'Well, we must be thankful for what we are given, I sup shy;pose. Our plans have gone awry, Bardolin my old friend, but the setback is temporary. We have fresh forces on the way which will weigh heavy in the scales, as you say.' He smiled, and the perilous lupine light burned in his eyes, gloating with secret knowledge.
An Inceptine who was leaning over the tower parapet with his fellows threw back his hood and pointed south. His voice quavered. 'Lord, the Torunnans are advancing up the very streets. They are approaching the cathedral!'
'Let them,' Aruan said. 'Let the doomed have their hour of glory.'
The battlefield had grown, so that now the monastery-city itself had been swallowed by it. Corfe had wheeled the Orphans westwards once more so that their right flank was resting on the complex of timber buildings that constituted the southern suburb of Charibon. Those arquebusiers who had been positioned on the shore of the Sea of Tor now advanced northwards and began pushing towards the Great Square at the heart of the city while the Cathedrallers formed up south of the Orphans to protect their open flank, and Olba's reserve began moving at the double northward to join in the taking of the city. Buildings were burning here and there already, and the Himerian troops who were trying to hold back the Torunnan advance were confused and leaderless. The hard shy;bitten Torunnan professionals herded them like sheep, advancing tercio by tercio so that the once tranquil cloisters of Charibon rang with the thunderous din of volley fire and the screams of desperate men. No quarter was given by the iron-clad invaders, and they cut down every man, woman and black-garbed cleric in their path so that the gutters ran with blood.
But the Second Empire had not yet committed all its strength. From the west the glittering ranks of mail-clad gallowglasses advanced in unbroken lines with their two-handed swords resting on their shoulders and their faces hidden behind tall, masked helms. And beyond them more regiments of Almarkans and Perigrainians were forming up on the plain, preparing to push the Torunnans into the sea.
A wind off the Torian carried the smoke and stink of the battle inland and the sun came lancing in banner-bright beams though the curling battle reek, making of the armed forma shy;tions brindled silhouettes. For three square miles south of Charibon the wreck and smirch of war covered the earth, as though the battle were some dark flaming brush fire which left blackened carrion in its wake. And it was not yet mid-morning.
Rilke's artillery began to bark out once again and create flowers of red ruin among the ranks of the advancing gallowglasses. However, these Finnmarkans were not the frightened boys that the Almarkan conscripts had been, but the household warriors of King Skarp-Hedin himself. Their advance continued, and they closed their gaps as they came so that Corfe could not help but admire them.
He studied the battlefield as though it were some puzzle to which he must find the answer. Huge masses of men had almost completed the dressing of their lines behind the gallow shy;glasses; the foremost had already begun to advance in their wake. He was outnumbered several times over, and it would not be long before someone in the enemy high command had the wit to move round his left and outflank him. He could either pull his men back now and await the enemy onslaught, or he could throw caution aside.
He looked north. The outskirts of Charibon were on fire and his men were fighting their way street by bloody street into the heart of the city. That was where the battle would be decided: in the very midst of the hallowed cloisters and churches of the Inceptines. He must make a deliberate choice. Battlefield victory was impossible; he knew that. He must either fight this battle conventionally, harbouring his men's lives and hoping that they could stage a fighting withdrawal through the hordes pitted against them. Or deliberately send the thing he loved to its destruction, throw away the tactics manual and chance everything on one throw of the dice. All to accomplish the death of a single man.
If he failed here; if Aruan and his cohorts survived this day, then the west would become a continent of slaves and the magicians and their beasts would rule it for untold years to come.
Corfe looked at Golophin, and the old wizard met his eyes squarely. He knew.
Corfe turned to Ensign Roche, who was wide-eyed and sweating beside him again.
'Go to Comillan. He is to charge the gallowglasses, and follow up until they break. Then go to Kyne. The Orphans must advance. They will keep advancing as long as they are able.'
The young officer took off with a hurried salute.
And as easily as that: it was done, and the fate of the world thrown into the balance. Corfe felt as though a great weight had been raised off his shoulders. He spoke to Haptman Baraz.
‘I am taking the Bodyguard into the city. Tell Olba to follow up with his command.' And when the young officer had gone he turned to Golophin again.
'Will you be there with me at the death?' he asked lightly.
The old wizard bowed in the saddle, his scarred face as grim as that of a cathedral gargoyle. 'I will be with you, Corfe. Until the end.'
Twenty-two
Bardolin watched the charge of the Cathedrallers from the roof of a building off the Great Square. In all the houses around he had gathered together what he could of the retreat shy;ing Almarkans and had stationed them at windows and on balconies, ready to fire down on the Torunnan invaders as they came. More reinforcements were still flooding through the city from the north, and while the Torunnans were burn shy;ing and killing their way forward he and Aruan had set in place many thousands of fresh troops to bar their way, rearing up barricades across every street and positioning arquebusiers at every corner.
But out on the plains beyond the city the red horsemen of Torunna were advancing side by side with a Fimbrian pike phalanx, eight or nine thousand strong, to meet the gallow shy;glasses of Finnmark. Something in Bardolin stirred at the sight, some strange grief. He watched as the Cathedrallers charged forward, a scarlet wave, and the terrible pikes of the Orphans were lowered as they followed up. Scarlet and black upon the field, the colours of Torunna. He heard faintly over the roar of the battle the battle paean of the Cimbric tribes come drifting back to the city, fearsome and beautiful as a summer storm. And he watched as the gallowglasses were shunted backwards and the lines intermingled silver and red as the Cathedrallers' legendary charge struck home. The Finn-markans fought stubbornly, but they were no match for the army that Corfe Cear-Inaf had created, and eventually their line broke, and splintered, and fell apart. And the Orphans came up to finish the bloody work, their pikes as perfect as though they were being wielded in a parade-ground review.
A nudge, a subtle spike in his brain.
Now, do it now.
Bardolin rose with tears in his eyes. He raised hands to heaven and called out in Old Normannic. Words of sum shy;moning and power which shook to its foundations the build shy;ing whereon he stood. And he was answered. For out of the south there came a dark cloud which sullied the spring sky. It drew closer while the battle below it opened out heedlessly and the smoke of Charibon's burning rose to meet it. At last other men saw the looming darkness, and cried out around him in fear. In a vast flock of many thousands, the Flyers of Aruan came shrieking down out of the sun and swarmed upon the advancing armies of Torunna like a cloud of locusts. Even the destriers of the Cathedrallers could not withstand the sudden terror of that attack from above, and they reared and threw their riders and screamed and milled in confusion. The scarlet armour of the tribesmen was hidden as by a black thunderhead and in the midst of it, dismounted, buffeted by their panicked steeds, they began a savage fight for survival. The remnants of the gallowglasses, and the regiments of Himerians behind them, took heart, and began to advance. The Orphans moved to meet them, and Corfe's Fimbrians fell under the cloud also, and all that part of the battlefield became a whirlwind of shadow and darkness within which a holo shy;caust of slaughter was kindled.