The Heretic Kings (31 page)

“Abrusio is burning,” he said.

A CROSS the breadth of Normannia, over the two great ranges of the Malvennors and the Cimbrics, down to the coast of the Kardian Sea and the city of Torunn, capital of Lofantyr’s kingdom.

Here it was already dawn; the sun which would not light up Hebrion’s shores for hours yet was huge over the rooftops of the city, and the streets were already busy with the morning life of the markets. Carts and waggons clogged the roadways as farmers brought their produce in to sell, and herds of sheep and cattle were being driven to the stockpens which nestled below the city wall to the west. And beyond the walls to the north the steam and reek of the vast refugee camps sprawled over the land like a rash, whilst Torunnan soldiers manned the gates in that direction, vetting every entrant into the city. Once-prosperous citizens of Aekir had turned to beggary and brigandage in the past weeks, and the more disreputable of the refugees were denied entrance to the walled centre of Torunn. Convoys of crown waggons laden with victuals were waiting to be hauled out to the camps to satisfy the immediate needs of the unfortunates, but Torunna was a country at war and had little enough to spare.

T HE morning had started badly for Corfe. He was striding along the stone corridors of Torunn’s Main Arsenal with Ensign Ebro hurrying to keep up beside him. The men of his new command had been grudgingly set aside a few barrack blocks for their quarters and were crammed into them like apples in a barrel. Ebro had seen to it that they were issued rations and clothes from the city stores, but as of yet not one sword or arquebus or scrap of mail had been forthcoming. And then, last night, a note had been brought to him from the Queen Dowager by a lady-in-waiting.

I have done what I could
, it said.
The rest is up to you
.

So he was on his own.

He had applied to have more officers seconded to him; he and Ebro alone could not effectively command five hundred men. And he had had Ebro indent three times for armour and weapons to outfit his force, but to no avail. Worst of all was the rumour running about the Garrison Quarters that Lofantyr was going to set aside twenty tercios of the regular army for the job of subjugating the rebellious nobles in the south—the task Corfe had been entrusted with. Clearly, the King did not expect the Queen Dowager’s protégé to accomplish anything beyond his own discrediting.

He hammered on the door of the Quartermaster’s department, wearing again the ragged uniform he had worn at Aekir.

The Quartermaster’s department of the Third Torunnan Field Army was housed in a vast string of warehouses close to the waterfront in the east of the city. The warehouses held everything from boots to waggonwheels, cannon barrels to belts. Everything needed to equip and sustain an army could be found in them, but they were giving Corfe’s men nothing more than the clothes on their backs and he wanted to know why.

The Quartermaster-General was Colonel Passifal, a veteran with a short, snow-white beard and a wooden stump in place of the leg he had lost fighting Merduks along the Ostian river before Corfe was born. His office was as bare as a monk’s cell, and the papers which covered his desk were set in neat piles. Requisition orders, inspection sheets, inventories. The Torunnan army had a highly organized system of paperwork which it had copied from its one-time overlord, Fimbria.

“What do you want?” Passifal barked, not looking up from the scraping nib of his quill.

“I indented for five hundred sets of half-armour, five hundred arquebuses, five hundred sabres and all the necessary accoutrements days ago. I would like to know why the requisition has not been filled,” Corfe said.

Passifal looked up, his quill losing its flickering animation.

“Ah. Colonel Corfe Cear-Inaf, I take it.”

Corfe nodded curtly.

“Well, there’s nothing I can do for you, son. My orders are to release stores only to regular Torunnan troops for the duration—Martellus is crying out for equipment up at the dyke, you know—and that rabble the King has given you to play with are officially classed as auxiliary militia, which means that the Torunnan military is not responsible for their fitting-out. I’ve stretched things as it is, giving you uniforms and a place for them to lay their heads. So don’t bother me any more.”

Corfe leant over the broad desk, resting his knuckles on the rim. “So how am I supposed to arm my men, Colonel?”

Passifal shrugged. “Auxiliary units are usually equipped by the private individual who has raised them. Are you rich, Cear-Inaf?”

Corfe laughed shortly. “All I possess is what I stand up in.”

Passifal gazed at the ragged uniform. “You got those rents at Aekir, I hear.”

“And at Ormann Dyke.”

“So you’ve smelled powder.” Passifal scratched his white beard for a moment and then gestured with sudden peevishness. “Oh, take a seat, for God’s sake, and stop trying to stand there on top of your dignity.”

Corfe drew up a chair. Ebro remained standing by the door.

“I hear the King has played a joke on you, Colonel,” Passifal said, grinning now. “He does that sometimes. The old woman rides him hard, and every so often he kicks at the traces.”

“The Queen Dowager.”

“Yes. What a beauty that woman was in her day. Not bad now, as a matter of fact. It’s the witchery keeps her young, they say. But Lofantyr gets tired of being told which pot to piss in. He’s outfitting an expedition to bring the south to heel—a proper one, infantry, cavalry and horse artillery—but he’s going to let you go south and make an arse of it first to show his mother she shouldn’t force her favourites on him.”

“I thought as much,” Corfe said calmly, though his fists clenched on his knees.

“Yes. My orders are not to let you have so much as a brass button from our stores. Those savages you style a command will have to fight with their fists and teeth alone. I’m sorry for it, Colonel, but that’s the way it is.”

“Thank you for explaining it to me,” Corfe said in a flat voice. He rose to go.

Passifal stuck out a hand. “Not so fast! There’s no hurry, is there? You served under Mogen, I take it.”

“I did.”

“So did I. I was a cavalryman in one of his flying columns in the days when we went out looking for the Merduks instead of waiting for them to march up to our walls.”

“I also was cavalry,” Corfe said, unbending a little. “But there was no need for horsemen in Aekir once the siege began.”

“Yes, yes, I daresay… Old Mogen used to say that cavalry was the arm of the gentleman, and artillery the arm of the mechanic. How we used to love that cantankerous old bastard! He was the best man we’ve ever had…”

Passifal stared at Corfe for a long moment, as if weighing him up.

“There is a way to equip your men, after a fashion,” he said at last.

“How?”

Passifal rose. “Come with me.” His stump thumped hollowly on the floor as he came round from behind his desk and retrieved a set of keys from the hundreds hanging in rows along one wall of the office. “You won’t like it, mind, and I’m not sure if it’s right, but they’re barbarians you’re commanding so I doubt if they’ll care. And besides, the stuff isn’t doing any good where it is, and technically it’s not part of the regular military stores…”

Corfe and Ebro followed the one-legged Quartermaster out of the office, completely baffled.

T HIS section of the Main Arsenal resembled nothing so much as the great market squares in the middle of Torunn. There were carts, waggons and limbers everywhere. Men were shifting stores from warehouses or into warehouses, culverins were being drawn by teams of oxen, and everywhere there was the squeal of pulleys and cries of labouring men. Down at the waterfront a trio of deep-hulled
nefs
had put in from the wide Torrin Estuary and were unloading cargoes of powder and pig-iron on to the quays, and a slim dispatch-runner had just docked, bearing news from the east, no doubt.

Passifal led them away from the hubbub to an older building which was set back from the waterfront. It was an ageing stone structure, windowless and somehow deserted-looking, as though it had been long forgotten.

The Quartermaster turned a key in the screeching lock and shouldered the heavy door open with a grunt.

“Stay close behind,” he told Corfe and Ebro. “It’s dark as a witch’s tit in here. I’ll strike a light.”

The crack of flint on steel, and Passifal was blowing gently on the tinder-covered wick of an oil lamp. The light grew and he slapped shut the glass case on the lengthening flame, then held it up so that the radiance of it flushed the interior of the building.

“What in the world—?” Corfe said, startled despite himself.

The building was very long; it extended beyond the lamplight into darkness. And it was crowded.

Piles of armour lay all about, in places stacked until they almost reached the raftered ceiling. Helmets, gauntlets, breast- and back-plates, chainmail, vambraces, aventails, rusting and cobwebbed and dented by blows, holed by gunfire. Mixed in with the armour were weapons: scimitars, tulwars, rotten-shafted lances with remnants of silk still attached to their heads. Strange weapons, unlike any the Torunnans used—or any other western army, for that matter.

Corfe bent and picked up a helmet, turning it in his hands and wiping the dust away. It was high-crowned with a flaring neck-guard and long cheek-pieces. The helmet of one of the
Ferinai
, the elite cuirassiers of the Merduks.

“Merduk armour,” he said as the realization smote him. “But what is it doing here?”

“Trophies of war,” Passifal said. “Been here sixty years, since we threw back the Ostrabarian Merduks after they overran Ostiber. That was Gallican of Rone, if you remember your history. A good general. He beat them as they were approaching the Thurian Passes and sent twenty thousand of the black-hearted bastards to join their precious Prophet. The King staged a triumphal march for him here in Torunn, parades of prisoners and so on. And he shipped back a thousand sets of armour to display during it. When it was over they were dumped here and forgotten. Been here ever since. I had been meaning to get rid of them—we’re pressed for warehouse space, you see…”

Corfe dropped the old helm with a clang. “You expect me to dress my men up as Merduks?”

“Seems to me you haven’t a lot of choice, son. This is the best I can do. You’ll not find a better offer in the city, unless you can persuade the Queen Dowager to stump up the necessary cash.”

Corfe shook his head, thinking.

“It’s not honourable, sir, dressing up as heathens,” Ebro said passionately. “You should decline the command. It’s what they want you to do.”

“And what you want me to do also, Ensign?” Corfe asked without turning around.

“Sir, I—”

“We’ll take the armour,” Corfe said briskly to Passifal. “But we can’t let the men wear it as it stands; folk will think we’re the enemy. Have you any paint, Quartermaster?”

Passifal’s white eyebrows shot up. “Paint? Aye, tons of it, but what for?”

Corfe retrieved the helm he had thrown down a moment before. “We’ll paint this gear, to distinguish ourselves. Red, I think. Yes—a nice shade of scarlet so that the blood won’t show. Excellent.” He was smiling, but there was little humour in his face. “My men have no transport facilities. I’ll have them here within the hour and they can pick out their armour themselves. Can you have the paint waiting by then, Quartermaster?”

Passifal looked as though he had been let in on an enormous joke. “Why not? Yes, Colonel, the paint will be here. It’ll be worth it to see your five hundred savages dressed up in Merduk armour and splashed crimson.”

Again, the mirthless smile. “Not only the savages, Quartermaster. Ebro and I will also be donning Merduk gear.”

“But sir, we have our own,” Ebro protested. “There’s no need—”

“We’ll wear what the men wear,” Corfe interrupted him. “And I shall have to think up some sort of battle standard, since the regular Torunnan banners will, it seems, be denied to us. Good. All that remains now is to meet the General Staff and receive my specific orders. After that, we can begin to plan.”

“No waggons or mules, no transport for our gear,” Ensign Ebro said, a last-ditch effort.

Corfe grinned at him, unexpectedly good-humoured. “You forget, Ebro, that our command is composed of savage tribesmen from the mountains. What need have they of a baggage train? They can live off the country, and may God help the country.”

Passifal was watching Corfe as though he had just that moment recognized him from somewhere. “I see you intend to pick up the King’s gauntlet, Colonel.”

“If I can, Quartermaster,” Corfe said flatly, “I intend to throw it back in his face.”

NINETEEN

“W hat a pretty picture a burning city makes,” Sastro di Carrera said, leaning on the iron balcony rail of the Royal palace. Abrusio spread out beyond his perch in a sea of buildings, ending almost two miles away downhill in the confusion of ships and buildings and docks which butted on to the true sea, the Western Ocean which girdled the known edges of the world. It was twilight, not because the day was near its long winter sleep, but because of the towers of smoke that shrouded the sun. Sastro’s face was lit by the radiance of the burning, and he could hear it as a far thunder, the mutterings of the banished elder gods.

“May God forgive us,” Presbyter Quirion said beside him, making the Sign of the Saint across his breastplate. Unlike Sastro, who was immaculately tailored, Quirion was grimed and filthy. He had lately come from the inferno below, in which men were fighting and dying by the thousand, their collective screaming drowned out by the hungry roar of the holocaust, the tearing rattles of volley-fire.

“ ‘And now,’ ” he said quietly, “ ‘is Hell come to earth, and in the ashes of its burning will totter all the schemes of greedy men. The Beast, in coming, will tread the cinders of their dreams.’ ”

“What in the world are you talking about, Quirion?” Sastro asked.

“I was quoting an old text which foretells the end of the world we know and the beginning of another.”