Ships from the West (34 page)

The day passed around them unnoticed as they sat on the grass, a trio of lost people to one side of a great concourse of the lost and the fearful and the fleeing. Hawkwood’s eye opened once ere the end, and he gripped Jemilla’s hand until the bones creaked under his strong fingers.

‘Clew up, clew up there,’ he whispered in a cracked dry voice. ‘Billerand, set courses and topsails. Steer due west with the wind on the quarter.’

Then he sighed, and the pressure of his fingers relaxed. The light faded from his eye. Richard Hawkwood’s long voyaging was over.

Twenty-one

Aruan woke out of sleep with the knowledge that something had changed in the black hours of the night, some balance had shifted. He was a master of soothsaying as he was of every other Discipline, but this feeling had nothing to do with the Dweomer. It was more akin to an old man’s aches before a storm.

He rose and called for his valet and was quickly washed and robed in the austere splendour of the Pontifical apartments, for he resided there now though Himerius and not he was Pontiff in the eyes of the world. He looked out of the high window upon the cloisters of Charibon below and saw that the dawn had not yet come and the last hours of the night still hung heavy above the horns of the cathedral and the Library of St Garaso.

He clenched and unclenched one blue-veined fist and stared at it darkly. He had overtired himself in his travels, bending the wills and raising the hearts of men up and down the length of the continent. But now Rone had fallen and southern Torunna was being invaded with little resistance, while at Gaderion Bardolin had laid the curtain wall in ruins and the Torunnans there were besieged within their three great fortresses, relief column and all. Hebrion and Astarac and Almark and Perigraine were conquered, their peoples his to command, their nobility extinguished. Only Fimbria now stood alone and aloof from the convulsions of the world, for the Electorates had sent no word since the departure of their embassy months before. Well, they would be dealt with in time.

But still he was afflicted by a restless uneasiness. He felt that he had overlooked some piece of his opponent’s upon the gaming board of war, and it troubled him.

As dawn finally broke open the sky in bands of scarlet behind the white peaks of the Cimbrics, King Corfe Cear-Inaf brought his army down from the foothills to the shores of the Sea of Tor, and where the land levelled out into the first wolds of the Torian Plains, he set his men into line of battle, a scant four miles from the outskirts of Charibon itself. It was the eleventh day of Enderialon in the Year of the Saint 567, and it was thirty-one days since he had set out from Torunn.

The army he led was a good deal smaller than that which had taken ship on the Torrin river those weeks before. Many had died in the unforgiving mountains, and over two thousand men, Fimbrians and Torunnans and tribesmen, had been detached while still high up in the foothills, their mission to destroy the Himerian transports docked at the eastern shore of the Sea of Tor, and thus cut the supply lines of the army which was entrenched in the Thurian Line and before Gaderion.

So it was with less than twenty-two thousand troops that Corfe descended from the high places to give battle to the forces of the Second Empire before the very gates of their capital. It was still dark as he set his men into line, and despite their depleted numbers their ranks stretched for over two and a half miles.

He rested his right flank on the shore of the sea itself, and there three thousand Torunnan arquebusiers were placed in four ranks, each half a mile long. To their left was the main body of the Orphans, eight thousand Fimbrian pikemen under Marshal Kyne, with a thousand more arquebusiers mingled in their files. The pike phalanx bristled nine ranks deep and had a frontage of a thousand yards. Next to them stood another three thousand arquebusiers, and out on the far left was the main body of the Cathedraller cavalry, four thousand heavy horsemen in four ranks, armed with lance and sabre and matchlock pistols, their lacquered armour gleaming red as blood in the morning light. Comillan had been newly made their commander, for their previous leader had died in the snows. Hidden in their midst were three batteries of horseartillery and their teams, awaiting the signal to unlimber and begin firing.

Behind this first wave, and closer to the left of the line than its centre, rode the Torunnan King himself at the head of his five-hundred-strong Bodyguard. He kept back with him a mixed formation of some two thousand Fimbrians and Torunnans to act as a general reserve, and also to bolster the open flank. For off on that flank, on the higher ground leading down to Charibon, the citadel of the Knights squatted, a grey low-built fortress around which were the tents and baggage of a small army. As the Torunnans advanced towards Charibon proper, they would have this fortress and encampment in their left rear. Not only that, but the fast-riding Cathedraller scouts which had been scouring the land about the army for days had only yesterday reported seeing a large body of infantry bivouacked some fifteen miles to the west of Charibon, square upon the Narian Road. They had not drawn close enough to this force to ascertain its nationality, but there was little doubt that it consisted of more levies on their way to swell the ranks of the Empire. And so Corfe had hurried his men through the night, to attack Charibon before this fresh army came up.

He had no illusions about the slimness of the thread from which his men’s survival hung, and he knew that even if they were victorious before the monastery-city, there was little hope of their ever returning to Torunna. But this was the head of the snake here before him, and if it were destroyed, the west might yet rise again and throw off the yoke. That chance was worth the sacrifice of this army. And as for his own life, he knew that it had been twisted beyond hope of happiness, and he would be content to lay it down here.

Ahead of the Torunnans and Fimbrians as they formed up on the plain more tent encampments sprawled amid a web of gravel roads, and beyond them the tricorne tower of the Cathedral of the Saint loomed tall and stark, matched in height by the Library of Saint Garaso and the Pontiff’s Palace close by, all connected by the Long Cloisters. That was the heart of Charibon, and of the Second Empire itself. Those buildings must all be laid in ruin and their inhabitants destroyed if the head of this snake were to be cut off.

Albrec had passionately disagreed when Corfe had told him of his intentions back in Torunn, but Albrec was not a soldier, and he was not here, staring at the vast factory of war that Charibon had become. Corfe would rather a thousand books burn than he needlessly lose a single one of his men, and he would see the history of ages go up in smoke rather than let one scion of Aruan’s evil brood escape. This he had impressed upon his officers and his men in a council of war held up in the hills, though Golophin, who had attended, had said nothing.

‘They have no pickets out,’ Ensign - Haptman rather -Baraz said incredulously. ‘Sir, I believe they’re all asleep.’

‘Let us hope so, Haptman.’ Corfe looked up and down at the line which stretched out of sight in the raw dawn light. Then he breathed in deep. ‘Alarin, signal the advance.’

Corfe’s colour-bearer was a Cimbric tribesman, a close kinsman of Felorin’s. He now stood up in his stirrups and waved the sable and scarlet banner of Torunna forward and back, for no bugle calls were to be used until the army had joined battle. The signal was taken up all down the line, and slowly and in silence that huge ordered crowd of men began to move, and became a muffled creeping darkness which edged closer to the tents of the enemy, bristling with barbed menace. Anyone looking closely at the war harness of the army’s soldiers would have rubbed their eyes and stared, for every man had welded to his armour short spikes of iron nails, and even the horses’ chamfrons and breastplates were similarly adorned, whilst the spear points of the Fimbrians and lanceheads of the Cathedrallers were not bright winking steel, but black iron also. Save for the scarlet of the Cathedrallers, the appearance of the army was sombre as a shadow, with hardly a gleam of bright metal to be seen.

When they had advanced two miles Corfe ordered the reserve to edge farther out on the left, for they were passing the camps of the Knights Militant about their citadel. There was activity there now where there had been none before, and he could see squadrons of cavalry mounting their horses. And then a bright series of horn calls split the morning and from the summit of the citadel’s tower a grey smoke went up.

‘It would seem the enemy has clambered out of bed at last,’ he said mildly. ‘Baraz, ride to Colonel Olba with the reserve and tell him to drop back farther and cover our left rear. He is to go into square if necessary, but he is to be prepared to ward off the Knights Militant from the main body.’

‘Sir!’ Baraz galloped off.

‘Ensign Roche.’

‘Yes, sir.’ The young officer’s horse was dancing under him and his eyes were bright as glass. He was about to see a real battle at last.

‘Go to Marshal Kyne in the middle of the phalanx, and tell him that he is to keep advancing for Charibon itself, even if he loses contact with the arquebusiers on his left. He has my leave to detach a flank guard if he sees fit, but he must keep moving regardless. Clear?’

‘Yes, sir!’ Clods of turf flew through the air like birds as Roche wheeled his horse away in turn.

Yes, the enemy was awake all right. A mile in front of the army men were tumbling out of their tents and forming up with confused haste. They were in Almarkan blue, arquebusiers and sword-and-buckler men. Many thousands of them were now preparing to bar the way into Charibon. As they milled about, the bells of the Cathedral of the Saint, and those of every other church in the monastery-city began to peal the alarm, and Corfe could see that the streets of Charibon were clogging with troops rushing south and east to meet him. Out to the west of the city he could see other formations moving on the plain, Finnmarkan gallowglasses according to the word of his scouts. They had vast camps out there, but had two miles to march before they would be on his flank. Corfe drew the Answerer, and the ancient pattern-welded iron of John Mogen’s sword glittered darkly as it left the scabbard. He raised it in the air and led the Bodyguard out to the left rear of the Cathedra Hers. The Torunnan army was eating up the yards to Charibon at a fearsome pace, and was now deployed in a great L-shape with the base of the L facing west. Not a single battlecry or shout came from the ranks; the only sound was the dull thunder of all those thousands of hoofs and feet.

‘Ensign Brascian,’ said Corfe to another of his young staff who clustered about him. ‘Go to Colonel Rilke of the artillery. You will find him with the Cathedrallers. Tell him to deploy his guns to the west at once and commence to engage the Knights Militant. Then find Comillan and say he is to charge the Knights at his own discretion, but he is not to pursue. He is not to pursue, is that clear?’

‘Very clear, sir.’

‘He is to pull back as soon as the enemy is halted and in disorder, and the guns will cover his withdrawal. Then he is to hold himself in readiness for further orders.’

Seven or eight thousand of the Knights Militant had now formed up in a long line facing east, in front of their citadel and the tents that were pitched at its foot. They would advance very soon, and must be neutralised. Corfe watched Brascian pelt off, slapping his horse’s rump with the flat of his sabre. He disappeared into the sea of red-armoured horsemen that was the Cathedrallers, and scant minutes later the ranks of the cavalry parted and the gun teams began to emerge and set up before them. The Cathedrallers halted behind the line of six-pounders and dressed their ranks. For all that they were composed mainly of the Cimbric tribes, they were as well disciplined as Torunnan regulars now, and Corfe’s heart swelled at the sight of them. What had once been a motley band of ill-armed galley slaves had over the years become the most feared body of cavalry in the world.

The Knights Militant began to advance, a tonsured Presbyter out to their front and waving them on with his mace. They too were heavily armoured, with the Saint’s Symbol picked out in white upon their breastplates, and their faces were hidden behind their closed helms. Their horses were of the fine, long-limbed strain which had been bred as hunters and palfreys on the Torian Plains for centuries by the aristocracy of Almark, but they were smaller in stature than the massive destriers of the Cathedrallers. The horses of Corfe’s mounted arm were descended from those brought east by the Fimbrians, back in the ancient days when some of their troops still went mounted, and the best of these had been stolen and raided by the tribesmen of the Cimbrics over the years, and for centuries after had been selected and bred purely for size and courage. For war.

The startling boom of a gun as the first six-pounder went off, followed by a close-spaced salvo from all three batteries. Rilke had trained his gun teams well. Hardly had the cannons jumped back on their carriages than his men were levering them forward again, worming and sponging them out, and reloading. They were using canister, hollow metal shells filled with scores of arquebus balls, and as the smoke cleared the carnage they produced was awesome to see. All along the front of the Knights’ line horses were tumbling screaming to their sides, crushing their riders, or rearing up with their bowels exposed or backing frantically away from the deadly hail to crash into their fellows behind them. The Knights’ advance stalled in bloody confusion. The horse of their Presbyter was galloping riderless about the field with gore streaming from its holed neck and flanks, and its owner lay motionless in the grass behind it, his tonsure pale as a porcelain bowl on the trampled turf.

‘Now’,
Corfe whispered, banging his gauntleted hand on his knee.
‘Go now!’

fired their second salvo he spurred out to the front of his men with his colour-bearer in tow, and with a wordless cry ordered them forward. The hunting horns of the Cimbrics sounded full and clear over the screams of maimed horses and men, and that huge line of armoured cavalry began to move, like some monstrous titan whose leash had been slipped. Corfe’s heart went there with them as they quickened into a trot, a canter, and then the lances came down in a full-blooded charge to contact. The earth trembled under them and the tribesmen began to sing the terrible battle paean of their native hills, and still singing they ploughed into the enemy formations like the blade of a hot knife sinking into butter. The first and second lines of Cathedrallers made a deep scarlet wedge in the ranks of the Knights Militant, and the smaller horses of the Himerians were knocked off their feet by the impact of that charge. The Cathedrallers discarded their broken and bloody lances and fired a volley of matchlock pistols at point-blank range, adding to the carnage and the panic. Then the silver horn calls signalled the withdrawal, and the first two lines turned about and fell back, covered by the advance of the third and fourth ranks, who rode through their files, formed up neatly and fired a rolling pistol volley in their turn. Comillan’s command trotted back across the field unmolested and seemingly unscathed, though Corfe could see the scarlet bodies which littered the plain they left behind them. But these were as nothing compared to the great wreckage of carcasses and steel-clad carrion which had once been the proud ranks of the Knights Militant.