Paul Kearney - Corvus

The army marched on, making good time now, and the conscript spears were at last beginning to cohere in their new morai. They kept pace with the veterans, listened to their stories, and began to take something like pride in themselves. After all, they were part of something grand and important, witnesses to one of the great moments of history.

More than that, they were now part of an army which had a tradition of victory. The Macht had been fighting amongst themselves for time out of mind; it was no unnatural thing to make war against their own kind. And they were at least on the winning side.

They had not yet considered where victory might take them, or what it might do to the world they knew.

Corvus was hurling the army across the hinterland like a spear. On all sides, cities whose men had been bloodied in the battle of Afteni stood unconquered, but he ignored them all, even ancient Avennos to the south. He had momentum now, and they were shackled by the inertia of their defeat.

Ardashir’s foraging columns reported no sign of organised resistance, in the lands round about. The hinterland cities had shut their gates and were awaiting events. They were waiting to see what would happen before the walls of Machran.

Rictus and his Dogsheads were in the van with the Igranians as usual, when a mounted patrol came cantering down the long slope ahead and reined in just in front. Corvus was there, and Ardashir, the two of them as bright-eyed as if they had been drinking.

Corvus threw up a hand. “Rictus, come forward. There’s something over the hill you have to see!

Fornyx, pass word down the line – all senior officers to the front of the column at once.”

Fornyx raised a hand. “Off you go,” he said to Rictus. “Don’t keep the little fellow waiting.”

“Go piss up a rope, Fornyx,” Rictus said, and took off up the hillside at a trot, his heavy shield banging on his back.

He stopped, gasping, at the crest of the hill. A knot of horsemen had gathered there, and Corvus had dismounted. Rictus knew the spot – there was a stone waymarker here at the side of the road.

Machran loomed in the distance, a vast stain upon the land, the smoke from ten thousand hearths rising up to cloud the air above it. A famous view – Ondimion’s plays had scenes set on this spot, and Naevius had made a song about it.

Corvus and Ardashir stood marvelling at the sight.

“Machran at last,” Corvus said. “After all this time.”

Rictus suddenly realised. “You’ve never seen it before.”

“Never – just read the plays and heard the songs and listened to men speak of it over their wine. I have maps of this city; I know its geography as though it were written across my dreams. I know the men who rule it, their names and families. But this is the first time I have seen it for myself – Ardashir too. I have been travelling years to stand at this spot, Rictus.”

“I wish you joy of the sight,” Rictus said with a smile. Here was the boy again, alight with the wondrous marvels of the world. There was something… unspoilt about Corvus. It was more than the mere enthusiasm of youth – it was a kind of appetite. He would always find the new experiences of his life to be vivid and memorable and worth the cost, like a man who has a fine nose for wine, who finds in it subtleties and fragrances that others miss. What was the line Gestrakos had used? Eunion was fond of quoting it.

“A man who has a passion will always find life to his taste,” Rictus said aloud.

Corvus turned to him at once. “A man who cares for nothing is a man already dead,” he said, finishing the couplet. “Rictus, you surprise me. I had not thought you a philosopher.”

“A friend quoted me that, a long time ago.”

“Then he was a wise man. For soldiers, the sayings of Gestrakos are a window on our lives.”

The head of the column reached them, and Fornyx raised a hand to halt the Dogsheads. Behind them, the line of marching men ran as far as the eye could see, and the weak winter sun ran along it, raising sparks and flashes off spearheads, helms, the brazen faces of shouldered shields.

“We are what – four pasangs from the walls?” Corvus estimated. “I will pitch the command tent on the slope ahead. Rictus, your men shall bivouac forward a pasang, and Druze’s Igranians with you. The rest will file in behind. I must inspect the line of the walls close-to before I decide how to post the rest of the army.”

“They’ve seen us,” Ardashir said. “Look; they’re closing the gates.”

Rictus could just make out the fall of shadow in the wall as the massive South Prime Gate was slowly pushed shut in the distance. It was something he had never seen before: Machran shutting its gates. He looked at the endless snake of the high fortifications running across the land for pasangs, and shook his head at the thought of assaulting such a place.

“The countryside is empty,” Ardashir said, shading his pale eyes with his hand. “There’s not a man or a beast to be seen for pasangs. It would seem Karnos has prepared the city somewhat.”

“I expected no less,” Corvus said. He mounted his horse, and the animal – a coal-black gelding which made him look small as a child on its back – threw up its head and snorted as it caught his mood.

“Bring up the baggage train, and deploy the army along this ridge, just in case he wants to come out.”

“He won’t come out,” Rictus said.

Corvus nodded. “I know – but we must show willing, and besides, it’s a grand thing to see an army file into line of battle. It will give the men on those walls something to think about.”

He bent and patted the neck of the restive gelding, crooning to it with words of Kefren. Then he straightened and flashed a wide grin at them all.

“Brothers,” he said, “today the siege of Machran begins.”

Karnos stood on the heights of South Prime Tower, in whose bowels the great gate was grinding shut, groaning and screeching like a sentient thing. There were two dozen men down there with their shoulders set to it, and half a dozen more were ladling olive oil over the seized up hinges.

To left and right, the walls of the city were crowded with people, thousands of whom had climbed the battlements to catch a sight of the army forming up in the distance. For months it had been a mere idea to them, a subject for gossip and speculation and argument. Now it was there, assembling on the lip of the great bowl-shaped vale in which Machran stood. A man might walk briskly from the walls to the front ranks of the enemy in half an hour.

It had come to this at last, this brutal reality.

Dion and Eurymedon stood beside Karnos on the tower’s topmost outpost. Two old men who looked even older this bright winter’s day as the undefeated army of Corvus deployed in line of battle before the city, as if to taunt them.

Behind the trio of Kerusia members were Murchos of Arkadios, whose city was already lost, and Tyrias of Avennos, or Scrollworm to his friends. Kassander was down at the gates, cursing and cajoling the men working there.

“I do not know what he is thinking,” Dion said, and there was the quake of age in his voice. “He forms up as though we’re about to give him battle.”

“Or invite him in,” Murchos grunted, striding forward to lean on the grey stone of the battlement. He rubbed shards of snow off the stone irritably. “Arrogant bastard. He means to begin the investment right here and now, in the middle of winter.”

“He has never been one to dawdle,” Karnos said. “Ah, the impetuousness of youth.”

“Let him sit there while the snow comes down on him, and see how he likes it,” Tyrias said. “He’s overreaching himself. We can sit here all winter and watch him shiver.”