Corvus

SEVEN

Karnos ran his fingertip down the spine of the girl from her nape to the silky crease of her buttocks. She was wet there, and she shifted slightly under his touch, her white body arching up like a cat being stroked. His fingertip moved upward again, traced the geometry of her ribs, touched the side-swell of one breast. He brushed her ear-lobe where the dark tresses of shining hair fell over it.

“I don’t care what Polio said, you were worth every obol,” he murmured.

A knock on the door.

The girl smiled as Karnos kissed her delicate ear. His hand ran down her body again, more urgent this time. A flare of base delight as she lifted her rump up in invitation.

Again, the knock – not so discreet this time. A rapping of knuckles.

“Fuck you, Polio!” Karnos shouted. “I was not to be disturbed!” The girl stiffened beside him, and her eyes took on the blank slave-look. Duty had replaced arousal in a moment, though she remained stock still with her white buttocks up in the air.

“Master, my profound apologies, but there is news here that cannot wait. Kassander himself is here, and awaits you in the court.”

“Kassander? Ah, shit,” Karnos said. He rose to his knees in the bed, pushed the slight pale-skinned girl to one side and reached for his chiton.

“Get him some wine – have Grania bring it.”

“I have already done so, master. He demands to see you at once.”

“Of course he does,” Karnos snarled, pulling his chiton over his head. To the girl he said, “Get out and clean yourself up.” She scampered naked from the bed, leaving by a side-door. The hanging that half-hid it was still twitching as Karnos rose barefoot and said, “Tell him I’m on my way. And it had better be important – Phobos’s arse, it’s the middle of the night.”

Polio came in bearing a bronze lamp, shielding the wick with his long fingers. “Shall I call for the cook?”

“No, let’s see what we have first. Light the way for me, Polio. Kassander is an impatient son of a bitch, but even he doesn’t turn out at this hour on a whim.”

The two men walked along the passageway in a fluttering globe of yellow lamplight while their shadows capered around them. Polio was a spare, elderly man with a broad grey beard. He wore a slave-collar, but it was chased with gold, and from his shoulders hung a himation of fine white linen.

Karnos wore a food-stained chiton of plain undyed wool. He was a broad, beefy man with a round paunch and a close-cropped black beard. His hair, worn long, was dressed with oil and he bore several rings on each hand. His bare feet slapped on the stone floor.

“Was he alone?”

“He came with an escort of spearmen, master, but they remained outside.”

“Fuck – then it’s official. Rouse the household and lay out my council robes, and a good cloak.”

“Some food, perhaps -”

“Wine – lots of it. The good stuff. It must be bad news; no-one ever brings good tidings in the dark. We’ll have it in the study. And have some sent out to the escort.”

A wide space surrounded by pale-pillared colonnades, open to the sky. Karnos gritted his teeth against the cold. There was the rill of water from the courtyard fountain, the glow of the solitary lamp kept burning by the gate-shrine, and a brazier for the doorman, the coals dull and almost dead. Beside it stood a large shadow, red-lit by the charcoal, and to one side the slim shape of a shivering slave-girl, a glass jug in her fists.

“Leave us, Crania,” Karnos said crisply. The girl fled, feet pattering on the chill stone.

“Kassander?”

The shadow resolved itself into a massive cloaked figure, as broad as Karnos but taller.

“You keep buying up all the pretty girls, Karnos. How many do you have stashed away here now?”

“If you want one, I’ll lend her to you – now what’s the news that has me shivering like a spent horse here in the night with Phobos leering down at me?”

Kassander drained his cup. “Word from the east. Hal Goshen has surrendered to him.”

Karnos leant against a marble pillar, the last of the bedroom’s warmth sucked out of him. “Ah, hell.” He rubbed one hairy-knuckled hand over his face, and seemed to feel the weight of his years and the loom of the winter weigh down his very bones.

“I told them, didn’t I?”

“Yes, you did,” Kassander said. “You have been proved right at every turn. There’s good in that – it means they may pay heed to you now.”

Karnos raised his head sharply, a sneer splitting his beard. “You think so? Brother, you have a faith in the rationality of men that makes me wonder whether to laugh or weep.”

“If this does not unite the League, nothing will. This could be good news, Karnos – it may be the turning point.”

“Ever the optimist, eh? Who else knows this?”

“It’ll be all over the city by dawn. I’ve already sent couriers to the hinterland, and the Kerusia is being waked as we speak.”

“Come inside with me. My prick has shrivelled up like a raisin in this cold – or maybe it’s your news has done it.” Kassander followed him like an obedient bear, tossing his cup into the courtyard pool with a silver splash.

“Light, light!” Karnos roared. “Am I to stagger around in the dark in my own home? Bring a lamp there!”

Polio appeared again. He bowed to Kassander, who nodded curtly in reply. “Master, your study fire has been lit, and -”

“Have my clothes laid out there, Polio, and rouse out the stables. I want the black gelding warmed up and shining, my best harness. I’ll be going to the Empirion with the dawn.”

Polio bowed again, handed his lamp to Karnos, and glided away.

The household was coming to life, slaves scurrying everywhere with lamps in their hands, unintelligible shouts emanating from the kitchens at the back of the house. Karnos and Kassander strode along the corridors, oblivious, until a heavy door was swung back to reveal a firelit room, littered with scrolls and papers, and a wide-eyed slave who bowed deeply, placed a tumble of clothing on the desk and fled, mumbling inanities.

“You’ve too many slaves,” Kassander said, unlooping the end of his cloak from his arm. “They’re underfoot like damned cockroaches. Can’t you hire some free-men to light your fires and groom your horses?”

“Free men have loyalties and families and worries of their own,” Karnos said, sweeping the piled papers from two iron-framed chairs. “Slaves only have to worry about their job. They do that well, and they have no other worries in the world.” He threw off his woollen chiton and stood naked in the firelight, then began to dress in the clothing the slave had abandoned.

“You’d have been Speaker far sooner if the world did not look askance at the harem you have here. There’s jokes about you and your insatiable prick scrawled across every wineshop wall in the Mithannon.”

“Insatiable, eh?” Karnos said with a grin. His head emerged from the neck of a black linen chiton. “I like that. The people love a politician whose vices are out in the open, Kassander – they know he has less to hide. Me, I love women -”

“Then marry one.”

“Are you insane? No, no. I flirt with power and I fuck slaves. Good decent women are too dangerous for a man like me. And I’m near forty now – too old to be learning the ways of a wife. Have a seat. No, you make my blood run cold merely by mentioning it – and you know the regard I have for your sister -”

“She thinks the sun rises and sets on you, Haukos knows why.”

“She is the very picture of a virtuous lady, a credit to your family. If I married her, she’d – well, you know what would happen. No, one day soon she will see sense and marry some other worthy fellow who will come home sober every night and plant her with babies. Enough.” He patted down his fine chiton and stepped into a pair of beaten sandals. “Now where is the fucking wine? Polio!”

The wine arrived, borne by an absurdly pretty girl whose tunic barely reached her thighs. Polio stood over her like a stern father.

“Master, will that be all?”

“For now. We’ll eat later – have the cook run up some of that good broth we had yesterday. And make sure no-one comes near this door, Polio.”

Polio bowed and withdrew, as stately as a grey-bearded king.

Karnos sat down and poured two clay cups of wine. He stuck his fingers into his own glass and flicked a few drops into the fire. “For Phobos, the rotten bastard – a libation.”

Kassander did the same with a big man’s slow smile. “For Haukos, who has not turned his face from us yet.”

“Your sunny disposition makes me want to puke,” Karnos said. “What are the details of the thing, or don’t we know them yet?”

Kassander leaned back in his chair with a sigh, making the ironwork creak under his bulk.

“The same story we’ve seen before. Scare the little people with the size of his army, offer them easy terms, and move on.”

“He had only just arrived before their walls,” Karnos said, punching his knee. “I thought we had time – Phaestus assured us he would hold out.”

“Phaestus was overruled, and declared ostrakr. Sarmenian was installed as governor.”

“Sarmenian! That rat-faced prick. I had him to dinner last month and he was full of shit about how Hal Goshen would halt the invader in his tracks. Bastard. He has a tiny cock, too; Grania told me.”

“Whatever the size of his instrument, he now rules Hal Goshen as tyrant, under Corvus. But there’s more, Karnos.”

“I see it in your face. You’re saving the best for last, you big fuck. Well, toss it at me if you must.”

“Rictus of Isca was at Hal Goshen. He has thrown in his lot with the invader.”

Karnos stood up. He set his wine cup on the desk, spilling some of the berry-dark liquid on the papers there. He stood before the fire and stared blindly into the flames whilst Kassander wiped up the spill doggedly with the hem of his cloak.

“Rictus,” he said dully. “I would not have thought it of him.”

“Who is the optimist now? Rictus is a mercenary,” Kassander said, irritably. “He goes where the money is; and this Corvus must have a fortune in his treasury by now.”

“No.” Karnos turned round. “Rictus is one of the old-fashioned Macht. He believes in things. I thought I had him, Kassander. This summer, we spoke, and I thought I had him. Imagine, if we had lured him here to lead the army!”

“My imagination runs riot,” Kassander said. “It’s unfortunate you’ll have to make do with Kassander of Arienus instead.”

Karnos waved a hand at him. “Don’t be a girl about it. You know damn well what it would have meant to have the leader of the Ten Thousand on these walls. Phobos! I never would have thought it of him.”

“You’re repeating yourself.”

“A politician’s habit – it keeps the mouth working until there’s something new to say. Kassander, we must push this issue now, while the shock of the news is getting around the streets. If we argue it out in the Kerusia, Corvus will he at our walls before we’ve even managed to convene the assembly.”

“Something tells me I have a role in this.”

“You’re polemarch of the army. For God’s sake, he’s ten good day’s march from these walls – we don’t have time to fuck around!”

Kassander sighed heavily. “You want me to call out the army on my own initiative.”

“By dawn. We must have the streets full of men -we must wake up the people to the danger, and force the Kerusia’s hand.”

“I can do that – I can have the host called out, but it’ll mean the end of your political career, you know that. You by-pass the Kerusia and they’ll vote you down. They hate you anyway.”

Karnos flapped a hand in dismissal. “I was voted onto the Kerusia by popular acclaim. If they throw me out of it they’ll have the people to answer to.”

Kassander looked into his wine. There was a silence in the room, broken only by the cracking of the fire. Olive wood was burning upon it, and the subtle blue fragrance of it stole about them in the quiet.

“You got me this post,” Kassander said. “You made me polemarch, so I am tied to you. I owe you for it.”

“This is not about calling in favours -” Karnos cried. Kassander raised his head, smiling. That slow, broad smile of the honest man.

“I know that. We have been friends a long time, Karnos. If I do this it will be for two reasons. Because it is the right course of action to preserve this city, and because you are my friend.”

“The only real friend I have,” Karnos said, with feeling. “After this the rest will desert me like rats running from a burning house.”

“Look on the bright side; you’ll still have your slaves to fuck.”

Machran was six pasangs from west to east, and three parts asleep. Even up in the Mithannon Quarter, the wineshops and brothels shut their doors for a few hours at this time of night. It was remarkable, then, how fast news could travel the narrow streets, how it lit up at window after window.

Kassander started it, storming into the dormitory of the city criers with Karnos’s seal affixed to a Kerusiad edict and shouting them awake. Brass-voiced men with fast feet, the criers took to the streets within minutes, shouting the news at every crossroads they came to. Hal Goshen had fallen. The army was being called out. Every able-bodied man of the first and second property classes was to arm and make his way to the Marshalling Yards on the Mithos River.

By the time Karnos was mounted and riding to the Empirion, the streets were wide awake and teeming as though it were festival time. Men shouted at him as they thronged the wide avenue to the Amphion Quarter, many bearing shields and spears. He tugged his black cloak about him and rode on with a practised look of remote authority on his face, feeling as though he had just opened the gate on a fractious bull.

The Empirion was a vast domed amphitheatre which could house five thousand with ease. Nominally a theatre, it was also used for public meetings in inclement weather. Karnos had chosen it quite deliberately. He wanted a certain amount of chaos, a massed crowd to speak to. He was always best when addressing a mob. It was how he had become Speaker of Machran, though his father had been nothing more than a stallholder of the third class, unable even to afford a spearman’s panoply.

The other members of the Kerusia, all scions of the oldest families in Machran, regarded Karnos with at best a certain patronising indulgence, and at worst with outright loathing. He was a man who got things done, who took on all the dirty jobs and accomplished them not only with relish but with a certain vulgar flair.

He was uncouth, foul-mouthed and ostentatious, but when he spoke, men listened. He could cajole a crowd, flirt with it, make people laugh and set them alight with outrage. Those who thought him ill-educated and uncultured had never seen his personal library, or heard him hold forth on drama or philosophy after dinner. He was careful to keep it that way. He was everyman. That was his charm.

Kassander had done his work well. Crowded though the streets were, there was a definite current of movement to the north and the Mithannon Gate. The levies were gathering, trusting that the machinery of the city was working with legal correctness. Hundreds of men were bowed down under the weight of their wargear, and every street was bristling with spears.

Karnos dismounted in front of the Empirion. One of the marvels of the Macht world, the dome was the height of fifty men, all in blazing white marble now tinted pink by the light of dawn, hewn block by block out of the vast stone quarries around Gan Cras and brought south on ox-drawn wagons with iron wheels. It was old as the city itself, though it did not look it. The white marble was inviolate, austere and dignified. Everything that Karnos was not.

They had lit the great flambeaux inside and the place was a shadow-textured stage humming with voices, row upon row of people lining the stone step-benches, those at the back some eighty feet above the performer’s circle below. When Karnos walked in, a roar went up, a wordless chorus of interrogation, greeting, and cat-calling.

The middle-men of the city were on their way to the Mithannon. Those who were present here comprised the two extremes of Machran society. Small tradesmen, freed slaves, and ne’er do wells. And also the highest ranking families of the city: the Alcmoi, the Terentians, the Goscrins and half a dozen more. The menfolk of these families were not subject to the levy. They would don their armour when it suited them, and provide the officers of the phalanx. That was their privilege. Whether or not they had the ability to lead men in battle was irrelevant.

And waiting for Karnos in the circle, three of the more dangerous members of the Kerusia. Katullos, Dion, and Eurymedon. These three might have been Polio’s brothers, all grey-bearded and stern, the folds of their himations draped over one forearm in the classic style. They dripped anger; it shone out of their faces.

Karnos smiled. He opened his arms, halted short of the other Kerusia members, and breathed in deep the energy of the crowd.

Gestrakos had lectured on this very spot, postulating the existence of other worlds. Ondimion had staged his tragedies upon these stones. And here Naevios himself had plucked his harp, singing the songs that were now buried deep in the souls of the Macht, even the Paean they sang at the moment of death itself.

Some men made music, some built in stone. Some led armies.

Karnos – he knew how to work a crowd. It was the reason he had been put upon the world. This was his moment.

“Brothers,” he said. And such were the superb acoustics of the Empirion that he reached the farthermost ranks of the crowd while barely raising his voice.

But he did raise it, along with his arms, outspread as though he would embrace them all if he could.

“Brothers! You know me – you know my name. I am Karnos of Machran, Speaker of the Kerusia. You put me here today by voting openly in the assembly of all free men at the Amphion of Machran, the first time in a generation that a Speaker has been so chosen. My brothers, you have honoured me beyond my deserts…”

He watched the crowd closely, alert to their postures, his ears pricked for the start of muttered conversations.

It was like reeling in a fish too heavy for the line. The mood had to be taken, massaged, guided and caressed to where he wanted it to go. A man could not storm the crowd – Katullos, the last Speaker, had tried it, and failed miserably.

“I have no family of note,” Karnos went on. “My father hammered out metal at a stall in the Mithannon – I was born there, and I know those alleys like they were the veins in my arm. He put me to work cross-legged in the street, tapping out dints in people’s pots for an obol a day before I was ten years old -”

A growl of appreciation from the crowd. They loved this stuff, the lower orders. Who needed rhetoric, when one could work on their sentimentality, the fellow-feeling of the urban poor?

“But he saw what was in me, and hired a slave for an hour every night to teach me to read and write, for he had no wish to see me back-bent and bowed and coughing up soot for the rest of my life.”

The slave had been Polio, a dark-haired, lanky young man who had found that teaching the bright, eager son of the street-smith was one way to dull the pain of his own servitude.

“When my father died, I sold his stall and his tools, and bought a single illiterate highland boy. I educated him in his turn, sold him at a profit, and never looked back.”

That had been about the same time that the Ten Thousand had returned from their failed expedition to the Empire. Karnos remembered it well. A few centons of them had marched through Machran, invited by Dominian, Speaker at the time. The famous Rictus had not been there, but all the same, the streets were clogged five deep to see the heroes of the east in their scarlet cloaks.

Karnos still remembered the lean and hungry look on their faces, their eyes still fixed on some invisible horizon.

It was the first time he had seen the mob of Machran in full voice on the streets, and he had never forgotten it. What would it be like, to have that adulation thrown at him – or to have those thousands hang on his words? It had been the beginning of the slow fire of ambition that had burned in his gut ever since.

“But I will not bore you with my life story – you’ve heard it all before. Brothers, it is enough for me to say that I came from where you are.”

His gaze swept the curved ranks of the amphitheatre. He let the statement hold the air a moment, saw a stir of restlessness, and plunged on.

“I am an ambitious man, that is true – were I not I would still be hammering pots in the Mithannon. But I am a man of Machran – this is my city. My life has been and always will be within her walls. I would never – never – do anything that would harm this place. I would rather die first.” Now the richly clad men near the bottom of the circle stirred. He saw some smirk.

“And brothers, know this: I have never lied to you. You know I am no hypocrite. I like wine, women, and as much amusement as I can pack into my life -this I have never tried to hide -” Now the common folk were smirking, and a few laughed out loud. “Aye, we know that all right!” someone cackled, and there was a buzz of laughter.

He had to grip them again, quickly. “So I am here today with no pretences, no defences. I come to you with the truth in my hands, to give to you. It is your privilege to do with it what you will.”

The baleful stares of the other Kerusia members present could almost be felt on his back. An irrational part of him twitched at the thought of a knife plunging into him, unseen, unexpected. The Empirion had seen it happen before.

He took a few steps forward, closer to the rising slope of the crowd, until he could smell the perfumes and scented soaps of those near the floor, and the unwashed miasma of those higher up in the dome.

“I hereby formally convene this gathering as an emergency assembly, gathered in time of war, to vote upon extraordinary measures taken this day by myself and the polemarch of the host, Kassander of Arienus.” Phobos – now he had their attention all right. In the next few minutes he would either have saved his career or would be feeling that knife in his back for real.

“You have all heard of the capitulation of Hal Goshen, after an eight-day defence by its people and the leader of the Kerusia, Phaestus. The enemy of us all, Corvus the warmonger, is on the march as I speak, barely a fortnight from our own walls.

“Brothers, on my own authority, I called out the levies this morning; they are gathering now at the Mithos River. I did this with the full support of our polemarch, but without the consultation of my fellow Kerusia members. Hence, I acted illegally.”

There it was. He had admitted it publicly.

“I hereby ask now for a vote on my actions. I did what I did for the good of the city and of us all, with no thought of my own position or ambitions – this I swear to you by Antimone’s Veil. I ask now that you vote to retrospectively legalise the call-out, so that we can go on to organise an effective defence of this city against he who would destroy your freedoms forever.

“According to Tynon’s constitution, in time of war, extraordinary assemblies may be called to pass laws by popular acclaim. Brothers, I need to hear your voices now. Forgive me for my infraction of our codes, and let it be written that I did so only in the city’s interest – in your interest.

“Brothers, will you now formally legalise my actions of last night, the calling out of the army, and the convening of this assembly? Let us hear what you say. All in favour, say aye.”

The dome roared.

Karnos struggled to be heard. “Those against -”

He could see the mouths of the well-dressed men at the floor of the circle opening, but whatever noise they made was drowned out by the thunderous wave of ayes that was still shaking the Empirion. He raised his arms.

“I declare the motion passed!”

The crowd kept roaring. Gobbets of food were thrown down from the topmost circles of the amphitheatre to land on the lower benches.

Men stood up. He heard his name called out by thousands, arms lifted to him. He stood and raised his own arm in salute.

I have you, he thought. I have you.

One of the other Kerusia members crossed the floor to stand at his side. It was Katullos, the bull-necked, grey-bearded patriarch of the Alcmoi family who had been Speaker himself at one time. He leaned close to be heard and said to Karnos:

“That was nicely done.”

“Thank you.”

“You are safe for now, my friend, with the mob shouting your name. Let us see how long it lasts.” He set a massive hand on Karnos’s shoulder in what looked like a friendly gesture. But Karnos could feel the fury in the grip of the older man’s fingers.

“One day they will cheer the news of your fall, Karnos. And I swear I will be there to see it.”

Karnos smiled at him with perfect affability.

“You must count on living a long time, Katullos.”