Century of the Soldier: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume Two) (65 page)

"There's been no major battle then. They must have my men bottled up somehow. The Merduks are probably on the march already. Hurry, Albrec! We don't have time to waste."

Nineteen

A
S THE LADIES-IN-WAITING
quaked, terrified, the Queen twitched and snarled in her chair, the whites of her eyes flickering under closed lids. She had been like this for almost two hours, and they longed to cry out to someone for help, a doctor or apothecary to be sent. But ancient Grania, who had been at the palace longer than any of the rest and whose dark eyes were unclouded by any vestige of senility, told them to hush their useless mouths and pretend nothing untoward was happening, else the guards posted outside might take it into their heads to come in. So the little flock of ladies embroidered and knitted with absent fervour, stabbing fingertips with monotonous regularity while brimming over with hiccuping little sobs for the predicament they had all found themselves in: and Grania glanced towards heaven and helped herself to the wine.

None of them noticed when the black furred shape with ruby eyes crept back into the chamber through the smoke hood and took up its accustomed place in the centre of a huge web that quivered sootily in the shadows of the great rafters. The Queen sighed, and sagged in her chair. Then she rubbed her eyes and stood up, putting a hand to the hollow of her back. For several seconds she looked what she was; a tired woman in her sixth decade. As the ladies-in-waiting chattered around her she took the goblet of wine that the silent Grania offered and drained it at a draught.

"I am getting to old for this sort of thing," she said to the aged woman who had once been her wet-nurse.

"We all are," the crone retorted dryly. And to the brightly plumaged chatterers about her she snapped: "Oh, shut up, all of you."

"No," Odelia said. "Keep talking - that is an order. Let the guards hear us gossiping away. Were we too silent, they would be the more suspicious."

"How bad is it?" Grania asked her Queen, as the surrounding women talked desperately now of the weather, the price of silk - all the while trying to spare an ear for the Queen's words.

"Bad enough. They have massacred many of his Cathedrallers. The poor fools charged massed arquebusiers with nothing more than sabres."

"And his Fimbrians?"

"Strangely supine. But something tells me that their commander, Formio, is not letting the grass grow under his feet. The rest of the city is under curfew. Fournier has installed himself in the east wing - so sure of himself is he that he has only fifty or sixty men around him. The rest patrol the city. There are fires down by the dockyards, but I don't know what they signify. Arach's vision is limited, and sometimes hard to decipher."

"Sit, lady. You are exhausted."

"How can I sit?" Odelia exploded. "I do not even know if he is alive or dead!" She passed a hand over her face. "Pardon me. I am tired. I was blind: I should have forseen this."

"No-one else did," Grania said bluntly. "Do not torment yourself because you are no soothsayer."

The Queen sank back down upon her chair. "He cannot be dead, Grania. He must not be dead." And she buried her face in her hands and wept.

I
T WAS A
long, weary way from the waterfront to the Pontifical palace, and it took Corfe and Albrec most of the remainder of the night to traverse it. Fournier's patrols were easy to dodge - they spent as much time gawking at the wonders of the great city as they did keeping an eye out for curfew-breakers. They were, when it came down to it, untutored men of the country awed by the size and sprawl of the capital. Eavesdropping on their conversations as they trooped past, Corfe realised that they did not even know why they were here, except that it was some kind of emergency engendered by the Merduk War.

Halted at the gates of the abbey by watchful Knights Militant, Corfe and Albrec were eyed with astonished disbelief when they demanded to see Macrobius. They were still fettered, and liberally plastered with mud and sewer filth. But something in Corfe's eye made one of the gate-guards dash off at once to fetch Monsignor Alembord. The portly Inceptine looked none too pleased to be dragged out in the middle of the night but there was no denying that he recognised the bedraggled pair straight away. They were ushered inside the gates amid much whispering and brought to a little reception-chamber where Corfe demanded a blacksmith or armourer to cut off their manacles. Alembord waddled away, looking thoroughly confused. He was almost entirely unaware of the coup that had taken place: Fournier's men had left the abbey alone, as Corfe had suspected they would.

The yawning armourer arrived soon after with a wooden box full of the tools of his trade. The fetters were cut from the two prisoner's wrists, and Corfe had to clench his teeth against the agony of returning circulation in his hands. They were swollen to twice their normal size and where the iron had encircled his wrists, deep slices had been carved out of the puffed flesh. He let them bleed freely, hoping it would wash some of the filth out of them.

Basins of clean, hot water, and fresh clothes were found for the two men. The clothes turned out to be spare Inceptine habits, and thus it was dressed as a monk that Corfe finally found himself ushered into Macrobius's private suite. It still wanted an hour until dawn.

Private though the suite might nominally be, it was crowded with anxious clerics and alarmed Knights Militant. They and Macrobius listened in grim silence as Corfe related the events of the night, Albrec narrating his own part in the story. As he and Corfe had agreed, however, no mention was made of the spy at the Merduk court.

When they had finished, Macrobius, who had listened without a word, said simply: "What would you have me do?"

"How many armed men can the abbey muster?" Corfe asked.

"Monsignor Alembord?"

"Some sixty to seventy, Holiness."

"Good," Corfe said. "Then you must sally at dawn with all of them, and go to the City Square. Call a meeting, raise the rooftops - create a commotion that will get people out onto the streets. Fournier does not have enough men to clamp down on the entire city, and he will not be able to cow the population if they can be raised against him. Get the people onto the streets, Holiness."

"And you, Corfe, what will you do?"

"I'm going to try and get through to my men. If you can make enough of a commotion, Fournier will have to take troops away from their containment, and then there will be a good chance I can break them out. After that, he will be defeated, I promise you."

"What of the Merduks?" Alembord asked with round eyes.

"I am assuming they are on the move even as we speak. If they force-march, they can be here in four or five days at most. That does not give us much time. This thing must be crushed by tomorrow at the latest if we are to take the field in time."

"Very well," Macrobius said, his chin outthrust. "It shall be as you say. "Monsignor Alembord, rouse out the entire abbey. I want everyone in their best habits, the Knights in full armour and mounted, with every flag and pennon they can find. We shall make a spectacle of it, give Fournier something to distract his mind. See to it at once."

As the unfortunate Alembord hurried away, Macrobius turned back to Corfe. "How do you intend to get through to your men?"

"With your permission, Holiness, I will retain the disguise I've been given. I will be a cleric desiring only to offer spiritual succour to the beleaguered soldiers. For that reason, I will go to Formio's Fimbrians first. The idea of a priest offering comfort to my Cathedrallers would not stand up."

"And will you go alone?"

"Yes. Albrec here is too easily recognisable, even by these bumpkins from the south. He will have to remain here in the abbey."

"And what about the Queen, Corfe?"

"She, also, will have to be left to her own devices for a while. For now it is soldiers I need, not monarchs."

C
OUNT
F
OURNIER'S BEARD
had been tugged from its usual fine point into a bristling mess. He paced the room like a restless cat while his senior officers stared woodenly at him.

"Escaped? Escaped? How can you be telling me this? The one man above all who must be contained, and you tell me he is now at large. Exactly how could this have happened?"

Gabriel Venuzzi's handsome face was sallow as a whitewashed wall. "It seems he managed to lever up a grating and make his way into the sewers, Count. He and that noseless monk who was incarcerated with him."

"That is another thing - I specifically said that all the prisoners were to be confined separately."

"There are not enough cells in the waterfront dungeons. By my last estimate, we have almost four-score prisoners down there. Some of them are even three to a cell now. Every officer above the rank of ensign is being picked up. Perhaps we could relax the rules a little."

"No! We must cut off the head if the body is not to crush us. Every man on the lists must be arrested. Start using the common gaols if you have to, but take every name on the list!"

"It shall be as you say."

"What of the Queen?"

"Still confined to her chambers."

"Have the guards look in on her every few minutes."

"Count Fournier!" Venuzzi was shocked. "She is the Queen - do you expect common soldiers to tramp in and out of her chambers like gawking sightseers?"

"Do as I say, damn it. I don't have time for your lace-edged court niceties now, Venuzzi. Our heads will all be on the block if this does not come off. How in the world could he have got away? Where would he go? To his men, obviously. But how to get through the lines? By subterfuge, naturally. Venuzzi, inform all our officers that no-one -
no-one
is to be allowed through the lines to the Fimbrians or the Cathedrallers. Do you understand me, Venuzzi? Not so much as a damned mouse."

"I am not an imbecile, Count."

"I thought that also until you let Cear-Inaf slip away - now get out and set about your errands."

Venuzzi left, his formerly livid face now flushed and furious. Fournier turned to a beefy figure who lounged by the door. "Sardinac, get some more men up here in the palace, and some artillery pieces."

The man called Sardinac straightened. "We don't have too many artillerists to spare, Count. These are hired retainers we're working with, remember; not Torunnan regulars."

"Don't I know it. Take some of the guns which they have deployed about the Fimbrian quarter. And send another courier in to treat with that ass Formio. His position is hopeless, it's not his fight, safe-conduct out of the city - the same as the last one."

Sardinac bowed, and exited in Venuzzi's wake.

Fournier wiped his brow with a scented handkerchief. He was surrounded by fools, that was the problem. Such a beautiful plan, but it had to work in all things or it would work in none. There was so little margin for error.

His restless feet took him out onto the balcony. You could see a corner of the City Square from here. It was like glimpsing a slice of some odd carnival. He could see Knights Militant bedecked with banners, richly robed priests - and a milling crowd of several thousand of the city lowly who had braved the curfew to see what was going on. That also had to be contained. His men were like butter scraped across too much bread. Who would have thought Macrobius would issue out of his lair and get up on his hind legs to preach, the old fool?

There was a lit brazier in the room, the charcoal red and grey with heat. Fournier went to the table, unlocked a small chest, and took out a battered scroll with the broken seal of the Merduk Military upon it. He studied it for a moment, thoughtfully, and seemed about to consign it to the brazier, but then thought better of it. He tucked it into the breast of his doublet, and patted it with one manicured hand.

"S
ERGEANT
! W
E'VE A
priest here wants to go and talk to the Fimbrians," the young soldier said. "That's all right, ain't it?"

The sergeant, a corpulent veteran of many tavern brawls, marched ponderously over to the barricade where the black-robed Inceptine stood surrounded by half a dozen nervous young men with the slow-match smouldering balefully on the clamps of their arquebuses. He drew a sabre.

"New orders, Fintan, lad. No-one to go through the lines. Courier arrived just this minute. Father, your time has been wasted. You might want to say a prayer for us though - out here facing those damned Fimbrians."

"By all means, my son." The priest, his face hidden in the cowl of his habit, raised his hands in the Sign of the Saint. As he did, the wide sleeves of his raiment fell back to reveal badly cut wrists. The soldiers had bowed their heads to receive his blessing, but they snapped upright when a clear young voice shouted out: "Sergeant! Bring that man to me at once!"

Colonel Aras was standing outside a nearby grain warehouse surrounded by a crowd of other officers and couriers. He stalked forward. "The priest! Grab that priest and bring him here!"

The Inceptine tensed as he found the barrels of six arquebuses levelled at him. The sergeant looked him up and down quizzically.