“More time than you might imagine. Sibastion Lejer’s fighting rearguard badly mangled the Hraibadar, the shock-troops of Shahr Baraz’s forces. He will wait for them to come up before launching a serious assault, and with the Western Road in a shambles and the weather showing no sign of changing, his transport will have difficulties moving with the troops. The River Searil is swollen. Once the Torunnans cut the bridges, the Merduks will have to force a river crossing under fire; but the Torunnans will not cut the bridges whilst there are refugees on the eastern bank. If I were the Khedive, I’d wait until the roads improved before I advanced. The refugees are still pouring west, so for the moment time is on his side. That is not to say that his cavalry will not attack the dyke first, before the main body comes up, but the dyke will hold them for a little while. Its defenders are Torunnans, after all.”
Abeleyn nodded absently. “I begin to see that Ormann Dyke is not solely a Torunnan affair. Lofantyr needs troops, needs them desperately. But what do I have to give him, and how could they get there in time? An army would take five or six months to march to the dyke.”
“By sea it might take five weeks, with fair winds or the aid of a weather-worker,” Golophin said.
“By sea?” Abeleyn shook his head. “The navy has its hands full patrolling the Malacar Straits against the corsairs; and then there is Calmar to consider. A western armament sailing into the Levangore would have to contend with the Calmaric Sea-Merduks. They have been quiet since Azbakir, but they would not tolerate an incursion of that size. It would be Azbakir all over again, save we’d be fighting it with transports instead of war-carracks. No, Golophin, unless you can magically spirit a few thousand men halfway across the world there is nothing we can do about the dyke. Lofantyr will love hearing that when I meet him at the conclave. Already he thinks the other monarchies have abandoned Torunna.”
“Perhaps he is right,” the mage said sharply. “There were seven great Kingdoms after the Fimbrian Hegemony ended; now the Merduks have reduced it to five. Will you sit in Abrusio until their elephants come tramping over the Hebros?”
“What would you have me do, teacher?”
Golophin paused, looking suddenly weary. “Teachers do not always know the answers.”
“Nor do kings.” Abeleyn set his brown fingers atop the old mage’s lean wrist and smiled.
Golophin laughed. “What a jest it is to sit and try to put the world to rights. The earth was a flawed place ere man arrived to skew it further; we shall never set it straight upon its foundations. Only God can do that, or the ‘Lord of Victories’,” as the Merduks call Him.”
“We will do our best, nonetheless,” Abeleyn said.
“Now, my King, you are beginning to sound like your father.”
“God forbid that I should ever sound like that sanctimonious, cold-eyed old warhorse.”
“Do not be so hard on his memory. He loved you in his own way, and everything he did was for the good of his people. I do not believe he ever committed one act which could be attributed to personal motives.”
“That much is certainly true,” Abeleyn said tartly.
“Were he Torunna’s king, sire, I’ll guarantee you that Aekir would be standing and the Merduks would be breaking their heads against its walls as they have done for the past sixty years. And the Knights Militant would be there in number also, instead of carrying out purges up and down the continent. It is hard to argue with a man of perfect convictions.”
“That I know.”
“John Mogen was such a man, but he was too abrasive. He inspired either love or hate, and alienated those who should have been his allies in Aekir’s defence. A king must appear to be as solid as a stone in his beliefs, lad, but he must bend like a willow when the gale blows.”
“And bend invisibly,” Abeleyn pointed out.
“Even so. There is a vast difference between blinkered intolerance and the ability to compromise without being seen to compromise.”
“Ironic, Golophin, isn’t it, that the best soldiers in the world, the Torunnans, are ruled by a king who has never seen battle, a young man who knows nothing of war?”
“The old monarchs are gone or going, sire. There is you, Lofantyr, King Mark of Astarac and Skarpathin of Finnmark-young men only a few years on the throne. The older kings who remember the earlier struggles with the Merduk are on their way out. The fate of Normannia rests on the shoulders of a new generation. I pray they will prove equal to the burden.”
“Thank you for your confidence, Golophin,” the King said dryly.
“You have it, sire, insofar as any man can have it. But I worry. The Ramusians have stood off the Merduk threat so long because they were united, strong, and of one faith. Now the holy men of the west seem intent on splitting each kingdom apart in the search for-what? Piety or earthly authority? I cannot yet say, but it worries me. Perhaps it is time there was a change. Perhaps Macrobius’ downfall and the loss of Aekir is a new beginning-or the beginning of the end. I am no seer; I do not know.”
Abeleyn stared into the cloudy heart of his beer. The tavern around them was quiet. There were a few murmuring knots of men in the corners, and the landlord stood at the bar smoking a short, foul-smelling pipe and whittling a piece of wood. Only Abeleyn’s bodyguards, across the dim room, were looking about them, ever alert for the safety of their king.
“I need something, Golophin,” Abeleyn said in a low voice. “Some morsel to take with me to the Conclave of Kings, some means of raising hope.”
“And of staving off requests for troops,” Golophin told him.
“That too. But I cannot think of anything.”
“You just spoke of the Torunnans, sire, and how they were the best soldiers in the world. That was not always true.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Think, lad. Who once held all of Normannia in their fist? Whose tercios marched from the shores of the Western Ocean to the black heights of the Jafrar in the east? The Fimbrians, whose hegemony lasted two hundred years before they tore themselves apart in their endless civil wars. The Fimbrians, whose hands built Aekir and laid the foundations of Ormann Dyke, who broke the power of the Cimbric tribes and founded the Kingdom of Torunna itself.”
“What about them?”
“They are still there, aren’t they? They have not disappeared.”
“They have shut themselves off in their electorates for this past century and more, endlessly quarrelling amongst themselves. They are no longer interested in empire, or in any events east of the Malvennor Mountains.”
“They have fine armies, though. There is something you can take to your meeting of kings, Abeleyn. The west needs troops? There are untold tens of thousands of them in Fimbria contributing nothing to the defence of the continent.”
“The Five Kingdoms distrust Fimbria; men have long memories. I am not sure even Torunna would welcome Fimbrian troops on its soil, despite the urgency of its needs-and even if we could persuade the Fimbrians to send them. They are an isolationist power, Golophin. They are not even sending a representative to the conclave.”
Golophin leaned back from the table and flapped a hand in exasperation. “So be it then. Let the men of the west keep their fears and prejudices. They will no doubt still possess them when the hordes of Ahrimuz have cast the shadow of their scimitars over all the Ramusian kingdoms.”
Abeleyn scowled, feeling as though he were the pupil again and Golophin the teacher who had just received the wrong answer.
“All right then, blast you! I’ll see what can be done. It can do no harm, after all. I’ll send envoys to the four Fimbrian Electorates, and I’ll bring the whole thing up at the conclave. Much good it will do me.”
“That’s my boy,” Golophin said, knowing how much that phrase irritated the King. “But there is one thing you might remember when dealing with the Fimbrians, sire.”