Paul Kearney - The Heretic Kings

“I needed air,” Corfe told him. “Why are you two out here missing the fun?”

“The men want to toast their commander,” Marsch said gravely.

He had been drinking solidly the whole evening, but he was as steady as a rock. He offered the wineskin to his colonel, and Corfe took a squirt of the thin, acidic wine of southern Torunna into his mouth. The taste brought back memories of his youth. He had come from this part of the world, though he had been stationed so long in the east that he nearly forgot it. Had he not joined the army at a tender age he might have been burning on that pyre on the hilltop right now, fighting for his overlord in a war whose cause he knew little of and cared less for.

“Are the pickets posted?” he asked Andruw.

The younger officer blinked owlishly. “Yes, sir. Half a mile out of town, sober as monks, and mounted on the best horses the stables could provide. Corfe, Marsch and I have been meaning to talk to you.” Andruw draped an arm about Corfe’s shoulders. “Do you know what we’ve found here?”

“What?”

“Horses.” It was Marsch who was speaking now. “We have found many horses, Colonel, big enough for destriers. It would seem that this duke of yours had a passion for breeding horses. There are over a thousand in studs scattered over the countryside to the south. Some of the castle attendants told us.”

Corfe turned to look Marsch in the eye. “What are you saying, Ensign?”

“My people are natural born horsemen. It is the way we prefer to fight. And this armour we wear: most of it is the armour of heavy cavalrymen anyway. .” Marsch trailed off, his eyebrows raised.

“Cavalry,” Corfe breathed. “So that’s it. I was a cavalry officer myself once.”

Andruw was grinning at him. “The property of traitors is confiscate to the crown, you know. But I’m sure Lofantyr will not miss a few nags. He’s been niggardly enough to us so far.”

Corfe stared out at the fire-split night. The pyre of the slain was like a dull eye watching him.

“On horseback we’d have more mobility and striking power, but we’d also need a baggage train of sorts, a mobile forge, farriers.”

“There are men among the tribe who can shoe horses and doctor them. The Felimbri value their horseflesh above their wives,” Marsch said, with perfect seriousness. Andruw choked on a mouthful of wine and collapsed into laughter.

“You’re drunk, Adjutant,” Corfe said to him.

Andruw saluted. “Yes, Colonel, I am. My apologies, Marsch. Have a drink.”

The wineskin did the rounds between the three of them as they leaned against the battlements and narrowed their eyes against the chill of the wind that came off the sea.

“We will equip the men with horses then,” Corfe said at last. “That’s eight squadrons of cavalry we’ll have, plus spares for every man and a baggage train for forage and the forge. Mules to carry the grain-there’s plenty about the town. And then-”

“And then?” Andruw and Marsch asked together.

“Then we march on Duke Narfintyr at Staed, get there before Lofantyr’s other column and see what we can do.”

“I’ve heard folk in the town say that Narfintyr has three thousand men,” Andruw said, momentarily sobered.

“Numbers mean nothing. If they’re of the same calibre as the ones we fought today we’ve nothing to worry about.”

The moon was rising, a thin sliver, a horned thing of silver which Marsch bowed to.

“ ‘Kerunnos’ Face,’ we call it,” he said in answer to the questioning looks of the two Torunnans. “It is the light of the night, of the twilight, of a dwindling people. My tribe is almost finished. Of its warriors, who once numbered thousands, there are only we few hundred left and some boys and old men up in the mountains. We are the last.”

“Our people have fought you for generations,” Corfe said. “Before us it was the Fimbrians, and before that the Horse-Merduks.”

“Yes. We have fought the world, we Felimbri, but our time is almost done. This is the right way to end it. It was a good fight, and there will be other good fights until the last of us dies a free man with sword in hand. We can ask for nothing more.”

“You’re wrong, you know,” Andruw spoke up unexpectedly. “This isn’t the end of things. Can’t you feel it? The world is changing, Marsch. If we live to old age we will have seen it become something new, and what is more we will have been a part of the forces that did the changing of it. Today, in a small way, we began something which will one day be important. .” He trailed off. “I’m drunk, friends. Best ignore me.”

Corfe slapped him on the shoulder. “You’re right in a way. This is just the beginning of things. There’s a long road ahead of us, if we’re strong enough to walk it. God knows where it’ll take us.”

“To the road ahead,” Marsch said, raising the almost empty wineskin.

“To the road ahead.”

And they drank from it one by one like brothers.

The reek of the burning hung about Abrusio like a dark fog, stretching for miles out to sea. The great fires had been contained, and were burning themselves out in an area of the city which resembled the visionary’s worst images of hell. Deep in those bright, thundering patches of holocaust some of the sturdier stone buildings still stood, though roofless and gutted, but the poor clay brick of the rest of the dwellings had crumbled at the touch of the fire, and what had once been a series of thriving, densely populated districts was now a wasteland of rubble and ash over which the tides of flame swept back and forth with the wind, seeking something new to feed their hunger even as they began to die down for lack of sustenance.

Fighting within the city had also died down, the protagonists having retreated to their respective quarters with the fire-flattened expanses providing a clear-cut no-man’s-land between them. Many of the King’s troops were engaged in the business of conducting evacuees beyond the walls and yet others were still demolishing swathes of the Lower City, street by street, lest the flames flare up again and seek a new path down to the sea.

“We are holding our own rather nicely,” Sastro di Carrera said with satisfaction. His perch on a balcony high in the Royal palace afforded him a fine view of Lower Abrusio, almost half of which lay in flickering ruin.

“I think we have exhausted the main effort of the enemy,” Presbyter Quirion agreed. “But a part of the fleet, a strong squadron, has not been in sight for days. Rovero may have sent it off somewhere to create some devilment, and the main part of Hebrion’s navy is at anchor beyond the Great Harbour. I fear they may assault the booms soon.”

“Let them,” Sastro said airily. “The mole forts house a score of heavy guns apiece. If Rovero sends in his ships to force the entrance to the harbour they will be cut to pieces by a deadly crossfire. No, I think we have them, Quirion. This is the time to see whether they will consider a negotiated surrender.”

Quirion shook his round, close-cropped head. “They’re in no mood for talking yet, unless I miss my guess. They still have a goodly force left to them, and our own men are thinly stretched. They will make another effort soon, by ship perhaps. We must remain vigilant.”

“As you wish. Now, what of my coronation plans? I trust they are forging ahead?”

Quirion’s face took on a look of twisted incredulity. “We are in the middle of a half-fought war, Lord Carrera. This is hardly the time to begin worrying about pomp and ceremony.”

“The coronation is more than that, my dear Presbyter. Don’t you think that the presence in Abrusio of an anointed king, blessed by the Church, will be a factor in persuading the rebels to lay down their arms?”