“Fromir. And little Sycanus of Gost. I thought it was you.”
“I think they have us, chief,” Sycanus said.
“It doesn’t look good,” Rictus admitted. “I thank you, brothers, for standing by me.”
“It seemed like the right thing,” Fromir, a bulky man with thick, curly hair said.
“Mention it if you get out of this – you’re due a bonus.”
“Fuck the bonus,” Sycanus said with a mirthless grin.
“Hand over the armour!” the enemy centurion shouted. He raised a hand.
Rictus looked up and saw the men at the top of the overlooking tower cock back their arms with javelins in their grasp. Even now, the defenders were wary of coming to grips with three men who wore the scarlet.
“Alive or dead, I’m having it, old man – your choice.”
My choice? I suppose it is, Rictus thought.
He looked over the wall at Corvus’s retreating, broken centons as they straggled back over the plain to their camp; hundreds, thousands of them.
He climbed up onto a merlon and balanced there, a welter of memories pelting through his mind. Aise, Rian and Ona – the sweetest joys he had known in his life.
Fornyx and Jason. His brothers.
The Ten Thousand singing the Paean, marching in time to face their deaths.
Rictus looked at the centurion, and smiled. “I gained this armour at a place called Kunaksa,” he said. “If you want it, you can come and take it.”
He stepped out into empty space, and plunged from the tall stone wall of Machran.
TWENTY
“Dead?” Corvus repeated. “He cannot be dead.”
Fornyx stood in front of him, his blade-scarred helm in one arm, his tattered scarlet cloak folded over the other, and the Curse of God slathered with blood across his chest. He looked like some sculptor’s ideal of war incarnate.
“The last ladder broke before he made it down off the wall. If he had been captured we would have heard of it by now.” He bowed his head a second. His voice was raw. “Rictus is gone.”
Corvus sank back onto the map-table, eyes staring at nothing. He had a bloodied linen clout tied about his upper thigh, and another on his forearm.
“Druze, what do you say?”‘ he asked.
Druze stood like a whey-faced ghost, his arm strapped to his side. “Fornyx got me down, or I would be dead too. We were among the last. When we took to the ladders Rictus was still fighting with maybe a dozen of his men, covering the retreat. None of them made it.”
Corvus rubbed his forehead. Fornyx glared at him.
“When the Dogsheads took your contract – if you want to call it that – we numbered over four hundred and sixty, Corvus. Today, rather less than a hundred of us are still standing. And Rictus is dead. Did you mean to destroy us, or was it something you had just not factored into your deliberations? I’m curious. Tell me.”
Corvus looked up. In the tent about him all the senior officers of the army were gathered, as sombre as men at a funeral. He looked their faces over one by one.
“Where is Ardashir?” he asked.
“He has not been found,” Druze said heavily. “But there are very many bodies out there at the foot of the walls.”
“Phobos,” Corvus whispered. His eyes filled with tears. He turned from them and leaned on the map table, the dressing on his forearm darkening as fresh blood stained it.
One-eyed Demetrius stepped forward. “It was a close thing, Corvus – the diversion worked. When they saw your banner at the South Prime they rushed every man they could there – had we possessed more ladders, I think Rictus’s assault would have succeeded.”
“It was meant to succeed,” Corvus said with a strangled groan. “Fornyx, despite what you think of me, I do not send men out to die for nothing.”
“These things happen in war,” Teresian spoke up. “Now we know better what we face.”
“The towers,” Druze said, “And the machines they have upon them. They crucified us on those walls.”
“Parmenios,” Corvus said. He wiped his eyes. “Do you have numbers yet?”
The fat little secretary came forward with a waxed slate and a stylus. Despite his paunch, he was powerfully built about the shoulders, and he had the hands of a man who built things. He tapped the slate. “These are provisional – such is the confusion -”
“Tell me!”
“Just under a thousand men, dead or so badly wounded as to be lost to the army for good. The Dogsheads and Igranians suffered worst, though Demetrius’s conscripts also took heavy casualties.”
“They fought well,” Corvus said, collecting himself. “Demetrius, I congratulate you. Your command is a thing to be proud of.”
Demetrius bowed his head slightly in acknowledgement, his single eye shining.
Corvus approached Druze. “Forgive me, brother,” he said brokenly.
Druze smiled, that quicksilver darkness. “There is nothing to forgive. This is the first time I have known defeat under you. It is Phobos’s doing – he means to humble us.”
Corvus leaned over the table again. He raised his voice slightly.
“I cannot afford to lose the services, or the example, of men such as you, Fornyx. Since you and Rictus joined this army I have given you the hardest post of all; but it was the post of honour. I thought there was a possibility we could end this thing with one quick assault. It had to be tried, and I knew that I wanted my best at the tip of the spearhead. I miscalculated, and you paid for it with your blood.”
He turned around. His eyes were bright and rimmed with red, and the high angular bones of his face seemed more pronounced than ever in the shadow of the tent. “You all paid for it, and I will not forget that. We were beaten last night, but we are not defeated. We will prevail against Machran -the city has shown that she is a worthy adversary.”
He laid a hand on Fornyx’s chest, and wiped some of the dried blood off the black cuirass. “I made you pay too high a price. Rictus was a man none of us could afford to lose.” He smiled, and his eyes welled up again.
“Fornyx, I loved him too, more than you know.”
Fornyx’s face remained hard as flint and his voice when he spoke was harsh as that of a crow.
“I wish to send a green branch to Machran to ask for his body. His wife would wish it of me.”
“Do as you think best.”
“It is an admission of defeat, to ask for the dead,” Demetrius rumbled.
“Then it is stating no more than the obvious,” Corvus replied. “The men of Machran fought well last night – let them have their triumph. If they now believe themselves invincible, then by Phobos we will use that against them.”
“They have one more Cursebearer on the walls of the city today,” Fornyx spat. “Think on that, if you will.”
A thin veil of sleet came slanting down out of a blank sky as winter settled itself comfortably about the lowlands surrounding Machran. On the horizons the mountains were white, their peaks lost in cloud. It was a day when a man prefers to set his back to the door and stare into a good fire.
Karnos stood in the arched shadow of the South Prime Gate as the huge oak and bronze doors were swung back by a dozen armoured men. Behind him, a centon in full panoply stood in ranks, most with the sigil of Machran on their shields, but Avennos and Arkadios were represented too. Murchos of Arkadios stood beside him wrapped in a piebald goatskin cloak against the cold. He wiped his nose on the fur and stamped his feet to keep the blood flowing.
“I don’t like this – he’s a tricky bastard, Corvus.”
“It’s three men, Murchos – what can three men do, even if they wear the scarlet? We have a hundred here – and the rest of the bugger’s army is back in camp nearly two pasangs away. Unless they grow wings and fly, they’re not going to interfere. And besides, I want to know what the great Rictus has to say.”
“Nothing good. It was he who brought the surrender terms to Hal Goshen, don’t forget.”
“After last night, I hardly think they’re here to demand that. Relax yourself, Murchos – you’re worse than Kassander.”