The Iron Wars

TWENTY-TWO

Aurungzeb had not ridden a horse any distance for longer than he cared to admit. His thighs were chafing and his buttocks felt like a pair of purple bruises. But he sat straight in the saddle, mindful of his station, and ignored the snow which was thickening in his beard.

“Blood of the Prophet!” he exclaimed, exasperated. “Can’t they move any faster?”

Shahr Harran, his second khedive, sat a horse with more obvious ease beside him. “It takes time, Highness, to get an army on the march. These things always appear slow at first, but the Torunnans will be embroiled for hours yet. Our scouts report that they are fighting square in the midst of the Minhraib camp-they have their heavy cavalry engaged right among the tents, the fools. They will not escape us, never fear. And their left flank is still unguarded.”

“What of those damned red-armoured horsemen everyone is so terrified of? Where are they?”

“To the enemy rear, my Sultan, in reserve. And they number scarcely a thousand. We are sending in twenty thousand Nalbenic horse-archers on their left and Shahr Johor should be assaulting their right with the Ferinai any time now. The Torunnans cannot escape. We will destroy their army utterly, and it is the last field army their kingdom can possibly muster.”

“Oh, hold the damn thing straight, can’t you?” the Sultan barked. This to the unfortunates who were striving to shield their lord from the spitting snow with a huge parasol, but the wind was wagging it like a kite above Aurungzeb’s head. “I am sure you are right, Shahr Harran; it is just that lately I have had my khedives assure me of Torunnan annihilation many times, and always the accursed Ramusians seem to be able to salvage their armies with some last-minute trick. It must not happen this time.”

“It will not. It cannot,” Shahr Harran assured him.

The two riders were surrounded by hundreds of others in silvered mail-the Sultan’s personal bodyguard. Beyond them a steady stream of lightly armoured cavalry trotted past endlessly. These were unarmoured, though well wrapped up against the cold. Their horses were light, high-stepping, delicate-looking creatures built for speed. The riders were dark men as fine boned as their steeds, armed with bows and with quivers of black-fletched arrows hanging from their pommels.

“Where is my intrepid infidel?” Aurungzeb asked in a lighter tone. “I must hear what he thinks of this array.”

A small, dark figure on a mule rode to Aurungzeb’s side. He was dressed in the habit of a Ramusian monk and his face was hideously disfigured.

“Sultan?”

“Ah, priest. How does it feel to look upon the might of Ostrabar, and know it shall soon accomplish the spiritual liberation of your benighted nation? Spreak freely. I value the nonsense you spout. It reminds me how hopelessly misled you Ramusians are.”

Albrec smiled strangely. “Not only the Ramusians, Sultan, but your own people too. Both peoples worship the same God and venerate the same man as his messenger. It is the pity of the world that you war on each other over an ancient misunderstanding. A lie. One day both Merduk and Ramusian will have to come to terms with this.”

“Why you arrogant little-” Shahr Harran sputtered, but Aurungzeb held up a hand that flashed with rings.

“Now, Khedive, this maniac came to us in good faith, to show us the error of our ways. He is as good a jester as I have ever had.” The Sultan laughed loudly. “Priest, you have spirit. It is a shame you are mad. Keep up your insane pronouncements and you may even live to see the spring, if you do not endeavour to escape first.” And he laughed again.

Albrec bowed in the saddle. His feet had been lashed to his stirrups and the mule was connected by a leading rein to a nearby warrior’s destrier. Escape was a possibility so remote as to be laughable. But he did not want to escape. He would not have chosen to be anywhere else. His ravaged face was impassive as he watched the mighty army that coursed endlessly past-and this, he had learned, was only one third of the whole, and not the greatest third at that. His heart twisted in his breast at the thought of the slaughter that would soon begin. Torunna could never hope to win this awful war through force of arms alone. His mission among the Merduks was more important than ever.

They had beaten him, the night he staggered into their camp on the wings of the storm, and he had almost been slain out of hand. But some officer had been intrigued by his appearance, thinking him perhaps a turncoat who might have useful information, and he had been sent to the Sultan’s camp, and beaten again. At last the Sultan himself had been curious to see this strange traveller. Aurungzeb spoke Normannic well enough to need no interpreter. Albrec wondered who had taught him-some captured Ramusian or other, he supposed. The Sultan had been first astonished and then intensely amused when Albrec had told him of his mission: to convince the Merduk peoples that their Prophet was one and the same as the Ramusian’s Blessed Saint. He had called in a pair of Mullahs-learned Merduk clerics-and Albrec had debated with them all night, leaving them as astonished as the Sultan. For Albrec had read every scrap he could find about the Merduks and their history, both at Charibon and then in the smaller library in Torunn. He knew Aurungzeb’s pedigree and clan history better than the Sultan did himself, and the monarch had been oddly flattered by the knowledge. He had kept Albrec in light chains in the Royal pavilion, for all the world like a performing bear, and when the army’s officers assembled for conferences, Albrec had been there and was told to stand up and do his party piece for the amusement of his captors.

Many of the men he had spoken before had not been amused, however. What the Sultan considered a diverting madman, others deemed a blasphemer worthy of a lingering death. And still others said nothing, but looked troubled and confused as Albrec told of the Blessed Ramusio’s coming into the eastern lands beyond the Jafrar, his teachings, his transformation into the Prophet who had enlightened the eastern tribes and brought to an end their petty internecine warfare, moulding them into the mighty hosts which threatened the world today.

There had been a woman present on one of these occasions, one of the Sultan’s wives, dressed as richly as a queen, veiled, silent. Her eyes had never left Albrec’s face as the little monk had gone through his sermon. The light-coloured eyes of a westerner. There was a despair in them, a sense of loss which wrenched at his heart. He seemed to remember seeing the same look in someone else’s eyes once, but he could not for the life of him remember whose.

The distant roar of battle jerked his mind back to the present. The Sultan was talking to him again.

“So do you know who this general is who leads these red-clad horsemen, priest? My spies tell me nothing of use. I know that the Torunnan King is no phoenix, and his High Command are a bunch of old women, and yet against all expectations they have come out to fight us. Someone among them is a true warrior at least.”

“I know little more than you, Sultan. I have met this general you speak of, though.”

Aurungzeb twisted in the saddle, eyes alight with interest. “You have? What manner of man is he?”

“It was a brief meeting. He is-” Suddenly Albrec remembered. That look he had seen in a woman’s eyes, above a veil. Now he knew who it reminded him of. “He is a singular man. There is a sadness to him, I think.” He recalled the hard grey eyes of the officer named Corfe he had encountered outside Torunn, the line of scarlet, barbaric cavalry behind him, passing by like something out of legend.

“A sadness! What a fellow you are, priest. By all accounts he is their best general since Mogen, and a raging fury in the saddle. I should like to meet him. Perhaps I will order him to be kept alive after we have broken his army.” And Aurungzeb chuckled to himself. “Listen to me! I am becoming like Shahr Baraz, chivalrous towards enemies.”

“Magnanimity becomes a great ruler, Sultan,” Albrec told him. “Only lesser men indulge their cruelty.”

“What is that, one of your Saint’s platitudes?”

“No. It is a saying of your Prophet.”

Another courier, the snow freezing on his shoulders and matting his horse’s mane. “I come from Marsch,” he said, and pointed westwards to reinforce the statement.

“Well?” Corfe demanded.

“Many, many horsemen coming. Small horses, men with bows.”

“How many? How far?”

The courier wrinkled his tattoed face. “Marsch tell me,” he said, “as many as the King’s army, or more, coming from the north-west. In one hour they will be here.” His face relaxed. He was obviously relieved to have got it out without mishap.

“Men with bows,” Andruw said thoughtfully. “Horse-archers. That’ll be the Nalbenic contingent. And if they have as many as the King commands…”

“Eighteen, twenty thousand,” Corfe said tonelessly.

“Damn it, Corfe, we’re finished then. Menin and the King have started to reorganize down in the camp, but there’s no way they can get their men out in an hour.”

“Then we’ll have to take them on ourselves,” Corfe said flatly.

Andruw managed a rueful grin. “I know we’re good at beating the odds, but don’t you think we’re pushing what luck we have left? We don’t even have the Fimbrians now. Just the Cathedrallers and Ranafast’s men. Six thousand.”

“We’ve no choice. They have to be thrown back before they can come in on our left. If they do that, the entire army will be surrounded.”

“How?” Andruw asked simply.

Corfe kicked his mount forward a few yards. He had learned many things about the nature of war in the last few months. It was like any other field of human endeavour: often appearance was as important as reality. And guile more important than brute strength.

Charge horse-archers with his heavy cavalry? Suicide. The enemy would simply fall back, shooting as they retreated. They would wear his men down with arrow fire and never let them come to grips. He had to pin them in place somehow, and then hit them hard at close quarters where the weight and armour of his men would make up for their lack of numbers. Fight fire with fire, he realized. Fire with fire. And he had five thousand veteran arquebusiers from Ormann Dyke under his command.

He scanned the huge battlefield before him. Down in the wreckage of the Minhraib camp the fighting was still going on, but it seemed to have abated somewhat. Both armies were trying to reorganize and he could see crowds of Torunnan troops being dressed back into disciplined lines. Fully half the tents in the vast camp seemed to have been flattened, and fires were burning everywhere, smoke hanging in great sodden grey banks. Beyond the camp, the Minhraib survivors had almost completed their own rebuilt battle-line. They would counter-attack soon. But that was not his problem right now. One thing at a time.

Over to the east, Aras and the Fimbrians were struggling to contain the Merduk flanking column. Formio had mingled his pikemen with Aras’s arquebusiers and Rosio’s guns. The position was enveloped in a pall of smoke which the flickering stabs of gunfire lit up red and yellow, but the westerners were holding. Corfe knew that Formio would not retreat a yard. The right flank was safe, for the time being.

So the left-the left was where disaster loomed most clearly. How to cripple this new threat with the few men he had remaining to him…

It came to him all at once. Guile, not force. And he knew exactly what he had to do. He jerked his horse round to face Andruw.

“We’re moving out. I want Ranafast’s men to lead the way, at the double. Andruw, you take the Cathedrallers off to their left. I’ll explain as we go along.”