Corvus by Paul Kearney

to skewer this flute-playing boy and drown him in his own
blood. He had to buy time.
    “Stack arms,” he
said to Fornyx.
    “My arse,” his
friend snapped, wide-eyed with fury behind his helm.
    “Do it, Fornyx.”
    The two men
stabbed their spears butt-first into the ground so that the sauroters buried
themselves. His right hand free, Rictus took off his helm, and the cold air bit
his face.
    “You have us at a
disadvantage,” he said to the flute-player. “And you have my name right. I am
Rictus, and this here is my second, Fornyx.” He looked about himself, heart
thundering, face stiff with the effort to keep it impassive. But he managed a
little flourish of contempt.
    “You think you
brought enough men?”
    The youth reached
up and threw back his hood. He was smiling. He walked down the slope as though
descending the steps of a palace, until he stood so close that Rictus could
have reached out and set both hands about his throat.
    His eyes were
weirdly pale, a shade of violet that did not seem quite natural. He had black
hair past his shoulders, as gleaming black as a raven’s wing, and his white
skin had a sheen of gold about it.
    He was as beautiful
as a maiden, but had the scar of an old sword-stroke at the corner of his left
eye.
    “I have wanted to
meet you for a long time, Rictus of Isca,” he said.
    “I am called
Corvus.”
     

FOUR
    MEN
OF PHOBOS
    IT IS A FINE
LINE , sometimes, Rictus thought, between guest and hostage. The key to it
is left unspoken, buried in courtesies. The fist inside the glove.
    They were escorted
back down into the glen of Andunnon as though the men about them were for their
own protection, and the strange youth who called himself Corvus walked beside
them, as though he were a friend of theirs. Some of his companions relieved
Rictus and Fornyx of the weight of their shields, helms and spears, but they
were allowed to keep their swords. Courtesy.
    “This is a
beautiful place,” Corvus said, as the woods thinned and the column came out
into the open sunlight of the valley bottom. “A man could be happy here. I do
not wonder that you wanted to keep your home a secret, Rictus.”
    “I am curious as
to how I failed in that regard,”
    Rictus said tartly.
    The youth nodded. “There’s
a lot to be said between us. I hope you will perhaps count me a guest here and
not an intruder. It is no part of my intent to harm you or your family.”
    “If talk were
commerce, all men would be rich,” Fornyx said, and spat into the snow. “A guest
does not bring a full centon of warriors to test his host’s hospitality.”
    “If I had brought
any fewer, you would both have fought me,” Corvus said, holding up one
long-fingered hand as though to catch something. “I had to take away hope of
winning to make you listen to what I have to say.”
    “They’re a patient
bunch,” Rictus said, gesturing to the ranks of soldiers who marched on all
sides. “How long were they buried in the woods?”
    “They are my
Igranians,” Corvus said. “From Igranon in the high eastern Harukush. It’s so
cold up there they think this is a mild spring in comparison. They are my light
troops, my foot cavalry. Druze is their chieftain, and one of my marshals.”
    “I hope they
brought their own bread,” Fornyx drawled. His tone was mocking, insolent, but
his face was white and drawn as a fever-victim, and his fist was knotted on the
hilt of his sword.
    “In this valley,
my hounds stay on the leash,” Corvus said gravely.
     
    They made good time. As the column
approached the farm, they saw that Aise and Eunion had not yet left, Garin and
Styra were in the front yard packing up bedrolls. The two shrank together as
the long line of armed men came into view and began splashing across the shallows
of the river. Then they bolted like hares, sprinting for the north. Corvus
swept an arm forward and at once the dark smiling fellow Druze led off some two
dozen of his men at a run. They skeined out into two lines