Paul Kearney - Kings of Morning

His sprawling kingdom embraced oxen, mules and slaves by the thousand, wagons, teamsters, metal-workers, tanners, rope-makers and angular machines of war, all built to his own designs, dismantled, and reassembled every time the army came across a walled city which insisted on shutting its gates in the face of the Macht. It was his rams, catapults and siege towers which had brought down the walls of Ashdod, and which were even now being taken down and repacked within their heavy long-bedded waggons for the advance into the mountains.

That completed the list of Corvus’s high command. These men who sat at the long table sharing the wine led an army which dwarfed the one Corvus had used to unite the Macht, and more soldiers were pouring over the narrow straits between Idrios and Sinon every day.

There were no more wars in the Harukush. Corvus had left behind a garrison at Machran under Kassander, who had once been polemarch of that city’s army. The cities still trained new classes of fighting men as they always had, but these now tramped east for a stint in the overseas army instead of remaining at home, where the temptation to foment mischief might prove too much. So it was that Corvus harnessed the energies of his people, and gave them outlet in an exotic, faraway campaign.

Fornyx, unwilling to grant Corvus credit for anything, had once told Rictus that they had created a great beast which had to keep on the move to survive, eating up the world as it went.

And even to himself, Rictus had to admit that there was some justice in that.

The wine ran to their heads somewhat, for it had been a long day. Lower down the ranks, this would have produced laughter, ribaldry, meaningless boastful exchanges and fistfights, but here in Corvus’s tent these men who led so many and had seen so much simply grew more thoughtful, spoke in quiet voices among themselves, and stared at the smoothworn wood of the table.

‘Where in hell is he?’ Fornyx asked.

‘Where else?’ Ardashir smiled, his long golden face hollow-painted with smoke. ‘He’s out checking on the men one last time.’

‘Or the horses,’ Rictus added. Corvus liked to walk the horselines at the end of the day. He loved the animals as much as he loved his troops, and seemed to find in their company some kind of peace.

‘He has half my men pushing up into the foothills. They’ll be camping in the heather tonight,’ Druze said. ‘It’s like Phobos is at his heels.’

‘There are fifty thousand Kufr swarming the countryside like ants who’ve lost their hole,’ Demetrius rumbled. ‘We cannot advance while the city is still burning — it’s chaos down there.’

Teresian yawned. ‘Well, the men are happy. It was a rich city, and good pickings.’

‘Only for those who got there first,’ Fornyx told him. ‘Your greedy bastards swiped the lot, Teresian, and the fires took the rest.’

‘Fortune favours the light fingered,’ Teresian said with a smile, and finding his jug almost empty, he poured the last red drops upon the tabletop. ‘For Phobos. This was one of his days.’

‘For Phobos,’ Rictus repeated, and up and down the table they all, save Ardashir, repeated the phrase, faces suddenly sombre. The god of fear had been abroad today indeed. They had all seen the Kufr women who had thrown themselves from the walls rather than be captured.

The sentries at the tent entrance clapped their spearheads against their shields and stood straight. A lithe, boyish figure stood with the darkness behind him, the light of the lamps within the tent vanishing as it struck the black cuirass he wore. He touched one of the sentries on the shoulder, called him by name, nodded at the other as though they were old friends, and then strode into the tent.

At once, the assembled Marshals rose to their feet. The young man in the black armour stood still, and looked them up and down. He was lean as a snake, pale-skinned, with strange violet-coloured eyes that seemed almost to possess a light of their own. A silver circlet sat on his black hair, which shone with the lustre of a raven’s wing. He looked underfed, tired, and there was an old scar at the corner of one eye.

‘All hale and sound,’ he said. ‘Even you, Druze. You went over that wall so fast this morning I thought you must have had a bet on it.’ Druze grinned.

‘Rictus.’ The newcomer tugged at the neck of his cuirass. ‘Give me a hand, will you?’

Rictus helped him unfasten the wings of the cuirass and raise them, and then undid the black arrow-shaped clasp under the left arm. The cuirass came open and he lifted it, then set it upon its stand at the back of the tent.

Corvus stretched, and looked his Marshals up and down again. He seemed weary, and his strange eyes were sunk in orbits of purple flesh. But his high voice filled the tent.

‘Well, don’t tell me you’ve drunk all the wine, you dogs — Ardashir, go get the pages to bring in some more, for the love of God. And food, too — we’re all famished.’ Then he called after the tall Kufr. ‘No; water and towels. We’ll wash first. We’re not barbarians — not all of us, at any rate. Seat yourselves, brothers. It’s been a long day, and it’s not over yet, but we’ve seen off the worst of it.’

The tent came to life. More lamps were lit, the pages ran hither and thither, braziers were kindled and sticks of meat set to grill upon them. The Marshals washed and were brought clean linen and oil. Then the table was laid. Cups of glass appeared, platters of bread and fruit and a wheel of hard army cheese. More wine, the fresh green drink of the outer empire.

Corvus sat at the head of the table and it seemed that his presence among them had lifted some constraint. The tent filled with talk, and toasts were proposed, to the men, to the horses, to the wine itself. They did not speak of killing or burning or the sack of cities, but revelled in the fact that they were alive another day, with all their limbs and senses, and Antimone’s wings were beating elsewhere.

How many years since Machran — six, seven? Rictus and Fornyx had been new to this table then, feeling their way through a certain amount of hostility and resentment, slightly bewildered by the strange-eyed boy at the head of it and his vast dreams. Now Rictus knew the men around the table as well as he had known anyone in his life. There was still friction there, even conflict from time to time, but they were all harnessed to the one chariot, and the charioteer handled them with consummate skill.

Fornyx was telling one of his inexhaustible filthy stories. Most they had all heard before, but every time there was a fresh embellishment which would set the company in a roar. Rictus peered up and down the table, studying his fellow marshals; and caught Corvus doing the same.

The King never truly rested. Even now, he was looking them over as a rider will examine his horse after a race. He was distracted only once, when a page came over and whispered in his ear. He smiled, said something inaudible back to the page, and touched him on the arm. The boy left the tent, aglow with the King’s momentary attention.

Rictus had led men most of his life. He knew he was a fine commander, a born leader. But Corvus possessed a quality that soared above such prosaic gifts. He could inspire. He made men want to please him, to be like him. It was a marvel to watch, and even now Rictus felt privileged to be able to see it close-to.

Corvus caught his eye and smiled crookedly. After ostentatiously downing his first glass of wine at a gulp, he had shifted to water as was his wont, and he barely picked at his food. But he joined in the belly laughter as Fornyx came to the scabrous climax of his story, and thumped the table with as much vigour as the rest.

At last, the tide went out, the meal was done and the table cleared. Back came the maps and the pointers and the inkwells, and the sound sank again. They could hear the shimmer of the cicadas outside, and the night-time noises of the camp around them. Thousands of men were bedding down in the dark about hundreds of campfires, and the hulk of Ashdod was sunk now to a sullen red glow in the distance. But despite the food and the fine wine and the new linen and the laughter, many in Corvus’s tent could still taste smoke in their mouths.