Corvus

FOURTEEN

There was something in Aise which responded to winter. She respected it, with the good sense of a woman who had lived her life in the blue and white world of the high hills. But there was more to it than that.

It was not that she enjoyed the sensations of the season – although she did – it was more that the vast labour of the year was done, at long last, affording a chance to stand and look around, and to lean back from the earth upon which she threw all the life she had within her, year upon year.

She did not like winter – no fool could – but there was a certain satisfaction about it, seeing all which had been set in train throughout the year lead up to the moment of truth. That was winter in the highlands; the test of life itself.

The barley had been scythed, threshed and winnowed, and the grain stored in the three-legged wooden bin at one end of the yard. When Aise felt cold, or out of sorts, she would open the bin and scoop out a bucketful, then pound it to flour in the great hollow stone that Rictus and Fornyx had dragged out of the river years in the past. They had been two days getting it from the water to where it now sat, and every time she thumped the iron-hard log into it she thought of them that summer, sitting grinning at one another with the muck of the riverbank all over them and that great stone between them. Now it sat in the yard as though it had been there since time immemorial, a totem of their permanence here.

A clinking of bronze bells, the nattering bleat of the goats. Rian was walking slowly across the yard with a leather bucket of goat’s milk, which was steaming in the chill of the morning. Ona chattered along beside her, bright as a starling, and around the two girls the dogs flounced like puppies, sure of their share of the milk.

In the house Styra was tending the fire – at this time of year it was never allowed to go out. Garin had been chopping wood since dawn, and was sat before the hearth, talking to her. The talk ceased when Aise entered, and Garin rose with a sullen look about him. He and Styra had become a couple very quickly – slaves were wont to do such things, casting around for what comfort they could in life – but he had never forgiven Aise for selling Veria, and his work was falling off. He spent more time out in the woods now, trapping and tree-felling and hunting, sometimes with Eunion, sometimes alone.

It is Rictus he stays for, Aise thought. My husband has a way of garnering loyalty, even when he is not trying.

Eunion came to the table with a cloak wrapped about him, a few strands of white hair standing out from his head like a dandelion gone to seed. He was yawning, and in the morning his face seemed as wrinkled as a walnut.

“You should not sit up so late,” Aise said, kneading the barley dough into flat cakes for the griddle. “You read too much, Eunion.” She hated that Eunion was getting old. She could not imagine life here without him. She would be lost, and that made her all the more terse.

“I was reading. One of these months I will go to Hal Goshen for a better lamp, a three-flame one with a deep well. My eyes smart like blisters.”

“They look more like cherries. Have some milk. I will have bannock made soon. Rian!”

Rictus’s daughter stuck her head in the front door. “Yes, mother?”

“Draw me a gourd of oil from the jar, and set the plates. Where is Ona?”

“Playing with the dogs.”

“Bring her in.”

The household gathered about the table. When Rictus and Fornyx were not here they all ate together, slaves and free alike. Aise rose, flushed, from the fire with barley bannock hot to the touch, and poured the oil over the pale, flat cakes. There was soft cheese to go with them, and goat’s milk with the animals’ warmth still in it. Eunion munched on an onion, and winced as his ageing teeth met their match in the purple bulb of it.

“I was reading about the Deep Mountains,” he said to the table.

“Which story? The one about the city of iron?” Rian asked eagerly.

I will have to brush her hair tonight, Aise thought. It is as matted as a horse’s mane – and I do not believe her face has felt water this morning.

“Yes,” Eunion went on, gesturing with the onion. “It seems to me there’s something to be said for the theory that the first Macht wanted to keep themselves hidden, hence the remote location of the legendary city of iron.

“But more than that. When I read the myths, I find that Antimone is there with them at the beginning, not just as the goddess we know and pray to, but as a creature who lived upon the face of Kuf in their midst. Who knows – she may even have been one of us – a Macht woman of great learning and wisdom that subsequent generations imbued with the godhead. When it comes to the black armour -”

“Eunion, you read too much that is not there,” Aise said, looking up from her bowl. “It’s one thing to spend the whole night ruining your sight in front of a bunch of old scrolls, but quite another to be filling the children’s heads with – with -”

“Blasphemy?” Eunion said.

“Well, yes. Antimone watches over us all eternally. She was never a mortal woman; that’s absurd. You’re just playing with ideas, and Rian has enough of those in her head already.”

Eunion grinned. “Aise, I merely flex my mind. It is a muscle, like those in your arm. If you do not exercise it, it will atrophy, and we would all be no better than goatmen.”

“Drink your milk, old man, you talk too much.” But she smiled.

“Goatmen! Tell us, Eunion,” Rian wriggled in her chair, “how was it that they came to be?”

“Gestrakos tells us that -”

The dogs growled, low in their throats, and padded away from the table towards the open door of the farmhouse. Eunion fell silent.

“Maybe they smell wolf on the wind,” Garin said.

The family sat quiet, listening. The two hounds both had their hackles up and their teeth bared.

They walked stiff-legged outside, and began baying furiously.

“We have visitors,” Eunion said, and rose up from the table with a swiftness that belied his years. Garin rose with him, wiping his mouth.

“Spears?”

“Yes – go get them.”

“The pass is closed,” Aise said. She could feel the blood leaving her face.

“Perhaps father has come back!” Rian said.

“The dogs know better,” Aise told her. “Stay here.”

Eunion and Garin were lifting their spears from beside the door, short-shafted hunting weapons with wide blades, made to fight boar and wolf.

“Aise -” Eunion said, but she shook off his hand.

“I am mistress of this house.”

She stepped outside, into the brilliant snow-brightness of the blue morning.

Just in time to see the death of her dogs.

The baying was cut short. Half a dozen men stood black against the snow on the near riverbank. As Aise watched, she saw one raise his arm again and spear one of the animals through and through. Blood on the snow, a colour almost too vivid to be part of this world. Aise stood frozen. Eunion and Garin surged out of the doorway behind her, saw the black shapes of the men scant yards away, and the bodies of the two hounds. Garin gave a wordless cry of grief and rage. The men looked up. Wrapped in winter furs, they were unrecognisable. A voice said, “That’s her,” and they came on at a run.

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.

At least you had a pyre worthy of you, Eunion, Aise thought. Now your ashes will be in the air and water of this place, like my son’s.

And Rictus, your precious gold is under the hearthstone where we put it.

Aise bent her head and followed her captors through the snow to the woods that hung dark and deep on the slopes of the glen above.

Behind her the home that she and Rictus and Fornyx and Eunion had made blazed into destruction, the stone walls toppling as the heat cracked them open, the hoarded grain, the oil, the olives and the wine -the very stuff of life – taking light and combusting in a boiling tower of black smoke that blighted the morning.

And in the flames at its base the bodies of the dead lay darkening into ash and dust; a grey taste on the wind, no more.