Fornyx shrugged. “There didn’t seem to be much point to it any more.” “You were the one so keen to find yourself part of history, Fornyx. This is it – we are inside it right now. There were times in the Empire I wanted to lie down and die, many times -”
“I told you once I thought it must have been like some black dream of Phobos. I was right.”
“Well, then.”
“At least in the Empire you knew where you were going, Rictus. Here, I look around and wonder what it’s all in aid of. Are we here to make Corvus into a king?”
“I think so.”
“And you’re happy with that? That half-breed boy lording it over all the Macht like a Kufr tyrant?”
“He’s not as bad as you make out.”
“Oh I know – you and he are like family now. I see it, Rictus. He was half out of his mind with joy when Ardashir brought you back from the dead.”
“He is Jason’s son, and it was my fault his father died.”
“That’s not a debt he can hold over you all his life – he never even knew his father.”
“I knew him,” Rictus said firmly. “He was a better man than either of us, and his mother a fine woman.”
“A Kufr.”
“A Kufr, yes – does it matter?”
“Most of the clodhoppers in this army have no idea their beloved general has Kufr blood in his veins. What do you think they’d do if they found out?”
“Nothing. He has luck on his side, Fornyx. Knowing him, it would only add to his mystery.”
Fornyx lowered his head. “All right, all right. I hear myself and I sound like some bitching recruit missing his mother’s tit. This grand scale of war, it’s new to me. There are too many faces missing around the centos, Rictus, men you and I had marched with for years. They fell in windrows up on that wall, and at Afteni.”
“There will be others, Fornyx. The faces have always changed. Doesn’t he have you recruiting?”
Fornyx laughed. “He does. He has given permission for any spearman in the army to try for us. Valerian and Kesero have them lined up outside their tents every morning, young fellows with a hankering to wear that scarlet cloak and call themselves a Dogshead.
“There was a time, Rictus, years ago, when there were mercenaries in every city, and the red cloak was nothing more than a badge of shame. Now, since the return of the Ten Thousand, and with this campaign, it’s something else.”
“An honour,” Rictus said.
“Yes. Who’d have thought it?”
“We’ll take the best of them, and build the Dogsheads up again, Fornyx,” Rictus said, patting his friend’s hand.
Fornyx grinned with a flash of his old vulpine self. “We’re drilling them till they puke.”
TO the rear of the camp which sprawled across the Goshen Road, east of Machran, a fenced-off lumberyard and ironworks had been set up. Within it, Corvus’s secretary Parmenios was lord and master, and he had conscripted every carpenter and blacksmith to be found from Machran to Afteni.
Every day the waggons poured into the enclosure, bearing lumber and scrap iron and charcoal, and the forges sparked and hammered there day and night. Tall structures began to rise up in the middle of them, rising higher- day by day, and new orders went out across the countryside. Herds of cattle were brought in, slaughtered for the beef that the army would eat, and then stripped of their hides.
Soon the reek of a tannery was added to the smoke of the roaring forges, and Corvus set sentries about this strange enterprise of Parmenios’s, most of them Kufr from the Companions. They turned away every curious soldier who ambled over the hill to see what was going on, and the army buzzed with speculation as the last days of the year ran out, and the dark night of midwinter came upon the earth.
Almost two hundred pasangs to the south and east, the city of Avensis rose on its crag to dominate the wide plain between Nemasis and Pontis. A great trading settlement, a hub of the caravan trails which converged before joining the Imperial road, it was also the richest member of the Avennan League after Machran itself.
The men of Avensis had fought at Afteni and fallen by the hundred. Now the Kerusia had decided to wait upon events, so advised by Ulfos the polemarch, who had been at Afteni and seen the prowess of Corvus’s army first hand.
They were meeting in the citadel of the city, an airy colonnaded space that looked out over the fertile plain below. Ulfos stood upon the grey mottled marble, blowing into his hands.
Winter was here; even this far south it had its bite, though there was no snow on the ground as yet. The circle of the Kerusia was a fine place to meet on a summer’s day when the sky was a cerulean blue overhead, but today the place had a bleakness to it that matched the mood of the men taking their seats on the stone semi-circle of benches.
Parnon, the Speaker of Avensis, rose in the classic fashion, himation caught up over one forearm. He extended the other to Ulfos.
“General, you said you had news. Best to present it quickly.” One of the elderly Kerusia behind him sneezed, and there was a muttering, swiftly silenced by a look from the stately Parnon, his white beard jutting like a brush.
Ulfos turned around and beckoned at the antechamber beyond. At his signal, a scrawny, bedraggled figure limped into the Kerusia circle, a filthy shock-haired youth, his cloak in rags and his bare feet bloody.
“This can’t be good,” one of the old men muttered to his neighbour.
“Speak up, lad,” Ulfos said. “Give what you carry to the Speaker here and then tell him what you told me.”
The boy looked the Kerusia over, then reached into his cloak and produced a tattered, rain-spotted scroll. He handed it to Parnon.
“Your honour, that is a message from Karnos of Machran himself, with his seal upon it – and it ain’t broke, I made sure of that.”
Parnon looked down at the scroll as though the boy had placed a turd in his hand. His gaze swept the Kerusia circle, and then he broke the seal, unrolling the paper. His lips moved, and his face grew set and hard.
He looked up at the boy again. “How did you get here?” he asked.
“I ran, your honour.”
“You ran? What – all the way?”
The boy laid an open hand on his chest as though feeling for his own heartbeat. “All the way. I swear. Karnos made me promise to stop for nothing, to talk to no-one on the road.”
“Did he send any other message?”
“He told me to tell you there would be no more messages.”
Parnon nodded. “What’s your name?”
“Fidias, your honour.”
Parnon drew near the boy and set a hand on his shoulder. “You have done a thing of great worth, Fidias. I thank you for it.” He looked at Ulfos, who stood biting his thumbnail, his cloak bundled around his arms.
“Look after this young fellow. He has quality in him. Go now, Fidias – you look as though a bath and a hot meal would not go amiss.”
The boy’s face lit up. “Thank you, your honour!” At a gesture from Ulfos he trotted out of the room, his gait a peculiar limping shuffle, at once sprightly and painful-looking.
Parnon threw the scroll down upon the marble floor of the circle.
“Machran is under close siege. The failure of the first assault has not dented Corvus’s determination. He has the walls surrounded and is building a circumvallation to seal off the city entirely. Karnos tells us that the city can subsist perhaps a month before starvation sets in. He asks that the forces of the League reassemble for a relief attempt as soon as possible.”
He bent and retrieved the scroll again, his eyes dark.
“That’s it then,” one of the Kerusia said, his breath rattling in his throat. “Machran is finished.”
“Without our help,” Parnon said.
“We gave our help already, and saw our men burned outside Afteni,” another said bitterly. “We have done enough. Do you forget that Machran offered us no help fifteen years ago when Pontis attacked?”
Parnon lifted his hand. “Let us not dig up the past. There’s enough here to occupy us right now.”