Corvus by Paul Kearney Read Free Book Online

things.”
    “Ach -” Half
angry, Rictus turned away. He hated talk of omens and portents. His life had
leached all sense of the numinous out of him. He believed in what his hands
could do and his eyes could see, and though he invoked the gods in prayer and
thanks it was as much a reflex as anything else, a grace-note. He did not
believe -
    “Fornyx - look
there, on the ridge to the south. Do you see it?” He crunched out of the last
dimming glow of the firelight and stared across the fields of snow to the dark
woods of the hills above, and beyond them, the high ridge which marked the
entrance to the valley, maybe six pasangs away. There in the moon-drenched dark
was the light of a single fire, as steady as a candle-flame in a glass lantern.
    “I see it.” Fornyx
joined him, shivering. “It’s a campfire, up on the side of the ridge. They must
be deep in the drifts up there, whoever they are.”
    “Valerian? Kesero?”
    “Too close. They
know this valley - for the sake of six pasangs they’d have marched through the
night, knowing a warm bed was here waiting for them. Whoever is up there,
Rictus, does not know Andunnon.”
     
    Before the sun came up, Rictus and
Fornyx were back in the farmhouse. The rest of the family rose to gape as the
two men methodically armed one another, hauling on the black cuirasses which
were Antimone’s ageless gift to the Macht, belting on their swords and
strapping bronze greaves to their shins. The girls clustered around their
mother, round-eyed, and Eunion, after a moment’s shock, unearthed his own
hunting spear. Rictus saw this and held up a hand.
    “No, no my friend.
You stay here.”
    “What is it,
Rictus?” Aise asked calmly, her arms around Ona’s shoulders, her face white and
fixed as a statue’s.
    “It may be
nothing. Fornyx, tie up that damned loose strap at my back, will you?” The two
men checked one another over, tugging on straps, tightening buckles.
    “Shields?” Fornyx
asked.
    “And helms. We may
as well look the part.”
    Ona began to cry.
    Within minutes,
the Rictus and Fornyx of the farm had vanished. In their place now stood two
heavily armoured mercenaries, their eyes mere glitters in the T-slits of their
helms, the scarlet cloaks of their calling on their shoulders, shields on their
left arms, spears at their right. They had become men of Phobos, the god of
fear.
    “Stay in the house,”
Rictus told the others. “If we’re not back by mid-morning, pack some things and
head for the north, up in the hills. Make for the old shepherd’s bothy on the
high pastures. This may all be for nothing, so do no thing that cannot be
undone.” He caught Eunion’s eye. “Keep them safe, you and Garin, until we
return.”
    Eunion nodded,
swallowing convulsively.
    Rictus stared at
Aise, then Rian, a blank mask, unknowable. The face of death. Without another
word, he ducked out of the house, and Fornyx followed him.
     
    They could smell woodsmoke on the
still air, the only smell in the white snow-girt morning. Without speaking,
they trudged uphill into the woods, shields slung on their backs, spears at the
trail.
    After two pasangs
they doffed their helms and halted to listen. The snow had stilled the woods,
the birds, the river itself. The trees were silent and listening with them. A
cock pheasant creaked and coughed away to the west, the sound carrying like a
shout.
    And then the other
sound. Men’s voices, and something large making its way through the snow and
the brush above them.
    “I count four, or
could be five,” Fornyx said.
    “Five,” Rictus
said. “And at least two horses.”
    “We should have
javelins, or a bow.”
    Rictus smiled with
sour humour. “We wear the red cloak and the Curse of God. They’ll piss down
their legs at the very sight of us. Helm up, brother, and guard my left - you’re
quicker on your feet than I am.”
    “Every time you
say that. Just once, couldn’t I —”
    “Fornyx.” This
last came out of Rictus’s mouth in