“Philemos, you were born to be more than phalanx-fodder, as was I. If you are to be a man, you must learn from me. A man cannot always follow the dictates of what he perceives to be his honour -sometimes that will lead him to his ruin.”
“Father, you could have been ruler of Hal Goshen under Corvus – it was your honour that has brought you here.”
Phaestus smiled. “Well said. I shall make a rhetorician of you yet.” He turned away, and the smile curdled on his face.
It was not honour. It was ambition, and outrage, and bloody-minded hatred. To be offered something like that, like a coin dropped on a beggar’s plate -and by Rictus, who despite everything was nothing more than a brute mercenary.
It could not be borne. It was the manner in which the offer had been made, as much as the offer itself.
I am a better man than Rictus, he thought. And I will prove it.
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.