by Paul Kearney
“Yes. Yes, of course,” Menin said. “My thought exactly . . .” He trailed off, appearing old and apprehensive.
“Ninety thousand men in that first camp,” someone said dubiously. “That’s three times our strength. Who says they’ll be an easy target?”
“Their camp is unfortified,” Corfe pointed out. “They’ll be keeping warm in their tents. Plus, they are nothing more than the peasant levy of Ostrabar, conscripts without firearms. So long as we retain the element of surprise, they should not prove too much trouble.”
“I am relieved to hear it,” the King said. He looked with obvious dislike at his youngest general. “You seem to have an answer for everything, General Cear-Inaf. I see we no longer have need of strategy conferences. All we do is consult you.”
A series of titters throughout the tent. Corfe was impassive. He merely bowed to his monarch. “My apologies, sire, if I overstep my station. I worry only about the good of the army.”
“Of course.” The King stood up. “Gentlemen, regard this plan here. Fournier, will you oblige us, please?”
The count unrolled a page of parchment with a pattern of diagrams drawn upon it. They gathered closer to look.
“This is how the army will go into battle. General Menin, kindly explain.”
“Yes, sire. Gentlemen, we shall be in four distinct commands. In the centre will be the main body, eighteen thousand men under His Majesty, myself and Colonel Rusio. Within this formation will be the field artillery—thirty guns under you, Rusio—and the cuirassiers—three thousand horsemen. His Majesty will lead the heavy horse personally.
“On the right flank of the main body will be a smaller formation, a flank guard to deal with the possibility of a Merduk assault from that quarter. This will be under Colonel Aras, and will number some five thousand, primarily arquebusiers. To the rear will be General Cear-Inaf’s command, eight thousand men. These constitute our only reserve, and will also have the task of guarding the baggage train. Am I clear, gentlemen?”
“What about the left flank?” Corfe asked. “It’s up in the air.”
“We do not feel that the left flank is particularly threatened,” the King told him. “The only threat from that quarter is from the baggage and headquarters camp of the enemy. We feel that the Merduk Sultan will not detach troops which are guarding his person until he knows exactly what the situation is. By that time we will have withdrawn. No, the only real threat is on the right, from the camp of the Hraibadar and the Ferinai. Aras, you have the position of honour. Hold it well.”
“I will indeed, sire, to the last man, if needs be.”
Corfe opened his mouth to protest, and then thought better of it. There was a possibility that the King was right, but he did not like it. Nor did he think it wise to have the heavy cavalry in the centre, where their mobility would be reduced and they would face the prospect of a charge into a tented camp: no job for horsemen. It would do no good to point it out, though.
“We move out in the morning,” the King went on. “Two days’ march will bring us to the environs of the enemy. We will go into battle-line somewhere out of view from their camp, and sweep down on them in one grand charge at dawn. As General Cear-Inaf has said, numbers will be less important in the confusion. We have an impenetrable screen of cavalry about us, so the enemy should remain unaware of our intentions until it is too late. We hit them hard, and then withdraw. Admiral Berza’s fleet will be attacking their coastal bases at round about the same time. After this double-pronged attack, the Sultan will have to retreat to the Searil, and Ormann Dyke is almost indefensible if one is attacking from the south. We will have delivered Northern Torunna from the enemy. Gentlemen, are there any questions?”
“This battle will go down in history, sire!” Aras exclaimed. “We are lucky to have the chance to participate in it.”
The King inclined his head graciously. Even Menin looked a little impatient at Aras’s toadying.
“You are dismissed, gentlemen,” the King said. “We will meet again the night before the ballet commences to finalize things. Until then, fare you well.”
The assembled officers exited, bowing. General Menin caught Corfe outside the tent flap and grasped his arm. In a low voice he said, “A word with you, if you please, General.”
They strolled through the camp together. Menin’s face was a study in night-dark and firelight. He seemed deeply troubled.
“This is not to be bruited about,” he said in a subdued tone. “But if I do not live through the battle, I wish you to take command of the army and lead the withdrawal.”
Corfe froze in his tracks. “Are you serious?”
The older man produced a sealed scroll. “Here it is in writing. The King will object, of course, but there will be little time for objections. His first choice after me for the command is Aras, and he has already been promoted beyond his abilities. This army must survive, whatever happens. Get these men back to Torunn, Corfe.”
Corfe took the scroll. “You pick an odd time to finally show confidence in me,” he said, not without bitterness.
“The time for politics is past. The country needs a soldier to lead it now.”
“You will survive, Menin. This is unnecessary.”
“No, General. My death lies there to the north. I know I shall not be coming back. But you make sure that this army does!” He gripped Corfe’s forearm with bruising force. His face was stark and livid. There was fear on it, but not for himself, Corfe was certain.
“I’ll do what I can, if it should prove necessary,” Corfe said haltingly.
“Thank you. And Corfe, your men may be in the rear, but they will have the hardest job in the days ahead, make no mistake about it.” And he walked away without further ceremony.
“H ERE,” Andruw said, offering him the wineskin. “You look as though you could use a snort. What did they do, overwhelm you with their strategic brilliance?”
Corfe squeezed a stream of acrid army wine into his mouth. “Lord, Andruw, I needed that.”
Seated about the campfire were most of his senior officers. He had asked them to await his return from the conference. They looked at him expectantly. In addition to Andruw, Marsch was there, and Morin beside him. Formio stood warming his hands at the flames next to Ranafast, and Ebro had paused in the process of whittling a stick to stare at his commanding officer. In the shadows beyond were many others. Corfe thought he saw Joshelin, the Fimbrian veteran, and Cerne, his trumpeter. His very heart warmed at the sight of them, doing away with some of the chill generated by Menin’s words. With the loyalty of men such as these, he felt he could accomplish almost anything.
“We pitch into them in two days, lads,” he said at last. “Ebro, give me your stick. Gather round, everyone. Here’s how we’re going to do it.”
TWENTY-ONE
D AWN over Northern Torunna. In the Merduk camps the sentries were being changed and men were stirring the embers of their campfires in preparation for breakfast. Along the horse-lines thousands of animals were champing on hay and oats and generating a steam of damp warmth into the frigid air. Supply wagons came and went in sluggish convoys. Over the tented cities of the Merduks a haze of smoke and vapour rose skywards, visible for many miles despite the low cloud. The conical tents sprawled for hundreds of acres, and streets had been laid down between their rows, fashioned of corduroyed logs. Women and children were visible, and there were market places and bazaars in the midst of the encampments where canny traders which followed the armies had set up their stalls. The three vast winter camps of the Merduks were as peaceful looking as military settlements could possibly be. It was commonly known that the cowardly Torunnans were lurking behind the walls of their capital, preparing for the inevitable siege. There were no enemy formations for leagues around, apart from a few isolated bodies of cavalry. In a week or two the tent cities would be broken up and the armies would be on the move again, but for now the soldiers of the Sultan were more preoccupied with the problems of keeping warm
and dry and well fed in the barbarous Torunnan winter.
Shahr Indun Johor, senior khedive of the Sultan’s forces, had his headquarters tent in the midst of the encampments of the Hraibadar and the Ferinai, the elite of the army. Rank had its privileges, and he was dozing with his head between the breasts of his favourite concubine when his subadar, or head staff officer, poked his head around the heavy curtains of the tent.
“Shahr Johor.” And again when there was no answer: “Shahr Johor!”
He stirred, a young, lean man, dark and quick as an otter. “What? What is it, Buraz?”
“It may be nothing, my Khedive. Some of the perimeter guards report gunfire coming from the west.”
“I’ll be a moment. See my horse is saddled.” Shahr Johor threw aside his grumbling concubine and hauled on his breeches and tunic. He wrapped a sash about his middle, thrust a poniard in the folds and pulled on his heavy knee-high riding boots. Then he kissed his scented bed partner. “Later, my dove,” he murmured, and strode out of the tent into the raw half-light of dawn.
Buraz awaited him with two saddled horses, their breaths steaming in the cold. The two officers mounted and cantered off to the perimeter of the vast camp, scattering soldiers and camp followers as they clattered along the timbered road. He sat in the saddle, breathing hard, staring at the empty horizon. It was still so gloomy that he could see the glare of the Minhraib’s campfires against the cloudy sky, three miles away. Thin flakes of snow had begun to fall, and there was more in the lowering nimbus overhead.
“I hear nothing. Who reported this?”
A Hraibadar sergeant stepped forward, a veteran with a hard, seamed face and black eyes. “I did, my Khedive. It comes and goes. If you wait, you have my word, you will hear it.”
They sat still, listening, whilst behind them the great camp and its tens of thousands of occupants came to life in the growing light. And at last Shahr Johor caught it. A distant, intermittent thunder rolling in from the west, the fainter crackle of what might have been volley fire.
“Artillery,” Buraz said.
“Yes. And massed arquebusiers. There is a battle going on out there, Buraz.”
“It may be only a raid, a skirmish.”
They both listened again. The Hraibadar sergeant angrily called for silence and around the two officers hundreds of men stopped what they were doing and paused, listening also.
The faraway thunder intensified. Everyone could hear it now. It seemed to echo off the face of the very hills.
“That is no skirmish,” Shahr Johor said. “It is a full-scale engagement, Buraz. The Unbelievers have attacked the Minhraib camp.”
“Would they dare?” his subordinate asked incredulously.
“It would seem so. Get me a trumpeter. Sound the alarm. I want the army ready to move immediately. And send a courier off to the Sultan in the northern camp. We will chastise these infidels for their impertinence. I shall come down on their flank with the Ferinai. You follow with the infantry. Make haste, Buraz!”
T HE Minhraib camp was a rough square, a mile and a half to a side. It lay on a gently undulating plain criss-crossed with small watercourses and dotted with copses of alder and willow where the ground was wet. To the east of it a small range of hills rose to perhaps four or five hundred feet, and on these heights a smaller camp of perhaps a thousand men had been pitched to dominate the ground below and safeguard communications with the other Merduk camp to the east. The main encampment was a huge sea of tents bisected by muddy roads, with corrals for the pack animals to the north. South-west of it, on a slight rise, was a long string of scattered woods, perhaps two miles from the first lines of tents. In these woods, the Torunnan army shook out from column into line of battle.
T HREE great formations of men emerged from the woods as the sky lightened steadily above their heads. They were late. The approach to the enemy was meant to be made under cover of the pre-dawn darkness, but it had, inevitably, taken longer than expected to reform thirty thousand men in the dark, and now they had two flat and open miles to march at the quick-time before they would come to blows with the Merduks.
Out in front of the main body, batteries of galloper guns under Colonel Rusio had dashed ahead and were unlimbering a mile from the enemy lines. Soon the little six-pounders were barking and smoking furiously, generating bloody chaos in the camp, flattening tents, shattering men.
Behind them the King’s formation, eighteen thousand strong, advanced at the double. The battle-line was on average six ranks deep, and it stretched for almost two miles, a dark, bristling, clanging apocalypse of heavily armoured men and horses. The earth shook under their feet, and in the centre the heavy sable-clad cuirassiers were ranged under the banners of the King and his noble bodyguard.
Off to the east, perhaps a mile from the main body, Colonel Aras’s five thousand were advancing also, their target the small Merduk camp on the hills. They were to take the camp, and hold the heights against the arrival of any enemy reinforcements. Aras’s men were lightly armoured, swift moving, and they trailed streamers of smoke from the slow-match of their arquebusiers so that it looked as though they were burning a path across the land as they came.
And behind the main fighting line, another formation. Seven thousand foot and a thousand horse—Corfe’s men, in a deep body only some two thirds of a mile long. He was stationed on the left of his line with the Cathedrallers, the Fimbrians were on the right, ten deep, and his dyke veterans were in the centre. Behind them, in the woods, were the hundreds of wagons which comprised the baggage train. Field surgeons and their assistants were busy amid the vehicles setting out their instruments, and crowds of wagoneers were frantically unpacking crates of shot, barrels of gunpowder. Scores of light galloper carts stood in their midst, ready to start the ferrying forward of ammunition and the ferrying backwards of casualties to the rear aid stations. A thousand men worked busily there, and Corfe had also left behind two hundred arquebusiers in case small bodies of the enemy should break through the front lines.
He halted his command when it was a mile from the Merduk camp. The roar of the artillery had begun to intensify. He could see the frenzied activity in the midst of the tented city, officers trying to get clotted crowds of men into battle-line only to have the artillery blow them apart as soon as they had dressed their ranks. The main Torunnan line advanced inexorably to the dull thunder of the infantry drums and a braying of army bugles. It looked as though nothing on earth would be able to stop it. Corfe felt a moment of pure, savage exultation, a fierce, dizzying joy at the sight of the advancing Torunnan army. If there was any glory in war, it was in spectacles such as this, neat lines of men advancing like chess pieces on the gameboard of the world. Once you took a closer look the glory died, and there was only the scarlet carnage, the agonizing misery of men dying and being maimed in their thousands.
The King’s formation was passing through the galloper batteries now. The squat guns fired only on a flat trajectory and thus were masked by their own troops as the advance continued. The gunners leaned on their pieces and cheered as their comrades passed by. Had they no further orders? Corfe scowled. Thirty guns left sitting idle. It was an incompetent oversight, and technically he outranked Colonel Rusio, the artillery commander. He reached in his saddlebag for pencil and paper, scrawled a message and sent it off to the idle batteries. A few minutes later, the gunners began limbering their pieces and withdrawing up the slope towards Corfe’s command. He could see Rusio in their midst, shouting orders, helmless. The grey-haired officer looked furious. Too bad. Corfe would find him something better to do than sit on his hands for the remainder of the battle.
Farther away on the plain, the main Torunnan formation had halted a scant two hundred yards from the Merduk camp, and the entire battle-line erupted with smoke as the massed arquebusiers let off a volley. A second later, the stuttering crackle of it could be heard. Then there was a huge, formless roar as the line charged, eighteen thousand men shouting their heads off as they
slammed into the Merduk camp at a run.
Corfe could see the wedge of three thousand heavy cavalry, the King’s banner at its head, forging ahead of the rest. Horses going down already, no doubt tripping on downed tents and guy-ropes. The disorganized unfortunates of the Minhraib had no chance. They presented a ragged line, which disintegrated into a howling mob, then a crowd of fleeing individuals. In minutes, the Torunnans had smashed deep into the enemy encampment and were carrying all before them. But now their own lines had become splintered and disorganized. The fighting inside the complex of tents degenerated into a massive free-for-all, and in the thick of it the King and his cuirassiers rampaged like dreadful animated engines of slaughter. Lofantyr had courage, Corfe thought. You had to give him that.
Corfe looked at the right, where another, smaller struggle had begun on the eastern hills. Aras had his men advancing in a perfect line, firing as they went. The Merduks in the hill camp, outnumbered five to one, nevertheless rushed down to meet them. They had few or no firearms and so had to try and engage at close quarters. They were cut down in windrows by exact volleys, and the survivors, a beaten rabble, fled the field. Aras advanced his men up to the hilltops and arranged them for defence.
“I hope he digs in,” Corfe muttered. He felt uneasy about the small size of Aras’s force. Soon they would have to cover the withdrawal of the King’s formation, and if the enemy came in any strength from the east they would have a hard time of it.
“Colonel Rusio reporting, as ordered,” a voice spat. Corfe turned. Rusio and his guns had reached his position. The older officer was glaring at him, but there was no time to massage his ego.
