Corvus

SEVENTEEN

Karnos stood on the heights of South Prime Tower, in whose bowels the great gate was grinding shut, groaning and screeching like a sentient thing. There were two dozen men down there with their shoulders set to it, and half a dozen more were ladling olive oil over the seized up hinges.

To left and right, the walls of the city were crowded with people, thousands of whom had climbed the battlements to catch a sight of the army forming up in the distance. For months it had been a mere idea to them, a subject for gossip and speculation and argument. Now it was there, assembling on the lip of the great bowl-shaped vale in which Machran stood. A man might walk briskly from the walls to the front ranks of the enemy in half an hour.

It had come to this at last, this brutal reality.

Dion and Eurymedon stood beside Karnos on the tower’s topmost outpost. Two old men who looked even older this bright winter’s day as the undefeated army of Corvus deployed in line of battle before the city, as if to taunt them.

Behind the trio of Kerusia members were Murchos of Arkadios, whose city was already lost, and Tyrias of Avennos, or Scrollworm to his friends. Kassander was down at the gates, cursing and cajoling the men working there.

“I do not know what he is thinking,” Dion said, and there was the quake of age in his voice. “He forms up as though we’re about to give him battle.”

“Or invite him in,” Murchos grunted, striding forward to lean on the grey stone of the battlement. He rubbed shards of snow off the stone irritably. “Arrogant bastard. He means to begin the investment right here and now, in the middle of winter.”

“He has never been one to dawdle,” Karnos said. “Ah, the impetuousness of youth.”

“Let him sit there while the snow comes down on him, and see how he likes it,” Tyrias said. “He’s overreaching himself. We can sit here all winter and watch him shiver.”

“Have the messengers gone out?” Eurymedon asked. He was a cadaverous, grey-bearded man with a long red nose. He looked as though he either had a cold, or liked to stave one off with wine.

“They went out last night,” Karnos said with a touch of impatience. “What good they will do us remains to be seen.”

“They’re a fart in the wind,” Murchos said. “Those who are willing to fight are already here within the walls. The rest will wait on events. There will he nothing done now until the spring, perhaps even later.”

“Agreed,” Karnos said. “We’re on our own, brothers, for a few months at least. We put up a good showing through the winter, bleed this boy’s nose for him a little, and the hinterland cities will get over their fright and see that their fate rests here with us as surely as if they were standing on these stones.”

“There are many cities that would like to see Machran humbled,” Eurymedon said with a sniff.

“We’ll see how they feel once this conqueror’s foraging parties start faring afield for supplies,” Karnos told him. “Once their granaries get raided a few times, things will turn around, you mark my words.”

He hoped he sounded more convincing to the others than he did to himself.

All afternoon the army of the conqueror marched and counter-marched. When his challenge was not taken up, Corvus put his host into camp square across the Imperial road, and as the winter afternoon dwindled swiftly into night, so the people of the city looked out to see a second city come to life in a thousand gleaming campfires to the south and east.

Stragglers from the outlying farms hammered on the East Prime Gate that night and pleaded to be admitted to the city, but were denied entry for fear that they were in the pay of the enemy. They were told to try the Mithannon Gate, which was farthest away from Corvus’s camp, and they cursed the men on the walls and held up their children to show the cautious gatekeepers. The Goshen road was cut, a mora of spearmen encamped across it, and their farms were being raided for food and livestock. If they stayed outside the walls they would starve, they shouted up. They were told to wait for daylight, and try the Mithannon, and some kind soul threw a few flatbreads and a skin of wine down to them.

Karnos remained on the walls until well after dark, unwilling to be seen to leave before the city crowds. Eventually the numbers on the walls thinned with the advent of night and the growing chill in the air, and soon there was no-one about the battlements except the armoured men whose job it was to walk them.

Kassander joined him. His face was thinner than it had been, but he still had the slow easy smile which belied’the quick workings of his mind.

“I’ll be bored to death before this thing is done,” Karnos said. “Especially if the Kerusia keeps those two ancient vultures hanging at my heels.”

“Anyone would think they didn’t trust you,” Kassander said.

“They’re afraid. Frightened men feel a need to try and know everything. When they were ignorant they were happier.”

“Then from the sounds in the streets, there are a lot of ignorant people abroad tonight. Can you hear them?”

Karnos nodded. “The Mithannon is teeming like a puddle full of spawn. The incomers from Arkadios and the other cities are intent on seeing the fleshpots while there’s still some flesh to be had.”

“It’s what men do.”

“And a damned fine idea!” Karnos exclaimed. He clapped Kassander on the shoulder. “Join me for dinner. Bring your sister. I’ll have Polio hunt out the good wine. We’ll get drunk and I’ll make an arse of myself – it’ll be like old times.”

Kassander smiled. “I accept your gracious invitation.”

“Good! I’ll ask Murchos and Tyrias too. Murchos can hold his wine and Scrollworm always has a poem or two on hand to help preserve civilization.”

Kassander jerked his chin towards the distant campfires. “You don’t think he’ll try anything tonight?”

“Tonight? That would be rude – he’s only just arrived. No, Kassander, our friends across the way will be busy making plans tonight. They’ve cut two roads into the city, and have three more to go. Tonight Corvus will be talking to his friends as we will be, plotting our destruction. And if they’ve any sense, they’ll be doing it with a drink in their hands too. I’ll have Gersic stay on the walls and report to us later on; he’s too excited to sleep tonight anyway.”

“Aren’t we all?” Kassander drawled.

Karnos’s villa on the slopes of the Kerusiad presented a fortress-like face to the world. Built around the fountain-courtyard, it looked in on itself rather than out at the city, a fact which Kassander had remarked upon more than once.

In summer, Karnos threw parties centred on the fountain, and drunken guests had been known to end up in it. So had their host. But with the advent of winter the long dining tables were laid athwart the second hall, further inside, so that the sound of the falling water was lost, and in its place a fire spat and crackled on a raised stone platform at one end of the room, the smoke sidling out of a series of louvred slats in the roof. The long couches upon which the guests sat or reclined according to their preference were set out facing one another, and slaves brought food to the diners on wooden platters and in earthenware dishes.

It was the way the rich ate, and Karnos was nothing if not rich. He had never forgotten the communal pot-meals of the Mithannon, with a dozen people dipping their hands in the food at once and grabbing it by the fistful in an echo of the mercenary centos. He had sworn never to eat like that again.

The meal was plentiful but plain. Karnos had developed expensive tastes in many things, but food was not one of them. He still relied on the country staples of bread, oil, wine, goat meat and cheese. The wine, however, was Minerian, one of the finest vintages ever trodden. Tyrias exclaimed as he tasted it, and held up his cup in salute. “As sieges go, this one certainly begins with promise,” he said.

“I thought it fitting to mark the day,” Karnos told him. He raised himself up off his elbow and turned to the plainly clad woman seated apart from the men on an upright backless chair of black oak.

“Kassia, are you sure you’re quite comfortable? These couches were made by Argon of Framnos -it’s like lying on a cloud.”

The woman, a handsome dark-eyed lady with Kassander’s broad face, smiled at him. “It would scarcely be proper, Karnos. And besides, I’ve spent enough evenings here to know you will probably end this one on your back.”

The men laughed, Kassander as loud as any. “My sister knows you too well, Karnos,” he said.

“She does.” Karnos raised his cup to her. “Her honesty is as refreshing as her beauty is intoxicating.”

“Your flattery is like the wine,” Kassia shot back. “It needs to be watered down a little.”

“Forgive me, Kassia. When a man is so dazzled by the exterior, he sometimes forgets what treasures sparkle within.”

“And now you’re becoming shopworn, Karnos. I have heard better lines in street-plays.”

“It’s true I have not attended to the classics as much as I should. But it was Eurotas who said that a woman’s face holds no clue to her heart.”

“Ondimion once said that to quote from drama was to sully the air with someone else’s fart.”

“He did? And I thought him a dried up old pedant. Still, you have proved his point.”

“There is a concept called irony – let me explain it to you.”

“Enough!” Kassander cried. “I wish you two would just get married and have it over with.”

“All intelligent conversation ends with marriage, Kassander – you know that,” Karnos said, waving a slave over for more wine. “Once the woman has her feet in the door the talk is all of budgets and babies.”

Kassia looked the slave-girl pouring Karnos’s wine up and down. “It seems to me you have too many wives already, Karnos.”

“I have an enormous heart, lady,” Karnos told her gravely. “It craves affection, but wilts like a flower when confronted by the brutalities of everyday domesticity. I have constructed my household to shield me from such indelicacies.”

The eyes of every man in the room followed the willowy girl with the wine-jug as she padded back into the shadows. Kassia sighed.

“You are a massive boy, Karnos. The woman who married you would be yoked to a lifelong project.”

“And that,” Karnos said triumphantly, “is the very definition of marriage. I thank you, lady, for putting it so pithily.”

Kassander lay back on his couch. “If the building were on fire, you two would stand inside arguing over who had started it.”

“Argument between a man and a woman is lovemaking without the orgasm,” Tyrias said with a raised eyebrow.

“Ah there we are – someone else farts,” Karnos said. “Can’t educated people converse without digging up the bones of dead men?”

“You’re a trivial bunch,” bull-necked Murchos grunted. “The world is on fire around us, Machran besieged, our fates cast to the whims of the gods, and you sit here sipping wine and indulging in sophistry. I’m glad the men on the walls don’t have an ear in this room.”

“Given half a chance they’d be doing the same, though with a little more raw gusto,” Karnos said dismissively. “Tomorrow we’ll stand on the walls and look Phobos in the eye. For tonight” – he poured a scarlet stream of wine onto the exquisite mosaic of the floor – “here’s a libation to gentle Haukos of the pink face, god of hope and men who drink too much. His palerfaced brother can kiss my hairy arse – saving your presence, lady.”

“Your piety is charming,” Kassia said. She stood up. “Gentlemen, I shall take a turn about the courtyard to clear my head.” She lifted her veil from her shoulders and wound it about her hair.

“Ah – the sun goes in!” Tyrias cried. “Sweet Araian, how canst thou veil thy bright face from me?”

“Put your cup to your mouth, Tyrias,” Karnos said, and rose in his turn. “Lady, will you lean on my arm?”

“Is it steady enough to bear me?” Kassia asked.

“I am a rock,” Karnos told her, swaying slightly. “Kassander, I will walk your sister in the shadows by my fountain. I assure you I am of innocent intent.”

Kassander waved a hand. “Take her, take her.”

The cold air struck Karnos like a splash of water as the pair left the firelit room for the blue shadow of the outer courtyard. The fountain splashed white moonlight in its pool and, looking up, Karnos found himself staring full into the pale face of Phobos, leering over the city like a rounded skull. Kassia shivered and drew closer to him. He could feet the warmth of her skin through the thin silken peplos.

“Phobos is full,” she said. “This is his season.”

Karnos put his arm about her and nuzzled the silk-covered fragrant hair at her temple. “Kassia, we are alive and well and there are ten thousand valiant men standing between you and the barbarians beyond the gates.” He bent his head and kissed her through the veil.

For a second her mouth responded to his, coming to life, and then she withdrew, patting his arm.

“I had always heard that men take liberties in wartime,” she said. And then, “It seems like bad luck, with Phobos looking on.”

“Marry me, Kassia,” Karnos murmured, his hands running up and down her arms, sliding the silk across her skin. He could feel the raised stipple of goosebumps on her flesh.

“That old saw? You have laid siege to my virtue for years, Karnos – what makes you think my walls will yield to you now?”

“You love me, as I have loved you all this time. What better moment to finally admit it than now, when the world is liable to come crashing down around us?”

She looked up at him, that strong jawline he loved, the courage in that broadboned face, the moonlight making the veil covering it as translucent as mist.

“And is the world to come crashing down, Karnos?”

He hesitated a moment, his face sombre, his eyes fixed on hers. Then the old buffoon’s grin flashed out. “You think this city can fall while your brother and I defend it? We are the Phobos and Haukos of Machran.”

She set a hand across his mouth. “Don’t talk like that.”

“The gods can laugh too, Kassia,” he said, kissing her cold fingers. “And Antimone loves those who chance everything for the love of another, whether it be a soldier shielding his brother on the battlefield, or a man risking all for the regard of a good woman.”

She lifted her hand and set it on his shoulder, atop the padding which still covered his wound.

“I would have died, had you not come back to me, Karnos. You will not make me love you more by bleeding in some battleline.”

“I know. And that’s why it is you for me, Kassia -you alone. It always has been.”

She walked away from him, a slim upright shadow greyed by the moonlight.

“You play the fool to win the heart of the mob, but I hate to see you do it. And you surround yourself with slaves so you will not be alone – the only people in this world you trust are old Polio and my brother.”

“And you.”

“If you trusted me you would do as I asked.”

He shook his head helplessly. “This is who I am. The way I live -”

“Is a scandal which makes your name a topic in all the wineshops of the city. You find that useful – I detest it.”

Karnos’s shoulders sagged. “I cannot discard my people. They depend on me.”

“They are your slaves, Karnos.”

“You have never been poor, Kassia. You don’t know.”

She whirled on him. “You damned idiot. You’re too frightened to let go of your past for fear of ridicule. How the mob would marvel if Karnos of Machran became respectable!” “It’s all appearances, nothing more.”

“It is not – it goes right to the heart of you. You will always be the child of the Mithannon. You are Speaker of Machran, Karnos, leader of the greatest city west of the sea. You have nothing to prove.”

“Except to you.”

“Except to me,” she said quietly. She stepped close to him again. “My dear, you are a better man than anyone knows.”

“I am a coward and a buffoon.”

“It is not cowardice to feel fear. You do not need to wield a spear to show me your courage. I know your quality, Karnos – I only wish more people did.”

She stood up on her toes and kissed him. “Now go back to my brother. I will ask Polio to escort me home.”

Karnos returned to the warmth of the inner hall, where the men on the couches reclined with their cups to hand, and the slaves stood about the walls like attentive statuary. He held out his own cup without a word, and Grania came forward to fill it. She smiled at him, but his face felt like wood.

“Karnos,” Kassander said, “Tell these fellows about the time you and I won that drinking contest in the Mithannon. They won’t believe me – they have to hear it from your own mouth.”

Karnos blinked. His face came slowly to life. The old grin spread across it.

“It was last summer, as I recall…” he said.