Paul Kearney - Corvus

Fornyx pushed through the mass of cheering spearmen. He had his hand on the shoulder of a tall, broad-shouldered fellow who had the sigil of Machran painted on his armour. The crowd of spearmen made way for them, shaking their spears in the tall man’s face. He ignored them, walked along as though in some kind of reverie, and only when he stood before Corvus did he look up and seem to snap out of it.

“Corvus,” Fornyx said, his face split wide in a grin. “I have a prize for you. This fellow here is named Kassander, and he is the polemarch of Machran. His men laid down their arms at the foot of the Empirion not ten minutes ago. They were the last. I promised them their lives and their freedom, for they fought well. I trust you will respect my promise.”

“Gladly, Fornyx,” Corvus said. He bent in the saddle and grasped the Cursebearer’s hand. “It was well done. I should have done the same thing myself.”

He turned to Kassander, who stood stolid and uncaring, though he did look up at the youth on the black horse with a wistful kind of curiosity.

“I am glad to see you alive, Kassander,” Corvus said to him. “I have heard you are a good man.”

Kassander grunted. He was a picture of carnage, soaked in blood, and he was missing the upper part of one ear. The blood from the sliced flesh had formed a black bar down the side of his neck.

“What of your friend Karnos? Do you know where he might be?”

The question seemed to pierce the fog. Kassander swallowed, looked up at the sky, winter-blue. There was not a cloud to be seen, but Phobos was a pale round wisp high up in it, a ghost with a cold smile.

“Karnos is dead. He is lying here somewhere. Your mercenaries killed him. He wore a black cuirass, but I suppose that will be stripped off him by now.”

Corvus’s face fell. “That is a pity. There was a time I would have wished him dead, but not now. You and he put up a rare fight, Kassander. I salute you for it.”

Kassander turned bloodshot eyes upon Corvus. “The city is yours now, and we are all in your hands. They say that Antimone shows us the hearts of men not only in defeat, but in victory also. Your name will be tied to this victory forever, Corvus, and what you and your men do to Machran now will follow you for as long as there are Macht to remember it.”

Corvus nodded. “I know this – it is something I have always known. You need not fear for Machran, Kassander. It will be my capital now, and its people are my people also.”

Kassander cocked his head to one side, squinting in the sun. “Are they?”

“We are all one people,” Corvus said softly. “We’ve been fighting amongst ourselves too long.”

Kassander rubbed a hand over his face, streaking it with blood. “Then let us put an end to it,” he said.

The first crashing impact on the door had startled them more than the roar of the city’s fall. It was immediate, personal, and on a human scale. Their fear, which had been an ill-defined dread before, now lurched into something closer to terror.

No sound outside, no shouting, nor clamour of a mob. Just the crash on the stout doors of Karnos’s house, as though a giant ram were charging it with blind malevolence.

Philemos’s mother became hysterical. She and her two young daughters were locked away in a far corner of the house. As Philemos shut the door on them, he heard the sound of furniture being dragged and piled up against it on the inside.

The wide front doors of the house were solid, oak and bronze. Kassia, Rian, Ona, Philemos and Polio began hauling furniture in their turn, dragging the beautiful couches made by Framnos, Karnos’s pride and joy, across the fountain courtyard and wedging them tight against the gate. Now they heard the grunt of men outside, the rattle of wheels on the cobbled street before every crash.

“There are armed men in here!” Philemos shouted. “Come through those doors and we’ll cut your throats!”

The only response was a burst of laughter, and then the gates were charged again. The heavy doors moved inwards, and white cracks opened and closed in the black wood.

“Perhaps we should go shut ourselves-in different rooms,” Kassia said, her face white and bloodless with fear. She was thinking of Aise the night she had arrived, that look in her eye. She could not imagine what had been done to her to make her look like that, but now it was going to happen. To all of them.

Rian stood calmly, a kitchen cleaver in her hand. She hugged Ona close to her.

“You have to try and hide,” she told her sister. “Ona, can you find some little space where no-one will find you?”

A timber was smashed free of the doors and skittered across the flagstones of the courtyard.

“Can you do that? I’ll come and find you later, I promise.”

The child looked at her dumbly, great dark eyes under a mass of red-brown hair.

“I promise,” Rian repeated, and her voice quavered on the word.

Ona put her arms around her sister’s neck, solemn, but eerily untroubled. Then she turned and ran away. They could hear her feet pattering through the house. Then there was a moment’s silence. Philemos set a hand on Rian’s arm. She wiped the tears from her face.

“I wish I had died at Andunnon, with Eunion. We should all have died there together.”

“I will not let them touch you,” Philemos said fiercely. “I protected you once before, and I will do it again.”

The door crashed inwards, the bolt tearing free of the wood.

They stood side by side, four people brought together by some whim of Phobos. A sister, a daughter, a slave and a son.

The doors sprang open, the iron bolt that held them together flying off. The heavy couches grated backwards on the flagstones, their legs splintering. They saw what looked like the bed of a handcart. It was hauled, grating, backwards out of the newly made entrance. Men’s voices in the street outside.

They came in, a group of lean, hungry-looking vagabonds, filthy and bright-eyed. Sertorius led them, and as he entered the fountain courtyard Rian shrank backwards in horror and Philemos seemed to stagger. He saw them standing there, and his face stretched in a wide grin.

“What’s this, a welcoming committee? People, I am touched! Look at this, lads – don’t it make a picture?”

Six other men entered the courtyard in his wake, dusting off their hands and wiping sweat from their faces.

“There’s my little black-haired sweetheart. Girl, I have something for you – we all have. I’ve been saving it since we turned you over to Karnos.”

“The other one’s not bad either,” Bosca said, running his fingers over his mouth.

“I told you there’d be nice pickings in this place, didn’t I?”

The men spread out in a crescent. The four people in front of them backed away until their heels were against the lip of the fountain pool.

“Get behind me,” Philemos said to Rian.

“There is money in this house,” Polio said loudly. “I can take you to it, save you some time. This is the house of Karnos, remember. He’s a powerful man. If you harm us, gentlemen, he will find a way to make you pay for it.”

“Karnos is dead, you old fuck,” Bosca snarled. “It’s all over the city. This Corvus is in charge now. He’d probably thank us for doing his work for him.”

“Dead?” Kassia repeated. “Karnos is dead?”

“What’s this – are you pining for him, my lovely?” Sertorius smiled. “That’s tragic, that is. Let us comfort you in your time of sorrow.”

“Enough,” Adurnos snapped. “Fucking do it, and leave out the talk, chief.”

They moved in like wolves. Polio advanced to meet them, lashing out with his knife. Adurnos caught his wrist; one of the Arkadians grabbed his other arrn. They stretched him like that between them, struggling, until Sertorius stabbed him in the heart. The old man went down without a sound, his beard white as sheep’s wool on the stone, his eyes still open.