CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
MANY LEAGUES TO the north, high in the foothills of the Eaglesclaw Mountains, Benet Edasson peered at the plain below and cried, ‘I can see them!’
‘You can’t see them,’ Stern told him impatiently. ‘You can barely see your hand in front of your face.’ His brother continually commented on what he could see in a bid to fool his comrades, when in truth he was just drawing attention to his blindness.
Stern pointed south-east. ‘There’s a smudge on the horizon. It must be the enemy army at the Narrows, waiting for the tide.’
‘You sure they’re still on this side?’ Benet asked, squinting.
‘I’ve been watching for a while and they haven’t moved,’ Stern said. He was speaking for Hayden’s benefit for he suspected the general too was hard of seeing. Hayden and Brel, a Petrassi captain, and he and Benet had walked up to the top of a sandstone outcrop while the rest of the troops, exhausted by the forced march, rested at its base. ‘Why would they be still in one place otherwise?’
Taking silence as assent, Stern went on: ‘They’re a day or so ahead of us. The men and horses will cross easily enough, once the tide is right, but they’ve got weapons and baggage. Getting all that over will take many rafts. How many carts do you reckon they have, Benet?’
Benet, who was the only soldier to admit having seen the retreating rear of the enemy army, guessed. ‘Two hundred or more?’
‘They may be able to use some of the rafts we abandoned on the north shore after our crossing in this direction,’ said Brel. ‘But it’s been weeks now and they will likely have all been stolen.’
‘Perhaps they’ll send their soldiers on ahead, leaving the wagons to cross later,’ offered Benet. ‘I would.’
The general shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. By sending only their soldiers against the north walls they will be warning the City of their presence, to no advantage. They’ll want to bring up the heavy weaponry for their first assaults.’ He looked at Benet. ‘I would.’
He explained: ‘Remember the great explosions at the Vorago?’ The brothers nodded fervently. How could they not? Stern thought that if he lived to make old bones he would never forget the terrifying crash of the cannon, the rain of bloody gouts of flesh, the screams of men and horses, and the gut-twisting fear that had left him helpless as a child.
‘Those weapons, if used properly,’ said the general, ‘could bring down a gate, perhaps even a great wall like those of the City. But the cannon are heavy and will be difficult to transport over the water.’
‘They need boats,’ Brel said. ‘And strong ones.’
‘They do indeed. They have been marching hard and have not been delayed by weather or military action. Perhaps that’s what they’re waiting for: boats. I think we have a chance of catching them in a day or two.’
‘Then what?’ asked Benet, eyes wide. ‘What good will we do, two hundred of us?’
The general looked thoughtful. ‘There is a great deal two hundred can do.’
Their little army had grown as they marched south. First had limped in more wounded, refugees and deserters; these were all welcomed as comrades, for it was impossible to discriminate between those who had fled and those left for dead. They were all heroes now. They were joined by stragglers from the Petrassi army, two dozen or so who had chosen to throw in their lot with the City forces. It was then that Hayden had been forced to identify himself to Stern and his fellows as a past general of Petrus. This had been treated with little surprise, indeed little interest. In these desperate times the City warriors chose to follow the age-old adage, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’
Now they followed him without complaint, at least to his face. The real test would come, as Stern had predicted, when they engaged in battle.
Three days after leaving the Vorago battlefield they had come to the place where the fleeing womenfolk had been overtaken by the forces of the enemy. It was a grim sight, but it seemed the women had been lucky, in a situation where even bad luck has different degrees. The enemy army was marching hard and its warriors had done no more than slaughter the women as efficiently as possible, take their pack animals and march on. Benet searched among the bloody corpses for Peach but could not find her. Stern had been tempted to look for Emly, for he felt in a strange way responsible for her, having kept her safe against the Fkeni in the siege in the high pass. But in the end he chose not to. He did not want to see the girl’s corpse, and if he could not find her it would mean nothing.
Then the next morning the soldiers had come across a small group of women and children, including the young whore Peach and the midwife Bruenna bearing Maura’s infant, who had successfully evaded the enemy. They had six donkeys piled with food and water, cooking gear and blankets. This morsel of good luck raised the spirits of Hayden’s army.
Now, within sight of their quarry, they spent the day descending the southern slopes of the Eaglesclaw foothills until, by sunset, they were on the wide flat plain which would lead them to the Narrows and eventually, for the City folk, to home.
Stern lay staring up at the moon. His belly was full of roasted horse, his mind full of thoughts. Around him soldiers talked quietly, sometimes jesting and laughing. It was all so familiar to Stern and he could easily imagine he was in the midst of a horde of twenty or thirty thousand, as so often in the past, rather than their small, bedraggled force.
There was a great deal he did not understand and he was anxious to talk to Hayden. He glanced over to where the general sat by the campfire, but he was surrounded by his Petrassi comrades. Perhaps they were talking about their lost land. They all looked sombre.
Stern thought about Quora, imagined her lying on the other side of the campfire listening to Benet complaining, or Grey Gus yarning, as she had done so often over their years together, glancing at him from time to time, smiling in the firelight. And he daydreamed that she would walk into the campsite one evening, strong and fit, having recovered from her head wound and finally caught up with them. Any delay in their progress made his hopes rise that he would see her again. And they would certainly be delayed at the Narrows.
‘General wants you,’ a voice interrupted, strongly accented, and Stern lifted his eyes to see one of the Petrassi, who jerked his head towards Hayden then wandered off. Stern scrambled up and went over. Hayden looked up.
‘Stern. Sit. We need to talk about tomorrow.’
Stern hunkered down beside him. ‘Can I ask a question first?’
‘Of course, soldier.’ Hayden poked the fire with a stick and the flaring light fell on his face, revealing dark shadows under weary eyes.
‘The weapons you spoke of, the cannon they used against us,’ asked Stern. ‘You already knew of them?’
Hayden bent his head so his face fell into shade. ‘I did. Though I had no reason to believe they would be turned against us.’
Stern nodded his acceptance of that. After all, there were many Petrassi bodies among the dead at the Vorago. ‘Then why didn’t the Blues, your forces, use them against the City?’ he asked. ‘You say these weapons can tear down a wall. But you used the reservoirs instead.’
The older man was silent, collecting his thoughts. Stern had noticed Hayden seldom spoke swiftly, but examined each word before he would allow it from his mouth. Perhaps, the soldier thought, it is because he is speaking words which are foreign to him. Some of Stern’s comrades believed the Blues spoke a strange tongue because they were too stupid to learn that of the City. Stern knew this was not true; still, he marvelled that a man could speak words that were not native to him with such ease. He sat back comfortably, happy to wait, inhaling the familiar scents of charred wood and meat and sweat, listening to the low voices of the soldiers and, nearby, the liquid song of a night bird.
Hayden leaned forward and prodded the fire again, then looked up. He said, ‘Towards the end of the war I met a group of allied officers, Odrysians, Buldekki, others. We were intent on a final push against the City. The
Odrysians gave a demonstration of the flares – the flying red lights – and explained how they were made. This was known to us, for the Petrassi, even far from home and dispersed throughout the world as we were, had devices the City was barely aware of. Timepieces, lanterns.’
He paused and Stern frowned. From his jacket pocket the general drew a long chain with a round metal object on the end. He showed it to Stern, who took it in his hand and examined it in the flickering light. A circle of glass was embedded in the front and underneath the glass were symbols. Stern was unlettered and had no understanding of their meaning.
‘This is a timepiece,’ Hayden explained. ‘These hands, these … points, go round at a fixed speed and tell the holder what hour of the day it is. Like a sundial.’
‘But there is no sun,’ said Stern, baffled. ‘And I do not need this pretty thing to tell me what time of day it is.’
Hayden gave a rare smile. ‘It has a mechanism inside which turns the hands whether there is sun or not, so it shows the hour, even at night.’
Stern shook his head. He didn’t like to appear a fool, but it smacked of witchcraft to him. ‘What use is it?’ he asked sceptically.
‘For an army it can be very useful. If you and I, for instance, were attacking an enemy from two sides. If we each had one of these we could coordinate our attacks to the moment.’
Stern nodded his understanding, though he doubted he would ever trust such a thing. ‘Do you have another one?’
‘No,’ the general admitted. ‘And this one is broken. But it is one of several devices other nations use which are unknown in the City, despite its past military might. My brother Mason, who knew a good deal more about the City than I, told me the ruling faction – the old emperor Araeon and the Vincerii – forbade the use of such things and suppressed similar inventions. They relied on the strength of the City and its soldiers. All the world knows warriors of the City are hard to kill.’
Stern grinned. It had been proved time and again to his own satisfaction. But it was good to know all the world knew it too.
‘At that meeting,’ Hayden went on, ‘an elderly Odrysian engineer, who had travelled far in foreign lands, said a nation in the far northeast, a barbaric and cruel people, had found a new, terrible use for the black powder.’ He paused and, as he was expected to do, Stern said, ‘Black powder?’
‘It is a substance which, when set alight, burns with great power and heat. The flares the enemy used at the Vorago were of black powder. They gave light and heat but were of little use as weapons, except to frighten. But this Odrysian said the barbarians had found a way to contain the force of the powder in a cast-iron pipe and use it to propel a ball of stone or iron great distances to kill their enemies. That is what this army is using. But such devices would be heavy and difficult to transport. And the powder must be kept dry. That is perhaps why we have caught up with them – crossing the Narrows will be a hurdle for them.’
Stern looked south to where the enemy army was still on this side of the water. He smiled as he realized what the general was saying.
‘So our mission,’ Hayden went on, ‘is to thwart them by sabotaging these weapons before they get to the City.’
‘We can do that,’ said Stern, grinning. It was good to have a purpose again.
‘Good,’ said the general. ‘Can you swim?’
Hoham Shoko was a warrior, son of a warrior and grandson of a warrior. He wore a vest of man-skin and a necklet made of the teeth of women. He had fought in desert and mountain and forest and plain and no man had bested him, and the great Lord of the Hratana himself knew his name.
But Hoham was afraid of water. He thought he had seen everything in his years of war, but he had never seen such a wide stretch of water before and his bowels quaked at the prospect of crossing it.
The Lord’s Army had waited on the north side of the wide river for two days now. They did not know why they were waiting, but the rest was good after many days of hard marching. Perhaps there will be another way round, Hoham thought hopefully, and the leaders are discussing the new path. He watched and waited, cursing the shifty gods of the rivers who first raised the waters then lowered them in a way that was both unnatural and menacing. Where did all the water come from? Where did it all go?
Lesser men, slaves and foreign labourers, were building boats and rafts, flimsy craft to cross such a terrible water. These vessels would carry the army’s weapons, heavy armour, the great fire-pipes, and supplies. The cavalry would rely on their mounts to get them over. But the infantry would have to swim, half-naked and vulnerable.
Hoham had crossed rivers before. He could stay afloat after a fashion and always found something to cling to: a raft, a piece of debris, sometimes, in humiliation, a trooper’s stirrup. But none of them had been as wide as this. You could barely see the other side.
Now it was late afternoon and the water level had sunk to its lowest ebb. And the order came to advance.
Hoham’s division would be the last to cross, for they were guarding the rear – not that they had seen anything to guard it against. He waited with his comrades of the seventh infantry, anxiety rising in his mouth as the leaders and the cavalry led the plunge into the water, followed by the fourth division guarding the boats loaded with barrels of black powder. Then the sixth was ordered out, leading the pack animals. Before long all the width of the water was churning with men and animals and vessels, all dwindling southwards in the darkening light. The wait was interminable and Hoham felt sick to his stomach.
The carts bearing the great fire-pipes had been dragged up on to the sturdiest rafts and strapped on securely. The rafts were pushed off.
Only one of the six fire-pipes remained. Its cart had shed a wheel and Hoham’s division had been ordered to carry the black iron weapon on to the raft and rope it down. Six of his comrades, the lucky ones, were deployed on to the raft to safeguard it, but Hoham and his fellows would have to swim behind.
As the last raft bumped away from the shore Hoham took a deep breath and marched into the water. He felt it cling to his limbs in its unwholesome way, and he pushed himself forward until he was chest-deep, trying to keep up with the raft. But though it was being paddled slowly, Hoham was even slower and when his feet left the floor of the river he tried to quell his panic, surging forward with his arms, keeping his head high, trying to stop the filthy water entering his body. He was watching the rear of the raft move beyond his grasp when he saw a dark shape rise from the water behind the paddlers. It resolved itself into a man’s head and as it turned towards him, Hoham could see the gleam of a knife between its teeth.
‘Enemy!’ he shouted, pausing in his floundering to point at the raft. But he sank like a stone anchor and water surged into his mouth and closed over his head. He flailed desperately with his arms until he regained the surface, thrashing and gasping. When he had regained his bearings and could see the raft again, the knifeman had gone. So had Hoham’s comrades who were already swimming far ahead. He looked behind him. There was no one left. He was the last to cross.
Then a black shape rose out of the river in front of him, strong hands closed around his throat and he was dragged down into the pitiless water. He struggled and fought but the cold hands were like iron.
Stern swam under the raft in darkness. The water, churned by thousands of men and horses, was thick and muddy and he felt his way through the murk, tracing with his fingertips the ropes which lashed the vessel together. He took the knife from his teeth and sawed through one of them. To no effect. He felt along the length of the log and cut another rope. Nothing happened. The raft was well made. He was forced to rise up at the rear of the raft, avoiding the flailing paddles, and take a deep breath. He glanced swiftly behind. A few of the enemy infantrymen remained on the shore but as he watched they marched down into the water.
He sucked air into his chest and swam back under the raft. He had cut through two more of the ropes before he felt the logs shift against each other. He sawed through one
more, his lungs burning. Suddenly the loosened logs started to roll, the cut ropes flailing through the water like whips. Stern dived down to the river bed then kicked himself upstream as far as he could before he was forced to emerge, gasping for air. He turned back to watch.
The raft was foundering, listing to one side as the logs came apart. The men on board were frantically trying to stop the cannon rolling into the water. But it was too heavy and was at an angle, its big mouth pointing down into the river. The alarm had been raised and more men were swimming to help as the raft foundered. Four soldiers on board tried to hold on to the cannon but they were sinking as timber shifted under them. There was nothing they could do.
Stern lay on his back in the water, paddling gently with hands and feet, unseen in the darkness. He listened to the enemy’s shouts and curses and watched the raft sink until there was nothing but blackness.
Benet suddenly emerged from the water beside him, laughing, and grabbed him round the shoulders and bore him down in the water. Stern struggled free and rose spluttering, then tried to dunk his brother just as they did when they were boys in the sea at Adrastto. They were both elated, triumphant at their victory. The only enemy soldier to spot them had been the fat oaf struggling along at the back of the army. Benet was doing him a kindness when he’d throttled him. He’d never have made it to the south shore anyway.
They swam upstream and when they waded up out of the water, eager hands reached to help them.
‘Well done, men,’ said Hayden, his face unsmiling but his eyes warm. ‘You have given them something to think about. They will place stronger guards on their weapons now they know they are being followed. This will be a setback to their plans, and their pride.’
‘They’ll send scouts,’ predicted Stern, rubbing himself down with a hairy blanket.
‘I hope so,’ Hayden said. ‘If I were their general I would send out the best, and that is who we will capture. It’s time we found out something about our enemy.’
The Immortal Throne (2016) Page 44