Authors: Paul Kearney
“I thought I’d be discreet. Besides, the Cathedrallers are mobbed every time they ride through the streets.”
“Ah, yes, I should have thought. Have a seat. Have some wine. My cook has been working wonders tonight. Some bass from the estuary I believe, and wild pigeon.”
Silver glittering in the candlelight upon a spotless white tablecloth. Crystal goblets brimming with wine, a gold-chased decanter and a small crowd of footmen, not one yet in his thirties. Fournier noted Corfe’s appraising glances and said shortly, “I like to be surrounded by youth. It helps keep my—my energy levels high. Ah, Marion, the first course, if you please.”
Some kind of fish. Corfe ate it automatically, his plate cleared by the time Fournier had had three mouthfuls. The nobleman laughed.
“You are not in the field now, General. You should savour my cook’s work. He is an easterner as a matter of fact, a convert from Calmar. I believe he might once have been a corsair, but one should not inquire too thoroughly into the antecedents of genius, should one?”
Corfe said nothing. Fournier seemed to be enjoying himself, as if he possessed some secret knowledge which he was savouring with even more gusto than he did the food.
The plates were taken away, another course came and went. Fournier talked inconsequently of gastronomic matters, the decline in Torunn’s fishing fleet, the proper way to dress a carp. Corfe drank wine sparingly and uttered the odd monosyllable. Finally the cloth was drawn and the two men were left with a dish of nuts and a decanter of brandy. The servants left, and for a while the only sound was the quiet night music of the river close by.
“You have shown commendable patience, General,” Fournier said, sipping the good Fimbrian spirit. “I had expected an outburst of some sort ere the main course arrived.”
“I know.”
“Forgive me. I like to play my little games. Why are you here? What’s afoot on this, the eve of great events? I will tell you, as a reward for your forbearance.”
Fournier reached under his chair and set upon the table a bloodstained scroll of paper. Upon it was a broken seal, but enough of the wax remained for Corfe to make out the crossed scimitars of Ostrabar’s military. Despite himself, he sat up straight in his chair.
“Do have a walnut, General. They complement the brandy so well.” Fournier broke one open with a pair of ivory handled nutcrackers. There was blood on the nutcrackers also.
“Make your point, Fournier,” Corfe said. “I do not have any more time to waste.”
Fournier’s voice changed: the bantering tone fled to be replaced by cold steel. “My agents made a capture today of some interest to us all. A Merduk mullah with two companions, out riding alone. The mullah was a strange little fellow with a mutilated face and no fingers on one hand. He spoke perfect Normannic, with the accent of Almark, and claimed to be one Bishop Albrec, fresh from the delights of the Merduk court.”
Corfe said nothing, but the candlelight made two little hellish fires of his eyes.
“Our adventurous cleric was bearing this scroll on him. He took quite a deal of persuasion to give it up, I might add. After further persuasion he revealed that he had been charged with delivery of it to you, my dear General. You alone, and in person. Now, we have an agent in the enemy camp, that you already know. But would you believe that until tonight I did not know the identity of that agent? Strange, but true. Now I know everything there is to know, General. Or almost everything. Perhaps you could explain to me why exactly you are receiving despatches from someone at the very heart of the Merduk court?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, Fournier. What is in this scroll?”
“That is of no matter for the moment. However, there is the rather alarming prospect of the Torunnan commander-in-chief being in clandestine communication with the enemy High Command. That, my dear Corfe Cear-Inaf, is treason in anyone’s book.”
“Don’t be absurd, Fournier. It’s come from this agent of yours you’ve been preening yourself over for weeks. What’s in the damned scroll? And what have you done with this Albrec?”
“All in good time, General. You see, the interesting thing is that the scroll did not come from any agent of mine. It came, as my little misshapen bishop finally admitted, direct from the hands of the Merduk Queen herself. Perhaps you could explain this.”
Corfe blinked, startled. “I have no idea—”
“Colonel Willem,” said Fournier, raising his voice a fraction. And out of the darkness a group of men instantly appeared. The candles lit up the length of their drawn swords.
A shaven-headed man with a patch over one eye stepped into the summerhouse. Willem, one of Corfe’s senior officers. Behind him was young Colonel Aras. Willem had a horse pistol cocked and ready, the match already smouldering on the wheel.
“Place General Cear-Inaf under arrest. You will take him to my offices down by the waterfront and hold him there.”
“With pleasure, Count,” Willem said, grinning to show broad gap-ridden teeth. “Get up, traitor.”
Corfe remained in his seat. The amazement fled out of his mind in a moment. Suddenly many things had become clear. He took in the faces of the newcomers with a quick glance. All strangers to him but for Willem and Aras. They were not even in army uniform. He turned to Fournier, keeping his voice as casual as he could.
“Why not just have me shot now?”
“It’s obvious, I would have thought. The mob would never wear it. You’re their darling, General. We must discredit you before we hang you.”
“You’ll never convince the Queen,” Corfe told him.
“Her opinion is as immaterial as her rule is unconstitutional. The line of the Fantyrs is at an end. Torunna must look elsewhere for her rulers.”
“I’ll wager she’ll not have to look far.”
Fournier smiled. “Willem, get this upstart peasant out of my sight.”
T HEY had a closed carriage waiting in the court-yard. Corfe was manacled and locked inside. Aras shared it with him, another pistol cocked and pointed at his breast, whilst Willem and the others rode pillion. The carriage lurched and bumped through the sleeping capital, for it was late—some time past the middle night, Corfe guessed. His mind was racing but he felt curiously calm. It was all in the open at last. No more intrigue: only naked force would work now.
He looked Aras in the eye. “When I saw you hold your ground in the King’s Battle I never would have believed you could be a part of something like this.”
Aras said nothing. The carriage interior was lit by a single fluttering candle-lantern and it was hard to see the expression on his face.
“This will mean civil war, Aras. The army will not stand for it. And the Merduks will be handed the kingdom on a plate. That is what he intends—to be governor of a Merduk province.”
Again, silence but for the rumbling of the iron-bound wheels and the horses’ hooves on the cobbles.
“For God’s sake, man, can’t you see where your duty lies?”
The carriage stopped. The door was unbolted and opened from without and Corfe was hauled outside. He could smell dead fish in the air, pitch and seaweed. They were down near the southern docks, on the edge of the estuary. Lightless buildings bulked up against the sky, and he could see the masts of ships outlined before the stars. He offered no resistance as they manhandled him. Willem wanted him dead at once, that was plain. Corfe would not give him an excuse to fire.
Swinging lanterns scattering broken light on the wet cobbles. Men in armour, arquebuses, pikes. The soldiers were all in strange liveries—part of the conscripted retainers that Corfe had brought into the capital. They had foxed him there. He had brought the enemy into the city himself. That was the reason for their confidence.
Inside. Someone boxing him on the ear for no reason. Down stone stairs with water running down the walls. Torchlight guttering here, a noisome stink that turned his stomach.
“Hold him,” Willem’s voice said, and men pinioned him. The one-eyed colonel sized him up in the unsteady torchlight.
“Caught you by surprise, didn’t we? You thought it was all signed, sealed and delivered. Well you thought wrong, you little guttersnipe—” and he brought the butt of his pistol down on Corfe’s temple.
Corfe staggered, and at the second blow the world darkened and his legs went out from under him. He struggled, but the men about him held him fast as Willem rained blow after blow down on his head. No pain, just a succession of explosions in his brain, like a battery of culverins going off one by one. Somehow he remained conscious. His blood dappled the flags of the floor, gummed shut his eyes and nose. He heard his own breathing as though from a great distance, as stertorous as that of a dying consumptive.
Keys clinking, and then he was flung into a black cell, and the door clanged shut behind him. The footsteps outside retreated, laughter retreating with them.
His head felt like it belonged to someone else. The lights were sparkling through it like a twilit battle, and the tight manacles were already puffing up his hands. The floor was sodden and stinking.
Corfe sat up, and the pain began to seep in under the shock of it all. His ears were ringing, his mouth full of blood. He retched, heaving out a mess of bile on to the filthy floor.
“Who is that?” a voice asked in the darkness, an odd voice, something wrong with it.
“Who wants to know?” he rasped.
“My name is Albrec. I’m a monk.”
He fought for breath. “We meet again, then. My name is Corfe. I’m a soldier.” And then the blackness of the cell folded over his mind, and his face hit the floor.
B Y dawn the arrests had begun. Willem and his men went around in squads. Andruw and Marsch were picked up first, along with Morin, Ebro and Ranafast. Then Quartermaster Passifal and General Rusio were roused out of their beds and led away in chains. The Cathedrallers’ barracks were surrounded by three thousand arquebusiers under Colonel Willem, while Colonel Aras led twenty more tercios to confine Formio’s Fimbrians. An order was issued to the army in general, directing it to stay in barracks, and a curfew was imposed upon the entire city. Lastly, Fournier himself took fifty men and marched them into the palace, demanding admittance to the Queen’s chambers. Odelia was placed under guard—for her own protection, naturally—and the palace was sealed off.
By noon the waterfront dungeons were crammed full with almost the entire Torunnan High Command, and the brightly clad retainers whom Andruw had mocked were in control of three quarters of the city. The Cathedrallers had made an abortive breakout attempt, but Willem’s arquebusiers had shot them down in scores. The Fimbrians had as yet made no move except to fortify their barracks with a series of makeshift barricades. They had little or no ammunition for their few arquebuses, however, and their pikes would be almost worthless in street fighting. They were contained, for the moment. Fournier was confident they would accept some form of terms and was content to leave them be. As the afternoon wore round, however, he had batteries of heavy artillery wheeled into position around both them and the Cathedrallers, and Colonel Willem took some twelve thousand of the Torunnan regulars out of the city to the north. They had been told that a Merduk raiding party was closing in on the city and their commander-in-chief had ordered them to intercept it. Once they had left Torunn, though, Willem led them off to the east, towards the coast where they would be safely out of the way. The rest of the regulars, leaderless and bewildered, remained in barracks, while around them the populace were kept off the streets by armed patrols and rumours of Merduk infiltrators were circulated to keep them cowed. Thus, with a judicious mixture of bluff, guile and armed force did Fournier tighten his grip upon the capital.
He took over the chambers Lofantyr had used for meetings of the High Command in a wing of the palace, and by the early evening the place was abuzz with couriers coming and going, officers receiving new appointments and confused soldiers standing guard. After a frugal meal he dismissed everyone from the room and sat at the long table in the chair which King Lofantyr had once occupied, toying with the oiled point of his beard. When the clap of wings sounded at the window he did not turn round, nor did he seem startled when a homunculus landed before him amid the papers and maps and inkwells. The little creature folded its wings and cocked its head to one side.
“I must congratulate you,” the beast said in a man’s voice. “The operation proceeded even more smoothly than we had hoped.”
“That was the easy part. Maintaining the facade for the next week will be harder. I trust you are keeping your master well informed.”
“Of course. And he is mightily pleased. He wants Cear-Inaf kept alive, so that he may dispose of him at his leisure when he enters the city.”
“And the Queen? What of her? She cannot live, you know that.”
“Indeed. But Aurungzeb has this strange aversion to the execution of Royalty. He feels that kind of thing puts odd ideas into men’s minds.”
“It may be that she will simply disappear, then. She may escape and never be heard of again.”
“I think that would be best.”
“When does your master’s army move?”
“It has begun to march already. In less than a week, my dear Count, you will be the new governor of Torunna, answerable only to the Sultan himself. The war will be over.”
“The war will be over,” Fournier repeated thoughtfully. “Cear-Inaf is an upstart and a fool. He has done well, but even his much-vaunted generalship could not prevail against a hundred and fifty thousand. What I have done is spare Torunna a catastrophic defeat. I have saved thousands of lives.”
“Indubitably.” Was it his imagination, or was there a sardonic sneer to the voice which issued out of the homunculus?
“Go now,” he said sharply. “Tell your master I will hold Torunn for him. When the army arrives the gates shall be thrown open, and I shall see to it that the regulars are deployed elsewhere. There will be no resistance.”
“What of Cear-Inaf’s personal troops? Those tribesmen and the Fimbrians, not to mention the veterans from the dyke?”