The Iron Wars

by Paul Kearney

  “Yes. The mules have had a good rest these last three leagues.”

  Avila muttered something venomous none of them could catch.

  They had been four days travelling, the two monks and the two Fimbrians. During that time they had marched and ridden harder than Albrec had ever thought it possible for the human frame to bear. They had spent fireless nights shivering against the mules for warmth, and had eaten salt beef and army biscuit through which the weevils squirmed. Joshelin reckoned that another three days would see them in Torunn, if they continued to elude the Merduk patrols. Those three days loomed ahead of them like a long period of penance. Albrec found it easier to think only about putting one foot in front of the next, or getting to the next rise on the horizon. He had not even had the energy to pray. It was only the crinkling bulk of the ancient document he carried which kept him on his feet at all. When it was safe with Macrobius in Torunn, his mind as well as his body might know some peace at last.

  At day’s end Albrec and Avila were numb and swaying on the backs of the two mules. Nothing in their lives had prepared them for this unbelievably swift, unencumbered travel across a wilderness. Their feet were blistered, the stumps of Avila’s lost toes weeping blood and fluid, and their rumps were rubbed almost raw by the crude pack-saddles. When the little party finally stopped for the night the two monks were too far gone to care. They had not even the energy to dismount. Their companions looked at each other wordlessly for a long moment, and then Siward began to lift the monks down off their steeds whilst Joshelin unpacked an entrenching tool and began to dig a hole.

  They had halted in the eaves of a small wood, mostly spruce and pine with beech and pale-trunked birch on the outskirts. Farther in, the coniferous trees grew closer together, and their needles carpeted the ground making the travellers’ footfalls soundless as a cat’s. Night was fast setting in, and it was black in the wood already. Beyond it, the wind had picked up into a whine which roamed across the Torunnan hills like winter’s courier. Albrec thought that never had he felt himself so lost, or in such a place of desolation. During the day they had passed abandoned farms and had helped themselves to food from their larders. They had even sighted a roadside inn, as deserted as a mountaintop. The entire population of Northern Torunna, it seemed, had fled at the coming of the Merduks. Would the Torunnans ever make a stand and fight?

  When Joshelin had dug his hole to the depth of his knees, he threw aside his entrenching tool and began gathering wood from under the deciduous trees at the outskirts of the forest. Siward threw the two shuddering monks a couple of greasy, damp blankets, and then unsaddled and rubbed down the mules before fitting them with bulging nosebags. The animals were so tired he did not even hobble them, but merely tied their picket ropes to a nearby tree.

  An owl hooted in the ghost-dark of the wood, and something—a fox, perhaps—yipped and barked far off, the sounds adding to the emptiness rather than subtracting.

  There was a flash, a jump of sparks which revealed the face of Joshelin bent and puff-cheeked as he blew on tinder. A tiny flame, smaller than that of a candle. He fed it as delicately as if he were tending a sick baby, and when it had grown a hand’s breadth, he lifted the small pile of twigs and needles into the trench he had dug and began feeding it with larger limbs. He looked as though he were peering into some crack in the earth which led to hell, Albrec thought, and then dismissed the image as unlucky.

  The fire grew, and the two monks crawled over to its warmth.

  “Keep it going,” Joshelin told them. “I have things to do.”

  “I thought we were to have no fire,” Avila said, holding his hands out greedily to the flames. His blanket stank as it began to warm.

  “You looked as though you needed it,” the Fimbrian said, and then strode off into the darkness with his sword drawn.

  “Ignorant fellows,” Avila muttered. His eyes were sunken, and the firelight writhed in them like two worms of yellow light.

  “Their bite may not be quite so bad as their bark, I’m thinking,” said Albrec, blessing the warmth and the gruff thoughtfulness of their companions.

  Chopping sounds, breaking wood, and then the two soldiers returned to the firelight holding a rough screen-like structure they had created out of interlaced branches stuffed with sods of turf. They planted it in the ground on the side of the fire trench that faced the border of the wood, and at last sat down themselves, pulling their black military cloaks about them.

  “Thank you,” Albrec said.

  They did not look at him, but threw over a wineskin and the provisions bag. “You’ll eat well tonight, at any rate,” Joshelin said. “That’s dainty fare we picked out of that farm.”

  They had a chicken, already plucked and gutted, bread which was several days old but which nonetheless seemed like ambrosia after Fimbrian hardtack, and some apples and onions. The chicken they spitted over the fire, the rest they wolfed down along with swallows of rough wine which in Charibon they would have turned their noses up at. Tonight it slid down their throats like the finest of Gaderian vintages.

  Siward produced a short black pipe from the breast of his tunic, filled it from a pouch at his waist and he and Joshelin smoked it in turns. The pipe smoke was heavy and strong and acrid. There was some tang in it that Albrec could not quite identify.

  “Might I try it?” he asked the soldiers.

  Siward shrugged, his face a crannied maze of light and dark in the fire-laced blackness. “If you have a strong head. It is kobhang, from the east.”

  “The herb the Merduks smoke? I thought it was a poison.”

  “Only if you take too much of it. It helps keep you awake and sharpens the senses, so long as you do not abuse it.”

  “How do you obtain it?” Albrec’s curiosity awoke, taking his mind off his exhaustion.

  “It is army issue. We get it along with the bread and salt horse. When there is no food to be had, a man can keep going for weeks by smoking it.”

  “And can he then stop smoking it if he has a mind to?” Avila drawled.

  Joshelin stared at him. “If he has the will.”

  Albrec took the pipe Siward proffered rather gingerly and sucked a draught of the bitter smoke deep into his lungs. Nothing happened. He returned the pipe to its owner, rather relieved.

  But then his aches and pains dimmed to a comfortable glow. He felt a new strength seeping through his muscles and his body became as light as a child’s. He blinked in wonder. The firelight seemed a beautiful, entrancing thing of bright twisting loveliness. He put out his hand towards it, only to have his wrist grasped by the hard fist of Joshelin.

  “One must be careful, priest.”

  He nodded, feeling foolish and exhilarated in the same moment.

  “I haven’t seen you smoke it before,” Avila said to the Fimbrians.

  Siward shrugged. “We are getting tired. We are men also, Inceptine.”

  “Well, bless my soul,” Avila retorted, and wrapped himself in his evil-smelling blanket.

  They took the chicken off the spit and ripped it into four pieces. Albrec was no longer hungry, but he ate the scorched meat anyway, no longer able to taste it. His mind felt clear as ice. His worries had vanished. He began to chuckle, and then stopped himself as he found his three companions were watching him.

  “Marvellous stuff. Marvellous,” he muttered, and fell back into the soft pine needles, snoring as soon as he was horizontal.

  Avila threw a blanket over him. It had holes in it from other nights spent lying close to campfires.

  “I will dress your feet in the morning,” Joshelin told him.

  The young Inceptine nodded distantly and took a huge swallow of the wine. “What will you do when you have escorted us safely to Torunn?” he asked.

  The two Fimbrians glanced at each other and then into the fire. “We will await further orders from the marshal,” Siward said at last.

  “You don’t believe you’ll get any further orders, though. Albrec told me his intentio
ns. Your marshal is leading his men to their deaths.”

  “Mind your own matters, priest,” Joshelin hissed with sudden passion.

  “It is no matter to me,” Avila said. “I only wonder that you had not thought out what will become of you when you have run this errand for him.”

  “As you say,” Joshelin grated. “It is no matter to you. Now get you to sleep. You need a lot of rest if you are to keep up today’s volume of whining on the morrow.”

  Avila looked at him for a long minute, and finally his face broke out into a smile.

  “Quite right. I would hate to let my standards slip.”

  NINE

  H E thought she looked younger in the morning light than she had the night before. He lay propped up on one elbow watching her quiet sleep, and in him a storm of feelings and memories fought for the forefront of his mind. He wrestled them back brutally, slammed a door in their faces, and was able for some few precious seconds to lie there and watch her, and be almost content.

  Her eyes opened. No morning bleariness or process of awakening. She was instantly alert, aware, knowing. Her eyes were green as the shallows of the Kardian Sea in high summer, a bewitching, arresting green. His wife’s eyes had been grey, quick to humour, and holding less knowledge in their depths. But then his wife had died still a young woman.

  “No grief,” Odelia said quietly. “Not on this morning. I will not permit it.” Her words were imperious but their tone was almost pleading. He smiled, kissed her unlined forehead, and sat up. His moment of peace had passed, but that was to be expected. He did not wish for more.

  “I must away, lady,” he said, feeling like some swain in a romantic ballad. To connect himself back to reality, he swung his feet off the bed and on to the stone floor. “I have a thousand men waiting for me.”

  “What is one woman, set against a thousand barbarians?” she asked archly, and rose herself, naked and superb. He watched her as she slipped a silk robe about her shoulders, her hair spilling gold down her back. He was glad she was not dark. That would have been too much.

  He pulled on the court uniform he hated, stamping his feet into the absurd buckled shoes. They seemed as insubstantial as cotton after the weeks in long cavalry boots.

  A discreet knock at the door.

  “Yes,” Odelia said, never taking her eyes off Corfe.

  A maid. “Highness, the King is in the antechamber. He wishes to see you at once.”

  “Tell him I am dressing.”

  “Highness, he will not wait. He insists on entering immediately.”

  Odelia met Corfe’s eyes, and smiled. “Find yourself a corner, Colonel.” Then she turned to the maid. “Tell him I will see him now, in here.”

  The maid scurried out. Corfe cursed venomously. “Are you out of your Royal mind?”

  “There’s a tapestry behind the headboard which will serve admirably. Make sure your toes do not stick out below it.”

  “Saint’s blood!” Swallowing other oaths, Corfe dashed across the room and concealed himself there. The tapestry was loose-woven. He could see through it as though through a heavy fog. His heart hammered as cruelly as if he were going into battle, but he found time to wonder if he were not the first man ever to hide in that spot.

  The King of Torunna entered the Queen Dowager’s bedchamber seconds later.

  Odelia sat down at her dressing table with her back to her son and began brushing her golden hair.

  “An urgent matter indeed, if you must burst in on me before I am even dressed,” she said tartly.

  Lofantyr’s eyes swept the chamber. He was sweating, and looked like nothing so much as a frightened boy in the schoolmaster’s study.

  “Mother, Ormann Dyke has fallen.”

  The brush stopped halfway through the gleaming tresses. Corfe thought that his heart had stopped with it. Almost he stepped out from behind the tapestry.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Merduk light cavalry have been sighted scarcely ten miles from the city walls. General Menin sent out a sortie which destroyed or captured an enemy patrol. One of the enemy was found to have this on him.”

  Lofantyr proffered his mother a small leather cylinder, much scuffed and stained.

  “A dispatch case,” Odelia said mechanically. She snatched it out of her son’s hands and ripped it open, tapping out the scroll of parchment within. She unrolled and read it, the sheet quivering like a captured lark in her hand.

  “Martellus’s seal—it’s genuine enough. Dated the day before yesterday. The courier must have made good time ere they caught him. Blood of the merciful Saint, he’s on the march, trying for the capital. Ten thousand men, Lofantyr. We must send out a host to meet him.”

  “Are you mad, mother? The countryside is swarming with the enemy. General Menin’s sortie barely made it back to the walls alive. We must ready ourselves for a siege here, and Martellus must fend for himself. I cannot spare the men.”

  Odelia raised her head. “Do you jest with me?”

  “It is the considered advice of the General Staff,” the King said defensively. “I concur. I have already given orders that the Aekirian refugee camps be broken up and their occupants shipped south. The fleet is at anchor in the estuary. We will bleed the Merduks white before the walls.”

  “As they were bled at Aekir and Ormann Dyke, no doubt,” the Queen Dowager said. “My God, Lofantyr, think about what you are doing. You are abandoning a quarter of the country and its people to the enemy. You are throwing away Martellus and his army—the best troops we have. Son, you cannot do this.”

  “The necessary orders are being written out as we speak,” the King snapped. “I’ll thank you to remember who is monarch of this kingdom, mother.” His voice had grown shrill. Perspiration glittered on his temples. He snatched Martellus’s dispatch out of her hand. “From now on, the affairs of state are no business of yours.” His eyes swept the chamber, passing over the two wine glasses, the rumpled clothing. “I see you have other things to keep you occupied, at any rate. I shall send a clerk round for the seal you still possess this afternoon. Good day.” He bowed, wild-eyed, turned, and spun out of the room, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he left.

  There was a moment of silence, and then Corfe came out of his hiding place. The Queen Dowager was sitting at her dressing table, chin sunk on breast. She looked up at him as he emerged from behind the tapestry and he saw to his shock that there were tears in her eyes, though her face was set as hard as that of a statue.

  “God knows how I ever gave birth to that,” she said, and something in her voice made the hairs on Corfe’s nape stand up.

  She rose. “The fool had not the courage to take the seal outright—he must send a lackey to do it for him. Well, I am forewarned, which is something. You must have a set of orders, Colonel, something suitably vague so that you may not be accused of overreaching yourself. I shall see to it at once.”

  Corfe was already at the door, his arms full of his old uniform, rusting Merduk armour, the sabre baldric over one shoulder. “What would you have me do?” he asked harshly, pausing.

  “Save Martellus, if you can. Use the tribesmen awaiting you at the gates. You can have nothing else. If I read this dispatch correctly, Martellus is still at least a week’s march away.”

  “An infantry march,” Corfe told her. “My men will do it in half the time.” He hesitated. “Do you really think my tribesmen can make a difference?”

  “I would not be sending you else. How soon can you move?”

  He turned it over in his mind. His men were exhausted, as were his horses. He had a thousand new recruits, who had to be integrated into his command.

  “I need at least a day. Two, probably,” he replied.

  “Very well.”

  Corfe turned to go, but she called him back.

  “One more thing, Colonel—two more, in fact. For the first, there is a Fimbrian grand tercio on the march out there, trying to intercept the southern Merduk army. It may well be closer to yo
u than Martellus is. I shall not presume to teach you tactics, but it might be best to combine with it ere you launch into the enemy.”

  Corfe nodded. His mind was racing, juggling the information, trying to make a plan, a sense of it.

  “And the other,” the Queen Dowager went on. “I shall write out a commission for you which will await your return. If you can save Martellus and the Fimbrians, you shall be a general, Corfe.”

  He looked at her unsmilingly. I am tasting the carrot, he thought. When shall I feel the stick? But all he said was “Goodbye, lady,” before striding out the door.

  H IS men had been billeted in an empty warehouse down by the river. They were lying there with nothing to cover them, on a stone floor which was inadequately strewn with straw. Heaped around their sleeping bodies were opened barrels of salt pork and hardtack and kegs of the weak beer which the Torunnan military quaffed daily. They had torn down some of the timber sidings of the building’s interior to make smoky fires. In the collective fug of the warehouse, the tribesmen stank and the smoke smarted Corfe’s eyes. He roused Andruw, Marsch and Ebro, and the trio stared at him as though he were a ghost, their eyes red-rimmed pits, the filth of the march north still slobbering their clothing.

  “What ho, the popinjay,” Andruw said, rubbing his eyes, managing a tired grin.

  Corfe began removing the court uniform and donning his old one. He felt furiously ashamed to be clean and well dressed while his men lay like forsaken vagabonds upon the straw-strewn stone. “I thought you would be billeted in regular barracks,” he said, savagely angry.

  “It’s all they could find, apparently,” Andruw told him. “I don’t give a damn. I’d have slept in a ditch, the men too. The horses are being well looked after, though. I made sure of that. They too have straw to lie on.”

  “Let the men sleep. You three come with me. We have work to do.”

  His three officers obeyed him like laboured old men. The expression on Corfe’s face quelled any questions they might have had.

  Torunn in winter, like all the northern cities, was a choked quagmire, the streets running with liquid mud, commoners splashing through it ankle-deep, their betters on horseback or carried in sedan chairs or sitting in carriages. It was a weary trek through the crowds under a thin drizzle, but the rain woke them up. Corfe was glad of it. He could still catch the scent of Odelia on his skin, even over the stink of his scarlet armour.