The Iron Wars

FOURTEEN

They met him with a salvo of guns, Torunn’s walls erupting in smoke and flame as the army came into view over the horizon. The exhausted men lifted their heads at the sound, and saw a thousand-strong guard of honour in rank on rank waiting to welcome them into the city. Corfe reined in, bemused, to regard the spectacle as his enlarged command continued to trudge past him. Torunnan sword-and-buckler men, arquebusiers and Fimbrian pikemen. His own Cathed-rallers out on the wings and bringing up the rear.

Marsch and Ebro joined him.

“Why do they fire guns at us?” Marsch wanted to know. “Is it a warning?”

“It’s a salute,” Ebro informed him. “They’re honouring us.”

“About time someone did,” another voice said as a fourth horseman joined them. This was Colonel Ranafast, the only officer of any rank to have survived from the dyke garrison. He was an emaciated-looking hawkish man who had commanded the dyke’s cavalry, only a score of which were now left to him. He had known Corfe as an obscure ensign, Martellus’s aide, but he showed no resentment at his former subordinate’s elevation.

The streets of the capital were lined with people. Corfe could hear their cheers from here, a mile away. They had turned out the populace to welcome his men. For their sake, he was glad of it-their morale needed the boost-but for himself, he would sooner have curled up in a cloak and stolen some sleep out here in the mud. He knew that the pantomimes would begin again the moment he was in the capital, and his soul was sick at the thought.

“Riders approaching,” Marsch said. “It is Andruw, I think. Yes, that is him. I know that smile of his.”

Andruw halted before them, breathing hard, and threw Corfe a salute.

“Greetings, General. I have orders to show you and your officers to a special set of quarters in the palace. There’s to be a banquet tonight in your honour.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Andruw?” Corfe demanded. “And what is this general horseshit?”

“It’s not a jest, Corfe. The Queen Dowager swung it for you. You’re now commander of this lot.” Andruw gestured at the long muddy column of men that was marching past. “She’s a wonder, that woman. Remind me never to cross her. Bearded Lofantyr in his own council chamber, bold as you please. What a king she’d have made, had she been born a man!”

General. He had not really believed she would do it. General of a half-wrecked army. He could take little joy in it. A certain grim satisfaction perhaps, but that was all.

The Fimbrians were marching past now, and one detached himself to salute the group of riders.

“Colonel Corfe?” Formio, the Fimbrian adjutant, asked.

“General now, by the Saint!” Andruw chortled.

“Shut up, Andruw. Yes?”

“Are we to enter the city with your men? I shall understand if political ramifications dictate otherwise.”

“What? No, by God, you’ll march in along with the rest of us. I’ll find quarters for every last one of you, in the palace itself if needs be. And if they refuse us, I’ll damn well sack the place.”

The men around Corfe fell silent. His anger subdued them. He had been like this ever since the battle.

“My thanks, General. And my congratulations on your promotion.”

“What do you intend to do, Formio? You and your men.”

“That is for you to decide.”

“I don’t follow you.”

“The marshal’s last order was to put ourselves at your disposal. Until I hear differently from the electorates, we are under your personal orders, not those of the Torunnan Crown. Good day, General.” And the Fimbrian resumed his place in the long disciplined column of pikemen.

“A good man,” Marsch said approvingly. “These Fimbrians know their trade. It will be a fine thing to fight beside them again. They are strangely ignorant of horses, however.”

“Corfe,” Andruw said, “they’re waiting for you down there. The Queen Dowager set this up: the salute, the triumphal entry, everything. If the population get behind you, then the King himself cannot touch you. It’s all part of the game.”

Corfe smiled at last. “A great game. Is that what it is? All right, Andruw, lead on. I’ll wave and grin and look general-like, but at the end of it I want a bath, a flagon of good wine and a bed.”

“Preferably with something in it,” Ranafast said, with feeling.

At that, the group crackled with laughter, and they followed the marching line of their army down to the cheering crowds that awaited them.

The celebratory nature of it stuck in Corfe’s throat, though. The banquet that evening was attended by a mere six hundred guests-officers of the Torunnan army and their ladies, the nobility, rich men of no rank but with bottomless purses. It swept over him in a haze of candlelight and laughter. The wine was running freely, and the courses came and went in a blur of liveried attendants and silver trays. His own stomach was closed, and he was desperately tired, so he drank glass after glass of wine-the finest Gaderian-and sat in his court dress with the new silver general’s braid at his shoulders.

It was a hollow feast. The King was not present, having pleaded some indisposition-hardly surprisingly-but Corfe sat at the right hand of the Queen Dowager as she managed small-talk with their neighbours and contrived to make Corfe feel part of conversations he contributed no word to. Everyone seemed intent on becoming roaring drunk and the din of the massed diners was unbelievable, though Corfe’s own ears were still ringing from the thunder of the North More battle. His ribs, too, ached from the sword blow they had taken during the fighting.

Andruw was in tearing spirits, flirting outrageously with two pretty duke’s daughters who sat opposite, and tossing back the good wine like a man unaware of what he was doing. Marsch was there also, utterly ill-at-ease and answering everyone in monosyllables. He seemed staring sober, though the sweat was streaming down his face and he had tugged his lace collar awry. Two seats down from him was Ensign Ebro, who was already drunk and leering and regaling his neighbours with gory tales of slaughtering Merduks. And the Fimbrian, Formio, sat like a mourner at a wake, drinking water, being carefully polite. The diners around him-a bluff Torunnan staff officer and a minor noble and their wives-were obviously plying him with questions. He did not seem particularly responsive. His eyes met Corfe’s, and he nodded unsmilingly.

Martellus and the greater part of the Ormann Dyke garrison, the finest army left to the country, lay dead and unburied to the north. The wolves would be feasting on their bodies, a mid-winter windfall. Laid beside them, close as brothers, were three thousand of Formio’s countrymen and his commander. And the city celebrated as though a victory had been won, a crisis averted. Corfe had never felt such a fraud in his life. But he was not an idealistic fool. Once he might have torn off this general’s braid and raged at the crowd. Before Aekir, perhaps. But now he knew better. He had rank and he would use it. And he had a command with which something might yet be accomplished.

He thought he fathomed the frenzied gaiety of the assembled diners. It was a last fling, a defiance of the gathering dark. He had seen its like before. In Aekir, as the Merduks began to surround the city, many noblemen had staged banquets such as this, and seen out the night in torrents of wine, processions of dancing girls. And in the morning they had taken up their stations on the walls. What had Corfe done, the day the siege began? Oh, yes. That night was the last time he had slept in the same bed as his wife. The last time he had made love to her. After that there was no more time left. She had brought him his meals as he paced the battlements, snatched previous minutes with him. Until the end.

“You’re drunk, Corfe!” Andruw cried gaily. “Lady”-this to the Queen Dowager-“you’d best keep one eye on the general. I know his fondness for wine.”

He was indeed drunk. Silent, brooding drunk. There was no joy left for him in wine; it merely brought the pain of the past floating in front of his eyes, all new and raw and glistening again. He felt the Queen Dowager’s knee press against his under the table. “Are you all right, General?” she whispered.

“Never better, lady,” he told her. “A fine gathering, indeed. I must thank you for it-for everything.”

He turned his head and met her eyes, those perilous green depths, like sunlight on a shallow sea. So beautiful, and she had done so much for him. Why? What payment would be required of him in the end?

“You must excuse me, lady. I am unwell,” he said thickly.

She did not seem surprised, and clapped her hands for the serving attendants. “The general is taken poorly. See him to his quarters.”

He rid himself of their ministrations as soon as he was out of the hall, and staggered on alone through the dimly lit palace, the sound of the banquet a golden roar behind him. His shoulder brushed the wall as he wove along. It was cold out here after the stuffiness of the close-packed crowd, and his head cleared a little. Why the hell had he drunk such a lot of the damned stuff? There was so much to do tomorrow, no time to nurse a blasted hangover.

His mind was too blurred to hear the soft footfalls behind him.

The parade ground before the palace. He stepped out into the star-bright night and stood looking up at the wheeling glitter of the sky. There were rows of massively designed buildings on both sides of the square, but most of their windows were dark. His men were quartered within, tribesmen and Torunnans and Fimbrians. No revelry there. They were too tired. They had seen too much. He would give them a few days to rest and refit, and then he would have to begin hammering these disparate elements into an organic whole, a close-knit organization.

Footsteps behind him, louder. He turned. “Andruw?”

And saw a dark shape lunging, the quicksilver flash of the knife. He twisted aside, and instead of slashing his throat it sliced open his right shoulder. The pain lit up his mind, burning away the wine fumes. He threw himself backwards as the blade came hissing towards his face, tripped and fell heavily on to his back. His attacker came at him again, and Corfe managed to plant a boot in his midriff and kick him away. He rolled, his cracked ribs screaming at him, his right arm weakening as the blood streamed out black in the starlight. But before he regained his feet another shape appeared. It piled silently into his attacker. There was a flurry of movement, too fast to follow in the darkness, and a grisly crack of bone. A body fell to the cobbles of the parade ground and the newcomer bent over him.

“General, are you much hurt?”

He was helped to his feet, his arm dangling stiff and useless. “Formio! By the Saint, that was timely. Let me have a look at the bastard.”

They dragged the body inside and examined it. It wore a black woollen mask with slits for eyes and nose. Ripping it off they saw the swarthy face below, eyes wide with surprise. An easterner, perhaps Merduk. His neck was broken.

“I’ll see the guard is turned out,” the Fimbrian said. “There may be more of them. This man was a professional.”

“How did you come to be here?” Corfe asked. He felt light-headed with loss of blood and the singing adrenalin of the struggle.

“I followed you. I am not a great lover of formal dinners either, and I wanted to talk…” He trailed off, seeming almost embarrassed.

“Lucky for me. He’d have cut my throat, else. An assassin, by God. The Sultan has a long arm.”

“If it was the Sultan. Not all your enemies are beyond the walls. Come, we need to get that shoulder dressed.”

• • •

The inevitable uproar as the guard turned out and the palace was scoured room by room for other assassins. The Queen Dowager was informed and at once had Corfe conveyed to her personal apartments, but those at the banquet feasted on into the night, unaware of the goings-on.

“I should be at your side permanently,” Odelia told Corfe as the wound in his shoulder closed under her hands and the faint ozone smell of the Dweomer filled the room. “That way you would get into less trouble. Where have you stowed the body?”

“Formio had it thrown into the river.”

“A pity. I should like to have examined it. A Merduk, you say?”

“An easterner of some sort or other. Lady, I wish we had a dozen folk with your skills in the army. Our wounded would bless their names.” Corfe moved his right arm experimentally and found it slightly stiff, but otherwise hale. A tiny scar remained, that was all, though the assassin’s knife had laid bare the bone.

“You would have trouble finding them,” she said. “The Dweomer-folk grow fewer every year. It is a decade since we even had a true mage at court here in Torunna. Golophin of Hebrion is the only one I know of who remains in the public eye. The rest have gone into hiding.”

“But not you.”

“I am a queen. Allowances are made for my… eccentricities.” She kissed him on the lips and when she drew back he saw to his surprise that the amazing eyes were alight with tears which would not fall.

“Was it the Sultan’s doing, you think?” he asked gruffly, looking away.

“Who is to know? The assassins are killers for hire, for all that they come from the east. Their employers can be Merduk or Ramusian. They must only be rich.”

“As rich as a king, perhaps?”

“Perhaps. The world is a dangerous place for those whose star is on the rise. There are men in this country who would see it in ashes ere they would let a commoner save it.”

“John Mogen was of low birth.”

“Yes. Yes, he was. And he never let anyone forget it!” She smiled.

“You knew him well?”

“I knew him. You might say I sponsored him in much the same way as I am sponsoring you.”

“So that is your role in the world. The raising up of generals.”

“The redemption of this kingdom,” she corrected him shortly, “by any means available.”

“I am glad to have it explained to me,” he said, with a terseness to match hers.

She rose to go. “I am a woman as well as a queen, though, Corfe. I sought military brilliance, and I found it. I do not seek to love or be loved, if that is what is worrying you.”

“I am relieved to hear it,” he said. And he cursed himself as she left the room with the hurt plain to see on her face.