The Second Empire

TWENTY-ONE

The final clash between Merduk and Ramusian on the continent of Normannia took place on the nineteenth day of Forialon, in the year of the Saint 552.

The Merduks had a screen of light cavalry out to their front. These Corfe dispersed by sending forward a line of arquebusiers, who brought down half a dozen of the enemy with a swift volley. The rest fled to warn their comrades of the approaching cataclysm. The Torunnan advance continued, lines of skirmishers out to flanks and front, the main body of the infantry sweating and toiling to maintain the brutal pace Corfe had set. The line grew ragged, and sergeants shouted themselves hoarse at the men to keep their dressing, but Corfe was not worried about a few untidy ranks here and there. Speed was the thing. The Merduks had been warned, and would be struggling to redeploy their forces from vulnerable march-column into battle-line. But that would take time, as did all manoevres involving large numbers of men. Had he possessed more cavalry, he might have sent forward a mounted screen of his own, strong enough to wipe out the Merduk pickets and take their main body totally by surprise-but there was no point wishing for the moon. The Cathedrallers had been needed on the flank, and there were simply no more horsemen to be had.

He turned to Cerne, who with seven other tribesmen had remained with him as a sort of unofficial bodyguard.

“Sound me double march.”

The tribesman put his horn to his lips, closed his eyes and blew the intricate yet instantly recognizable call. Up and down the three mile line, other trumpeters took it up. The Torunnans picked up their feet and began to run.

Over a slight rise in the ground they jogged, panting. Corfe cantered ahead of the struggling army, and there it was. Perhaps half a mile away, the mighty Merduk host was halted. Its battlefront was as yet less than a mile wide, but men were sprinting into position on both flanks, striving to lengthen it before the Torunnans struck. Back to the rear of the line, a mad chaos of milling men and guns and elephants and baggage waggons stretched for as far as the eye could see. At a crossroads to the left rear of the Merduk line, the hamlet of Armagedir stood forlornly, swamped by a tide of hell-bent humanity. There were tall banners flying amid the houses. The Merduk khedive seemed to have taken it as his command post.

They had chosen their ground well. The line was set upon a low hill, just enough to blunt the momentum of an infantry charge. There was a narrow row of trees to their rear which some long-dead farmer had planted as a windbreak. Corfe could see a second rank falling into position there. The Merduk khedive had been startled by the unlooked-for appearance of the Torunnans, but he was collecting his wits with commendable speed.

Corfe looked west, to the moorland which rolled featurelessly to the horizon. Andruw was out there somewhere, hunting the Merduk cavalry. It would be a few hours yet before he could be expected to arrive. If he arrived at all, Corfe told himself quickly, as if to forestall bad luck.

The army was running past him now, and his restive horse danced and snorted as the great crowd of men passed by. He thought he could feel the very vibration of those tens of thousands of booted feet through his saddle. He heard his name shouted by short-of-breath voices. Equipment rattling, the smell of the match, already lit, the stench of many bodies engaged in hard labour. A distilled essence of men about to plunge into war.

Then the thumping of hooves on the upland turf, and Rusio had reined in beside him accompanied by a gaggle of staff officers.

“We’ve got them, General! We’re going to knock them flying!” he chortled.

“Get your horse batteries out to the front, Rusio. I want them unlimbered and firing before the infantry go in. First rank halts and gives them a volley: the other ranks keep going. You know the drill. See to it!”

Rusio’s grin faded. He saluted and sped off.

Galloping six-horse teams now pulled ahead of the infantry, each towing a six-pounder. The artillery unlimbered with practised speed and their crews began loading frantically. Then the first lanyard was pulled, the first shell went arcing out of a cannon muzzle-you could actually follow it if you possessed quick eyes-and crashed into scarlet ruin in the ranks of the deploying Murduks. A damn good shot, even at such close range. The cannon barrels were depressed almost to the horizontal, so close were the gunners to the enemy.

Twenty-four guns were deployed now, and they began barking out in sequence, the heavy weapons leaping back as they went off. Those gunners knew their trade all right, Corfe thought approvingly.

Some of the first salvo was long; instead of hitting the Merduk front line it landed in the rear elements, sowing chaos and slaughter-but that was just as good. The gunners had orders to elevate their pieces to maximum once their own infantry passed them by, and keep lobbing shells on an arc into the Merduk rear. That would disrupt the arrivall of any reinforcements.

Four salvoes, and then the infantry was running past the guns. They were in a line a league long and four ranks deep, a frontage of one yard per man-and despite his quip the night before, Corfe had kept back some three thousand veterans as a last-ditch reserve, in case disaster struck somewhere. These three thousand were in field-column, and formed up beside him as he sat his horse surrounded by his bodyguard and a dozen couriers.

The first Torunnan rank halted, brought their arquebuses into the shoulder, and then fired. Six thousand weapons going off at once. Corfe heard the tearing crackle of it a second after he had watched the smoke billow out of the line. The enemy host was virtually hidden by a cliff of grey-white fumes. The other three Torunnan lines charged through the first and disappeared into the reek of powder-smoke, a formless roar issuing from their throats as they went. It would be like a vision of hell in there as they came to close quarters with the enemy.

That was it: the army was committed, and had caught the Merduks before they had properly deployed. The first part of his plan had worked.

Andruw reined in his horse and held up a hand. Behind him the long column of men halted. He turned to Ebro. “Hear that?”

They listened. “Artillery,” Ebro said. “They’re engaged.”

“Damn, that was quick.” Andruw frowned. “Trumpeter, sound battle-line. Morin, take a squadron out to the north. Find me these bastards, and find them quick.”

“It shall be so.” The tribesman grinned. He shouted in Cimbric, and a group of Cathedrallers peeled off and pelted away after him northwards.

“We should have run across them by now,” Andruw fretted. “What are they doing, hiding down rabbit holes? They must be making slower time than we’d thought. Courier, to me.”

A young ensign pranced up, unarmoured and mounted on a long-limbed gelding. His eyes were bright as those of an excited child. “Sir!”

“Go to General Cear-Inaf. Tell him we still have not located the enemy cavalry, and our arrivall on the battlefield may be delayed. Ask him if our orders stand. And make it quick!”

The courier saluted smartly and galloped off, clods of turf flying in the wake of his eager horse.

“Twenty-five thousand horsemen,” Andruw said irritably. “And we can’t find hide nor hair of them.”

“They’ll turn up,” Ebro said confidently. Andruw glared at him, and realised how easy it was to be confident when there was a superior around to make the hardest decisions. Then, “Hear that?” he said again.

Arquebus fire, a rolling clatter of it to the south of them.

“The infantry has got stuck in,” he said. “That’s it-they can’t break off now. They’re in it up to their ears. Where the hell is that damned enemy cavalry?”

Corfe sat his horse and watched the battle rage before him like some awesome spectacle laid on for his entertainment. He hated this-watching men dying from a distance with his sword still in its scabbard. It was one of the burdens of high rank he thought he would never get used to.

What would he be doing if he were the Merduk khedive? The first instinct would be to shore up the sagging line. The Torunnans had pushed it clear back to the row of trees, but there the Merduks seemed to have rallied, as men often will about some linear feature in the terrain. Their losses had been horrific in those first few minutes of carnage, but they had the numbers to absorb them. No-if the khedive was second-rate he would send reinforcements to the line; but if he were any good, he would tell the men there to hang on, and send fresh regiments out on the flanks, seeking to encircle the outnumbered Torunnans. But which flank? He had his cavalry out on his right somewhere, so the odds were it would be the left. Yes, he would build up on his left flank.

Corfe turned to the waiting veterans who stood leaning their elbows on their gun rests and watching.

“Colonel Passifal!”

The white-haired quartermaster saluted. “Sir?”

“Take your command out on our right, double-quick. Don’t commit them until you see the enemy feeling around the end of our line. When you do, hit them hard, but don’t join our centre. Keep your men mobile. Do you understand?”

“Aye, sir. You reckon that’s where they’ll strike next?”

“It’s what I would do. Good luck, Passifal.”

The unearthly din of a great battle. Unless it had been experienced, it was impossible to describe. Heavy guns, small arms, men shouting to encourage themselves or intimidate others. Men screaming in agony-a noise unlike any other. It coalesced into a stupendous barrage of sound which stressed the senses to the point of overload. And when one was in the middle of it-right in the belly of that murderous madness-it could invade the mind, spurring men on to inexplicable heroism or craven cowardice. Laying bare the very core of the soul. Until it had been experienced, no man could predict how he would react to it.

Passifal’s troops doubling off, a dark stain on the land. En masse, soldiers seen from a distance looked like nothing so much as some huge, bristling caterpillar slithering over the face of the earth. Men in the centre of a formation like that would see nothing but the back of the man in front of them. They would be treading on heels, cursing, praying, the sweat stinging their eyes. The heroic balladeers knew nothing of real war, not as it was waged in this age of the world. It was a job of work: sheer hard drudgery punctuated by brief episodes of unbelievable violence and abject terror.

There! Corfe felt a moment of intense satisfaction as fresh Merduk regiments arrived to extend the line on the right, just as he had thought they would. They were getting into position when Passifal’s column slammed into them, all the weight of that tight-packed body of men. The Merduks were sent flying, transformed from a military formation into a mob in the time it took for a man to peel an apple. Passifal re-formed his own men into a supported battle-line, and they began firing, breaking up attempts by the enemy to rally. He might be a quartermaster, but he still knew his trade.

Corfe looked back at the centre. Hard to make out what was going on in there, but Rusio still seemed to be advancing. That was the thing: to keep the pressure on, to deny the enemy time to think. So far it was working well. But men can only fight for so long.

He turned his face towards the deserted moors in the north. Where was Andruw? What was going on out there?

“I find them, Ondruw! I find them!” Morin crowed, his horse blowing and fuming under him, sides dank with sweat.

“Where?”

Morin struggled to think in Torunnan units of distance. “One and a part of a league east of here, in long-” He grasped for the word, face screwed up in concentration.

“Line? Like we are now?”

The tribesman shook his head furiously.

“Column, Morin, are they in column, like along a road?”

Morin’s face cleared. “Column-that is the word. But they have their Ferinai out to front, in-in line. And they have men on foot, infantry, coming behind.”

Formio came trotting up on his long-suffering mare. He had taken to horseback for the sake of speed, but he clearly did not relish it any more than she did. “What’s afoot, Andruw?”

“Morin sighted them, thank God,” Andruw breathed. “That was good work. Spread the word, Formio. We’re going to pitch into ’em as we are. Cathedrallers on the right, Fimbrians in the middle, Ranafast’s lads to the rear.” Then he hesitated. “Morin, did you say infantry?”

“Yes, men on foot with guns. Behind the horsemen.”

Formio’s face remained impassive, but he rode up close to Andruw and spoke into his ear. “No-one said anything about infantry. I thought it was just cavalry we were facing.”

“It’s probably just a baggage guard or suchlike. No need to worry about them. The main thing is, we’ve located them at last. If I have to, I’ll face the arquebusiers about and we’ll make a big square. Let them try charging Fimbrian pike and Torunnan shot, and see where it gets them.”

Formio stared at him for a moment, and then nodded. “I see what you mean. But we have to destroy them, not just hold our own.”

It was Andruw’s turn to pause. “All right. I’ll hold the Cathedrallers back. When the time is ready, they’ll charge and roll them up. We’ll hammer them, Formio, don’t worry.”

“Very well then. Let’s hammer them.” But Formio looked troubled.

The army redeployed towards the east. The Fimbrians led the advance while the Cathedrallers covered the flanks and the Torunnan arquebusiers brought up the rear. Just over seven and a half thousand men in all, they could hear the distant clamour of the battle rageing around Armagedir and marched over the upland moors with a will, eager to come to grips with the foe.

Thirty-five thousand Merduk troops awaited them.

Back at Armagedir, the morning was wearing away and the Torunnan advance had stalled. Rusio’s men had been halted in their tracks by sheer weight of enemy numbers. The line of trees had changed hands half a dozen times in the last hour and was thick with the dead of both armies. The battle here was fast degenerating into a bloody stalemate, and unlike the Merduk khedive, Corfe did not have fresh troops to feed into the grinder. He could hold his own for another hour, perhaps even two, but at the end of that time the army would be exhausted. And the Merduk khedive had fully one third of his own forces as yet uncommitted to the battle. They were forming up behind Armagedir, molested only by stray rounds from the Torunnan artillery. Something had to be done, or those thirty thousand fresh troops would be coming around Corfe’s flank in the next half-hour.

Where the hell was Andruw? He ought to at least be on his way by now.

Corfe made up his mind and called over a courier. He scribbled out a message while giving it verbally at the same time.

“Go to the artillery commander, Nonius. Have him limber up his guns and move them forward into our own battle-line. He is to unlimber there in the middle of our infantry and give the enemy every charge of canister he possesses. When that happens, Rusio is to advance. He is to push forward to the crossroads and take Armagedir. Repeat it.”

The courier did so, white-faced.

“Good. Take this note to Nonius first, and then to General Rusio. Tell Rusio that Passifal’s men will support his right flank. He is to break the Merduk line. Do you hear me? He is to break it. Here. Now go.”

The courier seized the note and took off at a tearing gallop.

Something had happened to Andruw, out in the moors. Corfe could feel it. Something had gone wrong.

Then another courier thundered in, this one’s horse about to founder under him. He had come from the north. Corfe’s heart leapt.

“Compliments of Colonel Cear-Adurhal sir,” the man gasped. “He has still not found the enemy. Wants to know if his orders stand.”

“How long ago did you leave him?” Corfe asked sharply.

“An hour, maybe. No sign of the enemy out there, sir.”

“God’s blood,” Corfe hissed. What was going on?

“Tell him to keep looking. No-wait. It’ll take you an hour to get back to him. If he hasn’t found anything by then, he’s to come here and attack the Merduk right. Throw in everything he’s got.”

“Everything he’s got. Yes, sir.”

“Get yourself a fresh horse and get going.”

Corfe tried to shake off the apprehension that was flooding through him. He kicked his horse into motion and cantered southwards, to where Passifal’s men were standing ready out on the right. They were the only reserve he had, and he was about to throw them into the battle. He could think of nothing else to do.

Andruw’s command charged full-tilt into the enemy with a shouted roar that seemed to flatten the very grass. The Ferinai, the elite of Merduk armies, came to meet them, eight thousand men on heavy horses dressed in armour identical to that worn by the Cathedrallers. And the tribesmen spurred their own mounts into a headlong gallop, drawing ahead of the Fimbrians and Torunnans.

There was a tangible shock as the two bodies of cavalry met. Horses were shrieking, some knocked clear off their feet by the impact. Men were thrown through the air to be trampled by the huge horde of milling beasts. Lances snapped off and swords were drawn. There was a rising clatter, like a preternatural blacksmith’s shop gone wild, as troopers of both sides hammered at their steel-clad adversaries. The struggle became a thousand little hand-to-hand combats as the formations ground to a halt and a fierce melee developed. The Cathedrallers were pushed back, hopelessly outnumbered though fighting like maniacs. But then the Fimbrians came up, their pike-points levelled. They smashed a swathe through the halted enemy cavalry, their flanks and rear protected by Ranafast’s arquebusiers. The combined formation was as compact as a clenched fist, and seemed unstoppable. Andruw led the Cathedrallers back out of the battle-line, and re-formed them in the rear. Many of them were on foot: others had dismounted comrades clinging on behind them or were dragged out by the grasp of a stirrup. Andruw had lost his helmet in the whirling press of men and horses, and seemed infected by a wild gaiety. He joined in the cheer when the Ferinai fell back, their retreat turning into something resembling a rout as the implacable Fimbrians followed up. The plan was working after all.

Then there was a staggering volley of arquebus fire that seemed to go on for ever. The Fimbrians collapsed by the hundred as a storm of bullets mowed them down, clicking through their armour with a sound oddly like hail on a tin roof. They faltered, their front ranks collapsing, men stumbling backwards on their fellows with the heavy bullets blasting chunks out of their bodies, cutting their feet from under them, snapping pike shafts in two. The advance ground to a halt, its furthest limit marked by a tideline of con torted bodies, in places two or three deep.

To the rear of the Ferinai had been a huge host of infantry, ten thousand of them at least. They had lain down in the rough upland grass and the wiry heather, and the retreating Merduk cavalry had passed over them. Then when the pike-men had approached, they had risen to their feet and fired at point-blank range. It was the same tactic Corfe had used on the Nalbenic cavalry in the King’s Battle. Andruw stared at the carnage in the Fimbrian ranks with horror. The Merduks had formed up in five lines, and when one line fired it lay down again so that the one behind it could discharge the next volley. It was continuous, murderous, and the Fimbrians were being decimated.

Andruw struggled to think. What would Corfe do? His own instinct was to lead the Cathedrallers in a wild charge, but that would accomplish nothing. No-something else.

Ranafast cantered up. “Andruw, they’re on our flanks. The bastards have horse-archers on our flanks.”

Andruw tore his eyes away from the death of the Fimbrians to the surrounding hills. Sure enough, massed formations of cavalry were moving to right and left on the high ground about them. In a few minutes his command would be surrounded.

“God Almighty!” he breathed. What could he do? The whole thing was falling to pieces in front of his eyes.

Hard to think in the rising chaos. Ranafast was staring at him expectantly.

“Take your arquebusiers, and keep those horse-archers clear of our flanks and rear. We’re pulling out.”

Ranafast was astonished. “Pulling out? Saint’s blood, Andruw, the Fimbrians are being cut to pieces and the enemy is all over us. How the hell do we pull out? They’ll follow and break us.”

But it was becoming clear in Andruw’s mind now. The initial panic had faded away, leaving calm certainty in its place.

“No, it’ll be all right. Get a courier to Formio. Tell him to get his men the hell out of there as soon as he can. He must break off contact. As he does, I’ll lead the Cathedrallers in. We’ll keep the enemy occupied long enough for you and Formio to shoot your way clear. I’m making you second-in-command now, Ranafast. Get as many of your and Formio’s men out as you can. Take them to Corfe.”

Ranafast was white-faced. “And you? You’ve no chance, Andruw.”

“It’ll take a mounted charge to make an impact in there. Besides, the Fimbrians are spent, and your lot are needed to keep the horse-archers at bay. It’ll have to be the tribesmen.”

“Let me lead them in,” Ranafast pleaded.

“No, it’s on my head, all this mess. I must do what I can to remedy it. Get back to Corfe, for God’s sake. Leave another rearguard on the way if you have to, but get there with as many as you can and pile into the enemy flank. He can’t hold them unless you do.”

They shook hands. “What shall I tell him?” Ranafast asked.

“Tell him… Tell him he made a cavalryman out of me at last. Goodbye, Ranafast.”

Andruw spun his horse around and galloped off to join the Cathedrallers. Ranafast watched him go, one lone figure in the middle of that murderous turmoil. Then he collected himself and started bellowing orders at his own officers.

The Fimbrians withdrew, crouching like men bent against a rainstorm, their pikes bristling impotently. As they did, the Hraibadar arquebusiers confronting them gave a great shout, elated at having made a Fimbrian phalanx retreat. They began to edge forward, first in ones and twos, then by companies and tercios, gathering courage as they became convinced that the enemy retreat was not a feint. Their carefully dressed lines became mixed up, and they began firing at will instead of in organised volleys.

An awesome thunder of hooves, and then the Cathedrallers appeared on one flank: a great mass of them at full, reckless gallop, the tribesmen singing their shrill battle-paean. Andruw was at their head, yelling with the best of them. The Hraibadar ranks seemed to give a visible shiver, like the twitch of a horse under a fly, just at the moment of impact.

And the heavy cavalry plunged straight into them. Fifteen hundred horsemen at top speed. Ranafast watched them strike from his position in the middle of the dyke veterans. The Hraibadar line buckled and broke. He saw one massive warhorse turn end over end through the air. Its fellows trampled the enemy infantry as though they were corn. He felt a surge of hope. By God, Andruw was going to do it. He was going to make it.

But there were ten thousand of the Hraibadar, and while the tribesmen had sent reeling fully one third of the Merduk regiments, the remainder were pulling back in good order, redeploying for a counter-attack. The success of the charge was temporary only, as Andruw had known it would be. But it had opened a gap in the encirclement, a gap that Ranafast’s own men were widening, blasting well-aimed volleys into the harassing horse-archers. The Fimbrians had completely disengaged now, and were surrounded by Torunnan arquebusiers. The formation resembled nothing so much as a great densely packed square. Lucky the enemy had no artillery-the massed ranks would have made a perfect target. Ranafast bellowed the order, and the square began to move southwards, towards Armagedir, sweeping the Nalbenic light cavalry out of its way as a rhino might toss aside a troublesome terrier. Behind it, the Cathedrallers fought on in a mire of slaughter, surrounded now, but battling on without hope or quarter.

A knot of Fimbrians were carrying something towards Ranafast. A body. The Torunnan dismounted as they approached. It was Formio. He had been shot in the shoulder and stomach and his lips were blue, but his eyes were unclouded.

“We’ve broken free,” he said. There was blood on his teeth. “I suggest we counter-attack, Ranafast. Andruw-”

“Andruw’s orders were to keep going and to join Corfe,” Ranafast said, his voice harsh as that of an old raven. Not Formio too.

“I intend to obey him. There is nothing we can do for the tribesmen now. We must make the most of the time they’ve bought us.”

Formio stared at him, then bent forward and coughed up a gout of dark gore which splashed his punctured breastplate. Some inhuman reserve of strength enabled him to straighten again in the arms of his men and look the Torunnan in the eye.

“We can’t-”

“We must, Formio,” Ranafast said gently. “Corfe is fighting the main battle; this is only a sideshow. We must.”

Formio closed his eyes, nodded silently. One of his men wiped the blood from his mouth, then looked up.

“He’s almost gone, Colonel.” The Fimbrian’s visage was a set mask.

“Bring him with us. I won’t leave him here to become carrion.” Then Ranafast turned away, his own face a bitter gnarl of grief.

The Torunnan infantry had lunged forward once more, clawing for the ground under them yard by bloody yard. Rusio’s troops now occupied the line of trees which had been the rallying point for the enemy. Out on the left, Aras had his standard planted in the hamlet of Armagedir itself, and fifteen tercios had grouped themselves around it and were holding against twenty times their number. The thatch on the roofs of the houses there was burning, so that all Corfe could glimpse were minute red flashes of gunfire crackling in clusters and lines, sometimes the glint of armour through the dense smoke.

Nonius was moving his guns forward with the infantry, but it was slow work. Many of the horses had been killed, and the gunners were manhandling the heavy pieces over broken ground that was strewn with corpses. The Merduk artillery was still embroiled in the hopeless tangle of men and equipment which backed up on the Western Road for fully five miles to their rear.

The insane roar of the battle went on without pause, a barrage of the very senses. Along a three-mile stretch of upland moor the two opposing lines of close-packed men strove to annihilate one another. They fought for possession of a line of trees, a burnt-out cluster of houses, a muddy stretch of road. Every little feature in the terrain took on a great significance when men struggled to kill each other upon it. Untold thousands littered the field of battle already, and thousands more had become pitiful maimed wrecks of humanity that swore and screamed and tried to drag themselves out of the holocaust.

Over on the right, Passifal had fully committed his men to the line. That was it-the bottom of the barrel. Corfe had nothing left to throw into the contest. And on the Merduk right, opposite Aras’s hard-pressed tercios, the enemy was massing for a counter-attack. When the Merduk general was ready he would launch some thirty thousand fresh men into the battle there, and it would all be over.

Strangely, Corfe found the knowledge almost liberating. It was finished at last. He had done his best, and it had not been good enough, but at least now there was nothing more to worry about. Something had happened to Andruw, that was clear. The last two couriers that Corfe had sent out seemed to have been swallowed up by the very hills. It was as though all those men had simply disappeared.

There. Large formations moving through the smoke, pointed towards Armagedir. The Merduk general had finally launched the counter-attack. Aras was about to be crushed. Corfe looked about himself. He had with him his eight Cathedraller bodyguards, and another ten youthful ensigns who acted as aides and couriers. Not much of a reinforcement, but better than nothing.

He turned to one of the young officers.

“Arian, go to General Rusio. Tell him he is to hold the line at all hazards, and if he deems it practicable he is to advance. Tell him I am joining Colonel Aras’s men. They are about to be hit by the enemy counter-attack. Go now.”

The young officer saluted smartly and galloped off. Corfe watched him go, wondering if he had ever been that earnest. He missed his friends. He missed Andruw and Formio. Marsch and the Cathedrallers. It was not the same, fighting without them. And he realised with a flash of insight or intuition that it would never be the same again. That time was over.

Corfe kicked his horse savagely in the belly and it half reared. He did not fear death, he feared failure. And he had failed. There was nothing more to be afraid of.

He drew Mogen’s sword for the first time that day and turned to Cerne, his trumpeter. “Follow me.”

Then the group of riders took off after him as he rode full tilt up the hillside, into the smoking hell of Armagedir.

Hundreds of men lay wounded to the rear of the line here, making it hard for the horses to pick their way over them. The fuming roar of the battle was unbelievable, astonishing. Corfe had never before known its like, not even in the more furious assaults upon Ormann Dyke. It was as though both armies knew that this was the deciding contest of the century-old war. For one side complete victory beckoned, for the other annihilation. The Torunnans would not retreat because, like Corfe, they had ceased to be afraid of anything except the consequences of failure. So they died where they stood, fighting it out with gunstocks and sabres when their ammunition ran out, struggling like savages with anything that came to hand, even the very stones at their feet. They were dying hard, and for the first time in a long while Corfe felt proud to be one of them.

His party dismounted as they approached the ruins of the hamlet around which Aras’s men had made their stand. The ground was too choked with bodies for the horses to be ridden further, and even the war-hardened destriers were becoming terrified by the din.

Aras’s command stood at bay like an island in a sea of Merduks. The enemy had poured around its left flank and was pushing into the right, where it connected with the main body of the Torunnan army. They were trying to pinch off the beleaguered tercios from Rusio’s forces, isolate and destroy them. But their assaults on the hamlet itself broke like waves on a sea cliff. Aras’s troops stood and fought in the ruins of Armagedir as though it were the last fortress of the western world. And in a way it was.

The Torunnans looked up as Corfe and his entourage pushed their way through the choked ranks, and he heard his name called out again and again. There was even a momentary cheer. At last he found his way to the sable standard under which Aras and his staff officers clustered. The young colonel brightened at the sight of his commander-in-chief, and saluted with alacrity. “Good to see you, sir. We were beginning to wonder if the rest of the army had forgotten about us.”

Corfe shook his hand. “Consider yourself a general now, Aras. You’ve earned it.”

Even under grime and powder-smoke he could see the younger man flush with pleasure. He felt something of a fraud, knowing Aras would not live long enough to enjoy his promotion.

“Your orders, General?” Aras asked, still beaming. “I daresay our flank march will be arriving any time now.”

Corfe did not have to lower his voice to avoid being overheard; the rageing chaos of the battle was like a great curtain.

“I believe our flank march may have run into trouble, Aras. It’s possible you will not be reinforced. We must hold on here to the end. To the end, do you understand me?”

Aras stared at him, the dismay naked across his face for a second. Then he collected himself, and managed a strangled laugh. “At least I’ll die a general. Don’t worry, sir, these men aren’t going anywhere. They know their duty, as do I.”

Corfe gripped his shoulder. “I know,” he said in almost a whisper.

“Sir!” one of the staff officers shouted. “They’re coming in-a whole wave of them.”

The Merduk counter-attack rolled into Armagedir like some unstoppable juggernaut. It was met with a furious crescendo of arquebus fire which obliterated the leading rank, and then it was hand to hand all down the line. The Torunnan perimetre shrank under that savage assault, the men crowded back on to the blazing buildings of the hamlet they defended. And there they halted. Corfe shoved his way to the forefront of the line and was able to forget strategy, politics, the worries of a high-ranking officer. He found himself battling for his life like the lowliest ranker, his Cathedraller bodyguards ranged about him and singing as they slew. The little knot of scarlet-armoured men seemed to draw the enemy as a candle will moths at twilight. They were more heavily armoured than their Torunnan comrades, and stood like a wedge of red-hot iron while the lightly armed warriors of the Minhraib crashed in on them to be hewn down one after another. Armagedir became cut off from the rest of the army as the Merduks swamped the Torunnan left wing. It became a murderous cauldron of insane violence within which men fought and killed without thought of self-preservation or hope of rescue. It was the end, the apocalypse. Corfe saw men dying with their teeth locked in an enemy’s throat, others strangling each other, snarling like animals, eyes empty of reason. The Minhraib threw themselves on the Cathedrallers like dogs mobbing a bear, three and four at a time sacrificing themselves to bring down one steel-clad tribesman and cut his throat on the blood-sodden ground. Corfe swung and hacked in a berserk rage, sword blows clanging off his armour, one ringing hollow on his helm, exploding his bruised face with stars of agony. Something stabbed him through the thigh and he fell to his knees, bellowing, Mogen’s sword dealing slaughter left and right. He was on the ground, buffeted by a massive scrum of bodies, trampled by booted feet. He fought himself upright, the sword blows raining down on him. Aras and Cerne were at his shoulders, helping him up. Then a blade burst out of Cerne’s eye, and he toppled without a sound. The detonation of an arquebus scorched Corfe’s hand. He stabbed out blindly, felt flesh and bone give way under the Answerer’s wicked edge. Someone hacked at his neck, and his sight erupted with stars and spangled darkness. He went down again.

A sunlit hillside above Aekir in some age of the world long past, and he was sitting on crackling bracken with Heria by his side, sharing wine. His wife’s smile rent his heart.

Andruw laughing amid the roar of guns, a delight in life lighting up his face and making it into that of a boy.

Barbius’s Fimbrians advancing to their deaths in terrible glory at the North More.

Berrona burning low on a far horizon.

A smoky hut in which his mother wept quietly and his father stared at the earthen floor as Corfe told him he was going for a soldier.

Dappled sunlight on the Torrin river as he splashed and swam there one long summer afternoon.

And the roar and blare of many trumpets, the beat of heavy drums rising even over the clamour of war. The press of bodies about him eased. He was hauled to his feet and found himself looking through a film of blood at Aras’s slashed face.

“Andruw has come!” he was shouting. “The Fimbrians have struck the Merduk flank!”

And raising his heavy head he saw the pikes outlined against the fuming sky, and all about him the men of Armagedir were cheering as the Merduks poured away in absolute panic. The dyke veterans were lined on a hillside to the north, blasting out volley after volley into the close-packed throng of the enemy. And the Fimbrians were cutting them down like corn, advancing as relentlessly as if they meant to sweep every Merduk off the edge of the world.

Corfe bent his head and wept.