Ships from the West

'She must marry young Nasir.'

He shut his eyes. The old pain burned, deep in his chest. That one he had seen coming. But marry Heria's daughter -his own wife's child? Never.

He rose, his face like stone. 'We will discuss this another time, lady.'

'We are discussing it now.'

‘I think not.' Turning on his heel he left the darkened chamber without a backward glance.

A courtier was waiting for him outside. 'Sire, I've been instructed by Colonel Heyn to tell you that the couriers are in with dispatches from Gaderion.'

'Good. I'll meet them in the Bladehall. My compliments to the colonel, and he is to join me there as soon as he can. The same message to General Formio and the rest of the High Command.' The courtier saluted and fled.

Corfe's personal bodyguard, Felorin, caught up with him in the corridor as he strode along with his boots clinking on the polished stone. Not a word was spoken as the pair made their way through the Queen's wing to the palace proper. There were fewer courtiers than there had been in King Lofantyr's day, and they were clad in sober burgundy. When the King passed them they each saluted as soldiers would. Only the court ladies were as finely plumaged as they had ever been, and they collapsed delicately into curtsies as Corfe blew past. He nodded to them but never slowed his stride for an instant.

They crossed the Audience Hall, their footsteps echoing in its austere emptiness, and the palace passageways and cham­bers grew less grand, older-looking. There was more timber and less stone. When the Fimbrians had built the Palace of Torunn it had been the seat of the Imperial Governor, who was also the general of a sizeable army. This area of the complex had originally been part of that army's barracks, but until Corfe came to the throne had been used mainly as a series of storerooms. Corfe had restored it to its original purpose, and housed within it now were living quarters for five hundred men - the Bodyguard of the King. These were volunteers from the army and elsewhere who had passed a rigorous training regimen designed by Corfe himself. Within their ranks served Fimbrians, Torunnans, Cimbric tribesmen, and even a sizeable element of Merduks. In garrison they dressed in sable and scarlet surcoats, the old 'blood and bruises' that John Mogen's men had once worn. In the field they rode heavy warhorses - even the Fimbrians - and were armed with wheel-lock pistols and long sabres. Both they and their steeds were accustomed to wearing three-quarter ar­mour, which Torunnan smiths had tempered so finely that it would turn even an arquebus ball. On the breastplate of every man's cuirass was a shallow spherical indentation where this had been put to the test.

'Where is Comillan today?' Corfe barked to Felorin.

'On the Proving Grounds, with the new batch.'

'And Formio?'

'On his way in from Menin Field.'

'We'll get there first then. Run ahead, Felorin, and set up the Bladehall for a conference. Maps of the Torrin Gap, a clear sand-table and some brandy - you know the drill.'

Felorin gave his monarch a strange look, though his tattoo­ing rendered his expression hard to read at the best of times. 'Brandy?'

'Yes, damn it. I could do with one. Now cut along.'

Felorin took off at a run, whereas Corfe's pace slowed. Finally he halted, and propped himself by a windowsill which looked out on the Proving Grounds below where a new set of recruits were being put through their paces. The glass was blurred with age but he was able to make out the man-high wooden posts sunk in the ground, and the lines of sweating men who hacked at them with the arm-killing practice swords whose blunt blades housed a core of lead. They had to strike defined spots at shoulder, waist and knee height on the right and then the left sides of the iron-hard old posts, and keep doing it until their palms blistered and the sweat ran in their eyes and their backs were raw masses of screaming muscle. Over thirty years before, Corfe had stood out there and hacked at those same posts while the drill sergeants had shouted and jeered at him. Some things, at least, did not change.

The Bladehall was new, however. A long, vaulted, church­like building, Corfe had had it constructed after the Battle of the Torian Plains ten years before, close to the old Quarter­master Stores where he had once found five hundred sets of Merduk armour mouldering and used them to arm his first command. He disliked using the old conference chambers for staff meetings because they were in the palace, and curious courtiers and maids were always in and out. Though Odelia might remind him tartly that the older venue had been good enough for Kaile Ormann himself, Corfe felt a need to break with the past. He also wanted to create somewhere for the officers of the army to come together without the inevitable delays that entering the palace complex entailed. Deep down, he also welcomed any opportunity to get out of the palace himself, even now.

Still a peasant with mud under my nails, after all this time, he thought with sour satisfaction.

Along the walls of the Bladehall were ranged suits of antique armour and weapons, tapestries and paintings depict­ing past battles and wars won and lost. And near the massive timber beams that supported the roof were hung the war banners and flags of generations of Torunnan armies. They had been found scattered in storerooms throughout the palace complex after Corfe had become king. Some were tattered and rotting but others, crafted of finest silk and laid aside with more care, were as whole as the day they had waved overhead on a shot-torn field.

Set into the walls were hundreds of scroll pigeonholes, each of which held a map. On the upper galleries there were shelves of books also: manuals, histories, treatises on tactics and strategy. Several sycophantic nobles had begged Corfe to write a general treatise on war years ago, but he had curtly refused. He might be a successful general, but he was no writer - and he would not dictate his clumsy sentences to a scribe so that some inky-fingered parasite might polish them up for public consumption afterwards.

Hung above the lintel of the huge fireplace at one end of the hall was John Mogen's sword, the Answerer. Corfe had carr­ied it at the North More, at the King's Battle, and at Armagedir. A gift from the Queen, it had hung there with the firelight playing upon it for a decade now, for Torunna's King had not taken to the field in all that time.

There were large tables ringed with chairs set about the floor of the lower Bladehall, and seated at these were several young men in Torunnan military uniform, trying hard to ignore the two muddy couriers who stood wearily to one side. Corfe encouraged his officers to come in here and read when they were off duty, or to study tactical problems on the long sand-table that stood in one of the side chambers. Attendants were permanently on hand to serve food and drink in the small adjoining refectory, should that be required. In this way, among others, Corfe had tried to encourage the birth of a more truly professional officer class, one based on merit and not on birth or seniority. All officers were equal when they stepped over the threshold of the Bladehall, and even the most junior might speak freely. More importantly, perhaps, the gratuities which army commanders had tradi­tionally accepted in return for the granting of commissions had been stamped out. All would-be commanders started as lowly ensigns attached to an infantry tercio, and they sweated it out in the Proving Grounds the same as all other new recruits. Strange to say, once Corfe had instituted this reform, the proportion of gallant young blue-bloods joining the army had plummeted. He smiled at the thought.

There was as yet no formal military academy in Torunna, as existed in Fimbir, but it was something Corfe had been mulling over in his mind for several years. Though he was an almost absolute ruler, he still had to bear in mind the views of the important families of the kingdom. They would never dare to take the field against him again, but their opposition to many of his policies had been felt in subtler ways. They would see an academy of war as a means to build up a whole new hierarchy in the kingdom, based not on blood but on military merit. And they would be right.

The young men in the Bladehall ceased their reading. They stood up as Corfe entered and he returned their salutes. The two couriers doffed their helms.

'Your names?'

'Gell and Brinian, sir. Dispatches from—'

'Yes, I know. Give them here.' Corfe was handed two leather cylinders. The same dispatch would be in both. 'Any problems on the road?'

'No, sir. Some wolves near Arboronn, but we outran them.'

'When did you leave Gaderion?'

'Five days ago.'

'Good work, lads. You look all in. Tell the cooks here to give you whatever you want, and change into some