by Paul Kearney
Victory. It tasted sweet, even if it was over fellow-Torunnans. It was better than wine or women. It was an exaltation which burned away self-doubt.
“Keep up the scare,” he told Andruw. “We’ll pursue them all the way to Hedeby if we have to. They mustn’t be given a rest, or a chance to reform. Keep at them, Andruw.”
Andruw gestured to the howling, slaughtering tribesmen who were following the retreating army and turning their rout into a murderous nightmare.
“I don’t think I could stop them if I tried, Corfe.”
B Y nightfall it was over. Hedeby’s citadel had been surrendered by the town headsman, the nobility of the place having been killed in the battle. Corfe billeted his troops in the castle itself. The remains of Duke Ordinac’s forces were scattered refugees, lost somewhere in the surrounding countryside. Many had surrendered in the town square, too exhausted to flee any farther. These were imprisoned in the castle cells. The people of the town, in terror of the bloody, weirdly armoured barbarians in their midst, refused them nothing in the way of food, drink, or anything else they had a mind to take, though Corfe issued stark orders against any maltreatment of the citizens. He had seen too much of that at Aekir to countenance it from men under his own command.
Four hundred of the duke’s men had died on the field, and another tenscore were bleeding and screaming wounded, most of whom would follow their dead comrades into eternity. Corfe’s men had lost less than a hundred, most of the casualties being incurred by the tercio which had engaged the enemy pikes head on.
Ordinac kept a good larder, and there was a feast for those well enough to stomach it that night, the tribesmen drinking and eating at the long tables of the castle hall, waited on by terrified serving attendants—Corfe had seen to it that these were male—and recounting the stories of what they had personally done in the battle lately fought. It was like a scene from an earlier, cruder age, when men put glory in battle above all other things. Corfe did not greatly care for it, but he let the men have their fun. They had earned it. He was amused to see Ensign Ebro flushed and drinking in the midst of the rest, being slapped on the back and not resenting it. Clearly the relief of having seen out his first battle without disgrace had unbent him. He was roaring with laughter at jokes told in a language he could not understand.
Corfe went out of the smoky hall to stand on the old-fashioned battlements of Hedeby Castle and look down on the town and the land below, dark under the stars. Up on the hill overlooking the town there was a dull red glow. The townspeople had dragged the bodies of the slain there on Corfe’s orders and made a pyre of them. There they lay, Torunnan men-at-arms and duke and Felimbric tribesmen, all burning together. Corfe thanked his luck that his men did not seem to require elaborate burial rites. As long as the corpse burned with a sword in its hand, they were happy. Such strange men; he had come close to loving them today as they followed him without question or hesitation. Such loyalty was beyond the fortunes of kings.
Footsteps behind him, and he found himself flanked by Andruw and Marsch, the tribesman clutching a flaccid wineskin.
“Drunk already?” Andruw asked, though he might have asked the same question of himself.
“I needed air,” Corfe told him. “Why are you two out here missing the fun?”
“The men want to toast their commander,” Marsch said gravely.
He had been drinking solidly the whole evening, but he was as steady as a rock. He offered the wineskin to his colonel, and Corfe took a squirt of the thin, acidic wine of southern Torunna into his mouth. The taste brought back memories of his youth. He had come from this part of the world, though he had been stationed so long in the east that he nearly forgot it. Had he not joined the army at a tender age he might have been burning on that pyre on the hilltop right now, fighting for his overlord in a war whose cause he knew little of and cared less for.
“Are the pickets posted?” he asked Andruw.
The younger officer blinked owlishly. “Yes, sir. Half a mile out of town, sober as monks, and mounted on the best horses the stables could provide. Corfe, Marsch and I have been meaning to talk to you.” Andruw draped an arm about Corfe’s shoulders. “Do you know what we’ve found here?”
“What?”
“Horses.” It was Marsch who was speaking now. “We have found many horses, Colonel, big enough for destriers. It would seem that this duke of yours had a passion for breeding horses. There are over a thousand in studs scattered over the countryside to the south. Some of the castle attendants told us.”
Corfe turned to look Marsch in the eye. “What are you saying, Ensign?”
“My people are natural born horsemen. It is the way we prefer to fight. And this armour we wear: most of it is the armour of heavy cavalrymen anyway . . .” Marsch trailed off, his eyebrows raised.
“Cavalry,” Corfe breathed. “So that’s it. I was a cavalry officer myself once.”
Andruw was grinning at him. “The property of traitors is confiscate to the crown, you know. But I’m sure Lofantyr will not miss a few nags. He’s been niggardly enough to us so far.”
Corfe stared out at the fire-split night. The pyre of the slain was like a dull eye watching him.
“On horseback we’d have more mobility and striking power, but we’d also need a baggage train of sorts, a mobile forge, farriers.”
“There are men among the tribe who can shoe horses and doctor them. The Felimbri value their horseflesh above their wives,” Marsch said, with perfect seriousness. Andruw choked on a mouthful of wine and collapsed into laughter.
“You’re drunk, Adjutant,” Corfe said to him.
Andruw saluted. “Yes, Colonel, I am. My apologies, Marsch. Have a drink.”
The wineskin did the rounds between the three of them as they leaned against the battlements and narrowed their eyes against the chill of the wind that came off the sea.
“We will equip the men with horses then,” Corfe said at last. “That’s eight squadrons of cavalry we’ll have, plus spares for every man and a baggage train for forage and the forge. Mules to carry the grain—there’s plenty about the town. And then—”
“And then?” Andruw and Marsch asked together.
“Then we march on Duke Narfintyr at Staed, get there before Lofantyr’s other column and see what we can do.”
“I’ve heard folk in the town say that Narfintyr has three thousand men,” Andruw said, momentarily sobered.
“Numbers mean nothing. If they’re of the same calibre as the ones we fought today we’ve nothing to worry about.”
The moon was rising, a thin sliver, a horned thing of silver which Marsch bowed to.
“ ‘Kerunnos’ Face,’ we call it,” he said in answer to the questioning looks of the two Torunnans. “It is the light of the night, of the twilight, of a dwindling people. My tribe is almost finished. Of its warriors, who once numbered thousands, there are only we few hundred left and some boys and old men up in the mountains. We are the last.”
“Our people have fought you for generations,” Corfe said. “Before us it was the Fimbrians, and before that the Horse-Merduks.”
“Yes. We have fought the world, we Felimbri, but our time is almost done. This is the right way to end it. It was a good fight, and there will be other good fights until the last of us dies a free man with sword in hand. We can ask for nothing more.”
“You’re wrong, you know,” Andruw spoke up unexpectedly. “This isn’t the end of things. Can’t you feel it? The world is changing, Marsch. If we live to old age we will have seen it become something new, and what is more we will have been a part of the forces that did the changing of it. Today, in a small way, we began something which will one day be important . . .” He trailed off. “I’m drunk, friends. Best ignore me.”
Corfe slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re right in a way. This is just the beginning of things. There’s a long road ahead of us, if we’re strong enough to walk it. God knows where it’ll take us.”
“To the
road ahead,” Marsch said, raising the almost empty wineskin.
“To the road ahead.”
And they drank from it one by one like brothers.
TWENTY-FOUR
T HE reek of the burning hung about Abrusio like a dark fog, stretching for miles out to sea. The great fires had been contained, and were burning themselves out in an area of the city which resembled the visionary’s worst images of hell. Deep in those bright, thundering patches of holocaust some of the sturdier stone buildings still stood, though roofless and gutted, but the poor clay brick of the rest of the dwellings had crumbled at the touch of the fire, and what had once been a series of thriving, densely populated districts was now a wasteland of rubble and ash over which the tides of flame swept back and forth with the wind, seeking something new to feed their hunger even as they began to die down for lack of sustenance.
Fighting within the city had also died down, the protagonists having retreated to their respective quarters with the fire-flattened expanses providing a clear-cut no-man’s-land between them. Many of the King’s troops were engaged in the business of conducting evacuees beyond the walls and yet others were still demolishing swathes of the Lower City, street by street, lest the flames flare up again and seek a new path down to the sea.
“We are holding our own rather nicely,” Sastro di Carrera said with satisfaction. His perch on a balcony high in the Royal palace afforded him a fine view of Lower Abrusio, almost half of which lay in flickering ruin.
“I think we have exhausted the main effort of the enemy,” Presbyter Quirion agreed. “But a part of the fleet, a strong squadron, has not been in sight for days. Rovero may have sent it off somewhere to create some devilment, and the main part of Hebrion’s navy is at anchor beyond the Great Harbour. I fear they may assault the booms soon.”
“Let them,” Sastro said airily. “The mole forts house a score of heavy guns apiece. If Rovero sends in his ships to force the entrance to the harbour they will be cut to pieces by a deadly crossfire. No, I think we have them, Quirion. This is the time to see whether they will consider a negotiated surrender.”
Quirion shook his round, close-cropped head. “They’re in no mood for talking yet, unless I miss my guess. They still have a goodly force left to them, and our own men are thinly stretched. They will make another effort soon, by ship perhaps. We must remain vigilant.”
“As you wish. Now, what of my coronation plans? I trust they are forging ahead?”
Quirion’s face took on a look of twisted incredulity. “We are in the middle of a half-fought war, Lord Carrera. This is hardly the time to begin worrying about pomp and ceremony.”
“The coronation is more than that, my dear Presbyter. Don’t you think that the presence in Abrusio of an anointed king, blessed by the Church, will be a factor in persuading the rebels to lay down their arms?”
Quirion was silent for a moment. From the city below came the odd crack of arquebus fire where pickets were taking potshots at each other, but compared to the hellish chaos of the past days Abrusio seemed almost tranquil.
“There may be something in what you say,” he admitted at last. “But we will not be able to stump up much in the way of pomp for a time yet. My men and yours are too busy fighting to keep what we have.”
“Of course, but I ask you to bear it in mind. The sooner this vacuum is filled the better.”
Quirion nodded and then turned away. He leaned on the balcony rail and stared out over the maimed city.
“They say that fifty thousand of the citizens perished in the fire, quite apart from the thousands who died in the fighting,” he said. “I don’t know about you, Lord Carrera, but for me that is a heavy load for conscience to bear.”
“They were heretics, the scrapings of the sewers. Of no account,” Sastro said scornfully. “Do not let your conscience grow tender on their behalf, Quirion. The state is better off without them.”
“Perhaps.
“Well perhaps you would care to walk with me and show me your plans for the defence of the Upper City.”
“Yes, Lord Carrera,” Quirion said heavily. As he turned away from the balcony, however, he had a moment of agonizing doubt. What had he done here? What kind of creature was he making a king of?
The moment passed, and he followed Sastro into the planning chamber of the palace, where the senior officers of their forces were awaiting them.
T HERE was no beauty in ships for the lady Jemilla. To her they were little more than complicated instruments of torture, set to float on an element which might have been designed specifically to cause her discomfort.
But there were times when she could dimly see some of the reasons why men held them in such awe and reverenced them so. They were impressive, if nothing else.
She was taking a turn about the poop-deck of the Providence, the flagship of Rovero and Abeleyn’s squadron. If she did not spend too much time looking at the gentle rise and fall of the horizon and concentrated instead on the cold wind which fanned her pale cheeks, then she might almost enjoy the motion. In any case, she would rather die than be sick here on deck, in front of five hundred sailors and marines and soldiers, all of whom were stealing privy glances up at her as she paced heavily to and fro from one bulwark to the other.
The flagship was a magnificent two-decker mounting some fifty guns, four-masted and with high-built fore- and stern-castles. Seen from aft, with her gold ornament and long galleries hanging over her wake, she looked like nothing so much as some baroque church front. But her decks presented an entirely different aspect. They had already been strewn with sand so that when the time came the gunners and sailors would not slip in their own blood. The guns had been run out, the firetubs set around the mast butts, and the slow-match which would set off the guns already lit and spreading its acrid reek about the ship. They were cleared for action. Abrusio was just over a league away. The admiral had told her they were doing six knots, and would raise the city in less than half an hour. She would be confined when that happened in the dark below-decks, in the murky stench of bilge and close-packed humanity which was the particular hallmark of every warship. So she was making the most of the fresh air, preparing herself for the ordeal ahead.
Abeleyn joined her on the poop. He was in half-armour, black-lacquered steel chased with silver and with a scarlet sash about his middle. He looked every inch the sovereign as he stood there with one hand resting on his sword hilt and the other cradling the open-faced helm which he would wear into battle. Jemilla found herself curtseying to him without conscious volition. He seemed to have grown in stature somehow, and she noticed for the first time the streaks of grey in his curly hair behind the temples.
“I trust you are enjoying your last moments of freedom, lady,” he said, and something in the way he said it made her shiver.
“Yes, sire. I am no sailor, as you know. I would stay up here throughout the battle if I could.”
“I believe you would.” Abeleyn smiled, his regal authority falling from him. He was a young man again. “I have seen seasick marines lift their heads and forget about their malady the moment the guns begin to roar. Human nature is a strange thing. But I will feel better knowing that you are safe below the waterline.”
She bowed slightly. “I am selfish. I think only of myself, and sometimes forget the burden I bear, the King’s child.” She could not resist reminding him, though she knew he disliked her doing it.
Sure enough, his face hardened. The boy disappeared again.
“You had best go below, lady. We will be within range of the city batteries in less than half a glass.”
“As you wish, sire,” she said humbly, but as she started for the companion ladder she paused and set her hand on his. “Be careful, Abeleyn,” she whispered.
He gripped her hand briefly and smiled with his mouth alone. “I will.”
The squadron went about, the sails on every ship flashing in and out as one, obedient to the signal pennants of the flagship. They were around the last
headland and could see in the distance Abrusio Hill, the sprawl of the city itself and the fleet which stood ready beyond its harbours.
The sight was a shock for Abeleyn, no matter that he had tried to prepare himself for it. It seemed to him at first glance that his capital was entirely in ruins. Swathes of rubble-strewn wasteland stretched across the city, and fires were burning here and there. Only the western waterfront and the Upper City on the hillside seemed unchanged. But Old Abrusio was destroyed utterly.
As the squadron was sighted, the fleet began its salute, some four hundred vessels suddenly coming alive in clouds of smoke and flame, a thunder which echoed across the hills inland and carried for miles out to sea as the King was saluted and welcomed back to his kingdom. The salute was the signal for the battle to commence, and before its last echoes had died away the warships of Hebrion had unfurled their sails and were weighing anchor. The blank rounds of a moment before were replaced by real cannonballs, and the bombardment of the mole forts which protected the Great Harbour had begun.
The staggering noise of a fleet action was something which had to be experienced for anyone to believe it. Added to the guns of the ships now was the return fire of the batteries on the city walls and the harbour forts. As his squadron edged closer to the eastern half of the Lower City, where his forces would attempt their landing, Abeleyn saw the water about the leading squadrons of the fleet erupt in geysers of foam as the first rounds went home. Topmasts were shattered by high-ranging shells and came crashing down in tangles of rigging and wood and billowing canvas. The bulwarks of the leading ships were swept with deadly chain shot, splinters of oak spraying through the gun crews like charges of canister. But still the great ships in the vanguard sailed on, their chasers firing across their bows and producing puffs of rubble and flame from the casemates of the forts.