Many of the northern Huran who had come as volunteers left; some in disgust, and some merely because they had good loot, or a captive to adopt or torment.
Despite the shifting, Thorn’s host was immense, and the loot of Ticondaga could not hold them long. Nor feed them. Hartmut’s men and the sailors made a camp and fortified it, ate from their own stores and refused to share with any but Orley’s warband.
Orley’s warband were now so well armed and armoured that they appeared a regiment of dark knights with scars and tattoos and deerskin surcoats. Most had heavy bills, or axes, and some carried crossbows as well. Kevin Orley was already a name. Men flocked to his banner now, and he called himself the Earl of Westwall. The armoured fist of the Orleys now floated over the smoking ruins of Ticondaga.
Ser Hartmut was a good teacher in the ways of war, and Thorn listened to him as he planned. Then he ordered his horde to break up-to feed off a larger swathe of the Adnacrags and to inflict more terror and more damage.
“Meet me under the Ings of the Wolf’s Head in five days,” he said, his voice like the growl and roar of summer thunder. “And we will take Dorling and feast again.”
Ser Hartmut organized the men-Galles, sailors, Outwallers, Orley’s warband and all their camp-followers. On their last day at Ticondaga, they were joined-late-by the expected reinforcement from Galle-another hundred lances and a strong company of the routiers with their own captains; Guerlain Capot led the brigans, men as hard and as rough as Orley’s men, and Ser Cristan de Badefol led a hundred Etruscan lances under a black banner. On his armour was the motto “Enemy of God, Mercy and Justice” in gold. It was said he had once been a member of the Order of Saint Thomas.
As soon as he arrived, he approached Ser Hartmut. They embraced-carefully-and de Badefol examined the ruin of Ticondaga.
“I told d’Abblemont that you’d take it,” the Etruscan said. “I brought what I could. There’s a lot of shit going on.”
Ser Hartmut wrinkled his nose fastidiously at de Badefol’s coarseness.
“Oh, don’t be a choirboy,” de Badefol said. “Just before we left port we heard that the King of Galle had been badly beaten in southern Arelat. There’s a rumour up in Three Rivers-since a pair of Etruscan merchants came in-that the Etruscans have asked the Emperor for help, it’s so bad.” De Badefol watched a wyvern taking flight off the water-its great, slow, laboured wings brushing the water at every stretch so that, as it lifted into the grey morning air of the mountains, its wings left a succession of perfectly round spreads of ripples. After sixteen great heaves of its wings it was airborne-just clearing the distant tree line across the lake, where Chimney Point came down from the Green Hills’ side. “By God, Ser Hartmut, I rejoice to see that we are directly in league with the forces of Satan. I’ve always been a devotee.”
“You speak much nonsense and little wisdom, my friend.”
“Does d’Abblemont know we are supporting the very side that makes war on the King in Galle and Arelat?” de Badefol asked.
“I care nothing for that,” Ser Hartmut growled. “I have orders, and I obey them, until they are complete.”
De Badefol nodded. “How very simple,” he said. “Well, my bravos will probably take a few days to-Black Angels of Hell, what is that?”
A few yards away, a pair of boglins emerged from the ground. They had bored through the earth, as they did when it was soft, and now appeared within the human encampment. In moments they’d caught a goat and begun to devour her.
Ser Hartmut drew his sword, which burst into flame. He killed both of the boglins, the sword slicing effortlessly through their carcasses and leaving them in the same unjointed state to which they had rendered the goat.
Within seconds, carrion birds began to descend.
“Where the fuck am I?” de Badefol asked.
“This is the Wild,” Ser Hartmut said. “Best get used to it. Here, one is either predator, or food.”
Sixty miles east of Dorling, the Emperor mounted his horse, took his helmet from the junior spatharios, Derkensun, and his sword from the senior, Guntar Grossbeak, and rode to his officers, gathered to review his magnificent army. Derkensun was still unsure of his rank, cautious in ceremonial. Grossbeak-tall and with fading copper hair and the biggest nose of any man Derkensun had ever met, was a lord, a Jarl. From home. He had no experience in the guard-but a great name as a killer.
Derkensun liked him, but he was a symptom of the imperial army’s greatest problem-too many new men.
The Emperor’s army broke camp and marched in a damp dawn. The Meander flowed on their right and to the south, the outposts of the Green Hills rolled away into long downs, some crowned with ancient hill forts, complex rings of earth, and some with standing cairns so ancient that no man remembered who had built them.
The Emperor watched the head of his army, guarded today by his Nordikaans, each carrying a great axe or a long-bladed two-handed sword, and wearing hauberks to their knees or below-some of steel, some of dull iron, some of bronze. Many of the Nordikaans now sported Etruscan or Alban breastplates over their maille, and some wore the new-style bascinets with maille aventails to pad the axed hafts on their shoulders. Almost every man had acquired full plate leg armour since last year’s bloody victory in Thrake. But the magnificent cloaks on their shoulders were the same, and many helmets glinted gold in the rising sun.
Behind the Emperor’s person, today, rode the Scholae, the elite cavalry of Morea, with horn bows scabbarded by their sides and coats of plates or steel scale over light maille, with gold brocade surcoats and billed helmets, new made in distant Venezia from hardened steel. Each troop of the Scholae rode matched horses; black in the first troop, bay in the second, and grey in the third. The scarlet-clad Vardariotes were already far ahead, moving across the hills in a nearly invisible skirmish line that covered the front and both flanks of the column.
Behind the Scholae rode two regiments of the Emperor’s stradiotes-his semi-feudal cavalry; the men of southern Morea and the men of the city. The northern Morea and Thrake would need a generation to recover from treason, stasis, and battle. But already since last year the stradiotes had changed in armament, and more of them rode larger horses and had heavier armour-made available at very favourable prices by the Etruscan factors.
Behind the stradiotes came a banda of mountaineers from the slopes between Alba and the Empire-tall, strong men and women with heavy javelins and heavier bows. They wore no armour at all beyond skull caps of iron. Many carried small round targets, but none had a knife longer than his forearm. The mountaineers had their own officers, bearded men on small ponies, and they marched quickly enough to keep up with the horsemen.
Behind them came a banda of Outwallers from south Huran, around Orawa, the extreme northern outposts of the Empire. They had come south to Middleburg and many had already shadowed the hosts of the sorcerer. Janos Turkos rode at their head, smoking. They kept no sort of order and sometimes left the column altogether.
Last, in the rearguard, came Ser Milus, with the company’s great banner of Saint Catherine, and with him rode Morgan Mortirmir and fully half of the company, and perhaps half again-Ser Milus had been busy recruiting.
All totalled, the Emperor had five thousand seasoned veterans to march to war in the north. If he was worried, his beautiful, bland face gave none of that away.
The army cheered him, and then turned, almost as one man, and moved off to the west.
Morgon Mortirmir had enjoyed a pleasant semester polishing his skills-really just a few weeks-before the Emperor’s messenger and Ser Milus’s had collided on his inn’s stairs summoning him to war. But he’d learned some fascinating things, and he’d used the first ten days out of Liviapolis on the road to work them into practical designs.