The Iron Wars

SIX

“Here he comes,” Andruw said. “Full of piss and vinegar.”

They watched as the knot of horsemen drew near, pennons billowing in a breeze off the grey sea. And behind them nearly three thousand men in full battle array waited in formation, the field guns out to their front, cavalry in reserve at the rear. Classic Torunnan battle formation. Classic, and unimaginative.

“Do you know this Colonel Aras?” Corfe asked his adjutant.

“Only by reputation. He’s young for the job, a favourite of the King’s. Thinks he’s John Mogen come again, and is too easy on his men. He’s had a few skirmishes with the tribes, but hasn’t seen any real fighting.”

Real fighting. Corfe was still amazed at how much of the Torunnan army had not seen any real fighting. Torunnan military reputation had been built up by the men of the Aekir garrison, once considered the best troops in the world outside Fimbria. But the Aekir garrison were all dead, or slaves in Ostrabar. What was left were second-line troops, except for Martellus’s tercios at the dyke. And now it was these second-line troops that would have to take on the Merduk invasion, and beat the armies which had taken Aekir. It was a chilling prospect.

The rest of his own men, the Cathedrallers, were drawn up behind him in two ranks. Scarcely three hundred of them able to mount a horse out of the five hundred he had started south with. His command was being inexorably worn down, despite the victories he had won. The men needed a rest, a refit, fresh horses. And reinforcements.

Aras’s party reined to a halt in front of Corfe and Andruw. Their armour was shining, their horses well-fed. They wore the standard Torunnan cavalry armour, much lighter than the Merduk gear Corfe’s men had. Corfe was keenly aware that he and his men looked like a horde of barbaric scare-crows, clad in scarlet-daubed Merduk war harness, eyes hollow with weariness, their mounts scarred and exhausted.

“Greetings, Colonel Cear-Inaf,” the lead rider opposite said. A young man, red-haired and pale, his freckles so dense as to make him look suntanned. He had the big hands of a horseman and he sat his mount well, but compared to Corfe’s troopers he seemed a mere boy.

“Colonel Aras.” Corfe nodded. “You have a fine command.”

Aras sat visibly straighter in the saddle. “Yes. Good men. Now that we have arrived, we can get on with the business at hand. I take it Narfintyr and his army have decamped from the vicinity, else you would not be here.” And he smiled. Corfe heard some of the tribesmen muttering angrily behind him. They understood enough Normannic to grasp what was being said.

“Indeed,” Corfe answered civilly. “I fear Narfintyr is far away by now. But you’re welcome to try and catch him if you like.”

Aras’s smile grew brittle. “That is why I am here. I am sure your men have striven nobly under you, but you must now leave it to me and my command to get the job done.”

Corfe was very tired. He had almost forgotten what it was like not to be tired. He was too tired even to be angry. Or to boast.

“Narfintyr has fled across the Kardian,” he said. “My men and I have destroyed his army. There are over a thousand prisoners locked in the halls of his castle as I speak. I leave the last of the mopping up to you, Colonel. I am taking my command north again.”

There was a pause. “I don’t understand,” Aras said, still struggling to smile.

“We’ve done your job for you, it seems, sir,” Andruw said, grinning. “If you doubt us, there’s a pyre to the south of the town with seven hundred corpses on it, still smouldering. Narfintyr’s finest.”

Aras blinked rapidly. “But you… I mean, where are the rest of your men? I thought you had only a few tercios.”

“We’re all here, Colonel,” Corfe told him wearily. “There were enough of us to do what was needed. You can stand down your own men. As I said, we leave for the north at once. I must get back to the capital.”

“You can’t!” Aras blustered. “You must stay here and help me. You must attach your men to my command.”

“God’s eyes-have you been listening?” Corfe barked. “Narfintyr is gone, his army destroyed. You cannot give me orders-you are not my superior. Now get out of my way!”

The two groups of riders remained opposite each other, the horses beginning to dance as they picked up the tension from their masters. Corfe had intended to have a civilized meeting, a military conclave of sorts where he would fill Aras in on the current situation. They were, after all, on the same side. But instead he found he could not bear the thought of trying to brief this arrogant puppy. His unravelling patience had finally frayed entirely. He wanted only to be on the move again, to get his men some well-earned rest. And to go north, where the real battlefields were. There was no time for bitching and moaning.

One thing, though, that he could not forget.

“Before we depart, Colonel, I must inform you that I must leave behind some score or so of my wounded who are too badly injured to travel. They’re billeted in the upper levels of the keep. Those men are to be looked after as though they were of your own command. I will hold you accountable for the well-being of each and every one of them. Is that clear?”

Aras opened and shut his mouth, his pale face flushed. Behind him, one of his aides muttered audibly: “Playing nursemaid to savages now, are we?”

It was Andruw who nudged his mount forward until it was shoulder to shoulder with the speaker’s.

“I know you, Harmion Cear-Adhur. We went to gunnery school together. Remember?”

The man Harmion shrugged. Andruw grinned that infectious grin of his.

“One of these savages behind me is worth any ten of your parade-ground heroes. And you-you only got those haptman bars by kissing the arse of every officer you were ever placed under. What have you to say to that?” Andruw’s grin had become wild, giving his grimed face a slightly demented aspect. He had his right hand on his sabre.

“Enough,” Corfe said. “Andruw, get back in ranks. You are out of order. Colonel Aras, I apologize for my subordinate’s behaviour.”

Aras got hold of himself. He cleared his throat, nodded to Corfe and finally asked in a civil tone: “Is it actually true? These men of yours have defeated Narfintyr?”

“I do not make a habit of lying, Colonel.”

“You are the same Colonel Cear-Inaf who was at Aekir and Ormann Dyke, are you not?”

“I am.”

Aras’s face changed. He cleared his throat again. “Then might I shake your hand, Colonel, and congratulate you and your men on a great victory? And perhaps I can prevail upon you to stay here for one more night and partake of my headquarters’ hospitality. I can also have some equipment and spare mounts sent over to your men. If you do not mind my saying so, they look as though they need it.”

Corfe rode forward and took the younger man’s hand. “Courteously put. All right, Aras, we’ll remain another night. My senior ensign, Ebro, will acquaint your quartermaster’s department of our needs.”

And so they remained, the two little armies encamped upon the muddy plain north of Staed. Aras had wanted to billet his men with the townspeople, but Corfe talked him out of the idea. The local people had suffered enough lately, and they were Torunnans, after all, not some conquered nation. It was enough that they went hungry to provision the soldiers who had lately swamped their countryside, and that their sons had died by the hundred whilst fighting those soldiers.

The camps of the Cathedrallers and Torunnan regulars were kept separate, and between them were Aras’s headquarters tents. The Torunnans seemed at first dubious, then curious, and small parties of men from both camps met at the stream where the horses were watered, and there took wary stock of each other, like two dogs sniffing and circling, unable to decide whether to go for each other’s throats.

Aras’s column was remarkably well stocked with all manner of military supplies. He sent over to the Cathedraller lines wagons full of new lances, pig-iron, charcoal for the field forges, fresh rations, forage and sixty fresh horses.

Corfe, Andruw and Marsch watched them come in. Big-boned bay geldings with matted manes and wild eyes.

“They’re only half broken,” Andruw pointed out.

“What did you expect-the best of his destriers?” Corfe asked him. “If they had three legs apiece I’d still take them. What think you, Marsch? Do they amount to much?”

The big tribesman was looking over the snorting, prancing new arrivals with a practised eye.

“Three-year-olds,” he said. “Only just lost their stones, and still feeling the loss. They’ll quiet down in time. My men will soon break them in.”

“Why is this Aras suddenly kissing your backside, Corfe?” Andruw asked thoughtfully.

“It’s obvious. We head for Torunn tomorrow, back to the court. He wants us to give a good account of him, maybe even let him share in some of the glory.”

Andruw snorted. “Fat chance.”

“Oh, I’m not going to disparage him before the King. I won’t make any friends that way either. But he won’t steal the glory my men bled for.”

There was a feast that night in Aras’s conference tent, a huge flapping structure thirty feet long and high enough to stand upright in. All his officers were there, dressed, to Corfe’s astonishment, in court uniforms, complete with lace cuffs and buckled shoes. There was a Torunnan soldier acting as waiter behind every one of the folding canvas chairs which seated the diners, and the long board table blazed with silver cutlery and tableware. As Corfe, Andruw and Ebro walked in, Andruw laughed aloud.

“We must be lost, Corfe,” he muttered. “I thought we were supposed to be on campaign.”

Corfe was seated at Aras’s right hand at the head of the table, Andruw farther down and Ebro near the bottom. Marsch had declined to come. He had to see to the settling in of the new horses, he said, though Corfe privately thought that the prospect of using a knife and fork terrified him as no battle ever could.

“Some of my staff brought down several deer last week in the march south,” Aras told Corfe. “They’re tolerably well hung by now. I hope you like venison, Colonel.”

“By all means,” Corfe said absently. He sipped wine-good Candelarian, the wine of ships-from a silver goblet, and wondered how large Aras’s baggage train had to be to sustain a headquarters of this magnificence. For an army of under three thousand it was ridiculous.

As the wine flowed and the courses came and went, the table set up a respectable din of talk. Ensign Ebro, Corfe saw, was in his element, regaling the other junior officers with war stories. Andruw was eating and drinking steadily, like a man making up for lost time. He was seated beside an officer in the blue livery of the artillery, and the two were engaged in a lively discussion between wolfed-down bites of food and gulps of wine. Corfe shook his head slightly. The field army of Aekir, John Mogen’s command, had never done things thus. Where had the pomp and ceremony which permeated the entire Torunnan army come from? Perhaps it had to do with soldiering to the rear of an impregnable frontier. Apart from himself and Andruw, no man here had ever fought in a large-scale pitched battle. And with the fall of Aekir, the frontier was no longer impregnable. An entire army, over thirty thousand men, had been destroyed in the city’s fall. The only truly experienced soldiers left in the kingdom were those at the dyke with Martellus. Once again, Corfe felt a thrill of uneasiness at the thought. Had he been Lofantyr, he would be conscripting and drilling men by the thousand, and marching them off to Ormann Dyke. There was a leisurely nature to the High Command’s strategy that was downright alarming.

Aras was talking to him. Corfe collected his thoughts quickly, mustering his civility. He had precious little of it to spare these days.

“I suppose you have heard the rumours, Colonel, you having been at the court for the arrival of the Pontiff.”

“No. Tell me,” Corfe said.

“It seems hard to credit it, but it would seem that our liege lord has hired Fimbrian mercenaries to reinforce Ormann Dyke.”

Corfe had heard as much in the war councils of the King, but his face betrayed nothing. “How very singular,” he said, and sipped at his wine.

“Yes-though there’s other words I’d rather use. Imagine! Hiring our ancient overlords to fight our wars for us. It’s an insult to every officer in the army. The King has never been greatly loved by the rank and file, but this has enraged them as nothing else ever could. It makes it look as though he does not trust his own countrymen to fight his battles for him.”

Corfe privately thought that in this at least the King was showing some shred of wisdom, but he said nothing.

“So now we have a grand tercio of them marching across Torunna as if they owned it. Fimbrians! I wonder they can still fight at all after having locked themselves behind their borders for four hundred years.”

“I am sure that Martellus will know what to do with them,” Corfe said mildly.

“Martellus-yes-a good man. You know him, I suppose, having served at the dyke.”

“I know him.”

“He’s not a gentleman, they say-a rough-and-ready kind of character, but a good general.”

“John Mogen was no gentleman either, but he could fight battles well enough,” Corfe said.

“Of course, of course,” Aras said hastily. “It is just that I think it is time the new generation of officers was given a chance to prove their mettle. The older men are too set in their ways, and the world is changing around them. Now give me a couple of grand tercios, and I’ll tell you how I’d relieve the dyke…” and he launched into a detailed description of how Colonel Aras would outdo Martellus and even Mogen, and send the Merduks reeling back across the Ostian River.

He was drunk, Corfe realized. Many of the officers there were by now, having thrown back decanter after decanter of the ruby Candelarian, their glasses blood-glows brimming in the candlelight. Outside, Marsch and the Cathedrallers would be making their cold beds in Torunnan mud, and up along the Ostian River, a hundred and thirty leagues away, the bones of the men who had once been Corfe’s comrades in arms would be lying still unburied.

I’m drunk myself, he thought, though the wine had curdled in his mouth. He hated the black mood that settled upon him with ever increasing frequency these days. He wanted to be like Andruw or Ebro, able to enjoy himself and laugh with his fellow officers. But he could not. Aekir had set him apart. Aekir, and Heria. He wondered if he would ever know a moment’s true peace again, except for those wild, murderous times in battle when all that existed was the present. No past, no thought of the future, only the vivid, terrifying and exhilarating experience of killing. Only that.

He thought of the night he had bedded the Queen Dowager of Torunna, his patron. That had been like battle, a losing of oneself in the sensations of the moment. But there was always the aftermath, the emptiness of awakening. No-there was nothing to fill the void in him except the roar of war, and perhaps the comradeship of a few men he trusted and esteemed. No room for softness there, no place for it any more. He had his wife’s face and her memories stored away in that inaccessible corner of his mind, and nothing else would ever touch him there.

“-but of course we need men, more men,” Aras was saying. “Too many troops are tied down in Torunna itself, and more will be sent south to guard against any fresh uprising. I suppose I can see the King’s reasoning. Why not let foreigners bleed for us at the dyke, and harbour our own kind until they are truly needed? But it leaves a bad taste in one’s mouth, I must say. In any case, the dyke will not fall-you should know that better than anyone, Colonel. No, we have fought the Merduks to a standstill, and should be thinking about taking the offensive. And I am not the only officer in the army who thinks this way. When I left the court, the talk centred around how we might strike back along the Western Road from the dyke and make a stab at regaining the Holy City.”

“If all campaigns needed were bold words, then no war would ever be lost,” Corfe said irritably. “There are two hundred thousand Merduks encamped before the dyke-”

“Not any more,” Aras said, pleased to have caught him out. “Reports say that half the enemy have left the winter camps along the Searil. Less than ninety thousand remain before the dyke.”

Corfe tried to blink away the wine fumes, suddenly aware that he had been told something of the greatest importance.

“Where have they gone?” he asked.

“Who knows? Back to their dank motherland perhaps, or perhaps they are in Aekir, helping with the rebuilding. The fact remains-”

Corfe was no longer listening. His mind had begun to turn furiously. Why move a hundred thousand men out of their winter camps at the darkest time of the year, when the roads were virtual quagmires and forage for the baggage and transport animals would be nonexistent? For a good reason, obviously, not mere administration. There had to be a strategic motive behind the move. Could it be that the main Merduk effort was no longer to be made at Ormann Dyke, but somewhere else? Impossible, surely-but that was what this news suggested. The question, however: if not at Ormann Dyke, then where? There was nowhere else to go.

A sense of foreboding as powerful as any he had ever known suddenly came upon him. He sobered in a second. They had found some way to bypass the dyke. They were about to make their main thrust somewhere else-and soon, in winter, when Torunnan military intelligence said they would not.

“Excuse me,” he said to a startled Aras, rising from his chair. “I thank you for a hospitable evening, but I and my officers must depart at once.”

“But… what?” Aras said.

Corfe beckoned to Andruw and Ebro, who were staring at him, bowed to the assembled Torunnan officers and left the tent. His two subordinates hurried to keep up with him as he squelched through the mud outside. Andruw saved the bewildered and drunken Ebro from a slippery fall. A fine drizzle was drifting down, and the night was somewhat warmer.

“Corfe-” Andruw began.

“Have the men stand to,” Corfe snapped. “I want everything packed and ready to move within the hour. We move out at once.”

“What’s afoot? For God’s sake, Corfe!” Andruw protested.

“That is an order, Haptman,” Corfe said coldly.

His tone sobered Andruw in an instant. “Yes, sir. Might I ask where we are going?”

“North, Andruw. Back to Torunn.” His voice softened.

“We’re going to be needed there,” he said.

Torunna seemed the hub of the world that winter, a place where the fate of the continent would be decided. Around the capital, Torunn, the hordes of unfortunates from Aekir were still squatting in sprawling refugee camps beyond the suburbs of the city. They were foreigners, bred to the cosmopolitan immensity of a great city which was now gone. And yet at day’s end they were Torunnan also, and thus the responsibility of the crown. They were fed at public expense, and materials for a vast tented metropolis were carted out to them by the wagonload, so it seemed to an observer that there was a mighty army encamped about the capital, with the smoke and mist and reek and clamour of a teeming multitude rising from it. And also the stench, the disease, and the disorder of a people who had lost everything and did not know where to go.

The nobility of Normannia were fond of heights. Perhaps it was because they liked to see a stretch of the land they ruled, perhaps it was for defensive purposes, or perhaps it was merely so they were set apart from the mass of the population who were their subjects. There were no hills in Torunn to build palaces on, as there were in Abrusio and Cartigella, so the engineers who had reared up the Torunnan palace had made it a towering edifice of wide towers interconnected with bridges and aerial walkways. Not a thing of beauty, such as the Peridrainian King inhabited in Vol Ephrir, but a solid, impressive presence that frowned down over the city like a stooped titan. From the topmost of its apartments and suites one might on a clear day see the glint of white on the western horizon that was the Cimbric Mountains. And on a still spring morning it was possible to see fifty miles out to sea, and watch the ships sail in from the Kardian Gulf like dark-bellied swans.

But now the mist that arose from the camps walled in the city like a fog, and even from the highest towers it was impossible to look beyond the suburbs of Torunn.

Odelia, the Queen Dowager, sighed and rubbed her hands together. Slim fingers, impeccable nails-the hands of a young woman but for the liver spots which dotted them and reminded her of her age. The cold seemed to have settled in her very marrow this winter-this endless winter. She had fought against time for so very long now that it was with instant resentment she noted every fresh signal of her body’s decay, every new ache and pain, every subtle lessening of her strength. She would repair the waning theurgy of her maintenance spells tonight-but oh how she so wanted that young man in her bed again, to feed on his vitality, to feel his strength. To feel like a woman, damn it. Not a queen slipping into the twilight of old age.

No one knew for sure how old she was. She had been married to Lofantyr’s father King Vanatyr at the age of fifteen, but the first three children they had conceived together in their joyless fashion had died before they could talk. Lofantyr had survived, and her womb was barren now. And Vanatyr was dead these fifteen years, having choked on something he ate. She smiled at the memory.

There had been three lovers in her life in the decade and a half since her husband’s death. The first had been Duke Errigal, the regent appointed to advise, guide and educate the thirteen-year-old King Lofantyr upon his coronation. Errigal had been her creature, body and soul. She had ruled through him and her son for five years, until Lofantyr attained his majority, and then she had ruled through Lofantyr. But her son the King was rising thirty now, and more and more often he brushed her advice aside and made decisions without consulting her. In short, he was learning to rule in his own right.

Odelia hated that.

Her second lover had been John Mogen, the general who had been Aekir’s military commander, one of the greatest leaders the west had ever seen. And she had truly loved him. Because he had been a man. A great man, devoid of manners, culture or breeding, but with a roaring humour and an art of remembering everything he was ever told, everyone he ever met. His men had loved him too: that was why they had died for him in their tens of thousands. She had helped along his career, and it was she who had procured for him the military governorship of the Holy City. She had never dreamed it could fall with him in command. And she had grieved for him, weeping her tears into her pillow at night, furious with her lack of self-control. It had been six years since she had last exchanged so much as a word with him.

And now there was this new lover, this embittered young man who had served under her beloved Mogen, who had seen him die. She knew full well that in advancing him she was indulging in a form of nostalgia, perhaps trying to recapture the magic of those years when she had ruled Torunna in all but name, and Mogen had been her knight, her champion. But she would allow sentiment to take her only so far, and the darkness of these times was something different, something new. She believed she could smell out greatness as surely as a hound scenting a hare. Mogen had possessed it, and so did this Corfe Cear-Inaf. In her own son, the King, there was no vestige of it at all.

As if summoned by her musings, her maid entered the chamber behind her and curtsied. “Lady, His Majesty-”

“Let him in,” she snapped, and she closed the balcony screens on the rawness of the day, the reek of the refugee camps and the roaring bustle of the city below.

“A little short of late, aren’t you, mother?” Lofantyr said as he came in. He had a heavy fur-lined cloak about him; he hated the cold as much as she did.

“The old are permitted impatience,” she retorted. “They have less time to waste than the young.”

The King seated himself comfortably on one of the divans that sat around the walls and warmed his hands at the saffron glow of a brazier. He looked around.

“Where’s your playmate?”

“Asleep. He caught a kitten, and he is so decrepit now he needs to gather his strength before tackling it.” She nodded towards the ceiling.

Lofantyr followed her eyes and saw up in the shadowed rafters a spiderweb fully twelve feet across. At its centre his mother’s familiar crouched, and twitching in a corner was a small web-wrapped bundle that uttered a faint, pathetic mewing. Lofantyr shuddered.

“To what do I owe the honour of this visit?” the Queen Dowager asked, gliding across the floor to her embroidery stand and seating herself before it. She began selecting a needle and a bright silken spool of thread.

“I have some news-more of a rumour, actually-that I thought might interest you. It is from the south.”

She threaded the needle, frowning with concentration. “Well?”

“The rumours have it that our rebellious subjects in the south have been subdued with unwonted speed and ease.”

“Your Colonel Aras made good time then,” she said, baiting him.

“The rumours say that the rebels were beaten by a motley group of strangely armoured savages under a Torunnan officer.”

She kept her face impassive, though her heart leapt within her. The needle stabbed through the embroidery board and into her finger, drawing a globule of blood, but she gave no sign.

“How very intriguing.”

“Isn’t it? And I will tell you something else intriguing. As well as the refugees from Aekir, we have encamped at our gates almost a thousand tribesmen from the mountains with their mounts and weapons. Cimbriani. Felimbri, Feldari. A veritable melting-pot of savages. They have sent a delegation to the garrison authorities saying that they wish to enlist under the command of one Colonel Corfe, as they call him, and that they will not leave the vicinity of the city until they have seen him.”

“How very curious,” she said. “And how have you dealt with them?”

“I do not want a horde of armed barbarians at my gates. I sent a few tercios to disarm them.”

“You did what?” Odelia asked, very softly.

“There was an unfortunate incident, and blood was shed. Finally I surrounded their camp with artillery and forced them to give up their arms. They are now in chains awaiting transfer to the Royal galleys to serve as oarsmen.” Lofantyr smiled.

Odelia looked at her son. “Why?” she asked.

“I don’t know what you mean, mother.”

“Don’t seek to play games with me, Lofantyr.”

“What has irked you? That I made a decision without first running to your chambers to consult? I am King. I do not have to answer to you, whether you be my mother or not,” the King said, his pale face flushing pink.

“You are a damned fool,” the Queen Dowager told her son, her voice still soft. “Like a child who destroys something precious in a fit of pique and cannot have it mended afterwards. Look beyond your own injured pride for a moment, Lofantyr, and consider the good of the kingdom.”

“I never consider anything else,” the King said, at once angry and sullen.

“This man I have sponsored, this young officer-he has ability beyond any of your court favourites and you know it. We need men like him, Lofantyr. Why do you seek to destroy him?”

“I will promote my own war leaders. I will not have them chosen for me!” the King exclaimed, and he stood up, his fur cloak billowing around him.

“Perhaps you will be allowed to choose your own when you have learned to choose wisely,” Odelia told him. Her skin seemed almost to glow and her eyes were alight, like emeralds with the sun refracted through them.

“By God, I do not have to listen to this!”

“No, you do not. A fool never likes to listen to wisdom when it crosses his own desires. Think, Lofantyr! Think not of your own pride but of the kingdom! A king who is not master of himself is master of nothing.”

“How can I be master of anything when you are always there in the shadow, spinning your webs, whispering into the ears of my advisors? You have had your day in the sun, mother, now it is my turn. I am the King, damn it all!”

“Then learn to behave like one,” Odelia said. “Your antics are more those of a spoilt child. You surround yourself with creatures whose only goal in life is to tell you what you want to hear. You place your own absurd pride above the good of the country itself, and you refuse to listen to any news which conflicts with your own ideas of how the world should work. The men bleeding on the battlefields are the glue which keeps this kingdom together, Lofantyr, not the fawning office-seekers of the court. Never forget where the true power lies, what the true nature of power is.”

“What is this, a lesson in kingship?”

“By the blood of the Saint, were I a man I’d thrash you until you shrieked. You’re so blinded by protocol and finery you cannot hear the very footfalls of doom come striding across the world.”

“Don’t become apocalyptic on me, mother,” her son told her, scorn in his own voice now. “We all know the witchery you practise-it is common knowledge at court-but it cannot help you predict the future. Your gifts do not lie that way.”

“It does not take a soothsayer to predict the way the world is going.”

“Nor does it take a genius to understand your sudden interest in this upstart colonel from Aekir. Does it help you to forget your age to take a man young enough to be your son to bed?”

They stared at each other.

Finally Odelia said: “Tread carefully, Lofantyr.”

“Or what? It is all over the court-the Queen Dowager bedding the ragged deserter from John Mogen’s vanished army. You talk to me of my behaviour. How do you think yours reflects upon the dignity of the Crown? My own mother, and a ragged-arsed junior officer!”

“I ruled this country when you were a snotty-faced child!” she cried shrilly.

“Aye, and we know how you managed that. Errigal you bedded too. You would prostitute yourself a thousand times over if it would seat you any nearer the throne. Well, I am a grown man, mother, my own man. You are not needed any more.”

“You think so?” Odelia asked. “You really think so?”

They were both standing now, with the hellish radiance of the brazier between them, illuminating their faces from below so that they were transformed into masks of flame and shadow. Above them, the giant spider that was Arach had awoken and its legs were gently tapping the web it clung to, as though readying itself for a spring. Lofantyr peered up at the thing; it was uttering a low keening, something like an anguished cat’s purr.

“Stop meddling in the affairs of state,” Lofantyr said more calmly to the Queen Dowager. “You must give me a chance to rule, mother. You cannot hang on for ever.”

Odelia inclined her head a trifle, as if in gracious agreement. Her eyes were two viridian flickers mingled with the yellow flame-light.

“Release the tribesmen,” she said in a reasonable tone. “Let him have them. It can do no harm.”

“Arm the Felimbri? Is that what you want? And you were the one who cautioned me about hiring the Fimbrians!”

“They will obey him. I know it.”

“They are savages.”

“Maybe if you had given him a command of regulars at the beginning this problem would never have arisen,” she said, her voice cutting.

“Maybe if you had not-” he began, and stopped. “This bickering does neither of us any good.”

“Agreed.”

“All right, I will release them. Your protege can have his savages. But they will receive no assistance from the military authorities. He is on his own, this Aekirian colonel.”

Odelia bowed her head in acceptance.

“Let us not fight, mother,” Lofantyr said. He moved around the brazier and held out his hands.

“Of course,” his mother said. She took his hands and kissed his cheek.

The king smiled, then turned away. “There are couriers from Martellus on their way in from the gates. I must see them. Will you come with me?”

“No,” she said to his retreating back. “No, see them alone. I have my work to do here.”

He smiled at her, and left the room.

Odelia sat a moment in the quiet he had left behind, her eyes hooded, their fire veiled. Finally she picked up the embroidery board and hurled it across the room. It cracked against the far wall in a tangled mess of snapped wood and fabric and thread. The maid peeped in at the door, saw her mistress’s face, and fled.

The black-burnt stone of Admiral’s Tower seemed somehow in keeping with the tone of Abrusio in these times. Jaime Rovero, admiral of Hebrion’s fleets, had his halls and offices near the summit of the fortress. In a tall chamber there he paced by his desk while the smell of seawater and ashes came sidling in from the docks below, and he could hear the gulls screaming madly. A winter fishing yawl must be putting in. All his life he had been a seaman, having risen from master’s mate aboard a caravel to command of his own vessel, then of a squadron, then a fleet, and finally the very pinnacle of his career-First Lord of the Navy. He could go no higher. And yet he would look down on the trefoil of harbours that the city of Abrusio encircled and, seeing the ships there, the hiving life of the port, the hordes of dock hands and mariners, he would sometimes wish he were a mere master’s mate again with hardly two coppers to rub together in his pocket, and the promise of a fresh horizon with the next sunrise.

The door was knocked and he barked: “Enter!” and straightened, blinking away the memories and the absurd regrets. One of his secretaries announced: “Galliardo Ponera, Third Port Captain of the Outer Roads, my lord.”

“Yes, yes. Send him in.”

In came a short, dark-skinned man with an air of the sea about him despite some fine clothes and an over-feathered hat. Ponero made his bow, the feathers describing an arc as he swung his headgear in a gesture he imagined was elegance itself.

“Oh, stow that courtly rubbish,” Rovero grated. “This isn’t the palace. Take a seat, Ponero. I have some questions for you.”

Galliardo was sweating. He sat in front of the massive dark wood of the admiral’s desk and soothed down his ruffled feathers.

Rovero stared at his visitor silently for a second. He had a small sheaf of papers on his desk which bore the Royal seal. Galliardo glimpsed them and swallowed.

“Calm down,” Rovero told him. “You’re not here on corruption charges, if that’s what you’re thinking. Half the port captains in the city turn a blind eye now and again. It’s the grease that turns the wheels. No, Ponero, I want you to have a look at these.” He tossed the papers across the desk at his trembling guest.

“They’re victualling warrants, Royal ones,” Galliardo said after a moment’s perusal.

“Bravo. Now explain.”

“I don’t understand, your excellency.”

“Those two ships, outfitted and victualled at Royal expense and carrying Hebrian military personnel, were readied for sea in your section of the yards. I want to know where they were headed, and why the King sponsored their voyage.”

“Why not ask him?” Galliardo said.

Rovero frowned, an awful sight.

“I beg your pardon, your excellency. The fact is the ships were owned by one Richard Hawkwood, and the leader of the expedition and commander of the soldiers was Lord Murad of Galiapeno.”

Rovero’s frown deepened. “Expedition? Explain.”

Galliardo shrugged. “They were carrying stores for many months, horses for breeding-not geldings, you understand-and sheep, chickens. And there were the passengers, of course…”

“What about them?”

“Some hundred and forty of the Dweomer-folk of the city.”

Rovero whistled softly. “I see. And what of their destination, Ponero?”

Galliardo thought back, back to the tail end of a summer that now seemed years ago. He remembered clinking a last glass of wine with Richard Hawkwood in the portside tavern by his offices which had seen so many partings, the backs of so many men who went into tall ships and sailed towards the horizon, never to return. Where was Richard Hawkwood now, and his ships, his companies? Rotting in the deep perhaps, or wrecked on some cragged rock out in the unmapped ocean. One thing Galliardo knew: Hawkwood had been meaning to sail west-not to the Brenn Isles or the Hebrionese, but west as far as his ships would take him, farther perhaps than anyone had ever sailed before. What had become of him? Had he found at last the limits of the turning world and set his foot on some untrodden strand? Galliardo would probably never know, and so he deemed it safe to tell the admiral what he knew of the Hawkwood expedition despite the fact that Richard had enjoined him to secrecy. Richard was probably dead, and beyond the consequence of anything Galliardo might do. The Hawkwood line had ended: his wife, Estrella, had died in the howling inferno that had been Abrusio scant weeks ago.

“West, you say?” Rovero rumbled thoughtfully when Galliardo had told him.

“Yes, excellency. It’s my belief they were trying to discover the legendary Western Continent.”

“That’s a fable, surely.”

“I think Hawkwood had some document or chart which suggested differently. In any case, he has been gone for months with no word sent back. I do not think he survived.”

“I see.” Rovero seemed strangely troubled.

“Is there anything else, excellency?” Galliardo asked timidly.

The admiral stared at him. “No. Thank you, Ponero. You may go.”

Galliardo rose and bowed. As he left the room and negotiated his way through the dark maze that was the interior of Admiral’s Tower, sharply lit memories came to his mind, pictures from what seemed another age. A hot, vibrant Abrusio with a thousand ships at her wharves and the men of a hundred different countries mixed in her streets. The Gabrian Osprey and the Grace of God sailing out of the bay on the ebb tide, proud ships plunging into the unknown.

As he came out into the cold grey day of the winter city, Galliardo whispered a swift prayer to Ran the God of Storms, the old deity many seamen sought to placate when they were a thousand miles from land or priest or hope of harbour. He prayed briefly for the souls of Richard Hawkwood and his crews, surely gone to their long wave-tossed rest at last.