Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  That should have settled matters, but Felix still glanced up towards the dwarvish wall, hidden by distance, shadows and trees.

  Büber shrugged. “We’ll talk about it over dinner, such as it is.”

  Kufstein didn’t have gates. It didn’t even have a proper wall yet to fix them to. Büber showed Felix what the defences would look like when they’d finished; the earth ramparts, fronted by a palisade, which would command both banks of the river as well as the bridge. From the edge of the crag, he pointed down the river bank at the ditch they’d dug, and, a stadia further inland, where the next one would go.

  Across the water were more works, all designed to keep the dwarves bottled up within range of their bows. The longer they had, the more defences they could build.

  “I’d rather attack,” said Büber. “Wolfgang’s persuaded me not to, but I don’t know that he’s right. The dwarves’ supply route’s stretched tighter than a lyre string, but no one’s strumming our tune on it.”

  “If you want me to take your side, you’ll have to at least take me as far as the wall tomorrow.”

  “That might be possible.” Büber worried at a knuckle. “My lord, you don’t need me to remind you that you’re the last of your line.”

  Felix turned away and looked at the scattering of tents and fires thrown up on the meadows below. “If something were to happen to me, then you’d choose another prince among those worthy of the honour, like in Alaric’s time. It hasn’t always been father-to-son, and there’s no reason why it should be. For all I know, my sons might be idiots.”

  “I’d have to explain to Sophia how I lost you. That would be difficult.” Talking about death and succession was difficult too. “I intend for you to live through this battle, this war.”

  “I don’t intend to die, Master Büber. If we can manage that, and turn the dwarves back, then it’ll be a job well done.” When he turned away, he looked like his mother, just for a moment.

  It had been thirteen years since the Order had killed Emma. Gods, she’d been dark and beautiful; he’d found himself almost incapable of speech the few times she’d talked to him. Thirteen years ago, Büber had been in his wild youth, leaping from mountain to mountain as though he had wings, running through the forests and diving into the lakes without pause or heed.

  Now, this was her son, almost grown, and he was a man in charge of the prince’s army

  “Master Büber?”

  “My lord. Lost in the past for a moment.”

  “We need you in the present. If you can see into the future, all the better.”

  They left the Kufstein crag and walked among the tents for a while, and Büber could see the effect that Felix’s presence had on the men. Whether Gerhard would have inspired them the same way was moot: he’d had one battle to fight, and had lost it.

  Büber was chilled inside and out by the time they found Reinhardt’s fire. Even while they sat around a pile of burning wood, eating mutton stew and discussing the best way to skin a rabbit, he thought they should be out there, digging by torch-light and praying to gods seemingly both deaf and blind that dawn would not reveal their inadequacies.

  The sun would rise all the same: the dwarves would swarm out and overwhelm them. Carinthia would be broken, and its army swept away.

  He found he’d lost his appetite, but shovelled in the food all the same. The beer tasted like piss, but he swallowed.

  The problem was this: the prince of Carinthia had come to lead his troops.

  No matter that Felix was due to go back to Juvavum in a few days, that there was no reason for an attack tomorrow – nothing to separate it from yesterday or the day after. They might even get the couple of month’s respite they wanted.

  But the Prince of Carinthia had come to Kufstein. This was Fate. The Norns had spun their wyrd from before they were born, and the ends unravelled here.

  Their only hope was that with the passing of magic, what might have been certain was no longer necessarily so. Their destiny was in their own hands. Büber realised with a snort that if there were any gods left, then he’d spit in their faces and defy them to do their worst.

  “What’s so amusing, Master Büber?” asked Reinhardt.

  “Nothing. Just an idle thought.”

  His head came up, and with it, the bottle he held in his hand. “To Carinthia,” he said. “And victory.”

  84

  It was always coldest just before dawn, and Felix had shivered himself awake under a pile of blankets. As he lay there, staring up at the white canvas rippling lazily above his head, he listened to the sounds around him: the creak and stretch of ropes, the distant coughing of men and barking of dogs, and, closer, someone snoring as if they were sawing logs in their sleep.

  He absorbed the sounds; the last time he’d lain like that, not quite warm enough to go back to sleep, pale light leaking in through a pale ceiling, had been the night before Obernberg.

  There were voices, low and muttered, indistinct, whispered almost. There were guards outside his tent – Reinhardt had insisted on that, stating baldly that being gutted from neck to navel by the Lady Sophia wasn’t his preferred method of passing to the afterlife.

  What Felix was hearing wasn’t the exchange of conversation between two men passing the time. He stretched and stirred, poked his head out of the flap, then emerged, his bare feet chill on the dew-drenched grass. He reached back in and grabbed a blanket to wrap around himself.

  The guards had gone. In their place was Peter Büber, hooded in his cloak, talking to a sweaty-faced man in a mail shirt.

  “Master Büber?”

  Büber stiffened, and looked askance at Felix. Then he nodded at the other man, who turned and ran back through the still-quiet camp.

  “My lord. You’re up.” The toes of Büber’s boots were already dark with water.

  “There’s something wrong?”

  “Wrong? No. Entirely expected. The dwarvish wall, it appears, has gates. Those gates are now open.”

  “Are we under attack?” Felix felt his heart beat hard under his shirt.

  “It’s twenty miles to the Ziller. We have at least the rest of today. I’d rather everyone was rested before we see what defences we can strengthen in the time we have left, than rouse the camp and have them work without breakfast.” Büber adjusted the strap on his swordbelt. “We have pickets who’ll tell us where the dwarves are.”

  “You’re riding out to see, though.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “I’ll come with you.” Before the huntmaster could say yes or no, Felix darted back into his tent. He threw the blanket aside and started to dress in his damp, cold, day clothes. There was only enough room in his simple ridge tent to sit and kneel, not to stand, but he still managed to tie and tuck himself in quickly enough. “Master Büber?”

  “My lord?” came the voice.

  “Are we expecting to fight?”

  “My lord, if you’re asking me whether you should plate up, then the answer is ten thousand times yes.”

  Gods, that made his heart beat all the faster. At Obernberg, he hadn’t known what to expect. It had been thrilling, the fear of the unknown, the fear of soiling his breeks at the first sight of the enemy. Now he knew, and his courage was as small as his stature.

  I am the Prince of Carinthia. I am thirteen. I have a hundred good people who could lead the palatinate after me.

  He picked up the Sword of Carinthia and ducked back out of the tent.

  His armour was hanging from a mannequin under an oilskin. He pulled off the cover under Büber’s watchful gaze, then lifted the harness off the wooden shoulders and onto his own. There were straps and buckles, which his tremulous fingers made hard work of fastening. The sword went into his belt and the shield onto his arm.

  Büber lifted the pot helmet off the mannequin’s head and dropped it on Felix’s. It went snug over his ears, the padding gripping him in an unfamiliar embrace.

  “Most lords couldn’t dress themselves in bre
eks and shirt, let alone their own plate.”

  “Is that approval, Master Büber?” It wasn’t something he felt he needed to seek any more, but it was good to know, all the same.

  “At least Carinthia has a prince who can piss in a pot and not get it down his leg. Would that the rest of Europe were so lucky.” Büber rapped his knuckles on Felix’s breastplate. It sounded reassuringly solid.

  “No mail for you, Master Büber?”

  “Can’t say I’ve ever held with it. Better to avoid being hit in the first place.” He looked out towards the blank black shape of Kufstein’s crag. “Our horses are being saddled. We may as well see to our stirrups ourselves.”

  Büber set off across the camp, and Felix caught him up. “You knew I’d want to come.”

  “Knew, no. Presumed, yes. You’ve that much of your father in you.” The grass hissed against their feet. “Let’s just hope you’ve the better sense.”

  “This is my father you’re talking about,” said Felix. He realised that Gerhard had been too slow to change, and that it had cost him his life and those of the men he’d led into battle. It was still his father.

  “And if you were to give me the choice between the man and the boy, I’d still choose the boy, even if the man did come with his earls. Mind, armoured cavalry is something we’re missing.”

  “If we had earls, we’d have nothing but levies.” Felix embraced the whole camp with a gesture. “These men are now fighting for their homes and their land. What do you want from me, Master Büber? A few more horsemen or a host of militia? It’s one or the other. We have what we have, and we are where we are. You may as well wish for hexmasters and be done with it.”

  Best not to have said that, he thought afterwards. He was sure Büber didn’t wish for any hexmasters, save for one in particular. He glanced at the big man.

  “We’re fighting infantry. A few more horsemen could turn the battle for us, used at the right time.”

  Either Büber hadn’t noticed, or he’d ignored the comment. Felix kept on the subject of horses. “How many do we have?”

  “Too few. People don’t keep horses except for pleasure, and then only the rich. The Jews have a few horses, but they use mostly bullocks to drag their ploughs and their carts. I can’t see riding a cow into battle catching on.” Büber pointed to the far bank, up by the col. “I’ll put what we have up there, most of them. They can ride down the side of the valley, strike hard, then away again. It’ll keep the flank occupied during our retreats, and perhaps they’ll sting a little. I’m told that Byzantium has horses covered head to foot in scale, their riders too, and that when they strike, they ride over their enemies as if they were nothing but a field of rye.”

  “The kataphraktoi,” said Felix. “I don’t know if it’s true.”

  Their horses arrived, ready for riding, held by two of Büber’s scouts.

  Felix swung into the saddle, and waited for the others to mount up. The jingling of tack and stamp of hooves did nothing to calm him. It felt like his heart was only still behind his ribs because of the breastplate strapped across them.

  “Across the bridge to the road,” said Büber. “We’ve already sent a messenger to Rosenheim, and someone else will ride to Juvavum.”

  Horses, carrying messages. This was how both war and peace were conducted now.

  They rode off at a steady trot, past the sagging canvas and drooping ropes, the still-smouldering fires and the blinking eyes of the morning watch. When they returned, the camp would have been struck. Every man would be armed and armoured. They were Carinthia just as much as the land was: every man they lost diminished the palatinate. It brought a sour taste up into Felix’s mouth.

  The bridge seemed less significant the closer they got to it. It was narrow, enough room for a single cart and no more, stone parapet up to waist-height across its three spans and two piers. The river below didn’t seem to be flowing that fast, or appear that deep. The banks were straight down for the most part, but it was hardly the insurmountable obstacle around which to base all their defences.

  There might be some overarching reason, thought Felix: perhaps dwarves didn’t like getting wet. He hoped so.

  They passed the limits of their earthworks, a mostly finished ditch from the Zellerberg hill on the left to the valley-side to the right, then they were into the area beyond, of quiet woods and little abandoned farms, and the road wound up the north side of the river all the way to Ennsbruck and beyond.

  The pickets were ahead of them, groups of two or three horsemen who were under strict orders to keep a watch on the dwarves but not to fight, even if it seemed likely they could score an easy win. What might look like a gift one moment could so quickly change to an irrecoverably dire situation the next – and they needed the horses more than they needed the men to ride them.

  Twenty miles. In any other circumstances, it’d be a decent morning’s hack, with the prospect of a good lunch at the end of it, and a pleasant feeling of fatigue afterwards that might last until bedtime. The scenery was stunning, with blue mountain peaks in the distance, the forest a deep, almost black green, and the constant companion of the river washing by.

  This valley, these trees, were not really his either by custom or right, but it fell to him to defend them, to keep the dwarves at bay from the pastures and cornfields of the plain.

  It struck Felix that peace was far better than war, and that he’d rather be remembered for his land reforms than for his prowess on the battlefield. He’d not asked to be prince, but gods, if prince he was, he’d see his people well fed and content. There was just the small matter of the entire population of Farduzes to contend with first. Curse them, and curse King Ironmaker. He would have welcomed them all as friends, and Carinthia had room for them, no matter how many there might be. Perhaps, when all this was done and Ironmaker had yielded his axe and his crown, there could be some sort of treaty between them.

  A picket from further up the line took over from the two who’d escorted them thus far, and Felix and Büber went on with the new man, further and deeper into the mountains, which now rose around rather than only ahead of them.

  The closer they got to the dwarvish wall, the more nervous he grew, but Obernberg had taught him that he was braver than he’d thought. After spending the first half of the battle running away from the Teuton outriders, it had been Felix and not Allegretti who’d stood his ground, and his refusal to run any further had forced the swordmaster to fight. He would carry on, no matter that his throat was dry and his stomach churning like a butter-tub; he’d not disgrace himself.

  They left their horses by a narrow forest path and climbed the rest of the way up to past the tree line. Büber went first, then Felix in his armour, and the picket third. It was hard, and Felix was out of breath soon enough. But then they came to an outcrop of rock that seemed to hang over the broad valley. They could sit in its shade and see everything.

  Büber had his distance-pipe, and so did Felix. Once he’d accepted some water, warm from the flask, his hands were steady enough to hold the tube and sight at the line of wooden stakes below.

  There were gaps in the wall, that much was obvious, places where pre-cut sections of palisade had been dropped to the ground. Through these gaps rolled a stream of the dwarvish wagons, arranged in long lines behind and forming up into two columns either side of the river.

  “What are they doing?” asked Felix.

  “Gods only know,” said Büber. He lowered the tube from his eye and blinked hard. “The only road suitable for those beasts is on this side. If they try and take them along the south side, they’ll find it not just heavy going, but all but impossible.”

  “And there are dwarves inside each one?” said Felix, twisting his distance-pipe to give him the best view.”

  “There aren’t any outside, pushing. So unless they’ve magic and we don’t, yes: ten or more to a wagon.” Büber rubbed at his eye. “If they’ve magic, we may as well go home.”

  The covered wag
ons were moving ahead relatively easily on the road, where the surface was hard and dry. On the other side, where there was barely a footpath, their progress seemed painfully slow.

  Felix kept watching. Yes, he could see dwarves now, cutting axes in hand, flanking the wagons as they disappeared into the forest. They looked somehow odd. Not the dwarves of legend, short-legged and barrel-chested, vast beards and dark-coal eyed: more half-made, pale worms wriggling out into the light.

  “Can we try and stop them?” he asked. “Or slow them down at least?”

  “We could. But we haven’t the men to make it count. If we cut trees across their path, they’ll have to get out and move them. We could kill a few before they drive us off. We’ve committed to Kufstein, though.” Büber put the tube to his eye again. “No sign of any flanking forces. They’re doing what we expected, at least. We’ll need to pull back ourselves soon, or we’ll get cut off.”

  “There are a lot of them, Master Büber,” said Felix.

  It was true. A stream of wagons continued to rumble and roll through the gaps in the wall, and behind them was an inchoate mass of figures, so large that it lost meaning.

  “And they’re all coming our way,” he continued.

  Büber took one last look, and slid his distance-pipe away. “If they use those wagons to attack us, our bows – our advantage – is lost until they climb out of them. The ditches will force them out, at least while they take the embankment behind. But then it’ll be spear against axe. We need a way of stopping them well ahead of our lines.”

  “Then we’ll have to do just that.”

  “Easier said than done, my lord.” Büber looked troubled as he touched Felix on the arm. “Unless we intend to be trapped here, we need to leave now.”

  Felix folded his own pipe away and took a last look at the horde. The next time he’d see them would be in battle.