The Iron Wars

by Paul Kearney

  The Fimbrians were marching past now, and one detached himself to salute the group of riders.

  “Colonel Corfe?” Formio, the Fimbrian adjutant, asked.

  “General now, by the Saint!” Andruw chortled.

  “Shut up, Andruw. Yes?”

  “Are we to enter the city with your men? I shall understand if political ramifications dictate otherwise.”

  “What? No, by God, you’ll march in along with the rest of us. I’ll find quarters for every last one of you, in the palace itself if needs be. And if they refuse us, I’ll damn well sack the place.”

  The men around Corfe fell silent. His anger subdued them. He had been like this ever since the battle.

  “My thanks, General. And my congratulations on your promotion.”

  “What do you intend to do, Formio? You and your men.”

  “That is for you to decide.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “The marshal’s last order was to put ourselves at your disposal. Until I hear differently from the electorates, we are under your personal orders, not those of the Torunnan Crown. Good day, General.” And the Fimbrian resumed his place in the long disciplined column of pikemen.

  “A good man,” Marsch said approvingly. “These Fimbrians know their trade. It will be a fine thing to fight beside them again. They are strangely ignorant of horses, however.”

  “Corfe,” Andruw said, “they’re waiting for you down there. The Queen Dowager set this up: the salute, the triumphal entry, everything. If the population get behind you, then the King himself cannot touch you. It’s all part of the game.”

  Corfe smiled at last. “A great game. Is that what it is? All right, Andruw, lead on. I’ll wave and grin and look general-like, but at the end of it I want a bath, a flagon of good wine and a bed.”

  “Preferably with something in it,” Ranafast said, with feeling.

  At that, the group crackled with laughter, and they followed the marching line of their army down to the cheering crowds that awaited them.

  T HE celebratory nature of it stuck in Corfe’s throat, though. The banquet that evening was attended by a mere six hundred guests—officers of the Torunnan army and their ladies, the nobility, rich men of no rank but with bottomless purses. It swept over him in a haze of candlelight and laughter. The wine was running freely, and the courses came and went in a blur of liveried attendants and silver trays. His own stomach was closed, and he was desperately tired, so he drank glass after glass of wine—the finest Gaderian—and sat in his court dress with the new silver general’s braid at his shoulders.

  It was a hollow feast. The King was not present, having pleaded some indisposition—hardly surprisingly—but Corfe sat at the right hand of the Queen Dowager as she managed small-talk with their neighbours and contrived to make Corfe feel part of conversations he contributed no word to. Everyone seemed intent on becoming roaring drunk and the din of the massed diners was unbelievable, though Corfe’s own ears were still ringing from the thunder of the North More battle. His ribs, too, ached from the sword blow they had taken during the fighting.

  Andruw was in tearing spirits, flirting outrageously with two pretty duke’s daughters who sat opposite, and tossing back the good wine like a man unaware of what he was doing. Marsch was there also, utterly ill-at-ease and answering everyone in monosyllables. He seemed staring sober, though the sweat was streaming down his face and he had tugged his lace collar awry. Two seats down from him was Ensign Ebro, who was already drunk and leering and regaling his neighbours with gory tales of slaughtering Merduks. And the Fimbrian, Formio, sat like a mourner at a wake, drinking water, being carefully polite. The diners around him—a bluff Torunnan staff officer and a minor noble and their wives—were obviously plying him with questions. He did not seem particularly responsive. His eyes met Corfe’s, and he nodded unsmilingly.

  Martellus and the greater part of the Ormann Dyke garrison, the finest army left to the country, lay dead and unburied to the north. The wolves would be feasting on their bodies, a mid-winter windfall. Laid beside them, close as brothers, were three thousand of Formio’s countrymen and his commander. And the city celebrated as though a victory had been won, a crisis averted. Corfe had never felt such a fraud in his life. But he was not an idealistic fool. Once he might have torn off this general’s braid and raged at the crowd. Before Aekir, perhaps. But now he knew better. He had rank and he would use it. And he had a command with which something might yet be accomplished.

  He thought he fathomed the frenzied gaiety of the assembled diners. It was a last fling, a defiance of the gathering dark. He had seen its like before. In Aekir, as the Merduks began to surround the city, many noblemen had staged banquets such as this, and seen out the night in torrents of wine, processions of dancing girls. And in the morning they had taken up their stations on the walls. What had Corfe done, the day the siege began? Oh, yes. That night was the last time he had slept in the same bed as his wife. The last time he had made love to her. After that there was no more time left. She had brought him his meals as he paced the battlements, snatched previous minutes with him. Until the end.

  “You’re drunk, Corfe!” Andruw cried gaily. “Lady”—this to the Queen Dowager—“you’d best keep one eye on the general. I know his fondness for wine.”

  He was indeed drunk. Silent, brooding drunk. There was no joy left for him in wine; it merely brought the pain of the past floating in front of his eyes, all new and raw and glistening again. He felt the Queen Dowager’s knee press against his under the table. “Are you all right, General?” she whispered.

  “Never better, lady,” he told her. “A fine gathering, indeed. I must thank you for it—for everything.”

  He turned his head and met her eyes, those perilous green depths, like sunlight on a shallow sea. So beautiful, and she had done so much for him. Why? What payment would be required of him in the end?

  “You must excuse me, lady. I am unwell,” he said thickly.

  She did not seem surprised, and clapped her hands for the serving attendants. “The general is taken poorly. See him to his quarters.”

  H E rid himself of their ministrations as soon as he was out of the hall, and staggered on alone through the dimly lit palace, the sound of the banquet a golden roar behind him. His shoulder brushed the wall as he wove along. It was cold out here after the stuffiness of the close-packed crowd, and his head cleared a little. Why the hell had he drunk such a lot of the damned stuff? There was so much to do tomorrow, no time to nurse a blasted hangover.

  His mind was too blurred to hear the soft footfalls behind him.

  The parade ground before the palace. He stepped out into the star-bright night and stood looking up at the wheeling glitter of the sky. There were rows of massively designed buildings on both sides of the square, but most of their windows were dark. His men were quartered within, tribesmen and Torunnans and Fimbrians. No revelry there. They were too tired. They had seen too much. He would give them a few days to rest and refit, and then he would have to begin hammering these disparate elements into an organic whole, a close-knit organization.

  Footsteps behind him, louder. He turned. “Andruw?”

  And saw a dark shape lunging, the quicksilver flash of the knife. He twisted aside, and instead of slashing his throat it sliced open his right shoulder. The pain lit up his mind, burning away the wine fumes. He threw himself backwards as the blade came hissing towards his face, tripped and fell heavily on to his back. His attacker came at him again, and Corfe managed to plant a boot in his midriff and kick him away. He rolled, his cracked ribs screaming at him, his right arm weakening as the blood streamed out black in the starlight. But before he regained his feet another shape appeared. It piled silently into his attacker. There was a flurry of movement, too fast to follow in the darkness, and a grisly crack of bone. A body fell to the cobbles of the parade ground and the newcomer bent over him.

  “General, are you much hurt?”

  He was he
lped to his feet, his arm dangling stiff and useless. “Formio! By the Saint, that was timely. Let me have a look at the bastard.”

  They dragged the body inside and examined it. It wore a black woollen mask with slits for eyes and nose. Ripping it off they saw the swarthy face below, eyes wide with surprise. An easterner, perhaps Merduk. His neck was broken.

  “I’ll see the guard is turned out,” the Fimbrian said. “There may be more of them. This man was a professional.”

  “How did you come to be here?” Corfe asked. He felt light-headed with loss of blood and the singing adrenalin of the struggle.

  “I followed you. I am not a great lover of formal dinners either, and I wanted to talk . . .” He trailed off, seeming almost embarrassed.

  “Lucky for me. He’d have cut my throat, else. An assassin, by God. The Sultan has a long arm.”

  “If it was the Sultan. Not all your enemies are beyond the walls. Come, we need to get that shoulder dressed.”

  • • •

  T HE inevitable uproar as the guard turned out and the palace was scoured room by room for other assassins. The Queen Dowager was informed and at once had Corfe conveyed to her personal apartments, but those at the banquet feasted on into the night, unaware of the goings-on.

  “I should be at your side permanently,” Odelia told Corfe as the wound in his shoulder closed under her hands and the faint ozone smell of the Dweomer filled the room. “That way you would get into less trouble. Where have you stowed the body?”

  “Formio had it thrown into the river.”

  “A pity. I should like to have examined it. A Merduk, you say?”

  “An easterner of some sort or other. Lady, I wish we had a dozen folk with your skills in the army. Our wounded would bless their names.” Corfe moved his right arm experimentally and found it slightly stiff, but otherwise hale. A tiny scar remained, that was all, though the assassin’s knife had laid bare the bone.

  “You would have trouble finding them,” she said. “The Dweomer-folk grow fewer every year. It is a decade since we even had a true mage at court here in Torunna. Golophin of Hebrion is the only one I know of who remains in the public eye. The rest have gone into hiding.”

  “But not you.”

  “I am a queen. Allowances are made for my . . . eccentricities.” She kissed him on the lips and when she drew back he saw to his surprise that the amazing eyes were alight with tears which would not fall.

  “Was it the Sultan’s doing, you think?” he asked gruffly, looking away.

  “Who is to know? The assassins are killers for hire, for all that they come from the east. Their employers can be Merduk or Ramusian. They must only be rich.”

  “As rich as a king, perhaps?”

  “Perhaps. The world is a dangerous place for those whose star is on the rise. There are men in this country who would see it in ashes ere they would let a commoner save it.”

  “John Mogen was of low birth.”

  “Yes. Yes, he was. And he never let anyone forget it!” She smiled.

  “You knew him well?”

  “I knew him. You might say I sponsored him in much the same way as I am sponsoring you.”

  “So that is your role in the world. The raising up of generals.”

  “The redemption of this kingdom,” she corrected him shortly, “by any means available.”

  “I am glad to have it explained to me,” he said, with a terseness to match hers.

  She rose to go. “I am a woman as well as a queen, though, Corfe. I sought military brilliance, and I found it. I do not seek to love or be loved, if that is what is worrying you.”

  “I am relieved to hear it,” he said. And he cursed himself as she left the room with the hurt plain to see on her face.

  FIFTEEN

  “B Y the beard of the Prophet, who were they? Clad in our own armour, galloping out of nowhere and then disappearing again. Can anyone tell me, or are you all struck dumb?”

  Aurungzeb the Golden, Conqueror of Aekir, Sultan of Ostrabar, raged at the huddle of advisors and officers who remained kneeling on the beautifully worked carpet before him. The walls of the great tent shuddered in the wind, and the dividing curtains billowed like rearing snakes.

  “Well?”

  A man in gorgeously lacquered iron half-armour spoke up. “We have spies out by the score at the moment, my Sultan. At this time, all we have are rumours picked up from captured infidels. They say this cavalry is something new, not even Torunnan. A band of mercenary savages from the Cimbric Mountains to the west led by a disgraced Torunnan officer. They are few though, very few, and we damaged them badly as they withdrew. They are not something we should be unduly concerned about, a . . . a unique phenomenon, a freak. It merely shows the desperation of the foe, when he must resort to hiring barbarians as well as the accursed Fimbrians.”

  “Well then.” Aurungzeb appeared somewhat mollified. “It may be that you are correct, Shahr Johor. But I do not want any more surprises such as the last. Had it not been for those scarlet-clad fiends, we’d have destroyed the entire dyke garrison, and the Fimbrians as well.”

  “Our patrols have been redoubled, dread sovereign. All Torunnan forces are now within the walls of their capital. There is little doubt that they will stand siege there and then we will be free to send forces through the Torrin Gap to Charibon, that nest of disbelief. Thus we will have destroyed both centres of the heinous Ramusian faith. The Ramusian Aekir is but a memory—soon it shall be so with Charibon and its black-robed priests.”

  Aurungzeb nodded, his eyes bright and thoughtful in his heavily bearded face. “Well said, Shahr Johor. Though they have a Pontiff in Torunn now also, the one we missed in Aekir, he is no friend to Charibon. Such is the squalid state of the Ramusians’ faith that they fight amongst themselves even as the sons of the Prophet knock on their walls.”

  “It is God’s will,” Shahr Johor said, bowing his head.

  “And the Prophet’s, may he live for ever.”

  An especially violent gust of wind made the entire massive fabric of the tent twitch and tremble. Aurungzeb’s face darkened again. “This storm . . . Batak!”

  A young man in a coral-coloured robe stepped out of the shadows. “My Sultan?”

  “Can’t you do anything about this cursed storm? We are losing time, and horses.”

  Batak spread his hands eloquently. “It is beyond my powers at present, lord. Weatherworking is an arcane discipline. Even my master—”

  “Yes, yes. Orkh would have had this snow melted in a trice and the wind made gentle as an old man’s fart. But Orkh is off chasing rainbows. See what you can do.”

  Batak bowed low and withdrew.

  “That is all,” Aurungzeb said. “I must commune with my God. You may all leave. Akran!” This to the tall, skeletal vizier who stood like a starved golem in one corner. “See I am not disturbed for one hour.”

  “Yes, lord. At once.” The vizier banged his staff on the floor of the tent. Back in the palace it would have rung impressively against marble, but here it produced only a dull thump. Such were the indignities of following his Sultan into the field. The officers and ministers took the hint, rose, bowed and backed out of the tent into the baying blizzard outside, the vizier following with a resigned look on his face.

  Aurungzeb stirred and glanced around. He looked now like a hirsute but mischievous boy.

  “Ahara,” he called softly. “Light of my heart, they are gone. Come out now, my little sweetmeat. Your master calls.”

  A slim shape filmy with gauze emerged from the curtained rear of the tent, and knelt before him with head lowered. He raised her by the chin and peeled away the veil which hid her features. A pale face, grey eyes, dark lips touched with rouge. He wiped it off them. “You do not need paint, my sweet. Not you. Perfection brooks no improvement.”

  He clapped his large, hairy-knuckled hands. “Music, there! The slow dance from Kurasan!”

  From an adjoining, closed-off portion of the tent came the
sudden chimes and pluckings of musicians, somewhat ragged at first and then growing in speed and harmony.

  “Dance for me. Dance for your weary master and make him forget the cares of the turning world.”

  Aurungzeb threw himself down on a pile of silken cushions and commenced to suck on a tall water-pipe whilst his concubine paused for a second, and then began to move as slowly as a willow in a summer breeze.

  Heria’s mind blanked out when she danced. She liked it. The exercise kept her supple and fit. It was the aftermath she did not care for, even now. Especially now. She had listened in on the report of Shahr Johor as she listened to everything that went on in the tent of the Sultan. Her command of the Merduk language was perfect, though she still pretended to have only a rudimentary grasp of it. She had hidden her grief at the news of the dyke’s fall, and her heart had soared at the account of the recent battle and the last-minute intervention of the mysterious and terrible red horsemen. Debased and soiled though she might be, she was still Torunnan. The man whose life she had shared until the fall of Aekir had been a Torunnan soldier, and it was no more possible that she should forget it than that the sun should one day forget to set.

  The pace of the dance quickened. Aurungzeb, intent on the whirling movement of her white limbs, puffed out smoke in swift little clouds. At last it ended, and Heria froze in position, arms above her head, breathing fast. The Sultan threw aside the stem of his water-pipe and rose.

  “Here. To me.”

  She stood close to him. His beard tickled her nose. She was tall, and he had not far to bend to nuzzle the hollow of her collar bone. His hands twitched aside her gauzy coverings. “You are a queen among women,” he murmured. “Magnificent.” He stripped her naked whilst she stood unmoving. His fingers brushed her nipples, erect and painfully sensitive.

  “My Sultan,” she began hurriedly as his hands wandered down her body. She had been depilated, after the fashion of the harem, and her skin was smooth as alabaster. His fingers became more urgent. She forced herself not to flinch as they explored her.