Century of the Soldier: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume Two) (17 page)

"Fight my way," Corfe shouted back. "Just once, fight my way, and if I don't bring you to victory, then you may fight any way you please. But ask Marsch and his Felimbri if my way is not the best."

The muttering died down. The men now knew of the battles the original Cathedrallers had fought in the south, the odds they had overcome. Corfe realized he was on trial. If he led these men to defeat, initially at any rate, then he would never be able to lead them with confidence again. They respected ability, not rank, and deeds rather than flowery declarations.

On the night before they moved out, he was summoned to meet the Queen Dowager again. He turned up at her chambers in his old, ragged uniform, aware of the whispers that followed him through the palace. Rumour was running like fire through the city: Torunn was about to be besieged as Aekir had been, the King was about to abandon the city to the enemy and pull the garrison south, a treaty was to be signed, a deal to be struck. Martellus was dead, he was victorious, he was a hostage of the Merduks. No one could tell fact from fiction, and already thousands were fleeing Torunn, lines of carriages and waggons and handcarts and trudging people heading south. At Aekir there had been hope, even confidence, that as long as John Mogen led them and the walls stood they would prevail. Here, hope was fleeing with the mobs of refugees. It sickened Corfe to his stomach. He was beginning to wonder if anything of the world he knew would survive another winter.

O
DELIA WAS ALONE
when he was shown in, sitting by a brazier with the shadows high and dark on the walls about her. "Lady."

Something scuttled away from the flame-light too quickly for him to make out, but the Queen Dowager did not stir. "You have been lucky, Colonel."

"Why is that, lady?"

"You have been almost forgotten about. Thus far, you have been overlooked."

Corfe frowned. "I don't know what you mean."

"I mean that my son the King has forgotten you in the... excitement of the present time. But someone else - Colonel Menin, or I should say now General Menin - has just been made aware of your existence. The sooner you are away from the city the better."

"I see," Corfe said. "Does he mean to make a fight of it?"

Odelia smiled unpleasantly. "I do not know. I am no longer privy to the workings of the government. My instincts tell me that the King is timid and his general is a buffoon. Menin's lackeys have been watching your men drilling. Tomorrow morning you will receive a new set of orders. You will be ordered to turn over your command to another, more... amenable officer who only today arrived from the south."

"Aras," Corfe hissed.

"The very same. According to him, you left your work there half done, and he had the lion's share of the fighting to do while you hot-footed it back to the bed of the Queen Dowager." Odelia's smile was like a scar across her face in the firelight.

"I left wounded with him, the dastard."

"I have had Passifal quarter them in an out-of-the-way place, don't worry. But you have to get into the field, Corfe, before they ruin you."

"We leave at dawn. Or sooner, with this."

"Dawn should be safe enough. But no fanfare. A discreet exit is called for, I think."

"When have you found me anything but discreet, lady?"

She laughed suddenly, like a girl. "Don't worry, Corfe. Just make sure that when you come back you have laurel on your brow, and I will do the rest. I still have strings to pull, even in the High Command. But that is not why I asked you to come here. I have something for you." She threw aside a cloth to reveal a long, gleaming wooden box. Intrigued, but chafing at the waste of time, Corfe stepped closer.

"Well, open it!"

He did as he was bidden, and there, set in silk padding, was the shimmer of a long, bright-bladed sword.

"It's yours. Call it a lucky charm if you like. I've had it sitting here these six years."

Corfe lifted the sword. It was a heavy cavalry sabre, only slightly curved, double-edged for all that, with a plain basket hilt, the grip wire-bound ivory darkened with another man's sweat. An old, iron sword which had seen use - there were several tiny nicks in the blade. Looking closer, he saw the serpentine gleam of pattern welding.

"It must be ancient," he said, wondering.

"It was John Mogen's."

"My God!"

"He called it
Hanoran
, which in old Normannic means 'The Answerer.' It was an heirloom of his house. He left it here before he went to take up the governorship of Aekir. You may as well have it." Her voice was off-hand, but her eyes bored into him, twin peridot glitters.

"Thank you, lady. It means much to me, to have this."

"He would have wanted you to have it. He would have wanted it to taste blood again in an able man's hands rather than lie here gathering dust in an old woman's chambers."

Corfe looked at her, and he smiled, the joy of the sword's light, deadly balance upon him. The hilt fitted his hand as though it had been made for him. On an impulse, he knelt before her and offered it to her.

"Lady, for what it is worth, know that you have one champion at least in this kingdom." He raised his dancing eyes. "And you are not so old."

She laughed again. "Gallantry, no less! I will make a courtier of you yet, Corfe." She rose, and indeed in that moment she looked young, a woman barely into her third decade, though she must have been almost twice that.
She's beautiful
, Corfe thought, and he admired her. One slim-fingered hand stroked his cheek.

"That is all, Colonel. I won't keep you from your barbarians a moment longer. You must,
must
leave at sunrise. Fight your battle, come back with Martellus and his men, and I guarantee they will not be able to touch you."

He nodded. The Answerer slid into his scabbard with hardly a click, though it was an inch too long. He took the battered sabre which he had carried from Aekir and tossed it into a corner with a clang. Then he bowed to her and left the room without a backward glance.

But Odelia the Queen Dowager retrieved his discarded sabre and placed it in the silk-lined box which had once housed Mogen's blade, and then set the box aside as gently as if some great treasure were stored therein.

T
HE GREY HOUR
before dawn, chill as a graveside. And in the broken hills that bordered the Western Road to the north of Torunn, a small party of weary travellers paused to look down on the sprawl of the Torunnan capital in the distance. Torches burned along the wails like a snake of gems trailed across the sleeping land, and the River Torrin was wide and deep and iron-pale as the sky began to lighten over the Jafrar Mountains in the east.

Two monks, two Fimbrian soldiers and two half-dead mules, all stained with the mud of their wanderings. They stood silent as standing stones in the sunrise until the shorter of the two monks, his face hideously disfigured, went down on his knees and clasped his hands in prayer. "Thank God, oh thank God."

The soldiers were looking about them like foxes for whom the hunt is on, but the hills were empty but for wheeling kites. "You shall have your fire, then," one of them said to the monks. "I doubt the Merduks will venture so close to the walls."

"Why not continue into the city?" Avila protested. "It's barely a league. We can manage that, I'm sure."

"We'll wait until it's fully light," Siward retorted. "If you approach the gates now you're liable to be shot. Torunn is all but under siege, and the gate guards will be jumpy. I've not come this far to finish with a Torunnan ball in me."

There was no more argument, and indeed the two monks were hardly able to advance another step. They had walked all night. Joshelin and Siward unloaded the bundle of faggots which one of the mules bore and began busying themselves with flint and tinder, after throwing the flaccid wineskin to their charges. Albrec and Avila squirted wine into their throats for want of a better breakfast, and sat gazing down on the last Ramusian capital east of the Cimbric Mountains.

"The Saint must have been watching over us," Albrec said. His voice trembled. "What a penance this has been, Avila. I have never known such weariness. But it refines the soul. The blessed Saint -"

"There are horsemen approaching," Avila cried.

Joshelin and Siward kicked out the nascent campfire, cursing, and threw themselves upon the ground, hauling the exhausted mules down with them.

"Where away?"

"My God, it's an army!" Avila said. "There - a column of them. They must have come out of the city."

Even the crannied features of the two Fimbrians fell with despair. "They are Merduks," Siward groaned. "Torunn has already fallen." Grimly, he began loading his arquebus while Joshelin worked furiously to light the slow-match.

"They are in scarlet," Albrec said dully. "Sweet Saints, to think we came this far, only to end like this."

It was indeed an army, a long, disciplined column of heavily armoured cavalry over a thousand strong. They bore a strange banner, black and scarlet, and some sang as they rode in an unknown tongue which sounded harsh and savage to the two cowering monks. The horsemen's line of march would take them within yards of the foursome, and beyond the hollow in which they hid the country was wide open for miles around. There was nowhere to run.

Albrec prayed fervently, his eyes tight shut, whilst Avila sat dully resigned and the two Fimbrians looked as though they meant to sell their lives dearly. The head of the column was barely a cable's length away, and the two soldiers were gently cocking their weapons when they heard a voice shout out in unmistakable Normannic:

"Tell Ebro to keep his Goddamned wing on the road! I won't have straggling, Andruw, you hear me? Blood of the Saint, this is not a blasted picnic!"

Albrec opened his eyes.

The lead horsemen reined in and halted the long column with one upraised hand. The monks had been seen. A knot of troopers cantered forward, the thin birthing sun flashing vermilion off their armour. Their banner billowed in the cold breeze, and Albrec saw that it seemed to represent a cathedral's spires. He stood up, whilst his three companions tried to pull him down again.

"Good morning!" he cried, his heart thumping a fusillade in his breast.

The leading rider walked his horse forward, staring. Then he doffed his barbaric helm. "Good morning." He was dark-haired, with deep-hollowed grey eyes. He reminded Albrec of the two Fimbrians behind him. Hard, formidable, full of natural authority. A young man, but with a middle-aged stare. Beside him was another hewn out of the same wood, but with a certain gaiety about him that even the outlandish armour could not dim. In the early light the pair looked like two warriors of ancient legend come to life.

"Who are you?" Albrec asked, quavering.

"Corfe Cear-Inaf, colonel in the Torunnan army. This is my command." The man's eyes widened slightly as the rest of Albrec's companions finally stood up. "Would you folk happen to be Fimbrians, at all?"

"We two are," Joshelin said proudly. He held his arquebus as though he had not yet decided whether or not to fire it. "From the twenty-sixth tercio of Marshal Barbius's command, detached."

The cavalry colonel blinked, then turned to his comrade. "Get them going again, Andruw. I'll catch up." He dismounted and held out a hand to Joshelin, whilst behind him the long column of horsemen began moving once more. Hundreds of soldiers, all superbly mounted, weirdly armoured, many with tattooed faces. If they were Torunnan troops, they were certainly like no soldiers Albrec had ever seen or heard of before.

"Where is Barbius?" this Colonel Corfe Cear-Inaf demanded of Joshelin even as he gripped his hand.

"Why would you want to know?" the Fimbrian countered.

"I wish to help him."

Eleven

"A
ND THESE PAIR
are from Charibon, you say?" Colonel Corfe Cear-Inaf asked Joshelin. "They are clerics, then. What are you two, emissaries from the Pontiff?"

"Not quite," Avila told him dryly. "Charibon's reputation for hospitality is vastly exaggerated. We decided to seek our earthly salvation elsewhere."

"They're heretics, like you Torunnans," Joshelin said impatiently. "Come bearing some papers for the other holy man you have stashed away here. Now I've told you, Torunnan, the marshal and the army were a week away from the dyke when we left them, headed south-east towards the coast. But listen - they go not just to link up with your Martellus. The marshal also means to assault the flank of the Merduk army coming up from the Kardian Gulf."

"They have a high sense of their own prowess, if they think they can assault an army that size and live," Corfe said shortly. His eyes bored into the Fimbrian before him. "And a high sense of duty, also. I salute them for it."

Joshelin shrugged fractionally, as if suicidal courage were part of the normal make-up of any Fimbrian soldier.

"You cannot catch up with them before they make contact with the enemy," he said. "I take it your mission is to preserve the dyke's garrison."

"Yes."

"With thirteen hundreds?"