by Paul Kearney
Then there was a staggering volley of arquebus fire that seemed to go on for ever. The Fimbrians collapsed by the hundred as a storm of bullets mowed them down, clicking through their armour with a sound oddly like hail on a tin roof. They faltered, their front ranks collapsing, men stumbling backwards on their fellows with the heavy bullets blasting chunks out of their bodies, cutting their feet from under them, snapping pike shafts in two. The advance ground to a halt, its furthest limit marked by a tideline of con torted bodies, in places two or three deep.
To the rear of the Ferinai had been a huge host of infantry, ten thousand of them at least. They had lain down in the rough upland grass and the wiry heather, and the retreating Merduk cavalry had passed over them. Then when the pike-men had approached, they had risen to their feet and fired at point-blank range. It was the same tactic Corfe had used on the Nalbenic cavalry in the King’s Battle. Andruw stared at the carnage in the Fimbrian ranks with horror. The Merduks had formed up in five lines, and when one line fired it lay down again so that the one behind it could discharge the next volley. It was continuous, murderous, and the Fimbrians were being decimated.
Andruw struggled to think. What would Corfe do? His own instinct was to lead the Cathedrallers in a wild charge, but that would accomplish nothing. No—something else.
Ranafast cantered up. “Andruw, they’re on our flanks. The bastards have horse-archers on our flanks.”
Andruw tore his eyes away from the death of the Fimbrians to the surrounding hills. Sure enough, massed formations of cavalry were moving to right and left on the high ground about them. In a few minutes his command would be surrounded.
“God Almighty!” he breathed. What could he do? The whole thing was falling to pieces in front of his eyes.
Hard to think in the rising chaos. Ranafast was staring at him expectantly.
“Take your arquebusiers, and keep those horse-archers clear of our flanks and rear. We’re pulling out.”
Ranafast was astonished. “Pulling out? Saint’s blood, Andruw, the Fimbrians are being cut to pieces and the enemy is all over us. How the hell do we pull out? They’ll follow and break us.”
But it was becoming clear in Andruw’s mind now. The initial panic had faded away, leaving calm certainty in its place.
“No, it’ll be all right. Get a courier to Formio. Tell him to get his men the hell out of there as soon as he can. He must break off contact. As he does, I’ll lead the Cathedrallers in. We’ll keep the enemy occupied long enough for you and Formio to shoot your way clear. I’m making you second-in-command now, Ranafast. Get as many of your and Formio’s men out as you can. Take them to Corfe.”
Ranafast was white-faced. “And you? You’ve no chance, Andruw.”
“It’ll take a mounted charge to make an impact in there. Besides, the Fimbrians are spent, and your lot are needed to keep the horse-archers at bay. It’ll have to be the tribesmen.”
“Let me lead them in,” Ranafast pleaded.
“No, it’s on my head, all this mess. I must do what I can to remedy it. Get back to Corfe, for God’s sake. Leave another rearguard on the way if you have to, but get there with as many as you can and pile into the enemy flank. He can’t hold them unless you do.”
They shook hands. “What shall I tell him?” Ranafast asked.
“Tell him . . . Tell him he made a cavalryman out of me at last. Goodbye, Ranafast.”
Andruw spun his horse around and galloped off to join the Cathedrallers. Ranafast watched him go, one lone figure in the middle of that murderous turmoil. Then he collected himself and started bellowing orders at his own officers.
T HE Fimbrians withdrew, crouching like men bent against a rainstorm, their pikes bristling impotently. As they did, the Hraibadar arquebusiers confronting them gave a great shout, elated at having made a Fimbrian phalanx retreat. They began to edge forward, first in ones and twos, then by companies and tercios, gathering courage as they became convinced that the enemy retreat was not a feint. Their carefully dressed lines became mixed up, and they began firing at will instead of in organised volleys.
An awesome thunder of hooves, and then the Cathedrallers appeared on one flank: a great mass of them at full, reckless gallop, the tribesmen singing their shrill battle-paean. Andruw was at their head, yelling with the best of them. The Hraibadar ranks seemed to give a visible shiver, like the twitch of a horse under a fly, just at the moment of impact.
And the heavy cavalry plunged straight into them. Fifteen hundred horsemen at top speed. Ranafast watched them strike from his position in the middle of the dyke veterans. The Hraibadar line buckled and broke. He saw one massive warhorse turn end over end through the air. Its fellows trampled the enemy infantry as though they were corn. He felt a surge of hope. By God, Andruw was going to do it. He was going to make it.
But there were ten thousand of the Hraibadar, and while the tribesmen had sent reeling fully one third of the Merduk regiments, the remainder were pulling back in good order, redeploying for a counter-attack. The success of the charge was temporary only, as Andruw had known it would be. But it had opened a gap in the encirclement, a gap that Ranafast’s own men were widening, blasting well-aimed volleys into the harassing horse-archers. The Fimbrians had completely disengaged now, and were surrounded by Torunnan arquebusiers. The formation resembled nothing so much as a great densely packed square. Lucky the enemy had no artillery—the massed ranks would have made a perfect target. Ranafast bellowed the order, and the square began to move southwards, towards Armagedir, sweeping the Nalbenic light cavalry out of its way as a rhino might toss aside a troublesome terrier. Behind it, the Cathedrallers fought on in a mire of slaughter, surrounded now, but battling on without hope or quarter.
A knot of Fimbrians were carrying something towards Ranafast. A body. The Torunnan dismounted as they approached. It was Formio. He had been shot in the shoulder and stomach and his lips were blue, but his eyes were unclouded.
“We’ve broken free,” he said. There was blood on his teeth. “I suggest we counter-attack, Ranafast. Andruw—”
“Andruw’s orders were to keep going and to join Corfe,” Ranafast said, his voice harsh as that of an old raven. Not Formio too.
“I intend to obey him. There is nothing we can do for the tribesmen now. We must make the most of the time they’ve bought us.”
Formio stared at him, then bent forward and coughed up a gout of dark gore which splashed his punctured breastplate. Some inhuman reserve of strength enabled him to straighten again in the arms of his men and look the Torunnan in the eye.
“We can’t—”
“We must, Formio,” Ranafast said gently. “Corfe is fighting the main battle; this is only a sideshow. We must.”
Formio closed his eyes, nodded silently. One of his men wiped the blood from his mouth, then looked up.
“He’s almost gone, Colonel.” The Fimbrian’s visage was a set mask.
“Bring him with us. I won’t leave him here to become carrion.” Then Ranafast turned away, his own face a bitter gnarl of grief.
T HE Torunnan infantry had lunged forward once more, clawing for the ground under them yard by bloody yard. Rusio’s troops now occupied the line of trees which had been the rallying point for the enemy. Out on the left, Aras had his standard planted in the hamlet of Armagedir itself, and fifteen tercios had grouped themselves around it and were holding against twenty times their number. The thatch on the roofs of the houses there was burning, so that all Corfe could glimpse were minute red flashes of gunfire crackling in clusters and lines, sometimes the glint of armour through the dense smoke.
Nonius was moving his guns forward with the infantry, but it was slow work. Many of the horses had been killed, and the gunners were manhandling the heavy pieces over broken ground that was strewn with corpses. The Merduk artillery was still embroiled in the hopeless tangle of men and equipment which backed up on the Western Road for fully five miles to their rear.
The insane roar of the b
attle went on without pause, a barrage of the very senses. Along a three-mile stretch of upland moor the two opposing lines of close-packed men strove to annihilate one another. They fought for possession of a line of trees, a burnt-out cluster of houses, a muddy stretch of road. Every little feature in the terrain took on a great significance when men struggled to kill each other upon it. Untold thousands littered the field of battle already, and thousands more had become pitiful maimed wrecks of humanity that swore and screamed and tried to drag themselves out of the holocaust.
Over on the right, Passifal had fully committed his men to the line. That was it—the bottom of the barrel. Corfe had nothing left to throw into the contest. And on the Merduk right, opposite Aras’s hard-pressed tercios, the enemy was massing for a counter-attack. When the Merduk general was ready he would launch some thirty thousand fresh men into the battle there, and it would all be over.
Strangely, Corfe found the knowledge almost liberating. It was finished at last. He had done his best, and it had not been good enough, but at least now there was nothing more to worry about. Something had happened to Andruw, that was clear. The last two couriers that Corfe had sent out seemed to have been swallowed up by the very hills. It was as though all those men had simply disappeared.
There. Large formations moving through the smoke, pointed towards Armagedir. The Merduk general had finally launched the counter-attack. Aras was about to be crushed. Corfe looked about himself. He had with him his eight Cathedraller bodyguards, and another ten youthful ensigns who acted as aides and couriers. Not much of a reinforcement, but better than nothing.
He turned to one of the young officers.
“Arian, go to General Rusio. Tell him he is to hold the line at all hazards, and if he deems it practicable he is to advance. Tell him I am joining Colonel Aras’s men. They are about to be hit by the enemy counter-attack. Go now.”
The young officer saluted smartly and galloped off. Corfe watched him go, wondering if he had ever been that earnest. He missed his friends. He missed Andruw and Formio. Marsch and the Cathedrallers. It was not the same, fighting without them. And he realised with a flash of insight or intuition that it would never be the same again. That time was over.
Corfe kicked his horse savagely in the belly and it half reared. He did not fear death, he feared failure. And he had failed. There was nothing more to be afraid of.
He drew Mogen’s sword for the first time that day and turned to Cerne, his trumpeter. “Follow me.”
Then the group of riders took off after him as he rode full tilt up the hillside, into the smoking hell of Armagedir.
H UNDREDS of men lay wounded to the rear of the line here, making it hard for the horses to pick their way over them. The fuming roar of the battle was unbelievable, astonishing. Corfe had never before known its like, not even in the more furious assaults upon Ormann Dyke. It was as though both armies knew that this was the deciding contest of the century-old war. For one side complete victory beckoned, for the other annihilation. The Torunnans would not retreat because, like Corfe, they had ceased to be afraid of anything except the consequences of failure. So they died where they stood, fighting it out with gunstocks and sabres when their ammunition ran out, struggling like savages with anything that came to hand, even the very stones at their feet. They were dying hard, and for the first time in a long while Corfe felt proud to be one of them.
His party dismounted as they approached the ruins of the hamlet around which Aras’s men had made their stand. The ground was too choked with bodies for the horses to be ridden further, and even the war-hardened destriers were becoming terrified by the din.
Aras’s command stood at bay like an island in a sea of Merduks. The enemy had poured around its left flank and was pushing into the right, where it connected with the main body of the Torunnan army. They were trying to pinch off the beleaguered tercios from Rusio’s forces, isolate and destroy them. But their assaults on the hamlet itself broke like waves on a sea cliff. Aras’s troops stood and fought in the ruins of Armagedir as though it were the last fortress of the western world. And in a way it was.
The Torunnans looked up as Corfe and his entourage pushed their way through the choked ranks, and he heard his name called out again and again. There was even a momentary cheer. At last he found his way to the sable standard under which Aras and his staff officers clustered. The young colonel brightened at the sight of his commander-in-chief, and saluted with alacrity. “Good to see you, sir. We were beginning to wonder if the rest of the army had forgotten about us.”
Corfe shook his hand. “Consider yourself a general now, Aras. You’ve earned it.”
Even under grime and powder-smoke he could see the younger man flush with pleasure. He felt something of a fraud, knowing Aras would not live long enough to enjoy his promotion.
“Your orders, General?” Aras asked, still beaming. “I daresay our flank march will be arriving any time now.”
Corfe did not have to lower his voice to avoid being overheard; the rageing chaos of the battle was like a great curtain.
“I believe our flank march may have run into trouble, Aras. It’s possible you will not be reinforced. We must hold on here to the end. To the end, do you understand me?”
Aras stared at him, the dismay naked across his face for a second. Then he collected himself, and managed a strangled laugh. “At least I’ll die a general. Don’t worry, sir, these men aren’t going anywhere. They know their duty, as do I.”
Corfe gripped his shoulder. “I know,” he said in almost a whisper.
“Sir!” one of the staff officers shouted. “They’re coming in—a whole wave of them.”
The Merduk counter-attack rolled into Armagedir like some unstoppable juggernaut. It was met with a furious crescendo of arquebus fire which obliterated the leading rank, and then it was hand to hand all down the line. The Torunnan perimetre shrank under that savage assault, the men crowded back on to the blazing buildings of the hamlet they defended. And there they halted. Corfe shoved his way to the forefront of the line and was able to forget strategy, politics, the worries of a high-ranking officer. He found himself battling for his life like the lowliest ranker, his Cathedraller bodyguards ranged about him and singing as they slew. The little knot of scarlet-armoured men seemed to draw the enemy as a candle will moths at twilight. They were more heavily armoured than their Torunnan comrades, and stood like a wedge of red-hot iron while the lightly armed warriors of the Minhraib crashed in on them to be hewn down one after another. Armagedir became cut off from the rest of the army as the Merduks swamped the Torunnan left wing. It became a murderous cauldron of insane violence within which men fought and killed without thought of self-preservation or hope of rescue. It was the end, the apocalypse. Corfe saw men dying with their teeth locked in an enemy’s throat, others strangling each other, snarling like animals, eyes empty of reason. The Minhraib threw themselves on the Cathedrallers like dogs mobbing a bear, three and four at a time sacrificing themselves to bring down one steel-clad tribesman and cut his throat on the blood-sodden ground. Corfe swung and hacked in a berserk rage, sword blows clanging off his armour, one ringing hollow on his helm, exploding his bruised face with stars of agony. Something stabbed him through the thigh and he fell to his knees, bellowing, Mogen’s sword dealing slaughter left and right. He was on the ground, buffeted by a massive scrum of bodies, trampled by booted feet. He fought himself upright, the sword blows raining down on him. Aras and Cerne were at his shoulders, helping him up. Then a blade burst out of Cerne’s eye, and he toppled without a sound. The detonation of an arquebus scorched Corfe’s hand. He stabbed out blindly, felt flesh and bone give way under the Answerer’s wicked edge. Someone hacked at his neck, and his sight erupted with stars and spangled darkness. He went down again.
A sunlit hillside above Aekir in some age of the world long past, and he was sitting on crackling bracken with Heria by his side, sharing wine. His wife’s smile rent his heart.
Andruw
laughing amid the roar of guns, a delight in life lighting up his face and making it into that of a boy.
Barbius’s Fimbrians advancing to their deaths in terrible glory at the North More.
Berrona burning low on a far horizon.
A smoky hut in which his mother wept quietly and his father stared at the earthen floor as Corfe told him he was going for a soldier.
Dappled sunlight on the Torrin river as he splashed and swam there one long summer afternoon.
And the roar and blare of many trumpets, the beat of heavy drums rising even over the clamour of war. The press of bodies about him eased. He was hauled to his feet and found himself looking through a film of blood at Aras’s slashed face.
“Andruw has come!” he was shouting. “The Fimbrians have struck the Merduk flank!”
And raising his heavy head he saw the pikes outlined against the fuming sky, and all about him the men of Armagedir were cheering as the Merduks poured away in absolute panic. The dyke veterans were lined on a hillside to the north, blasting out volley after volley into the close-packed throng of the enemy. And the Fimbrians were cutting them down like corn, advancing as relentlessly as if they meant to sweep every Merduk off the edge of the world.
Corfe bent his head and wept.
TWENTY-TWO
T HE levee had gone very well, Murad thought. Half the kingdom’s remaining nobility seemed to have been present, and they had listened, agog, as Murad had told them of his experiences in the west. It was good of the King to have allowed him to do it. It announced that the Lord of Galiapeno had returned indeed and, what was more, enjoyed the Royal favour. But it had also been a draining experience.
Traveller’s tales. Is that all they thought he had to tell? Empty-headed fools.
The King had limped down from his throne and was now mingling with his subjects. He had a genius for gestures like that, Murad thought, though it was hardly fitting, not so soon after these same men who were now fawning about him had been conspiring to take the throne away from him.
