“Who will the new khedive be, you think?”
“Who knows? Some creature of Aurungzeb’s who is more malleable than I. One who will put his own ambitions above the lives of his men. The Searil will flow scarlet ere we take that fortress, Mughal.”
“But it will fall in the spring. It will fall. And where will we be then?”
“Eating yoghurt in a felt hut on the steppes.”
Mughal guffawed, then bent his face to the fire and nudged the kettle into the flames. They would have steaming kava to warm them before they broke camp and continued their journey.
“Will you turn your back on it so easily?” he asked.
Shahr Baraz was silent for a long time.
“I am of the old Hraib,” he said at last. “This war which we have begun will usher the world into a new age. Men like myself and John Mogen were not destined to be leaders in the times to come. The world has changed, and is changing yet. The Merduk people are no longer the fierce steppe horsemen of my youth; their blood is mixed with many who were once Ramusian, and the old nomadic times are only a memory.
“Even the way of the warrior itself is changing. Gunpowder counts for more than courage. Arquebus balls take no heed of rank. Honour counts for less and less. Soon generals will be artisans and engineers rather than soldiers, and war will be a thing of equations and mathematics. That is not the way I have waged it, or ever will.
“So yes: I will turn my back on it, Mughal. I will leave it to the younger men who come after me. I have seen a Merduk host march through the streets of Aekir; my place in the story is assured. I have that to take with me. Now I will ride east to the land of my fathers, there to see the limitless plains of Kambaksk and Kolchuk, the birthplace of our nation, and there I will leave my bones.”
“I would come with you, if I may,” Mughal said.
The terrible old man smiled beneath the twin tusks of his moustache.
“I would like that. A companion shortens a journey, it is said. And it will be a long journey.”
“But it is the last journey,” Mughal murmured, and poured steaming kava for them both.
Tell me what you see,” Macrobius said.
They stood on the battlements of the citadel of Ormann Dyke, a cluster of officers and soldiers and one old man who was missing his eyes. Corfe stared out at the white, empty, snow-shrouded land beyond the flinty torrent of the Searil river.
“There is nothing there. The camps have been abandoned. Even the trenches and walls they delved and reared are hard to see under the snow; mere shadows running across the face of the hills. Here and there is the remnant of a tent, a strew of wreckage covered with snow. They have gone, Holiness.”
“What is that smell on the air, then?”
“They gathered their dead under the terms of the burial truce, and burned them on a pyre in one of the further valleys. It is smoking yet, a hill of ashes.”
“Where have they gone, Corfe? Where did that great host go to?”
Corfe looked at his commander. Martellus shrugged.
“They have retreated into winter camp, a league or more from the walls.”
“Then they are defeated. The dyke is safe.”
“For now, yes. They will be back in the spring, when the snows melt. But we will be ready for them. We will hurl them back beyond the Ostian river and cleanse Aekir once more.”
The High Pontiff bent his ravaged head, his white hair flickering in the chill breeze. “Thanks to God and the Blessed Saint.”
“And you, Your Holiness, have done your duty here and done it well,” Martellus said. “It is time you left to take up your proper place.”
“My proper place?” Macrobius said. “Perhaps. I am no longer sure. Has there been no word from Charibon?”
“No,” Martellus lied. “King Lofantyr will be returning from Vol Ephrir very soon; it is best you are in Torunn to meet him. There will be much for you and he to discuss. Corfe will go with you. He is a colonel now; he has done well. He is the only Torunnan to have survived Aekir and he will be able to answer the King’s questions.”
“Are you so sure the Merduks will not attack again, General?”
“I am. They have abandoned their artillery emplacements and will have to fight to rehouse their batteries again. No-my scouts tell me that they are completing a great new road between here and Aekir for the passage of supplies. And they have small parties sniffing the upper and lower stretches of the Searil, searching for a way to outflank the Dyke. They will not find it. The Fimbrians did well to build their fortress here. The campaign is finished for this year. You will spend a more comfortable winter in Torunn than you would here, Holiness, and you will be of more service to us there.”
“Meaning?” Macrobius asked.
“Meaning I want you and Corfe to work on King Lofantyr. The dyke must be reinforced ere the snow melts. The Merduks have been having command difficulties-one of the reasons we are still here. But come spring they will be at our throats again under a new general. So it is rumoured.”
Macrobius started. “Is Shahr Baraz dead then?”
“Dead or replaced-it makes little difference. But the Ostian is reputed to be thick with supply barges, many of them carrying firearms. The tactics will be different when they come again, and we have lost the eastern barbican. We hang on here by a thread, despite the fools who are celebrating in the refugee camps-another subject that Corfe will bring up when he meets the King.”
Macrobius smiled wryly, looked blindly at Corfe.
“You have come far, my friend, since we shared burnt turnip on the Western Road. You have become a man who consorts with kings and Pontiffs, and your star has not finished rising yet; I can feel it.”
“You will have thirty of Ranafast’s troopers to escort you,” Martellus said, a little put out. “It is all we can spare, but it should be enough. The road south is still open, but you should leave as soon as you can.”
“I travel in state no longer, General,” Macrobius said. “All I own I wear on my back. I can go whenever you wish.”
“It is time the world saw Macrobius again, and heard of the things that have been done here. We have done well, but it is only the first battle of a long war.”
T HE year was turning. Even in Vol Ephrir the balminess was vanishing from the air and the flaming trees were growing barer by the day. The Conclave of Kings ground on interminably as the land settled into an early winter, a bitter winter that was already rendering the mountains impassable. This dark season would be long and hard, harder still for those lands which were under the shadow of invasion and war.
The High Pontiff in Charibon, Himerius II, issued a Pontifical bull denouncing the old blind man rumoured to be Macrobius and housed in Ormann Dyke as an impostor and a heretic. His sponsor, the Torunnan general Pieter Martellus, who had successfully defended the dyke against the army of Shahr Baraz, was indicted on charges of heresy in his absence, and couriers were sent to Torunna to demand his removal and punishment.
A second bull authorized clerical authorities in the Five Ramusian Kingdoms of the West, as well as the duchies and principalities, to seize and detain any person or persons who were users of black magic, who were natives of a state not within the Ramusian fold or who publicly objected to the seizure of any of the above. These persons’ property was to be considered confiscate and divided between the Church and the secular authorities of the region, and they were to be detained pending a Religious Trial.
At roughly the same time two thousand Knights Militant reached Abrusio in the Kingdom of Hebrion and were met by representatives of the Inceptine Order. The city of Abrusio was put under Theocratic Law and governed by a body of Inceptines and nobles answerable only to the High Pontiff and to the Hebrian king-who unfortunately was far away in Vol Ephrir. The first day of the new rule was marked by the burning of seven hundred and thirty people, thus emptying the catacombs for the influx of fresh heretics and foreigners the Knights were rounding up throughout the city and the kingdom beyond.