The Torunnans shifted their feet, looking both embarrassed and sullen. Corfe moved forward to speak to their ringleader, Varian. Thank God Andruw had remembered his name.
“I too lost a home and family, Varian,” he said quietly. “All of us here have suffered, in one way or another.”
Varian’s eyes were hot blazes of grief. “I had a wife,” he croaked, hardly audible. “I had a daughter.”
Corfe gripped his shoulder. “Don’t do anything that would offend their memory.”
The trooper coughed and wiped his eyes roughly. “Yes, sir. I’m sorry. We’re bloody fools, all of us.”
“So are all men, Varian. But we were husbands and fathers and brothers once. Save the hatred for a battlefield. These animals are not worthy of it. Now go and get some sleep.”
Corfe raised his voice. “All of you, back to your lines. There is nothing more to do here, nothing more to see.”
Reluctantly, the throng broke up and began dispersing. Corfe felt the relief wash over him in a tepid wave as they obeyed him. They were still his to command, thanks to Formio and Andruw. They were still an army, and not a mob.
I N the middle watch of the night he did the rounds of the camp as he always did, exchanging a few words with the sentries, looking in on the horses. He took his own mount, an equable bay gelding, from the horse-lines and rode it bare-back out of the wood and up to the summit of a small knoll which lay to the east of the camp. Another horseman was there ahead of him, outlined against the stars. Andruw, staring out upon a sleeping Torunna. Corfe reined in beside him, and they sat their horses in silence, watching.
On the vast dark expanse of the night-bound earth they could see distant lights, throbbing like glow-worms. Even as Corfe watched, another sprang up out on the edge of the horizon.
“They’re burning the towns along the Searil,” Andruw said.
Corfe studied the distant flames and wondered what scenes of horror and carnage they signified. He remembered Aekir’s fall, the panic of the crowds, the inferno of the packed streets, and wiped his face with one hand.
“I’m sorry I lost my head back there for a time,” Andruw said tonelessly. “It won’t happen again.” And the anger and despair ate through the numbness in his voice as he spoke again. “God’s blood, Corfe, will it ever end? Why do they do these things? What kind of people are they?”
“I don’t know, Andruw, I truly don’t. We’ve been fighting these folk for generations, and still we know nothing about them. And they know as little about us, I suspect. Two peoples who have never even tried to understand one another, but who are simply intent on wiping each other out.”
“I’ve heard that in the west, in Gabrion and Hebrion, the Sea-Merduks trade and take ship with Ramusian captains as though there were no barriers between them. They sail ships together and start businesses in partnership with each other. Why is it so different here?”
“Because this is the frontier, Andruw. This is where the wheel meets the road.
“I stood ceremonial guard in Aekir once, at a dinner John Mogen was giving to his captains before the siege. I think that if anyone had some understanding of the Merduks, he did. I think he even admired them. He said that men must always move towards the sunset. They follow it as surely as swallows flit south in wintertime.
“Originally the Merduks were chieftains of the steppes beyond the Jafrar, but they followed the sun and crossed the mountains, and were halted by the walls and pikes of the Fimbrians. The Fimbrians contained them: we cannot. That is the simple truth. If we are not to fight one another into annihilation, then one day we shall have to broker a peace and make a compromise with them. Either that, or we will be swept into the mountains and end our days the leaders of roving homeless tribesmen, like Marsch and his people.”
“I must talk to Marsch. That mountain savage bit… I have to tell him—”
“He knows, Andruw. He knows.”
Andruw nodded. “I suppose so.” He seemed to be having trouble finding the words he wanted. Corfe could sense the struggle in him as he sat his horse and picked at its mane.
“They shamed us back there, Formio and Marsch and their men. There they were, foreigners and mercenaries, and they stood by you while your own people were almost ready to push you out of the way. Those men were at the dyke with us—they saw us there. A few even served under you in the barbican. There’s no talk around their campfires tonight. They have failed you—and themselves.”
“No,” Corfe said quickly. “They are just men who have been pushed too far. I think none the worse of them for it. And this army is not made up of Fimbrians and Torunnans and the tribesmen. Not any more. They’re my men now, every one of them. They’ve fought together and they’ve died together. There is no need to talk of shame, not to me.”
Andruw grimaced. “Maybe… You know, Corfe, I was ready to slit the throats of those prisoners. I would have done it without a qualm and slept like a baby afterwards. I never really hated before, not truly. In a way it was some huge kind of game. But now this—this is different. The refugees from Aekir, they were just faces, but these hills… I skylarked in them when I was a boy. The people up here are my own people, not just because they are Torunnan—that’s a name—but because I know how they live and where. Varian hasn’t seen his wife and child in almost a year, and he doesn’t know if they’re alive or dead. And there are many more like him throughout the troops that came from the dyke. They sent their families out of the fortress at the start, back here to the north, or to the towns around Torunn. They thought the war would never come this far. Well, they were wrong. We all were.”
“Yes,” Corfe said, “we were.”
“Are we doomed, do you think? Madmen fighting the inevitable?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care either, Andruw. All I know is how to fight. It’s all I’ve ever known. Perhaps one day it will be possible to come to some kind of terms with the Merduks. I hope so, for the sake of Varian and his family and thousands like them. If it does not prove so, however, I will fight the bastards until the day I die, and then my ghost will plague their dreams.”
Andruw laughed, and Corfe realised how much he had missed that sound of late.
“I’ll just bet it will. Merduk mothers will frighten children yet unborn with tales of the terrible Corfe and his red-clad fiends.”
“I hope so,” Corfe smiled.
“You think that snot-nosed boy was telling the truth about the Merduks marching on Charibon?”
“Possibly. It could be misinformation, but I doubt it. No, I think it’s time the army went hunting. The quickest road to the gap from Ormann Dyke lies two days’ march east of here. Tomorrow that’s where we’re going, with the Cathedrallers out in front under you and Marsch.”
“Any guesses on the size of the army we’re looking for?”
“Small enough for us to take on, I should think. The Sultan still believes the Torunnan military to be penned up in Torunn, licking their wounds, and Charibon has never been well defended. We may be outnumbered, but not by much, I hope.”
“We can’t stay out too long. We carry only enough rations for another three weeks.”
“We’ll go on half rations if we have to. I will not allow them to send an army through the gap. I’ve no more love for the Ravens of Charibon than the next man, but I’m damned if I’ll let the Merduks waltz over Normannia like they owned it already. Besides, I have this feeling, Andruw. I think the enemy is slowing down. We’ve blunted their edge. If they find they have to fight for every yard of Torunnan soil, then they may end up content with less of it.”
“An open battle will do the men good.”
“This is war we’re talking about, Andruw. A battle that will kill and maim great numbers of the men.”
“You know what I mean, Corfe. They need to taste blood again. Hell, so do I.”
“All right, I take your point.” Corfe turned his horse around with a nudge of his knee. “Time to get some sleep.”
“I think I’ll stay here and think a while,” Andruw said.
“Don’t think too much, Andruw. It doesn’t do any good. Believe me, I know.” And Corfe kicked his mount into a canter, leaving Andruw to stare after him.
A LBREC’S cell was sparse and cold, but not unbearably so. To a monk who had suffered through a
