Ships from the West

Twenty-two

Bardolin watched the charge of the Cathedrallers from the roof of a building off the Great Square. In all the houses around he had gathered together what he could of the retreat shy;ing Almarkans and had stationed them at windows and on balconies, ready to fire down on the Torunnan invaders as they came. More reinforcements were still flooding through the city from the north, and while the Torunnans were burn shy;ing and killing their way forward he and Aruan had set in place many thousands of fresh troops to bar their way, rearing up barricades across every street and positioning arquebusiers at every corner.

But out on the plains beyond the city the red horsemen of Torunna were advancing side by side with a Fimbrian pike phalanx, eight or nine thousand strong, to meet the gallow shy;glasses of Finnmark. Something in Bardolin stirred at the sight, some strange grief. He watched as the Cathedrallers charged forward, a scarlet wave, and the terrible pikes of the Orphans were lowered as they followed up. Scarlet and black upon the field, the colours of Torunna. He heard faintly over the roar of the battle the battle paean of the Cimbric tribes come drifting back to the city, fearsome and beautiful as a summer storm. And he watched as the gallowglasses were shunted backwards and the lines intermingled silver and red as the Cathedrallers' legendary charge struck home. The Finn-markans fought stubbornly, but they were no match for the army that Corfe Cear-Inaf had created, and eventually their line broke, and splintered, and fell apart. And the Orphans came up to finish the bloody work, their pikes as perfect as though they were being wielded in a parade-ground review.

A nudge, a subtle spike in his brain.

Now, do it now.

Bardolin rose with tears in his eyes. He raised hands to heaven and called out in Old Normannic. Words of sum shy;moning and power which shook to its foundations the build shy;ing whereon he stood. And he was answered. For out of the south there came a dark cloud which sullied the spring sky. It drew closer while the battle below it opened out heedlessly and the smoke of Charibon's burning rose to meet it. At last other men saw the looming darkness, and cried out around him in fear. In a vast flock of many thousands, the Flyers of Aruan came shrieking down out of the sun and swarmed upon the advancing armies of Torunna like a cloud of locusts. Even the destriers of the Cathedrallers could not withstand the sudden terror of that attack from above, and they reared and threw their riders and screamed and milled in confusion. The scarlet armour of the tribesmen was hidden as by a black thunderhead and in the midst of it, dismounted, buffeted by their panicked steeds, they began a savage fight for survival. The remnants of the gallowglasses, and the regiments of Himerians behind them, took heart, and began to advance. The Orphans moved to meet them, and Corfe's Fimbrians fell under the cloud also, and all that part of the battlefield became a whirlwind of shadow and darkness within which a holo shy;caust of slaughter was kindled.

The sunlight had gone, and a premature twilight had fallen upon the world. Great tumbling clouds had come galloping up from the south propelled by wizened smatterings of light shy;ning and a chill had entered the air. It began to rain, and with the rain fell long slivers of ice "which scored men's flesh and rattled like knives off their armour. The battle plain began to soften, and the churned footfalls of soldiers and horses sank into mud below them so that a vast quagmire was created, and within it heavily burdened men swung their weapons at each other and battled with the unthinking ferocity of animals.

Such was the press and congestion in the streets of the city that Corfe and his Bodyguard had to dismount and leave their horses behind. Armed with sabres and pistols, the five hun shy;dred men in raven-black Ferinni armour picked their way forward on foot, the rain dripping from their fearsome helms. They were tribesman and Torunnan, Fimbrian and Merduk; the cream of the army. As the regular Torunnans fighting there in the shadow of the burning houses saw them they set up a great shout. 'The King is come!'

The Bodyguard walked on until they came to the first of the street barriers behind which Almarkan arquebusiers were firing and reloading frantically. There came a sound like heavy hail rattling off a tin roof, and several of the Bodyguard staggered as arquebus bullets slammed into them. But their armour was proof against such missiles. They walked on, shielding the match in their pistols from the rain, and delivered a volley at point-blank range. Then they discarded their firearms and drew their sabres and began climbing over the barricades. The Almarkans ran.

The Torunnans marched on. Men were still firing at them here and there from upper windows but for the most part the Himerians had fallen back to the Great Square before the cathedral and the Library of St Garaso. They gathered there and were placed in order by Bardolin and Aruan and dozens of Inceptines. A few surviving Hounds squatted snarling on the cobbles and homunculi wheeled overhead like vultures.

Corfe and his men burst out of the streets and into the square itself. The rain had quenched every scrap of slow-match between both armies and the arquebusiers had thrown aside their useless firearms and drawn their swords. The tall helms of the Bodyguard as they formed up in the square made them seem like black towers alongside their more lightly armoured comrades, and behind them in the streets Olba's reserve, a thousand of whom were Orphans, were coming up at the double, their pikes resting on their shoulders, the sharpshooters felling them by the dozen as they advanced.

Charibon's Great Square was almost half a mile to a side. At its north end stood the Library of St Garaso, greatest in the world since the sack of Aekir. To the west loomed the towers of the Pontifical Palace, a newer construction much expanded in the last decade. And to the east was the triple-horned Cathedral of the Saint. The square, for all its size, was hemmed in by tall buildings on all sides and resembled nothing so much as a huge amphitheatre. Across it Corfe could see two glittering figures who must be Aruan and Bardolin. They wore antique half-armour worked with gold, and it flashed and gleamed in the rain. Even as he watched, the Torunnan King saw one of these two straighten before his troops, heedless of the invaders, and lift his arms to the lowering sky and the ice-mingled rain. He was saying some shy;thing in a strangely beguiling chant, and as he did his troops straightened and lifted their heads and looked at the fearsome Torunnans across the short distance of the square and were no longer afraid. They began to cheer and howl and beat sword-blade against breastplate so that a deafening din of clattering metal rose up under the rain.

Corfe's Torunnans had dressed their lines, and stood motionless and silent. The Bodyguard formed the front rank, with a thicker knot of them about the King. Behind them came a thousand Orphans, their pikes projecting over their shoul shy;ders, and behind them two thousand more Torunnan arque-busiers, fighting with sabres alone.

Golophin stood beside the King, the only man in all that densely packed square who wore no harness and carried no weapon. Corfe looked at him. 'Which one is which?'

'Aruan is the bald one with the hawk nose. Bardolin's nose is broken and he looks like a soldier. That is him, on the right.'

'And Himerius, where is he do you think?'

'Himerius is near eighty now. I doubt he'll take to the field.'

Golophin was not far off that age himself, Corfe realised. He set a gauntleted hand on the wizard's shoulder. 'Maybe you'd best go to the rear, Golophin.'

The wizard shook his head, and his smile was not altogether pleasant. 'No weapon will bite me today, sire. And I am not without weapons of my own.'

Corfe raised his voice to be heard over the clamour of the Himerians and the hissing rain.

'Then help me kill him.'

Golophin nodded, but said no word. He turned so that his wide-brimmed hat hid his eyes.

At that moment the Himerian troops in the square charged, screaming like fiends. They came on in a frenzied rush and, crashing into the tall armoured line of the Bodyguard, began to hammer upon the Torunnans like men possessed.

Corfe's line bent but did not break. The Orphans of the reserve came forward and leant their weight to the melee, some stabbing blind with their pikes, others drawing their short, broad-bladed swords and pitching in where a falling Bodyguard left a gap.

The discipline of the Torunnans mastered even the Himer shy;ians' Dweomer-fed rage, and indeed that rage caused many of the enemy to leave themselves open as they neglected to defend themselves in their haste to kill. They pulled down many of the tall Torunnans, three and four of them attacking a single soldier at a time, but Olba's Fimbrians strode forward to fill the gaps and the line remained unbroken.

Corfe felt the moment when all was poised, and the initiative began its slip away from the enemy, like the moment when a wave crests the beach and must begin to ebb.

'Sound the advance!' he shouted at Astan, and the horn call blew loud and clear over the tumult of battle. A hoarse animal roar came from the throats of the Torunnans, and they surged forward. The spell broke under the strain, and the Himerians began to fall back.

'Come with me,' Corfe said to those around him, and a group of men clustered under his banner and began cutting a path through the retreating enemy to where Aruan and Bardolin stood on the steps of the Library of St Garaso with a crowd of soldiery about them. Baraz was with Corfe, and Felorin, and Golophin, and Astan and Alarin and two dozen more. They held together with the compact might of a mailed fist and when their foes saw the light in Corfe's eye they blenched and fell back.

The Torunnans poured across the square in the wake of their King. Before them the enemy retreat degenerated into a rout. The Himerians had fought Hebrians and Astarans; they had cowed the petty kingdoms and principalities of the north and they had set their stamp across two thirds of the known world. But faced by the elite of Torunna's warriors and their soldier-king, they were hopelessly outmatched, and not even the wizardry of Aruan could make them stand fast.

Corfe and his followers strode across the corpse-choked square until they were scant yards from Aruan and Bardolin and their last bodyguards crowded on the library steps. Aruan looked like a man exhausted, but there was a deadly light in his eyes and he stood straight and arrogant. At his shoulder was Bardolin, his armour covered in other men's gore, a short-bladed broadsword in his fist. The darkness of the day was deepening, for Charibon was on fire all about them now, and shrouds of smoke hid the sky. The rain poured down in shining rods and leapt up bloody from the cobbles. Across the square a quiet fell, though all around them in the distance they could hear the battle raging on beyond, as though Charibon were groaning in its death throes.

Corfe pointed at Aruan with the tip of the Answerer's blade.

'It ends here.'

Astonishingly, the Arch-Mage laughed. 'Does it, indeed? Thank you for the warning, but I fear, little King, that you are misinformed. Golophin, be a good fellow and tell him. You know the truth of it. You have seen it with your farsight.'

Golophin frowned, and Corfe spun on him. 'What does he mean?'

'Sire, the Cathedrallers and the Orphans are defeated and surrounded upon the field. They are gathering for a last stand. This thing's flying legions have broken their lines, and more troops are on their way from the west, a great army. The battle is lost.'

Corfe turned to Aruan again, and to the astonishment of all, he smiled. 'So be it. They have done their job, and now I must do mine.'

He raised the Answerer and kissed the dark blade, then began to march forward.

His men came with him, and the tribesmen among them began singing. Not a battle paean this time, but the mournful song raised by hunters at the place of the kill.

Aruan's mouth opened and closed. Then he shut his eyes and his body shimmered and appeared to grow transparent. Just when it seemed he would disappear entirely, a bolt of blue light came lancing across the heads of his men and smote him to the ground. He grew solid again in the blink of an eye and fell to his hands and knees, gasping.

Golophin lowered his still-smoking fist. 'No one runs away’ he said. 'Not today.'

A last, bitter fight took place on the steps of Charibon's ancient library, wherein long before Albrec had once dis shy;covered the document which united the great religions of the world. The Himerians fought with a savagery hitherto unseen, the Torunnans like dreadful machines of slaughter. The bodies tumbled down the steps and built up at their foot, but all the while Corfe cut his way ever closer to Aruan and Bardolin. As the last of their defenders fell, the doors of the library opened behind them, and a fresh wave of their troops poured out, yelling madly. But they could not drown out the sombre death hymn of the tribes, and these too were pushed back by a black hedge of flailing iron blades, until the melee had moved and retreated into the tall dimness of the library itself. There it opened out, and by lamplight and torchlight amid the tall shelves and stacks of books and the ash-grey pillars of the building the fighting went on, and men scattered trying to flee or trying to kill. But Corfe and his companions held together and followed the gleam of Aruan's bright armour, and pursued him back through the shadows of the library until he stood at bay with few about him, his eyes glaring hatred and a kind of madness, and the stench of the beast rising in him.

Bardolin strode forward then and clashed swords with Corfe himself, but the Torunnan King seemed to have grown in the shadows of the ancient building until he loomed like some giant warrior out of legend. He knocked Bardolin aside with one mailed fist, and kept going with his eyes fixed on Aruan.

The beast erupted out of the Arch-Mage, uncontrollable and baying. The armour it wore burst its straps and fell from its body and it became a huge monolithic darkness within which two yellow eyes gleamed and long fangs clashed in its slaver shy;ing muzzle. It lunged forward and careered into a tall shelf full of books, sending it tumbling over. The heavy wood caught Corfe on his left side and knocked him off his feet. The Answerer skittered across the stone floor. The wolf Aruan towered over him, and then bent to bite out his throat.

But two more shapes sprang forwards, their swords stabb shy;ing out above their prone King. Baraz and Felorin, charging like champions at the huge shifter, yelling defiance. The wolf leaped back with preternatural speed and ripped free a heavy shelf from the wall. This it swung in a great arc that caught Baraz across the side of the head and broke his neck. It raised the heavy wood again, but Felorin ducked under the swing and stabbed upwards. He missed, but the wolf fell back swiftly, holding the shelf before it like a shield. Then Felorin's mouth opened and he dropped his sword to the floor with a clatter. He half turned but something smote him deep once again, and he sank to his knees.

Bardolin pulled his sword free and stepped back as Felorin collapsed face up on the floor. There was a haziness to his outline, as if he possessed more than one shadow, and indeed as he turned back to the King it could be seen that a second shadow detached itself from him and left to be lost in the gloom of the library. He strode forward, and behind him the wolf followed.

Corfe's left arm was broken, and the ribs on that side had been cracked and displaced. He tasted blood in his mouth and a harsh gasp of pain left his lips as he struggled to his feet, then bent to retrieve his sword. His bugler and colour-bearer were dead behind him, at whose hand he knew not, and though fighting could be heard all through the library, here at this end he stood alone.

Bardolin faced him while the wolf padded off to one side, circling. Corfe stood swaying and the Answerer seemed im shy;possibly heavy in his good fist. He pointed the sword into the floor like a staff to steady himself and stared at the man who had been Golophin's protege, his apprentice, his friend. He had, as the wizard had said, a soldier's face, and Corfe knew looking at him that at another time or in another world they would have been friends. He smiled. That other world awaited him now, and was not so far away.

Bardolin nodded as if he had spoken his thought aloud, but there was something else in his eye. It looked beyond Corfe, behind him-

The wolf attacked. Corfe, warned by the movement of Bardolin's eye, wheeled round forgetting his pain. The Answerer jumped up light as a bird again in his hand and as the great beast's paws came raking down he stabbed inwards, felt the point break flesh and sink half a handspan, no more. The claws raked the flesh from his face and then fell away. There was a shrieking bellow, like the sound of an animal caught in a trap, and the wolf tumbled to the ground stiffly as a felled tree. Before it hit the flags of the floor it was no longer an animal, but a naked man in old age. And Aruan lay there with blood trickling from a wound over his heart, and he lifted up his head, hatred burning out of his eyes. He aged as Corfe stood there, his face becoming lined and withered, his muscles melting away, his skin darkening like old leather. He dwindled to bare, sinew-frapped bone and his stare was lost in the twin orbits of an empty skull.

Corfe staggered. His flesh hung in rags below his eyes and the blood was pouring in a black stream down his breastplate. Now Bardolin strode forward, and his broadsword came up. His expression had not changed, and his face wore still a mask of gentle grief.

Corfe managed to clang aside his first lunge. The second smote his breastplate and knocked him backwards. He came up against a scribe's angled desk and knocked aside a third.

'No!'

There was a sudden blazing radiance, and Golophin stepped between them with the werelight spilling out of his eyes and burning around his fists. He was breathing heavily, and even his breath seemed luminous. Bardolin retreated before him though there was no fear in his eyes. 'Get back, Golophin,' he said calmly.

'We did not agree to this!'

'No matter. It is necessary. He must die, or else it has all been for nothing.'

‘I will not let you do it, Bardolin.'

'Do not try to stop me. Not now, when we are so close. Aruan is gone – that was the bargain. But he must go too.'

'No,' Golophin said steadily, and the light in him increased.

Bardolin's cheeks were wet with tears. 'So be it, master.' He dropped his sword and out of him a light flooded to match Golophin's.

Corfe shielded his eyes. It seemed to him that there was stroke and counter-stroke in the midst of a storm of whirling and leaping brilliances. Books caught fire and blazed to ashes, the stone floor was blackened, but he felt no heat. The ground under him trembled and shook.

The light winked out, and when Corfe had blinked away the searing after-images he saw that Golophin was standing over a prostrate but conscious Bardolin, his chest moving in great heaves.

'I'm sorry, Bard,' he said, and cocked one fist upon which a globe of blue werelight shimmered like a broadhead trembl shy;ing at full draw.

But then a shadow flew out of the gloom of the wrecked library, and as it approached it took on shape and definition until it seemed to Corfe to be a young girl with a head of heavy bronze-coloured hair. He shouted at Golophin but his voice was no more than a harsh croak in his throat. The girl shadow sprang upon the old wizard's back and his head came back and he screamed shrilly. She seemed to melt into his body, and his werelight was sucked into a growing darkness near his heart. For a moment he metamorphosed into a writhing, grotesque pillar of wildly gyrating limbs and faces, and then there was a last, blinding flash of light, and the pillar crumpled to the floor like a bundle of tortured rags.

The only sound was the cutting rasp of Corfe's breathing. The air was heavy with the stink of the wolf and another reek, like old burning. Corfe grasped his sword and crawled one-handed over to Golophin's body, but there was nothing there except a shredded robe. The fighting in the library seemed to have ended, and though men's voices could be heard far down the aisle of book stacks none but the dead seemed to remain around him.

He crawled on, until he came across Bardolin's body in the gloom, and there he halted, utterly spent. It was done. It was over.

But Bardolin stirred beside him. He raised his head and Corfe saw his eyes glitter in the darkness, though no other part of him moved.

'Golophin?'

'He is dead.'

Bardolin's head fell back and Corfe heard him weeping. Moved by some feeling he could not explain, he released his grip on the Answerer and took the wizard's hand.

'He could not do it, in the end,' Bardolin whispered. 'He could not betray you.' Corfe said nothing, and Bardolin's fingers tightened about his own.

'There should have been a better way,' he said in the same, racked whisper. His eyes met Corfe's again. 'There must be a better way. It cannot always be like this.'

He turned his head, and Corfe thought he could almost feel the life slipping out of him. It was growing lighter. The darkness outside the tall windows of the library was clearing. Lifting his eyes, Corfe saw a shard of blue sky breaking through the clouds far above. From farther down the library came the sound of men approaching, Torunnans by their speech.

'It will be different now,' he told Bardolin. But the wizard was already dead.

Out on the fuming expanse of the battlefield, the remnants of the Torunnan army had come together in a great circle, and were beleaguered there by a sea of foes while behind them Charibon burned unchecked, its smoke hiding the light of the sun. Around them there piled up a monstrous mound of corpses, and the teeming regiments of the Himerians attacked with merciless persistence, men clambering over the bodies of the dead to come at each other. The Torunnan circle shrank inexorably as thousands upon thousands more of the enemy came up on all sides, and within it men cast away hope, and resolved to sell their lives dearly, and their discipline held firm despite their shrinking numbers. They would make an end worth a song, if nothing else.

Another army came marching over the horizon out of the west, and the Torunnans watched its advance with black despair while the Himerians were inspired to fresh heights of violence. But the keen-eyed on the battlefield paused as they watched it, and suddenly a rumour and a strange hope swept the struggling tercios and regiments that battled there.

The approaching army opened out and shook into battle-line with the smooth efficiency of a machine. And now all on the western edge of the field could see that it was clad in black, and its soldiers carried pikes on their shoulders. As they drew near, the Himerian attack faltered, and the rumours grew until they were being shouted from man to man, and the Torun shy;nans lifted their heads in wonder.

Thus the Fimbrian army, fifty thousand strong, came marching to the aid of their old foes the Torunnans, and the forces of the Second Empire took one look at that sable juggernaut, and began to flee.