Hawkwood's voyage

EIGHTEEN

They came with the dawn, as Martellus had said they would. Had it not been for the vigilance of the pickets they might have swarmed up to the very walls, so sudden was their onset; for the Merduks had elected to forgo a preliminary bombardment, preferring to gamble on achieving surprise. But the watching sentries set light to the signal rockets and flares, and suddenly the eastern barbican and the river were lit up with smoking red lights that described bright parabolas across the lightening sky and illuminated the bristling phalanxes of advancing troops below.

The garrison of the barbican rushed out to their stations. All along the walls, slow-match was lit and set to one side, men shouldered their arquebuses and powder and shot-carriers hurried up to the parapets with their vital loads.

The Merduk host, discovered, came on with a mighty roar, a rush of shouting and thumping feet that set the hair crawling on Corfe’s head. Once again, he beheld the teeming mass of a Merduk army assaulting walls, like a seaweed-thick tide lapping at a cliff face.

The sun was coming up. More powder rockets were launched, this time to help the gunners aim their culverins. The swarming mob of Merduks was perhaps two hundred yards from the walls when Andruw stabbed the slow-match into the touch-hole of the first cannon.

It jumped back with a roar and an exploding fog of smoke. At the signal, the other big guns of the fortress began to bark out also until the entire barbican was a massive reeking smoke cloud stabbed through and through with red and yellow flame.

Corfe was able to see the result of the first few salvoes before the smoke hid the advancing hordes. The Torunnans were using delayed-fuse shells that exploded in midair and scattered jagged metal in a deadly radius beneath them. He saw swathes of the enemy fall or be tossed into the air and ripped to pieces, like crops flattened by an invisible wind. Then they came on again, dressing their broken lines and screaming their hoarse battlecries. There were hundreds of ladders in their midst, carried shoulder-high.

“What of their numbers, Corfe?” Andruw shouted. “What do you make them?”

How to set a figure to that broiling mass of humanity? But Corfe was a soldier, a professional. His mind played with figures in his head.

“Nine or ten thousand in the first wave,” he shouted back, the smoke aching his throat already. “But that’s just the first wave.”

Andruw grinned out of a blackened face. “Plenty for everyone then.”

They were at the foot of the walls now, a roaring multitude horned with scaling ladders and baying like animals. The rising sun lit up the further hills, shafted through the billowing powder smoke and made something ethereal and beautiful out of it, the defenders seeming to be flat silhouettes in the fiery reek. The gunners of the lighter pieces depressed their guns to maximum and began firing down into the packed masses below, whilst the arquebusiers were holding fire, waiting for Andruw’s order.

Scaling ladders thumping against the battlements. Grapnels, ropes and a shower of crossbow bolts that knocked down half a dozen men in Corfe’s vision alone. The ladders began to quiver as the enemy climbed up them.

“Hold your fire, arquebusiers!” Andruw shouted. A few nervous men were already letting loose.

Faces at the top of the ladders, black as fiends from hell.

“Fire!”

A rippling series of explosions as two thousand arquebuses went off almost as one. Many ladders crashed back down in the press below, unbalanced by the death throes of the men at their tops. Others remained, and more of the enemy continued their climb.

“Fork-men, to the front!” the order went out, and Torunnans came forward bearing objects shaped like long-handled pitchforks. Two or three of the defenders would push these against the scaling ladders and send them out in a slow, graceful arc, packed with men, to swing down into red ruin in the massed ranks at the foot of the walls.

The assault paused, checked. The noise of men shouting and shrieking, the boom of cannon and crack of arquebus were deafening.

“Have they no strategy at all?” Andruw was asking Corfe. “They’re like a ram butting a gate. Do they reckon nothing of casualties?”

“They don’t have to,” Corfe told him. “Remember what Martellus said? Attrition. They are losing men by the thousand, we by the score. But they can afford to lose their thousands. They are as numberless as the sand of a beach.”

They stood near the gate that was the main entrance to this part of the fortress. The sun was rising rapidly and a rosy-gold light was playing over the scene. They could see through gaps in the smoke to where fresh forces were already being marshalled on the hills beyond. The Merduk guns were being brought into play now, but they were firing high. Most of their shots seemed to be falling into the Searil, raising fountains of white, shattered water.

“So they use explosive shells, too,” Andruw said, surprised.

It was something the Ramusians had invented only twenty years ago.

“Yes, and incendiaries. I hope we have enough firefighters.”

“Fire is the last thing we have to worry about. Here they come again.”

A fresh surge at the foot of the walls. Crossbow bolts came clinking and cracking against the battlements in a dark hail. Men fell screaming from the catwalks.

Another assault, the ladders lifted up and thrown down once more. The ground at the bottom of the fortifications was piled with corpses and wreckage.

“I don’t like it,” Corfe said. “This is too easy.”

“Too easy!”

“Yes. There is no thought behind these assaults. I think they are a cover for something else. Even Shahr Baraz does not throw his men’s lives away for no gain.”

There was an earth-shuddering concussion that seemed to come from beneath their very feet. Almost the entire gatehouse was enveloped in thick smoke through which flame speared and flapped.

“They’ve blown the gate!” Andruw cried.

“I’ll see to it. Stay here. They’ll make another assault to cover the breaching party.”

Corfe ran down the wide stairs to the courtyards and squares below. Torunnan soldiers and refugee civilians were running about carrying powder, shot, wounded men, match and water. He seized on a group of a dozen who possessed arquebuses and led them into the shadow of the gatehouse.

There in the arch a fierce fire was burning, and the massive gates were askew on their hinges, white scars marking the shattered wood. Already the Merduk engineers were swarming through the gaps and a hundred more were clustered behind them. It was like watching dark maggots writhing in a wound.

“Present pieces!” Corfe yelled to his motley command, and the arquebuses were levelled.

“Give fire!”

The volley flung back a score of Merduks who were clambering through the wrecked gates.

“Out swords. Follow me!” Corfe cried, and led the Torunnans at a run.

They stepped over wriggling, maimed men and began slashing and hewing in the burning gloom of the arch like things possessed. In a few moments there were no Merduks left alive inside the gatehouse, and those trying to force their way through the battered portals had limbs and heads lopped off by the defenders.

The fire spread. Corfe was dimly aware of men with water buckets. He hacked the fingers off a hand that was pulling at the broken gate. Then someone was tugging him away.

“The murder-holes! They’re going to use them. Out of the gateway!”

He allowed himself to be hauled away, half blind with sweat and smoke. The Torunnans fell back.

Immediately the Merduks were squirming through the gates again. In seconds a score of them were on the inside and more of their fellows were joining them by the moment.

“Now!” a voice yelled somewhere.

A golden torrent poured down on the hapless Merduks from holes in the ceiling of the gatehouse. It was not liquid, but as soon as it struck the men below they screamed horribly, tearing at their armour and dropping their swords. They flailed around in agony for long minutes whilst their comrades halted outside, watching in helpless fury.

“What is it?” Corfe asked. “It looks like-”

“Sand,” he was told by a grinning soldier. “Heated sand. It gets inside the armour and fries them to a cinder. More economical than lead, wouldn’t you say?”

“Make way, there!” A gunnery officer and a horde of blackened figures were man-hauling two broad-muzzled falcons into position before the gate. As the torrent of sand faltered the Merduks outside began clambering inside again with what seemed to Corfe to be arrant stupidity or maniac courage.

The falcons went off. Loaded with scrap metal, they did the remains of the gates little damage, but the Merduks in the archway were blown to shreds. Blood and fragments of flesh, bone and viscera plastered the interior of the archway.

“They’re falling back!” someone yelled.

It was true. The attack on the gate was being abandoned for the moment. The Merduks were drawing away.

“Keep these pieces posted here, and get engineers to work on these gates,” Corfe commanded the gunnery officer, not caring what his rank might be. “I’ll send men down from the wall to reinforce you as soon as I can.”

Without waiting for a reply, he ran for the catwalk stairs to rejoin the men on the battlements.

Another assault-the cover for the breaching party-had just been thrown back. Men were reloading the cannons frantically, charging their arquebuses, doctoring minor wounds. The dead were tossed off the parapet like sacks; time for the solemnities later.

Andruw’s sabre was bloody and his eyes startlingly white in a filthy face. “What about the gate?”

“It’s holding, for the moment. They’re persistent bastards. I’ll give them that. We sent half a hundred of them to join their prophet before they drew back.”

Andruw laughed heartily. “By sweet Ramusio’s blessed blood, they’ll not walk over us without a stumble or two. Was it as tight as this at Aekir, Corfe?”

Corfe turned away, face flat and ugly.

“It was different,” he said.

Martellus watched the failure of the assault from his station on the heights of the citadel. His officers were clustered about him, grave but somehow jubilant. The Merduk host was drawing back like a snarling dog that has been struck on the muzzle. All over the eastern barbican on the far side of the river a vast turmoil of rising smoke shifted and eddied, shot through with flame. Even here, over a mile away, it was possible to hear the hoarse roar of a multitude in extremity, a formless, surf-like sound that served as background to the rolling thunder of the guns.

“He’s lost thousands,” one of the senior officers was saying. “What is he thinking of, to throw troops bare-handed against prepared fortifications like that?”

A messenger arrived from the eastern bank, his face grimed and his chest heaving. Martellus read the dispatch with thin lips, then dismissed him.

“The gate is damaged. We would have lost it, were it not for the efforts of my new aide. Andruw puts his own casualties at less than three hundred.”

Some of the other officers grinned and stamped. Others looked merely thoughtful. They eyed the retreat of the attacking Merduk regiments-orderly despite the barrage that the Torunnan guns were laying down-then their gazes moved up the hillsides, to where the main host was encamped in its teeming thousands and the Merduk batteries squatted silent and ominous.

“He’s playing with us,” someone said. “He could have continued that attack all day, and not blinked an eye at the casualties.”

“Yes,” Martellus said. The early light filled his eyes with tawny fire and made a glitter out of the white lines in his hair. “This was an armed reconnaissance, no more, as I said it would be. He now knows the location of our guns and the dispositions of the eastern garrison. Tomorrow he will attack again, but this time it will not be a sudden rush, unsupported and ill-disciplined. Tomorrow we will see Shahr Baraz assault in earnest.”

Hundreds of miles away to the west. Follow the Terrin river northwards to where the gap between the Cimbric Mountains and the Thurians opens out. Pass over the glittering Sea of Tor with its dark fleets of fishing boats and its straggling coastal towns. There, in the foothills of the western Cimbrics, see the majestic profile of Charibon, where the bells of the cathedral are tolling for Vespers and the evening air is thickening into an early night in the shadow of the towering peaks.

In the apartments that had been made over to the new High Pontiff Himerius, the great man himself and Betanza, Vicar-General of the Inceptine Order sat alone, the attending clerics dismissed. The muddy, travel-worn man who had been with them minutes before had been led away to a well-earned bath and bed.

“Well?” Betanza asked.

Himerius’ eyes were hooded, his face a maze of crannied bone dominated by the eagle nose. As High Pontiff he wore robes of rich purple, the only man in the world entitled to do so unless the Fimbrian emperors were to come again.

“Absurd nonsense, all of it.”

“Are you so sure, Holiness?”

“Of course! Macrobius died in Aekir. Do you think the Merduks would have missed such a prize? This eyeless fellow is an impostor. The general at the dyke, this Martellus, he has obviously circulated this story in order to raise the morale of his troops. I cannot say I blame the man entirely-he must be under enormous pressure-but this really is inexcusable. If he survives the attack on the dyke I will see to it that he is brought before a religious court on charges of heresy.”

Betanza sat back in his thickly upholstered chair. They were both by the massive fireplace, and broad logs were burning merrily on the hearth, the only light in the tall-ceilinged room.

“According to this messenger,” Betanza said carefully, “Torunn was informed also. Eighteen days he says it took to get here, and four dead horses. Torunn will have had the news for nigh on a fortnight.”

“So? We will send our own messengers denying the validity of the man’s claim. It is too absurd, Betanza.”

The Vicar-General’s high-coloured face was dark as he leaned back out of the firelight.

“How can you be so sure that Macrobius is dead?” he asked.

Himerius’ eyes glittered. “He is dead. Let there be no question about it. I am High Pontiff, and no Torunnan captain of arms will gainsay me.”

“What are you going to do?”

Himerius steepled his fingers together before his face.

“We will send out riders at once-tonight-to every court in Normannia-all the Five monarchies. They will bear a Pontifical bull in which I will denounce this impostor and the man who is behind him-this Martellus, the Lion of Ormann Dyke.”

Himerius smiled.

“I will also send a private letter to King Lofantyr of Torunna, expressing my outrage at this heretical occurrence and telling him of my reluctance to commit our Knights Militant to the defence of his kingdom whilst that same kingdom harbours a pretender to my own position, an affront against the Holy Office I occupy, a stink in the nostrils of God.”

“So you will withhold the troops you promised Brother Heyn,” Betanza said. He sounded tired.

“Yes. Until this thing is dealt with Torunna shall receive no material aid from the Church.”

“And Ormann Dyke?”

“What of it?”

“The dyke needs those men, Holiness. Without them it will surely fall.”

“Then so be it. Its commander should have thought of that before he started elevating blind old men to the position of High Pontiff.”

Betanza was silent. As the Knights Militant were quartered in Charibon they were nominally under the command of the head of the Inceptine Order. But never in living memory had a Vicar-General flouted the wishes of his Pontiff.

“The men are already on the march,” Betanza said. “They must be halfway to Torunna by now.”

“Then recall them,” Himerius snapped. “Torunna shall receive nothing from me until it extirpates this impostor.”

“I beg you to consider, Holiness. . What if this man is who he says he is?”

“Impossible, I tell you. Are you questioning my judgement, Brother?”

“No. It is just that I do not want you to make a mistake.”

“I am directly inspired by the Blessed Saint, as his representative on earth. Trust me. I know.”

“By rights we should reassemble the Synod and put this to the convened Colleges and Prelates.”

“They’re happily trekking homewards by now. It would waste too much time. They will be informed in due course. What is the matter with you, Brother Betanza? Do you doubt the word of your Pontiff?”

One of the powers inherent in the Pontifical office was the nomination or removal of the Vicar-General of the Inceptines. Betanza looked his superior in the eye.

“Of course not, Holiness. I only seek to cover every contingency.”

“I am glad to hear it. It is always better when the Vicar-General and the Pontiff have a good working relationship. It can be disastrous if they do not. Think of old Baliaeus.”

Baliaeus had been a Pontiff of the last century who had quarrelled with his Vicar-General, removed the man from office and assumed the position himself in addition to his Pontiffship. The event had scandalized the entire Ramusian world, but none had attempted to reinstate the unfortunate head of the Inceptines. The man had died a reclusive hermit in a cell up in the Cimbrics.

“But you are no Baliaeus, Holiness,” Betanza said, smiling.

“I am not. Old friend, we have worked too hard and striven too long to see what we laboured for torn away from us.”

“Indeed.” So if Himerius went, Betanza went. That much was clear at least.

“In any case,” Himerius went on suavely, “we may be worrying over nothing. You have said yourself that the dyke must fall. If it does, the impostor will fall with it and all those who believe in him there. Our problems will be at an end.”

Betanza stared at him, open-mouthed.

“That will do, my lord Vicar-General. Have the scribes sent to me when you leave. I will dictate the dispatches this evening. We must strike whilst the iron is hot.”

Betanza got up, bowed and kissed his Pontiff’s ring. He left the room without another word.

Brother Rogien was waiting for him as he exited. He strode along the wide corridors of Charibon with Rogien silent at his side. He could hear Vespers being sung from half a dozen college chapels and smell the enticing aromas from the kitchens of the monastery.

Rogien was an older man, broad-shouldered and stooped, with hair as white and fine as the down on a day-old chick. He was Betanza’s deputy, experienced in the ways of Inceptine intrigue.

“He will not even investigate it!” Betanza raged at last, striding along at a swift, angry pace.

“What did you think, that he would tamely lie down and accept it?” Rogien asked caustically. “All his life he has coveted the position he now occupies. He is more powerful than any king. It is not a thing to be abandoned lightly.”

“But the way he goes about it! He will recall the Knights promised to Torunna; he will alienate Heyn and the Torunnan king. He will gladly see Ormann Dyke fall rather than risk his own position!”

“So? We knew that was what would happen.”

“I have been a soldier of sorts, Rogien. I commanded men in my youth and maybe that gives me a different outlook. But I tell you that this man will see the west riven by fire and ruin if he thinks it will advance his own cause one jot.”

“You have attached yourself to him,” Rogien said implacably. “His fortunes are yours. You worked with him to gain the Pontiffship; he helped vote you into your position. You cannot turn around now and forsake him. It will ruin you.”

“Yes, I know!”

They reached the Vicar-General’s quarters, dismissed the Knights at the door and went inside, lighting candles as they did so.

“You would never have become head of the order were it not for him,” Rogien went on. “Your age and your late vocation counted against you. It was Himerius’ lobbying that swung the Colleges. You are his creature, Betanza.”

The Vicar-General poured himself wine from a crystal decanter, made the Sign of the Saint with a clenched fist and drank the wine at a gulp.

“Yes, his creature. Is that what they will say in the history books? That Betanza stood by whilst his Pontiff brought down the west? Can the man be so blinkered that he is unable to see what he is doing? By all means, denounce the impostor; but withhold the Torunnan reinforcements as well? That smacks of paranoia.”

Rogien shrugged. “He is willing to take no risks. He knows it will bring Lofantyr to heel quicker than anything else. And you have to admit it would look odd were the High Pontiff to send troops to bolster the garrison of a fortress which has raised up a rival High Pontiff.”

“Yes, there is that, I suppose.” Betanza smiled wryly and poured his colleague and himself more wine. “Mayhap I am losing my skill at the Inceptine game.”

“You bring to it the wisdom of a man who has not worn a black habit his whole life. You were a nobleman once, a lay-leader. But that is in the past. If you are to survive and to prosper, you must learn to think wholly as an Inceptine. The order must retain its pre-eminence. Let the kings worry about the defence of the west; it is their province. We must concern ourselves with the spiritual welfare of the Ramusian world-and what would happen to it were there to be two Pontiffs? Chaos, anarchy, a schism that might take years to heal. Think on that, Brother.”

Betanza regarded his subordinate with sour humour.

“I think sometimes that you would be better off sitting in my chair and I in a soldier’s harness before Ormann Dyke, Rogien.”

“As you are Himerius’ creature, I am yours, lord.”

“Yes,” the Vicar-General said quietly. “You are.”

He threw back his wine. “Send a half-dozen of our quickest scribes to the High Pontiff’s chambers. He will be wanting to dictate his dispatches at once. And warn off a squad of our dispatch-riders to be ready for a long journey.”

Rogien bowed. “Will there be anything else? Shall I have your meal sent up, or will you eat in hall?”

“I am not hungry. I must be alone for a while. I must think, and pray. That will be all, Rogien.”

“Very well, my lord.” The older man left.

Betanza moved to the window and threw back the heavy shutters. A keen air smelling of snow wafted into the dim room. He could see where the majestic Cimbrics loomed right at the shores of the Sea of Tor, the last light of the sun touching their white peaks while the rest of the world was sinking into shadow. Eighteen days the messenger had been on the road. The dyke had most likely already fallen and his worries were academic. The largest army yet seen could be even now resuming its march westwards, and he remained here splitting hairs with an egocentric Churchman.

He smiled. What Inceptine was not egocentric, ambitious, imperious? Even the novices behaved like princes when they walked the streets of the fisher villages.

It would cause trouble. He could feel it in his bones. It was not just the Merduk war; there were other straws in the wind tonight. The Conclave of Kings would be convening very soon; he would know more then. He had his informants in place.

A time of change was approaching. Attitudes were shifting, not just among the common people but among kings and princes. Himerius already had the aspect of a man on the defensive. But perhaps his efforts would be no more effectual than the efforts of those few unfortunates who were fighting and dying along the Searil River at this very moment. The mood of the age could not be turned around by a few ambitious men, even ones as powerful as the High Pontiff.

He wondered if Macrobius were truly alive. There was little chance of it, of course, and the likeliest explanation for the dispatch they had received that afternoon was the one proffered by Himerius. But if the impostor were the old Pontiff, Betanza doubted very much whether Himerius would step down. There would be a schism: two Pontiffs, a divided Ramusian continent with the Merduks baying at its borders. Such a scenario did not bear thinking about.

He left the window, shutting out the cold air and the sunset-tinted mountains. Then he knelt on the stone floor and began to pray.