twitched his reins and began his stately progress back across the square. His aides and staff officers streamed after him.
“What now, Khedive?” Jaffan, his adjutant, asked.
“I want the men redeployed, Jaffan, as soon as is practicable. We must start planning our next move. You will send the quartermaster-general to me after lunch and we will discuss a new supply route.”
“We are advancing on the Searil, then?” Jaffan asked, his eyes shining.
“Yes. It will take time, of course; time to reorganize and to consolidate, but we are advancing on the Searil. May Ahrimuz continue to bless our arms as he has done in this place. I will call an indaba of general officers this evening to discuss things in detail.”
“Yes, Khedive!”
“Oh, and Jaffan—”
“Khedive?”
“Make sure that Lejer is dead within the hour. With all his faults, he is a brave man. I do not like to see brave men hanging on gibbets.”
SEVEN
F URTHER west, along the Searil road.
The rain was falling steadily, mourning perhaps the fall of the City of God. The Thurians were hidden behind its diffuse, livid veil; the moisture beaded the air in a mother-of-pearl dimness so all Corfe could see were shapes moving off on every side, occasionally becoming darker and clearer as they staggered nearer then, wraithlike, fading again.
His boots sank calf-deep in the clutching mud, and water rolled down his face as though it were the sweat of his toil. He was tired, chilled to the marrow, numb as a stone.
The fleeing hordes had been passing this way for days. They had scoured a scar across the very face of the earth, a long snake of churned mud almost a third of a league wide obscuring the original slim track that had been the route west. The rain was filling up the broken soil, turning it into something near liquid glue. Along it bodies lay partly submerged every few yards: the ranks were beginning to thin. Folk who had fled Aekir with nothing more than the tunics on their backs were shivering and shuddering as they trudged towards the dubious sanctuary of the Torunnan lines. The very old and the very young were the first to falter; most of the bodies Corfe had passed were those of children and the elderly.
Here and there was the angular shape of a cart askew, sinking in the mud, the carcass of a mule or a pair of oxen sprawled between its shafts. People had already been at the flesh, stripping the bodies clean so that bones glinted palely in the unending rain.
There was shouting away in the rain mist. A fight up ahead by the sound of it. Corfe heard an old man’s voice cry out in pain, the sound of blows. He did not quicken his pace, but slogged wearily along. He had seen a score of such encounters since Aekir; they were as unremarkable as the falling rain.
But suddenly he was in the midst of it. An elderly man, his clothes black with mud and his face hideously scarred, came blundering out of the mist with one hand stretched before him as though feeling his way through the damp air. His other hand clutched something at his breast. There were half a dozen shapes in pursuit, snarling and shouting to one another.
The old man tripped and fell full length in the mud. For a second he lay as if struck down; then he began moving feebly. As he lifted his head Corfe saw that his eyes had been gouged out. They were dark, scabbed pits filled with mud and rain.
The pursuers became more visible, a rag-tag crowd of wild-eyed men. They carried cudgels and poniards. One bore a pike with a broken shaft. He poked the old man with the splintered end.
“Come on, grandfather, let us have the pretty bauble and perhaps we will let you live. It’s little good to you anyway. You’ll never see it glitter no more.”
The old man tried to struggle to his knees, but the mud held him fast. His breath was coming in hoarse whines.
“I beg you, my sons,” he bleated, “in the name of the Blessed Saint, let me be.” Corfe could see now that dangling from a chain around his wizened neck was the A-shaped symbol of the praying hands, the badge of a Ramusian cleric. It was smeared with mud, but the yellow gleam of gold and precious stones could be made out through the filth.
“Have it your own way then, you God-damned Raven.”
The men closed in on the prone figure like vultures moving in on a carcass. The old man’s body began jerking up and down as they tried to wrest the chain off his neck.
Corfe was level with the scuffle. He could either step off to one side and continue on his way or walk right through the middle of them. He stopped, hesitating, furious with himself for even caring.
There was a squawk of anguish from the old man as the chain broke free. The men laughed, one holding it aloft like a trophy.
“You accursed priests,” he said, and kicked the old man in the ribs. “Your sort always have gold about you, even if all around is ruin and wreckage.”
“Cut his saintly throat, Pardal,” one of the men said. “He should have stayed to burn in his precious holy city.”
The man named Pardal bent with a steel glitter in his fist. The old man groaned helplessly.
“That’s enough, lads,” Corfe heard himself say, for all the world as though he were back in barracks breaking up a brawl.
The men paused. Their victim blinked withered eyelids on bleeding holes. One side of his face was as black as a Merduk’s with the mud.
“Who’s that?”
“Just a traveller, like yourselves. Has not there been enough murder done these past days, without you adding to it? Leave the old crow alone. You have what you want.”
The men peered at him, curious and wary.
“What are you, a Knight Militant?” one asked.
“Nay,” another said. “See his sabre? That’s the weapon of Mogen’s men. He’s a Torunnan.”
The man called Pardal straightened. “The Torunnans died with Mogen or with Lejer. He’s got that pig-sticker off a corpse.”
“What else do you think he’s got?” another asked greedily. The men growled and moved into a line confronting Corfe. Six of them.
Corfe drew out the heavy sabre in one fluid movement.
“Who’ll be first to test whether I be one of Mogen’s men or no?” he asked. The sabre danced in his hand. He loosened his feet in the gripping muck.
The men stared at him doubtfully, then one said: “What’s that in your pouch, fellow?”
Corfe tapped his bulging belt pouch, smiling, and said truthfully: “Half a turnip.”
“Throw it over here, and maybe we won’t cut off your prick.”
“Come and get it, you long streak of yellow shit.”
The six paused, greed and fear fighting a curious battle on their countenances.
Then: “Take him!” one of them bellowed, and they were lurching towards Corfe with their weapons upraised.
He moved aside. They bunched on him, which was what he had hoped for. A jab of the sabre point made one throw himself backwards, to slip and tumble in the slithery mud. As he brought the blade back Corfe smashed the heavy basket hilt into another of their faces. The short spike on the hilt ripped up the man’s nostril with a spray of dark blood, and he turned aside with a cry.
Corfe whirled—too slowly. A cudgel caught him just above the ear, grazing his skull and tearing the skin and hair. He hardly felt the blow, but ducked low and swung at the man’s knee, feeling the crunch of bone and cartilage up his forearm as the keen blade destroyed the joint.
He tore the sabre free and the man fell, tripping up another. Corfe swung at the nape of the tripped man’s
