the old man heal the Macht marshal. And because the youngster was often in the caravan with Rictus, the crop- headed Kefren princess, Roshana, was there also as often as not.
Buri did not know who Roshana was, and she did not tell him, but he did ask Kurun why the boy wanted to see the Macht veteran live.
‘He helped us once,’ was all Kurun would say, with a shrug of his narrow shoulders. And then he would be out the back door of the caravan, leaping off it as they plodded along in search of firewood or water or fresh linen. He had become an able thief, and the three Kufr in the caravan ate well. Rictus would eat nothing. He would only drink water, as much as any man could hold. It was as if he were trying to flush the dust of Gaugamesh out of his throat.
So it was that when they reached Carchanis, it was deemed a natural thing that apartments be found in the high citadel to accommodate them all close at hand to each other. By that point Rictus was able to sit up, though his raw-boned face had lost its colour and the flesh had fallen from his bones, so that his head seemed too big for his body. Buri’s administrations kept his wounds clean and knitting, and fought off the dank fierceness of a fever; the same that was carrying off hundreds of the other Macht wounded. All the same, Rictus was gone for several days after their arrival in Carchanis, lost in some twilit world where Antimone watched over him and folded him in her black wings. Kurun watched over him day and night, pouring water down his throat and wiping the sweat from his body. And Roshana sat in a corner with her komis over her face and carried water from the fountained courtyard as though she were the servant and old Buri her master.
It was the sound of marching feet and the call of bronze horns which finally roused Rictus from his stupor. The city was full of the sound of an army, but the horns were deep and strange. They did not belong to the Macht, or to the empire. He opened his red-crusted eyes to find Kurun looking down on him, his young face hollow-eyed but cheerful. In Kefren, the hufsan said, ‘Buri, the Macht awakes.’
‘Help me up,’ Rictus told him, knowing the face but not connecting it to any memory as yet. The boy seemed to understand him, but even in his gaunt state Rictus was too heavy to shift. Finally Roshana propped herself under his other shoulder and they helped him out of the bed. He stood naked between them, his body covered with purple wounds and linen dressings, and limped over to the high window.
Into the hot sunlight, the heat of it like a blast of memory. Rictus closed his eyes a moment against the glare, and when he could finally see again he found himself looking down on the serried clay-tile rooftops of a great city, as great as Machran or larger. The buildings of it swooped down with dizzying steepness to walls of pale stone far below, and beyond, a great river, brown as the back of a thrush, crossed by a massive bridge of ancient stonework. Beyond that, the green country of the Middle Empire opened out into a shimmering haze of heat and dust, and beyond that lay the dark blue guess of the Magron Mountains at the edge of sight.
But that was not what caught Rictus’s eyes. It was the dark worms of marching men slowly inching across the green country, blackening the pale roadways to the city with their numbers and their strange banners, the beat of their feet to be heard as a distant blood-quickening drum even up here in the heights of the citadel.
‘Who are they?’ he asked. Again, the boy Kurun understood him, though he spoke in Machtic.
‘They Juthan. Juthan army here. Juthan King here today,’ he said, the words ill-formed in his mouth but perfectly understandable.
‘Where is this?’
‘This Carchanis. Big city. Big river. Enough now.’
They tried to move Rictus away from the tall balconied window, but Rictus was as immobile as a standing stone, staring as though he had just seen the world for the first time.
‘Carchanis,’ he said. ‘The Bekai River.’
And then, in a whisper, ‘Fornyx, my brother.’ He stood there with the two young Kufr under his arms, old Buri beginning to fuss and fret around him, and the tears came dripping from his eyes and trailed down a gaunt face as hard as stone.
There was a banquet that night, to welcome the King of Jutha into the city. Proxanon himself had led his grey-skinned legions clear across the Middle Empire, fighting several battles along the way, but he had missed the great conflagration of Gaugamesh. The long hall which was the centrepiece of the governor’s palace was packed tight and bright with Macht and Juthan, and the city was flooded with them. The evening had been set aside for celebrations, the first Corvus’s army had known since the battle. In the wake of their victory there had been too much to do, too many wounded to take care of, too many details to be rounded off, for there to be any real sense of their triumph. But now that they were ensconced in a rich, civilised city with plentiful provisions to hand and the prospect of some rest to come, the Macht king had declared a holiday. The city was decked out as though for a festival and hundreds of wine-barrels had been roused out of the palace cellars and set rolling in the streets. The smell of roasting meat hung over all, entire herds and flocks of animals slaughtered for a night of largesse, of excess. The men had earned it. They needed it.
The inhabitants of Carchanis, unmolested until now, drew inside their houses and locked the doors and shuttered the windows, while in the streets the wine ran in the gutters and the teeming soldiers grew steadily more raucous.
Rictus heard them as he lay by the tall window. He had insisted they move the bed there so he could feel the wind on his face and watch the torchlight in the streets below. A cup of wine sat in his hand, untasted, and a platter fit to feed a family had been sent up from the banqueting tables, still untouched. He sat and looked out at the warm, fire-studded night while Kurun squatted on the floor beside him, with his elbows on his knees, and plied him with endless halting questions in broken Machtic. The boy had a mind like a magpie, forgetting nothing, endlessly curious, and he was picking up the foreign tongue with all the speed of youth, intelligence and stubbornness that was in him. Rictus responded to his sallies with monosyllables, but he liked having the boy there beside him. Like some bright flame of life still burning bright beside the spent lamp of his own spirit.
The noise of revelry grew louder as the door to the chambers was opened, then shut out again. Rictus knew the footsteps that approached. He did not turn round. He could smell the wine, and some Kufr perfume. Kurun rose easily to his feet and bowed.
‘Where is the princess Roshana?’ Corvus’s voice.
‘The girl went to bed, though how she’ll sleep with this racket I don’t know,’ Rictus said. He turned to look upon his king, now the most powerful man in the world.
Corvus had vine-leaves laced in his hair, and his eyes had been drawn out dark with stibium so that his white face was more of a mask than ever. The wine was heavy on his breath and he had a jar of it dangling from one hand. He smiled, sat down on the edge of Rictus’s bed with a heaviness quite unlike him. He was drunk, Rictus realised. For the first time in all the years he had known Corvus, the boy was drunk.
Not a boy, though. Despite the painted face and the vine leaves, this was no callow youth who sat beside Rictus now, and the smile on his face was as painted as his eyes.
‘How is my old warhorse — I meant to look in on you earlier — how is my friend Rictus? Old Rictus, old man. Never dead yet. How is he? Have some wine, brother — ’ He lifted the jar, slopping the red liquid on the bed.
‘I have some,’ Rictus said, raising his untasted cup.
‘As well you should, Rictus. We should all have wine tonight, as much as we can hold. It washes away the dust. Boy! Drink with me!’
Kurun looked at Rictus quickly, and then gulped from the proffered jar as Corvus held it for him.
‘That’s the stuff, boy. Phobos, but you’re a pretty one. Near as pretty as your mistress. I must look in on her. I’ll be quiet. I want to see her — ’
He raised himself from the bed, but Rictus took him by the wrist. ‘Let her sleep, Corvus. Not everyone wants to drink tonight.’
‘No — no — of course not.’ He seemed to sober somewhat. His face changed. Rictus had never known any other man with such mobile features. For a second Corvus seemed on the verge of weeping, but then he seemed to collect himself. He poured a stream of wine to spatter redly on the floor.
‘For absent friends,’ he said thickly.
And now Rictus drank deep from his own wine, suddenly needing the warmth of it in his own gullet. His throat had narrowed. He tossed the dregs onto the stone as Corvus had.
‘I did not mean them all to die,’ Corvus said quietly. His words were slurred, but the thuggish gaiety had left
