The Iron Wars

by Paul Kearney

  Companies of Torunnan regulars elbowed aside the crowds of civilians at frequent intervals, all heading towards the city walls. The capital was crawling with activity, but there seemed to be no panic, or even unease as yet. The news of Ormann Dyke’s fall was not yet common knowledge, though it was known that the refugee camps about the city walls were about to be broken up. As the foursome made their way to the northern gate, Corfe filled in his subordinates on the situation. Andruw became silent and glum. Like Corfe, he had served at the dyke, but for longer. He had friends with Martellus. The dyke had been his home. Marsch, by contrast, seemed uplifted, almost merry at the thought of meeting a thousand more of his fellow tribesmen.

  The prospective recruits were encamped a mile from the walls, out of the swamp of the refugees. They had posted sentries, Corfe was gratified to see, and as he and his three comrades puffed up the slope to meet them a knot of riders thundered out of their lines, coming to a mud-splattering halt ten yards away. The lead rider, a young, raven-dark man as slender as a girl, called out in the language of the tribes, and Marsch called back. Corfe heard his own name mentioned, and the dark rider’s eyes bored into him.

  “I hope they don’t put too much store by appearances,” Andruw muttered. “We should have ridden.”

  The dark rider dismounted in one fluid movement, and came forward. He was shorter even than Corfe, and he wore old-fashioned chainmail of exquisite workmanship. A long, wickedly curved sabre hung at his side, and Corfe noted the light lance dangling from the pommel of his horse’s saddle.

  “This is Morin,” Marsch said. “He is of the Cimbriani. He has six hundred of his people here. The rest are Feldari, and a few of my own people, the Felimbri. He has been elected warleader by the host.”

  Corfe nodded.

  The dark tribesman, Morin, launched into a long and passionate speech in his own language.

  “He wishes to know if it is true that his men are to fight the Merduks only,” Marsch translated.

  “Tell him it’s true.”

  “But he also says that he will fight the Torunnans too if you wish. They tried to enslave his men when first they arrived, and had them disarmed. Three were killed. But then they were released again. He”—here Marsch sounded apologetic—“he does not trust Torunnans, but he hears you were an officer under John Mogen, and so you must be an honourable man.”

  Corfe and Andruw looked at each other. “Torunnan military courtesy is as famed as ever, I see,” Andruw murmured. “I’m surprised they didn’t bugger off back to the mountains.”

  “They want to fight,” Marsch said simply, whilst beside him Ensign Ebro, a prime example of Torunnan military courtesy, glowered at the ground.

  “Tell Morin,” Corfe said, holding the eyes of the dark tribesman, “that as long as his people serve under me, they shall be treated like men, and I shall speak for them in everything. If I break faith with them, then may the seas rise up and drown me, may the green hills open up and swallow me, may the stars of heaven fall on me and crush me out of life for ever.”

  It was the ancient oath of the mountain tribes which Marsch and the rest of the Cathedrallers had once sworn to him. When Marsch had finished translating it to Morin, the dark tribesman instantly fell on one knee and offered Corfe the hilt of his sabre—and Corfe heard the same words coming back at him in the rolling tongue of the Cimbriani.

  His little army had just grown by a thousand men.

  TEN

  I T would take not two days but three to get the command ready for the road north. Thirteen hundred men and almost two thousand horses, plus a baggage train of some two hundred mules. The entire column had been fitted out in the discarded Merduk armour which lay mouldering in a quartermaster’s warehouse, and the new men’s gear was lathered in red paint, just as that of the original Cathedrallers had been. They had looked somewhat askance at the Merduk equipment at first. Unlike Marsch and his five hundred, they possessed their own weapons and wore finely wrought mail hauberks, but Corfe had insisted that they don the same armour his original command had fought in down south. Also, he wanted heavy cavalry, the shattering impact of an armoured charge. Half of the newcomers had powerful recurved compound bows of horn and mountain yew and bristling quivers hung from their cantles, but they were now outfitted with the lances of the Merduk heavy horse. They were to be shock troops, pure and simple.

  Thirteen hundred men, a thousand of whom had never been part of a regimented military command before. Corfe organized them into twenty-six troops, fifty strong each, and sprinkled the three hundred survivors of his original command throughout the new units as NCOs. Two troops made up a squadron, and four squadrons a wing: thus three wings, plus a squadron in reserve to guard the baggage and spare horses. Corfe made Andruw, Ebro and Marsch wing commanders, Ebro almost speechless with gratitude at being given a real command at last.

  All very well on paper, but the reality was infinitely more complex. It took a day and a half to equip the new men and reorganize the command. Morin, it turned out, spoke good Normannic and Corfe detailed him as his adjutant and interpreter. The tribesman was none too pleased at not having command of a wing, but he knew nothing of the tactics that Corfe meant to employ, and had to be content with the promise of a field command at a later date. As it was, his pride was satisfied with relaying Corfe’s orders as though he had given them himself.

  The command was heterogenous to an extreme, liable to sub-divide along the lines of tribe. The new men saw themselves as Cimbriani or Feldari rather than Cathedrallers, but once they had a few battles under their belt, Corfe knew that would change.

  Their camp was a buzzing maelstrom of activity, night and day. Andruw and a couple of squadrons busied themselves with the collection of stores from a reluctant and somewhat outraged Torunnan quartermaster’s department, and had it not been for the goodwill of Quartermaster Passifal his men would never have been issued a single piece of hardtack. Others were occupied having the horses shod and the armour reconditioned, while Corfe conducted formation drill on the blasted plain north of the capital and the battlements of the city were lined with fascinated and in some cases derisive spectators.

  He worked his men hard, but no harder than he worked himself. By the third day the three wings were able, with a certain amount of cursing and jostling, to move from road column to line of battle at a single trumpet call from Cerne, Corfe’s bugler. Their efforts would have made a Torunnan drill-master stare, but the end result was well enough, Corfe thought. There was no time to teach them any of the niceties. The image which chiefly disturbed him was that of his men breaking formation and reverting to some tribal warband, especially if they happened to push an enemy into flight. He impressed upon them, at campfire gatherings interpreted by Morin, that they were not to break from the line or advance without direct orders from their wing commanders. There was some muttering at this, and someone shouted out from the darkness at the back of the crowd that they were warriors not slaves, and they did not have to be taught how to fight.

  “Fight my way,” Corfe shouted back. “Just once, fight my way, and if I don’t bring you to victory, then you may fight any way you please. But ask Marsch and his Felimbri if my way is not the best.”

  The muttering died down. The men now knew of the battles the original Cathedrallers had fought in the south, the odds they had overcome. Corfe realized he was on trial. If he led these men to defeat, initially at any rate, then he would never be able to lead them with confidence again. They respected ability, not rank, and deeds rather than flowery declarations.

  On the night before they moved out, he was summoned to meet the Queen Dowager again. He turned up at her chambers in his old, ragged uniform, aware of the whispers which followed him through the palace. Rumour was running like fire through the city: Torunn was about to be besieged as Aekir had been, the King was about to abandon the city to the enemy and pull the garrison south, a treaty was to be signed, a deal to be struck. Martellus was dead, he was victorious,
he was a hostage of the Merduks. No one could tell fact from fiction, and already thousands were fleeing Torunn, lines of carriages and wagons and handcarts and trudging people heading south. At Aekir there had been hope, even confidence, that as long as John Mogen led them and the walls stood they would prevail. Here, hope was fleeing with the mobs of refugees. It sickened Corfe to his stomach. He was beginning to wonder if anything of the world he knew would survive another winter.

  O DELIA was alone when he was shown in, sitting by a brazier with the shadows high and dark on the walls about her.

  “Lady.”

  Something scuttled away from the flame-light too quickly for him to make out, but the Queen Dowager did not stir. “You have been lucky, Colonel.”

  “Why is that, lady?”

  “You have been almost forgotten about. Thus far, you have been overlooked.”

  Corfe frowned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I mean that my son the King has forgotten you in the . . . excitement of the present time. But someone else—Colonel Menin, or I should say now General Menin—has just been made aware of your existence. The sooner you are away from the city the better.”

  “I see,” Corfe said. “Does he mean to make a fight of it?”

  Odelia smiled unpleasantly. “I do not know. I am no longer privy to the workings of the government. My instincts tell me that the King is timid and his general is a buffoon. Menin’s lackeys have been watching your men drilling. Tomorrow morning you will receive a new set of orders. You will be ordered to turn over your command to another, more . . . amenable officer who only today arrived from the south.”

  “Aras,” Corfe hissed.

  “The very same. According to him, you left your work there half done, and he had the lion’s share of the fighting to do while you hot-footed it back to the bed of the Queen Dowager.” Odelia’s smile was like a scar across her face in the firelight.

  “I left wounded with him, the dastard.”

  “I have had Passifal quarter them in an out-of-the-way place, don’t worry. But you have to get into the field, Corfe, before they ruin you.”

  “We leave at dawn. Or sooner, with this.”

  “Dawn should be safe enough. But no fanfare. A discreet exit is called for, I think.”

  “When have you found me anything but discreet, lady?”

  She laughed suddenly, like a girl. “Don’t worry, Corfe. Just make sure when you come back you have laurel on your brow, and I will do the rest. I still have strings to pull, even in the High Command. But that is not why I asked you to come here. I have something for you.” She threw aside a cloth to reveal a long, gleaming wooden box. Intrigued, but chafing at the waste of time, Corfe stepped closer.

  “Well, open it!”

  He did as he was bidden, and there, set in silk padding, was the shimmer of a long, bright-bladed sword.

  “It’s yours. Call it a lucky charm if you like. I’ve had it sitting here these six years.”

  Corfe lifted the sword. It was a heavy cavalry sabre, only slightly curved, double-edged for all that, with a plain basket hilt, the grip wire-bound ivory darkened with another man’s sweat. An old sword which had seen use—there were several tiny nicks in the blade. Looking closer, he saw the serpentine gleam of pattern welding.

  “It must be ancient,” he said, wondering.

  “It was John Mogen’s.”

  “My God!”

  “He called it Hanoran, which in old Normannic means ‘The Answerer.’ It was an heirloom of his house. He left it here before he went to take up the governorship of Aekir. You may as well have it.” Her voice was off-hand, but her eyes bored into him, twin peridot glitters.

  “Thank you, lady. It means much to me, to have this.”

  “He would have wanted you to have it. He would have wanted it to taste blood again in an able man’s hands rather than lie here gathering dust in an old woman’s chambers.”

  Corfe looked at her, and he smiled, the joy of the sword’s light, deadly balance upon him. The hilt fitted his hand as though it had been made for him. On an impulse, he knelt before her and offered it to her.

  “Lady, for what it is worth, know that you have one champion at least in this kingdom.” He raised his dancing eyes. “And you are not so old.”

  She laughed again. “Gallantry, no less! I will make a courtier of you yet, Corfe.” She rose, and indeed in that moment she looked young, a woman barely into her third decade, though she must have been almost twice that. She was beautiful, Corfe thought, and he admired her. One slim-fingered hand stroked his cheek.

  “That is all, Colonel. I won’t keep you from your barbarians a moment longer. You must, must leave at sunrise. Fight your battle, come back with Martellus and his men, and I guarantee they will not be able to touch you.”

  He nodded. The Answerer slid into his scabbard with hardly a click, though it was an inch too long. He took the battered sabre which he had carried from Aekir and tossed it into a corner with a clang. Then he bowed to her and left the room without a backward glance.

  But Odelia the Queen Dowager retrieved his discarded sabre and, taking it, she placed it in the silk-lined box which had once housed Mogen’s blade, and then set the box aside as gently as if some great treasure were stored therein.

  • • •

  T HE grey hour before dawn, chill as a graveside. And in the broken hills which bordered the Western Road to the north of Torunn a small party of weary travellers paused to look down on the sprawl of the Torunnan capital in the distance. Torches burned along the walls like a snake of gems trailed across the sleeping land, and the River Torrin was wide and deep and iron-pale as the sky began to lighten over the Jafrar Mountains in the east.

  Two monks, two Fimbrian soldiers and two half-dead mules, all stained with the mud of their wanderings. They stood silent as standing stones in the sunrise until the shorter of the two monks, his face hideously disfigured, went down on his knees and clasped his hands in prayer. “Thank God, oh thank God.”

  The soldiers were looking about them like foxes for whom the hunt is on, but the hills were empty but for wheeling kites. “You shall have your fire, then,” one of them said to the monks. “I doubt the Merduks will venture so close to the walls.”

  “Why not continue into the city?” Avila protested. “It’s barely a league. We can manage that, I’m sure.”

  “We’ll wait until it’s fully light,” Siward retorted. “If you approach the gates now you’re liable to be shot. Torunn is all but under siege, and the gate guards will be jumpy. I’ve not come this far to finish with a Torunnan ball in me.”

  There was no more argument, and indeed the two monks were hardly able to advance another step. They had walked all night. Joshelin and Siward unloaded the bundle of faggots which one of the mules bore and began busying themselves with flint and tinder, after throwing the flaccid wineskin to their charges. Albrec and Avila squirted wine into their throats for want of a better breakfast, and sat gazing down on the last Ramusian capital east of the Cimbric Mountains.

  “The Saint must have been watching over us,” Albrec said. His voice trembled. “What a penance this has been, Avila. I have never known such weariness. But it refines the soul. The blessed Saint—”

  “There are horsemen approaching,” Avila cried.

  Joshelin and Siward kicked out the nascent campfire, cursing, and threw themselves upon the ground, hauling the exhausted mules down with them.

  “Where away?”

  “My God, it’s an army!” Avila said. “There—a column of them. They must have come out of the city.”

  Even the crannied features of the two Fimbrians fell with despair. “They are Merduks,” Siward groaned. “Torunn has already fallen.” Grimly, he began loading his arquebus while Joshelin worked furiously to light the slow-match.

  “They are in scarlet,” Albrec said dully. “Sweet Saints, to think we came this far, only to end like this.”

  It was indeed an army, a long,
disciplined column of heavily armoured cavalry over a thousand strong. They bore a strange banner, black and scarlet, and some sang as they rode in an unknown tongue which nevertheless sounded harsh and savage to the two cowering monks. The horsemen’s line of march would take them within yards of the foursome, and beyond the hollow in which they hid the country was wide open for miles around. There was nowhere to run.

  Albrec prayed fervently, his eyes tight shut, whilst Avila sat dully resigned and the two Fimbrians looked as though they meant to sell their lives dearly. The head of the column was barely a cable’s length away, and the two soldiers were gently cocking their weapons when they heard a voice shout out in unmistakable Normannic:

  “Tell Ebro to keep his God-damned wing on the road! I won’t have straggling, Andruw, you hear me? Blood of the Saint, this is not a blasted picnic!”

  Albrec opened his eyes.

  The lead horsemen reined in and halted the long column with one upraised hand. The monks had been seen. A knot of troopers cantered forward, the thin birthing sun flashing vermilion off their armour. Their banner billowed in the cold breeze, and Albrec saw that it seemed to represent a cathedral’s spires. He stood up, whilst his three companions tried to pull him down again.

  “Good morning!” he cried, his heart thumping a fusillade in his breast.

  The leading rider walked his horse forward, staring. Then he doffed his barbaric helm. “Good morning.” He was dark-haired, with deep-hollowed grey eyes. He reminded Albrec of the two Fimbrians behind him. Hard, formidable, full of natural authority. A young man, but with a middle-aged stare. Beside him was another hewn out of the same wood, but with a certain gaiety about him that even the outlandish armour could not dim. In the early light the pair looked like two warriors of ancient legend come to life.