Paul Kearney: Corvus

The sea. How he had loved it, in his youth. And he remembered the remnants of the Ten Thousand shouting out in joy at the sight of it. That moment, that bright flash of delight was carved in stone within his heart.

“It was a long time ago,” Rictus said, a thickness, to his voice. “Half a lifetime, almost. The march of the Ten Thousand is nothing more now than an old man’s memory.”

Fornyx spat into the river. “It’s more than that, and you know it. Just as you will always be more than some highland farmer with a spear beside the door. We trail our past with us wherever we go, brother, especially those of us who wear the Black Curse. It is what we are.”

They stood side by side as the valley brightened further around them and the birds in the hanging woods above filled the air with song.

“It is what we are,” Rictus agreed at last.

The snow was a morning wonder which was gone by mid afternoon, save where the shadows of the trees protected pockets from the sun. That first day back, Rictus tramped the borders of his little kingdom with a hazel staff in his hand and a bronze knife in his belt to cut the bread and cheese and onion that Aise had packed for him.

He and Eunion and Rian trudged up the tawny hillsides to the open country beyond the woods, and there stood like royalty to survey the speckle of the goat-herd as the hardy animals ranged across the last of the year’s good grass. Like everything else, the herd had grown while Rictus had been away.

The mismatched trio sat on the grass as the wind surfed it into waves around them, and as the time wound to noon they munched on red onions as if they were apples. The dogs lay to one side, bright-eyed and watchful, and Rian’s chatter washed over Rictus half-heard, tugging his mouth into a smile now and again as he caught the gist of it. Chiefly, though, he sat enjoying the sound of his eldest daughter’s voice, and he would now and again grasp her hand in the depths of the yellow upland grass, as if to make sure she were real.

Voluble though Rian was, it was from Eunion that Rictus received the clearest version of the year gone by. There was indeed a bear’s den in the slopes of Crag-End hill, hidden in the brush and juniper that swamped the northern slope. Bears were semi-sacred to the Macht, respected for their strength and ferocity, but the occupant of this particular den was elusive and, for now at least, best left alone.

The vorine had hardly been seen in the valley since the killing of the vixen and her cubs, but wolves had been glimpsed in their place, scouting the hills. The bear would sleep through winter, but the wolves would not – something to be considered.

The billy goat, wise, wicked old Grenj, had had a fight with an eagle, a sight Eunion had never seen before nor heard tell of. Rian mimed the struggle as she described it like some tale out of legend: one hand the eagle, the other, valiant Grenj. Anyone else would have seen some portent in the goat’s killing of the eagle, but to Eunion it was a fascinating natural phenomenon, something to be stored away and analysed. And as if summoned by the story, Grenj himself ambled past them amid his harem, with his regal spread of horns and cold yellow eyes. As good as a hound for protecting his own, Eunion said, though he was old now – another winter might see him done.

“When he is, we’ll put his horns up here on a pole,” Rictus said. “It’s what they used to do around Isca when I was a boy. To keep his spirit here.”

“He’ll live for years and years,” Rian protested. “He must, after such a feat.”

“I hope he will,” Rictus said, kissing the top of her head. “You’re right – he deserves to.”

“And your campaigning, master – how went that with the year?” Eunion asked. “It was Nemasis, was it not, that hired you?”

Eunion loved to hear of the goings-on in the wider world, and he was one of the few men who could dissect them with intelligence. Rictus looked down at Rian. She was sat, chin on knees, between them, rubbing Mij’s belly with her bare toes. He caught Eunion’s eye, and saw the apology in the older man’s face.

“It was a protracted campaign,” he said gruffly, and he set his hand on his daughter’s nape as though to comfort her.

“There was little fighting – one or two clashes south-west of Machran. But they were stubborn, the Vengans. They have good land around that earth-walled city of theirs, and they would not admit defeat even when we drove them from the field. So it became a siege of sorts.”

“A siege!” Rian exclaimed, as though this were some marvellous revelation.

“A rarity, in this age,” Eunion said. He rasped one hard palm across the white bristles on his chin.

“A rarity, thank God. And in winter, too. We sat there all through the coldest months of the year, and ate the country bare all around while the Vengans sat in their city and starved. They made a sally at the turning of the year, and that was their mistake. We took the gatehouse, and then it was all over.”

“And the terms?” Eunion always wanted to know. It came of his own fate in life, perhaps.

“What did you do to them?” Rian demanded. His own eyes, in his daughter’s face, looking up at him.

“Well, the Nemasians had been made to freeze in camps half the winter instead of sitting at home with their wives, so they were not disposed to mercy.”

Rictus was reluctant to say more. He had no wish to convey to his daughter, or to this good, gentle man beside her, the carnage and chaos that had concluded the campaign.

“Did Venga survive?” Eunion asked, tight-lipped.

“Yes. She lost most of her good land.” And most of her sons and daughters, Rictus added to himself, thinking of the hopeless lines of shackled children filing up the roads towards the Machran slave-markets.

“Our own casualties were light, not above fifty for the whole episode.”

“Fifty? That’s nothing – you barely fought at all,” Rian accused him.

“Hardly at all,” Rictus agreed, though something in his face made Rian set a hand on his knee in obscure apology.

“And what news from Machran, master?” Eunion persisted. “We’ve been hearing stories down in Onthere and Hal Goshen, but they are so garbled as to be little better than myth. Have you heard any more about what is happening in the east?”

Rictus frowned, rubbing his right thigh just below the hem of his chiton. There was a pink scar there where a Vengan arrow, almost spent, had smacked into his flesh the year before. It had been a long time healing in the winter camps and it troubled him still when he sat awhile on the cold ground, as he did now.

The east, where this new thing had arisen, this prodigy. It was all anyone had ever asked him in his travels – what word of the east? What is he doing now? This apparition, this phoenix of war.

“It’s hard to separate myth and fact when it comes to talking about the east,” he said at last. “I know he is well inland from Idrios now, and I heard word that Gerrera and Maronen had fallen to him.”

“It’s true, then – he does head this way!” Rian exclaimed, and she lifted both her hands as though to catch a posy.

“If he has Maronen,” Eunion said tersely, “then his next step must be Hal Goshen.”

“That is my thinking also.”

“Master, Hal Goshen is barely -”

“I know,” Rictus said curtly.

“What does he want, father?” Rian asked.

Rictus shrugged. “Some say he aims at nothing more than overlordship of all the Macht cities. But that’s absurd.” He spoke over Rian’s head, meeting Eunion eye to eye.

“When we were in Machran, Karnos was talking of invoking the terms of the Avennan League, and this time I think the core cities will respond. If that happens, Machran can field an allied army of maybe forty thousand, a force the like of which the Harukush has never seen before. This would-be conqueror cannot match that. He will see sense, and pull in his horns.” He wanted Eunion to agree with him, to treat the thing as Rian had. But the old man would not oblige.