by Paul Kearney
Abeleyn saw one tall carrack dismasted entirely, her towering yards shattered and crumpling over her side. She yawed as the fallen spars dragged her to one side and in a moment had collided with one of her sister-ships. But the battle for the mole forts and the boom was being obscured by rising clouds of pale powder-smoke. It seemed that the whole surface of Abrusio’s Great Harbour, over a mile from one end of it to the other, was a seething cauldron which bubbled steam, amid which the masts of ships could be glimpsed as the smoke rolled and toiled in vast thunderheads across the broken face of the sea.
The Providence’s guns were roaring, softening up the waterfront where the marines and soldiers of the squadron would make their landing. On the formation’s vessels the fighting men stood in unbroken ranks amidships, their lips moving in prayer, their hands checking armour and weapons one last time. Three thousand men to carry the eastern half of Abrusio and hack a way up to the palace. They seemed pitifully few to Abeleyn, but he had to remind himself that the fleet was doing its part in the Great Harbour, and Mercado’s men would be assaulting across the burnt wasteland of the western city also. With luck, his own forces should not have too many of the enemy to contend with.
He could see the sea walls of eastern Abrusio now, scarcely three cables away. The water was deep here, seven fathoms at least, and even the carracks would be able to run in close to the walls to support the landing parties with point-blank fire.
The longboats and cutters of the squadron were already on the booms, and sailors and marines were hauling together in sweating crowds to swing them out over the ship’s sides and down to the water so far below. All this while the guns bellowed out broadside after broadside and were answered by the wall batteries. Abeleyn had to hold himself upright, unflinching, as rounds began to whistle and crash home on the carrack. A longboat took a direct hit and exploded in a spray of jagged wood and gore, men flung in all directions, ropes flapping free. But the work went on, and the small boats were lowered down the sides of the ships one by one. There were scores of them, enough to carry over a thousand men in the first wave.
“Your boat is ready, sire,” Admiral Rovero shouted over the noise, his lopsided mouth seemingly built to concentrate the force of his voice. Abeleyn nodded. He felt a touch of warmth as Sergeant Orsini fell into step beside him, and took a moment to grip the man’s shoulder. Then he put one leg over the bulwarks and began climbing down the rope ladder hanging there while a yard away on the other side of him the culverins exploded and were reloaded, running in and out like monsters let loose and then restrained.
He was in the boat, his heart almost as loud as the gunfire in his head. The vessel was already packed with men, struggling with oars and arquebuses and swords and ladders. Abeleyn stepped over them to the prow, where the laddermen were squatting ready. He waved his hand at the helmsman, and they cast off from the looming carrack along with half a dozen other crowded boats. The men’s oars dipped, and they began to move over the shot-stitched water.
An agonizing time of simply sitting there while they crawled forward towards the walls. There were scores of boats in the water, a mass of close-packed humanity crammed into them, dotting the deadly space between the hulls of the warships and the sea walls of the city. But they took few casualties in that choppy approach. The broadsides of the carracks were smothering the wall batteries with fire like mother hens protecting their chicks. Abeleyn felt that if he stuck up a hand into the air he could catch a cannonball, so thick was the volume of shot screaming overhead. To his own alarm, he had a momentary urge to throw up. Several of the men in the boat had already done so. It was the waiting, the drawing tight of the nerves to unbearable tautness. Abeleyn swallowed a mouthful of vomit that was searing his throat. Kings could not afford to show such weaknesses.
They were at the wall, the boat’s bow bumping against the weathered stone. Showers of rock were falling down on them as the shells from the carracks ploughed into the defences above their heads. The naval gunners would elevate their fire at the last moment, giving their comrades as much cover as possible in that murderous time of grappling with the ungainly ladders.
The laddermen stood up with their bulky charge—a fifteen-foot ladder with hooks of steel at its top which were clanging against the stone. They swayed and lurched, their legs held steady by their comrades, until finally the ladder had hooked on to an embrasure above.
Abeleyn pushed them out of the way and climbed first. Golophin and Mercado would have railed at him for such foolishness, but he felt there was nothing else to do. The King must be seen to take the lead. If these men showed their willingness to die for him, then he too must illustrate it in return.
So intent, so utterly concentrated were his thoughts, that he did not even pause to wonder if any of the men would follow him. The spectre of his death was something which hovered gleefully, cackling at his shoulder. His feet were leaden in their boots. He pictured his precious body torn asunder, riddled with bullets, tossed down into the bloody water below. His life ended, his vision of the world, unique and unrecoverable, made extinct. The strain was so great that for a second the wall in front of his nose seemed to turn slightly red, echoing the thunder of blood through his booming arteries.
He drew his sword, awkward and heavy in his armour, and climbed one-handed, gulping for air that would not be sucked into his lungs fast enough.
A stone clanged off one shoulder, and he almost fell. Looking up, he saw a wild-eyed Knight Militant looking over the battlements at him. He froze, utterly helpless as he stared into the man’s raging countenance. But then the Knight’s face disintegrated as a volley of arquebus fire from the boat below hammered into him, throwing him back out of sight. Abeleyn climbed on.
He was at the top, on the walls. Men running, dismounted guns, rubble, gaping holes in the defences. Shot from the carracks whistling higher as the guns were elevated.
Someone running towards him. His own sword flicking out before he even thought of it, clashing aside the other man’s blade. A boot to the midriff, and the man was gone, screaming off over the catwalk.
More of his own men behind him. They were clearing a stretch of wall, fighting the knots of the enemy who were rushing towards them, pushing them back. It was only then that Abeleyn realized how lightly the walls were defended.
I’m alive, he thought with keen surprise. I’m still here. We are doing this thing.
Something in him changed. Until now he had been so preoccupied by what he had to do, by the possibility of his own death or maiming, that he had been thinking like a private soldier obsessed with the precariousness of his own existence. But he was the King. These men were looking to him for orders. He had the responsibility.
He remembered the seaborne fight aboard Dietl’s carrack, a hundred years ago it seemed. He remembered the delight in battle, the sheer excitement of it, and his own feeling of invincibility. And he realized in a tiny, flashing instant, that he would never feel that way again, not about this. That feeling had something to do with youth and exuberance and the joy at being alive. But he had seen his city burned to ashes. He had a child growing in a woman’s belly. His crown had cost his people thousands of lives. He would never feel so untrammelled and unafraid again.
“Follow me!” he shouted to his men. The enemy were falling back off the walls as hundreds more of the landing forces struggled atop the battlements. He led his troops off the sea defences of Abrusio into the streets of the city itself and the bloody work which yet awaited them.
G OLOPHIN stared at the awesome spectacle. A city in torment, burned, bombarded and broken down. Perhaps in the east, with the fall of Aekir and the battles at Ormann Dyke, they could match this scale of destruction and carnage, but nothing he had ever seen before in his long life had prepared him for it.
He had seen the King’s squadron assault the eastern sea walls as the main body of the fleet attacked the mole forts and the boom which protected Abrusio’s widest harbour. But now he could see nothing, no
t even with his cantrips, for the entire enclosed trio of bays which formed the seaward side of the city was obscured by thundering smoke clouds. Three miles of shell-torn water from which a steady roar issued, as though some titanic, agonizing labour of birth were going on deep in that fog of war.
His familiar was dying somewhere aboard the King’s flagship. He had worn it out with his errands and only a flicker of life remained within its breast, a last spark of the Dweomer he had created it with. He could feel the ebbing of its loyal, savage mind, and with it was fading his own strength. No light thing, the death of a familiar. It was like losing a child whose umbilical had never been cut. Golophin felt as old and frail as a brittle leaf, and the Dweomer had sunk in him to a dull glow. It would be a long time ere he was ready to perform miracles again.
And yet he chafed at being here, on the summit of Admiral’s Tower, while the young man who was his lord and his friend fought for his birthright and the life of the city they both loved. The bastard traitors and Knights had ripped the bowels out of raucous Lower Abrusio. It would never be the same again, not in what remained of this old man’s lifetime anyway.
General Mercado joined him, leaving the aides and staff officers and couriers who were clustered about the map-littered table on the other side of the tower.
“He is over the walls,” the general said, one side of his face crannied with worry, the other silver perfection.
“Well, that is something. And the attack on the boom?”
“Too soon to say.” An especially severe series of broadsides from the harbour tumult meant he had to raise his voice to be heard. “We’ve lost at least four great ships and there’s no chance for the crews in that maelstrom. And those who make it ashore are being killed out of hand by the lackeys of the Carreras. At least two thousand men already.”
“What of your land assault?”
“Slow progress there. They’ve thrown up breastworks along their front and my men are having to charge them across the wasteground. There will be no sudden breakthrough, not in this half of the city. We are merely pinning down his troops.”
“So the main effort will be with Abeleyn?”
“Yes. His is the only assault which is presently getting anywhere. But with scarcely four thousand men the Presbyter cannot hold on to all his lines indefinitely. He will crack in the end. It only remains to be seen how much blood we must spill before he does.”
“Great God, General, this will ruin the kingdom.”
Golophin felt faint, worn, useless. The burly soldier steadied him with a hand on his thin arm.
“You should be resting, Golophin. We cannot spare men such as you, either now or in the future.”
The old wizard smiled wanly. “My life is not of such great account, not any more. We are each of us expendable, save one. Nothing must happen to the King, Albio, or this is all for nothing. The King must be made to realize that.”
“I’m sure he will be prudent. He is no fool, despite his youth.”
“He is not such a youth any more, either.”
T HE enemy lines had broken, and those who could were retreating westwards, having spiked their guns and fired their magazines. The Carrera retainers led the rout, whilst the Knights Militant brought up the rear, fighting stubbornly the whole way. Abeleyn’s men took heavy casualties as they followed up the retreat and stumbled into bitter hand-to-hand conflict with the Knights, who were well-trained and superbly armoured. It was only when the King halted the advance and reformed what men he could that the Knights were thrown back in disorder. Abeleyn’s arquebusiers and sword-and-buckler men had become disorganized and intermingled. He separated them and led the advance with quick-firing ranks of arquebusiers alone, which cut down the stolid Knights Militant and sowed panic in the enemy forces. The streets were streaming with men, some intent on saving their own lives, others intent on cutting them down. It had become a running battle, one-sided and fast-moving.
A gasping courier found Abeleyn near the foot of Abrusio Hill, directing the pursuit of the fleeing traitors in person and jogging along with his advancing forces as he snapped out orders right and left. The courier had to tug at the King’s arm before Abeleyn could be halted.
“What? What is it, damn it?”
“I am sent from General Rovero, sire,” the man panted. “He presents his compliments—”
“Damn his compliments! What has he to say?”
“The fleet has broken the boom, sire. They’re sailing into the Great Harbour and beginning to bombard the Upper City. They’ll be landing their marines in minutes. Sire, the general and Golophin beg that you do not expose yourself unnecessarily.”
“My thanks for their advice. Now run to the waterfront and hurry along those landing parties. I want the palace surrounded before the traitors can escape. Go!”
“Yes, your majesty.” And Abeleyn had disappeared into the midst of his jubilant, advancing troops.
“I T is over,” said Quirion.
Sastro’s face was as pale as snow. “What do you mean, ‘over’?”
They could hear the crackling of arquebus volleys as they stood in the high chambers of the palace’s topmost tower. It and the thunder of heavy guns mingled with the crash and rumble of lacerated masonry. Shells were falling closer. Men’s voices could be made out in individual screams rather than the far-off roar of battle which had been what they had heard from this eminence so far. A curtain of battle din was inexorably advancing towards them.
“Our lines are broken, Lord Carrera, and our forces—even my Knights—are in full retreat. The enemy ships have broken the boom and are in the Great Harbour trying the range for the palace. In a few minutes the bombardment of this very edifice will commence. We are defeated.”
“But how is that possible? Only this morning we were ready to discuss terms with an exhausted enemy.”
“You were ready. I never believed it would happen. Abeleyn is in the city as we speak, advancing on the palace. His men fight like fiends when he is at their head, and ours become discouraged. It may be we can draw together what troops of ours remain and make a stand here, perhaps sue for some terms other than those of unconditional surrender. I do not know. Your retainers are in utter rout, and even my people are much broken up. I have my senior officers in the streets trying to rally them, but I do not hold out much hope.”
“Then we must escape,” Sastro said in a strangled voice, his dreams and ambitions crumbling away before his eyes. But his life—it must be possible to survive. It was unthinkable that he would not.
“The palace is surrounded. There is no hope of escape, and especially not for you.” Here a note of some subtle satisfaction crept into Quirion’s voice. “If you are caught they will execute you out of hand for high treason. Myself and my men I believe they may let depart in peace—we are not Hebrionese, after all—but you and your men are traitors and will pay the ultimate penalty. I suggest, Lord Carrera, that to avoid public humiliation at the hands of Abeleyn’s soldiery, you use this—” And here Quirion held out a long, wicked-looking knife.
“Suicide?” Sastro squawked. “Is that the only end for me? Take my own life?”
“It would be a kinder end than the one Abeleyn will permit you.”
“And you—you will tamely submit to the dictates of a heretic king? What will the Pontiff think of that, Presbyter?”
“The Pontiff will not be pleased, naturally, but better that I bring him a thousand Knights out of this debacle than nothing. There is the future to think of. My men must live to fight again for the Church.”
“The future,” Sastro said bitterly. Tears were brimming in his eyes. “You must help me get away, Quirion. I am to be King of Hebrion. I am the only alternative to Abeleyn.”
“You bought your nomination with your men’s bodies,” Quirion said harshly. “There are others whose blood is better. Make a good end of it, Lord Carrera. Show them that you died a man.”
Sastro was weeping openly. “I cannot! How can I die, I, Sast
ro di Carrera? It cannot be. There must be something you can do.” He clutched at Quirion’s armoured shoulders as if he were a drowning man reaching for his rescuer. A spasm of disgust crossed the Presbyter’s face.
“Help me, Quirion! I am rich—I can give you anything.”
“You whining cur!” Quirion spat. “You would send a hundred thousand men to their deaths without a thought, and yet you cringe at the prospect of your own. Great Gods, what a king you would have made for this unhappy realm! So you will give me anything?”
“Anything, for God’s sake, man! Only name it.”
“I will take your life, then,” the Presbyter snarled, and he thrust the knife into the nobleman’s stomach.
Sastro’s eyes flared in disbelief. He staggered backwards.
“Sweet Saints,” he gasped. “You have killed me.”
“Aye,” Quirion said shortly, “I have. Now get about your dying like a man. I go to surrender Abrusio to the heretic.”
He turned on his heel and left the room without a backward glance.
Sastro fell to his knees, his face running with tears.
“Quirion!”
He gripped the hilt of the knife and tried to pull it out of his belly, but only yelped at the pain of it, his fingers slipping on the slick blood. He fell to his side on the stone floor.
“Oh, sweet Blessed Saint, help me,” he whispered. And then was silent. A bubble of blood formed over his open mouth, hovered, and finally popped as his spirit fled.
“T HERE are white flags all over the city, sire,” Sergeant Orsini told Abeleyn. “The enemy are throwing down their arms—even the Knights. Abrusio is ours!”
“Ours,” Abeleyn repeated. He was bloody, grimed and exhausted. He and Orsini walked up the steep street to where the abbey of the Inceptines glowered sombre and high-spired on the skyline ahead. His men were around him, weapons still at the shoulder, but the glee of victory was brightening their faces. Shells were falling, but they were being fired by the ships in the harbour. The enemy batteries had been silenced. Men sank into crouches as a shell demolished the side of a house barely fifty yards away. Streamers of oily smoke were rising from the abbey as it burned from a dozen direct hits.