Paul Kearney - Corvus

“Nice looking cunt, Sertorius. Things are looking up.”

“Keep her there. Adurnos, go check the house. How’s Fars?”

“He’s dead. That fucking slave killed him, and that bald fucker broke my nose.” “Makes you prettier. Now, go do as I say. Let the filly loose; she won’t leave the mare.”

Aise heaved for breath, the man’s foot crushing it out of her.

“Their own fault, Phaestus – don’t you give me that look. They came at us first, so fair’s fair. Anyway, we have what we came for.”

Phaestus? Aise scrabbled through the white panic in her mind.

“Phaestus?” she croaked aloud.

“Get your foot, off her, Sertorius. I’ll see to her.” An older man’s voice, familiar.

“Leave that girl alone!” Another voice shouted, a boy’s yell raised in outrage.

“Philemos – get the daughters, bring them to me.”

There was a cry inside the farmhouse, and Aise heard Styra scream. The men laughed and whooped.

She closed her eyes. Setting out her hand she touched Eunion’s head, the feather-soft tendrils of white hair about the ears. Her eyes burned. But she would not weep.

A shadow over her, a new one that did not smell as bad as the last.

“Aise, let me help you up.”

She laboured to her feet, and Rian was hugging her, white face streaked with tears. Ona was clinging to her skirts, silent, empty-eyed with her thumb in her mouth.

She knew this man in front of her: a friend of Rictus, an important figure in Hal Goshen. She knew him as vain and proud and full of himself, but a man of probity and wit. A guest-friend. He had eaten at her table. He had drunk wine with Eunion, whose corpse now lay on the snow between them.

Eunion -

Her face hardened. “Phaestus,” she said, and her voice was steady, as cold as the stone in the frozen river. “What is this evil you do here?”

There had been something like remorse on his face – dismay at least. Now that fled. His face matched hers, stone for stone.

“I revisit on the family of Rictus the evil he has done mine,” he said.

“What has my husband done to you, his guest friend?” Aise asked, and her voice cracked on the last word.

“He has made us ostrakr, robbed us of everything we had and set us on the roads like vagabonds. He has brought my city to servitude and shame. And all for a mercenary’s purse.”

“Hal Goshen?” Aise asked, shaking her head.

“Corvus now owns my city, like a paid-for whore.”

Aise looked down at Eunion’s body. She wanted to take the old man in her arms, to kiss his eyes shut. For twenty years he had been like a father to her, a more constant companion than the husband who had brought them here. Now he lay like slaughtered meat in the snow. His half-eaten onion was still on the table inside.

The tears brimmed up and burned like acid in her eyes.

“Did Rictus do this to you?” she asked simply, and opened her hands to the dead man.

“This was unforeseen, an accident,” Phaestus said.

“I had not meant it to be like this.”

A shriek from inside the house. Styra’s voice.

The young man standing beside Phaestus looked stricken. “Father, we must stop them.”

“She’s only a slave,” Phaestus said.

“But-”

“No!” he roared, face flushed red. “Be silent, Philemos. The world works like this – as well you see it first hand at last. If you can’t hold your tongue then go and get the mules – not another word!”

Rian had stopped sobbing. She knelt in the bloody snow and closed Eunion’s eyes, then bent and kissed him as Aise had wanted to do. She straightened.

“I know you,” she said to Phaestus. “So does my father. When he hears of what you have done here he will find you, and he will kill you. This I promise.”

Her eyes were grey, like Rictus’s, and in them was some of the same wild fury. Phaestus stared back at her a moment. His mouth opened. Then he swung his arm and back-handed her across the face. Rian tumbled into the snow. Aise knelt at once and gathered her into her arms. Ona let out shrill scream.

“Sertorius! – get out here! Sertorius!”

The gap-toothed brigand came out of the farmhouse with a wineskin in one hand, grinning. “Got everything you want, Phaestus? Who’d have thought there’d be such fine flesh up here in the arse of nowhere?”

“Take these three and tie them up, hands in front of them. But let them get some things out of the house first – travelling clothes. And take whatever you can from the place in the way of food.” “Whoa there, my fine friend – aren’t we going to hole up here for a day or two? That was the plan. We could be pretty snug here; they have a whole winter’s supplies squirreled away.”

“Take what you need and what won’t slow us down – we move on at once.”

“Listen, chief -”

“Do as I say, Sertorius, if you want that big welcome in Machran.”

“What of the dead meat lying here?” Sertorius asked, surly now.

“Throw them into the house, and then burn it.”

Aise moved through the familiar rooms in a fog. In a normal, everyday tone she told Rian to dress in her best woollens, and the fur-lined cloak her father had brought back from Machran.

Everything inside the house had been kicked over and picked through, things broken for no reason. The little aquamarine pot in Aise’s room was smashed in blue shards upon the floor. Rictus’s battered old farm sandals lay to one side.

I wish you were here, husband, she thought. Though it is you that has brought this upon us.

In the back room, Styra lay naked and sprawled like a broken doll. Her face was beaten into a swollen fruit, a pulp of bone and blood, and she had been stabbed below her left breast.

Aise stood looking at her for a long time, standing square in the doorway so Rian could not see.

This is what awaits us all, she thought.

One of Sertorius’s men came up behind her, his mouth full of the barley bannock Aise had baked that morning.

“Bitch had a knife on her, cut me good – you see what she did?”

Aise turned. He was heavily built, and the hair from his chest rose up to join with that of his beard. He had a fresh wound at the side of his eye, a finger-long slice with the blood already dry upon it.

“All we wanted was some sport,” he said, shaking his head. “Fucking waste.” He smiled at Aise. “You make good bannock. Tasty.” His grin widened, and he slapped Aise on the rump. “High and mighty, aren’t we? Wife of the great Rictus.” He took another bite of bannock, and held it up to her. “Hope you can suck cock as well as you cook.”

When they were outside again with a pitiful collection of belongings furled in blankets upon their backs, Sertorius grabbed their hands and bound them with rawhide strips cut from the milking buckets.

He leaned in close to Rian as she stood there and sniffed at her neck. She flicked her head as though a fly had settled on her, and he laughed – then straightened as Phaestus and his son approached.

“The bodies go in the house,” Phaestus said.

“What does it matter, for Phobos’s sake, if they burn or the wolves have them?” Sertorius protested.

“Wouldn’t you want someone to do it for you?” Aise asked him.

Sertorius looked at her. “Don’t speak to me, cunt.”

“Just do it,” Phaestus said quickly. “One of your own is lying here.”

“Fars was always a slow lazy bastard – oh, all right. Adurnos, Bosca, you heard the fellow – trail this rubbish in the house before we fire it.”

Aise looked up at the sky. It had been such a beautiful morning, a blue, still winter’s day. She wished it had not been so beautiful; now, when there were other days as fine as this, she would be remembering the events of this morning, and they would taint every blue winter’s sky for her.