On their last night in the foothills they made camp and set to cooking the strips they had cut from the carcasses of the dead mules. There was still snow on the ground, but it was a thin, threadbare carpet beneath which sprouted tough clumps of brown upland grass which the surviving mules gorged themselves upon. Abeleyn climbed a nearby crag to look down on the bivouac, more the encampment of a band of refugees than the entourage of a king. He sat there in the cold wind to stare at this hard, sea-girt kingdom of his blooming out in the gathering twilight, the lights of the upland farms kindling below him spangling the tired earth.
A rustle of pinions, and Golophin’s bird had landed nearby and stood preening itself, trying to sort its ragged feathers into some kind of order. Had it been a purely natural creature, it could not have flown in the state it was in, but the Dweomer of its master kept it breathing, kept it airborne to run his errands for him.
“What tidings, my friend?” Abeleyn asked it.
“News, much news, sire. Sastro di Carrera has struck some sort of deal with the Presbyter Quirion. It is rumoured that he is to be named the next King of Hebrion.”
Abeleyn gave a low whistle. In his worn travelling clothes he resembled a young shepherd come to seek a herd of errant goats up here on the stony knees of the mountain—except that he had too much care written into the darknesses below his eyes, and there was a growing hardness to the lines which coursed on either side of his nose to the corners of his mouth. He looked as though he had lately become accustomed to frowning.
“Rovero and Mercado. What are they doing?”
“They barricaded off the western arm of the Lower City as you ordered, and there have been clashes with the Knights but no general engagement. The troops Mercado considers unreliable have been segregated from the rest, but we were unable to arrest Freiss. He was too quick for us, and is with his tercios.”
“They don’t amount to much anyway,” Abeleyn grunted.
“More troops have been coming into the city though, sire. Almost a thousand, most of them in Carreridan livery.”
“Sastro’s personal retainers. I dare say their deployment was the price of his kingship. Is there anything official yet about his elevation to the throne?”
“No, lad. It is a court rumour. The Sequeros are infuriated, of course. Old Astolvo is barely able to hold his young bloods in check. The kingship should have been his since he is next in line outside the Hibrusids, but he did not want it. Sastro’s gold, it is said, is being showered about the city like rice at a wedding.”
“He’ll beggar himself to get the throne. But what does that matter, when he will control the treasury afterwards? Any news from my fiefs?”
“They are quiet. Your retainers dare not do anything at the moment. The Knights and the men at arms of the other great houses are watching them closely. The slightest excuse, and they will be wiped out.”
Abeleyn had a couple of elderly aunts and a doddering grand-uncle. The Hibrusid house had become thin on the ground of late. These relics of its past had left all intrigue behind and preferred to stay away from court and live their vague lives in the peace of the extensive Royal estates north of Abrusio.
“We’ll leave them out of it, then. We can do it with what we have anyway. Get back to the city, Golophin. Tell Rovero and Mercado that I will be approaching the city in four days, if God is willing. I want them to have a ship waiting ten miles up the coast from the Outer Roads. There is a cove there: Pendero’s Landing. They can pick me up, and we’ll sail into Abrusio with all honours, openly. That will give the population something to think about.”
“You will have no problems with the common folk, Abeleyn,” Golophin’s falcon said. “It is only the nobles who want your head on a pike.”
“So much the better,” the young King said grimly. “Go now, Golophin. I want this thing set in train as soon as possible.”
The bird took off at once, leaping into the air, its pinions shedding feathers as they flailed frantically.
“Farewell, my King,” Golophin’s voice said. “When next we meet it will be in the harbour of your capital.”
Then the bird was labouring away across the foothills, lost in the star-filled night sky.
T HE company settled for the night, grateful for the fact that the worst of the winter weather had been left behind with the mountains. Abeleyn rolled himself in a boat-cloak and dozed by one of the soldiers’ fires. He did not feel like sharing a tent with Jemilla tonight. It seemed somehow more wholesome to sleep under the stars with the firelight producing orange shadows beyond his tired eyelids.
He did not sleep for long, however. It was after midnight by the position of the Scythe when Sergeant Orsini shook him gently awake.
“Sire, pardon me, but there’s something I think you should see.”
Frowning, blinking, Abeleyn let himself be led out of the camp to the crag he had sat on earlier. Orsini, an efficient soldier, had placed a sentry there because it afforded a good view of the surrounding region. The sentry was there now, saluting quickly and then blowing on his cold hands.
“Well?” Abeleyn asked a little irritably.
Orsini pointed to the south-western horizon. “There, sir. What do you make of it?”
The world was dark, sleeping under its endless vault of stars. But there was something glowing at its edge. It might have been a mistimed sunset: the sky was red there, the clouds kindled with crimson light. A blush which lit up fully a quarter of the horizon glimmered silently.
“What do you think it is, sire?” Orsini asked.
Abeleyn watched the far-off flicker for a second. Finally he rubbed his eyes, squeezing the bridge of his nose as if trying to get rid of a bad dream.
“Abrusio is burning,” he said.
A CROSS the breadth of Normannia, over the two great ranges of the Malvennors and the Cimbrics, down to the coast of the Kardian Sea and the city of Torunn, capital of Lofantyr’s kingdom.
Here it was already dawn; the sun which would not light up Hebrion’s shores for hours yet was huge over the rooftops of the city, and the streets were already busy with the morning life of the markets. Carts and waggons clogged the roadways as farmers brought their produce in to sell, and herds of sheep and cattle were being driven to the stockpens which nestled below the city wall to the west. And beyond the walls to the north the steam and reek of the vast refugee camps sprawled over the land like a rash, whilst Torunnan soldiers manned the gates in that direction, vetting every entrant into the city. Once-prosperous citizens of Aekir had turned to beggary and brigandage in the past weeks, and the more disreputable of the refugees were denied entrance to the walled centre of Torunn. Convoys of crown waggons laden with victuals were waiting to be hauled out to the camps to satisfy the immediate needs of the unfortunates, but Torunna was a country at war and had little enough to spare.
T HE morning had started badly for Corfe. He was striding along the stone corridors of Torunn’s Main Arsenal with Ensign Ebro hurrying to keep up beside him. The men of his new command had been grudgingly set aside a few barrack blocks for their quarters and were crammed into them like apples in a barrel. Ebro had seen to it that they were issued rations and clothes from the city stores, but as of yet not one sword or arquebus or scrap of mail had been forthcoming. And then, last night, a note had been brought to him from the Queen Dowager by a lady-in-waiting.
I have done what I could, it said. The rest is up to you.