Corvus (22 page)

He was freezing
cold, but free, staring up at the invisible rain, the teeming dark. How far to
Machran? It must be over a hundred pasangs.

Machran, the sun
of his world. He loved his city more than he would ever love any wife. One
could walk there upon stones that had been shaped in the dawn of his race’s
existence. It was rumoured that below the circle of the Empirion were caverns
in which the first of the Macht had lived, sealed chambers which housed the
dust and dreams of millennia.

My city.

The rain was
easing, and in the tattered dark of the sky he could see glimpses of the stars
peering through the cloud as the wind picked up and began to harry them away.
Phobos was long set, but the pink glow of Haukos could still just be made out,
and to one side, Gaenion’s Pointer, showing the way north. He fixed it in his
mind, and some almost unconscious part of him made his fist dig a hole in the
mud pointing north.

I think my father
taught me that. He lived his life in a half dozen narrow streets, and yet he
knew about the stars - how is that?

Because even the
poor can look up past their next meal. Even the drunkard pauses now and then to
cast his face to the sky and hope, and wonder.

We are beaten,
Karnos thought. He beat us fair and fully, outnumbered and in the muck of
winter when his horses could not run.

I should have
offered Rictus more. His men were in front of me today - or yesterday - his
Dogsheads. Corvus did that on purpose. What a marvellous bastard he must be. I
wish I knew him.

I hope Kassander
got away.

And with that
thought the rags of the present came back to him. The League he had spent years
building was cast to the wind, and the flower of Machran had been slaughtered
here, around him.

How many died here
today?

He sat up, and the
pain became something quite novel in its intensity. He had heard old campaigners
say that the worse the wound, the less the pain. He hoped it was true.

Polio, I need a
bath. Who knew that war would stink so bad?

Karnos of Machran
stood up, a fat man in a gaudy cuirass, barefoot and slathered in mud and
blood, a black arrow poking from his right shoulder. He was the only thing
moving upon the flooded mere which had been a battlefield.

The Plain of
Afteni, they will call it, he thought, for Afteni is not twenty pasangs away
along the road. That is where they will be, those who are alive. That is where
I must be, if I am to live. He began walking west.

THE
HIGHLAND SNOWS

Phaestus - one-time Speaker
of Hal
Goshen, until Rictus had shown up at his gates - had always been a man who
prided himself on his appearance. He liked the attention of women; his wife,
Thandea, had been a noted beauty in her day and was still a handsome matron.
More to the point, she was an amenable adornment to his life who kept his
household running smoothly in conjunction with his steward, leaving Phaestus to
consider the weightier things in life, be they the running of a great city or
the pursuit of other men’s wives.

That was all in
the past.

To become ostrakr
was a blackened distinction within the Macht world. It meant a man had no city,
no citizenship, and hence no redress for wrongs done to him.

He might own
taenons of good land, but the moment he was ostrakr, that land became anyone’s
to own. He might try to defend it with the strength of his own arm, but what is
one man to do when three or four - or fifty - walk onto his farm and declare
their intention to take it from him? He dies fighting, or he leaves it all
behind.

The same applies
to his house, his slaves, all his possessions. And if some stranger takes a
fancy to his wife or his daughter, then it is his own spear, and that alone,
which will preserve their honour. There is no recourse to the courts, to the
assembly, or even to the assistance of friends and neighbours. He is ostrakr -
he no longer exists.

Mercenaries
forsook their cities when they took up the red cloak, though there were far
fewer of them around now than there had been - so many had died with the Ten
Thousand that a kind of tradition had been lost, and even now the true,
contracted fighting man who fought by the code of his centon was something of a
rarity. Such men were ostrakr also, but they at least had the brotherhood of
their fellows to fall back on. They exchanged one polity for another.

A man who had
nothing to fill up the framework of his world was naked in the dark, and must
subsist with the tireless wariness of the fox until he somehow found a way to
become a citizen again, to come in from that darkness.

That is what
Phaestus had meant to do.

He stood now
wrapped in bear-furs which he had bartered from a group of drunk goatherder men
over the campfire of the night before. They had been good men, rough and ready
as all were who lived up in the highlands with no city to call their own. Up
here it was still the world of the clan and the tribe, a more ancient place.
But still, men belonged to something. They looked after those of their own
blood.

It was a white,
frozen world this high in the hills, and the Gosthere Range was a marching line
of blinding-bright giants all along the brim of the horizon, the sky as blue
and clear as a robin’s egg above them. Here, winter had already come into its
own, and the drifts were building deep, the dark pinewoods locked down in
frozen suspension, and the rivers narrowed to fast flowing black streams
between broadening banks of solid ice, the very rocks bearded with foot-long
icicles.

The goatherder men
had been bringing their flocks and their families down into the valleys for the
winter, and were glad to trade: furs and dried meat for wine and pig-iron
ingots. They had haggled hard over the wine and then shared it out liberally
afterwards, for such was their nature.

These were the
original strawheads of the high country, from whom Phaestus’s own people had
come. The dark-skinned lowlanders might sneer at them, but they at least did
not burn down cities and enslave populations. All they wanted was grazing for
their animals, a place to pitch their dome-shaped tents of weathered hide, and
room to roam. They were a picture, perhaps, of how the Macht had lived in the
far and misty past. Perhaps.

Phaestus watched
them go, and raised his spear to answer the headman’s departing salute. Ten
families, perhaps thirty warriors and a hundred women and children and old
folk. A unit more cohesive than the citizenry of any city.

If only life were
that simple, Phaestus thought.

He had grown a
beard to keep the wind from his face, and it had come out as grey as hoar
frost. His plump wife had lost some of her padding and had stopped complaining
about having to sleep on the ground. And his son had become a man right in
front of his eyes, discarding the preening sulks of the adolescent in a few
short weeks.

Exile had been
good for him, young Philemos. Dark like his mother, and inclined to amplitude
like her, he had become an angular young man who took to this life of exile as
though he had been waiting for it to happen. There was that much, at least, to
be thankful for. The two girls were a different matter.

Phaestus turned in
his tracks to regard the straggling little column on the slope below him. One
mule had died already, and the rest were overburdened. They would have to dump
more of their possessions, pitifully few though they were. His complete
collection of Ondimion was already in a snowdrift two days back, a sacrifice
which had wrenched his heart. But there was no need to read of drama in a
scroll when it was the stuff of their daily lives now.

Tragedy, revenge;
yes, that is what life hinges around. The poets had it right after all.

He looked north,
at the furrowed valleys and glens of the Gostheres, white in a dreaming world
of snow.

That old word they
used, from the ancient Machtic
- nemesis.
That is what I am, Phaestus
thought.

His son joined
him, scratching and grinning. “These bearskins have lice in them, father. Are
we to become barbarians to survive?”

“Yes,” Phaestus
said. “That is exactly what we must be. But not forever, Philemos.”

“I hope not - I
can’t listen to my sisters carp and moan for much longer. I love them dearly,
but I would also love to clash their heads together.”

Phaestus laughed,
his white teeth gleaming in his beard. “Now you know how I have felt these last
few years. The women are unhappy, and rightly so -this is not their world, up
here. Everything they have known has been taken away from them - the least we
can do is bear their carping without complaint. That is what men do.”

“We’re soft. I had
not thought so until we were with the goatherder people last night. I think
their women are tougher than us.”

“They breed them
hard, this high,” Phaestus said, and his smile faded. “Your mother and sisters
are folk of the city, lowlanders, but my people came from the highlands, and it
is in your blood too. It’s well to remember that. The clans of the mountains
are not savages - not like the goatmen, who are worse than animals. They are
ourselves, in a purer state. What we write down, they keep in their heads, and
their sense of honour is as refined as our own. As soon as they sat across a
fire from us last night, we were part of their camp, and had some threat come
upon us, we would all have fought it together.”

“And if we had
cheated them in the bargaining?”

“They would have
considered themselves fools for being cheated - that is what such barter is
about. But you cross them in a matter of honour, Philemon, and they will kill
you without mercy, and all your family. You must remember that.”

“I will.” The boy
sobered.

“Good lad. Now,
get back down and help with the repacking and, for Phobos’s sake, don’t
overload the mules. They have a long journey still to make. Send Berimus up to
me.”

“Yes, father.”

Phaestus watched
him go.

Seventeen years
old, and ostrakr. It’s still an adventure to him - he has no real idea what it
means.

Berimus stood
silently for some time before Phaestus spoke to him, and when he did his tone
was entirely different, harsh and cold as the mountain stone below the ice.

“Are all the
preparations made?”

“Yes, master.”

“I am no longer
your master, Berimus. You are no longer a slave.”

He turned around.
Berimus was a small man, built as broad as an oak door, with a nut-shaped head
of dark hair and lively grey eyes. The same age as Phaestus, he looked ten
years younger, a compact, muscular version of the tall patrician with the
pepper-grey beard, who looked him in the eye.

Phaestus handed
him a clinking pouch of soft leather.

“That is all we
have left, but it should be enough. You won’t need it up here in the hills, and
do not show it - it will only make trouble.”

“I know.” “Once
you reach the lowlands, show someone in authority this.” Phaestus produced a
sealed scroll of parchment. He rubbed the red wax with one finger.

“This is the seal
of Karnos himself. Any official of the hinterland cities will recognise it, and
will assist you. Make due west - it’s four hundred pasangs to Machran. Do not
let the ladies tell you otherwise. My wife will think to command you - do not
let her. You are a free man now, but still my steward, and the man I trust most
in the world.”

“Master, your
family is my own - you know that.”

“I do. Berimus, we
will come out of this thing. When I bring Karnos what I seek we will be
citizens again, of the greatest city in our world. I will see you right, I
swear.”

Berimus bowed his
head.

“You remember when
we were boys together, and we came up here hunting with my father?”

“The day the boar
felled him - I remember.”

“We stood over him
that day, shoulder to shoulder like brothers. That is what you have always been
to me. I am entrusting my family to you now - stand over them as you stood over
my father.”

“I will, master.”

“I am called
Phaestus, my friend.”

Berimus looked
solemn as an owl. “Phaestus. I will deliver your family to Machran, or I will
die trying. You have my word on it.”

They clasped
forearms as free men do.

“Philemos and I
will join you before midwinter. Karnos will look after you until then. Give
this to him.” Another scroll, another waxed seal.

“Be careful,
Phaestus,” Berimus said. “These hills are a strange and dangerous place.”

“Dangerous?”
Phaestus smiled. “Don’t worry, Berimus. I only go to call on the home of a
friend.”

TWO
separate lines
of people, one
family. They moved apart from one another, mere dots on the white spine of the
world. Phaestus was throwing his life into the hollow of a knucklebone, and
with it, those of all he loved.

Let me show you
how it feels, Rictus,
he thought.

He had hunted
in these hills for
decades; he knew them as well as any city-dweller could. In the winter he had
tracked wolf, in the summer deer. North of the Gostheres, in the deep Harukush,
there were mountain leopards with blue eyes, and enormous white cave bears. So
it was rumoured, though Phaestus had never seen one, or met anyone who had.

It was an ancient
place, the Deep Mountains. The legends said that the Macht themselves had
originated there, migrating south and east out of the snows and the savage peaks,
leaving behind them a lost city - the first city - whose walls had been made of
iron.

The first Macht
had all been Cursebearers, according to the myth, and had known Antimone
herself. She had descended to the surface of the world to dress them in her
Gift, and then had left for her endless vigil among the stars with only her two
sons for company.