Corvus

FIVE

Hal Goshen. In old Machtic the name denoted a gateway, and in the centuries since men had settled there, that was what it had been, commanding a gap between stone and water.

The Gosthere Range, a jagged, rocky, bare-headed line of high hills or low mountains, threw out a long spin here, some two hundred pasangs from north-east to south-west. At the end of it, on a wide flattened knob of high ground, the city had been built. It overlooked the ancient highway that connected the eastern portion of the Harukush with the western, and was a scant fifteen pasangs from the sea.

The lowland ground between coast and mountain hail been fought over for generations, and was the root of Hal Goshen’s prosperity. It had deep, black soil which might yield two good crops a year, if the weather were kind, and down on the shore to the south were scores of fishing villages and small towns whose menfolk counted themselves citizens of the city on the hill, and voted in its assemblies. The port of Goshen itself was the largest of these, linked to the hilltop city by a fine road. It had one of the best natural harbours on the southern seaboard, and a prosperous fishing fleet was based there.

An army travelling west across the Harukush would find the land narrowing between the mountains and the sea, until the grey tufa walls of Hal Goshen were before it, like the cork in a bottle. To drink the wine of the west, that cork would have to be popped.

A company of men stood on the high ridge northeast of the city and halted there to take in the wide sweep of the world before them. It was bitterly cold, and snow was blowing across the ridge in clouds as hard and heavy as sand, pluming off the peaks of the mountains behind them in long banners across a pale sky, blue as a robin’s egg.

Corvus seemed to feel the cold more than most. He was buried in a thick cloak, highlander’s felt, and held the hood close about his mouth.

“There she lies, the door to the west. I hope we shall not have to knock too hard,” he said.

Rictus scanned the open country to the south of the city, the scattered farms, so much closer together than in the highlands. A taenon of earth here would be a mere tithe of the expanse a man would need to support a family in the high country. Even with autumn well into its stride, the place had a prosperous, comfortable look, lined with vines and well-spaced olive trees, the woods cut back, the wetlands drained, neat tufa walls everywhere; a thousand years of labour or more. A tamed landscape, this; a fat pigeon waiting for a hawk.

“It does not seem to me that the men of Hal Goshen are much panicked by your army,” Fornyx said. Snow had greyed his beard and eyebrows. He looked pinched, almost as grizzled as Rictus.

“Our camp is eight pasangs back to the east,” Corvus said, his gaze fixed hungrily on the city. “But I hey know we’re here. They closed their gates eight days ago, and brought what provisions they could within the walls. The road to the port has been cut by my cavalry.”

“I see no burnt farms or uprooted vines,” Rictus said.

“That is not the way I make war,” Corvus told him. “I mean to possess this city, and the lands around it. I do not intend to capture a wasteland.”

“Then how do you feed your men?” Fornyx asked, genuine surprise in his voice.

“Trains of supply wagons are sent to me from my eastern possessions,” Corvus said. “That is why I am able to keep campaigning with winter coming on. We do a certain amount of foraging when we are on the march, but in general I find that it is best not to despoil a country whose inhabitants you wish to conciliate.”

“It could be argued that a man whose farm is burning is more apt to listen to reason,” Fornyx said.

Corvus turned his strange pale eyes upon him. “I have found that there are two ways of dealing with men. Either you treat them with respect, or you kill them. Anything in between merely breeds resentment and the desire for revenge.”

“Your world is a stark and simple place,” Fornyx said.

“I sleep well at night,” Corvus retorted with a grin.

Rictus listened to their exchange without a word. He was thinking of Hal Goshen. For twenty years he had lived close by – Andunnon was barely sixty pasangs away, up in the Gosthere hills. He knew the men inside those tufa walls, had sat at their tables and drunk their wine. Phaestos, the Speaker of their kerusia, had hired him more than once, had eaten in Andunnon, hunted with him. He and Aise had been to the theatre there, to see Ondimion acted. Her scarlet dress had been bought in the city agora.

It was from the port of Goshen that Rictus had taken ship for the Empire, so long ago. The sea had been black, then, with the ships of the Ten Thousand.

He had no wish to see this city besieged, assaulted, or watch its people broken and enslaved. This was too close to home, to the memories that spanned the web of his life.

“Your reasoning is sound,” he told Corvus. “Hal Goshen and its surrounds can muster some four thousand fighting men, maybe two thirds of them spearmen. They have no chance. If we inform them of that fact, then I don’t believe that it will prove difficult to make the Kerusia open the gates.”

Corvus nodded, watching Rictus’s face closely. “That would be my take on it also. Of course, it would be better if this were pointed out to them by someone they know. Someone they trust.”

Rictus looked down at the hooded youth, frowning. “Indeed.”

Fornyx broke in. “Well, what say you we go take a look at this army of yours first? I want to see what all the fuss has been about.”

An army’s camp usually announced itself on the wind, with the stink of men’s excrement. That, and woodsmoke. As they tramped down from the high land to the plain below they were able to take in the smell on the breeze, and at once it brought back to Rictus a spate of memories.

In all the fighting he had done since returning with the Ten Thousand over two decades before, he had never been part of a force greater than two or three thousand men. The inter-city conflicts of the Macht were small-scale affairs, conducted almost to a kind of ceremony. Sieges such as that of his last campaign were unusual.

The fighting men of two cities would line up in the summer, well before harvest-time, and crash into each other with all the tactical refinement of two rutting slags. Often the battlefields they fought upon had been fought over by their fathers and grandfathers, cockpits of war since time immemorial. One side would win, one would lose, and the victor would dictate terms. It was rare that such an encounter would lead to the extinction of a city as a political entity – the Macht considered it vaguely impious to destroy a polity entirely.

There were special cases, however. Rictus’s own city, Isca, had been extinguished by a combination of her neighbours because Isca had drilled her citizens like mercenaries and made war on others with the intention of subjugating them entirely to her will, rendering them her vassals. To the Macht this was intolerable, unnatural. War in the Harukush was a bloody ritual, a way to make men of boys, and enhance a city’s riches and prestige. It was not conducted with the aim of outright conquest.

And now Corvus had changed all that.

How the hell did he do it? Rictus wondered. Who is this boy and where does he come from? He had so many questions, and he had not yet admitted even to himself that part of the reason he was here was sheer, avid curiosity. He wanted to see how it had been done.

The camp of Corvus’s army was huge, a sprawling scar upon the face of the countryside. Roughly square, it was perhaps twenty taenons of tents and horse-lines and wagon-parks, the largest encampment Rictus had ever seen in the Harukush. Fornyx halted in his tracks at the sight of it and ran his fingers through his beard. “Phobos! So all the bullshit is true, after all. You really have conquered the east, and you’ve brought half of it here with you!”

Corvus pointed out segments of the camp to them both.

“Those lines nearest to us are the conscript spearmen, citizens of the eastern cities who are here for the duration of the campaign. Behind them are my own spears, who have followed me since the fall of Idrios, two years ago. Druze’s Igranians are encamped on the north side, and in the rear are my Companions, the cavalry of the army.”

Rictus had seen large armies before. There had been over thirty thousand in the forces of Arkamenes, the Kufr pretender to the Great King’s throne, and Ashurnan had brought several times that to the field at Kunaksa. This was the camp of many thousands, but it was not the army he had heard of in the stories – it was too small.

“How many men do you have here?” he asked Corvus bluntly.

“Enough for the task in hand. I have had to leave several garrisons behind me.” Corvus cocked his head to one side in that bird-like gesture of his.

“The army you see here numbers somewhat under fourteen thousand.”

“Phobos!” Fornyx exclaimed again, but Rictus was not so easily impressed.

“You had best hope then that Karnos does not marshal all the forces of the Avennan League against you.”

“Numbers are not everything,” Corvus said. “You of all men should know that, Rictus.”

They walked down the descending slopes of the hills to the camp itself. There were mounted pickets out in twos and threes, unarmoured men bearing javelins, perched upon the tough hill-ponies of the eastern mountains. Closer to the mass of hide tents, spear-carrying infantry stood sentry. The Macht’ cities emblazoned the shields of their warriors with the sigils that denoted their city’s name, but Corvus’s soldiers all had the symbol of a black bird painted on theirs, their only concession to uniformity.

The nearest of them raised their spears and shouted Corvus’s name as he was recognised, and it seemed to send a stir throughout the camp, as wind will usher a wave across a field of ripe corn. The hooded boy walking beside Rictus threw back the folds of his highlander chlamys and raised a hand as he entered the encampment of his army, to be met by a hoarse formless shout from the crowds of men who saw him arrive.

“They love the little bugger,” Fornyx said, marvelling.

A tented city, with neat streets, the roadways within corduroyed with logs where the ground was soft. Latrines had been dug at every crossroads, deep slit trenches with men squatting over them. Fresh ones were being dug even as Rictus watched. There was discipline here, a level beyond that of the usual citizen-army.

An open space before the largest tent they had yet seen. A line of tall wooden posts with outspanning arms had been embedded in the earth along one side, like a series of gibbets.

“What’s this?” Fornyx asked.

“The execution ground,” Corvus told him. “And here is my tent. Rictus, I would be happy to make you my guest.”

“Where are my men?” Rictus demanded. “I wish to see them.”

Corvus nodded to Druze, who sped off. It had begun to rain, a cold drizzle clouding down from the mountains. “Come inside. They’ll be here presently.”

The tent was tall, a draped house of hides upon which the rain had begun to drum more insistently, with one entire wall lifted up on poles. There were braziers within, bright and hot with charcoal, a broad table covered with maps, a simple cot, and an armour stand hung with weapons and a black cuirass. Two sentries stood stolid as marble by the wide entrance, ignoring the rain running down their faces.

“This is home for me,” Corvus said, discarding his sodden chlamys and spreading his fingers out to the heat of a brazier. A pair of boys, not more than fifteen, took the cloak and brought wine to the table in a jug of actual glass.

“After I took Idrios, I had it made – it took the hides of eighty cattle. In the past two years I have not slept under a proper roof more than a half-dozen times.” He raised his head, smiling. “I like to hear the rain beat upon it.”

He seemed to snap himself out of a reverie. “Drink – it’s not Minerian, but almost as good. I eat at dusk. You’ll meet the other commanders of the army then. We have much to discuss.”

Rictus drank, admiring the glass jug, discreetly studying the maps upon the table. For the most part they showed the eastern Harukush: its rivers, its roads, its cities and towns. But there was one that portrayed the lay of the land all the way up to Machran and its broad hinterland, the ring of cities about it that were all members of the loose confederation known as the Avennan League, named for the city of Avennos in which it had been formed, over twenty years ago.

This boy standing at the brazier had in two years conquered his way across some eight hundred pasangs of the Harukush, and by these maps he now controlled at least a dozen major cities, as well as all the countless towns and villages in between.

Where in the world had he come from?

“I might have known I’d find you pair with cups in your hands,” a voice said. It was Kesero, grinning so wide as to show every thread of silver ringing his teeth. And beside him Valerian, the ruined beauty of his lop-sided face alight with something akin to relief.

“Rictus – how went it at the farm – is everyone – is Rian -”

“My family is well,” Rictus said formally, unsmiling. “Report, centurions. How are my men?”

They stiffened, raindrops streaking their faces. Fornyx stood silent beside Rictus. The two older men were both in their black armour with the scarlet chitons and cloaks of their calling. The rest of their gear had been carried for them by Druze’s men, but they bore their swords, and looked every inch the hard-boiled mercenary centurions. Valerian and Kesero, by contrast, were clad in grey civilian chitons which had not been washed any time recently.

“The Dogsheads are bivouacked half a pasang from here, on the south side of the camp,” Valerian said. “All are present with their arms on hand, awaiting your orders.”

“We voted on it,” Kesero said, his shaven head gleaming with rain. “They’re sticking with you, Rictus. They’ve signed no contract, and will sign none without your say.”

Rictus looked at Corvus. “I think we may be out of the territory of contracts. The game has changed.”

“Something else to talk about,” Corvus said. “But later.” Druze and a pair of aides had entered the tent in the wake of Valerian and Kesero, and stood patiently. The Igranian was as lit up with curiosity as a kitten watching a ball of yarn.

“I must go. Stay here, Rictus, you and your officers. The pages will set up the place for the evening meal in a little while – until then you can have the place to yourselves.” His gaze travelled over the four mercenaries. He seemed to waver for a second, then shook his head, and with a slice of his hand beckoned Druze and the aides out into the rain with him.

“The conquering hero leaves us,” Fornyx said drily. “Grab yourself some of this wine, brothers -the boy keeps only the best on hand, it seems.”

But Valerian and Kesero stood immobile, fixed in place by Rictus’s glare.

“Tell me what happened,” he said, in a voice as cold as the rain.

“We were in a wine-shop in Grescir when they took us,” Valerian said. “Three parts drunk.”

“It was just a little shithole on the way to Hal Goshen,” Kesero put in. “We halted on the march to let the men fill their skins. They must have been watching the road. That black-eyed bastard Druze surrounded the place with what looked like a thousand men, then sent in word that they had you and Fornyx and were negotiating a contract with you.”

“They gave us safe passage if we would follow them to their camp,” Valerian said. “By the time we had formed up they had a thousand more on the hills outside the town, and cavalry too. What the fuck could we do, Rictus?”

“You could keep a better watch,” Rictus said quietly.

“This fellow Corvus knows all about you,” Kesero rumbled. “Your history, your family, the farmhouse. He must have had spies on every road from Idrios to Machran watching out for the Dogsheads these last few months.”

“What about the men – how are they provisioned?”

“They’re being fed by Corvus’s quartermasters. They’ve even been issued tents and a place in the baggage train.” Valerian shook his head. “It’s all been organised, like it was set up for us weeks ago.”

“I believe it was,” Rictus said. “Corvus does not like to leave things to chance. I know that much now.”

“So what’s the play?” Kesero asked. “You want to try something, or are we to bow our necks to this boy and let him fuck us up the arse?”

Rictus looked at the maps on the table. Everything is deliberate, he realised. He left these here to let me see what he has done, what he has achieved and what he means to do.

What would this phenomenon be like in battle, with his strange ideas, his men on horses? Once again, the curiosity of it welled up in him.

“How stupid would it be, to let pride get in the way,” he murmured, touching the map table, seeing the whole of the Macht countries laid out there before him like some picture of history already drawn. He thought of the petty, brutal campaign of the summer and the winter before it. The crass incompetence of the men who had hired him. And before that, the countless little quarrels he had fought in over the last twenty years, purposeless warfare, squalid little battles with nothing to show for them but the dead and the maimed and the enslaved.

How boring it had all been.

And he remembered Kunaksa, the terrible glory of those days on the Goat’s Hills, fighting for the fate of an empire. Creating a legend.

“We could do worse things,” he said, musing aloud. He regarded his two junior centurions with one eyebrow lifted. “You look like shit. How long have you been here?”

“Five days,” Valerian said with a nervous grin. “We’ve been keeping ourselves to ourselves.”

“Clean yourselves up – I want you in scarlet by the time we sit down with this fellow’s officers. We’re not going to look like some vagrant bandits in front of him.”

“The same goes for the men,” Fornyx added sternly, but there was a light in his eye. “We’re professionals – this fellow Corvus, he’s just a gifted amateur.”

The officers of the amateur’s army trooped in later that evening, as the campfires of the host began to brighten in the blue rain-shimmered dusk. Trestle tables had been set up, with narrow benches lining the sides.

A group of beardless boys waited on the diners. They were not slaves, and in fact held themselves with a peculiar nonchalance. They watched Rictus and his centurions with open curiosity.

The others were more guarded. These were mostly young men, Valerian’s age. Corvus introduced them as the food was placed up and down the table without ceremony. Plain army fare: black bread, salted goat meat, yellow cheese and oil and vinegar to help it down. The wine was local; Rictus had drunk it a thousand times before. Apparently the best vintages were saved for special guests and occasions.

Druze was there, as chieftain of the Igranians, and a broad shouldered strawhead named Teresian was named as general of Corvus’s own spears. Looking at his face, Rictus saw himself twenty years before, raw-boned, grey-eyed and withdrawn.

An older man, perhaps in his thirties, was named as Demetrius. He had one eye, the other a socket of whorled scar tissue – he was general of the conscript spears, the levies which Corvus had brought east from each of the twelve cities he had conquered. Rictus wondered how these men – there were some six thousand of them, by all accounts – felt fighting far from home for a man who had destroyed their independence. They were likely here as hostages for their cities’ good behaviour as much as anything else.

But the real shock was the leader of Corvus’s own Companion Cavalry. This fellow’s name was Ardashir, and he was a head taller than anyone else in the room, with violent green eyes and skin a pale gold. His face was so long as to be almost equine, and he had dragged his long black hair into a topknot.

Ardashir was not Macht. He was Kufr.

It had been a long time since Rictus had laid eyes on a Kufr. From his own experience he knew that the other peoples of the world came in many shapes and sizes. He had encountered most of them in his travels, and while the Macht might lump them all under the same derogatory label, he knew better.

There were many castes in the Empire, but the highest were formed by those who came from the heartland of Asuria, who spoke the language of the Great King’s court, provided his bodyguards and administrators. By his appearance Ardashir was one of these, a high-caste Kefren of the Imperial nobility. And he sat here at a Macht table, commanding troops in a Macht army.

Rictus found the tall Kefren studying him almost as intently as he was being studied. Ardashir smiled. “It is not often one finds oneself breaking bread with a legend. Rictus of Isca, I have heard your name in stories all my life, as have we all here. It lifts my heart to think that we shall be fighting shoulder to shoulder from this day on.” His voice was deep, melodious, his Machtic almost perfect.

“Come, drink with me.”

Rictus found his throat seizing up on him. The Kefren’s face had jolted his memories. He remembered faces like that raging down at him in a line thousands strong, crashing in close enough that their spittle sprayed his face, their blood soaked his skin. He had trampled faces like that into the muck and mire of Kunaksa. He had not believed the memories could be brought back so bright and vivid while he sat eyes open and wide awake, and had to fight a momentary, overwhelming urge to spring to his feet. He bowed his head and choked down a cup of yellow wine.

The whole table was watching him; Rictus, leader of the Ten Thousand, thrown into panic by the sight of a single Kufr. He beat it down, grinding his teeth on the wine. When he raised his head again his face was as blank as a flint.

“You are a long way from home,” he managed.

Ardashir bowed his head in acknowledgement. “A friend came this way, and I followed him.”

“Ardashir’s people make up most of the Companion Cavalry,” the one-eyed man, Demetrius, said. “They were among the first to fight for Corvus, and have come all this way -”

“They are my friends, all of them,” Corvus said, his high, clear voice cutting the older man short. “They have fought by my side on a dozen battlefields. The Macht have never been a people to appreciate the potential of cavalry, and a man does not become a horse-soldier overnight. To create a mounted arm, I had to look over the sea. Rictus, in your youth you battled your way across half the Empire. You of all men should be able to appreciate the valour of the people within it.”

Corvus was taut-faced, staring at him. Here was a test, Rictus realised. He spoke to Ardashir again.

“I fought the Great King’s Honai at Kunaksa, and the Asurian cavalry at Irunshahr. I do not have to be convinced of your people’s prowess.”

Druze leaned close to Ardashir and reached up to shake the Kefren by the shoulder. “Prowess or not, he still beat you, you big yellow streak of shit.”

The table erupted in laughter, Ardashir laughing as loud as the rest. He clinked cups with Druze, the two of them as familiar with each other as any two fighting comrades can be. Rictus wiped the cold sweat from his forehead. He found Corvus still watching him, smiling without humour. Then the pale-faced youth raised his own cup to Rictus and drained it. It would seem the test had been passed.

“Rictus has drilled his Dogsheads to a level not equalled by any other troops I have seen,” Corvus said, raising his voice. The long table fell silent instantly.

“They are only a half-mora of spearmen, but I intend that their example shall be followed throughout the army. Here and now, I name Rictus of Isca as one of my marshals, equal to all of you here. Demetrius, Teresian, you will consult with Rictus on the drilling of your own men. If we can field a phalanx that fights as well as did the Ten Thousand, then there is nothing in all of the Harukush that can stand against us.”

There was a general buzz of consent, and Fornyx slapped Rictus on the back, leaning in close to speak in his ear.

“Congratulations, marshal. Before you let me kiss your elevated arse, look at your colleagues. I think you just pissed in their wine.”

One-eyed Demetrius, and rawboned Teresian. They drank silently, looking over the rim of their cups at Rictus, and he realised that he had just made his first enemies in Corvus’s army.