Hawkwood's voyage

TWELVE

They had been three weeks on the road, this giant convoy, this rolling city. They had fought against slime and snow and marauding wolves to force the waggons over the narrow passes of the Thurian Mountains before beginning the long, downward haul to the green plains of Ostrabar beyond.

The Sultanate of Ostrabar, now first in the ranks of the Seven Sultanates, its head, Aurungzeb the Golden, one of the richest men in the world-or he would be when this caravan reached him.

This had been a Ramusian country once, a settled land of tilled fields and coppiced woods with a church in every village and a castle on every hill. Ostiber had been its name, and its king had been one of the Seven Monarchs of Normannia.

That had changed with the advent of the Merduks sixty years ago. They had poured over the inadequately defended passes of the terrible Jafrar Mountains to the east, crossed the headwaters of the Ostian river and had overrun Ostiber in less than a year, exposing the city of Aekir’s northern flank and coming to a halt only when faced with the defended heights of the Thurians manned by grim Torunnans who included in their ranks a youthful John Mogen. Ostiber had become Ostrabar, and the wild steppe chieftain who had conquered this country took that as his family name. The captain of his guard had been Shahr Baraz, who would in time rise to command all his armies. And his sons, when they had finished poisoning one another, became sultan after him. Thus was the Kingdom of Ostiber lost to the west, its Royal line extinguished, its people enslaved, tortured, ravished and pillaged and, worst of all, forced to change their faith so their eternal souls were lost to the Company of the Saints for ever.

Thus were the children of the Western Kingdoms taught. To them the Merduk were a teeming tribe of savages, held at bay only by the valour of the Ramusian armies and the swift terror of horse and sword and arquebus.

For the folk living in Ostrabar now it was different. True, they must needs pray to Ahrimuz every day in one of the domed temples that had been erected throughout the land, and they yielded yearly tribute to the Sirdars and Beys who now inhabited the hilltop castles; but there had always been nobles in the castles exacting tribute, and they had always prayed. The terror of the first invasion was long past, and many descendants of those who had fought in Ramusian armies six decades before wielded tulwar and scimitar in the ranks of Aurungzeb’s regiments.

For some, indeed, life had improved under the Merduk yoke. Wizards and thaumaturgists and alchemists were tolerated under the new regime, not persecuted as they occasionally had been when the Knights Militant roved the land. Many, in fact, had wealthy patrons, for the Merduk nobility treasured learning above all things save, perhaps, the profession of arms and the breeding of horses.

So for those among the long train of waggons who had expected to see a nightmarish, unholy land upon their descent from the heights of the Thurians, there was a shock. They saw the same countryside, the same houses, and in the main the same people whom they had encountered every day in Aekir before its fall. The only differences were the domes of the temples glittering across the peaceful landscape, and the fantastical shapes of elephants working in the woods and along the well-kept roads. Those and the flashing silk finery of the Merduk nobility who gathered to see the train that held the spoils of Aekir.

Six miles long, it straggled out of the high land to the south. Over nine hundred waggons hauled by patient oxen, their tarred covers ragged and flapping in the wind. Trudging beside them in long lines were thousands upon thousands of captives who had been brought back as trophies for Aurungzeb to view. Most were women destined for harems and brothels, or the kitchen. Others were Torunnan soldiers, bitter-faced and savage. For them crucifixion awaited; they were to be made an example of, and were too dangerous to be allowed to live. And there were the children: young boys who would be made into eunuchs for the courts or the more specialized of the pleasure houses, young girls who would serve the same ends as the women, despite their age. There were all tastes and persuasions among the nobles of Ostrabar.

Along the flanks of the train rode bodies of Merduk light cavalry. During the crossing of the mountains they had been muffled in furs and cloaks, spattered with mud and haggard with exhaustion, but before nearing the country of their homes they had spruced themselves up, grooming their mounts and donning coloured silk surcoats over their chainmail. Pennons snapped and danced in the wind, and decorations glittered on the breasts of the horses. They made a fine sight as they stepped out, regiment by regiment, the very picture of a victorious army escorting a beaten foe.

In the better covered of the waggons the occupants shuddered as they listened to the thunder of hooves and the voices shouting gaily in the harsh Merduk tongue. Not for these select ones the killing labour of marching and scrambling in the rutted path of the train; they were to be kept apart, and spared the ordeal of the journey. They knelt in chains and rags, hardly looking at one another, whilst the waggons bounced and jolted under them, carrying them closer to their fate by the hour.

They were the pick of the spoils, the choicest treasures that Aekir had to offer. Two hundred of the most beautiful women in the city, rounded up like cattle to await the appraising eye of the Grand Vizier and in turn the perusal of Aurungzeb himself. The lucky ones would be taken into the harem to join the numerous ranks of the Sultan’s concubines. The rest would be shared out amongst court officials and senior officers-rewards for men of ability and loyalty in this happy time.

The woman named Heria pulled her rags closer about her, the chains on her wrists clinking as she moved. Her bruises were fading. As they had begun to near their destination the soldiers had left the women in the waggons alone; they had to reach the capital looking relatively unabused. At night she and her sister slaves had huddled under the canopy and listened to the screams of the less fortunate outside, and the laughter of the soldiers.

Corfe, she thought yet again. Do you live? Did you get away, or did they kill you like the others?

There was a red memory in her mind, the picture of the city’s fall and the fury that had followed. Merduks everywhere, looting, killing, running. And the flames of Aekir’s burning rising as high as hills into the smoke-black night beyond.

She had been caught whilst trying to flee towards the western gate. A grinning devil with a face as black as leather had seized her and dragged her into the ruin of a burning building. There she had been raped.

As he had worked busily upon her the blade of his sword had rested against her throat, already bloody, and sparks had come sailing down out of the air to land on his back and gleam like little leering eyes on his armour. She remembered staring at them and watching them go dark one by one to be replaced by others. Not feeling anything much.

His breastplate had bruised her and her back had been cut by the glass and broken stones on the floor. Then the officer had come, his horsehair plume nodding above his helm and his eyes as greedy as a child’s. He had taken her, despite the first soldier’s protests, and hauled her to the city wall where she had been raped again. Finally she had joined the thousands of others herded into the pens on the hillsides beyond the city, all weeping, all bloody and terrified and ashamed like herself. That had been the first stage in her journey.

For days the terrified masses had shivered on the hills and watched the ruin of the City of God. They had seen the Merduks withdraw in the face of the flames and then had been witness to the final conflagration, a holocaust that seemed caused by the hand of God, so immense was the scale of it. In the morning the ashes had covered the ground like a grey snow, and the sun had been shrouded so that the land about was in twilight. It had seemed like the end of the world.

And, in a way, it was.

They had started north on the eighth day after her capture, herded by hordes of Merduk soldiers. The entire country had seemed covered with moving people, soldiers, horses and elephants, and untold hundreds of waggons bumping and lurching in the mud. And all the while the rain had poured down, numbing their very souls.

But the worst thing had been the sight of hundreds of Ramusian soldiers, the much-vaunted Torunnans of John Mogen, trudging north with their arms in capture yokes. From stolen conversations and whispered words the women learned that Sibastion Lejer was dead, his command annihilated; Lejer himself had been crucified in the square of Myrnius Kuln. The garrison of Aekir no longer existed, and the inhabitants of the city were fleeing westwards to Ormann Dyke, blackening the very face of the earth with the vastness of their exodus.

The train had laboured north at a snail’s pace, the bodies of the weak and injured littering the land in its wake. They had passed the enormous camps of the Merduk army, cities of canvas and silk flags sprawled out across the blasted countryside. They had seen the wrecked churches, the gutted castles and burned villages of the north of the country. And the Thurians had loomed closer and closer on the horizon, and ice had begun to collect on the muzzles of the oxen.

A hard, timeless nightmare of mud and snow and savage faces. The wind had come down from the north like an avenging angel, ripping the covers from the waggons and making the horses scream. There had been brief snowstorms, snap freezes that had given the mud the consistency of wood. The Merduks had dined on horseflesh, their captives occasionally on each other.

A few of the Torunnans had tried to escape, and the Merduks had shot them full of arrows, perhaps wary even now of coming to grips with them.

They had lost waggons by the score. Heria had seen ancient tapestries trampled into the mud, incense sticks scattered across the snow, little children wide-eyed and dead, their faces grey with frost. The Merduks had been brutal in their haste, striving to get the train over the high passes before the first heavy snows of autumn. And somehow they had done it, though fully two thousand of the prisoners were left dead in the drifts of the mountains.

Heria had been one of the lucky ones. A Merduk officer had taken her out of the long line of chained women on seeing her face, and put her in one of the waggons and given her a blanket. That night he had taken her against a waggon wheel watched by a laughing score of his fellows, but had stopped the rest from following suit. From then on he had visited the waggon from time to time, to bring her morsels of food-even wine once-and to take her again. But he had stopped coming once the Thurians were behind them. Perhaps he too lay dead in the snows.

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.

The 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.

Two hours later the final assault had begun, and then his world had been utterly destroyed.

He felt a hand on his arm and started. It was wholly dark but for the fire. The open ground within the fortress was a flame-stitched blueness in which shadows moved aimlessly.

“She is gone to God’s rest, my son. You no longer have to fear for her,” Macrobius said softly.

“How did you-?”

“You had relaxed, as though in a dream, and then I felt your muscles go as rigid as wood. I am good, I find, at recognizing suffering in others these days. She is with Ramusio in the company of the Saints of heaven. Nothing more can touch her.”

“I hope so, old man. I hope so.”

He could not voice, even to himself, the fear that Heria might yet be alive and suffering torment at the hands of those eastern animals. And so he prayed that his wife was dead.

He stood up abruptly, shaking off the priest’s hand.

“Food. We have to eat if we’re to be good for anything. Ribeiro, look after the old man.”

The young monk nodded. His face was shiny and discol-oured, like a bruised fruit, and he kept spitting out bits of teeth. Privately Corfe did not give much for his chances.

He strode off between the fires, stepping over exhausted bodies lying unconscious on the sodden ground, brushing aside two women who tried to solicit him. It was only in extremity that the true depths and heights of human nature were visible. Folk who had been civilized, upright, even downright saintly in Aekir before its fall were now whores and thieves and murderers.

And cowards, he added to himself. Let us not forget cowards.

No man could truly say what he was until he had been pushed to the edge of things with the precipice of his own ruin staring up at him. Things changed that close to the brink, and people changed too. Rarely, Corfe believed, for the better.

He turned aside at the approach of two Torunnan troopers, twitching his sabre behind his body so it would not be seen. He was not sure what his position might be with the army, whether he was a deserter or a mere straggler, but he felt guilty enough in his own mind not to want to find out.

He had not been afraid on abandoning Aekir. He had seen most of the men he commanded slaughtered on the walls, and had been caught up in the headlong retreat that followed. After that, knowing Heria was lost to him, one way or another, he had merely wanted to leave the blood and the smoke behind. It had been a bitter thing, but he could not remember being afraid. He could not remember feeling anything much. The events in which he had been caught up had seemed too vast for human emotion.

But away from the roaring chaos of that day, he was not so sure. Had it been fear? At any rate, his duty would have been to stay with Lejer’s rearguard and fight on. He would be dead by now in that case, or marching east under a Merduk capture yoke.

“You there!” a voice barked. “Halt where you are. What’s that you’re carrying?”

Two fellow Torunnans. They had noticed the sabre after all. Corfe contemplated running for a second, but then smiled at the absurdity of the idea. He had nowhere else to go.

The Torunnans were in black and scarlet, their half-armour lacquered so that it was like shining ebony. Sabres that were the twin of Corfe’s hung by their sides and they wore the light helms with beak-like nose guards that were typical of their race. One also carried an arquebus over his shoulder, but the slow-match was not lit.

“Where did you get that weapon?” the one without the arquebus demanded.

“From a dead Torunnan,” Corfe said carelessly.

The man’s breath hissed through his teeth. “You God-damned vulture, I’ll stick you like a pig-” But then his companion stopped him.

“Wait, Han. What’s that he’s wearing?”

They both stared, and Corfe could almost have laughed at the dawning comprehension on their faces.

“Yes, I am Torunnan also. John Mogen was my general, and I saw him die on the eastern wall of Aekir. Any other questions?”

It puzzled Corfe that he was being taken so seriously. He paced the stone floor of the anteroom, listening to the voices rising and falling on the other side of the door. The two troopers had brought him here at once, across the crowded Searil bridge to the dyke and into the very heart of the fortress on the western bank.

Here the chaos had been even greater than it was across the river. The refugees had set up a kind of shanty town of sticks and canvas and whatever else they could find within the fortress, and it spilled beyond the towering walls out into the surrounding countryside. Everywhere fires glittered in the night, stretching far across the land and roughly following the line of the Western Road. Everywhere there was the hubbub and stink of an enormous camp.

It troubled Corfe to see Ormann Dyke in this state. He had always thought of it as impregnable, but then he had thought the same about Aekir in the months before its fall. He had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach as he waited to be called in by General Pieter Martellus, the commanding officer. He had seen the long lines of waggons waiting in the drill yards piled high with supplies, and he had seen the activity along the horse lines, the blacksmiths working through the night, their forges like little hell-lit caverns. He had a feeling the dyke was being abandoned without a battle, and despite the detachment he affected the knowledge shook him to the core. If the dyke fell, what hope was there for Torunn itself?

He was called in at last, and found himself in a high-ceilinged room built entirely of stone but for black beams as thick as his waist criss-crossing near the roof. A fire burned in a deep brazier and there was a long table covered with maps and papers, and so many quills that it seemed a flock of birds had just been startled into flight from there. A group of men stood or sat around the table, some smoking pipes. They stared at him as he entered.

He saluted, acutely conscious of his wretched appearance and the mud that was falling from his boots to clod the floor.

One man, whom Corfe recognized as Martellus, stood up, throwing aside a quill as though it were a dart.

The troops called him “the Lion,” not without reason. He had a mane and beard of shaggy black hair shot through with grey and russet tints, and his eyebrows shadowed his cavernous sockets. He was a huge man, but surprisingly slim-waisted-quite unlike the barrel-chested firebrand that had been John Mogen. He had been Mogen’s lieutenant for ten years and had a reputation for cold-blooded severity. There were also barrack rumours that he was a wizard of sorts. His pale eyes regarded Corfe unblinkingly.

“We are told you were at Aekir,” he said, and his voice was as deep as the splash of a coin at a well’s bottom. “Is this so?”

“Yes, sir.”

“You were one of Mogen’s command?”

“I was.”

“Why did you not join Lejer in his rearguard?”

Corfe’s heart hammered as the officers watched him intently, some with their pipes halfway to their mouths. They were Torunnans like himself, the much-vaunted warrior race. It had been the Torunnans who had first thrown off the Fimbrian yoke, Torunnans who had beaten back the first of the Merduk invasions. That tradition seemed to hang heavy in the room now, along with the unfamiliar taste of defeat. Mogen had been their best, and they knew it. The garrison of Aekir had been widely recognized as the finest army in the world. No one had ever contemplated its defeat-especially these men, the generals of the last fortress of the west. But none of them had been at Aekir: how could they know?

“There was no time. After the eastern bastion fell-after Mogen died-there was a rout. My men were all dead. I got cut off. .” His voice trailed away. He remembered the flames, the panic of the mobs, the falling buildings. He remembered his wife’s face.

Martellus continued to stare at him.

“I’d had enough of the killing,” he said, his words grating out unwillingly. “I wanted to look for my wife. When I failed to find her it was too late to join Lejer. I got caught up in the crowd. I-” He hesitated, then went on, his gaze never leaving Martellus’s cold eyes: “I fled with the rest into the countryside.”

“You deserted,” someone said, and there was a murmur round the table.

“Maybe I did,” Corfe said, surprising himself with his calmness. “Aekir was burning. There was nothing left in the city to fight for. Nothing I cared about. Yes, I deserted. I ran away. Do with me what you will. I am tired, and have come a long way.”

One man thumped the table angrily at this, but Martellus held up a hand then stood with his hands behind his back, the red light from the brazier making his face seem more than ever like that of a feline predator.

“Easy, gentlemen. We did not bring this man here to judge him, but to gain information. What is your name, Ensign?”

“Corfe. Corfe Cear-Inaf. My father served under Mogen also.”

“Inaf, yes. I know the name. Well, Corfe, I have to tell you that you are the first Torunnan soldier we have seen who came out of Aekir alive. The best field army of the Five Monarchies is no more. You may be its last survivor.”

Corfe gaped, unable to believe it. “There have been no more? None?”

“Not one. The Merduks took many hundreds prisoner after Lejer’s last battle, that much we know. They are destined for crucifixion in the east. No others have got this far.”

Corfe bowed his head. He was alive, then, when every other Torunnan who had fought under Mogen was dead or captured. The shame of it made his face burn. Small wonder the men around the table seemed so hostile. In all the thousands of men who had been part of that army, only Corfe had fled and saved his own skin. The knowledge staggered him.

“Take a seat,” Martellus said, not unkindly. “You look as though you need it.”

He fumbled for a chair and sat down, his head in his hands. “What do you want of me?” he whispered.

“As I said, information. I want to know the composition of the Merduk army. I want to know how badly Mogen’s men damaged it before the end. And I want to know why Aekir fell.”

Corfe looked up. “Are you going to stay here, to fight the Merduk again?”

“Yes.”

“It doesn’t seem that way to me.”

The men at the table stirred at his words. Martellus glared at them to silence them, then nodded. “Some of the garrison have been transferred west, to Torunn. Thus we are short-handed.”

“How many? On whose orders?”

“On the orders of King Lofantyr himself. Twelve thousand will be left here for the defence of the dyke, no more.”

“Then the dyke will fall.”

“I do not intend to let it fall, Ensign.”

“You have refugees crawling all over the fortress. If the Merduks chanced upon this place it would not last an hour.”

“There has been confusion, what with the transfers to the west. It is coming under control.” Martellus appeared faintly irritated. “Our scouts inform us that the Merduk main body is still in Aekir, though they have light troops out skirmishing a scant league away from here. We have time and to spare; it will be weeks yet ere the main enemy body begins to move. My orders are to get as many of Aekir’s refugees away to the west as possible before cutting the bridges. Now, tell me. What is the enemy strength?”

Corfe hesitated. “Since the siege, they may be left with some hundred and fifty thousand.”

The officers glanced at one another. Such an army had never been seen before, never imagined.

“How many did they have before the siege began?” one asked harshly.

“A quarter of a million, maybe. We cut them down like straw, but they kept coming. I know that many were also sent back to guard the supply routes over the mountains, but the first snows will be in the passes of the Thurians now. I cannot see how they will keep supplied through the winter.”

“I can,” Martellus said. “Duke Comorin of Kardikia says they are building boats by the hundred on the Ostian river. That will be their new supply route, and it will remain open through the winter. Their advance will continue.”

Martellus bent over the table and examined a map of the land between the Searil and the Ostian rivers.

“Show me the line of their advance,” he said to Corfe.

Corfe got up, but then something occurred to him. “Has Macrobius been seen yet, or his body found?”

“The High Pontiff? Why, no. He died in Aekir.”

“Are you sure? Did anyone see him killed?”

“His palace burned, and just about every priest who was in the city was put to the sword. I have it from civilians and clerics who were there. I do not think the Merduks could have overlooked someone of his eminence.”

“But Mogen had him locked in a storeroom in the palace to stop him fleeing the city.”

Martellus stared, incredulous. “Are you serious?”

“It was a rumour in the city just before its fall. The Knights Militant almost left Mogen’s command over it. Would you know the High Pontiff if you saw him?”

Martellus became exasperated. “I suppose so. I have supped at the same table as him a few times. Why?”

“Then you must send men over to the eastern bank. You will find an old man there near the barbican who lacks eyes, and a young monk with an injured face.”

“What about them?”

“I think the old man may be Macrobius.”