Paul Kearney - Corvus

“I like the view. I can see half a dozen pasangs down the road when the rain lifts a little – it means I’ll see that bastard coming.”

“By all accounts he’s not on his way just yet – the road is washed out in half a dozen places, where it’s not wholly underwater, and rumour has it there’s sickness in his camp. He’s afloat in a sea of his own shit some ten pasangs back down the road, long may he remain there.”

Karnos poured some wine with his good hand. “Meanwhile we sit here in relative comfort. It warms my heart to think on it.”

“He did the right thing with the dead – sent Greynos of Afteni’s body forward under a green branch and burned the rest with all the proper rites.”

“Yes, he’s quite the fucking gentleman. In the meantime we are sitting here on a castle of sand, leaking centons by the day. Kassander, we must think of Machran now. The League has snapped in our hands like a wishbone.”

“You think we’re on our own?”

“Stop and listen.”

Kassander sighed and nodded. Below the endless patter and hiss of the rain was another noise, a vast hum, like a hive of angry bees.

“That’s the Afteni assembly in session, ten thousand angry, frightened men standing in the rain at the bottom of this rock, making a debate about something they have already decided. They lost six hundred of their best down on the plain, and Greynos, the only one of their Kerusia with any stones. They are finished, and they know it, but must spin out the argument while Machran and the other contingents are still within their walls looking on. It’s like observing the decencies at a funeral pyre. The eastern cities of the hinterland are lost, Kassander. The rest are waiting to see what Machran can do.”

“Machran will never capitulate,” Kassander said, his big, good-natured face darkening. “Not while I live.”

Karnos touched him on the arm. “Well said, brother.” He set down his winecup. A young man in the black sigil-embroidered chiton of the Machran staff coughed politely behind him.

“Yes, Gersic?”

“Sir, counsellor Katullus requests that you meet with him at your convenience. He is -” “I know where he is, Gersic; tell him I’m on my way. And Gersic -”

“Sir?”

“How is his voice?”

The young man, dark and earnest and with a stitched-up stab wound on his arm, considered. “He can whisper, sir.”

“Good enough.” Karnos turned back to Kassander.

“It has come to something when I view Katullos as an ally, of like mind to myself.”

Kassander raised his winecup. “Being wounded and left for dead has done wonders for your reputation.”

“I should have done it years ago,” Karnos said.

A small, bare room, austere enough to satisfy even an ascetic like Katullos. There were no windows, and a single lamp burned by the bed. In a corner, the black cuirass sat upon its stand like a silent spirit, not a mark upon it, though Katullos had been at the very heart of the fighting.

The old man had taken an aichme to the throat. They had closed the wound with a hot iron and it blazed below his chin now like a second, purple-lipped mouth. His magnificent beard had been shorn off by the carnifex, and his face looked absurdly small without it. His skin was flushed with fever, but his eyes were clear. His big, mottled hands picked at his blanket ceaselessly as Karnos took a stool beside him.

“Lean close,” Katullos said, a zephyr almost drowned out by the sound of the rain outside and the rumbling from the assembly.

“Here.” A letter, folded and sealed. There had been three attempts at the seal before it had taken -he had done it himself.

“For the Kerusia. It may help.”

“What does it say?”

Katullos smiled. “To trust you.”

Karnos sat back again, frowning, holding the letter like a trapped bird in his hand. “How do I know that? You have never been a friend to me, Katullos. I may break the seal and look.”

“Then it is worthless.”

“Better that than -”

“Trust me.” Spittle was leaking from the corner of the old man’s mouth. A few days before, he had led a mora into battle while wearing the Curse of God. Now he was reduced to this. Karnos felt a sting of pity.

“We have been adversaries all our public lives, you and I. What has changed?”

Again, the death’s head smile. “I once told you I would be there to cheer the day you fell. Now I see that to do so would be to cheer the fall of my own city. You did the right thing, fighting when you did. You had your blood spilled for Machran. You love the city as I do. I did not see it before. I thought you loved only your own ambition.”

“A man can love both.”

“No, Karnos, not now.” He coughed, a long wet rattle in his chest. Karnos could feel the heat radiating off him, as though his life were burning out in one last, guttering flare.

“Keep fighting,” Katullos rasped. “Machran must never surrender. This man means to make himself king of us all. If Machran falls, he will have his foot on our necks for a generation.” He sagged. “You see it – but not all men do.”

“I see it – I have known it a long time.”

“We were at cross purposes. I was wrong. You are Speaker of Machran; you speak for us all. Break him before our walls. No other city can do it.”

“We cannot face him in open battle again, Katullos. The League is falling apart.”

“The walls, Karnos. Hold the walls. Bleed him white. No-one can take Machran if men are on her walls, not even Corvus.”

Karnos took one of the big, restless hands in his own. A jet of pain ran through his shoulder as he leaned over the dying man in the bed.

“Katullos, you have my word on it.”

Katullos smiled again. “That is worth something -I know that now.”

“I’ll have you on the next wagon heading west -you’ll see the city again, I promise you.”

“I’ll be dead before then. But take me home, Karnos. Burn me at the Mithos River and scatter my ashes in the water. Carve my name on the catafalque of the Alcmoi.”

“It shall be done.”

“My cuirass – see it goes to my family.”

“I will.”

Katullos stared closely at him. “You are a disgrace to the Kerusia, a demagogue, a rake and a philanderer. But you are all we have. The rest are sheep.”

Karnos chuckled. “You flatter me, Katullos…

“Katullos?”

The old man remained staring, but the breath was running out of him in a long, hoarse sigh. He was still, the grip of the liver-spotted hand relaxing. Karnos shook his head.

“Stubborn old bastard.” He closed the still-bright eyes with his fingers and bowed his head a moment. Then he looked up, and stared across the room thoughtfully at the Curse of God which sat silent in its corner.

The men of Machran marched out the next day, weighed down with all their gear. The roads had become so bad that no wagon could take to them, so the battered morai splashed through the mire with all their wargear on their backs and as much in the way of scanty rations that Afteni could spare. It was almost two hundred pasangs to Machran, and they would be hungry long before they were home.

Other contingents of the League were marching out also. The men of the hinterland cities had called their own assemblies in Afteni, and voted on what to do next. The Arkadians and Avennans, who had been keen supporters of the League and allies of Machran for time out of mind, voted to stick with Karnos and Kassander.

Murchos, polemarch of the Arkadians, was a burly man with a face like that of a pink, startled pig, but he was a guest-friend of Kassander and would follow him anywhere, as his own men would follow him – especially since he was also a Cursebearer.

The Arkadians had always been a froward, reckless bunch. They threw their knucklebones high when they gambled, as they were gambling now. They would hold true, all three thousand of them.