Authors: Paul Kearney
The roar of battle seemed to be rageing just down the corridor. Fournier’s companions took off towards it, yelling—except for Gabriel Venuzzi, who collapsed upon the floor and began sobbing loudly.
“Before I go,” Fournier went on, “there is something I would like to give you. A parting gift which I hope will be of some use to the—ah, the new Torunna which will no doubt come into existence after my departure.”
He reached into the breast of his doublet and pulled out a tattered scroll. It was bloodstained and ragged, with a broken seal upon it.
“You see, lady, despite what you may think, I never wanted harm to come to this kingdom. I simply could not see any way to save it except my own. Others may save it—that is quite possible—but in doing so they will also destroy it. If you do not see what I mean already, I am sure you will one day.”
Odelia took the scroll with a slight inclination of her head. “I will see you hanged, Count. And your head I will post above the city gate.”
Fournier smiled. “I am sorry to disappoint you, Majesty, but I am a nobleman of the old school who will take his leave of the world in the manner he sees fit. Excuse me.”
He walked over to a table in the corner which had decanters of wine and brandy set upon it, ignoring the crash and roar of the fighting which was rageing a few doors down. Pouring himself a goblet of wine, he sprinkled a white powder into the glass from a screw of paper he had palmed. Then he tossed off the liquid with one swift gulp.
“Gaderian. As good a vintage to finish with as any, I suppose.” He bowed perfectly. When he had straightened, Odelia could see the sudden sweat on his forehead. He took one step towards her, and then folded over and toppled to the floor.
Odelia went to him and despite herself she knelt and cradled his head in her hands.
“You are a traitor, Fournier,” she said gently. “But you never lacked courage.”
Fournier smiled up at her.
“He is a man of blood and iron, lady. He will never make you happy.” Then his eyes rolled back, and he died.
Odelia shut the dead eyelids, frowning. The firing down the passageway reached a crescendo, and there was the clash of steel on steel, men shrieking, orders half lost in the chaos. Then a voice she knew thundered out: “Cease fire! Cease fire there! You—drop your weapons. Formio, round them up. Andruw, come with me.”
An eerie quiet fell, and then booted feet were marching up the corridor, crashing on marble. Through the door came Corfe and Andruw, with a bodyguard of Fimbrians and wild-eyed Cathedrallers. Corfe’s face was badly bruised and black with powder, and one eye was swollen. The Queen rose, letting Fournier’s head thump to the floor.
“Good day, General,” she said, aching with the need to run to him, embrace him.
“I trust I see you well, lady?” Corfe replied, his eyes scanning the room. Coming to rest on Fournier they narrowed. “The Count made good his escape, I see.”
“Yes, just this moment.”
“Lucky for him. I’d have impaled the traitor, had I taken him alive. Lads, cheque the next suite. That yokel down there says there’s no more but we can’t be too sure.” Andruw and the other soldiers tramped off purposefully. Corfe noticed the bedraggled heap of the weeping Venuzzi and kicked him out of his way.
“The city is secure, Majesty,” he said. “A force has been sent out to bring in the head of Colonel Willem. He is holed up to the east with some of the regulars.”
“What of the other conspirators?” the Queen asked.
“We shot them as we found them. Which reminds me.” Corfe drew John Mogen’s sword. There was a flash as swift as lightning, a sickening crunch, and Gabriel Venuzzi’s head spun end over end, attached to the body only by a ribbon of spouting arterial blood. The ladies-in-waiting shrieked; one fainted. Odelia curled her lip.
“Was that necessary?”
Corfe looked at her with no whit of softness in his eyes. “He had eighty of my men shot. He’s lucky to have died quickly.” He wiped his sword on Venuzzi’s body.
Odelia turned her back on him and walked away from the puddle of gore on the floor. “Clean up that mess,” she snapped at one of the maids.
The view out the window again. Fully a quarter of the city was burning, most of it down by the river. But the gunfire had stopped. Macrobius was still preaching in City Square, as he had been doing since dawn. What was he talking about? she wondered absently.
Corfe joined her. He looked like a prizefighter who had lost his bout.
“Well, you have delivered the city, General,” Odelia said, angry with him for all manner of reasons she could not name. “I congratulate you. Now all you have to do is save us from the Merduks.” Was it possible that Fournier’s last words had registered with something in her? That disgusting murder in cold blood—right in front of her eyes! What kind of man was he anyway?
“Marsch is dead,” Corfe said quietly.
“What?”
“He was killed while leading the breakout attempt.”
She turned to him then and saw the tears coursing down his cheeks, though his face was set as hard as marble.
“Oh Corfe, I’m so sorry.” She took him into her arms and for a moment he yielded, buried his face in the hollow of her shoulder. But then he pulled away and wiped his eyes with his fingers. “I must go. There’s a lot to do, and not much time.”
She turned to watch him. He left the room blindly, tramping through Venuzzi’s gore and leaving a trail of bloody footprints behind him.
T ORUNN’S brief but bloody agony ended at last as the regular army stamped out the last embers of the abortive coup. The fires were brought under control, thousands of the capital’s citizens mobilised to form bucket chains. Safely perched on a cherry tree in the heights of the palace gardens, the homunculus watched the spectacle with unblinking eyes. As darkness fell, it took off and flapped northwards.
That night, on the topmost battlements of Ormann Dyke’s remaining tower, Aurungzeb, Sultan of Ostrabar, hammered his fist down on the unyielding stone of the ancient battlement.
“Who is sovereign here? Who commands? Shahr Johor, you may be my khedive, but you are not irreplaceable. I have indulged your whims once before, and forgiven you for the failure which resulted. You will now indulge me!”
“But Highness,” Shahr Johor protested, “to change a battle-plan when the army is only days away from contact with the enemy is—is foolhardy.”
“What did you say?”
Hopelessly, Shahr Johor pinched the bridge of his nose. “Your pardon, my Sultan. I am a little tyred.”
“Yes, you are. Get yourself some sleep ere the fight begins, or you will be of no use to anyone.” Aurungzeb’s voice lost its harsh edge. “I am not a complete child in military matters, Shahr Johor, and what I am suggesting is not a complete rewriting of the plan, merely a minor revision.”
Shahr Johor nodded, too weary to protest further.
“Batak failed to have this Torunnan commander-in-chief neutralised. That traitor Fournier failed to deliver Torunn to me without a fight. Batak tells me that the coup has already been stamped out—in the space of two days! There has been too much intrigue, and all of it a mere waste of time. Enough of it. Brute force is all that will destroy the Torunnans—that, and a good battle-plan. I have made a study of your intentions.” Aurungzeb’s voice fell, became more reasonable. “Your plan is fine. I have no quarrel with it. All I am asking is that you strengthen this flank march of yours. Take ten thousand of the
Hraibadar
from the main body and send them along with the cavalry.”
“I don’t understand your sudden desire to change the plan, Highness,” Shahr Johor said stubbornly.
“There has been a lot of coming and going between here and Torunn. I suspect”—here Aurungzeb lowered his voice further—“I suspect we may have a traitor in our midst.”
Shahr Johor snapped upright. “Are you sure?”
Aurungzeb flapped one massive hand. “I am not
sure
, but it is as well to be suspicious. That mad monk escaped from here with the connivance of someone at the court, and who knows what information he might have in his addled pate? Make the change, Shahr Johor. Do as I wish. I shall not meddle further in your handling of this battle.”
“Very well, my Sultan. I bow to your superior wisdom. The flank march we planned will be augmented, and with the best shock infantry we possess. And no-one shall know of it but you and I, until the very day they set out.”
“You relieve my mind, Shahr Johor. This may well be the deciding battle of the war. Nothing about its conduct must be left to chance. Mehr Jirah has half the army convinced that the western Saint is also our Prophet, and the
Minhraib
, curse them, are simple enough to believe that it means an end to war with the Ramusians. It may be that this is the last great levy Ostrabar will ever be able to mobilise.”
“I won’t fail you, Highness,” Shahr Johor said fervently. “The Unbelievers will be struck as though by a thunderbolt. In a few days, not more, you will sit in Torunn and receive the homage of the Torunnan Queen. And this much-vaunted general of theirs shall be but a memory.”
TWENTY
T HERE had been no time for councils of war, debates on strategy or any of the last-minute wrangles so beloved of high commands since man had first started wageing organised war. Before the fires which raged down on the waterfront of Torunn had even stopped smouldering, the army was on the move. Corfe was leading thirty-five thousand men out of the capital, and leaving four thousand behind to garrison it. Some of the men in both the garrison and the field army had lately been in arms against each other, but now that it was the Merduk they were to fight against, their former allegiances were forgotten. Care had to be taken, however, to keep the Cathedrallers away from the conscripts. The tribesmen had taken Marsch’s death hard, and were not inclined to forgive or forget in a hurry.
Andruw commanded the Cathedrallers now, with Ebro as his second-in-command. Formio led the Fimbrians, as always, and Ranafast the dyke veterans. The main body of the Torunnan regulars were under General Rusio, with Aras as his second, and the newly arrived conscripts had been scattered throughout the veteran tercios, two or three to a company. Back in Torunn, the garrison had been left under the personal command of the Queen herself, which had raised more than a few eye-brows. But Corfe simply did not have the officers to spare. Many had died as they were broken out of the dungeons. In any case, if the field army were destroyed, Torunn would have no chance.
It was not the best-equipped force that Torunna had ever sent out into battle. Most of the conscripts did not even possess uniforms, and some were still unfamiliar with their weapons, though Corfe had weeded out the most unhandy and reserved them for the garrison. In addition, the baggage train was a somewhat haphazard affair, as many of the supplies destined to be carried by it had gone up in smoke along with the riverfront warehouses. So the men were marching forth with rations for a week, no more, and two hundred of the Cathedrallers were serving as heavy infantry for lack of horses. But tucked away in Corfe’s saddlebags was something he hoped would tip the scales in their favour: the Merduk battle-plan which Albrec had brought away from Ormann Dyke, and which the Queen had had translated. He knew what part of the enemy army was going where, and even though their advance had been brought forward, he thought they would stick to their original plan—for it is no light thing to redesign the accepted strategy of a large army, especially when that army is already on the march.
Without that information, Corfe privately believed that there would have been little or no hope for his men, and in his mind he blest Aurungzeb’s nameless Ramusian Queen.
N O cheers to see them off, but the walls were thickly crowded with Torunn’s population all the same. There was a headlong sense of urgency about the city. So much had happened in such a short space of time that the departure of the army for the decisive battle seemed but one more notable event amongst many. No time for farewells either. The regulars had an appointment to keep, and they marched out of the city gates knowing they were already late for it.
The army tramped eighteen miles that first day, and when the lead elements started to lay out their bivouacs the rearguard was still a league behind them. As was his wont, Corfe found himself a nearby knoll and sat his horse there, watching them trudge into camp. He was not seeing them, though. He was thinking of an ex-slave who had once sworn allegiance to him with the chains of the galleys still on his wrists. A savage from the Cimbrics who had become his friend.
Andruw and Formio joined him, the Fimbrian actually mounted on a quiet mare. The trio exchanged sombre salutes and then watched as the first campfires were lit below, until there was a constellation of them rivalling the brilliance of the first stars.
The darkness deepened. The trio sat their horses without sharing a word, but glad of one another’s company. Then Andruw twisted in his saddle and peered north. “Corfe, Formio. Look there.”
On the horizon, a ruddy glow like that of a burning town. Except that there were no towns for many leagues in that direction.
“It’s their campfires,” Corfe realised. “Like the lights of a city. That’s the enemy, gentlemen.”
They studied the phenomenon. It was, in its way, as awe-inspiring as the Northern Lights which could be seen in winter from the foothills of the Thurians.
“It doesn’t seem as though it could be the work of man, somehow,” Formio said.
“When there’s enough of them, men can do just about anything,” Andruw told him. “And they’re capable of anything.” His voice fell into something approaching a whisper. “But I’ve never known or heard of them fighting a war like this one. There has never been a pause in it, from the first assaults on Aekir until now. Ormann Dyke, the North More, the King’s Battle, Berrona, and then the battle for the city itself. There’s no end to it—in the space of a year.”
“Is that all it’s been?” Corfe wondered. “One year? And yet the whole world has changed.”
They were all thinking of Marsch, though no-one mentioned his name.