Fornyx looked mystified, but Rictus understood perfectly.
“Let me see, then.”
The armour came up off its stand, light as leather, harder than any stone. Rictus opened the two halves of it and Corvus slid his arm into the gap. He was sweating.
The clasps snapped shut, and then the wings came down and clicked into place. Corvus stood tugging at the neck of the cuirass. “It’s too big,” he rasped.
“Wait a second,” Rictus said, remembering the first time he had donned his own cuirass, on the Kunaksa hills. This boy’s father had told him to put it on.
Corvus’s face changed. “It’s shifting. I can feel it.”
“It will mould to your body. It only takes a second.”
Something lit up in Corvus’s strange eyes. “It’s done, Rictus. It fits as though it was made for me.”
Fornyx clapped the shoulder of the youth’s black armour. “There you go; a Cursebearer at last. What a vision we are, three men in black and scarlet.”
Corvus wiped his eyes. “Thank you, Rictus. I have been travelling a long time, to feel I have the right to this. I was never sure -”
“You are Macht. It was made for you to wear,” Rictus said. “After tomorrow you will be our king. Be worthy of the armour and the crown.”
Corvus looked up at him. “These last weeks, since we took Machran, I have been receiving delegations from every city worthy of the name. Men that reviled me now put their signatures to edicts congratulating me.”
“They’ve had enough of war for a season,” Fornyx said. “They’re ready for something new, anything so long as the fighting ends.”
“I trust men like Kassander more – men who fought me openly, who kept trying until the very end. Men like that are worth something.”
Rictus thought of Phaestus, of Karnos. If they were alive right now he would kill them himself. And yet he had a daughter who loved Phaestus’s son.
“I’ve heard it said that only Antimone truly knows the hearts of men,” Rictus said, “and that is why she weeps.”
“When I turned up at your farm that morning, Rictus, I never thought that it would lead to where it did,” Corvus said. “I wish it could have been different.”
“It’s been a long road,” Rictus said. “None of us know what’s around the next bend in it.”
He thought of Jason, this boy’s father. Eunion, that good and gentle man. And Aise, whose life had ended in torment. All because of him.
Their lives, their deaths; they would be with him always in a blackened corner of his soul.
“We just keep marching,” Rictus said softly. “That is what we do. We carry the Curse of God on our backs and go into the dark together.”
“There are times when I am not sure what it means, to be one of the Macht,” Corvus said. “And I know I do not yet know what it means to be a king.
“Tomorrow the leaders of the Macht will all be there to see the circlet put on my head, men from fifty cities, a crowd of thousands. But what that means, for me and them, I am not yet sure.”
Rictus looked down at him, this terrible, earnest young man with the strange eyes.
“It will come to you,” he said. “In time.”
EPILOGUE
The snows were gone from the deep glens, though the mountains still blazed white on the blue horizon. They waded across the river, feeling the bite of the water, the ice not quite done quickening in it.
Rictus walked through the ruined doorway of what had once been his home. The walls still stood, blackened and broken, stone upon stone. He picked his way through the wreckage and knelt in front of the beehive hearth, in which Aise had baked the bread. The hearthstone was still in place. There were blades of grass rising through the joins between the flags.
He lifted aside a beam and it crumbled to charcoal in his hands. Broken pottery crunched underfoot. He startled a blackbird, which launched itself from the ruin with an indignant clatter.
He passed through what had been the side door, to the space where he and Aise had slept.
And knelt there, remembering. Something glittered in the sunlight, and he stooped and rummaged through the ashes. A piece of aquamarine blue glass, a shard of memory. He clenched it in his palm and bent over with the sudden pain of the pictures it conjured up in his mind.
At last he rose again, breathing hard, his eyes burning. He looked up, and there were swallows in the air above him, carving gleeful arcs out of the sky. They were dropping mud as they swooped, building in the crevices of the walls.
He left the house, walked out to join the others in the sunshine and the placid glimmer of the river. Above him the woods hung on the slopes of the glen, new leaves unfurling green-tipped on the beech and oak and birch thickets. The place was alive with birdsong.
Rian took his hand. He lifted Ona up into his embrace, and the child put her arms about his neck.
He looked at Fornyx and Philemos.
“We’d best get started, I suppose. There’s a lot to be done.”
GLOSSARY
Aichme: A spearhead, generally of iron but sometimes of bronze. The spearhead is usually some nine inches in length, of which four inches is the blade.
Anande: The Kefren name for the moon known as Haukos; in their tongue it means patience.
Antimone: The veiled goddess, protector and guardian of the Macht. Exiled from heaven for creating the black Macht armour, she is the goddess of pity, of mercy, and of sadness. Her Veil separates life from death.
Antimone’s Gift / the Curse of God: Black, indestructible armour given to the Macht in the legendary past by the goddess Antimone, created by the smith-god Gaenion himself out of woven darkness. There are some five to six thousand sets of this armour extant upon the world of Kuf, and the Macht will fight to the death to prevent it falling into the hands of the Kufr.
Apsos: God of beasts. A shadowy figure in the Macht pantheon, reputed to be a goat-like creature who will avenge the ill-treatment of animals and sometimes transform men into beasts in revenge or as a jest.
Araian: The Sun, wife of Gaenion the smith.
Archon: A Kufr term for a military officer of high rank, a general of a wing or corps.
Beclass="underline" The all-powerful and creative god who looks over the Kufr world. Roughly equivalent to the Macht “God,” but gentler and less vindictive.
Carnifex: An archaic term for an army surgeon, or any would-be healer who travels with armed men. Its ancient meaning denotes a butcher or executioner; an example of Macht humour.
Centon: Traditionally the number of men who could be fed from a single centos, the large black cauldron mercenaries eat from. It approximates one hundred men.
Chamlys: A short cloak, commonly reaching to mid-thigh.
Chiton: A short-sleeved tunic open at the throat, reaching to the knee. The female version is longer.
Drepana: A heavy, curved slashing sword associated with the lowland peoples of the Macht.
Firghe: The Kefren name for the moon Phobos, meaning anger.
Gaenion: The smith-god of the Macht, who created the Curse of God for Antimone, who wrought the stars and much of the fabric of Kuf itself. He is married to Araian, the sun, and his forges are reputed to be upon the summit of Mount Panjaeos in the Harukush.
Goatherder tribes: Less sophisticated Macht who do not dwell in cities but are nomadic hill-people. They possess no written language, but have a large hoard of oral culture.
Goatmen: Degenerate savages who belong to no city, and live in a state of brutish filth. They wear goatskins by and large, and keep to the higher mountain-country of the Macht lands.
Helclass="underline" The far side of the Veil. Not hell in the Christian sense, but an afterlife whose nature is wholly unknowable.
Himation: A long, fine cloak, sometimes worn ceremonially.
Honai: Traditionally, a Kefren word meaning finest. It is a term used to describe the best troops in a King’s entourage, not only his bodyguards, but the well-drilled professional soldiers of the Great King’s household guard.