The Heretic Kings

EIGHTEEN

The blizzard struck as they were crossing the mountain divide. The pass disappeared in minutes and the world became a blank whiteness, featureless as a steamed-up window.

The column halted in confusion and the men fought to erect their crude canvas tents in the hammering wind. A numbing, aching time of struggle and pain, the fingers becoming blue and swollen as the blood inside them slowly crystallized, ice crackling in the nostrils and solidifying in men’s beards. But at last Abeleyn and the remnant of his bodyguard were under shelter of a sort, the canvas cracking thunderously about their ears, the most accomplished fire starters amongst them striving to set light to the damp faggots they had carried all the way up from the lowlands.

It was a diminished band which accompanied the excommunicate King up into the Hebros. They had left the sailors and the wounded and the weaker of the soldiers behind to be tended by villagers in the foothills, along with an escort of unhurt veterans to guard them, for the folk in this part of the world, though Hebrian, were a hard, rapacious people who could not be trusted to treat helpless men with any charity. So it was with less than fifty men that Abeleyn had started the climb into the mountains that formed the backbone of his kingdom. He was afoot, like his subordinates, for he had put the lady Jemilla on the only horse which survived, and the dozen mules they had commandeered from the lowland villages were burdened with firewood and what meagre supplies they had been able to glean from the sullen population.

They had been eight days on the road. It was the eleventh day of Forgist, the darkest month of the year, and they were still twenty leagues from Abrusio.

The lady Jemilla pulled her furs more closely about her and ordered her remaining maidservant to fetch her something to eat from one of the soldiers’ fires. “And none of that accursed salt pork, either, or I’ll have the hide flayed off you.”

She was cold despite the fact that she had the best tent in the company and there was a fire burning by its entrance. She was beginning to regret her insistence that she accompany Abeleyn back to Abrusio, but she had been afraid to let the King out of her sight. She wondered what awaited them in the bawdy old city, which was under the sway of the Knights Militant and the nobles.

She bore Abeleyn’s child-or so it would be believed. Were his attempt to reclaim his kingdom unsuccessful, her life would be forfeit. The present rulers of Hebrion could not allow a bastard heir of the former King to live. In carrying Abeleyn’s issue she harboured her own death warrant within her very flesh.

If he failed.

He would not talk to her! Did he think that she was some empty-headed, high-born courtesan with no thoughts worth thinking beyond the bedroom? She had tried to wheedle information out of him, but he had remained as closed as an oyster.

The tattered raptor which was always coming and going was the familiar of the wizard, Golophin-everyone knew that. He was keeping the King informed as to events in his capital. But what were those events? Abeleyn was such a boy in many things-in sex most of all, perhaps-but he could suddenly go still and give that stare of his, as though he were awaiting an explanation for some offence. That was when the man, the King, came out, and Jemilla was afraid of him then, though she used all her skill at dissembling to conceal it. She dared not press him further than she already had, and the knowledge galled her immeasurably. She was as ignorant of his intentions as the basest soldier of his bodyguard.

Her thoughts wandered from the groove they had worn for themselves. The blizzard roared beyond the frail walls of the tent, and she found herself thinking of Richard Hawkwood, the mariner who had once been her lover and who had sailed away such a long time ago, it seemed. Where was he now, upon the sea or under it? Did he think of her as he paced his quarterdeck, or faced whatever perils he had to face in the unknown regions his ships had borne him to?

His child, this little presence in her belly, his son. He would have loved that: a son to carry on his name, something that whining bitch of a wife had never given him. But Jemilla had larger plans for this offspring of hers. He would not be the son of a sea captain, but the heir to a throne. She would one day be a king’s mother.

If Abeleyn did not fail. If his betrothal to Astarac’s princess could somehow be foiled. If.

Jemilla plotted on to herself, constructing a world of interconnecting conspiracies in her mind whilst the blizzard raged unheeded outside and the Hebros passes deepened with snow.

For two days Abeleyn and his entourage cowered under canvas, waiting for the blizzard to abate. Finally the wind died and the snow stopped falling. They emerged from the half-buried shelters to find a transformed world, white and blinding, drifts in which the mules might disappear, mountain peaks glaring and powder-plumed against a brilliant cobalt blue sky.

They slogged onwards. The strongest men were put to the front to clear a way for the others, wading through the drifts and bludgeoning a path forward.

Two more days they travelled in this manner, the weather holding clear and bitterly cold. Four of the mules died on their feet in the freezing star-bright nights and one sentry was found hunched stiff and rime-brittle at his post in the early morning, his arquebus frosted to his grey hand and his eyes two dead, glazed windows into nothing. But at last it seemed that the mountains were receding on either side of them. The pass was opening out, the ground descending beneath their feet. They had crossed the backbone of Hebrion and were travelling steadily down into the settled lands, the fiefs of the nobles and the wide farmlands with their olive groves and vineyards, their orchards and pastures. A kindlier world, where the people would welcome the coming of their rightful king. At least, such was Abeleyn’s hope.

On their last night in the foothills they made camp and set to cooking the strips they had cut from the carcasses of the dead mules. There was still snow on the ground, but it was a thin, threadbare carpet beneath which sprouted tough clumps of brown upland grass which the surviving mules gorged themselves upon. Abeleyn climbed a nearby crag to look down on the bivouac, more the encampment of a band of refugees than the entourage of a king. He sat there in the cold wind to stare at this hard, sea-girt kingdom of his blooming out in the gathering twilight, the lights of the upland farms kindling below him spangling the tired earth.

A rustle of pinions, and Golophin’s bird had landed nearby and stood preening itself, trying to sort its ragged feathers into some kind of order. Had it been a purely natural creature, it could not have flown in the state it was in, but the Dweomer of its master kept it breathing, kept it airborne to run his errands for him.

“What tidings, my friend?” Abeleyn asked it.

“News, much news, sire. Sastro di Carrera has struck some sort of deal with the Presbyter Quirion. It is rumoured that he is to be named the next King of Hebrion.”

Abeleyn gave a low whistle. In his worn travelling clothes he resembled a young shepherd come to seek a herd of errant goats up here on the stony knees of the mountain-except that he had too much care written into the darknesses below his eyes, and there was a growing hardness to the lines which coursed on either side of his nose to the corners of his mouth. He looked as though he had lately become accustomed to frowning.

“Rovero and Mercado. What are they doing?”

“They barricaded off the western arm of the Lower City as you ordered, and there have been clashes with the Knights but no general engagement. The troops Mercado considers unreliable have been segregated from the rest, but we were unable to arrest Freiss. He was too quick for us, and is with his tercios.”

“They don’t amount to much anyway,” Abeleyn grunted.

“More troops have been coming into the city though, sire. Almost a thousand, most of them in Carreridan livery.”

“Sastro’s personal retainers. I dare say their deployment was the price of his kingship. Is there anything official yet about his elevation to the throne?”

“No, lad. It is a court rumour. The Sequeros are infuriated, of course. Old Astolvo is barely able to hold his young bloods in check. The kingship should have been his since he is next in line outside the Hibrusids, but he did not want it. Sastro’s gold, it is said, is being showered about the city like rice at a wedding.”

“He’ll beggar himself to get the throne. But what does that matter, when he will control the treasury afterwards? Any news from my fiefs?”

“They are quiet. Your retainers dare not do anything at the moment. The Knights and the men at arms of the other great houses are watching them closely. The slightest excuse, and they will be wiped out.”

Abeleyn had a couple of elderly aunts and a doddering grand-uncle. The Hibrusid house had become thin on the ground of late. These relics of its past had left all intrigue behind and preferred to stay away from court and live their vague lives in the peace of the extensive Royal estates north of Abrusio.

“We’ll leave them out of it, then. We can do it with what we have anyway. Get back to the city, Golophin. Tell Rovero and Mercado that I will be approaching the city in four days, if God is willing. I want them to have a ship waiting ten miles up the coast from the Outer Roads. There is a cove there: Pendero’s Landing. They can pick me up, and we’ll sail into Abrusio with all honours, openly. That will give the population something to think about.”

“You will have no problems with the common folk, Abeleyn,” Golophin’s falcon said. “It is only the nobles who want your head on a pike.”

“So much the better,” the young King said grimly. “Go now, Golophin. I want this thing set in train as soon as possible.”

The bird took off at once, leaping into the air, its pinions shedding feathers as they flailed frantically.

“Farewell, my King,” Golophin’s voice said. “When next we meet it will be in the harbour of your capital.”

Then the bird was labouring away across the foothills, lost in the star-filled night sky.

The company settled for the night, grateful for the fact that the worst of the winter weather had been left behind with the mountains. Abeleyn rolled himself in a boat-cloak and dozed by one of the soldiers’ fires. He did not feel like sharing a tent with Jemilla tonight. It seemed somehow more wholesome to sleep under the stars with the firelight producing orange shadows beyond his tired eyelids.

He did not sleep for long, however. It was after midnight by the position of the Scythe when Sergeant Orsini shook him gently awake.

“Sire, pardon me, but there’s something I think you should see.”

Frowning, blinking, Abeleyn let himself be led out of the camp to the crag he had sat on earlier. Orsini, an efficient soldier, had placed a sentry there because it afforded a good view of the surrounding region. The sentry was there now, saluting quickly and then blowing on his cold hands.

“Well?” Abeleyn asked a little irritably.

Orsini pointed to the south-western horizon. “There, sir. What do you make of it?”

The world was dark, sleeping under its endless vault of stars. But there was something glowing at its edge. It might have been a mistimed sunset: the sky was red there, the clouds kindled with crimson light. A blush which lit up fully a quarter of the horizon glimmered silently.

“What do you think it is, sire?” Orsini asked.

Abeleyn watched the far-off flicker for a second. Finally he rubbed his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose as if trying to get rid of a bad dream.

“Abrusio is burning,” he said.

Across the breadth of Normannia, over the two great ranges of the Malvennors and the Cimbrics, down to the coast of the Kardian Sea and the city of Torunn, capital of Lofantyr’s kingdom.

Here it was already dawn; the sun which would not light up Hebrion’s shores for hours yet was huge over the rooftops of the city, and the streets were already busy with the morning life of the markets. Carts and waggons clogged the roadways as farmers brought their produce in to sell, and herds of sheep and cattle were being driven to the stockpens which nestled below the city wall to the west. And beyond the walls to the north the steam and reek of the vast refugee camps sprawled over the land like a rash, whilst Torunnan soldiers manned the gates in that direction, vetting every entrant into the city. Once-prosperous citizens of Aekir had turned to beggary and brigandage in the past weeks, and the more disreputable of the refugees were denied entrance to the walled centre of Torunn. Convoys of crown waggons laden with victuals were waiting to be hauled out to the camps to satisfy the immediate needs of the unfortunates, but Torunna was a country at war and had little enough to spare.

The morning had started badly for Corfe. He was striding along the stone corridors of Torunn’s Main Arsenal with Ensign Ebro hurrying to keep up beside him. The men of his new command had been grudgingly set aside a few barrack blocks for their quarters and were crammed into them like apples in a barrel. Ebro had seen to it that they were issued rations and clothes from the city stores, but as of yet not one sword or arquebus or scrap of mail had been forthcoming. And then, last night, a note had been brought to him from the Queen Dowager by a lady-in-waiting.

I have done what I could, it said. The rest is up to you.

So he was on his own.

He had applied to have more officers seconded to him; he and Ebro alone could not effectively command five hundred men. And he had had Ebro indent three times for armour and weapons to outfit his force, but to no avail. Worst of all was the rumour running about the Garrison Quarters that Lofantyr was going to set aside twenty tercios of the regular army for the job of subjugating the rebellious nobles in the south-the task Corfe had been entrusted with. Clearly, the King did not expect the Queen Dowager’s protege to accomplish anything beyond his own discrediting.

He hammered on the door of the Quartermaster’s department, wearing again the ragged uniform he had worn at Aekir.

The Quartermaster’s department of the Third Torunnan Field Army was housed in a vast string of warehouses close to the waterfront in the east of the city. The warehouses held everything from boots to waggonwheels, cannon barrels to belts. Everything needed to equip and sustain an army could be found in them, but they were giving Corfe’s men nothing more than the clothes on their backs and he wanted to know why.

The Quartermaster-General was Colonel Passifal, a veteran with a short, snow-white beard and a wooden stump in place of the leg he had lost fighting Merduks along the Ostian river before Corfe was born. His office was as bare as a monk’s cell, and the papers which covered his desk were set in neat piles. Requisition orders, inspection sheets, inventories. The Torunnan army had a highly organized system of paperwork which it had copied from its one-time overlord, Fimbria.

“What do you want?” Passifal barked, not looking up from the scraping nib of his quill.

“I indented for five hundred sets of half-armour, five hundred arquebuses, five hundred sabres and all the necessary accoutrements days ago. I would like to know why the requisition has not been filled,” Corfe said.

Passifal looked up, his quill losing its flickering animation.

“Ah. Colonel Corfe Cear-Inaf, I take it.”

Corfe nodded curtly.

“Well, there’s nothing I can do for you, son. My orders are to release stores only to regular Torunnan troops for the duration-Martellus is crying out for equipment up at the dyke, you know-and that rabble the King has given you to play with are officially classed as auxiliary militia, which means that the Torunnan military is not responsible for their fitting-out. I’ve stretched things as it is, giving you uniforms and a place for them to lay their heads. So don’t bother me any more.”

Corfe leant over the broad desk, resting his knuckles on the rim. “So how am I supposed to arm my men, Colonel?”

Passifal shrugged. “Auxiliary units are usually equipped by the private individual who has raised them. Are you rich, Cear-Inaf?”

Corfe laughed shortly. “All I possess is what I stand up in.”

Passifal gazed at the ragged uniform. “You got those rents at Aekir, I hear.”

“And at Ormann Dyke.”

“So you’ve smelled powder.” Passifal scratched his white beard for a moment and then gestured with sudden peevishness. “Oh, take a seat, for God’s sake, and stop trying to stand there on top of your dignity.”

Corfe drew up a chair. Ebro remained standing by the door.

“I hear the King has played a joke on you, Colonel,” Passifal said, grinning now. “He does that sometimes. The old woman rides him hard, and every so often he kicks at the traces.”

“The Queen Dowager.”

“Yes. What a beauty that woman was in her day. Not bad now, as a matter of fact. It’s the witchery keeps her young, they say. But Lofantyr gets tired of being told which pot to piss in. He’s outfitting an expedition to bring the south to heel-a proper one, infantry, cavalry and horse artillery-but he’s going to let you go south and make an arse of it first to show his mother she shouldn’t force her favourites on him.”

“I thought as much,” Corfe said calmly, though his fists clenched on his knees.

“Yes. My orders are not to let you have so much as a brass button from our stores. Those savages you style a command will have to fight with their fists and teeth alone. I’m sorry for it, Colonel, but that’s the way it is.”

“Thank you for explaining it to me,” Corfe said in a flat voice. He rose to go.

Passifal stuck out a hand. “Not so fast! There’s no hurry, is there? You served under Mogen, I take it.”

“I did.”

“So did I. I was a cavalryman in one of his flying columns in the days when we went out looking for the Merduks instead of waiting for them to march up to our walls.”

“I also was cavalry,” Corfe said, unbending a little. “But there was no need for horsemen in Aekir once the siege began.”

“Yes, yes, I daresay. . Old Mogen used to say that cavalry was the arm of the gentleman, and artillery the arm of the mechanic. How we used to love that cantankerous old bastard! He was the best man we’ve ever had. .”

Passifal stared at Corfe for a long moment, as if weighing him up.

“There is a way to equip your men, after a fashion,” he said at last.

“How?”

Passifal rose. “Come with me.” His stump thumped hollowly on the floor as he came round from behind his desk and retrieved a set of keys from the hundreds hanging in rows along one wall of the office. “You won’t like it, mind, and I’m not sure if it’s right, but they’re barbarians you’re commanding so I doubt if they’ll care. And besides, the stuff isn’t doing any good where it is, and technically it’s not part of the regular military stores. .”

Corfe and Ebro followed the one-legged Quartermaster out of the office, completely baffled.

This section of the Main Arsenal resembled nothing so much as the great market squares in the middle of Torunn. There were carts, waggons and limbers everywhere. Men were shifting stores from warehouses or into warehouses, culverins were being drawn by teams of oxen, and everywhere there was the squeal of pulleys and cries of labouring men. Down at the waterfront a trio of deep-hulled nefs had put in from the wide Torrin Estuary and were unloading cargoes of powder and pig-iron on to the quays, and a slim dispatch-runner had just docked, bearing news from the east, no doubt.

Passifal led them away from the hubbub to an older building which was set back from the waterfront. It was an ageing stone structure, windowless and somehow deserted-looking, as though it had been long forgotten.

The Quartermaster turned a key in the screeching lock and shouldered the heavy door open with a grunt.

“Stay close behind,” he told Corfe and Ebro. “It’s dark as a witch’s tit in here. I’ll strike a light.”

The crack of flint on steel, and Passifal was blowing gently on the tinder-covered wick of an oil lamp. The light grew and he slapped shut the glass case on the lengthening flame, then held it up so that the radiance of it flushed the interior of the building.

“What in the world-?” Corfe said, startled despite himself.

The building was very long; it extended beyond the lamplight into darkness. And it was crowded.

Piles of armour lay all about, in places stacked until they almost reached the raftered ceiling. Helmets, gauntlets, breast- and back-plates, chainmail, vambraces, aventails, rusting and cobwebbed and dented by blows, holed by gunfire. Mixed in with the armour were weapons: scimitars, tulwars, rotten-shafted lances with remnants of silk still attached to their heads. Strange weapons, unlike any the Torunnans used-or any other western army, for that matter.

Corfe bent and picked up a helmet, turning it in his hands and wiping the dust away. It was high-crowned with a flaring neck-guard and long cheek-pieces. The helmet of one of the Ferinai, the elite cuirassiers of the Merduks.

“Merduk armour,” he said as the realization smote him. “But what is it doing here?”

“Trophies of war,” Passifal said. “Been here sixty years, since we threw back the Ostrabarian Merduks after they overran Ostiber. That was Gallican of Rone, if you remember your history. A good general. He beat them as they were approaching the Thurian Passes and sent twenty thousand of the black-hearted bastards to join their precious Prophet. The King staged a triumphal march for him here in Torunn, parades of prisoners and so on. And he shipped back a thousand sets of armour to display during it. When it was over they were dumped here and forgotten. Been here ever since. I had been meaning to get rid of them-we’re pressed for warehouse space, you see. .”

Corfe dropped the old helm with a clang. “You expect me to dress my men up as Merduks?”

“Seems to me you haven’t a lot of choice, son. This is the best I can do. You’ll not find a better offer in the city, unless you can persuade the Queen Dowager to stump up the necessary cash.”

Corfe shook his head, thinking.

“It’s not honourable, sir, dressing up as heathens,” Ebro said passionately. “You should decline the command. It’s what they want you to do.”

“And what you want me to do also, Ensign?” Corfe asked without turning around.

“Sir, I-”

“We’ll take the armour,” Corfe said briskly to Passifal. “But we can’t let the men wear it as it stands; folk will think we’re the enemy. Have you any paint, Quartermaster?”

Passifal’s white eyebrows shot up. “Paint? Aye, tons of it, but what for?”

Corfe retrieved the helm he had thrown down a moment before. “We’ll paint this gear, to distinguish ourselves. Red, I think. Yes-a nice shade of scarlet so that the blood won’t show. Excellent.” He was smiling, but there was little humour in his face. “My men have no transport facilities. I’ll have them here within the hour and they can pick out their armour themselves. Can you have the paint waiting by then, Quartermaster?”

Passifal looked as though he had been let in on an enormous joke. “Why not? Yes, Colonel, the paint will be here. It’ll be worth it to see your five hundred savages dressed up in Merduk armour and splashed crimson.”

Again, the mirthless smile. “Not only the savages, Quartermaster. Ebro and I will also be donning Merduk gear.”

“But sir, we have our own,” Ebro protested. “There’s no need-”

“We’ll wear what the men wear,” Corfe interrupted him. “And I shall have to think up some sort of battle standard, since the regular Torunnan banners will, it seems, be denied to us. Good. All that remains now is to meet the General Staff and receive my specific orders. After that, we can begin to plan.”

“No waggons or mules, no transport for our gear,” Ensign Ebro said, a last-ditch effort.

Corfe grinned at him, unexpectedly good-humoured. “You forget, Ebro, that our command is composed of savage tribesmen from the mountains. What need have they of a baggage train? They can live off the country, and may God help the country.”

Passifal was watching Corfe as though he had just that moment recognized him from somewhere. “I see you intend to pick up the King’s gauntlet, Colonel.”

“If I can, Quartermaster,” Corfe said flatly, “I intend to throw it back in his face.”