by the rough goatskin. And behind the pair the centon of spearmen advanced, some ninety armoured men in close ranks.

Three men in red cloaks stood awaiting them in the shadow of the walls, one holding aloft a branch of. olive wood with a few thin leaves clinging to it. Around them, scores of corpses still lay contorted on the cold ground, the residue of Corvus’s diversionary attack of the night before. The three looked like the sole survivors of some disaster as they stood there amid the tumbled bodies of the dead.

None of them were Rictus, Karnos noted at once, disappointed. He slid his good arm out of his cloak and raised his hand.

“Close enough, friend – what is it you’ve come to say?”

The branch-bearer was a lean, wiry man with a black beard. He walked forward a few steps, his feet cracking the ice which had gathered in the frozen rutted mud of the roadway. Blood, too, had frozen in puddles hard as gemstones, but he avoided stepping on it. He let his cloak fall back and Karnos saw that he was a Cursebearer; he studied the man’s face more intently.

“Fornyx?”

The man smiled. “You have a good memory for faces, Karnos. We only met the once, I think.”

“You’re Rictus’s second, aren’t you?”

“I was.” A spasm of pain crossed the lean man’s features. “I come here to ask you a favour, one soldier to another.”

Karnos’s eyebrows shot up his forehead. “After last night, I find this a strange time to -”

“Rictus of Isca died on your walls last night. I have come to ask you for his body.”

Karnos’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. He looked like a landed fish. Murchos sprang forward. “What’s that you say?”

Fornyx’s face was a study in sinew and bone. His eyes flashed. “You heard me. I ask your permission to search through the bodies on your walls.” His jaw worked as though he wanted to bite back the words as he spoke them. “I lay no claim to his armour. I want only to be able to burn him decently, for his wife’s sake.”

The news had run through the ranks of the spearmen in the gateway. Their voices were a low buzz of wonder.

“Quiet!” Murchos shouted.

“This could be a trick,” Karnos said, more for form’s sake than anything else; he could read a man’s face, and he knew that Fornyx was telling the truth.

“I will enter the city alone, if you like. I’m not a spy – I know Machran well in any case. I wish only to do the decent thing by my friend.”

Karnos nodded. He saw something else in Fornyx’s eyes, an anger smouldering alongside the grief. That was interesting. He turned and looked at Murchos. The big Arkadian seemed torn between astonishment and glee. He made a show of considering the matter a moment.

“Very well, then. You can enter – you alone. Your companions can wait here. The gate will be shut, and I will escort you myself.”

Fornyx bowed slightly. He nodded to the other two mercenaries who accompanied him, handing the olive branch to a young man with a scar that tugged his face askew, and then stepped into the shadow of the South Prime Gate.

The spearmen made a lane for Karnos and Fornyx, while Murchos ordered the gates shut in a voice of brass. They clunked shut with a boom, and Fornyx stopped and looked at them in wonder.

“First time I ever saw them shut, close to,” he said. “You must have had a hell of a time loosening those old hinges.”

“It took enough oil to drown an ox,” Karnos said. “But then, we’ve plenty to spare. Perhaps you’d care for some wine before we begin your sad task? I’m sure I can lay hands on a skin.”

Fornyx’s mouth twisted in a half-smile. “You are a shifty bastard, Karnos. But I make a point of never refusing wine, especially on a morning like this.”

“I’ll have some sent to the wall. We can pour a libation for the dead.”

The dead still lay in heaps. Many hundreds of men had died on the walls of the Goshen Quarter and the clean-up process had only begun. The bodies of the enemy were first looted, stripped of arms, armour and any trinkets of value, and then the defenders tossed their stiff, stripped carcasses over the parapet to lie like gutted fish in the street below. Waggons waited there, and municipal slaves with the machios sigil painted on their tunics were loading the corpses upon them like cords of wood.

Fornyx drained his wine-cup while standing beside Karnos on the battlements he had fought atop the night before. They were treacherous with frozen blood. It was splashed about the stone of the merlons as liberally as paint. Karnos raised his voice and called a halt to the grisly work.

“What will you do with them?” Fornyx asked him.

“Our own dead will be burned on a pyre outside the Mithannon with all the proper rites, if Corvus will allow us to do so without harassment.”

“He will. He has authorised me to promise that.”

Karnos inclined his head. “Your people are your own affair. They will be hauled north separately, and left on the banks of the Mithos.”

“You would leave them there like carrion?”

“You are our enemy, Fornyx. I will not use up the city’s resources to make you a pyre.”

“Fair enough. Give me some more, will you?” He held out his cup.

Karnos filled it himself from a wineskin. Soldier’s wine, as raw as vinegar. Fornyx downed the cup in a single throat-searing swallow.

“It was a good enough way to die. At least he did not fall in some poxed little skirmish somewhere. The walls of Machran are a grand enough stage even for Rictus.”

“He could have been defending these walls. I asked him – you know that,” Karnos said.

“I know. In the end, it was his curiosity that killed him.”

“How so?”

Fornyx smiled. “Come, Karnos – you must have felt it yourself. This phenomenon, Corvus. Tell me you would not like to meet him.” “I would,” Karnos conceded. “But the price of his fame has been too high.”

“Yes it has,” Fornyx said. And then: “More wine.”

The cup was refilled and emptied again. Fornyx’s eyes were bloodshot and watering with the potent stuff, but his face remained as hard as ever. Karnos merely sipped at his own cup, watching the mercenary closely.

“Your men died well,” he said, “but there cannot be many of the Dogsheads left now. They are a dying breed.”

“They are dead. They died here with Rictus. I am done with this war, Karnos. I am going home. Rictus’s wife is a woman -” he halted, looked into his cup, frowning.

“Yes?” Karnos looked as prick-eared as a cat.

“Nothing. All I want now is to walk away from this.” A twisted smile flitted across his face.

“The fun has gone out of it, you might say. I care not a damn now whether Machran stands or falls.”

“You are lucky to be able to do so. For us within these walls, there is no such choice.”

“That is war. A man cannot always have what he wants.” Fornyx let the last of his wine trickle over the bloodstained stone of the walls. “For Phobos, who has the last word on us all.”

Karnos did the same. “For Antimone, who watches over us in pity.”

Fornyx tossed his cup away. “I must get started,” he said.

The short winter’s day ran its course, and as night came on the corpses lay contorted and hardening at the foot of Machran’s walls amid a wreckage of broken timber and iron, the ghastly flotsam of war. The bodies on the battlements were slowly cleared away, the waggons trundling into the night with their grisly loads, but no-one as yet had gone near the mounded charnel house piled up outside the city. Those who had died going up and down the ladders lay where they had fallen.

Rictus opened his eyes.

All day he had lain as still as the corpses surrounding him, drifting in and out of the world. His wounds had stopped bleeding, and he was almost beyond feeling the cold. He knew there were things broken in him, but he could not quite make out what they were. His black armour was so slathered with blood and gobbets of flesh that it had lost its unearthly darkness and was a dull red, the colour of a clay tile.

He smiled. He was still a Cursebearer.

There were other things moving in the mound of bodies, and small mewling sounds from men who were still alive deep in that hill of decaying flesh. One of the last to fall, Rictus was near its crest. He had tumbled from the walls and landed on a mattress of dead and dying men, and Antimone’s Gift had stopped the impact from killing him. When he breathed, he could feel the broken ends of bones grating in his chest, but he was breathing.

Alive, but not quite of this world, not yet. The cold had numbed him, and the reopened wound in his arm had bled him almost white.

Better the cold than the putrefying heat of the summer.

There was a snuffling and yapping at the base of the corpse-mound, animals growling and snapping. The vorine had come out in the night to feast upon the dead.

That galvanised him. He bit down on his own agony as he struggled over the wood-hard limbs and snarling faces that surrounded him. There was torchlight on the battlements high above, and periodically a sentry would lean over an embrasure and study the sights below. Once, one threw a stone at the feeding vorine. Each time, Rictus went limp, staring up with the open eyes of the dead at the men above.

He was not the only survivor with the strength to move. As he slithered downwards over the bodies here and there a hand clutched feebly at him, a desperate stare met his own. He ignored them, intent on his own salvation, on beating down the pain and keeping the languor of the cold from carrying him out of the world.

Someone was coming. It was not yet moonrise, but even so, Rictus could make out a crouched shadow working its way about the foot of the mound. He fell still, but the mound shifted under him, and he slid helplessly across the face of a bronze shield, and was jabbed in the thigh by the blade of a broken drepana. He emitted a sharp hiss of new pain.

The shadow paused, then approached. The vorine turned to meet this new threat, snarling, unwilling to leave the hill of bounty they had found. There was a swift, sharp sound, and one of the beasts yelped.

Torchlight over the battlements again. All went still. The yellow eyes of the vorine reflected back the light as they drifted off in the darkness, angry and afraid. The light left, the sentry walking on.

The shadow came closer. Rictus lay paralyzed with sudden terror, as keen a fear as he had felt on any battlefield. Something was climbing up the serried limbs of the dead, standing on their joints and fingers, ascending a ladder of meat.

Rictus could hear it breathing right beside him, see the warm air it exhaled in a white cloud. Then it set a hand upon his face.

He lurched, the pain in his chest screaming. The hand forced him down easily.

“Be quiet, you bloody fool. Lie still.”

A strange voice, but familiar.

An eye came into view, a glow about it similar to that which lit the eyes of the vorine.

“Bel be praised. Rictus!” the voice whispered. “How are you hurt?”

“Who are you?”

“It’s Ardashir.” The face came closer, and Rictus could see it was that of the tall Kefren. One of his eyes was swollen closed, and all that side of his head was black with blood.

“Ardashir…” Rictus fell back.

“Can you walk? Are you much hurt?”

“I don’t know, Ardashir. What happened to you?”

“I got hit on the head by a stone, right at the start – I never even made it to the ladders.”

“You were lucky,” Rictus said. He closed his eyes. The world was moving under him, as though he were too drunk to stand. He grunted as the pain bit into him again, and realised that the Kefren was pulling him down over the dead, grasping him by the wings of his cuirass.

“If your legs still work, time to start using them,” Ardashir whispered. “It’s a long way back to camp.”

“My head is stuffed with wool. No, keep going. For the love of God, get me out of this.”

His legs worked, albeit sluggishly, as though they had gone unused for days. Finally Ardashir and Rictus lay on the cold ground beyond the mounded bodies. Rictus struggled and swayed to his feet, while Ardashir set another arrow to his bow and shot it at the vorine pack which hovered scant yards away.

“Get yourself a spear, or something to swing at those fellows,” Ardashir said. “They seem rather intent on us.”

Rictus found a bloodied drepana, but it was too heavy for him. His right arm was a bloodless lump of meat. He found the sauroter-end of a broken spear, and stood with it in his left fist, swaying.

“I could do with a drink,” he said.

“You and me both – here, lean on me, and wave that thing at our hungry friends. We’ve a way to go before moonrise.”

The mismatched pair began limping and stumbling away from the walls of Machran, the tall Kefren half-carrying the dazed Macht. The vorine watched them from a safe distance, and then left off the pursuit for easier pickings among the dead of Corvus’s army.