covered with maps and counters. Coprenius Kuln himself, the first Fimbrian emperor, had set it here eight hundred years previously.
Horses were hobbled off to one side, to mount order-bearing couriers. The Fimbrians did not believe in cavalry, and this was the only use they had for the animals.
On the training fields below, formations of men marched and counter-marched. Fifteen thousand of them, perhaps, their feet a deep thunder on the ground that had hardened with the first frosts. A cold early morning sunlight sparked off the glinting heads of their pikes and the barrels of shouldered arquebuses. They looked like the massed playthings of a god left lying on a nursery floor and come to sudden, beetling life.
Two men strolled away from the cluster of officers on the hill and stood apart, looking down on the panoply and magnificence of the formations below. They were in middle age, of medium height, broad-shouldered, hollow-cheeked. They might have been brothers save that one wore a black hole where his left eye should have been, and the hair on that side of his head had become silver.
“The courier, Caehir, died at his own hand last night,” the one-eyed man said.
The other nodded. “His legs?”
“They took them off at the knee; there was no saving them. The rot had gone too far, and he had no wish to live as a cripple.”
“A good man. Pity to lose one’s life because of frostbite, no more.”
“He did his duty. The message got through. By now, Jonakait and Merkus will be in the passes of the mountains also. We must hope they meet with better luck.”
“Indeed. So the Five Kingdoms have split. We have two Pontiffs and a religious war in the offing. And all this while the Merduks howl at the gates of the west.”
“The men at Ormann Dyke; they must be soldiers.”
“Yes. That was a fight. The Torunnans are no mean warriors.”
“But they are not Fimbrians.”
“No, they are not Fimbrians. How many of our people are we to send to their aid?”
“A grand tercio, no more. We must be cautious, and see how this division of the kingdoms goes.”
The Fimbrian with the unmutilated face nodded fractionally. A grand tercio comprised some five thousand men: three thousand pike and two thousand arquebusiers, plus the assorted gunsmiths, armourers, cooks, muleteers, pioneers and staff officers who went with them. Perhaps six thousand in all.
“Will that be enough to save the dyke?”
“Possibly. But our priority is not so much to save Ormann Dyke as to establish a military presence in Torunna, remember.”
“I find I am in danger of thinking like a general instead of a politician, Briscus.”
The one-eyed man named Briscus grinned, showing a range of teeth with smashed gaps between them. “Kyriel, you are an old soldier who sniffs powder-smoke in the wind. I am the same. For the first time in living memory our people will leave the bounds of the electorates to do battle with the heathen. It is an event to quicken the blood, but we must not let it cloud our judgement.”
“I do not altogether like farming our men out as mercenaries.”
“Neither do I; but when a state has seventy thousand unemployed soldiers on hand, what else can one do with them? If Marshal Barbius and his contingent impress the Torunnans sufficiently, then we will have all the Ramusian kingdoms crying out for our tercios. The time will come when every capital will have its contingent of Fimbrian troops, and then—”
“And then?”
“We will see what we can make out of it, if it happens.”
They turned to look down on the training fields once more. The pair were dressed no differently from the other senior officers on the hill, but they were Fimbrian Electors and represented half the ruling body of their peculiar country. A word from them, and this army of thousands would march off the training fields and into the cauldron of war wherever they saw fit to wage it.
“We live in an age where everything will change,” one-eyed Briscus said quietly. “The world of our forefathers is on the brink of dissolution. I feel it in my bones.”
“An age of opportunity, also,” Kyriel reminded him.
“Of course. But I think that before the end all the politicians will have to think like soldiers and the soldiers like politicians. It reminds me of the last battle by the Habrir river. The army knew the Electors had already signed away the Duchy of Imerdon, and yet we deployed that morning and fought for it nonetheless. We won, and threw the Hebrians in disorder back across the fords. Then we gathered up our dead and marched away from Imerdon for ever. It is the same feeling: that our armies can win any battle they choose to fight, and yet in the end it will make no difference to the outcome of things.”
“You wax philosophical this morning, Briscus. That is unlike you.”
“You must forgive me. It is a hazard of advancing years.”
From the formations below, lines of smoke puffed out and seconds later the clattering rumble of arquebus fire reached them on the hill. Regiments of arquebusiers were competing against each other to see who could reload the fastest, shooting down lines of straw figures that had been set up on the plain. Volley followed volley, until it seemed that a high-pitched thunder was being generated by the very earth and was clawing up to heaven. The plain below became obscured by toiling clouds of powder-smoke, the fog of war in its most literal sense. The heady smell of it drifted up to the two Electors on the hillside and they snuffed it in like hounds scenting a hare on a winter’s morning.
A third figure left the gaggle of officers around the stone table and stood to attention behind the Electors until the pair had noticed him. He was a square man; what he lacked in height he made up for in width. Even his chin was as regular as the blade of a shovel, his mouth a lipless gash above it partially obscured by a thick red moustache. His hair was cut so short as to stand up like the cropped mane of a horse; the mark of a man who often wore a helm.
“Well, Barbius?” Briscus asked the man. “How do they fare?”
Barbius stared straight ahead. “They’re about as handy as a bunch of seamstresses on a cold morning, sir.”
Briscus snorted with laughter. “But will they pass?”
“I’ll work them up a little more before we go, sir. Three rounds a minute, that’s our goal.”
“The Torunnans think themselves well-drilled if they can get off two in that time,” Kyriel said quietly.
“They’re not Torunnans, sir—with respect.”
“Damn right, by God!” Briscus said fervently. His one eye flashed. “I want your command to be as perfect as you can make it, Barbius. This will be the first Fimbrian army the rest of the kingdoms have seen in action for twenty-five years. We want to impress.”
“Yes, sir.” Barbius’ face had all the animation of a closed helm.
“Your baggage train?”
“Fifty carts, eight hundred mules. We travel light, sir.”
“And you’re happy with the route?”
Here Barbius allowed himself the merest sliver of a smile. “Through the Narian Hills by way of Tulm, and so to Charibon for the Pontifical blessing. Along the south-eastern shore of the Sea of Tor and down into Torunna by way of the Torrin Gap.”
“And another Pontifical blessing from the other Pontiff,” Kyriel added, his eyes dancing.
“You’ve been briefed on your behaviour and that of your men?” Briscus said, serious now.
“Yes, sir. We are to be as respectful as possible to the Pontiff and the Church authorities, but we are not to be deflected from our line of march.”
“There is nothing on that line which has the remotest chance of stopping a Fimbrian grand tercio,” Briscus said, his eye narrowing. “But you are to avoid the slightest friction with anyone, especially Almarkans. That is clear, Marshal? You are a nameless functionary; you are obeying orders. All complaints, protests and similar are to be directed to Fimbir, and you are not to delay your march for anything.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Let them think you are a mindless soldier whose job is to do as he is told. If you pause to argue with them just once, then they will wrap you up in coils of Inceptine law and hamstring you. This army must get through,
