Ships from the West (9 page)

Agony in his hands. He tried to cry out as they were constricted in a merciless grip, their blisters bursting, the charred skin flaying off. He was hauled out of the water, and fell with a thump to the sodden wood of the maintop wreckage. He lay there, awash, and a scream died in his salt-crusted mouth. ‘It’s all right, Richard. I have you.’

He opened his eyes and saw only a shadow limned black against the sky.

Six

The Queen’s chambers were a shadowed place. Despite the spring warmth of the air outside, there were fires burning in every massive hearth, and the ornate grilles that flanked each window were shut, letting in only a pale, mangled radiance that could barely compete with the blare of the firelight.

The ladies-in-waiting all had an attractive flushed look, and their low-cut gowns afforded an intriguing glimpse of the perspiration that gleamed in the hollows of their collar bones. Corfe tugged at his own tight-fitting collar and dismissed them as they hovered around, curtseying. ‘Go on outside and get some air, for God’s sake.’

‘Sire, we—’

‘Go, ladies; I’ll square it with your mistress.’

More curtsies, and they whispered out, white hands flapping fan-like at their faces, long skirts hitched up as though they were tiptoeing through puddles. Corfe watched them go appreciatively, then collected himself.

‘It’s like a Macassian bath house in here!’ he called. ‘What new fad is this, lady?’

His wife appeared from the inner bedchamber. She had a shawl wrapped about her shoulders and she leaned on an ivory cane.

‘Nothing that need concern a loutish peasant up from the provinces for the day,’ she retorted, her voice dry and clear.

Corfe took her in his arms as carefully as though she were made of tinsel, and kissed her wrinkled forehead. It was marble-cold.

‘Come now. It’s Forialon these two sennights past. There are primroses out along the side of the Kingsway. What’s with this skulking in front of a fire?’

Odelia turned away. ‘So how was your jaunt up the road of memory? I trust Mirren enjoyed it.’ She lowered herself into a well-stuffed chair by the fire, her blue-veined hands resting on top of her cane. As she did, a multi-legged, dark, furred ball skittered down the wall, climbed up her arm and nestled in the crook of her neck with a sound like a great cat’s purr. A clutch of eyes shone like berries.

‘It would do you good to take a jaunt yourself.’

Odelia smiled. Her hair, once shining gold, had thinned and greyed, and her years sat heavily in the lines and folds of her face. Only her eyes seemed unchanged, green as a shallow sea in sunlight, and bright with life.

‘I am old, Corfe. Let me be. You cannot fight time as though it were a contending army. I am old, and powerless. What gifts I possessed went into Mirren. I would have made her a boy if I could, but it was beyond me. The male line of Fantyr has come to an end. Mirren will make someone a grand queen one day, but Torunna must have a king to rule, always. We both know that only too well.’

Corfe strode to a shuttered window and pulled back the heavy grilles, letting in the sun, and a cool breeze from off the Kardian in the east. He stared down at the sea of roofs below, the spires of the Papal Palace down by the square. The tower wherein he stood was two hundred feet high, but still he could catch the cacophony of sellers hawking their wares in the marketplace, the rattle of carts moving over cobbles, the braying of mules.

‘We made slow going of it for the first few days,’ he said lightly. ‘It is incredible how quickly nature buries the works of man. The old Western Road has well-nigh disappeared.’

‘A very good point. Our job here is to prevent nature burying
our
works after we are gone.’

‘We’ve been over this,’ he said wearily.

‘And will go over it again. Speaking of burying things, my time on this goodly earth is running out. I have months left, not years—’

‘Don’t talk like that, Odelia.’

‘And you must start to think of marrying again. It’s all very well making these pilgrimages to the past, but the future bears looking at also. You need a male heir. Lord God, Corfe, look at the way the world is turning. Another conflict ripens at long last to bloody fruition, one whose climax could make the Merduk Wars look like a skirmish. The battles may have already begun, off Hebrion, or even before Gaderion. When you take to the field, all that is needed is one stray bullet to lose this war. Without you, this kingdom would be lost. Do not let what you have achieved turn to dust on your death.’

‘Oh, it’s my death now. A fine conversation for a spring morning.’

‘You have sired no bastards - I know that - but I almost wish you had. Even an illegitimate male heir would be better than none.’

‘Mirren could rule this kingdom as well as any man, given time,’ Corfe said heatedly. Again, Odelia smiled.

‘Corfe, the soldier-king, the iron general. Whose sun rises and sets on his only daughter. Do not let your love blind you, my dear. Can you see Mirren leading armies?’

He had no reply for that. She was right, of course. But the simple thought of remarrying ripped open the scars of old wounds deep in his soul. Aurungzeb, Sultan of Ostrabar, had two children by - by his queen, and several more by various concubines it was said. Nasir, the only boy, was almost seventeen now, and Corfe had met him several times on state visits to Aurungabar. Black-haired, with sea-grey eyes - and the dark complexion of a Merduk. A son to be proud of. The girl was a couple of years younger, though she remained cloistered away in the manner of Merduk ladies.

Their mother, too, rarely left the confines of the harem these days. Corfe had not seen her in over sixteen years, but once upon a time, in a different world it seemed, she had been his wife, the love of his life. Yes, that old scar throbbed still. It would heal only when his heart stopped.

‘You have a list, no doubt, of eligible successors.’

‘Yes. A short one, it must be said. There is a dearth of princesses at present.’

He laughed, throwing his head back like a boy. ‘What does the world come to? So who is head of your list? Some pale Hebrian maiden? Or a dark-eyed matron of Astarac?’

‘Her name is Aria. She is young, but of excellent lineage, and her father is someone we must needs bind to us with every tie we can at the present time.’

‘Abeleyn? Mark?’ Corfe was puzzled.

‘Aurungzeb, you fool. Aria is his only daughter by his Ramusian-born queen, sister to his heir, and hence a princess of the Royal blood. Marry her, and you bind Torunna and Ostrabar together irrevocably. Sire children on her and—’

‘No.’

‘What? I haven’t finished. You must—’

‘I said no. I will not marry this girl.’ He turned from the window and his face was bloodless as chalk. ‘Find another.’

‘I have already put out diplomatic feelers. Her father approves the match. Your issue would join the Royal houses of Ostrabar and Torunna for all time - our alliance would be rendered unbreakable.’

‘You did this without my permission?’

‘I am still Torunna’s Queen!’ she lashed out, some of the old fire flashing from her marvellous eyes. ‘I do not need your permission every time I piss in a pot!’

‘You need it for this,’ he said softly, and his own eyes were winter-cold, hard as flint.

‘What is your objection? The girl is young, admittedly, but then I’m not quite dead yet. She is a rare beauty by all accounts, the very image of her mother, and sweet-natured to boot.’

‘By God you’re well-informed.’

‘I make it my business to be.’ Her voice softened. ‘Corfe, I’m dying. Let me do this last thing for you, for the kingdom. I know I have not been much of a wife to you these last years—’

He strode from the window and knelt on one knee beside her chair. The skin of her face was gossamer thin under his hand. He felt that she might blow away in the breeze from the windows. ‘You’ve been a wife and more than a wife. You’ve been a friend and counsellor, and a great queen.’

‘Then grant me this last wish. Keep Torunna together.

Marrv this girl. Have a son - a whole clutch of sons. You also are mortal.’

‘What about Mirren?’

‘She must marry young Nasir.’

He shut his eyes. The old pain burned, deep in his chest. That one he had seen coming. But marry Heria’s daughter -his own wife’s child? Never.

He rose, his face like stone. ‘We will discuss this another time, lady.’

‘We are discussing it
now.’

‘I think not.’ Turning on his heel he left the darkened chamber without a backward glance.

A courtier was waiting for him outside. ‘Sire, I’ve been instructed by Colonel Heyn to tell you that the couriers are in with dispatches from Gaderion.’

‘Good. I’ll meet them in the Bladehall. My compliments to the colonel, and he is to join me there as soon as he can. The same message to General Formio and the rest of the High Command.’ The courtier saluted and fled.

Corfe’s personal bodyguard, Felorin, caught up with him in the corridor as he strode along with his boots clinking on the polished stone. Not a word was spoken as the pair made their way through the Queen’s wing to the palace proper. There were fewer courtiers than there had been in King Lofantyr’s day, and they were clad in sober burgundy. When the King passed them they each saluted as soldiers would. Only the court ladies were as finely plumaged as they had ever been, and they collapsed delicately into curtsies as Corfe blew past. He nodded to them but never slowed his stride for an instant.

They crossed the Audience Hall, their footsteps echoing in its austere emptiness, and the palace passageways and chambers grew less grand, older-looking. There was more timber and less stone. When the Fimbrians had built the Palace of Torunn it had been the seat of the Imperial Governor, who was also the general of a sizeable army. This area of the complex had originally been part of that army’s barracks, but until Corfe came to the throne had been used mainly as a series of storerooms. Corfe had restored it to its original purpose, and housed within it now were living quarters for five hundred men - the Bodyguard of the King. These were volunteers from the army and elsewhere who had passed a rigorous training regimen designed by Corfe himself. Within their ranks served Fimbrians, Torunnans, Cimbric tribesmen, and even a sizeable element of Merduks. In garrison they dressed in sable and scarlet surcoats, the old ‘blood and bruises’ that John Mogen’s men had once worn. In the field they rode heavy warhorses - even the Fimbrians - and were armed with wheel-lock pistols and long sabres. Both they and their steeds were accustomed to wearing three-quarter armour, which Torunnan smiths had tempered so finely that it would turn even an arquebus ball. On the breastplate of every man’s cuirass was a shallow spherical indentation where this had been put to the test.

‘Where is Comillan today?’ Corfe barked to Felorin.

‘On the Proving Grounds, with the new batch.’

‘And Formio?’

‘On his way in from Menin Field.’

‘We’ll get there first then. Run ahead, Felorin, and set up the Bladehall for a conference. Maps of the Torrin Gap, a clear sand-table and some brandy - you know the drill.’

Felorin gave his monarch a strange look, though his tattooing rendered his expression hard to read at the best of times. ‘Brandy?’

‘Yes, damn it. I could do with one. Now cut along.’

Felorin took off at a run, whereas Corfe’s pace slowed. Finally he halted, and propped himself by a windowsill which looked out on the Proving Grounds below where a new set of recruits were being put through their paces. The glass was blurred with age but he was able to make out the man-high wooden posts sunk in the ground, and the lines of sweating men who hacked at them with the arm-killing practice swords whose blunt blades housed a core of lead. They had to strike defined spots at shoulder, waist and knee height on the right and then the left sides of the iron-hard old posts, and keep doing it until their palms blistered and the sweat ran in their eyes and their backs were raw masses of screaming muscle. Over thirty years before, Corfe had stood out there and hacked at those same posts while the drill sergeants had shouted and jeered at him. Some things, at least, did not change.

The Bladehall was new, however. A long, vaulted, churchlike building, Corfe had had it constructed after the Battle of the Torian Plains ten years before, close to the old Quartermaster Stores where he had once found five hundred sets of Merduk armour mouldering and used them to arm his first command. He disliked using the old conference chambers for staff meetings because they were in the palace, and curious courtiers and maids were always in and out. Though Odelia might remind him tartly that the older venue had been good enough for Kaile Ormann himself, Corfe felt a need to break with the past. He also wanted to create somewhere for the officers of the army to come together without the inevitable delays that entering the palace complex entailed. Deep down, he also welcomed any opportunity to get out of the palace himself, even now.

Still a peasant with mud under my nails, after all this time, he thought with sour satisfaction.

Along the walls of the Bladehall were ranged suits of antique armour and weapons, tapestries and paintings depicting past battles and wars won and lost. And near the massive timber beams that supported the roof were hung the war banners and flags of generations of Torunnan armies. They had been found scattered in storerooms throughout the palace complex after Corfe had become king. Some were tattered and rotting but others, crafted of finest silk and laid aside with more care, were as whole as the day they had waved overhead on a shot-torn field.

Set into the walls were hundreds of scroll pigeonholes, each of which held a map. On the upper galleries there were shelves of books also: manuals, histories, treatises on tactics and strategy. Several sycophantic nobles had begged Corfe to write a general treatise on war years ago, but he had curtly refused. He might be a successful general, but he was no writer - and he would not dictate his clumsy sentences to a scribe so that some inky-fingered parasite might polish them up for public consumption afterwards.