Paul Kearney - Corvus

“Ach -” Half angry, Rictus turned away. He hated talk of omens and portents. His life had leached all sense of the numinous out of him. He believed in what his hands could do and his eyes could see, and though he invoked the gods in prayer and thanks it was as much a reflex as anything else, a grace-note. He did not believe -

“Fornyx – look there, on the ridge to the south. Do you see it?” He crunched out of the last dimming glow of the firelight and stared across the fields of snow to the dark woods of the hills above, and beyond them, the high ridge which marked the entrance to the valley, maybe six pasangs away. There in the moon-drenched dark was the light of a single fire, as steady as a candle-flame in a glass lantern.

“I see it.” Fornyx joined him, shivering. “It’s a campfire, up on the side of the ridge. They must be deep in the drifts up there, whoever they are.”

“Valerian? Kesero?”

“Too close. They know this valley – for the sake of six pasangs they’d have marched through the night, knowing a warm bed was here waiting for them. Whoever is up there, Rictus, does not know Andunnon.”

Before the sun came up, Rictus and Fornyx were back in the farmhouse. The rest of the family rose to gape as the two men methodically armed one another, hauling on the black cuirasses which were Antimone’s ageless gift to the Macht, belting on their swords and strapping bronze greaves to their shins. The girls clustered around their mother, round-eyed, and Eunion, after a moment’s shock, unearthed his own hunting spear. Rictus saw this and held up a hand.

“No, no my friend. You stay here.”

“What is it, Rictus?” Aise asked calmly, her arms around Ona’s shoulders, her face white and fixed as a statue’s.

“It may be nothing. Fornyx, tie up that damned loose strap at my back, will you?” The two men checked one another over, tugging on straps, tightening buckles.

“Shields?” Fornyx asked.

“And helms. We may as well look the part.”

Ona began to cry.

Within minutes, the Rictus and Fornyx of the farm had vanished. In their place now stood two heavily armoured mercenaries, their eyes mere glitters in the T-slits of their helms, the scarlet cloaks of their calling on their shoulders, shields on their left arms, spears at their right. They had become men of Phobos, the god of fear.

“Stay in the house,” Rictus told the others. “If we’re not back by mid-morning, pack some things and head for the north, up in the hills. Make for the old shepherd’s bothy on the high pastures. This may all be for nothing, so do no thing that cannot be undone.” He caught Eunion’s eye. “Keep them safe, you and Garin, until we return.”

Eunion nodded, swallowing convulsively.

Rictus stared at Aise, then Rian, a blank mask, unknowable. The face of death. Without another word, he ducked out of the house, and Fornyx followed him.

They could smell woodsmoke on the still air, the only smell in the white snow-girt morning. Without speaking, they trudged uphill into the woods, shields slung on their backs, spears at the trail.

After two pasangs they doffed their helms and halted to listen. The snow had stilled the woods, the birds, the river itself. The trees were silent and listening with them. A cock pheasant creaked and coughed away to the west, the sound carrying like a shout.

And then the other sound. Men’s voices, and something large making its way through the snow and the brush above them.

“I count four, or could be five,” Fornyx said.

“Five,” Rictus said. “And at least two horses.”

“We should have javelins, or a bow.”

Rictus smiled with sour humour. “We wear the red cloak and the Curse of God. They’ll piss down their legs at the very sight of us. Helm up, brother, and guard my left – you’re quicker on your feet than I am.”

“Every time you say that. Just once, couldn’t I -”

“Fornyx.” This last came out of Rictus’s mouth in a whispered hiss. Fornyx grimaced, ducked behind a tree and donned his helm. The two men nodded silently at one another, grasping their spears at the mid-point.

They could make out men talking now, strange accents, a bark of laughter, and the truckle of air through a horse’s nose. The trail down the hillside was buried in snow, but still made a clear way through the trees, a white ribbon uncoiling across the slopes of the forest.

Up close now. They could smell the sweat of the horses.

Again, the cock-pheasant rasped, as though counting down the moments. Behind his tree, Rictus breathed deep and even, as his father had taught him in boyhood, as he had in turn taught so many men who had fought under him.

The spear-grip in his hand was more familiar to him than the feel of his wife’s breast. The black cuirass was feather-light on his back. The world was a bright slot of light. He had known these sensations all his life. They were what his life was about. They were what made him alive.

He stepped out from behind the tree.

That first moment, counting bodies. How they are standing, what is in their hands, what they are wearing – the weak points. Who is the leader? Deal with him first.

They were soldiers, all of them. He saw that at once, despite the dun-coloured cloaks, the winter-gear. They had swords – the heavy curved drepana of the lowland cities – hung at their hips, and from the pommel of the nearest horse hung three bronze helms, like outsized onions. But no red cloaks on display – they were not mercenaries.

The men froze as Rictus and Fornyx materialized in front of them, gleaming faceless statues of ebony and scarlet, spears held easily at the shoulder. Rictus’s eyes flicked back and forth within the helm-slot. He breathed out a little, relaxing somewhat, looking at the deeds and intentions of their eyes. No need for death, not right away.

“Good morning, lads,” he called out, the bronze robbing his voice of tone and warmth. “What’s up here for you in the snow and the hills this time of year?”

One of the men edged closer to the lead pack-horse, where a bundle of javelins was slung. Rictus stepped forward two paces and levelled the aichme of his spear at the man’s throat.

“You’ll not be needing those, friend. Not today.”

A black-bearded man held up his hands in the air.

He had a broad, likeable face which was at once good-humoured and sinister. He might have been Fornyx’s younger brother.

“The Curse of God, here in the middle of nothing and nowhere – now there’s a prodigy! Lower your spear, brother. We mean you no harm. We are merely travellers, on our way to better things.”

Rictus cocked his head, the spear stone-steady in his fist. He was aware of Fornyx at his left, breathing quiet clouds of breath into the still air. No-one else was stirring – they had sense enough for that, at any rate. One brisk movement would resolve the morning in carnage, and they knew it.

“Who are you?” Rictus asked the dark-bearded man.

The man bowed his head, grinning. “I am Druze, and these are my friends, my comrades in arms Grakos, Gabinius, and a couple of other rascals. We were seeking the quickest way to Hal Goshen and seemed to have gotten ourselves turned around in the night. Our apologies if we have trespassed upon your ground. We mean no harm. We may take a rabbit or two out of your woods, but that’s all.”

He was lying. The straight road to Hal Goshen lay up along the ridge, impossible to miss. Only an imbecile could wander off it, and this man was no fool. Rictus knew that just by the sloe-black twinkle in his eyes. He was not afraid, either, or even apprehensive. That was worrying.

One of the man’s friends trudged down the slope from the rear of the party, also holding up empty palms. This was a smaller fellow, and slender. He wore the short woollen chlamys of the mountain folk, with the hood pulled up so his face was hard to make out except for a bright gleam of the eyes as the sun caught them in passing.