“He’s the best officer in the army, but those stuffed fools over there cannot see it. They pule and prate about precedent and decorum. They’ll be huddled over a brazier arguing when the Merduks are setting light to the palace itself.”
Some of the young officers looked over their shoulders nervously. The stuffed fools were barely ten yards away on the other side of the chamber.
“We’ll stand siege here soon,” the artilleryman said. “Then there will be glory enough for all.”
“But no one to make songs about it once the walls are breached and your wives and sisters are carried off to Merduk harems,” Andruw said savagely. “The enemy needs to be beaten in the field, and Corfe is the only man in the kingdom who might be able to do it.”
“I fancy half the army are beginning to think so too,” the artilleryman said in a whisper. “It’s common knowledge that he beat the rebels down south single-handed, and Aras did nothing but a little mopping up. It doesn’t do to say so, although—”
He broke off as Andruw was called back to the council table by his King.
“Be so good as to inform us of the strengths of the Merduk army your command encountered,” the King said with a wave of his hand.
“At least forty thousand, sire, but our impressions were that it was but the van of the whole. More formations were coming up as we pulled out. I should not be surprised if the final number were double that.”
A stir of talk, disbelief, or rather an unwillingness to believe.
“And how badly mauled was the enemy by the battle?”
“We did not see the end of the Fimbrians, sire—we left them still fighting, though surrounded. I would wager the Merduk general has lost perhaps a quarter of his strength. Fimbrian pikemen die hard.”
“You sound almost as though you admire these mercenaries.”
“I never saw men die better, sire, not even at the dyke.”
“Ah! So you were at the dyke. We had forgotten.” Several officers in the room seemed to warm to Andruw somewhat. He received a few approving nods.
“Corfe was at the dyke also, sire. He led the defence of the eastern barbican.”
“The first place to fall,” Aras murmured.
Andruw stepped forward until he had Aras penned against the long table. “I should be very sorry, sir, to hear anyone impugn the good name of my commanding officer. I feel I would have to ask for satisfaction in such a case.” His eyes blazed, and Aras looked away. “Of course, Haptman, of course . . .”
The King seemed to have missed the exchange. “Gentlemen,” he said, “with the addition of these men salvaged from Martellus’s command, we will have almost forty thousand available to defend the capital, though it means denuding our southern fiefs of troops. Thanks to the work of Colonel Aras, however, the rebellious provinces of the south are once again recalled to their ancient allegiance, and I think we need not fear for our rear in the struggle to come.”
Aras graciously accepted the mutter of approbation from the assembled officers.
“All bridges over the River Torrin, right up to the mountains, have been destroyed. The geography of our beloved country favours the defender. Our rivers are our walls.”
Like the Ostian and the Searil rivers, Andruw thought, both of which had failed to hold back the Merduk advance. Now that Northern Torunna had been evacuated, the Merduks might even send an army through the Torrin Gap and take Charibon if they chose, or cross the Torian Plains and assault Almark, even Perigraine. Those places were under the sway of the Himerian Church, however, and Andruw did not think that the men present would shed many tears if Charibon were sacked, or Almark—now rumoured to be Church-ruled—invaded. With the present religious schism dividing the Ramusian kingdoms, there could be no question of them presenting a united front to the invaders. Corfe was right: if the enemy were not crushed before Torunn, he would be able to send columns across half of Normannia. And if the Torunnan army allowed itself to be bottled up in the capital, besieged as Aekir had been besieged, then it would take itself out of the reckoning entirely. Almark and Perigraine were not great military powers. They could not withstand the Merduk and the troops of the Prophet would conquer the continent as far west as the Malvennor Mountains.
A palace courtier entered, interrupting Lofantyr’s rosy predictions of Merduk disaster. He bent and whispered in the King’s ear, and his sovereign shot up out of his seat, an outraged look on his face. “Tell her—” he began, but the doors of the chamber were thrown open, and the Queen Dowager entered with two of her ladies-in-waiting. Every man present bowed deeply, save for her son, who was furious.
“Lady, it is not appropriate that you be present here at this time,” he grated.
“Nonsense, Lofantyr,” his mother said with a winning smile, waving a folded fan. “I’ve sat in on meetings of the High Command all my life. Is that not true, General Menin?”
Menin bowed again and murmured something incomprehensible.
“In any case, Lofantyr, you left something behind when you visited me in my apartments the other day. I wished to make sure you received it.” She held out a scroll heavy with the scarlet wax of the Royal seal.
Lofantyr took it as gingerly as if he expected it to bite him. His eyes were narrow with suspicion. As he opened and read the document his face flushed red.
“From whence did this come?”
“Come now, my sovereign, it bears your own seal—one which I no longer possess. Pray read it out to this august company. I’m sure they are with child to hear the good news it contains.”
“Another time, perhaps.”
“
“It . . . it is a general’s commission, for one Corfe Cear-Inaf, confirming him second-in-command of Martellus’s army or, if Martellus no longer lives, he is appointed sole commander.”
Andruw thumped his gauntleted fist into his palm with delight, and behind him several of the junior officers cried “Bravo!” as if they were watching a play. The Queen Dowager glided over to Colonel Aras, who looked as though he had just swallowed a bolus of foul-tasting medicine. “I hope you are not too disappointed, Colonel. I know how much you looked forward to commanding those red-clad barbarians.”
“No . . . no, not at all. Delighted, happy to . . .” He trailed off in confusion. Odelia’s concentrated regard was hard to bear.
“This is a mistake,” King Lofantyr managed, regaining his poise. “I sealed no such orders.”
“And yet they exist. Countermanding them is tantamount to breaking one’s word, my son. You are a busy man—you have merely misremembered that you issued them. I am sure the recollection will come to you. In time. Gentlemen, I will leave you to your high strategies. I, a poor, incompetent woman, am obviously out of my arena here. Haptman Cear-Adurhal, pray stop by my chambers before you return to your command.”
Andruw bowed wordlessly, his face shining. The other men there followed suit as the poor, incompetent woman made a regal exit.
T HEY met him with a salvo of guns, Torunn’s walls erupting in smoke and flame as the army came into view over the horizon. The exhausted men lifted their heads at the sound, and saw a thousand-strong guard of honour in rank on rank waiting to welcome them into the city. Corfe reined in, bemused, to regard the spectacle as his enlarged command continued to trudge past him. Torunnan sword-and-buckler men, arquebusiers and Fimbrian pikemen. His own Cathed-rallers out on the wings and bringing up the rear.
Marsch and Ebro joined him.
“Why do they fire guns at us?” Marsch wanted to know. “Is it a warning?”
“It’s a salute,” Ebro informed him. “They’re honouring us.”
“About time someone did,” another voice said as a fourth horseman joined them. This was Colonel Ranafast, the only officer of any rank to have survived from the dyke garrison. He was an emaciated- looking hawkish man who had commanded the dyke’s cavalry, only a score of which were now left to him. He had known Corfe as an obscure ensign, Martellus’s aide, but he showed no resentment at his former subordinate’s elevation.
The streets of the capital were lined with people. Corfe could hear their cheers from here, a mile away. They
