Corvus (24 page)

Eunion and Garin
shouldered Aise aside, hefted their spears, and stood to meet the incomers. Two
of the strangers held back, and the taller yelled, “Alive! There is no need for
killing here!”

Garin charged like
a bull, knocked aside an aichme with the deftness of a man who has faced down
wild boar, and thrust his own spear into the belly of the man in front of him.
There was a high pitched gurgling cry, and the man fell to his knees. The spear
went down with him, clutched by his intestines. The other men roared with fury.
A spearhead flicked out and transfixed Garin through the eye. He fell
backwards, off the blade, a bright arc of blood in the air following his body
to the ground.

Aise scrabbled for
his weapon, but was kicked in the ribs once, twice -

“Fucking cunt,”
her attacker snarled.

Eunion barrelled
into him, smashing the shaft of his spear into the man’s face, thumping the
butt of it into the chest of a second. The third stabbed him at the base of the
spine, grunting with the effort of the thrust. Eunion fell to his knees,
startled. He looked down at Aise as she lay gasping for breath in the snow.

“This is not -”

Two more
spearheads were pushed into him. One was thrust so hard it exited his chest, a
grotesque spike under his chiton. He looked down at it in utter bewilderment.
Then the man behind him set his foot in Eunion’s back and booted him off the
end of the spear. He fell over Aise, warm, twitching, his blood hot and coppery
over her.

She heard Rian
shriek and tried to rise, pushing Eunion to one side. His eyes were still moving
and his mouth opened, but nothing came out except the smell of the onion he had
eaten for breakfast. His face went still.

Someone kicked
Aise again, hard in the back.

“Stay down there,
bitch.”

She tried to rise
regardless. Rian was screaming, and she could hear Ona sobbing. The man set a
boot on her breasts and leant on her. He looked down, a black shadow against
the blue sky.

“Nice looking
cunt, Sertorius. Things are looking up.”

“Keep her there.
Adurnos, go check the house. How’s Fars?”

“He’s dead. That
fucking slave killed him, and that bald fucker broke my nose.” “Makes you
prettier. Now, go do as I say. Let the filly loose; she won’t leave the mare.”

Aise heaved for
breath, the man’s foot crushing it out of her.

“Their own fault,
Phaestus - don’t you give me that look. They came at us first, so fair’s fair.
Anyway, we have what we came for.”

Phaestus?
Aise
scrabbled through the white panic in her mind.

“Phaestus?” she
croaked aloud.

“Get your foot,
off her, Sertorius. I’ll see to her.” An older man’s voice, familiar.

“Leave that girl
alone!” Another voice shouted, a boy’s yell raised in outrage.

“Philemos - get
the daughters, bring them to me.”

There was a cry
inside the farmhouse, and Aise heard Styra scream. The men laughed and whooped.

She closed her
eyes. Setting out her hand she touched Eunion’s head, the feather-soft tendrils
of white hair about the ears. Her eyes burned. But she would not weep.

A shadow over her,
a new one that did not smell as bad as the last.

“Aise, let me help
you up.”

She laboured to
her feet, and Rian was hugging her, white face streaked with tears. Ona was
clinging to her skirts, silent, empty-eyed with her thumb in her mouth.

She knew this man
in front of her: a friend of Rictus, an important figure in Hal Goshen. She knew
him as vain and proud and full of himself, but a man of probity and wit. A
guest-friend. He had eaten at her table. He had drunk wine with Eunion, whose
corpse now lay on the snow between them.

Eunion -

Her face hardened.
“Phaestus,” she said, and her voice was steady, as cold as the stone in the
frozen river. “What is this evil you do here?”

There had been
something like remorse on his face - dismay at least. Now that fled. His face
matched hers, stone for stone.

“I revisit on the
family of Rictus the evil he has done mine,” he said.

“What has my
husband done to you, his guest friend?” Aise asked, and her voice cracked on
the last word.

“He has made us
ostrakr, robbed us of everything we had and set us on the roads like vagabonds.
He has brought my city to servitude and shame. And all for a mercenary’s purse.”

“Hal Goshen?” Aise
asked, shaking her head.

“Corvus now owns
my city, like a paid-for whore.”

Aise looked down
at Eunion’s body. She wanted to take the old man in her arms, to kiss his eyes
shut. For twenty years he had been like a father to her, a more constant
companion than the husband who had brought them here. Now he lay like
slaughtered meat in the snow. His half-eaten onion was still on the table
inside.

The tears brimmed
up and burned like acid in her eyes.

“Did Rictus do
this to you?” she asked simply, and opened her hands to the dead man.

“This was
unforeseen, an accident,” Phaestus said.

“I had not meant
it to be like this.”

A shriek from
inside the house. Styra’s voice.

The young man
standing beside Phaestus looked stricken. “Father, we must stop them.”

“She’s only a
slave,” Phaestus said.

“But-”

“No!” he roared,
face flushed red. “Be silent, Philemos. The world works like this - as well you
see it first hand at last. If you can’t hold your tongue then go and get the
mules - not another word!”

Rian had stopped
sobbing. She knelt in the bloody snow and closed Eunion’s eyes, then bent and
kissed him as Aise had wanted to do. She straightened.

“I know you,” she
said to Phaestus. “So does my father. When he hears of what you have done here
he will find you, and he will kill you. This I promise.”

Her eyes were
grey, like Rictus’s, and in them was some of the same wild fury. Phaestus
stared back at her a moment. His mouth opened. Then he swung his arm and
back-handed her across the face. Rian tumbled into the snow. Aise knelt at once
and gathered her into her arms. Ona let out shrill scream.

“Sertorius! - get
out here! Sertorius!”

The gap-toothed
brigand came out of the farmhouse with a wineskin in one hand, grinning. “Got
everything you want, Phaestus? Who’d have thought there’d be such fine flesh up
here in the arse of nowhere?”

“Take these three
and tie them up, hands in front of them. But let them get some things out of
the house first - travelling clothes. And take whatever you can from the place
in the way of food.” “Whoa there, my fine friend - aren’t we going to hole up
here for a day or two? That was the plan. We could be pretty snug here; they
have a whole winter’s supplies squirreled away.”

“Take what you
need and what won’t slow us down - we move on at once.”

“Listen, chief -”

“Do as I say,
Sertorius, if you want that big welcome in Machran.”

“What of the dead
meat lying here?” Sertorius asked, surly now.

“Throw them into
the house, and then burn it.”

Aise moved through
the familiar rooms in a fog. In a normal, everyday tone she told Rian to dress
in her best woollens, and the fur-lined cloak her father had brought back from
Machran.

Everything inside
the house had been kicked over and picked through, things broken for no reason.
The little aquamarine pot in Aise’s room was smashed in blue shards upon the
floor. Rictus’s battered old farm sandals lay to one side.

I wish you were
here, husband, she thought. Though it is you that has brought this upon us.

In the back room,
Styra lay naked and sprawled like a broken doll. Her face was beaten into a
swollen fruit, a pulp of bone and blood, and she had been stabbed below her
left breast.

Aise stood looking
at her for a long time, standing square in the doorway so Rian could not see.

This is what
awaits us all
, she thought.

One of Sertorius’s
men came up behind her, his mouth full of the barley bannock Aise had baked
that morning.

“Bitch had a knife
on her, cut me good - you see what she did?”

Aise turned. He
was heavily built, and the hair from his chest rose up to join with that of his
beard. He had a fresh wound at the side of his eye, a finger-long slice with
the blood already dry upon it.

“All we wanted was
some sport,” he said, shaking his head. “Fucking waste.” He smiled at Aise. “You
make good bannock. Tasty.” His grin widened, and he slapped Aise on the rump. “High
and mighty, aren’t we? Wife of the great Rictus.” He took another bite of
bannock, and held it up to her. “Hope you can suck cock as well as you cook.”

When they were
outside again with a pitiful collection of belongings furled in blankets upon
their backs, Sertorius grabbed their hands and bound them with rawhide strips
cut from the milking buckets.

He leaned in close
to Rian as she stood there and sniffed at her neck. She flicked her head as
though a fly had settled on her, and he laughed - then straightened as Phaestus
and his son approached.

“The bodies go in
the house,” Phaestus said.

“What does it
matter, for Phobos’s sake, if they burn or the wolves have them?” Sertorius
protested.

“Wouldn’t you want
someone to do it for you?” Aise asked him.

Sertorius looked
at her. “Don’t speak to me, cunt.”

“Just do it,”
Phaestus said quickly. “One of your own is lying here.”

“Fars was always a
slow lazy bastard - oh, all right. Adurnos, Bosca, you heard the fellow - trail
this rubbish in the house before we fire it.”

Aise looked up at
the sky. It had been such a beautiful morning, a blue, still winter’s day. She
wished it had not been so beautiful; now, when there were other days as fine as
this, she would be remembering the events of this morning, and they would taint
every blue winter’s sky for her.

If she lived long
enough to have the memories.

I wronged Garin,
she thought. I should not have sold Veria, for she was his wife in everything
but name. I got rid of her because she reminded me too much of my own hurt, of
the boy we lost. For that at least, I am paying now.

Lord, in thy
goodness and thy glory, let me take it all upon myself, what remains ahead of
us. Let it all be mine, the hurt and the evil to come. Protect my girls, and
let the pain be on me alone.

She smelted smoke,
heard a crackling, and turned round to find the thatch of the farmhouse on
fire. Phaestus’s son, Philemos, was shooing the goats out of their bothy while
the roof broke into flame above him.

“What’s with this,
goatherder boy?” Sertorius asked.

“No need for them
to burn,” Philemos said. His colour was up and his eyes were shining dark. “There’s
been enough death here for one day.” He looked over at Aise and Rian and then
looked away again quickly.

They gathered
together in front of the farmhouse as it went up and the two mules brayed in
fear at the smell of smoke and the massive rush of heat. All the outbuildings
were on fire also, and the goats were streaming away in panic from the blaze.
Sertorius was wearing Rictus’s spare soldier’s cloak, mercenary scarlet, while
his accomplices were loading down the mules with hams, barley-flour, oil-jars
and skins of wine.

“Not an obol in
the place,” Sertorius said, staring at the burning house. “Where did the famous
Rictus keep his money, is what I want to know? The bastard lives simply - there’s
hardly a damn thing worth stealing.”

“The moneydealers
in Hal Goshen have it all,” Aise said, “Safe in one of their cellar-vaults. He
is not stupid enough to keep it here.” Sertorius looked at her with an eyebrow
raised.

“We have what we
came for,” Phaestus said. “It’s the best part of three hundred pasangs to
Machran, and winter is on us. When we deliver these three to Karnos, you won’t
want for money, Sertorius. I’ll see to that.”

“See that you do,”
Sertorius said. “I am a man of many virtues and vices, Phaestus, and one might
say that the one weighs in the balance against the other. Don’t try to leave
your thumb on my scales.”

Then he grinned. “Ah,
the warmth! Let us hope our campfire tonight will keep us as warm! But to the
logistics of today. Adurnos, you will lead the spitfire girl. I will take the
woman -”

“No,” Phaestos
said. He stepped forward and grasped the long lashing of hide that hung from
Aise’s wrists. “I’ll take her. Philemos, you lead the girl, and you, Sertorius,
the child.”

“Fuck that,”
Sertorius said. “Adurnos, the brat is yours. At least she’ll be light, carried.
Shall we leave then, brothers and sisters? The day is trailing on and I want to
get past the drifts at the top of this dungheap valley before darkness finds
us.”

They set out.
Sertorius led the way, and Aise was jerked into motion behind Phaestus as the
older man tugged on her bonds. Philemos came next, Rian walking at his side as
though he was escorting her for a ramble through the woods. Then came the big
man with the broken nose, Adurnos. He settled Ona up on a mule with a curse,
while Bosca, whom Styra had marked with her knife, brought up the rear, leading
another heavily laden mule.

They crossed the
river, their feet breaking through the snow-covered ice that had thickened on
the surface of the water. The bite of the stream cleared Aise’s head somewhat.
She heard a great crash behind her and looked back to see the roof of the
farmhouse cave in with a rush of black smoke and scattered sparks. In the
bright day, the flames were saffron-dark and solid as swords, drenched in
sunlight.

Smoke the colour
of an autumn storm rose in a high pillar in the air above the valley. It loomed
over them all, casting its own shadow on the snow, and smuts from the burning
floated over the trees like ethereal carrion birds.