Paul Kearney - The Iron Wars

“And can he then stop smoking it if he has a mind to?” Avila drawled.

Joshelin stared at him. “If he has the will.”

Albrec took the pipe Siward proffered rather gingerly and sucked a draught of the bitter smoke deep into his lungs. Nothing happened. He returned the pipe to its owner, rather relieved.

But then his aches and pains dimmed to a comfortable glow. He felt a new strength seeping through his muscles and his body became as light as a child’s. He blinked in wonder. The firelight seemed a beautiful, entrancing thing of bright twisting loveliness. He put out his hand towards it, only to have his wrist grasped by the hard fist of Joshelin.

“One must be careful, priest.”

He nodded, feeling foolish and exhilarated in the same moment.

“I haven’t seen you smoke it before,” Avila said to the Fimbrians.

Siward shrugged. “We are getting tired. We are men also, Inceptine.”

“Well, bless my soul,” Avila retorted, and wrapped himself in his evil-smelling blanket.

They took the chicken off the spit and ripped it into four pieces. Albrec was no longer hungry, but he ate the scorched meat anyway, no longer able to taste it. His mind felt clear as ice. His worries had vanished. He began to chuckle, and then stopped himself as he found his three companions were watching him.

“Marvellous stuff. Marvellous,” he muttered, and fell back into the soft pine needles, snoring as soon as he was horizontal.

Avila threw a blanket over him. It had holes in it from other nights spent lying close to campfires.

“I will dress your feet in the morning,” Joshelin told him.

The young Inceptine nodded distantly and took a huge swallow of the wine. “What will you do when you have escorted us safely to Torunn?” he asked.

The two Fimbrians glanced at each other and then into the fire. “We will await further orders from the marshal,” Siward said at last.

“You don’t believe you’ll get any further orders, though. Albrec told me his intentions. Your marshal is leading his men to their deaths.”

“Mind your own matters, priest,” Joshelin hissed with sudden passion.

“It is no matter to me,” Avila said. “I only wonder that you had not thought out what will become of you when you have run this errand for him.”

“As you say,” Joshelin grated. “It is no matter to you. Now get you to sleep. You need a lot of rest if you are to keep up today’s volume of whining on the morrow.”

Avila looked at him for a long minute, and finally his face broke out into a smile.

“Quite right. I would hate to let my standards slip.”

He thought she looked younger in the morning light than she had the night before. He lay propped up on one elbow watching her quiet sleep, and in him a storm of feelings and memories fought for the forefront of his mind. He wrestled them back brutally, slammed a door in their faces, and was able for some few precious seconds to lie there and watch her, and be almost content.

Her eyes opened. No morning bleariness or process of awakening. She was instantly alert, aware, knowing. Her eyes were green as the shallows of the Kardian Sea in high summer, a bewitching, arresting green. His wife’s eyes had been grey, quick to humour, and holding less knowledge in their depths. But then his wife had died still a young woman.

“No grief,” Odelia said quietly. “Not on this morning. I will not permit it.” Her words were imperious but their tone was almost pleading. He smiled, kissed her unlined forehead, and sat up. His moment of peace had passed, but that was to be expected. He did not wish for more.

“I must away, lady,” he said, feeling like some swain in a romantic ballad. To connect himself back to reality, he swung his feet off the bed and on to the stone floor. “I have a thousand men waiting for me.”

“What is one woman, set against a thousand barbarians?” she asked archly, and rose herself, naked and superb. He watched her as she slipped a silk robe about her shoulders, her hair spilling gold down her back. He was glad she was not dark. That would have been too much.

He pulled on the court uniform he hated, stamping his feet into the absurd buckled shoes. They seemed as insubstantial as cotton after the weeks in long cavalry boots.

A discreet knock at the door.

“Yes,” Odelia said, never taking her eyes off Corfe.

A maid. “Highness, the King is in the antechamber. He wishes to see you at once.”

“Tell him I am dressing.”

“Highness, he will not wait. He insists on entering immediately.”

Odelia met Corfe’s eyes, and smiled. “Find yourself a corner, Colonel.” Then she turned to the maid. “Tell him I will see him now, in here.”

The maid scurried out. Corfe cursed venomously. “Are you out of your Royal mind?”

“There’s a tapestry behind the headboard which will serve admirably. Make sure your toes do not stick out below it.”

“Saint’s blood!” Swallowing other oaths, Corfe dashed across the room and concealed himself there. The tapestry was loose-woven. He could see through it as though through a heavy fog. His heart hammered as cruelly as if he were going into battle, but he found time to wonder if he were not the first man ever to hide in that spot.

The King of Torunna entered the Queen Dowager’s bedchamber seconds later.

Odelia sat down at her dressing table with her back to her son and began brushing her golden hair.

“An urgent matter indeed, if you must burst in on me before I am even dressed,” she said tartly.

Lofantyr’s eyes swept the chamber. He was sweating, and looked like nothing so much as a frightened boy in the schoolmaster’s study.

“Mother, Ormann Dyke has fallen.”

The brush stopped halfway through the gleaming tresses. Corfe thought that his heart had stopped with it. Almost he stepped out from behind the tapestry.

“Are you sure?”

“Merduk light cavalry have been sighted scarcely ten miles from the city walls. General Menin sent out a sortie which destroyed or captured an enemy patrol. One of the enemy was found to have this on him.”

Lofantyr proffered his mother a small leather cylinder, much scuffed and stained.

“A dispatch case,” Odelia said mechanically. She snatched it out of her son’s hands and ripped it open, tapping out the scroll of parchment within. She unrolled and read it, the sheet quivering like a captured lark in her hand.

“Martellus’s seal-it’s genuine enough. Dated the day before yesterday. The courier must have made good time ere they caught him. Blood of the merciful Saint, he’s on the march, trying for the capital. Ten thousand men, Lofantyr. We must send out a host to meet him.”

“Are you mad, mother? The countryside is swarming with the enemy. General Menin’s sortie barely made it back to the walls alive. We must ready ourselves for a siege here, and Martellus must fend for himself. I cannot spare the men.”

Odelia raised her head. “Do you jest with me?”

“It is the considered advice of the General Staff,” the King said defensively. “I concur. I have already given orders that the Aekirian refugee camps be broken up and their occupants shipped south. The fleet is at anchor in the estuary. We will bleed the Merduks white before the walls.”

“As they were bled at Aekir and Ormann Dyke, no doubt,” the Queen Dowager said. “My God, Lofantyr, think about what you are doing. You are abandoning a quarter of the country and its people to the enemy. You are throwing away Martellus and his army-the best troops we have. Son, you cannot do this.”

“The necessary orders are being written out as we speak,” the King snapped. “I’ll thank you to remember who is monarch of this kingdom, mother.” His voice had grown shrill. Perspiration glittered on his temples. He snatched Martellus’s dispatch out of her hand. “From now on, the affairs of state are no business of yours.” His eyes swept the chamber, passing over the two wine glasses, the rumpled clothing. “I see you have other things to keep you occupied, at any rate. I shall send a clerk round for the seal you still possess this afternoon. Good day.” He bowed, wild-eyed, turned, and spun out of the room, wiping the sweat from his forehead as he left.