Some six leagues to the north and west of Gaderion the narrow, mountain-girt gap opened out into the wider land of the Torian Plains beyond, and in the tumbled foothills which marked the last heights of the mountains a line of turf and timber structures signalled the beginning of the Thurian Line, the easternmost redoubt of the Second Empire. Here, with the conscripted labour of thousands, the forces of Himerius had reared up a great clay and wood barrier, part defensive wall, part staging post. It meandered over the grassy hills like a monstrous serpent, bristling with stockades and gabions and revetments. There were few heavy guns stationed along it, but huge numbers of men patrolled its unending length, and to the rear they had constructed sod-walled towns and roads of crushed stone. The smoke of their fires could be seen for miles, an oily smudge on the hem of the sky, and their shanty towns were surrounded by muddy quagmires through which columns of troops trudged ceaselessly, and files of cavalry plunged fetlock-deep. Here were garrisoned men of a dozen different countries and kingdoms reaching from Fulk in the far west to Gardiac in the heights of the Jafrar. Knights of Perigraine, looking like chivalric relics on their magnificently caparisoned chargers. Clanking gallowglasses from Finnmark with their greatswords and broadaxes. Almarkan cuirassiers with pistols strapped to their saddles. Knights Militant, as heavily armoured as the Perigrainians, but infinitely more businesslike. And Inceptines, no longer monks in habits, but now tonsured warriors on destriers wielding maces and clad in black-lacquered steel. They led ragged columns of men who wore no armour, wielded no weapons, but who were the most feared of all Himerius's soldiers: the Hounds of God. When a troop of these trotted down one of the muddy garrison streets, everyone, even the hulking gallowglasses, made room for them. The Torun-nans had yet to meet these things in battle, but they were the secret weapon upon which the Empire based many hopes.
A savage, low-intensity warfare had flickered over this disputed ground between the two defence lines now for several months. Each side sent out patrols to gather intelli shy;gence on the other, and when these met no quarter was asked or given. Scarcely two sennights previously, a Torunnan flying column of a thousand cuirassiers had slipped through the foothills to the north-east of the Thurian Line undetected, and had burned the bridges over the Tourbering river a hundred miles to the north. However, on their way back the Himerians had been ready for them, and barely two hundred of the heavy horsemen had survived to see the walls of Gaderion again.
A small group of lightly armed Torunnan cavalry reined in as evening drew on and prepared to bed down for the night on a low bluff within sight of the endless skein of lights that was the Thurian Line. They had been out of Gaderion three days on a reconnaissance, riding the entire length of the enemy fortifications, and were to return to barracks in the morning. Half their number stood guard while the rest unsaddled, rubbed down and fed their mounts, and then unrolled their damp bedrolls. When this had been done, the dismounted troopers remained standing and watchful as their comrades did the same. Five dozen tired, grimy men who wanted nothing more than to get through the night and back to their bunks, a wash, and a hot meal. The Torunnans were forbidden to light fires when between the lines, and thus their camps had been chill and cheerless, their food ration scarcely less so. By the time the horse lines were pegged out in the wooded ground at the foot of the bluff and the animals hobbled and deep in nosebags, it had become almost fully dark, the last light edging down behind the jagged sentinel bulk of Candor-wir behind them, and the seven stars of the Scythe bright and stark in a cloudless night sky.
The troopers' young officer, a lanky youth with straw-coloured hair, stood watching the line of lights glittering on the world perhaps ten miles away to the north and west. They arced across the land like a filigree necklace, too delicate to seem threatening. But he had seen them up close, and knew that the Himerians decorated those ramparts with Torunnan heads mounted on cruel spikes. The bodies they left out as carrion within gunshot of the walls.
'All quiet, sir', the troop sergeant told his officer, a shadow among other, faceless shadows.
'All right, Dieter. Turn yourself in as well. I reckon I'll watch for a while.'
But the sergeant did not move. He was staring down at the Thurian Line like his officer. 'Funny, behind the walls it's lively as an ants' nest someone has poked with a stick, but there's not hide nor hair of the bastards out here. Not one patrol! I haven't seen the like, and I've been stationed up here these past four years.'
'Yes, there's a bad smell in the air all right. Maybe the rumours are true, and it's the start of the war at last.'
'Saint's blood, I hope not.'
The young ensign turned to his sergeant, his senior by twenty years, and grinned. 'What's that? Aren't you keen to have a go at them, Dieter? They've been skulking behind those ramparts for ten years now. It's about time they came out and let us get at them.'
Dieter's face was expressionless. 1 was at Armagedir, lad, and in the King's Battle before that. I was no older than you are now and thought much the same. All young men's minds work the same way. They want to see war, and when they have seen it, they never want to see it again, providing they live through it.'
'No glory, eh?'
'Roche, you've been up here a year now. How much glory have you seen?'
'Ah, but it's just been this damn skirmishing. I want to see what a real fight is like, where the battle lines are a mile long and the thunder of it shakes the earth.'
'Me, I just want to get back to my bed, and the wife in it.'
'What about young Pier? He'll soon be of an age to sit a saddle or shoulder a pike. Is he to follow you into the tercios?'
'Not if I can help it.'
'Ah, Dieter, you're tired is all.'
'No, it's not that. It's the waiting, I think. These bastards have been building things up for a decade now, since the Torian Plains battle. They own everything between the Mai shy;vennors and the Cimbrics, right up to the sultanates in the Jafrar, and still they want more. They won't stop till we break 'em. I just want to get on with it, I suppose. Get it over with.'
He stopped, listening. In the horse lines among the trees the animals were restless and quarrelsome, despite being as tired as their riders. They were tugging at the picket ropes, trying to rear though their forelegs were securely hobbled.
'Something in the wind tonight,' the young ensign said lightly, but his face was set and hard.
The night was silent save for the struggling horses. The sentries down at the lines were trying to calm them, cursing and grabbing at their skewed nosebags.
'Something,' Dieter agreed. 'Sir, do you smell that?'
The ensign sniffed the air doubtfully. 'There must be an old fox's den nearby. That's what is spooking the horses.'
'No, it's different than that. Stronger.'
One of the sentries came running up to the two men with his sabre drawn. The metal glinted coldly in the starlight.
'There's something out there in the dark sir, something moving. It was circling the camp, and then I lost it in that gully down on the left. It's in the trees.'
The young officer looked at his sergeant. 'Stand to.'
But the nickering of the horses exploded into a chorus of terrified, agonising shrieks that froze them all where they stood. The sentries came running pell-mell from the horse lines, terrified. 'There's something down in there, Sergeant!'