The Beating of his Wings (Left Hand of God Trilogy 3)

by Paul Hoffman

  ‘I’d like to borrow Koolhaus for an hour or so a day.’

  The attempt to bend Koolhaus out of shape by suggesting he was some sort of useful household item was deliberate. Annoying Koolhaus was something that had always delighted the three boys (‘If you were an egg, Koolhaus, would you rather be fried or boiled?’). They could have been friends and allies – and should have been – but they were not. That’s boys for you.

  Simon could see that his interpreter was annoyed – it didn’t take much. Their master and servant relationship was awkward, the balance of power shifting between Simon’s dependency on him to make contact with the world – which he often resented – and Koolhaus’s entirely justified feeling that he was meant for greater things than being a talking puppet. An offer to pay Koolhaus more money usually mollified him, but only temporarily.

  ‘Tomorrow at six, then,’ said Cale, and made his way through the low-ceilinged corridors where he had so disgraced himself during his last uninvited visit. What hideously mixed feelings twisted in his soul; dread and hope, hope and dread. Then – and he might have made the same visit fifty times and they would have never met – she was in front of him, having decided to take her son to see Simon, who delighted in the baby because he could neither fear Simon nor pity him. Cale’s heart lurched in his chest as if it would tear itself from his body. For a moment they stared at each other – the boiling sea off Cape Wrath was nothing to it. Not love or hate but some braying mule of an emotion, ugly and raucously alive. The baby waved his hand about happily then suddenly slapped his mouth against his mother’s cheek and began making loud slurping noises.

  ‘Is that good for him?’ Cale said. ‘You might be catching.’

  ‘Have you come to threaten us again?’ She was also shocked at the change in him, gaunt where he was once muscular, with the dark circles around his eyes that no good night’s sleep would ever wipe away.

  ‘You remember every sin of mine that was just words and forget everything I did to keep you safe at any cost. You’re still alive because of me – now the dogs bark at me in the street because of you.’

  Ah, self-pity and blame, a combination to win the heart of any woman. But he couldn’t help himself.

  ‘Abl blab abl baddle de dah,’ said the baby, nearly poking his mother in the eye.

  ‘Shshshsh.’ She settled him on her hip and started to swing from side to side.

  ‘If there was any good in you, you’d leave us alone now.’

  ‘He seems happy enough.’

  ‘That’s because he’s a baby and would play with a snake if I let him.’

  ‘Is that supposed to be me – that’s what I am to you?’

  ‘You’re frightening me – let me go.’

  But he couldn’t. He could feel the pointlessness of talking to her but there was no way to stop. Part of him wanted to say he was sorry and part of him was furious with himself for feeling so. There was nothing to be sorry for – his soul demanded that she throw herself to the floor and, weeping, beg his completely undeserved forgiveness. But not even that would have been enough, she would have needed to spend the rest of her life on her knees to stop his heart from scalding him about what she’d done. But not even that.

  ‘The man you sold me to told me he’d already bought me once before – for sixpence.’

  ‘Then your price has risen, hasn’t it?’

  Angry and guilty, and therefore angrier, it was unwise to say something like that to him. But like Cale she had a taste for the last word. As much as her presence was poison to him he couldn’t bear to see her go. But he couldn’t think of anything to say. She pushed past, the baby on the far side, away from him. Into his chest something seeped: oil of vitriol. Acid was kind next to it.

  ‘Yaaar! Blah baa! Pluh!’ shouted the baby.

  19

  History teaches us that there are approximately twice as many triumphant military exits from great cities as there are triumphant returns. The exodus from Spanish Leeds was greater than most in terms of trumpets, rows of well-drilled troops, cheering crowds and emotional young women shouting goodbyes to their heart-burstingly proud men. And then there were the horses – the power and glory, the head-brasses and the colours of blue and yellow and red – and the gorgeous men riding them. There were children present who would remember the splendour and the noise of steel on stone and the cheers until the day they died.

  Twenty minutes outside the city, off came the armour and most of the horses were sent back to their stables. Not only did they consume fodder the way a bear eats buns, but Conn Materazzi would not be allowing the Redeemer archers to destroy a cavalry charge from three hundred yards away as they’d done at Silbury Hill. The cavalry were mostly useful for gathering information before a battle and running away afterwards if it all went wrong.

  Even though Conn’s vanity and pride had largely given way to an impressively mature good judgement he still had a blind spot, understandably enough, when it came to Thomas Cale. Although Cale had no intention of fighting in a battle where he wasn’t in control, he was furious when he was told that he wouldn’t be allowed to bring the Purgators anywhere near the army. Even Artemisia, guilty by association, was refused a part on the grounds that her troops were irregular and not suited to a pitched battle. She would be allowed, however, to lead the sixty or so reconnaissance riders who had helped her slow the Redeemer movement through Halicarnassus. Artemisia had let Cale sulk for several days then suggested he come with her, pointing out that he wouldn’t be able to fight but he might be able to watch.

  ‘I’m not sure if I can,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if I have the strength even for watching.’ He had not told her anything like the whole story of his illness but it was too obvious that something was seriously wrong with him not to give some explanation. He claimed he was suffering from bad-air disease caught in the Scablands. The symptoms were well known to be vague and recurring. Why shouldn’t she believe him?

  ‘Try it for a few days. You can always come back.’

  Six days into the march to the border the news reached Conn that a Redeemer army of around thirty-five thousand was heading to the Mittelland in two parts of twenty-five and ten thousand respectively, the latter coming through the Vaud, probably in an attempt to take Conn’s army from behind. Unfortunately, but not unusually, some of this information was wrong.

  The Redeemer army under Santos Hall had, on balance, decided to move forward only to take the high ground outside the village of Bex and again on balance to divide the army so that they could move more quickly to do so. Shifting thirty-five thousand men with all their carts and baggage could easily lead to a queue two miles wide and twenty miles back. The speed needed to reach the best ground outside Bex was the priority here. But by the time the Redeemers arrived a delighted Conn was solidly placed in front of Bex, protected on his left by the River Gar and to the right by a dense wood, full of lacerating briars thick as fingers and wince-sharp thorns known as dog’s teeth. This gave Conn a space about a mile wide into which to fit thirty-two thousand men. Just before nightfall, the Redeemers started to set up in a position they glumly realized was very much second best. Between the two armies was a slope, much shallower down the Redeemer front and much steeper up to the Swiss army. Conn had won the first battle: he had control of the steeper slope and he had archers almost as good as the Redeemers, and more of them. The battle tomorrow would start with a forty-minute exchange between the two. In that time more tens of thousands of arrows would be exchanged, arriving at one hundred and fifty miles an hour, fired into packed ranks. One of the sides would not be able to endure such a killing squall and would be forced to attack. The side that did so would probably lose the battle, defence being far easier than attack. Odds against the Redeemers were much worse because they had to advance up a steep slope under fire and with fewer men when they got to the top because of the numbers of the dying and dead. More alarming than this was that the ten thousand troops Santos Hall had moved separately from his
main army in order to outflank the Axis had got lost and were now blundering around the Swiss countryside.

  During the night something changed that might make the situation better for the Redeemers or very much worse, although it was nothing either side could do anything about. It was a feature of the local climate that because of the effect of the nearby mountains the weather could change dramatically. The unusually hot sun that day emerged out of a clear sky, which at nightfall allowed the heat to escape upwards in minutes. In turn, cold air off the mountains began flowing into the valley so that the temperature dropped quickly to freezing in a few hours and a deep frost covered everything. By two o’clock in the morning the ground was like iron. But then the wind picked up. It blew over the battlefield first one way then the other, and then back again. Conn and Little Fauconberg, not much more than five foot two, stood in the freezing cold at the top of the hill outside Bex and looked over their own ineffective fires at the equally ineffective fires of the Redeemers, who didn’t even have the shelter of the wood to protect them from the cold wind.

  ‘Odd if the wind settles it,’ said Conn.

  ‘There’s nowt you could do about it. But it might drop altogether now or blow in their face and we’d be even better off.’

  A horse intelligencer arrived and ran up to the two men, slipping on the icy ground and landing heavily on his poor arse. Embarrassed and in pain, he got to his feet. ‘We sighted the rest of the Redeemers at the far end of the Vaud, heading the wrong way. They’ve turned for us now but they won’t be here before mid-afternoon.’

  ‘Should we divide and go to meet them?’ said Fauconberg. ‘We don’t need to stop them, just slow them down. Three thousand could keep them away long past them being of any use here.’

  Conn thought about it.

  ‘Is that Cale oik in camp?’ Fauconberg went on. ‘We could send him off to squeeze them at Bagpuize – they’ve got to come that way. His glorious death would be jolly useful all round.’

  ‘He’s not here. It’s a damn good idea, Fauconberg, but I’m going to stick. Triple the intelligencers – I want to know every mile they make towards us. We can send Vennegor or Waller if things go all right here.’

  ‘If the wind settles going down from us towards them, we’ll win.’

  ‘And what if it doesn’t?’ said Conn.

  Conn was right to ask. By five in the morning the wind was driving constantly into their faces like a blast from a furnace for forging ice. All the advantages won by Conn’s speed and grasp were blown away in a cold wind from the worst cold snap in thirty years.

  ‘They won’t wait,’ said Little Fauconberg. ‘If the wind can change once it can change twice. They’ll take the advantage while they can. Bloody bollocks and damn our luck!’

  There was nothing he could say to improve on Fauconberg’s assessment so Conn just ordered the massed ranks up into line. With the wind so bitter he ordered the men at the front to swap with the men behind, seven deep, every ten minutes. What may sound a tricky manoeuvre was easy enough: for all the romantic heroics of tall tales of warfare in the penny-dreadfuls of Geneva and Johannesburg and Spanish Leeds, the man never lived who could fight for ten or five or even two hours at a stretch. Men were in ranks so that they could replace the men in front not just if they died or were wounded, but mostly to give them a breather and to be given one in their turn. Depending on circumstances a man in pitched battle might fight for no more than ten minutes in every hour. Now, like the emperor penguins of the northern pole, they shuffled side to side into the numbing sleet.

  Little Fauconberg was right. Santos Hall ordered his archers forward. So hard was the ground they could not grab even a pinch of earth to eat to make it clear to God that they were ready to be buried for his sake. This put many Redeemers into a state of hysteria, so terrified were they of dying in a state of sin yet hardly terrified at all of death itself. An exasperated Santos Hall had to send non-militant priests up and down the ranks issuing pardons, something that took ten minutes. A more practical matter of concern was that the earth was so hard they couldn’t stick their arrows into the ground for ease of use.

  Once forgiveness for sins of omission had calmed them down, the Redeemer archers moved forward into position to shoot. As they did so they began to call out to their enemies.

  ‘Baaaa! Baaaa! Baaaa! Baaaa! The sleet wind blew the sound across the four hundred yards that separated them.

  ‘Isn’t that sheep?’ asked Little Fauconberg. ‘Why are they making the sound of sheep?’

  ‘Baaaa! Baaaa! Baaaa!’ The call came louder and softer with the rhythm of the wind.

  ‘They’re saying we’re lambs to the slaughter,’ said Conn.

  ‘Are they?’ said Fauconberg. ‘Hand out sprigs of mint to the men and when we come together we’ll shove it up their arse.’

  ‘Shouldn’t that be arses, Fauconberg?’ said one of the knights-in-arms standing just behind.

  ‘Shut your gob, Rutland, or I’ll use you to show the men how it’s done.’

  Much laughter at this.

  ‘If you must shove something up my bottom,’ said Rutland, ‘I’d prefer a nice hot pepper. It might have a warming effect in this fucking wind.’

  Then it began and in a few seconds the first stage of the battle was lost. The wind against them blew with so much power that the Swiss arrows lost fifty yards in range and those of their enemy gained the fifty they’d lost. They might just as well have used harsh words. It hardly mattered that the thick sleet blinded them and they kept losing sight of their opponents, now dim, now completely obscured by the driving mixture of snow and freezing rain, because everything they shot fell short. But the first volley from the Redeemers no longer fell from the sky but was driven by the wind with malice into knee and chest, mouth and nose at such speed not even the highest quality of steel could defend against a full strike. Rutland, pierced through the ear, no longer worried about the cold.

  There were ten thousand Redeemer archers shooting, at a less than usual rate of about seven arrows in every minute because of the hard ground. The thirty-two thousand Swiss on the steeper hill were hit by nearly seventy thousand arrows every sixty seconds, each weighing a quarter of a pound and, with the wind behind each one, travelling nearly a hundred yards every second. There was nothing coming back at the Redeemers to frighten or harm them. After twenty minutes more than a million arrows landed on a space half a mile wide and ten yards deep. In all, one hundred and fifty-eight tons of malignant rain pissing it down on men, none of them with shields and more than half of them with no more armour than a heavy jacket with metal discs sown into it. To retreat out of range would have meant rout – an army cannot turn its back and live – and to stay was impossible, but to advance made for a probable defeat.

  ‘We’ve to attack!’ shouted Fauconberg over the hideous rattle of iron on steel. PINGAPINGAPINGAPINGAPINGAPINGAPINGAPING! The racket merging with screams of pain and the roaring shouts of the sergeants trying to stop their men from running away. Few die well or quickly on a battlefield.

  Shocked and more astonished by the collapse of his clever and wonderfully executed plans, Conn looked at Fauconberg. ‘Yes, I agree.’ Despite himself, Fauconberg, fifty-five years old and bad-tempered, as dismissive as any thirty-year mercenary, was impressed by Conn: Not bad, sonny, in a shit-storm like this.

  How many of us have a finest hour? The moment when everything you were made for, everything you have become, arrives; the great event that opens you up and calls out, ‘This is for you.’ With his carefully laid plans in wind-driven ruin, Conn Materazzi gathered himself up and caught fire. He bellowed the order to advance and its tone of power and conviction was picked up by each of the sergeants in their turn as it echoed down the line. The great army afflicted by the squall of sharps moved forward to come to grips. Four hundred yards will take an army moving with care to keep its shape more than three minutes – an age under the arrows pelting into feet and knees and mouths and throats. But now the
murder of arrows had to end because the Swiss were closing. The Redeemer archers had to leave off and retreat behind the infantry standing still behind them and who would now have to bar the way of the advancing Swiss hand-to-hand. The arrows stopped falling like a sudden squall suddenly over. But the real wind grew more blustery as they advanced, the sleet more blinding. As both sides moved in the storm, the slack visibility and the confusion of movement of so many men so quickly meant that the left side of Conn’s attacking line and the right side of the Redeemers overlapped as they finally met. Seeing the problem, the centenars and sergeants on either side threw in reserves to seal up the edges and to prevent their opponents coming around the sides to take them from behind. But these uneven counter pushes began to skew the line of battle so that it slowly began to rotate against the clock.

  At nearly six foot four, in armour that cost the price of the better kind of manor house, Conn was the man observed by all observers, Axis and Redeemer alike. He was the latter’s target, too. Redeemer marksmen, a couple hiding in the trees that defined one side of the battlefield, fired at him repeatedly – but even when they hit their man the fortune lavished on his suit of lights showed that in armour you get what you pay for. The arrows pinged harmlessly away as he moved across the back of the line, shouting and moving to the front. Like some towering elegant insect, silver and gold, he stabbed, crushed and punched his opponents, whose armour he seemed to open up as if it was made of tin. There were few swords here – Conn preferred the hideous poleaxe for fighting in this press, men trying to get at each other with hardly a couple of feet to either side.

  The poleaxe was a thug’s weapon used by gentlemen. Not more than four foot long it was hammer, hatchet, club and spike. Of all the weapons of killing it was the most honest because anyone could tell what it was for just by looking at it. Poets might blather on about magic swords or holy spears but none of them had ever used a poleaxe to symbolize anything: it was made to crush and split and didn’t pretend otherwise.