Corvus by Paul Kearney

Author:Paul Kearney [Kearney, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781906735777
Publisher: Solaris
Published: 2010-10-26T03:00:00+00:00

They kept to the high ridges to steer clear of the drifts, and found, themselves in a blue and white world, where the wind took their breath away and set the snow clouding in a blizzard off the rocks and stones at their feet. The sky was empty except for the pale red disc that was Haukos, always reluctant to quit the sky in winter, but to the north the great peaks of the Harukush - legendary even among the Kufr - barred the horizon like a white wall. Down from them the wind swooped, and the bite of it was as bitter as a plunge into a midwinter sea.

There were six of them: Phaestus, Philemos, and four others who had come out of Hal Goshen with them. One of these, Sertorius, had been at various times in his life a mercenary, a hunter, a slave-dealer, and a pimp. It was in this latter guise that he had come to the attention of Phaestus, in his duties as chief magistrate of the city.

The two had known each other for many years, and from their confrontations there had arisen a grudging mutual respect. In his own way, Sertorius was as proud and stiff-necked as Phaestus, and as disgusted by the tame surrender of his city. It was he, and his silent little band of henchmen, who had smuggled the Speaker of Hal Goshen, his family and some of his household out of the city - and with a surprising degree of discretion.

Ostrakr, the sentence had been, but Phaestus had no doubt that he was not intended to survive. His rival, Sarmenian, had ached for the chief magistracy for too long to be magnanimous in victory.

Sertorius had been well paid for his troubles, but this current exploit he was doing for free. Like Phaestus, he was a man without a city now, and were he to walk through the gates of Machran, he wanted to do so with something to show for his trouble, something which would ease the transition.

He was a lowlander, a black-haired, brown-skinned man with eyes the colour of a thrush’s back and a convict’s gall-marks on his wrists. His face was seamed and scarred with knife-fights and wickedness and he had a wide gap between his front teeth. He was not the company Phaestus would have chosen for a trip into the highlands in winter -still less the three hulking street-thugs that were his companions - but the choice had not been wide, and Sertorius had at least a brassy, hail-fellow-well-met way of getting along with others which had come in useful with the goatherder folk the night before.

What Sertorius and his men lacked, however, was a knowledge of the mountains, and they stumbled in the wake of Phaestus and his son, holding onto the tails of the mules and complaining endlessly about the cold.

“Two good day’s travel,” Phaestus told them, reining in his contempt with the practice of a politician. “That’s all. Two days, and then we shall have a roof over our heads, for a day or two at least.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.