“The League is too late. They’ve spent the last two years debating what to do about Corvus and have ended up chasing their own tail. There is no army coming to your rescue, Phaestus, so put that out of your mind. He has moved too fast for them. I tell you now in friendship: accept his terms.”
Phaestus’s face was as livid as his hair. “What are the terms?” he said.
“The same as those he has given to a dozen cities in the east. You must give up your independence and join him, accept him as absolute ruler. You must pay a tithe of all your wealth and income to his treasury, and you must send him five hundred spearmen every year to fight in his wars.
“You do these things, and Hal Goshen will not be touched – he will not even enter the city, but will appoint a governor.” Rictus took Phaestus by the arm again, squeezing flesh down upon bone. “I have spoken to him of this. You will be the governor, Phaestus. You have my word on it. And if you prove loyal, then your son Philemos will follow you.”
“He’s establishing dynasties now, is he?” Phaestus snapped. “Petty little kings, to serve under him, the Great King of all. What are we now, Rictus, no better than Kufr? A free man bears his spear and has his voice heard among his peers – that is how the Macht have always lived.”
“Times are changing,” Rictus said, angry now, though not with Phaestus. “I warn you, as a friend, if you do not submit to him, he will take Hal Goshen, and he will destroy it, to make an example. You and your son will die and your womenfolk will be enslaved. Hal Goshen will disappear as Isca did. He will do it, Phaestus, believe me.”
Phaestus looked at him with a mixture of wonder and contempt.
“The great leader of the Ten Thousand, whom I termed my friend. Rictus of Isca, reduced to the errand boy of a barbarian. Run back to him, Rictus, and tell him -”
“For Antimone’s sake, Phaestus, don’t come all high and mighty on me now. We stand in a cold hard world, and honour is something we leave for the stories. You are being offered something priceless here. There can yet be honour in what you accept, and you will save your city a nightmare.”
Phaestus looked like a man in doubt as to whether he was about to sob or shout. He shook his head.
“I never yet truly understood the nature of a mercenary. You redcloaks are a dying breed, and we have made you into a kind of legend. But in the end, all that matters is the weight of the purse you are offered. What you consider honour, I spit upon, Rictus.”
Rictus seized him by the throat, his grey eyes blazing. “Watch what you say, old man. You do not know of what you speak. Have you ever watched a city burn? I have. I have seen my people led off to the slave market, my family butchered. If your pride seeks to consign your own folk to the same fate then I swear to you I will make special effort, when your walls are breached. I will find you and kill you myself, and your precious son. And your last sight on this earth will be that of my men raping your wife and daughters.” He tossed Phaestus aside as a dog will discard a dead rat.
“I came to you out of friendship. I advanced your name with Corvus because I knew you to be a just and honourable man, one who would rule wisely. You love this city, as do I. Its fate is in your hands now.”
Phaestus rubbed his throat, eyes hot and white. “You think I would enjoy setting myself up as a tyrant, the slave of a greater tyrant? You do not know me as well as I thought you did, Rictus. And it seems I do not know you at all.”
“Take his terms to the Kerusia, then – see what the other elders have to say, and put it to the assembly.”
Phaestus’s lip curled. “How did he buy you? Are you to have the pickings of his conquests? Antimone watches us, Rictus. Her black wings beat over our heads all our lives. You and Corvus will answer for what you are doing.”
“I’ll take my chances with the gods. You think on the offer I have made, and ask whether your ideals are worth the death of a city. Corvus expects answer before nightfall. If there is none, the army will assault your walls at dawn.”
Rictus turned on his heel and walked away. Neither Phaestus nor the men on the walls could see the agony written across his face.
Hal Goshen capitulated that evening. A leading elder of the Kerusia, Sarmenian, was proclaimed governor by Corvus. The city accepted a small staff of clerks from the conqueror’s entourage, and agreed to forward provisions to the army for the remainder of the present campaign. Five hundred glum-faced youths wearing their fathers’ armour marched out to join the army on the plain below, and were folded into Demetrius’s command.
Of Phaestus there was no sign. He had relayed the terms of the city’s surrender to the Kerusia, and then disappeared, fleeing Hal Goshen with his family, making for the hills. In his absence, and on Corvus’s insistence, he was declared ostrakr by the Kerusia, before that body disbanded itself. Like Rictus, he no longer had a city to call his own.
It was perhaps the most efficient example of conquest Rictus had ever seen. Not a drop of blood had been spilled, and yet a great city had fallen. And with the fall of Hal Goshen, the way was open to the western heartlands of the Harukush. The cork was out of the bottle.
The army of Corvus shook out into march column next morning, a river of men that blackened the face of the lowlands. The great camp in which they had passed the preceding days was dismantled and abandoned – the leather tents, the field-forges, the barrelled provisions all packed up and loaded onto the waggons of the baggage train. Then the thing began to move. The clouds broke open and yellow sunlight made of their passage an immense, barbed snake slithering west, the endless companies passing by the walls they had not been called upon to breach.
In their midst, Rictus trudged silently at the head of his men, and his black armour reflected not a gleam of the autumn sun. He did not look back.
PART TWO
SEVEN
Karnos ran his fingertip down the spine of the girl from her nape to the silky crease of her buttocks. She was wet there, and she shifted slightly under his touch, her white body arching up like a cat being stroked. His fingertip moved upward again, traced the geometry of her ribs, touched the side-swell of one breast. He brushed her ear-lobe where the dark tresses of shining hair fell over it.
“I don’t care what Polio said, you were worth every obol,” he murmured.
A knock on the door.
The girl smiled as Karnos kissed her delicate ear. His hand ran down her body again, more urgent this time. A flare of base delight as she lifted her rump up in invitation.
Again, the knock – not so discreet this time. A rapping of knuckles.
“Fuck you, Polio!” Karnos shouted. “I was not to be disturbed!” The girl stiffened beside him, and her eyes took on the blank slave-look. Duty had replaced arousal in a moment, though she remained stock still with her white buttocks up in the air.
“Master, my profound apologies, but there is news here that cannot wait. Kassander himself is here, and awaits you in the court.”
“Kassander? Ah, shit,” Karnos said. He rose to his knees in the bed, pushed the slight pale-skinned girl to one side and reached for his chiton.
“Get him some wine – have Grania bring it.”
“I have already done so, master. He demands to see you at once.”
“Of course he does,” Karnos snarled, pulling his chiton over his head. To the girl he said, “Get out and clean yourself up.” She scampered naked from the bed, leaving by a side-door. The hanging that half-hid it was still twitching as Karnos rose barefoot and said, “Tell him I’m on my way. And it had better be important – Phobos’s arse, it’s the middle of the night.”