by Paul Kearney
So she had remained alive, for what it was worth. The rutted quagmires of the mountain roads had given way to good paved highways, and the air had become warmer. There was food again, though never enough to banish hunger entirely. And she had been left in peace at night.
Ceasing to think, to wonder or to hope, she had crouched in the waggon, feeling the lice move in her hair, and had stared at the blank canvas, rocking with the movement of the vehicle as though she were in a ship at sea. A thousand fantasies had glimmered in her mind, dreams of rescue, images of scarlet carnage. But they had burned down to black ash now. Corfe was dead and she was glad, for she was no longer fit to be his wife. The body she had kept for him alone was an item of property to be bartered for a crust of bread, and the looks she had been so secretly proud of had gone. Her eyes were as dull as slate, her heavy mane of raven hair matted and infested, her body covered with bites and sores, and her ribs saw-toothed ridges down her sides.
I am carrion, she thought.
Thirty-six days out of Aekir, though, something pricked her apathy. There was a shout at the head of the train, men cheering and horses neighing. The women in the waggon shifted and looked at one another fearfully. What was it now? What devilish torment had the Merduks contrived for them?
Suddenly there was a ripping sound, and the entire canopy of the waggon was peeled off and torn away. A pair of horsemen rode off with it flapping between them, grinning like apes.
Sunlight, blinding and searingly painful to their shadow-accustomed eyes. The women covered their faces and tried to pull their rags about them. There were hoots of laughter, and the world was a chaos of galloping shapes, half-glimpsed dark faces, capering horses. Then they cleared away, leaving the women staring.
The land before them dipped in a great shallow bowl leagues across. At its bottom was the sword-blade glitter of a large river, lightning-bright in the sun. All around were broken and rolling hills, green or gold with crops or dotted with grazing herds. They stretched to every horizon, gilded by the sunshine and ruffled to glimmering waves by the northern breeze.
As the expanse rose up to meet the blue shadows of the mountains in the north, so the watchers saw a wider hill there. It was a city, white-walled and towered, the smoke of its hearths rising to haze the cerulean arch of the cloudless sky. Everywhere amid the clotted disorder of its streets minarets and cupolas caught the sun, and at the height of the hill gleamed the massive dome of the Temple of Ahrimuz, the biggest in the world after its older rival in Nalbeni.
There were palaces there, in the shadow of the temple. The women could see parks amid the city, the ripple of water in tended gardens. And even at this distance they could hear the chanters in the towers calling the faithful to prayer. Their oddly harmonious wails drifted down the wind, and the Merduk escort bowed their heads for a moment in acknowledgement.
“Where are we? What is this place?” one of the women demanded in a panic-shrill whisper.
But one of the escort had heard her. He bent from his horse into the waggon and gripped the woman’s jaw with one brown hand.
“We are home,” he said distinctly. This is Orkhan, home for me and you. This is the city of Ostrabar. Hor-la Kadhar, Ahrimuzim-al kohla ab imuzir . . .” He trailed off into his own language as if he were reciting something, then turned to the women in the waggon again.
“You go to Sultan’s bed!” And he laughed uproariously before touching spurs to his horse’s belly and cantering off.
“Lord God in heaven!” someone murmured. Others began sobbing quietly. Heria bent her head until her filthy hair covered her face.
Can you remember him? How he was when he had that devil-may-care grin on his face, his eyes alight? Can you remember?
A long summer’s day, the sun hanging in a cobalt sky and the Thurians mere guesses of shadow at the edge of the world. They were in the hills above the city, watching the huge length of Aekir sprawl out along the shining length of the Ostian river. Far enough to view the whole of the city walls but near enough to hear the bells of Carcasson tolling the hour, the sound drifting up into the hills along with a faint rush of noise; the echo of a distant throng.
Wine they had had, and white bread from the city bakeries. Apples from last year’s crop, wrinkled but still sweet and moist. If they looked out to the south, beyond the city, they could see where the Ostian river widened in its estuary before opening out into the Kardian Sea. Sometimes when the wind was from the south, the gulls wheeled and cried in the very streets of the city itself and the salt tang was in the air so that Aekir might have been a harbour city on the rim of an ocean. Heria had always loved to come into the hills and see the Kardian glittering on the horizon. It was like seeing the promise of tomorrow, a doorway into a wider world. She had often wondered what it would be like to have a ship, to ply the sea routes of the wide world, sleep beneath a wooden deck and hear the waves lapping at her ear.
Corfe had laughed at her fantasies, but never tired of hearing them. He had been wearing his ensign’s uniform that day—Torunnan black edged with scarlet. Blood and bruises, they called it. His sabre had lain scabbarded at his side.
She could not remember what they had said, only that they had been content. It seemed to her now that they had never thought how lucky they might be to have each other, the sun flooding down on the grass-covered hillside, Aekir spread out on the earth below them like a brilliantly coloured cloak let slip upon the world and the sea glimmering at the limit of vision, full of possibilities. Everything had been possible; though even then, in that last, glorious summer, the Merduk host had already been on the move. Their fates had been fixed, and their snatched seconds were trickling away like sand in an hourglass.
The train of booty and prizes lurched and trundled downhill towards Orkhan, capital of the Northern Merduks, whilst in the waggons the women sat stark and silent and the Merduk horsemen sang their songs of victory all around.
T HE rain had held off and a weak sun was pouring down over the blasted expanse of the land. Corfe helped the old man up the muddy slope, using his sabre as a staff. Ribeiro came behind them, his face swathed in filthy rags, one eye invisible with the awful swelling.
They reached the top of the hill and stood panting. Macrobius leaned on Corfe with his head bent, his bony chest sucking in and out. Corfe looked down the western slope and suddenly went very still. Macrobius tensed at once, his liver-spotted fingers gripping Corfe’s arm.
“What is it? What do you see?”
“We’re there, old man, there at last. Ormann Dyke.”
The land levelled out west of where they stood. It dipped down into a broad valley in which the wide expanse of the Searil river foamed and churned, full after the recent rains. There was a bridge there, spanning the current. On the western bank it was constructed of weatherbeaten stone, but here on the eastern side the supports were of fresh timber.
On the eastern side of the Searil great works of earth and stone had been thrown up, revetments and trenches and stockades. The smoke of burning slow-match drifted down the breeze along with the cooking fires, and above the fortifications the black and scarlet Torunnan flag flapped. Corfe felt a strange ache in his breast at the sight of it.
The eastern fortifications extended maybe half a mile on either side of the bridge. Corfe could see culverins gleaming with brass behind gabion-strengthened emplacements, soldiers walking up and down, a knot of cavalry here and there. But the entire rear of the position seemed choked with people. There were thousands there in the spaces behind the battlements, some obviously cooking, others sleeping in the mud and more trudging purposefully towards the river.
The bridge was clogged with them. All along its length it was jammed with handcarts, animals, people on foot and in waggons. Torunnan troopers were trying to direct the traffic. There was nothing panicked about it. It was more like a sullen retreat, as though the crowds of refugees were too exhausted to feel fear.
Corfe peered further west, across the river. The land
rose there in two ridges running parallel to the Searil. The ridges themselves were steep and rocky, and their summits were dotted with watchtowers and signal stations. But there was a gap close to where the bridge arched out from the western bank, and in this gap, maybe a league wide, the fortress of Ormann Dyke proper stood.
The walls were sixty feet high and wide enough for a waggon to drive along. Every cable or so their length was interrupted by a tower which jutted up to a hundred feet, guns glinting in the embrasures. There were odd kinks in the layout of the walls, and the sides of the towers met at strange angles. These were recent innovations, designed to concentrate the gunfire of the defenders so that anyone approaching the dyke would be caught in a deadly crossfire.
At the southern end of the Long Walls was the citadel. It was built on a steep-sided spur that jutted out from the main line of the ridges. Its guns would dominate the whole frontage of the dyke itself.
In front of the walls, and constructed at least six centuries before them, was a vast ditch, carved out of the very bones of the land. It was forty feet deep and at least two hundred wide, a work of unimaginable labour built by the Fimbrians when Ormann Dyke had marked the limits of their empire, before the first ships sailed up the Ostian river to found the trading post that would eventually become Aekir. This ditch extended for fully three miles in front of the walls, like a second river to mirror the brown flow of the Searil. It, too, was full of muddy water, and its sides were constructed of slick, close-joined brick. Corfe knew that under the water were entanglements, impaling caltrops, and all manner of devilry designed to rip out the bottoms of any boats foolish enough to try and cross. He knew also that once there had been charges of gunpowder placed in waterproof caches along the ditch, with underground fuse tunnels connecting them to the main fortress. These had fallen into disrepair within the past few years, but he did not doubt that the dyke’s defenders had remedied that by now.
The garrison of Ormann Dyke usually numbered some twenty thousand men. It was one of the three great Torunnan armies. The others were stationed at Aekir and Torunn itself. The Aekir army no longer existed, and the Torunn force was some thirty thousand strong. Corfe was sure that most of the capital’s garrison were here at the dyke now. The Torunnan king would concentrate his forces here, at the Gateway to the West.
“It still stands then, the dyke?” Macrobius asked querulously.
“It stands,” Corfe told him, “though it looks as though half the world is trekking westwards through it.”
Ribeiro joined them at the hilltop and stared down at the teeming fortress, the river, the bristling ridges beyond.
“God be praised!” he said thickly. He knelt and kissed Macrobius’ knuckle. “We will find someone who will recognize you for who you really are, Your Holiness. Your sojourn in the wilderness is ended. You are come back into your kingdom.”
Macrobius shook his head, smiling slightly.
“I have no kingdom. I never had, unless it be in the souls of men. Always I was a mere cipher, a figurehead. Perhaps my hand helped guide the tiller a little, but that is all. I know that now, and I do not know if I would greatly care to be such a figure again.”
“But you must! Holiness—”
“Patrol coming,” Corfe said brusquely, wearying of this pious raving. “Torunnan heavy horse—cuirassiers by the look of them.”
The cavalry troop was forcing a way out of the clogged gate of the eastern defences. They parted the flow of refugees like a rock splitting a wave, and then their mounts were stepping through the broken mud of the hillside below Corfe and his companions. Corfe did not move. He doubted that, what with the filth and wear of the past days, his clothing was recognizable as a Torunnan uniform. There was no reason for the horsemen to note three more ragged refugees.
But Ribeiro was sliding and tumbling down the sodden hillside, waving his arms and shouting. His habit billowed out above his thin limbs like the wings of an ungainly bird. The lead horsemen reined in. Corfe swore rabidly.
“What is he doing?” Macrobius asked. There was real fear in his voice.
“The damn fool is . . . ach, they’ll think he’s merely mad.”
Ribeiro was talking to the halted cavalry. Corfe could not make out what he was saying, but he could guess.
“He’s probably trying to convince them that you’re the Pontiff.”
Macrobius shook his head as if in pain. “But I am not—not any more. That man died in Aekir. There is no Macrobius any more.”
Corfe looked at him quickly. Something in the tone of the old man’s voice, some note of loss and resignation, struck a painful chord in his own breast. For the first time he wondered if this Macrobius might indeed be whom he said he was.
“Easy, Father. They’ll put his claims down to the ravings of a demented cleric, no more.”
Macrobius sank to his knees in the mud. “Let them leave me alone. I am in darkness, and always will be. I am no longer even sure of the faith which once sustained me. I am a coward, soldier of Mogen. You fought to save the City of God whilst I cowered in a storeroom, imprisoned in my own palace lest I flee and take the heart of the city with me.”
“We are all cowards, in one way or another,” Corfe said with rough gentleness. “Were I a braver man, I’d be lying dead before Aekir myself, along with my wife.”
The old man raised his head at that. “You left your wife in Aekir? I am sorry, my friend, very sorry.”
The horsemen rode on, leaving Ribeiro behind them. The young monk shook his fist at them, and then his whole frame seemed to sag. Corfe helped Macrobius to his feet.
“Come on, Father. We’ll see if we can’t get you a roof over your head tonight, and something warm in your belly. Let the great ones argue over the fate of the west. It is our concern no more.”
“Oh, but it is, my son, it is. If it is not the concern of us all, then we may as well lie down here on the ground and wait for death to take us.”
“We’ll think about that another time. Come. Ho! Ribeiro! Give me a hand with the old man!”
But Ribeiro seemed not to have heard. He was standing with one hand over the eye he could still see out of, and his lips were moving silently.
They joined the straggling crowds of ragged and wild-eyed people who were disappearing into the eastern gate of the dyke. They sank calf-deep in mud—what was left of the Western Road—and were shoved and jostled as they went. Eventually, though, the darkness of the barbican was around them, and then they were within the walls of the last Ramusian outpost east of the Searil river.
There was chaos within the defences.
People everywhere, in all states of filth and desperation. They stood in huddles around fires on the very drill ground and the interior walls of the fortifications were lined with primitive shelters and lean-tos that had been thrown up to combat the rain. Some enterprising souls had set up market stalls of sorts, selling whatever they had brought with them out of the wreck of Aekir. Corfe saw a mule being butchered, people hanging round the carcass like gore-crows. There were women, pathetically haggard, who were offering themselves to passers-by for food or money, and here and there some callous souls were playing dice on a cloak thrown over the mud.
Corfe glimpsed violence, also. There were groups of men with long knives extorting anything of value from fellow refugees, once the Torunnans had passed by. He wondered if Pardal’s comrades had made it this far.
What he saw disturbed him. There seemed to be little order within the fortress, no organization or authority. True, men in Torunnan black were on the battlements, their armour gleaming darkly, but they appeared thin on the ground, as though the garrison were not up to strength. And no effort had been made, it seemed, to bring the mob of fleeing civilians under control. If Corfe were in command here, he’d have them herded west, well clear of the dyke, and then perhaps try and rig up provisions for them and police the camps with what men he could spare. But this—this was mere anarchy. Was Martellus still in command, or had there
been some reshuffle which had engendered this chaos?
He found a spot to stop in the shadow of one of the eastern revetments, kicking a couple of sullen young men from the space. They left after a hard stare at the sabre and the ragged remnants of the uniform, but Corfe was too weary and troubled to care. He collected pieces of wood—there were plenty lying about, and he guessed that the refugees had demolished some of the inner stockades and catwalks—and got a fire going with the greatest difficulty. By that time the light was beginning to fail, and across the open ground within the fortress campfires were flickering into life like lambent stars, whilst if he stood up he could see across the Searil river to where the lights of the dyke burned by the thousand. People were crossing the bridge by torchlight in an unending procession and the eastern gates remained open despite the dimming light, which seemed to Corfe to be the merest madness: in the dark, Merduks might mingle with the swarm of civilians entering the fortress and gain access to the interior. Who was in command here? What kind of fool?
Ribeiro was uncommunicative and seemed shaken by the fact that Macrobius had not immediately been recognized. He sat with his swollen head in his hands and stared into the flames of Corfe’s fire as though he were looking for some revelation.
Macrobius, however, was almost serene. He sat on the wet ground, the firelight making a hideous mask out of his savaged face, and nodded to himself. Corfe had seen that look before, on men about to go into battle. It meant they no longer feared death.
Could this crazy old man really be the High Pontiff?
His stomach rumbled. They had eaten nothing in the past day and a half, and precious little in the days before that. In fact, the last time he had eaten a solid meal . . .
The last time, it had been Heria who had prepared it, and brought it to him at his post on the wall of Aekir. It had been dark then, as it was now. They had stood together on the catwalk looking out at the campfires of the Merduk thousands, smelling the tar and smoke of the siege engines, the stench of death that hung over the city continually. He had begged her to go once more, but she would not leave him. That had been the last time he had ever seen his wife; that heartbreaking smile, one corner of her mouth quirking upwards, one eyebrow lifting. He remembered her going down the steps from the wall, the torchlight shining on her hair.