The Iron Wars

by Paul Kearney

  The gates of Torunn were closed, and Andruw and his men had to cajole and threaten for fully a quarter of an hour in the pouring rain before the guards would admit them to the city. Their horses clopped noisily through the gloom of the barbican with the gore of the North More battle still upon them, ten riders looking like warriors out of some primitive bloodstained myth.

  The haptman of the gatehouse accosted them on the street below the walls, demanding to know their names and their errand. Andruw fixed him with a weary eye. “I bear dispatches for the High Command. Where do they meet these days?”

  “The west wing of the palace,” the haptman said. “Whose command are you with? I’ve never seen your like. That’s Merduk armour your men wear.”

  “Very observant of you. I’m with Colonel Corfe Cear-Inaf’s command. He’s a day’s march behind me with seven thousand men, two thousand of them Fimbrians.”

  The haptman’s face lit up. “Is Martellus with him? Has he got through?”

  “Martellus is dead, so is the Fimbrian marshal. The greater part of their armies lie slain up on the North More. Now are you satisfied?”

  The officious haptman nodded, horrified. He stepped aside to let the sombre cavalcade pass.

  Andruw was kept waiting half an hour in an antechamber despite the urgency of his errand. His normally sunny outlook was soured by grief and exhaustion. The North More had been a victory of sorts, he knew—Corfe had saved part of an army from destruction and was bringing it to the capital. But the rest, including men Andruw had served with along the Searil River, friends and comrades, had been wiped out. And he could not get out of his mind the vision of the Fimbrian pike phalanx advancing to its doom. It was the most admirable and terrible thing he had ever seen.

  At last the door opened and he was admitted to the council room. A score of tall beeswax candles burned in sconces, and there was a trio of lit braziers glowing along one wall. A long table dominated the chamber. It was piled with maps and papers, quills and inkwells. At one end sat King Lofantyr in a fur cloak, his chin resting on one ring-glittering hand. A dozen other men were present also, some sitting, others standing, all in the resplendent finery of the Torunnan court. They looked up as Andruw entered, and he saw the distaste on more than one face as they took in his squalid condition. He bowed, the mud-stained dispatch Corfe had dashed off with a saddle for a desk clenched in one fist.

  “Your Majesty, sirs, Haptman Andruw Cear-Adurhal, bearing dispatches from Colonel Corfe Cear-Inaf.”

  Andruw distinctly heard someone say “Who?” as he laid the dispatch before his monarch and retreated, bowing again. A series of chuckles rustled through the gathering.

  “Is it true Martellus is dead?” Lofantyr said suddenly, quelling the buzz of talk that had arisen. He made no move to read the crumpled scroll.

  “Yes, sire. We came too late. He and the Fimbrians were already heavily engaged.”

  “Fimbrians!” a voice barked. Andruw recognized the broad form of Colonel Menin, now a general, and the commander of Torunn’s garrison.

  “On whose orders did Colonel Cear-Inaf take his command north?” Lofantyr demanded querulously. Andruw blinked, shifting his feet.

  “Why, on yours, sire. I saw the Royal seal myself.”

  Lofantyr’s face twisted. He whispered something which might have been “Damned woman.” And then: “Are you aware, Haptman, that your commanding officer was sent orders to turn over his command to Colonel Aras the morning your men left for the north?”

  “No, sire. We received no such orders, but we did move out before dawn. Your courier must have missed us.” God almighty, Andruw thought.

  “And you arrived too late to save Martellus and his men, you say,” Menin accused Andruw.

  “We saved some five thousands, sir. They will be here in one, perhaps two days.”

  “Why were you late, Haptman? Was not this mission deserving of some urgency?”

  Andruw flushed, remembering the breakneck forced marches, the bone-numbing weariness of men and horses, tribesmen tumbling asleep from their saddles.

  “No one could have gone any faster, General. We did our best. And”—his voice rose, and he looked Menin in the eye—“We were only thirteen hundreds, at the end of the day. Had Corfe been given more men, he might have saved the whole damned army, and Martellus might yet be alive to serve his country!”

  “By God’s blood, you insolent puppy!” General Menin raged. “Do you know who you are talking to, sir? Do you know?”

  “Enough,” the King said sharply. “Bickering amongst ourselves will lead us nowhere. I am sure that the full facts of this disaster will become known in time. Haptman, what in God’s name are you wearing? And how do you come to present yourself before this council in such a state of filth? Have you no inkling of respect for your superiors?”

  Andruw’s blood was up, but he bit on his tongue to silence himself. He saw the drift of things. They needed a scapegoat, someone to off-load the burden of their own incompetence and cowardice upon. Corfe had not saved part of an army, he had lost the rest. They would twist the facts to suit themselves. Lord God, he thought. They would wrangle at the very gates of hell.

  “My apologies, sire. I thought my news warranted great haste. I am come straight from the field.”

  “Ay, but whose field, I wonder?” a voice said mockingly.

  Andruw turned to see the dapper form of Colonel Aras. He bowed, very slightly. “Sir. I am happy to see you well after your . . . endeavours, in the south of the kingdom.”

  “I’m sure you are, Haptman. I brought thirty of your wounded savages north with me when I had finished thrashing the rebels there. Your commander really should take better care of his men. I’m sure I shall.”

  Andruw stared at him, and something in his eye made Aras cough and bury his nose in a wine goblet.

  After that he was ignored, left to stand there in his bloody armour as the council debated the news he had brought. No one dismissed him, and he seemed to have been forgotten. His hauberk pressed down on his shoulders. The heat of the chamber seemed stifling after the chill air out of doors, and his head began to swim. Someone nudged him and he gave a start just as his knees had begun to buckle.

  “Here, drink this, Haptman,” a voice said, and a glass of dark liquid was pressed into his hand. He gulped it down, feeling the good wine warm his innards. His benefactor was a young officer in the blue of the artillery. He looked vaguely familiar. Perhaps they had been at gunnery school together. His mind was too fogged to remember.

  “Come into a corner. They won’t miss you.”

  He followed the officer to the far corner of the spacious chamber, and there set down his helm, unbuckled his sword baldric and with the other soldier’s help levered off his breast and back plates. Feeling more nearly human, he accepted another glass. By this time there was a group of four or five other officers clustered about him, and the droning voices at the council table went on and on over their shoulders.

  “What was it like?” the artilleryman asked him. “The battle, I mean. The city’s been running with talk for days. They say you slew twenty thousand Merduks up there.”

  “This Corfe—what manner of man is he?” another asked.

  “They say he is John Mogen come again,” a third said in a low voice.

  Andruw rubbed his eyes. He had never really sat back and considered Corfe before, the kind of man he was, the things he had done. But he saw something in the eyes of these young officers, something which startled him. It was a kind of awe, a reflected glory. At a time when all hope for the future was being ground down into the winter mud, and the once-great Torunnan military was decimated, cowering behind walls, this one man had raised an army out of thin air and with it had fought to a standstill the invincible Merduk horde.

  “He’s a man like any other,” Andruw said at last. “The greatest friend I have.”

  “By God, I’d give my right arm to serve under him,” one of the young men said earnestly. “He�
�s the only officer we have who’s doing anything.”

  “They say he’s the Queen Dowager’s bedmate,” another said.

  “They don’t know what they’re talking about,” Andruw growled. “He’s the best officer in the army, but those stuffed fools over there cannot see it. They pule and prate about precedent and decorum. They’ll be huddled over a brazier arguing when the Merduks are setting light to the palace itself.”

  Some of the young officers looked over their shoulders nervously. The stuffed fools were barely ten yards away on the other side of the chamber.

  “We’ll stand siege here soon,” the artilleryman said. “Then there will be glory enough for all.”

  “But no one to make songs about it once the walls are breached and your wives and sisters are carried off to Merduk harems,” Andruw said savagely. “The enemy needs to be beaten in the field, and Corfe is the only man in the kingdom who might be able to do it.”

  “I fancy half the army are beginning to think so too,” the artilleryman said in a whisper. “It’s common knowledge that he beat the rebels down south single-handed, and Aras did nothing but a little mopping up. It doesn’t do to say so, although—”

  He broke off as Andruw was called back to the council table by his King.

  “Be so good as to inform us of the strengths of the Merduk army your command encountered,” the King said with a wave of his hand.

  “At least forty thousand, sire, but our impressions were that it was but the van of the whole. More formations were coming up as we pulled out. I should not be surprised if the final number were double that.”

  A stir of talk, disbelief, or rather an unwillingness to believe.

  “And how badly mauled was the enemy by the battle?”

  “We did not see the end of the Fimbrians, sire—we left them still fighting, though surrounded. I would wager the Merduk general has lost perhaps a quarter of his strength. Fimbrian pikemen die hard.”

  “You sound almost as though you admire these mercenaries.”

  “I never saw men die better, sire, not even at the dyke.”

  “Ah! So you were at the dyke. We had forgotten.” Several officers in the room seemed to warm to Andruw somewhat. He received a few approving nods.

  “Corfe was at the dyke also, sire. He led the defence of the eastern barbican.”

  “The first place to fall,” Aras murmured.

  Andruw stepped forward until he had Aras penned against the long table. “I should be very sorry, sir, to hear anyone impugn the good name of my commanding officer. I feel I would have to ask for satisfaction in such a case.” His eyes blazed, and Aras looked away. “Of course, Haptman, of course . . .”

  The King seemed to have missed the exchange. “Gentlemen,” he said, “with the addition of these men salvaged from Martellus’s command, we will have almost forty thousand available to defend the capital, though it means denuding our southern fiefs of troops. Thanks to the work of Colonel Aras, however, the rebellious provinces of the south are once again recalled to their ancient allegiance, and I think we need not fear for our rear in the struggle to come.”

  Aras graciously accepted the mutter of approbation from the assembled officers.

  “All bridges over the River Torrin, right up to the mountains, have been destroyed. The geography of our beloved country favours the defender. Our rivers are our walls.”

  Like the Ostian and the Searil rivers, Andruw thought, both of which had failed to hold back the Merduk advance. Now that Northern Torunna had been evacuated, the Merduks might even send an army through the Torrin Gap and take Charibon if they chose, or cross the Torian Plains and assault Almark, even Perigraine. Those places were under the sway of the Himerian Church, however, and Andruw did not think that the men present would shed many tears if Charibon were sacked, or Almark—now rumoured to be Church-ruled—invaded. With the present religious schism dividing the Ramusian kingdoms, there could be no question of them presenting a united front to the invaders. Corfe was right: if the enemy were not crushed before Torunn, he would be able to send columns across half of Normannia. And if the Torunnan army allowed itself to be bottled up in the capital, besieged as Aekir had been besieged, then it would take itself out of the reckoning entirely. Almark and Perigraine were not great military powers. They could not withstand the Merduk and the troops of the Prophet would conquer the continent as far west as the Malvennor Mountains.

  A palace courtier entered, interrupting Lofantyr’s rosy predictions of Merduk disaster. He bent and whispered in the King’s ear, and his sovereign shot up out of his seat, an outraged look on his face. “Tell her—” he began, but the doors of the chamber were thrown open, and the Queen Dowager entered with two of her ladies-in-waiting. Every man present bowed deeply, save for her son, who was furious.

  “Lady, it is not appropriate that you be present here at this time,” he grated.

  “Nonsense, Lofantyr,” his mother said with a winning smile, waving a folded fan. “I’ve sat in on meetings of the High Command all my life. Is that not true, General Menin?”

  Menin bowed again and murmured something incomprehensible.

  “In any case, Lofantyr, you left something behind when you visited me in my apartments the other day. I wished to make sure you received it.” She held out a scroll heavy with the scarlet wax of the Royal seal.

  Lofantyr took it as gingerly as if he expected it to bite him. His eyes were narrow with suspicion. As he opened and read the document his face flushed red.

  “From whence did this come?”

  “Come now, my sovereign, it bears your own seal—one which I no longer possess. Pray read it out to this august company. I’m sure they are with child to hear the good news it contains.”

  “Another time, perhaps.”

  “Read it!” Her voice cracked like a gunshot, the authority in it making every man there wince. Lofantyr seemed to shrink.

  “It . . . it is a general’s commission, for one Corfe Cear-Inaf, confirming him second-in-command of Martellus’s army or, if Martellus no longer lives, he is appointed sole commander.”

  Andruw thumped his gauntleted fist into his palm with delight, and behind him several of the junior officers cried “Bravo!” as if they were watching a play. The Queen Dowager glided over to Colonel Aras, who looked as though he had just swallowed a bolus of foul-tasting medicine. “I hope you are not too disappointed, Colonel. I know how much you looked forward to commanding those red-clad barbarians.”

  “No . . . no, not at all. Delighted, happy to . . .” He trailed off in confusion. Odelia’s concentrated regard was hard to bear.

  “This is a mistake,” King Lofantyr managed, regaining his poise. “I sealed no such orders.”

  “And yet they exist. Countermanding them is tantamount to breaking one’s word, my son. You are a busy man—you have merely misremembered that you issued them. I am sure the recollection will come to you. In time. Gentlemen, I will leave you to your high strategies. I, a poor, incompetent woman, am obviously out of my arena here. Haptman Cear-Adurhal, pray stop by my chambers before you return to your command.”

  Andruw bowed wordlessly, his face shining. The other men there followed suit as the poor, incompetent woman made a regal exit.

  FOURTEEN

  T HEY met him with a salvo of guns, Torunn’s walls erupting in smoke and flame as the army came into view over the horizon. The exhausted men lifted their heads at the sound, and saw a thousand-strong guard of honour in rank on rank waiting to welcome them into the city. Corfe reined in, bemused, to regard the spectacle as his enlarged command continued to trudge past him. Torunnan sword-and-buckler men, arquebusiers and Fimbrian pikemen. His own Cathed-rallers out on the wings and bringing up the rear.

  Marsch and Ebro joined him.

  “Why do they fire guns at us?” Marsch wanted to know. “Is it a warning?”

  “It’s a salute,” Ebro informed him. “They’re honouring us.”

  “About time someone did,”
another voice said as a fourth horseman joined them. This was Colonel Ranafast, the only officer of any rank to have survived from the dyke garrison. He was an emaciated-looking hawkish man who had commanded the dyke’s cavalry, only a score of which were now left to him. He had known Corfe as an obscure ensign, Martellus’s aide, but he showed no resentment at his former subordinate’s elevation.

  The streets of the capital were lined with people. Corfe could hear their cheers from here, a mile away. They had turned out the populace to welcome his men. For their sake, he was glad of it—their morale needed the boost—but for himself, he would sooner have curled up in a cloak and stolen some sleep out here in the mud. He knew that the pantomimes would begin again the moment he was in the capital, and his soul was sick at the thought.

  “Riders approaching,” Marsch said. “It is Andruw, I think. Yes, that is him. I know that smile of his.”

  Andruw halted before them, breathing hard, and threw Corfe a salute.

  “Greetings, General. I have orders to show you and your officers to a special set of quarters in the palace. There’s to be a banquet tonight in your honour.”

  “What the hell are you talking about, Andruw?” Corfe demanded. “And what is this general horseshit?”

  “It’s not a jest, Corfe. The Queen Dowager swung it for you. You’re now commander of this lot.” Andruw gestured at the long muddy column of men that was marching past. “She’s a wonder, that woman. Remind me never to cross her. Bearded Lofantyr in his own council chamber, bold as you please. What a king she’d have made, had she been born a man!”

  General. He had not really believed she would do it. General of a half-wrecked army. He could take little joy in it. A certain grim satisfaction perhaps, but that was all.