Ships from the West (26 page)

‘As for Torunn itself, I want the field army here put on notice to move at once. We have wasted enough time. I will lead them out within the week.’

Formio’s scratching quill went silent at that. ‘The snows are still lying deep in the foothills,’ he said.

‘It can’t be helped. In my absence you will remain here, as regent.’

‘Corfe, I—’

‘You will obey orders.’ The King turned from the fire and smiled at Formio to soften his words. ‘You are the only person I would trust with it.’

The Fimbrian subsided. From the tip of his quill the ink dripped to blot a black circle on the pale parchment. Corfe turned to Golophin.

‘It would ease my mind were you to remain here with him.’

‘I cannot do that, sire.’

Corfe frowned, then turned away. ‘I understand. It is not your responsibility.’

‘You misunderstand me, sire. I am going with you.’ ‘What? Why in the world—?’

‘I promised a dying woman, my lord, that I would remain by your side in this coming trial.’ Golophin smiled. ‘Perhaps I have just got the habit of serving kings. In any case, I go with you on campaign - if you’ll have me.’

Corfe bowed, and some life came back into his eyes. ‘I would be honoured, master mage.’ As he straightened he turned to Ensign Baraz, who had not moved.

‘I would very much like to have you accompany me also, Ensign.’

The young man stepped forward, then came stiffly to attention once again. ‘Yes, sir.’ His eyes shone.

‘There is one more thing.’ Here Corfe paused, and as they watched him they saw something flicker in his eyes, some instantly hidden agony.

‘Mirren must go to Aurungabar at once, to be married.’

Formio nodded, but Baraz looked utterly wretched. It was Golophin who spoke up. ‘Could that not wait a while?’ he asked gently. ‘I have barely begun her tuition.’

‘No. Were we to delay, it would be seen as uncertainty about Nasir. No. They sent us Aria, we must send them Mirren. When she marries Nasir the whole world will see that the alliance is as strong as ever despite the death of Aurungzeb, the turning back of the Merduk reinforcements.’

‘It is the clearest signal we can send,’ Formio agreed.

And it was only right, Corfe thought, for himself to suffer something of what Heria suffered. There was an ironic symmetry about it all, as though this were laid on for the amusement of some scheming god. So be it. He would shoulder this grief along with the others.

‘Ensign Baraz,’ he said, ‘fetch me the palace steward, if you please. Formio, get those notes off to the scribes and then rouse out the senior staff. We will all meet here in one hour. Felorin, secure the door.’

When only he and Golophin remained in the hall’s vast emptiness, Corfe leant his forehead against the hot stone of the mantel.

‘Golophin, how did she die?’

The old mage was startled. He seemed to take a moment to comprehend the question. ‘The Merduk Queen? A knife, Shahr Baraz told me. There were maids close by, but they heard nothing. So he says.’

Corfe’s tears fell invisibly into the flames below, to vanish with not so much as a hiss to note their passing.

‘Sire - Corfe - is there something else the matter?’

‘This is my wedding night,’ the King said mechanically. ‘I have a new wife waiting for me.’

Golophin set a hand on his arm. ‘Perhaps you should return to her for a little while, before she hears the news from someone else.’

Dear God, he had almost forgotten. He raised his head with a kind of dulled wonder. ‘You are right. She should hear it from me. But I must talk to Cullen first.’

‘Here then. Have a swallow of this.’ The wizard was offering him a small steel flask. He took it automatically and tipped it to his mouth. Fimbrian brandy. His eyes smarted and ran as he filled his mouth with it and swallowed it down.

‘I always keep a mote of something warming about me,’

Golophin said, drinking in his rum. ‘Nothing else seems to keep out the cold these days.’

Corfe looked at him. The mage was regarding him with a kindly surmise, as though inviting him to speak. For a moment it was all there, crowding on his tongue, and it would have been a blessed relief to let it gush forth, to lean on this old man as other kings had before him. But he bit back the words and swallowed them. It was enough that Albrec alone knew. He could take no sympathy tonight. It would break him. And others would need sympathy ere the night was done.

Footsteps the length of the hall, and Baraz was returning with the grizzled old palace steward. Corfe drew himself up.

‘Cullen, you must have the Princess Mirren woken at once. She is to pack for a long journey. Have the stables harness up a dozen light wagons, enough for a suitable entourage. Ensign Baraz, you will, with my authority, pick out a tercio of cuirassiers as escort.’

‘Where shall I tell the Princess she is going, sire?’ Cullen asked, somewhat bewildered.

‘She is going to Aurungabar to be married. I will see her before she goes, but she must be ready to leave by daybreak. That is all.’

The steward stood irresolute for a second, his mouth opening and closing. Then he bowed and left hurriedly, drawing his night robes closer about him as if the King exuded some baleful chill. Baraz followed him unhappily.

A blessed quiet for a few minutes. Corfe felt an overwhelming urge to go down to the stables, saddle up a horse, and take off alone for the mountains. To run away from this world and its decisions, its complications, its pain. He sighed and drew himself up. His bad leg was aching.

‘You had best stay here,’ he said to Golophin. ‘I will be back soon.’ Then he set off to tell his new wife that she was an orphan.

The troop transports took up four miles of river-frontage. There were over a hundred of the wide-beamed, shallow-draught vessels, each capable of carrying five tercios within its cavernous hold. They had been taking on their cargoes for two days now, and still the wharves of Torunn’s waterfront were thronged with men and horses and mules and mountains of provisions and equipment. A dozen horses had been lost, and several tons of supplies, but the worst of the embarkation was over now and the transports would unmoor with the ebb of the evening tide in the estuary, and would begin their slow but sure battle upstream against the current of the Torrin river.

‘The day has come at last,’ Formio said with forced lightness.

‘Yes. At one time I thought it never would.’ Corfe tugged at the hem of his armoured gauntlets. ‘I’m leaving you three thousand of the regulars,’ he told Formio. ‘Along with the conscripts, that will give you a sizeable garrison. With Aras and Heyd at Gaderion, and Melf and Berza in the south, they should not even have to see battle.’

‘We will miss those Merduk reinforcements ere we’re done,’ Formio said gravely.

‘Yes. They would have eased my mind too. But there’s no use crying after them now. Formio, I have been over all the paperwork with Albrec. As soon as I step aboard the transports you become regent, and will remain so until I return. I’ve detached a few hundred of your Orphans to take over the training from the Bodyguard. The rest are already boarded.’

‘You’re taking the cream of the army,’ Formio said.

‘I know. They have a hard road ahead of them, and there’s no place for conscripts upon it.’

‘And the wizard goes too.’

Corfe smiled. ‘He may be useful. And I feel he is a good man.’

‘I do not trust him, Corfe. He is too close to the enemy. He knows too much about them, and that knowledge he has never explained.’

‘It’s his business to know such things, Formio. I for one shall be glad of his counsel. And besides, we shall face wizardry in battle before we’re done. It’s as well to be able to reply in kind.’

‘I would I were going with you’ Formio said in a low voice.

‘So would I, my friend. It has seemed to me that the more rank one acquires in this world, the less one is able to do as one prefers.’

Formio gripped Corfe by the arm. ‘Do not go.’ His normally closed face was bright with urgency. ‘Let me take them out, Corfe. Stay you here.’

‘I cannot. It’s not in me, Formio. You know that.’

‘Then be careful, my friend. You and I have seen many battlefields, but something in my heart tells me that this one you are setting out for shall be the worst’

‘What are you now, a seer?’

Formio smiled, though there was little humour in his face. ‘Perhaps.’

‘Look for us in the early summer. If all goes well we shall march back by way of the Torrin Gap.’

The two men stood looking at one another for a long moment. They had no need to say more. Finally they embraced like brothers. Formio moved back then and bowed deep.

‘Farewell, my King. May God watch over you.’

Half the city came down to the waterfront to see them off, waving and cheering as ship after ship of the transport fleet pulled away from the wharves and nosed out into the middle of the estuary. The fat-bellied vessels set their courses to catch the south-east wind that was blowing in off the Kardian, and in line astern they began the long journey upriver.

Torunna’s sole Princess had already left for Aurungabar and her wedding, but the kingdom’s new Queen was there in the midst of a cloud of ladies-in-waiting, courtiers and bodyguards. She raised a hand to Corfe, her face white and unsmiling, the eyes red-rimmed within it. He saluted in return, then turned his gaze from the cheering crowds and stared westwards to where the Cimbric Mountains loomed bright in the sunlight, their flanks still deep in snow, clouds streaming from their summits. Somewhere up in those terrible heights the secret pass existed which led all the way down to the Sea of Tor, and that was the path this great army he commanded must take to victory. He felt no trepidation, no apprehension at the thought of that mountain-passage or the battles that would follow. His mind was clear at last.

PART THREE

Nightfall

Men worshipped the dragon, for he had given his authority to the beast, and they worshipped the beast, saying, ‘Who is like the beast, and who can fight against it?’

Revelation ch. 13 v. 4

Sixteen

The sun was a long time clearing the Thurian Mountains in the mornings, and down in the Torrin Gap it remained drear and chill long after the surrounding peaks were bright and glowing with the dawn. The sentries paced the walls of Gaderion and cursed and blew into their hands whilst before them the narrow valley between the mountains opened out grey and shadowed, livid with frost, and out in the gloom the campfires of the enemy gleamed in their tens of thousands.

General Aras walked the circuit of the walls with a cluster of aides and couriers, greeting the sentries in a low voice, halting every now and then to look out at the flickering constellations burning below. This he did every morning, and every morning the same view met his eyes.

The defenders of Ormann Dyke must have experienced something like this, back in the old days. The knowledge that there was nothing more to do than to wait for the enemy to move. The nerve-taut tension of that wait. The Himerian general, whoever he was, knew how to bide his time.

Finally the sun reared its head up over the white-frozen Thurians, and a blaze of red-yellow light swept down the flanks of Candorwir in the western arm of the valley. It lit up the blank, pocked cliff face that was the Eyrie, travelled along the length of the curtain wall and kindled the stone of the redoubt, the sharp angles of the fortifications thrown into perfect, vivid relief, and finally it halted at the foot of the donjon walls, leaving that fortress in shadow. Only the tall head of the Spike was lofty enough to catch the sun as it streamed over the white peaks behind it. In the donjon itself Aras heard the iron triangles of the watch clanging, summoning the night watch to breakfast, and sending the day watch out to their posts. Another day had begun at Gaderion.

Aras turned away. His own breakfast would be waiting for him in the donjon. Salt pork and army bread and perhaps an apple, washed down with small beer - the same meal his men ate. Corfe had taught him that, long ago. He might eat it off a silver plate, but that was the only indulgence Gaderion’s commanding officer would allow himself.

The last of the wains go south this morning, do they not?’ he asked.

His quartermaster, Rusilan of Gebrar, nodded. Those are the last. When they have gone, it will be nothing but the garrison left, and several thousand fewer mouths to feed, though it’s hard on the family men.’

‘It’ll be easier on their minds to know their wives and children are safe in the south, once the real fighting starts,’ Aras retorted.

The real fighting,’ another of the group mused, a square-faced man who wore an old Fimbrian tunic under his half-armour. ‘We’ve lost over a thousand men in the last fortnight, and are now penned in here like an old boar in the brush, awaiting the spears of the hunters. Real fighting.’

‘A cornered boar is a dangerous thing, Colonel Sarius. Let him move within range of our guns and he will find that out.’

‘Of course, sir. I only wonder why he hesitates. Intelligence suggests that the Finnmarkans and Tarberans are all up now. He has his entire army arrayed and ready, and has had them so for at least four days. His supply lines must be a quartermaster’s nightmare.’

“They’re convoying thousands of tons of rations across the Sea of Tor in fishing boats,’ Rusilan said. ‘At Fonterios they have constructed a fair-sized port to accommodate them all now that the ice is almost gone. They can afford to wait for the summer if they choose; the Himerians can call on the tribute of a dozen different countries.’

The retort of an artillery piece silenced Rusilan, and the group of officers went stock-still. High up on the side of the Spike, the smoke of the gun was hanging heavy as wool in the air, and before it had drifted a yard from the muzzle of the culverin that had belched it, the alarm triangles were ringing.

Aras and his part}’ ran along the curtain wall to the donjon proper, against a tide of soldiers coming the other way. When they had passed through the small postern that linked the wall with the eastern fortifications they climbed up to the catwalks there and peered out of an embrasure whilst all around them the gun crews were swarming about their weapons.