“Fornyx,” Rictus said, panting. “Keep the push on – don’t let them reform.”
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine. Go on. I’ll catch up.”
Fornyx led the Dogsheads up the square with a roar that belied his wiry frame. The Machran defenders were in rout, and the Dogsheads broke formation to take up the pursuit. Behind them came hundreds more of Teresian’s and Demetrius’s centons, and looking back Rictus saw horsemen in the gateway now as well, the lead elements of Corvus’s cavalry.
He bent over and vomited onto the bloodsoaked stones, dropped his shield, and dragged off his helm, gasping for air.
Then he staggered over to the dying Cursebearer lying amid a mound of his own men, the spearshaft protruding obscenely from above his collarbone and his blood running down the black armour in a steady stream.
He knelt down and pulled off the man’s helm.
Karnos looked up at him with wide, white eyes, and after a moment, he smiled, blood oozing from his lips.
“Rictus of Isca? Am I dead already?”
“Karnos.” The round face was gone. Karnos had become a different man, familiar and changed all the same. A gaunt warrior who wore Antimone’s Gift as though he had been born for it.
“You will be soon,” Rictus said. He took the dying man’s hand, feeling an indefinable sadness. He had not thought much of the silver-tongued slave dealer who had once tried to employ him, but the man who lay before him now was someone else. “You fought well. I did not think you had it in you.”
“Rictus?” Karnos’s white face twisted into a picture of astonishment. The blood gurgled in his throat. He gripped Rictus’s hand until the bones creaked. “But you died, weeks ago. On the wall.” “Almost. I made it off the wall the quickest way I could.”
Karnos shut his eyes a moment. “Oh, Phobos, you filthy swine.”
“What is it, Karnos?”
“Listen to me.” Karnos coughed up a gout of blood, choking on it, and Rictus wiped it from his mouth, leaned close to catch the man’s failing breath.
“I have your children in my house. Your children, you understand? I am sorry, Rictus. I sought to use them against you. They are on the Kerusiad Hill.”
“My children?”
“Forgive me. Phaestus and I, we thought -”
Rictus’s face was a white, bloodstained mask of shock and fury. “My family?”
“You know the house – the big villa with earth-coloured walls. They are there, safe.”
“My wife!” Rictus said, his voice rising. “What about my wife? What have you done, Karnos?”
But Karnos was already dead.
The panic spread across the city in waves. Broken remnants of the Arkadians and Avennans were already streaming off. the walls, heading for the Mithannon, whist the men of Machran fought on hopelessly.
Their polemarch, Kassander, rallied a dozen centons below the towering dome of the Empirion itself, and led them back into the fray, but Corvus’s forces were already in command of most of the Avennan Quarter, and the siege towers had broken the defence to the east, in the Goshen.
Fully half the circuit of the walls had been taken by the enemy or abandoned by the defenders, and more of the besiegers were pouring through the gates by the minute, a tide “that seemed unstoppable. The citizens of Machran began flooding north and west, away from the fighting. Tens of thousands of people were on the move in the streets, in places packed as tight as the ranks of a fighting phalanx.
“The city has fallen,” Sertorius said. “That’s it, lads, I’m telling you: The whole thing is about to come crashing around our ears. Bosca, for Phobos’s sake, clear a way there – Adurnos, help him.”
They were going against the flow, a small determined fistful of men battling against the current of the panicked crowds, clearing a path for themselves with the threat of their drawn swords, and sometimes with the flat of them slapped into someone’s face. The streets leading into the Goshen Quarter were a madhouse of screaming women and shrieking children, bloodied men fleeing the lost battle of the walls.
Above them, Kerusiad Hill rose on its crag like a vision beyond the smoke and roar of the streets below. They were under two pasangs from Druze’s siege-towers.
“Left here,” Sertorius shouted above the din. “Up this way.” They turned off the main thoroughfare, and the crowd was less packed. Men and women were trundling handcarts down from the hill piled high with their belongings and wailing children too small to keep their feet. Sertorius led his men against the current of the exodus, feeling the hill rise under him.
“It’s not far now,” he said. “Phaestus is in that house on the right, up ahead, the one with the yellow roof tiles. We do him first.”
“And that little shit of a son he has,” Bosca snarled. “I want some fun with him before he goes!”
“As long as we make it quick,” Sertorius said. “Remember, the real prize is at the top of the hill. And don’t forget the slaves – I want them too. They’re gold on the hoof, brothers.”
The men around him growled in anticipation.
The rented villa had stout doors of iron-studded wood, locked shut against the chaos of the streets. At a nod from Sertorius, Bosca and Adurnos swooped on a family pushing a handcart, tossed the children off the vehicle, and when the man protested beat him down, leaving him a broken bundle in the street with his family shrieking around him.
“Now, lads, after three,” Sertorius said.
They crashed the handcart into the heavy doors, running it up with a roar, and the bolt wrenched free of the wood. They whooped happily, and poured inside with drawn swords. A dark-haired man who was in their path stood frozen and was cut down with barely a pause.
“Phaestus! Phaestus, you cheating bastard. It is I, Sertorius, come for you!”
They careered through the house like mad children, kicking over furniture, pawing through drawers and cupboards. Not a lamp was lit in the place; aside from the dead man near the entrance the place seemed deserted.
It was Adurnos who found him, and shouted for the others to join him. They crowded at the door of the room, breathing heavily.
“The fucker got away from us boss,” Adurnos said moodily.
Phaestus lay like a wax image on the bed, a blanket drawn up to his chin. His face was white as old ivory. Sertorius leaned over and touched it.
“Cold as a fish. Antimone got to him before we did.”
“Let’s torch the place,” Bosca suggested. “There’s not so much as a mouse in it – they’ve cleared out long since.”
“No, no burning,” Sertorius said. “I’ll not give this son of a bitch a pyre. Let him lie here and rot.” He straightened.
“Let’s get us that cart again, lads, Karnos’s house is just up the hill a ways, and I don’t mean to be done out of my fun a second time.”
They turned and ran back through the empty house like a dark, flapping gale, a curse spoken by Phobos and given form.
Rictus was exhausted, but kept going out of pure will. He had thrown away his shield and helm, picked up a discarded drepana, and was fighting his way east through the streets like a salmon wriggling upstream. In his wake followed Valerian. There had been other Dogsheads with him, but they had become separated.
Fornyx was still leading the bulk of the men in the destruction of Kassander’s last stand.
There was no other kind of ordered resistance left in the city, but the entire population of Machran appeared to be on the streets, most people trying to make their way north, to the districts Corvus’s army had not yet captured. They had no plan in their minds beyond that. Half-crazed by hunger and fear, they had no kind of plan at all.
The red cloak and the Curse of God cleared a path for Rictus, people recoiling from him as he strode along. Or perhaps it was the look on his face. He no longer cared if Machran stood or fell, if it went up in flames and was burnt to ash. He knew only that he had to find out whether Karnos had been speaking the truth. If his family were in this city he would tear the place down brick by brick to find them. He would have struck down Phobos himself if the god had stood in his path.