‘Who were they? Name them to me.’
‘I will not. They were fools, and I slapped them down. There was no harm done. We are not going to start hanging men on the eve of battle, Corvus, no matter who they were pawing.’
‘You do not know who she is, Rictus. The girl, I have discovered, is a daughter of the Great King himself, a royal princess.’
Rictus snorted. ‘What?’
‘It’s true. I have had some of the story from her, some from the Kufr wounded we brought back to camp in the wake of the fight. Her name is Roshana. Her brother Rakhsar died on the field, killed by his elder brother, the heir to the throne.’
‘You mean to tell me — ’
‘They were all there together, the elder pursuing his younger siblings — or half-siblings. I had the Great King’s eldest son on the point of my lance. I could have killed him, Rictus, but I was distracted.’
‘The girl.’
‘The girl’ — Corvus shrugged — ‘and the small matter of a thousand enemy cavalry. But yes; her face is enough to distract any man. It is the stuff of tall tales, is it not?’
‘Phobos! And the heir to it all got away, you say.’
‘Possibly. It was the strangest thing. Only Ardashir and I, and now you, know the whole truth of it.’
‘This girl, also, is the strangest thing…’ Rictus tailed off.
‘You’re not as incisive as you think, brother. I have been thinking over some of your ideas for a long time now. It seems to me we have been given a sign, a gift if you like.
‘If all goes well — if this time tomorrow we are alive and whole and victorious, then I intend to make this royal princess, Roshana, my wife.’
Rictus walked out of the camp that night, clad in the Curse of God and carrying a drepana, but with the rest of his panoply left with the baggage. He strode out under the stars, leaving behind the milling assemblies of the army and the startled sentries, and trudged up to a low knoll some two pasangs from the camp lines, where a trio of lonely olive trees huddled. There was stone in the grass at his feet, and he realised the mound was something man-made and ancient, its history buried under more history, millennia of stories laid down in layers, forgotten now. Perhaps it had been a tomb, perhaps a place to speak and be heard. Now it was simply somewhere he could sit and look out in the night at the turning darkness of the world.
There was a stifled curse in the dark, the click of hobnails on stone, and then a wineskin was tossed out of the gloom and struck him on the chest.
‘You’re getting to be an eccentric old bastard, you know that?’
Fornyx’s voice.
‘And you’re blind as a mole, if you stub your toes in starlight as bright as this.’
Fornyx sat down beside him in the dry grass. He wore full armour save for his helm, and swore at the clasps as he undid them. Then he tossed his black cuirass to one side as if it were a thing of little account, and pulled the cork from the skin.
They shared the wine, a swallow each, back and forth as if it were some wordless game.
‘I wish Valerian was here,’ Fornyx said.
‘Lord of Irunshahr. The boy made it a long way. I wish him well.’
‘May he find himself a bow-legged woman who bears him many sons,’ Fornyx said solemnly. He took another snort, and wiped his mouth.
‘The men will miss you out there tomorrow,’ he said, quietly.
‘I’ll be out there. I’ll just be behind instead of in front.’
‘Kesero is useless. Fifteen years in the scarlet and he hasn’t the sense of a goose.’
‘But you tell him to stand somewhere, and he will stay there. That’s why he was banner-bearer all those years.’
‘Too stupid to retreat,’ Fornyx agreed.
‘Keep him in the centre; he’ll do well there. And watch your left. Don’t come unattached from Demetrius’s flank. Many of the latest draft are green as grass. If they see a gap, they’ll go to pieces.’ Rictus paused. Fornyx was looking at him, smiling into his beard.
‘There’s an old saying about grandmothers and eggs, Rictus. Let me see if I can remember how it goes…’
‘Fuck off, you shortarsed little shit. Give me the wine.’
They drank. Rictus unbuckled his own cuirass and hauled it off. He laid the black plates of it on his knee and wiped a palm across them.
‘You ever notice, Fornyx, how even the dust will barely stick to a black cuirass?’
‘I know. Water, too. Once Corvus becomes king of the world he should get old Parmenios to take a look into the things, see if we can’t hammer out a few more.’
‘I don’t think we ever will. Whoever made them, their art is lost for good.’
‘I could never wear a bronze cuirass again. The weight! I’ve heard old men say that there’s a forgotten place in the deep Harukush where they mined the stuff that makes the Curse of God, but that it was lost in some disaster. Fire, flood and earthquake — the usual tales.’
Rictus set Antimone’s Gift aside.
‘What won you over?’
Fornyx paused with the neck of the wineskin on his lips. ‘Eh?’
‘Corvus. How did he do it? There was a time not so long ago when you were the most awkward bugger at the table, but now he has you convinced. Did his genius dazzle you at last, Fornyx?’
‘Genius? Genius, my arse.’ Fornyx drank deep. The wine ran black from the corner of his mouth.
‘He said he would take Machran, and he did. He said he would be King, and he was. Now he says he will be Great King, and I want to be there to see that day, Rictus. He has us all now, caught in the fire of his dreams. We can no more turn away than the moth can leave the flame. For some it is power, riches — the chance to be something approaching a king. For others like me, well — ’ he grinned. ‘I just want to see how it turns out.’
‘You don’t argue with him any more, or question his strategy.’
‘No. Because he has proved himself. And also, we all have you to do that for us. He will take it from you, Rictus, and if it were one of the other marshals, I believe he would get that look on his face — you know the look — and blood would flow. But you, he still listens to.’
‘I can’t be the conscience of an entire army, Fornyx.’
‘You’re doing all right so far. And he knows it — that’s why he has taken you out of the front line. He needs you, Rictus, and we all know it. If there was no man around rash enough to speak the truth to his face, what would he become?’
‘Perhaps that’s the reason the ancient Macht got rid of kings,’ Rictus said wryly.
‘Well we’re stuck with one now, may Antimone watch over him. We’ll need that little bastard and his hare- brained plans tomorrow, to help even up the odds.’
They drank some more. The skin was half-empty, but the wine had not gone to their heads. The stars were a little brighter, perhaps, but that was all.
‘Did you see the girl he brought back to camp?’
‘The little Kufr with the shaven head? Half the army is talking about her. A little beauty, they say.’
‘She reminds me of Aise.’
Fornyx was shocked into silence for a moment. Rictus’s wife had been dead these seven years, and he rarely spoke her name.
‘When she was young. She had the same pale face, that fine-boned strength to her. The black hair. Do you remember, Fornyx?’
‘I remember,’ his friend said heavily.
‘I’ve been thinking on her lately. The early years when we were all together: you, me, Aise and poor Eunion. Building that house stone by stone at the river. The pictures are in my mind tonight, as clear as if it were yesterday, and not a quarter of a century ago.’
‘Rictus — ’
