The Second Empire

SEVENTEEN

The Papal palace of Macrobius had once been an Inceptine abbey, and was now bursting at the seams with all manner of clerics and office-seekers, armed guards and inky-fingered clerks. Their numbers were augmented today by richly dressed Torunnan soldiers, a bodyguard fit for a queen. And in their midst, like a scarlet spearhead, eight Cathedrallers in all their barbaric glory. The military tailors had quickly run up some crimson surcoats for them-it would not do for them to tramp into the Pontiff’s presence in their battered armour-and though they were, sartorially speaking, smarter than they had ever been before, their tattooed faces and long hair set them apart.

Queen Odelia and her commander-in-chief had come to call upon Macrobius, and they must needs be received with all the pomp and ceremony that embattled Torunn could muster. Two thrones had been set up-that reserved for the Queen noticeably less ornate than Macrobius’s-and to one side there was a stark black chair for the sable-clad general.

Corfe was far and away the most sombre-looking member of the cavalcade that had made its way through Torunn’s packed streets to the Papal palace, but it was he who elicited the most excitement from the gathered crowds. They cheered him to the echo, and some of the more effusive pushed through the cordon of troops to touch his stirruped boot or even stroke the flank of his restive destrier. Andruw, who rode at his side, thought it all immensely funny, but for himself he felt like a fraud. They called him the “Deliverer of his country,” but that country was a hell of a long way from being delivered yet, he thought.

The cavalcade dismounted in the main square of the abbey. The balconies which surrounded the square were lined with cheering monks and priests-a weird and somewhat comical sight. Then Corfe took the Queen’s arm, and to a flourish of trumpets they were ushered into the great reception hall of the palace, running the gauntlet of a throng of clapping notables. These were most of what remained of Torunna’s nobility, and their greeting was markedly less enthusiastic than that of the crowds beyond the abbey walls. They eyed the tattooed tribesmen with distaste, the black-clad general with wonder and dislike, and the ageing Queen with guarded disapproval. Corfe’s face was stiff as wood as he stood before the Papal dais and looked once more on the blind old man who was the spiritual leader of half the western world.

Monsignor Alembord had barely cleared his throat to announce the eminent visitors in his stately fashion when Macrobius cut him short by hobbling down from the dais and reaching out blindly.

“Corfe.”

Corfe took the searching hand. It felt as dry as an autumn leaf in his grasp, frail as thistledown. He looked at the ravaged face and remembered the long cold nights on the Western Road on the retreat from Aekir.

“Holiness. I am here.”

The chamber fell into silence, Alembord’s proclamation strangling into a muted cough. All eyes swivelled to the general and the Pontiff.

Macrobius smiled. “It has been a long time, General.”

“Yes. It has.”

“I told you once your star had not yet stopped rising. I was right. You have come a long way from Aekir, my friend. On a long, hard road.”

“We both have,” Corfe said. His throat burnt. The sight of Macrobius’s face brought back memories from another world, another time. The old man gripped his shoulder. “Sit beside me now, and tell me of your travells. We shall have more than burnt turnip to share this time.”

The chair which had been set aside for Corfe was hurriedly moved closer to the Papal throne and the trio took their seats after Macrobius had greeted the Queen with rather more formality. Musicians began to play, and the crowd in the hall broke into a loud surf of conversation. Andruw remained standing at the foot of the dais with the Cathedraller bodyguards and found himself next to a man of about his own age in the robes of an Inceptine.

“What cheer, Father?” he said brightly.

“What cheer your grace, soldier. I’m a bishop, you know.”

Andruw looked him up and down. “What shall I do-kiss your ring?”

Avila laughed, and took two brimming glasses of wine from an attendant who passed by with a tray. “You can kiss my clerical backside if you want. But have a drink first. These levees are liquid occasions, and I hear you’ve been working up quite a thirst in the north, you and your scarlet barbarians.”

“I didn’t know they made bishops so young these days.”

“Or colonels either, for that matter. I came here from Charibon with… with a friend of mine.”

“Wait! I know you, I think. Didn’t we run into you and your friend? You were with a couple of Fimbrians on the Northern Road a few months back. Corfe stopped and talked to you.”

“You have a good memory.”

“Your friend-he was the one without a nose. Where’s he today? Keeping out of the way of the high and mighty?”

“I… I don’t know where he is. I tell you what though, we’ll drink to him. A toast to Albrec. Albrec the mad, may God be good to him.”

And they clinked their glasses together, before gulping down the good wine.

“We have reason to believe he is still alive, this errant bishop of yours,” Odelia said. “And what is more, he is moving freely in the Merduk court, spreading his message. As far as we know, the Merduk mullahs are debating this message even now.”

Macrobius nodded. “I knew he would succeed. He has the same aura of destiny about him as that I sensed in Corfe here. Well, mayhap it is better this way. The thing is taken out of our hands after all. I see no option but to broadcast the news abroad here in Torunna also. The time for discussion and debate is past. We must begin spreading the word of the new faith.”

“Quite a revelation, this new faith of yours,” Corfe said quietly.

Odelia had told him what was engendering the rancourous argument in the Papal palace. He had been as astonished as anyone, but had tended to think of it as a Church affair. The Merduks were purportedly engaged in the same debate: that gave it a different colour entirely. There might be military ramifications.

The Pontiff, the Queen and Corfe were closeted in Macrobius’s private quarters at the end of a long, tiring day much given over to speech and spectacle. The whole occasion had been a complete success, Odelia had been keen to point out. Her coronation had been ratified by the Church, and everyone had witnessed the Pontiff greet Corfe like a long-lost friend. Anyone seeking to destabilise the new order would think twice after seeing the rapturous welcome given to them by the crowds, and the apparent amity between the Crown and the Church.

“If the Merduks take this Albrec’s message to heart, will it affect their conduct of the war?” Odelia asked.

“I do not know,” the Pontiff told her. “There are men of conscience amongst the Merduk nation, we have always known that. But men of conscience do not often have the influence necessary to halt wars.”

“I agree,” Corfe put in. “The Sultan will keep fighting. Everything points to the fact that this campaign is meant to be the climax of the entire war. He means to take Torunn, and he will not let the mullahs get in his way-not now. But if we can survive through to the summer, it may be that a negotiated end to the war will be more feasible.”

“An end to the war,” Odelia said. “My God, could that be possible? A final end to it?”

“I spoke to Fournier yesterday. He is as insufferably arrogant as always, but when I persevered he deigned to tell me that the Merduk armies are completely overstretched, with desertions rising daily. If this next assault fails, he cannot see how the Sultan will continue. The Minhraib campaigned right through last year’s harvest. If they do so a second year running, then Ostrabar will face famine. This is Aurungzeb’s last throw.”

“I had no idea,” Odelia said. “I don’t think of them as men with crops and families. To me they are more like… like cockroaches. Kill one and a dozen more appear. So there is hope at last-a light at the tunnel’s end.”

“There is hope,” Corfe said heavily. “But as I say, he is betting everything on this last assault. We could be facing as many as a hundred and fifty thousand enemy in the field.”

“Should we not then stay behind these walls and stand siege? We could hold out for months-well past harvest.”

“If we did that he could send the Minhraib home and contain us with a smaller force. No. We need to make him commit every man he has. We have to push him to the limit. To do that, we will have to take to the field and challenge him openly.”

“Corfe,” Macrobius said gently, “the odds you speak of seem almost hopeless.”

“I know, I know. But victory for us is a different thing from the kind of victory the Merduks need. If we can smash up their army somewhat-blunt this last assault-and yet keep Torunn from undergoing a siege, then we will have won. I believe we can do that, but I need some advantage, some chance to even things up a little. I haven’t found it yet, but I will.”

“I pray to God you do,” Macrobius said. His eyeless face was sunken and gaunt, vivid testimony to what Merduks would do in the hour of their victory.

“If this happens, if you manage to halt this juggernaut of theirs, what then?” Odelia asked. “How much can we expect to regain, or lose by a negotiated peace?”

“Ormann Dyke is gone for ever,” Corfe said flatly. “That is something we must get used to. So is Aekir. If the kingdom can be partitioned down the line of the Searil, then we will have to count ourselves fortunate. It all depends on how well the army does in the field. We’ll be buying back our country with Torunnan blood, literally. But my job is to kill Merduks, not to bargain with them. I leave that to Fournier and his ilk. I have no taste or aptitude for it.”

You will acquire one though. I will see to that, Odelia thought. And out loud she said: “When, then, will the army take to the field?”

Corfe sat silently for what seemed a long time, until the Queen began to chafe with impatience. Macrobius appeared serene.

“I need upwards of nine hundred warhorses, to replace our losses and mount the new recruits that are still coming in,” Corfe said finally. “Then there are the logistical details to work out with Passifal and the quartermaster’s department. This will be no mere raid. When we leave Torunn this time we must be prepared to stay out for weeks, if not months. To that end the Western Road must be repaired and cleared, depots set up. And I mean to conscript every able-bodied man in the kingdom, whatever his station in life.”

Odelia’s mouth opened in shock. “You cannot do that!”

“Why not? The laws are on the statute books. Theoretically they are in force already, except for the fact that they have never actually been enforced.”

“Even John Mogen did not try to enforce them-wisely. He knew the nobles would have his head on a spear if he ever even contemplated such a thing.”

“He did not have to do it at Aekir. Every man in the city willingly lent a hand in the defence, even if it was only to carry ammunition and plug breaches.”

“That was different. That was a siege.”

Corfe’s fist came hurtling down on to the table beside him with a crash that astonished both the Queen and the Pontiff. “There will be no exceptions. If I conscript them, then I can leave an appropriate garrison in the city and still take out a sizeable field army. The nobles in the south of the kingdom all have private armies-I know that only too well. It is time these privately raised forces shared in the defence of the kingdom as a whole. Today I had orders written up commanding these blue-bloods to bring their armed retainers in person to the capital. If my calculations are correct, the local lords alone could add another fifteen thousand men to the defence.”

“You do not have the authority-” Odelia began heatedly.

“Don’t I? I am commander-in-chief of Torunna’s military. Lawyers may quibble over it, but I see every armed man in the kingdom as part of that military. They can issue writs against me as much as they like once the war is over, but for now I will have their men, and if they refuse, by God I’ll hang them.”

There was naked murder on his face. Odelia looked away. She had never believed she could be afraid of any man, but the savagery that scoured his spirit occasionally leapt out of his eyes like some eldritch fire. It unnerved her. For how many men had those eyes been their last sight on earth? She sometimes thought she had no idea what he was truly capable of, for all that she loved him.

“All right then,” she said. “You shall have your conscription. I will put my name to your orders, but I warn you, Corfe, you are making powerful enemies.”

“The only enemies I am concerned with are those encamped to the east. I piss on the rest of them. Sorry, Father.”

Macrobius smiled weakly. “Her Majesty is right, Corfe. Even John Mogen did not take on the nobility.”

“I need men, Father. Their precious titles will not be worth much if there is no kingdom left for them to lord about in. Let it be on my head alone.”

“Don’t say such things,” Odelia said with a shiver. “It’s bad luck.”

Corfe shrugged. “I don’t much believe in luck any more, lady. Men make their own, if it exists. I intend to take an army of forty thousand men out of this city in less than two sennights, and it will be tactics and logistics which decide their fate, not luck.”

“Let us hope,” Macrobius said, touching Corfe lightly on the wrist, “that faith has something to do with it also.”

“When men have faith in themselves, Father,” Corfe said doggedly, “they do not need to have faith in anything else.”

Albrec and Mehr Jirah met in a room within Ormann Dyke’s great tower, not far from the Queen’s apartments. It was the third hour of the night and no-one was abroad in the vast building except a few yawning sentries. But below the tower thousands of men worked through the night by the light of bonfires. On both banks of the Searil river they swarmed like ants, demolishing in the west and rebuilding in the east. The night-black river was crowded with heavy barges and lighters full to the gunwale with lumber, stone and weary working parties, and at the makeshift docks which had been constructed on both sides of the river scores of elephants waited patiently in harness, their mahouts dozing on their necks. The Sultan had decreed that the reconstruction of Ormann Dyke would be complete before the summer, and at its completion it would be renamed Khedi Anwar, the Fortress of the River.

The chamber in which Albrec and Mehr Jirah sat was windowless, a dusty store-room which was half full of all manner of junk. Fragments of chain mail, the links rusted into an orange mass. Broken sabre blades, rotting Torunnan uniforms, even a box of moldy hardtack much gnawed by mice. The two clerics, having nodded to each other, stood waiting, neither able to speak the other’s tongue. At last they were startled by the swift entry of Queen Ahara and Shahr Baraz. The Queen was got up like a veiled Merduk maid, and Shahr Baraz was dressed as a common soldier.

“We do not have much time,” the Queen said. “The eunuchs will miss me in another quarter-hour or less. Albrec, you are leaving for Torunn tonight. Shahr Baraz has horses and two of his own retainers waiting below. They will escort you to within sight of the capital.”

“Lady,” Albrec said, “I am not sure-”

“There is no time for discussion. Shahr Baraz has procured you a pass that will see you past the pickets. You must preach your message in Torunna as you have here. Mehr Jirah agrees with us in this. Your life is in danger as long as you remain at Ormann Dyke.”

Albrec bowed wordlessly. When he straightened he shook the hands of Mehr Jirah and Shahr Baraz. “Whatever else I have found amongst the Merduks,” he said thickly, “I have found two good men.”

Heria translated the brief sentence and the two Merduks looked away. Shahr Baraz produced a leather bag with dun coloured clothing poking out of its neck.

“Wear these,” he said in Normannic. “They are clothes of a Merduk mullah. A holy man. May-may the God of Victories watch over you.” Then he looked at Heria, nodded and left. Mehr Jirah followed without another word.

“I can still preach here too, lady,” Albrec said gently.

“No. Go back to him. Give him this.” She handed the little monk a despatch scroll with a military seal. “They are plans for the forthcoming campaign. But do not tell who gave them to you, Father.”

Albrec took the scroll gingerly. “I seem to make a habit of bearing fateful documents. Was there no other way you could get this to Torunn? I am not much of a courier.”

“Two men we have sent out already,” Heria said in a low voice. “Merduk soldiers with Ramusian blood in them-Shahr Baraz’s retainers. But we do not know if they got through.”

Albrec looked at her wonderingly. “So he is in on it too? How did you persuade him?”

“He said his father would have done it. The Shahr Baraz who took Aekir would not have condoned a war fought in the way Aurungzeb fights it today. And besides, my Shahr Baraz is a pious man. He thinks the war should stop, since the Ramusians are brothers in faith. Mehr Jirah and many of the mullahs think likewise.”

“Come with me, Heria,” Albrec said impulsively. “Come back to your people-to your husband.”

She shook her head, the grey eyes bright with tears above the veil. “It is too late for me. And besides, they would miss me within the hour. We would be hunted down. No, Father, go back alone. Help him save my people.”

“Then at least let me tell him you are alive.”

“No! I am dead now, do you hear? I am not fit to be Corfe’s wife any more. This is my world now, here. I must make the best of it I can.”

Albrec took her hand and kissed it. “The Merduks have a worthy Queen then.”

She turned away. “I must go now. Take the stairs at the bottom of the passage outside. They lead out to the west court-yard. Your escort awaits you there. You will have several hours start-they won’t miss you until after dawn. Go now, Father. Get the scroll to Corfe.”

Albrec bowed, his eyes stinging with pity for her, and then did as he was bidden.