Paul Kearney - Corvus

A clinking of bronze bells, the nattering bleat of the goats. Rian was walking slowly across the yard with a leather bucket of goat’s milk, which was steaming in the chill of the morning. Ona chattered along beside her, bright as a starling, and around the two girls the dogs flounced like puppies, sure of their share of the milk.

In the house Styra was tending the fire – at this time of year it was never allowed to go out. Garin had been chopping wood since dawn, and was sat before the hearth, talking to her. The talk ceased when Aise entered, and Garin rose with a sullen look about him. He and Styra had become a couple very quickly – slaves were wont to do such things, casting around for what comfort they could in life – but he had never forgiven Aise for selling Veria, and his work was falling off. He spent more time out in the woods now, trapping and tree-felling and hunting, sometimes with Eunion, sometimes alone.

It is Rictus he stays for, Aise thought. My husband has a way of garnering loyalty, even when he is not trying.

Eunion came to the table with a cloak wrapped about him, a few strands of white hair standing out from his head like a dandelion gone to seed. He was yawning, and in the morning his face seemed as wrinkled as a walnut.

“You should not sit up so late,” Aise said, kneading the barley dough into flat cakes for the griddle. “You read too much, Eunion.” She hated that Eunion was getting old. She could not imagine life here without him. She would be lost, and that made her all the more terse.

“I was reading. One of these months I will go to Hal Goshen for a better lamp, a three-flame one with a deep well. My eyes smart like blisters.”

“They look more like cherries. Have some milk. I will have bannock made soon. Rian!”

Rictus’s daughter stuck her head in the front door. “Yes, mother?”

“Draw me a gourd of oil from the jar, and set the plates. Where is Ona?”

“Playing with the dogs.”

“Bring her in.”

The household gathered about the table. When Rictus and Fornyx were not here they all ate together, slaves and free alike. Aise rose, flushed, from the fire with barley bannock hot to the touch, and poured the oil over the pale, flat cakes. There was soft cheese to go with them, and goat’s milk with the animals’ warmth still in it. Eunion munched on an onion, and winced as his ageing teeth met their match in the purple bulb of it.

“I was reading about the Deep Mountains,” he said to the table.

“Which story? The one about the city of iron?” Rian asked eagerly.

I will have to brush her hair tonight, Aise thought. It is as matted as a horse’s mane – and I do not believe her face has felt water this morning.

“Yes,” Eunion went on, gesturing with the onion. “It seems to me there’s something to be said for the theory that the first Macht wanted to keep themselves hidden, hence the remote location of the legendary city of iron.

“But more than that. When I read the myths, I find that Antimone is there with them at the beginning, not just as the goddess we know and pray to, but as a creature who lived upon the face of Kuf in their midst. Who knows – she may even have been one of us – a Macht woman of great learning and wisdom that subsequent generations imbued with the godhead. When it comes to the black armour -”

“Eunion, you read too much that is not there,” Aise said, looking up from her bowl. “It’s one thing to spend the whole night ruining your sight in front of a bunch of old scrolls, but quite another to be filling the children’s heads with – with -”

“Blasphemy?” Eunion said.

“Well, yes. Antimone watches over us all eternally. She was never a mortal woman; that’s absurd. You’re just playing with ideas, and Rian has enough of those in her head already.”

Eunion grinned. “Aise, I merely flex my mind. It is a muscle, like those in your arm. If you do not exercise it, it will atrophy, and we would all be no better than goatmen.”

“Drink your milk, old man, you talk too much.” But she smiled.

“Goatmen! Tell us, Eunion,” Rian wriggled in her chair, “how was it that they came to be?”

“Gestrakos tells us that -”

The dogs growled, low in their throats, and padded away from the table towards the open door of the farmhouse. Eunion fell silent.

“Maybe they smell wolf on the wind,” Garin said.

The family sat quiet, listening. The two hounds both had their hackles up and their teeth bared.

They walked stiff-legged outside, and began baying furiously.

“We have visitors,” Eunion said, and rose up from the table with a swiftness that belied his years. Garin rose with him, wiping his mouth.

“Spears?”

“Yes – go get them.”

“The pass is closed,” Aise said. She could feel the blood leaving her face.

“Perhaps father has come back!” Rian said.

“The dogs know better,” Aise told her. “Stay here.”

Eunion and Garin were lifting their spears from beside the door, short-shafted hunting weapons with wide blades, made to fight boar and wolf.

“Aise -” Eunion said, but she shook off his hand.

“I am mistress of this house.”

She stepped outside, into the brilliant snow-brightness of the blue morning.

Just in time to see the death of her dogs.

The baying was cut short. Half a dozen men stood black against the snow on the near riverbank. As Aise watched, she saw one raise his arm again and spear one of the animals through and through. Blood on the snow, a colour almost too vivid to be part of this world. Aise stood frozen. Eunion and Garin surged out of the doorway behind her, saw the black shapes of the men scant yards away, and the bodies of the two hounds. Garin gave a wordless cry of grief and rage. The men looked up. Wrapped in winter furs, they were unrecognisable. A voice said, “That’s her,” and they came on at a run.

Eunion and Garin shouldered Aise aside, hefted their spears, and stood to meet the incomers. Two of the strangers held back, and the taller yelled, “Alive! There is no need for killing here!”

Garin charged like a bull, knocked aside an aichme with the deftness of a man who has faced down wild boar, and thrust his own spear into the belly of the man in front of him. There was a high pitched gurgling cry, and the man fell to his knees. The spear went down with him, clutched by his intestines. The other men roared with fury. A spearhead flicked out and transfixed Garin through the eye. He fell backwards, off the blade, a bright arc of blood in the air following his body to the ground.

Aise scrabbled for his weapon, but was kicked in the ribs once, twice -

“Fucking cunt,” her attacker snarled.

Eunion barrelled into him, smashing the shaft of his spear into the man’s face, thumping the butt of it into the chest of a second. The third stabbed him at the base of the spine, grunting with the effort of the thrust. Eunion fell to his knees, startled. He looked down at Aise as she lay gasping for breath in the snow.

“This is not -”

Two more spearheads were pushed into him. One was thrust so hard it exited his chest, a grotesque spike under his chiton. He looked down at it in utter bewilderment. Then the man behind him set his foot in Eunion’s back and booted him off the end of the spear. He fell over Aise, warm, twitching, his blood hot and coppery over her.

She heard Rian shriek and tried to rise, pushing Eunion to one side. His eyes were still moving and his mouth opened, but nothing came out except the smell of the onion he had eaten for breakfast. His face went still.

Someone kicked Aise again, hard in the back.

“Stay down there, bitch.”

She tried to rise regardless. Rian was screaming, and she could hear Ona sobbing. The man set a boot on her breasts and leant on her. He looked down, a black shadow against the blue sky.