Paul Kearney - Corvus

Karnos exhaled. The cuirass seemed to settle on him. He was no longer fat, and the black stuff of the armour closed in against his torso and gelled there, a black hide matching the contours of his chest perfectly.

“Now you are a Cursebearer at last,” Kassia said. There were tears in her eyes.

He gripped her arm a moment, and stepped forward to the table upon which the rest of his panoply lay. A plain bronze helm, a shield emblazoned with the sigil of Machran, a spear, and a curved drepana in a belted scabbard. But he did not touch these, taking up instead a small iron key.

He walked over to Polio, and set the key in the old man’s slave-collar. With a click, he loosened it, and carefully took it from his neck.

“You are free, my friend. I am only sorry I did not do it sooner.”

Polio rubbed his throat. He looked down on Karnos like a stern father. There was a gleam in his eye, though his face never changed.

“I was never a slave in this house,” he said.

Karnos gave him the key. “Free them all, Polio -they can come or go as they please. I will own no more slaves.”

Something like a smile crossed Polio’s face. “You have grown, Karnos.”

Karnos tapped the side of his black cuirass. “I thought I had shrunk.”

The two men stood looking at one another. Now that Karnos had become thin and gaunt they could almost have passed for father and son.

“I shall be here when you return,” Polio said. “This is where I belong.”

Karnos nodded.

He turned to Philemos and the children of Rictus. “Stay here. The streets will not be safe – better to stay behind stout walls tomorrow, whatever happens.”

“I’m coming with you,” Philemos said, and Rian clutched at his arm.

“You are needed here,” Karnos told him. “Stay in my house, and look after those you love. You will do more good here than in a spearline.” He half-smiled. “That is my order, as Speaker of Machran.”

Then he went back to the table, and set the bronze helm on his head.

The sun began to rise, and with the dawn a stillness fell across the city. The walls were lined with spearmen of Machran and Arkadios and Avennos, and gathered together in the square within the South Prime Gate a mass of spearmen, thousands strong, had formed up and stood silently, looking at the grey lightening of the sky.

On the blasted plain before the walls, the army of Corvus formed up, massing to the east and south of the city. They stood in ordered ranks, waiting like their foes within.

And over the hills to the south a third army came into view. It shook out from column into line of battle, and as the sun cleared the Gosthere Mountains to the east, so the men who marched in its ranks took up the Paean, the death hymn of the Macht, and the sound of it rolled over the plain and filled the air like the thunder of an approaching storm.

Ardashir hummed lightly under his breath, a cradle-song he had learned back in the Empire. The tune came to him now and again, on sleep or waking, and reminded him always of a warmer world, of blue skies and heat shimmering across yellow fields. It seemed Like a dream from another life, but there was comfort in it.

The horses of the Companions shifted and pawed at the ground restlessly. They were on the left of a line extending just under two pasangs, facing south across the vast brown bowl that had once been the famed fertile hinterland of Machran. To their front, the army of the Avennan League was approaching, a line of bronze shields which the rising sun caught and set alight in sudden, blazing ripples of yellow light. Ardashir looked at the sky. At least there would be sunshine today, something to give colour and warmth to this drab country.

Corvus sat his horse beside him, his banner-bearer behind him. The leader of the army had doffed his tall helm with its flowing white crest, and was smiling, the light catching his eyes and kindling in them a violet flame. He looked today more like a fine-boned Kefren than one of the heavy, stolid Macht. His mother’s bones in him, Ardashir thought. He must have his father’s spirit.

Corvus turned to him as though he had caught the thought. “Good hunting, brother,” he said.

The Macht spearmen to their right had taken up the Paean, the men of Teresian and Demetrius’s morai booming out the ancient song in time with their kinsmen across the way. It stirred the blood, a dirge which was nonetheless a challenge to battle.

The horses in the ranks of the Companions knew the sound, and began to prance and nicker under their riders. They were ill-fed and overworked, but still they had the Niseian blood in them, that of the finest warhorses ever bred, and the loom of battle made them sweat and stamp where they stood. The brightly armoured Kefren riders spoke to them and called them by their names. Soon they would be let loose on the singing men drawing nearer minute by minute.

Ardashir turned to his left. Shoron had his lance in one hand, his reins in the other, and a bronze horn hanging from his cuirass.

“You think you’ll have enough spit to blow that thing?” Ardashir asked him, grinning.

“I’ll blow it in your ear and let you be the judge.”

“Good hunting, Shoron.”

“Good hunting.”

Corvus rose up in his saddle, balancing on his knees. He turned right and waved his arm. “Xenosh – the signal. Give it now.”

Behind him his banner-bearer lifted up the streaming raven-flag and moved it forward and back.

A moment where nothing happened, but then a series of orders rapped out through the ranks of the Macht spearmen. Centurions in transverse helms moved forward of the main line, raised their spears, and bellowed to their centons.

The commands of Teresian and Demetrius began to move, three thousand heavy infantry. The Paean sank a little as they started out, and then rose up strong again, the beat of the song marking their footfalls. The phalanx moved out to meet the challenge of the men approaching from the south, who outnumbered them better than two to one.

“The anvil is on its way,” Corvus said. “Brothers, we are the hammer.”

Almost six pasangs away, the defenders of the East Prime Gate were craning their necks to watch what was going on to the south, when someone shouted out in astonishment.

Their attention shifted to the enemy troops along the Imperial road. These were not yet advancing, but behind them something else was. Looming up out of the early light came six huge towers, the rumble of their progress audible even on the walls of the city. Each was the height of ten tall men or more, topped with battlements, and encased in hides of all colour and hue. And they were moving on wheels.

Perhaps two hundred men drew each tower, and there were more pushing from behind.

As the six behemoths reached the lines of Druze’s men, so the infantry moved forward with them. On the towers of the city, crews began to crank back the immense bows of the ballistae.

At the South Prime Gate, a centurion shouted down to the waiting centons and morai below.

“The enemy is moving out to engage the League army!”

Kassander was walking through the waiting ranks of men. “This is it, lads,” he said calmly, “Move out nice and quick, but don’t bunch up in the gateway. Form up on your centurions outside.”

Then he bellowed at the men in the gatehouse. “Open the gates! Machran, we are moving out!”

The gates swung screeching on their ancient hinges, pushed by straining soldiers. Kassander went to the head of the lead centon and raised his spear. The troops of Machran and Arkadios and Avennos began to follow him out of the gates, close on four thousand men in full armour.