The Heretic Kings

Marat bent his head and prayed in silence for a second, the gulls still calling in their savage forlornness beyond the shuttered windows of the chamber. Then he rose, went to one of the windows and opened the shutters so that the keen sea air might rush in and freshen the death-smelling room.

Alstadt: broad, crude, thriving port-capital of the north. It opened out before him misted in drizzle, hazed by woodsmoke fires, alive with humanity in its tens of thousands. And beyond it, the wide kingdom of Almark with its horse-rich plains, its armies of cuirassiers. Himerius would be pleased: things could not have worked out better. And others would be pleased also.

Marat turned from the cold window to gaze down on the corpse of the King, and his eyes shone with a saffron light that had nothing human in it at all.

TWENTY

T HEY were an unlikely looking crowd, Corfe had to admit to himself. They had never been taught to form ranks, present arms or stand at attention and they milled about in an amorphous mob, as unmilitary a formation as could be imagined.

They were clad in bruised, holed and rusty Merduk armour of every shape and type, but mostly they had picked out the war harness of the Ferinai, the heavy cuirassiers of the east, as it was the best quality. And perhaps it appealed to some savage sensibility within them, for it was the armour of horsemen and these men had once been horsemen. Their fathers and grandfathers had raided the coastal settlements of the Torunnans time out of mind, swooping out of the Cimbric foothills on their rangy black horses—horses which were the product of secret studs high in isolated valleys. Cavalry was what these men ought to be. Horse-soldiers. But Corfe could no more provide them with horses than he could with wings, so they must fight afoot in their outlandish armour.

Armour which had been rendered even more strange-looking by the liberal addition of red paint. The tribesmen seemed as happy as finger-painting children as they splashed it over their armour and hurled it at each other in gore-like gobbets. A crowd had gathered to watch, black-clad Torunnan soldiers lounging in the Quartermaster’s yard and laughing fit to split their sides at the dressing up of the savages from the mountains, the ex-galley slaves.

As soon as the first Torunnan laughs were heard, however, the tribesmen went as silent as crags. A tulwar was scraped out of its threadbare scabbard and Corfe had to step in to prevent a fight which would quickly have turned into a full-scale battle. He called upon Marsch to calm his fellow tribesmen down and the hulking savage harangued his comrades in their own tongue. He was a frightening figure: somehow he had found a Merduk officer’s helm which was decorated with a pair of back-sweeping horns and a beak-like nose-guard. Lathered with red paint, he looked like the apotheosis of some primitive god of slaughter come looking for acolytes.

“Someone to see you, sir,” Ensign Ebro told Corfe as the latter doffed his heavy Merduk helm and wiped the sweat from his face. Ebro also wore the foreign harness, and he looked acutely uncomfortable in it.

“Who is it?” Corfe snapped, squeezing the acrid sweat from his eyes.

“Someone who has tasted gunsmoke with you, Colonel,” another, familiar voice said. Corfe spun to find Andruw there, holding out a hand and grinning. He shouted aloud and pumped the proffered hand up and down. “Andruw! What in the hell are you doing here?”

“I ask myself the same question: what have I done to deserve this? But be that as it may, it would seem that I am to be your adjutant. For what misdeed I know not.”

The pair of them laughed together while Ebro stood stiff and forgotten. Corfe mustered his manners.

“Ensign Ebro, permit me to introduce . . . what rank have they showered upon you, Andruw?”

“Haptman, for my sins.”

“There you are. Haptman Andruw Cear-Adurhal, late of the artillery, who commanded the Barbican Batteries of Ormann Dyke.”

Ebro glanced at Andruw with rather more respect, and bowed. “I am honoured.”

“Likewise.”

“But what are you doing away from the Dyke?” Corfe asked Andruw. “I thought they’d need every gunner they could lay their hands on up there.”

“I was sent to Torunn with dispatches. You have been seeking officers, I hear, driving the muster clerks mad with your enquiries. Apparently they decided that by seconding me to your command they could shut you up.”

“And how goes it at the Dyke? Can they spare you?”

Andruw’s bright humour faded a little. “They are short of everything, Corfe. Martellus is half out of his mind with worry, though as always he hides it well. We have had no reinforcements to replace our losses, no resupply for weeks. We are a forgotten army.”

Andruw’s gaze flicked to the weirdly garbed savages of Corfe’s command as he spoke. Corfe noticed the look and said wryly: “And we are the army they would like to forget.”

There was a pause. Finally Andruw asked: “Have you had your orders yet? Whither are we bound with our garish warrior band?”

“South,” Corfe told him, disgust seeping into his voice. “I had best warn you now, Andruw, that the King expects us to end in some kind of debacle, fighting these rebels in the south. We are of small account in his plans.”

“Hence the quaint war harness.”

“It’s all they would let me have.”

Andruw forced a grin. “What is it they say? The longer the odds, the greater the glory. We proved that at Ormann Dyke, Corfe. We’ll do it again, by Ramusio’s beard.”

L ATER that afternoon, Corfe reported to the Staff Headquarters for the detailed orders that were to send his command into its first battle. The place was busy with sashed officers and bustling aides. Couriers were coming and going and the King was closeted in conference with his senior advisors. No one seemed to recall any orders for Colonel Cear-Inaf and his command, and it was a maddening half-hour before a clerk finally found them. One unsealed roll of parchment with a scrawling, illegible signature at the bottom and a hasty impression of the Royal signet in a cracked blob of scarlet wax. It was in the stilted language of military orders not written in the field.

Y OU are hereby directed and obliged to take the troops under your command south to the town of Hedeby on the Kardian Sea, and there engage the retainers of the traitor Duke Ordinac in open battle, destroying them and restoring their master’s fiefs to their rightful allegiance. You will march with due haste and prudence, and on accomplishing your mission you will occupy the town of Hedeby and await further orders.

By command of the Torunnan war staff, for His Highness King Lofantyr.

T HAT was all. No mention of supporting troops, timings, supplies, the hundred and one pieces of information which any military enterprise needed to function smoothly. Not even an estimate of the enemy’s numbers or composition. Corfe crumpled the order into a ball and thrust it inside his breastplate. His look wiped the sniggers off the clerks’ faces. No doubt they had heard about his strange soldiers and their stranger armour.

“I acknowledge receipt of my orders,” he said, his voice as cold as a winter peak. “Please inform the staff that my command will march at daybreak.”

He turned to go, and one of the clerks let him get as far as the door before saying: “Sir—Colonel? Another message for you here. Not part of your orders, you understand. It was brought this afternoon by a lady-in- waiting.”

He collected this second message without a word and left with it bunched in his fist. As he closed the door he heard the buzz of the clerks’ talk and laughter, and his face gnarled into a grimace of fury.

The note was from the Queen Dowager requesting his presence in her chambers this evening at the eighth hour. So he must dance attendance upon a scheming woman whilst he was preparing to take an untried and ill- equipped command into the field. His first independent command. Dear God!

Better if I had died at Aekir, he thought. With honour and in comradeship with my countrymen. My Heria would have met me in the Saint’s company and we would have shared eternity together.

Oh, dear God.

On an impulse, he veered away from the path back to the barracks where his men were stationed. He felt