Corvus Read Free Page B

young
either. If you want an heir you must father one on some decent woman - it would
not do to have a slave as his mother.”
    “You were a slave
once,” Rictus reminded her sharply. “Do you think that matters to me, after all
this time?”
    She smiled, and in
her face there was both bitterness and a peculiar kind of happiness, as if a
memory had lit up her eyes.
    “You freed me. You
would have no other but me. I do not forget, Rictus. I will never forget that.”
    “Then let’s go to
bed,” he said, tugging on her hand like a child intent on its mother’s
attention. It was like pulling on the root of an oak.
    “No; I will bide
here awhile with the dogs. Go you to bed - there’s a dish of water to wash in.”
    “There was a time
when you would have washed me yourself, Aise, and I would return the favour.”
    “We are not
youngsters, Rictus, coupling like dogs every chance we get.”
    “We’re not dead
yet, either,” he snapped, and he rose, the anger flooding his face. He seized
his wife by the arms and drew her to her feet. Her eyes met his, blank as
slate. With something like a snarl he hoisted her into his arms and strode
across the room, the dogs whimpering at the mood in the air. He kicked open the
door that led to their bedroom - there was a single lamp left burning in it,
and his muscles locked as he prepared to toss her onto the bed.
    But he stopped,
arms tight about her spare frame, she tense within the embrace as a man’s face
stiffens before a blow.
    A neat, ordered
space. She had laid out a fresh chiton for him, and the battered sandals he
always wore about the farm. There were the year’s last flowers, fresh-cut in a
jar - the deep aquamarine jar he had brought all the way from Sinon, a lifetime
ago - she had always treasured it, for the memory. Clean linen, a jug and ewer,
all set out as she had set them out for him these twenty years and more,
sometimes under a roof, sometimes under the ragged canvas of an army tent, and
sometimes under nothing but the canopy of the stars. His anger drained away.
    He laid her gently
down on the willow-framed bed, his face harsh and set. Then he kissed his wife
on the forehead, her own features unreadable in the shadow he cast before the
lamp. He stood over her a moment, a dark giant, an interloper filling the room
with his bulk and the smell of the road, the stink of the army. Then he turned
and left, closing the door behind him.
     
    That first night back in his home,
Rictus slept on the floor before the dying fire, wrapped in his scarlet cloak
with the dogs curled up around him for company.
     

TWO
    THE
GOAT AND HIS EAGLE
    AS Rictus had predicted, the snow
came that night, drifting down soundlessly in the black hours. He rose well
before dawn to poke the ashes of the fire into red warmth again and toss
kindling upon the pulsing glow of the embers. The dogs rose beside him,
stretching and yawning. Old Mij licked his face and would not leave him alone
until he had had his ears well scratched, while Pira, the young bitch, rolled
on the floor, arching her back like a cat.
    He opened the
door, shivering in his well-worn cloak, and in the pre-dawn dark the snow
stretched grey and unbroken across the valley before him. Above the lip of the
mountains red Haukos still sailed, but his brother Phobos had almost set.
    Rictus crunched
barefoot across the virgin snow, the dogs trotting after. In the blank
whiteness only the river seemed dark, prattling noisily to itself.
    Rictus’s eye was
caught by tracks in the snow - a hare, and heading down to the brim of the
river was the spoor of an adventurous vole not yet ready for its winter sleep.
The dogs snuffled along the riverbank, lapping at the water.
    Rictus knelt
beside them in the chill mud and dipped his hands in the flow, dashing the
water about his head and neck. The bite of it made him gasp, but brought him
fully awake.
    When he returned,
the household was coming to life. The fire was a yellow roar now, and Aise