The Iron Wars (16 page)

It was indeed an army, a long, disciplined column of heavily armoured cavalry over a thousand strong. They bore a strange banner, black and scarlet, and some sang as they rode in an unknown tongue which nevertheless sounded harsh and savage to the two cowering monks. The horsemen’s line of march would take them within yards of the foursome, and beyond the hollow in which they hid the country was wide open for miles around. There was nowhere to run.

Albrec prayed fervently, his eyes tight shut, whilst Avila sat dully resigned and the two Fimbrians looked as though they meant to sell their lives dearly. The head of the column was barely a cable’s length away, and the two soldiers were gently cocking their weapons when they heard a voice shout out in unmistakable Normannic:

“Tell Ebro to keep his God-damned wing on the road! I won’t have straggling, Andruw, you hear me? Blood of the Saint, this is not a blasted picnic!”

Albrec opened his eyes.

The lead horsemen reined in and halted the long column with one upraised hand. The monks had been seen. A knot of troopers cantered forward, the thin birthing sun flashing vermilion off their armour. Their banner billowed in the cold breeze, and Albrec saw that it seemed to represent a cathedral’s spires. He stood up, whilst his three companions tried to pull him down again.

“Good morning!” he cried, his heart thumping a fusillade in his breast.

The leading rider walked his horse forward, staring. Then he doffed his barbaric helm. “Good morning.” He was dark-haired, with deep-hollowed grey eyes. He reminded Albrec of the two Fimbrians behind him. Hard, formidable, full of natural authority. A young man, but with a middle-aged stare. Beside him was another hewn out of the same wood, but with a certain gaiety about him that even the outlandish armour could not dim. In the early light the pair looked like two warriors of ancient legend come to life.

“Who are you?” Albrec asked, quavering.

“Corfe Cear-Inaf, colonel in the Torunnan army. This is my command.” The man’s eyes widened slightly as the rest of Albrec’s companions finally stood up. “Would you folk happen to be Fimbrians, at all?”

“We two are,” Joshelin said proudly. He held his arquebus as though he had not yet decided whether or not to fire it. “From the twenty-sixth tercio of Marshal Barbius’s command, detached.”

The cavalry colonel blinked, then turned to his comrade. “Get them going again, Andruw. I’ll catch up.” He dismounted and held out a hand to Joshelin, whilst behind him the long column of horsemen began moving once more. Hundreds of soldiers, all superbly mounted, weirdly armoured, many with tattooed faces. If they were Torunnan troops, they were certainly like no soldiers Albrec had ever seen or heard of before.

“Where is Barbius?” this Colonel Corfe Cear-Inaf demanded of Joshelin even as he gripped his hand.

“Why would you want to know?” the Fimbrian countered.

“I wish to help him.”

ELEVEN

“A nd these pair are from Charibon, you say?” Colonel Corfe Cear-Inaf asked Joshelin. “They are clerics, then. What are you two, emissaries from the Pontiff?”

“Not quite,” Avila told him dryly. “Charibon’s reputation for hospitality is vastly exaggerated. We decided to seek our earthly salvation elsewhere.”

“They’re heretics, like you Torunnans,” Joshelin said impatiently. “Come bearing some papers for the other holy man you have stashed away here. Now I’ve told you, Torunnan, the marshal and the army were a week away from the dyke when we left them, headed south-east towards the coast. But listen—they go not just to link up with your Martellus. The marshal also means to assault the flank of the Merduk army coming up from the Kardian Gulf.”

“They have a high sense of their own prowess, if they think they can assault an army that size and live,” Corfe said shortly. His eyes bored into the Fimbrian before him. “And a high sense of duty, also. I salute them for it.”

Joshelin shrugged fractionally, as if suicidal courage were part of the normal make-up of any Fimbrian soldier.

“You cannot catch up with them before they make contact with the enemy,” he said. “I take it your mission is to preserve the dyke’s garrison.”

“Yes.”

“With thirteen hundreds?”

“I also have a high sense of duty, it seems.”

The two soldiers looked at one another, and the glimmer of a smile went between them. Joshelin unbent a little.

“You are cavalry, so mayhap you will move swift enough to be of use,” he admitted grudgingly. “What are your men? Not Torunnans.”

“They are tribesmen from the Cimbrics.”

“And you trust them?”

“Insofar as I trust any man. We have shed blood together.”

“You know your own business, I am sure. What of the Torunnan King? Is your command all he is sending out?”

“Yes. The King is very… preoccupied at present. He prefers to stand siege in Torunn and await the Merduk assault here.”

“Then he is a fool.”

Albrec and Avila caught their breath, awaiting some outburst in reply to this comment, but Corfe only said, “I know. But we will bleed for him nonetheless.”

“That is as it should be. We are merely soldiers.”

The long column of horsemen had passed them by, the rearguard a dark bristle in the distance. Corfe raised his eyes to it, and then straightened, mounting his restive destrier. “I must be on my way. Good luck to you on your errand, priests. If you meet Macrobius, tell him that Corfe sends greetings, and that he does not forget the retreat from Aekir.”

“You know Macrobius?” Albrec asked wonderingly.

“I travelled with him, you might say. A long time ago.”

“What manner of man is he?”

“A good man. A humble one—or at least he was when I knew him. The Merduks cut out his eyes. But men change, like everything else. I can’t answer for him now.”

He turned to ride away, but Joshelin halted him. “Colonel!”

“Yes?”

“It may be that Barbius will not be so easy to find, nor Martellus either. Let me ride with you, and I will set you upon the right road at least.”

Corfe looked him up and down. “Can you ride?”

“I can stay on a horse, if that’s what is needed.”

“All right, then. Get up behind me. We’ll find you a mount from the spares. Good day, Fathers.”

The warhorse leapt off into a canter with Corfe upright in the saddle, Joshelin clinging on behind him, as elegant as a bouncing sack. Siward followed his comrade’s departure with thin lips, and it was with real disgust in his voice that he turned back to the two monks who were his charges.

“Well, let’s get you down into the city. I may as well see it out to the end.”

T HE antechambers of the new Pontifical palace were large, bare halls of cold marble and stuccoed ceilings. Little gilt chairs stood in rows, seeming too frail to bear anyone, and the new Macrobian Knights Militant stood guard like graven mages, gleaming with iron and bronze. Someone had unearthed a few score sets of antique half-armour from a forgotten arsenal, and the Knights looked like paladins from another age.

The antechambers were busy, teeming with clerics and minor nobles and messengers. Macrobius, whom Himerius in Charibon labelled a heresiarch, was spiritual leader of three of the great Ramusian kingdoms of the west, and even in time of war the business of the Church—this new version of it, at any rate—must go on. Bishops had to be reconsecrated in the new order, replacements had to be found for those who remained faithful to the Himerian Church, and the palace complex was full of office-seekers and supplicants whose contributions to the Church’s coffers had to be rewarded. A new Inceptine order was being organized, and in fact all the trappings and facets of the old Church were here being duplicated at high speed, so that the Macrobians might be considered worthy rivals to the unenlightened of Charibon. Albrec, Avila and Siward stood amid the crowds and stared. The Merduks were baying at the gates, and still men haggled here, seeking novitiates for second sons, exemptions from tithes, tenancy of Church lands.

“Life goes on, it seems,” said Avila, not without bitterness. He had been the most worldly of clerics, and an aristocrat to boot, but he surveyed the worldly strivings of the New Church with much the same weary amazement as Albrec.

“We must see the Pontiff,” they told a harried Antillian who was trying to organize the throng.

“Yes, yes, no doubt,” and he walked on self-importantly, dripping disdain.

The two monks stood like a couple of lost vagabonds, and indeed that is what they were—disfigured, ragged and filthy. Albrec hobbled after the Antillian. “No, you don’t understand, Brother—it is of the utmost urgency that we see the Pontiff today, at once!” He tugged at the cleric’s well-tailored habit like a child harassing its mother.

The Antillian snatched himself away from the diminutive tramp. “Guards! Eject this person!”

Two Knights Militant strode forward, towering over the pleading Albrec. One seized him roughly by the shoulder. “Come, you. Beggars wait at the door.”

But then there was a blur of dark movement, a whistle of air, and the Knight was smashed off his feet by the swing of Siward’s arquebus butt. The Fimbrian dropped the weapon, whipped out his short sword, and the second Knight found its glittering point in his nostril.

“These priests will see the Pontiff,” Siward said evenly. “Today. Now.”

The hubbub in the antechamber died away, and there was a silence, all eyes on the ugly tableau unfolding before them. More Knights came striding up the hall, swords unsheathed, and for a moment it looked as though Siward would be cut down where he stood, but then Avila spoke up in a clear, ringing aristocratic voice:

“We are monks from Charibon, bearing important documents for the eyes of Macrobius himself! Our protector is a renowned Fimbrian officer. Any mistreatment of him will be seen as an act of war by the electorates!”

The Knights had frozen as soon as the word “Fimbrian” came out of Avila’s mouth. The Antillian’s jaw dropped, and he stammered:

“Put up your swords! There will be no blood shed in this place. Is this true?”

“As true as the nose on his face,” Avila drawled, nodding at the sweating Knight who had two feet of steel poised at the aforementioned feature.

“I will have to see my superior,” the Antillian muttered. “Put up your swords, I tell you!”

Weapons were sheathed, and the hall began to glimmer with talk, speculation, surmise. Avila clapped the narrow-eyed Siward on the shoulder.

“My friend, that was as good as a play. I’m only sorry you did not have the opportunity to spill his entrails on the marble.” Siward said nothing, but picked up his arquebus, kicking aside the other, still-senseless Knight as he did so. No one dared interfere.

An Inceptine appeared, heavy-jowled and glabrous. “I am Monsignor Alembord, head of His Holiness’s household. Perhaps you will be so good as to explain yourselves.”

“We did not travel here through blizzards and wolves and marauding armies to bandy words with a lackey!” Avila cried. He was obviously enjoying himself. “Admit us to His Holiness’s presence at once. We bear tidings that must be heard by the Pontiff alone. Thwart us at your peril!”

“For God’s sake, Avila,” Albrec murmured, helping the Knight Siward had knocked down to his feet.

Monsignor Alembord seemed torn between alarm and fury. “Wait here,” he snapped at last, and jogged off with the unfortunate Antillian in tow.

“You should have been a passion-player, Avila,” Albrec told his friend wearily.

“I’m sick of being abused, especially by fat insects like that Inceptine. It’s time to stop sneaking around. Things need to be stirred up a little. Ramusio’s beard, do they think they tore down the Church only to build a doppelganger in its place? Wait until the Pontiff sees the tale you carry, Albrec. If he’s a decent man, as that fellow Corfe seemed to think he is, then by the blood of God we’ll make sure he shakes the world with it.”

PART TWO INTO THE STORM

You must never drive your enemy into despair. For that such a strait doth multiply his force, and increase his courage, which was before broken and cast down. Neither is there any better help for men that are out of heart, toiled and spent, than to hope for no favour at all.

Rabelais

TWELVE

I T was the thunder of the distant guns that drew them. It muttered beyond the horizon like the anger of some subterranean god. Artillery, by battery, and the rolling crackle of arquebus fire. Morin dismounted and laid his ear to the ground, listening to the unseen engagement. When he straightened there was a look of something like wonder on his face.

“Many, many men, and many big guns,” he said. “And horses, thousands of horses. War echoes through the earth.”

“But who is it?” Andruw asked. “Martellus or Barbius? Or both?”

The other members of the party, Corfe included, looked at Joshelin. The grizzled Fimbrian sat upon a restive Torunnan destrier looking tired and irritable. He was not a natural-born horseman, to put it mildly.

“It will be the marshal,” he said. “We have not gone far enough north to intercept Martellus. We must be forty leagues from the dyke still. I would wager that Martellus’s host is two or three days’ march away.”

The little knot of horsemen were half a mile in advance of the main body, though both Ebro and Marsch were detached for now, leading squadrons out on the flanks and destroying any Merduk skirmishers they came across. Corfe intended the approach of his men to remain a secret. As at Staed, if he could not have numbers on his side, he’d best have surprise.

“How far, Morin?” Corfe asked his interpreter.

“A league, not more.”

Thirty minutes, perhaps, if he were not to wind the horses for a charge. He would have to leave at least one squadron with the mules… Corfe’s mind raced through the calculations, adding up the risks and probabilities. He needed to make a reconnaissance, of course, but that would eat up valuable time. A reconnaissance in force, then? Too cumbersome, and it would throw away surprise. With his numbers, he needed to pitch into the Merduk flank or rear for preference. A head-on charge into a large army’s front would simply be throwing his men’s lives away.