The Heretic Kings

TWENTY-THREE

They had made good time, marching sixty leagues in eleven days. Corfe had never seen anything quite like his motley little army of savage tatterdemalions. They were eager, talkative, fiercely good-humoured. On leaving Torunn they had changed completely, and their column often rang out with tribal songs, ribald laughter. It was as if the city had placed some kind of sombre restraint on them, but now that they were out in open country, marching with swords slapping at their thighs and lances in their hands, something in them took wing. They were undisciplined, yes, but they were more enthusiastic than any other soldiers Corfe had known. It was as if they thought they were marching south to take part in some manner of festival.

He put his views to Marsch one evening as they sat by the campfire, shivering in their threadbare blankets and watching flurries of snow lit up by the flames wheeling feather-like out of the darkness beyond. Almost a third of the men were barefoot, and many had no adequate covering to keep out the cold, but the bristling crowds about the other campfires were humming with low talk, like a summer garden alive with bees.

“Why do they seem so happy?” Corfe asked his newest ensign.

The huge tribesman wiped his nose on his blanket, shrugging. “They are free. Is that not enough to make a man happy?”

“But they are marching south to fight a battle which has nothing to do with them. Why do they seem so eager to do it?”

Marsch looked at his commander strangely. “How often do the causes for which men fight mean anything to them? For my people, the Felimbri, war is our life. It is the means by which a man advances himself in the esteem of his comrades. There is no other way.”

Ensign Ebro, who was sitting close by with a fur cape clutched about his shoulders, snorted with contempt.

“That is the reasoning of a primitive,” he said.

“We are all primitives, and always will be,” Marsch said with unusual mildness. “If men were civilized truly, then they would not kill each other. We are animals. Something in us needs to fight in order to prove we are alive. My men have been chattels, beasts harnessed for brute labour. But now they bear the weapons of free men, and they are to fight like free men, in open contest. It matters not who they fight or where, or for what.”

“The philosopher savage.” Ebro laughed.

“So there is no cause needed,” Corfe said.

“No. A man advances himself by making subject other men, either by killing them or so dominating them that they will not dare to challenge his word. Thus are kings made-among my people, at least.”

“And what were you before the galleys claimed you, Marsch?” Corfe asked quietly.

The huge savage smiled. “I was what I still am, a prince of my people.”

Ebro guffawed, but Marsch ignored him as if he did not exist.

“You could kill your Torunnan officers here and now, and leave for home. No one could stop you,” Corfe said.

Marsch shook his head. “We have sworn an oath which we will not break. There is honour involved. And besides”-here he actually grinned at Corfe, showing square yellow teeth whose canines had been filed to sharp points-“we are interested to see how this colonel of ours will fare in open battle, with his Torunnan ways and his plain speaking.”

Then it was Corfe’s turn to laugh.

There was no chance of the column’s approach remaining a secret. Their appearance was so outlandish and unique that entire villages turned out at the side of the mud-deep roads to stare at them as they trudged past. The last few days were spent on short commons, as the Quartermaster-issued rations had run out and the men had to subsist on what they could glean from the surrounding countryside. Several cattle were quietly appropriated from awe-struck owners, but in general Corfe prevented any large-scale foraging because this was Torunna they were marching through, his own country, and also he wanted to make the greatest speed he could.

The men were marvellously fast marchers. Though their time in the galleys had blunted the fine edge of their fitness, building brute strength up in place of stamina, they were able to crack along at a fearsome pace, unhindered by an artillery train or baggage of any kind. It was all the three Torunnan officers in the column could do to keep up with their subordinates as they strode along with their helms slung at their hips and their lances resting on their powerful shoulders. Corfe was privately amazed. He had been brought up to believe that the tribes of the Cimbrics were degenerate savages, hardly worthy of attention from civilized men except when they became a nuisance with their raiding and brigandage. But now he was learning the truth of the affair, which was that they were natural-born soldiers. All they needed was a little discipline and leadership and he was sure they would acquit themselves well against any foe in the world.

Andruw was similarly impressed. “Good men,” he said, as they sucked along through the rutted mud of the winter roads towards Hedeby. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a pack of fellows so keen for a fight. I’d give my left ball for a good battery of culverins, though.”

Corfe chuckled. Humour was coming with a strange ease to him lately. Perhaps it was being free, in the field, his own man. Perhaps it was the prospect of slaughter. At any rate, he did not care to examine the reasons too closely.

“They’d not get far in this mud, your culverins. Nor would cavalry. I’m starting to think it’s as well this force of ours is all infantry. We may find it more mobile than we supposed.”

“They march fast enough, no doubt of that,” Andruw agreed ruefully. “I’ll be a short man by the time we get to Hedeby. I’ve walked at least an inch off each heel.”

They were half a day’s march from Hedeby when they sighted a small group of armoured cavalry outlined against the horizon ahead, watching them. Their banners flapped in the cold wind that winnowed the hills on either side of the road.

“Ordinac, I’ll bet,” Corfe said on sighting the horsemen, “come to have a look at what he’s up against. Unfurl the banner, Andruw.”

Andruw had their standard-bearer, a massive-thewed tribesman named Kyrn, pull loose the cathedral banner and let it snap out atop its twelve-foot staff, a point of vivid colour in the monochrome winter afternoon. The rest of the men gave out a cry at the sight, a five-hundred-voiced inarticulate roar which made the skylined horses flinch and toss their heads.

“Line of battle,” Corfe said calmly. “He’s having a look, so we might as well give him something to see. Andruw, take the fifth tercio forward and chase those riders away as soon as the others have shaken out.”

Andruw’s boyish face lit up. “With pleasure, sir.”

The five tercios of Corfe’s command got into line. Five men deep, the line extended for a hundred yards. As soon as it was in place, the standard flapping with the colour party in the centre, Andruw led one tercio up the hill towards the watching riders.

There were less than a score of horsemen there, though they wore the heavy three-quarter armour of the old nobility. When the tercio was within fifty paces they turned their horses and trotted away, not liking the odds. Andruw placed his men on the hilltop and soon a gasping runner was jogging down from his position. He handed Corfe a note.

Enemy camp half a league ahead, some three leagues out of town, it read. Looks like they are beginning to deploy.

“Your orders, sir?” Ensign Ebro asked. Like everyone else’s, his scarlet armour was so liberally plastered with muck that it had become a rust-brown colour.

“We’ll join Andruw’s tercio,” Corfe said. “After that, we’ll see.”

“Yes, sir.” Ebro’s voice was throbbing like the wing-beat of a trapped bird and his face was pale under its spattering of mud. “Is there anything wrong, Ensign?” Corfe asked him.

“No, sir. I-it’s just that-I’ve never been in a battle before, sir.”

Corfe stared at him for a moment, somehow liking him better for this admission. “You’ll do all right, Ensign.”

The rest of the formation joined Andruw’s men on the hilltop and stared down to where the leather tents of the enemy camp dotted the land. Off to the left, perhaps a mile away, was the sea, as grey and solid as stone. Ordinac’s castle at Hedeby could be made out as a dark pinnacle in the distance. Corfe examined the duke’s men with a practised eye.

“A thousand maybe, as we were told. Perhaps a hundred cavalry, the duke’s personal bodyguard and mostly pikemen apart from that. I can’t see too many arquebusiers. These are second-rate troops, no match for the regular army. His guns-he has two, see? Light falcons-are not even unlimbered yet. Holy Saints, I do believe he’s going to offer us battle at once.”

“You mean today, sir?” Ebro asked.

“I mean right now, Ensign.”

Andruw came over. “Time to fight, I believe. He’ll come to us if we wait for him, though look at the mobs down there: he’ll be half the day getting them into formation.”

Crowds of men were collecting their stacked arms and milling about whilst gesticulating officers tried to sort them into some kind of order. The only organized group seemed to be that of the duke’s bodyguard, who were drawn up in a two-deep line on their heavy horses ahead of the other troops, acting as a screen until their deployment was complete.

Corfe took in the situation in a moment. He was outnumbered: he was expected to fight a defensive battle. He occupied the high ground and thus had a good position. But his men had no firearms. The enemy could close to within firing range and blast away at him half the day whilst the cavalry threatened to cave in his flanks if he tried to close.

“We will attack,” he said crisply. “Andruw, Ebro, go to your tercios. Marsch, inform the men that we are to charge the enemy at once and throw them into disorder before they have time to deploy.”

“But the cavalry-” Ebro said.

“Obey your orders, Ensign. Marsch, peel off the rear rank and keep it back as a tactical reserve. I’ll call for it when it’s needed. Understood?”

The big tribesman nodded and pushed his way through the men behind him.

“Are you sure about this, Corfe?” Andruw asked.

“I’m not going to sit here and wait for them, Andruw. This is our only chance. We must be quick. I want everything at the double. We have to catch them while they’re trying to deploy.”

“Half a league at the double in this armour?” Andruw said doubtfully.

“The men can do it. Come, let’s get to work.”

The colour party moved out first, whilst the ranks of men behind it retied their helmstrings and loosened their swords in the scabbards. Then the formation began to move. Corfe had taught them a few words of command in Normannic, and he shouted one now, emphasizing the order with a wave of his sabre.

“Double!”

The men broke into a lumbering trot, sounding like a moving ironmonger’s stall. The formation began to coalesce as they slogged downhill through the soft ground, tearing it into a morass as they went. Behind the main body, Marsch had his hundred of the reserve in a more compact mass following in the wake of their comrades.

Tearing effort, at first quite easy because of the downhill slope, then getting harder as the feet began to drag, the lungs began to fight for air and the heavy armour crushed down on the shoulders. The men would be tired when they made contact, but the enemy would be disorganized and in disarray. It was an exchange Corfe was willing to make.

Half a mile gone by, and the formation ground on in silence except for the suck of boots or bare feet in the mud, the clank and crash of iron, and laboured, gasping breathing. There was no energy to spare for battlecries.

Hard to fight the head up and make the brain work, to keep thinking. But the furious thinking and planning kept the mind off the physical pain.

The screen of heavily armoured horsemen seemed at a loss. They had obviously not expected this move. A bugle call sounded, and the riders kicked their mounts into motion up the hill. The animals were heavily laden, moving in soft, mucky ground up a gradient. The best they could do was a fast trot, counting on their weight and momentum to break Corfe’s formation; that, and the fear of coming to grips with lancers.

The tribesmen uttered a hoarse, tearing whoop as the two bodies of troops met with a ringing crash, the horses struggling uphill and the infantry running down to meet them. The line was staggered, the ranks intermingling as the horsemen drove wedges of iron and muscle into it. Corfe saw one of his men speared clean through by a lance, armour and all, and tossed aside like a gutted fish.

But the horsemen could not keep up their advance. Corfe’s men seized their lances and dragged them out of the saddle, stabbed upwards into armpit and groin or slashed the tendons of the horses so the screaming creatures went down kicking madly, crushing their riders. And once a rider was on his back, it was impossible for him to get up again. The heavy armour kept him pinned in the muck until a gleeful tribesman ripped off his helm and cut his throat.

It was over quickly. The cavalry line was broken into knots of milling riders who were in turn engulfed and brought down. A score of pain-crazed horses galloped riderless down the hill along with a few lancers who had somehow kept in the saddle and flailed their mounts into a canter.

“Reform!” Corfe shouted. And his men paused in their looting of the dead to dress their ranks and straighten the line.

“Double!”

The formation jogged on again. Corfe had no idea how many casualties his little army had suffered, but that did not matter. What was important was that they catch the rest of the rebel forces before they deployed.

His armour seemed light now. He had not struck a blow during the swift, brutal skirmish, too busy trying to direct things, to keep an eye out for the larger picture, to gauge the need for the reserve under Marsch. Now the battle energy was flowing in him, the cold strength that entered into every man at the imminent prospect of death. The tribesmen advanced downhill at a flat run, and this time Corfe heard them break out into the shrill, unearthly wail that was their battlecry.

A mob of men before them, some dressed in line, some crowded in a shapeless mass. There was the bristling array of a pike tercio, the long, wicked weapons swinging down to present a fence of spikes to the attackers. Corfe’s command charged into the enemy.

The rebels were pushed into a tighter mass almost at once as the men at the forefront of the formation recoiled. Here and there a company got off a rattle of volley fire, but for the most part isolated arquebusiers were loading and firing at will. Maybe the duke had died in the cavalry battle, Corfe thought; there seemed to be no leadership beyond the officers of individual tercios.

Only the tercio of pikemen kept their ranks. The tribesmen beat down the long weapons with their swords and tried to pierce the formation and disrupt it, but rear ranks of the enemy brought their own pikes down over the shoulders of their comrades and impaled the impetuous attackers. Corfe’s men were pushing back the disorganized mobs of rebels elsewhere, but were taking heavy losses against the pikes.

Corfe fought his way out of the scrum until he was at the rear of his men. Marsch was waiting there with the reserve, his eyes aflame with impatience.

“Come with me,” Corfe shouted at them, and led them off at a sprint.

He took them along the back of the battlefront, around the enemy flank. They met a company of arquebusiers there, placed to guard against such a move, but they were among them before the enemy could let off a volley, hacking and stabbing like scarlet-clad fiends. The arquebusiers broke and fled into their camp. Corfe led his men onwards, through the outer tents of the rebel encampment, the tribesmen kicking through fires and slashing guy-ropes as they went.

They were in the enemy rear. Incredibly, no one had posted a reserve here. The pike phalanx bristled like a vast porcupine ahead of them, Corfe’s men still throwing themselves on the pike points and striving to beat them down.

“Charge!” Corfe screamed, and led his hundred forward into the rear of the pikes.

The enemy had no chance. Impressive though pikemen might be in formation, once their ranks were broken they were impotent, their unwieldy weapons a handicap. Corfe’s reserve tercio slaughtered them by the score, shredding their formation to pieces.

The battle was won. Corfe knew that even as the rebels were fighting to break away from this twofold assault. The rebel army had become a mob, losing any vestige of military organization. It was simply a crowd of men struggling to save themselves, with the scarlet demons of Corfe’s warriors cutting them down like corn as they ran.

“I give you joy of your victory, Colonel,” Andruw said, meeting Corfe in the midst of that mass of murder. “As pretty a move as I’ve ever seen, and these men of ours!” He grinned. “There must be a virtue in savagery.”

Victory. It tasted sweet, even if it was over fellow-Torunnans. It was better than wine or women. It was an exaltation which burned away self-doubt.

“Keep up the scare,” he told Andruw. “We’ll pursue them all the way to Hedeby if we have to. They mustn’t be given a rest, or a chance to reform. Keep at them, Andruw.”

Andruw gestured to the howling, slaughtering tribesmen who were following the retreating army and turning their rout into a murderous nightmare.

“I don’t think I could stop them if I tried, Corfe.”

By nightfall it was over. Hedeby’s citadel had been surrendered by the town headsman, the nobility of the place having been killed in the battle. Corfe billeted his troops in the castle itself. The remains of Duke Ordinac’s forces were scattered refugees, lost somewhere in the surrounding countryside. Many had surrendered in the town square, too exhausted to flee any farther. These were imprisoned in the castle cells. The people of the town, in terror of the bloody, weirdly armoured barbarians in their midst, refused them nothing in the way of food, drink, or anything else they had a mind to take, though Corfe issued stark orders against any maltreatment of the citizens. He had seen too much of that at Aekir to countenance it from men under his own command.

Four hundred of the duke’s men had died on the field, and another tenscore were bleeding and screaming wounded, most of whom would follow their dead comrades into eternity. Corfe’s men had lost less than a hundred, most of the casualties being incurred by the tercio which had engaged the enemy pikes head on.

Ordinac kept a good larder, and there was a feast for those well enough to stomach it that night, the tribesmen drinking and eating at the long tables of the castle hall, waited on by terrified serving attendants-Corfe had seen to it that these were male-and recounting the stories of what they had personally done in the battle lately fought. It was like a scene from an earlier, cruder age, when men put glory in battle above all other things. Corfe did not greatly care for it, but he let the men have their fun. They had earned it. He was amused to see Ensign Ebro flushed and drinking in the midst of the rest, being slapped on the back and not resenting it. Clearly the relief of having seen out his first battle without disgrace had unbent him. He was roaring with laughter at jokes told in a language he could not understand.

Corfe went out of the smoky hall to stand on the old-fashioned battlements of Hedeby Castle and look down on the town and the land below, dark under the stars. Up on the hill overlooking the town there was a dull red glow. The townspeople had dragged the bodies of the slain there on Corfe’s orders and made a pyre of them. There they lay, Torunnan men-at-arms and duke and Felimbric tribesmen, all burning together. Corfe thanked his luck that his men did not seem to require elaborate burial rites. As long as the corpse burned with a sword in its hand, they were happy. Such strange men; he had come close to loving them today as they followed him without question or hesitation. Such loyalty was beyond the fortunes of kings.

Footsteps behind him, and he found himself flanked by Andruw and Marsch, the tribesman clutching a flaccid wineskin.

“Drunk already?” Andruw asked, though he might have asked the same question of himself.

“I needed air,” Corfe told him. “Why are you two out here missing the fun?”

“The men want to toast their commander,” Marsch said gravely.

He had been drinking solidly the whole evening, but he was as steady as a rock. He offered the wineskin to his colonel, and Corfe took a squirt of the thin, acidic wine of southern Torunna into his mouth. The taste brought back memories of his youth. He had come from this part of the world, though he had been stationed so long in the east that he nearly forgot it. Had he not joined the army at a tender age he might have been burning on that pyre on the hilltop right now, fighting for his overlord in a war whose cause he knew little of and cared less for.

“Are the pickets posted?” he asked Andruw.

The younger officer blinked owlishly. “Yes, sir. Half a mile out of town, sober as monks, and mounted on the best horses the stables could provide. Corfe, Marsch and I have been meaning to talk to you.” Andruw draped an arm about Corfe’s shoulders. “Do you know what we’ve found here?”

“What?”

“Horses.” It was Marsch who was speaking now. “We have found many horses, Colonel, big enough for destriers. It would seem that this duke of yours had a passion for breeding horses. There are over a thousand in studs scattered over the countryside to the south. Some of the castle attendants told us.”

Corfe turned to look Marsch in the eye. “What are you saying, Ensign?”

“My people are natural born horsemen. It is the way we prefer to fight. And this armour we wear: most of it is the armour of heavy cavalrymen anyway. .” Marsch trailed off, his eyebrows raised.

“Cavalry,” Corfe breathed. “So that’s it. I was a cavalry officer myself once.”

Andruw was grinning at him. “The property of traitors is confiscate to the crown, you know. But I’m sure Lofantyr will not miss a few nags. He’s been niggardly enough to us so far.”

Corfe stared out at the fire-split night. The pyre of the slain was like a dull eye watching him.

“On horseback we’d have more mobility and striking power, but we’d also need a baggage train of sorts, a mobile forge, farriers.”

“There are men among the tribe who can shoe horses and doctor them. The Felimbri value their horseflesh above their wives,” Marsch said, with perfect seriousness. Andruw choked on a mouthful of wine and collapsed into laughter.

“You’re drunk, Adjutant,” Corfe said to him.

Andruw saluted. “Yes, Colonel, I am. My apologies, Marsch. Have a drink.”

The wineskin did the rounds between the three of them as they leaned against the battlements and narrowed their eyes against the chill of the wind that came off the sea.

“We will equip the men with horses then,” Corfe said at last. “That’s eight squadrons of cavalry we’ll have, plus spares for every man and a baggage train for forage and the forge. Mules to carry the grain-there’s plenty about the town. And then-”

“And then?” Andruw and Marsch asked together.

“Then we march on Duke Narfintyr at Staed, get there before Lofantyr’s other column and see what we can do.”

“I’ve heard folk in the town say that Narfintyr has three thousand men,” Andruw said, momentarily sobered.

“Numbers mean nothing. If they’re of the same calibre as the ones we fought today we’ve nothing to worry about.”

The moon was rising, a thin sliver, a horned thing of silver which Marsch bowed to.

“ ‘Kerunnos’ Face,’ we call it,” he said in answer to the questioning looks of the two Torunnans. “It is the light of the night, of the twilight, of a dwindling people. My tribe is almost finished. Of its warriors, who once numbered thousands, there are only we few hundred left and some boys and old men up in the mountains. We are the last.”

“Our people have fought you for generations,” Corfe said. “Before us it was the Fimbrians, and before that the Horse-Merduks.”

“Yes. We have fought the world, we Felimbri, but our time is almost done. This is the right way to end it. It was a good fight, and there will be other good fights until the last of us dies a free man with sword in hand. We can ask for nothing more.”

“You’re wrong, you know,” Andruw spoke up unexpectedly. “This isn’t the end of things. Can’t you feel it? The world is changing, Marsch. If we live to old age we will have seen it become something new, and what is more we will have been a part of the forces that did the changing of it. Today, in a small way, we began something which will one day be important. .” He trailed off. “I’m drunk, friends. Best ignore me.”

Corfe slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re right in a way. This is just the beginning of things. There’s a long road ahead of us, if we’re strong enough to walk it. God knows where it’ll take us.”

“To the road ahead,” Marsch said, raising the almost empty wineskin.

“To the road ahead.”

And they drank from it one by one like brothers.