Hawkswood's Voyage

was lying atop him, pinioning his limbs. He had opened his eyes, feeling hot breath on his face, and had seen two yellow lights regarding him from six inches away. The cold gleam of teeth. A vague impression of two horn-like ears arcing up from a broad, black-furred skull. And the paralysing heat and weight of it on his body.

He had passed out, or the dream had faded. He woke later, after sunrise, with a scream on his lips—but found himself alone in the gently swaying cot, sunlight streaming in the stern windows, a patch of blood on the blankets. He drew in shuddering breaths. A dream or nightmare, nothing more. It could be nothing more.

He swung off the cot on to rubber legs. The ship was rolling more heavily, the bow rising and falling. He could see white-topped waves breaking in the swell beyond the windows.

It took the last pint in the wine decanter to quell the trembling in his hands, to wipe out the horror of the dream. When it had faded all he could remember was the taut joy of her under him, the unwilling surrender. Strangely, he did not feel triumphant at the memory, but quickened, somehow invigorated.

By the time he had broken his fast, he had forgotten the vision of the night entirely. Too much brandy and wine, perhaps. All he could think of was the slim girl and her bright eyes, the taut joy of her under him.

He hungered for more.

SIXTEEN

T HE Merduk army was on the move.

It had taken time; far too much time, Shahr Baraz thought. Aekir had damaged them more than they had cared to admit at the time, but now many of their losses had been made good. Fresh troops had been sent through the Thurian passes before the snows closed them for the winter, and Maghreb, Sultan of Danrimir, had sent fifty elephants and eight thousand of his personal guard to join the taking of Ormann Dyke. It was a gesture as much as anything else, with the inevitable political ramifications behind it. The other sultans had sat up quickly when Aekir had fallen, and soon the scramble for the spoils would begin. Shahr Baraz had heard camp rumours that ancient Nalbeni, not to be outdone by its northern rival, had commissioned a fleet of troop transports to cross the Kardian Sea and fall on the southern coastal cities of Torunna. That snippet made him smile. With luck, it had already reached the ears of the Torunnan king and might make him detach troops from the north.

Shahr Baraz had no illusions as to the difficulty of the task before him. He had maps of the fortress complex, made by the troopers of the countless armed reconnaissances he had sent west. The Fimbrians had first built the dyke, and as with everything they constructed it had been built to last. His distant ancestors had attacked it once, way back in the mists of tribal memory when it had marked the boundary of the Fimbrian Empire. They had died in their screaming thousands, it was said, and their bodies had filled to the brim the dyke itself.

But that was then. This was now. One of the reasons the Merduk advance had been so slow to recommence after the fall of Aekir was because he had had his engineers at work day and night. The results of their labour had been dismantled and loaded on to gargantuan waggons, each pulled by four elephants. Now he had everything he needed: siege-towers, catapults, ballistae. And boats. Many boats.

He sat on his horse on a low muddy hill with a gaggle of staff officers about him and his bodyguard in silent ranks on the slope below. He watched his army trudging past.

Outriders on the flanks, squadrons of light cavalry armed with lances and wearing only leather cuir boulli, something they had picked up from the Ramusians. Then the main vanguard, a picked force of the Hraibadar, the shock-troops who specialized in assaults, breachings and, if necessary, last stands. Their ranks were thinner than they had been—so many had fallen at Aekir that he was pressed to field more than ten regiments of them, scarcely twelve thousand men.

Trundling through their ranks were the dotted bulk of elephants. Only a score of them travelled with the van, and each pulled a train of light waggons loaded with provisions. The vanguard was Shahr Baraz’s most mobile force, and his most hard-hitting. It would spearhead the final assault, once he had softened the dyke up a little.

At the rear of the van, a brigade of heavy cavalry, what the Ramusians called cuirassiers. They were known as Ferinai to his own people, who had specialized in their use for generations. They wore chainmail reinforced with glittering plates of steel, and their faces were covered by tall helms. In addition to their swords they each carried a pair of matchlock pistols, a recent innovation that the Ferinai had accepted only with much grumbling. These were the best troops that Shahr Baraz possessed; his own bodyguard had been picked mainly from their ranks. They were professional soldiers, unlike the majority of the army, and their general was as niggardly with them as a miser with his gold.

The van passed by, almost twenty thousand strong, and as Shahr Baraz calmed his restless horse, the main body came up. Here the discipline was not so rigid. Men waved and cheered at him as they marched past and he nodded curtly in reply. These were the Minhraib, the common footsoldiers who when not at war were small farmers, tradesmen, peasants or laborers. A hundred thousand strong, they marched in a column whose head was fifty men wide, and it extended for over three and a half miles. It would take an hour and a half at least for them to pass by their general in their entirety. The sight of them made Shahr Baraz stiffen, and he raised his old eyes to heaven in a moment’s prayer, thanking his God and his Prophet that he had been given the chance to see this, to command this: the largest army ever fielded by an eastern sultanate. Its like had not been seen on the continent since the terrible wars of the Ramusians, when they had fought among themselves to bring down the Fimbrian Hegemony.

He would not wait to view the rearguard or the siege train; they were seven miles down the road. When the van went into camp that night, the rearguard would be ten miles behind them. Such was the logistical nightmare of moving an army this size across country.

Still, he had the Ostian river now. Already the first barges had come downstream from Ostrabar and the supplies were building up on the burnt wharves of Aekir’s riverfront. Incredible, the amount of supplies an army of this size needed. The elephants alone required eighty tons of forage daily.

“Have you spoken to the chief of engineers about the road?” he asked an aide crisply.

The aide started in the saddle. The old man’s eyes had seemed so vacant, so far away, that he had thought his general was in some sort of tired daze.

“Yes, Khedive. The materials are already on the road. Once the army is in position about the dyke, the work will go on apace. We have rounded up some thirty thousand head of labour from the countryside. The new road will, the engineer tells me, be finished in sixteen days. And it will bear the elephant waggons.”

“Excellent,” Shahr Baraz said, and stroked the silver-white moustache that fell past his chin in two tusk-like lengths. His black eyes glittered between their almond-shaped lids.

“Read me again that dispatch from Jaffan at the dyke.”

The aide fumbled in a saddlebag and produced a piece of parchment. He squinted at it intently for a moment, making the old man’s eyes narrow with humour. Officers had to learn to read and write before being seconded to his staff. For many it was an arcane chore that did not come naturally.

“He says,” the aide reported haltingly, “that . . . that the refugees are all across the river and encamped about the fortress, but the—the bridges have not yet been cut. Ramusian forces are making sorties east of the river, harrying his troops. He wants more men.” Finished, the aide blinked rapidly, relief on his face.

“He will have sixscore thousand of them in his lap soon enough,” Shahr Baraz said casually, his eyes still fixed on the unending files of men and horses and waggons that were moving west. “I want another dispatch sent to Jaffan,” he went on, ignoring the sudden rustle of paper and scratch of quill. “The usual greetings, et cetera.

“Your orders are changed. You are to cease the harrying of Ramusian forces east of the river and concentrate on reconnaissance of the enemy position. You will send squadrons to north and south of the dyke looking for fords or possible bridging points. The eastern bank will be reconnoitered for at least ten leagues on either side of the dyke. At the same time you will, using whatever means necessary, ascertain the strength of the fortress garrison and find out how many men have been detached for service further west. You will also confirm or deny the constant rumour I have been hearing that the head of the Ramusian Church did not die in Aekir but is alive and well in Ormann Dyke.

“May the Prophet Ahrimuz watch over you in your endeavours and the enlightenment of the true faith constantly illuminate your path. I and my forces will relieve you within a week. Shahr Baraz, High Khedive of the