“I give you joy of your victory, Colonel,” Andruw said, meeting Corfe in the midst of that mass of murder. “As pretty a move as I’ve ever seen, and these men of ours!” He grinned. “There must be a virtue in savagery.”
Victory. It tasted sweet, even if it was over fellow-Torunnans. It was better than wine or women. It was an exaltation which burned away self-doubt.
“Keep up the scare,” he told Andruw. “We’ll pursue them all the way to Hedeby if we have to. They mustn’t be given a rest, or a chance to reform. Keep at them, Andruw.”
Andruw gestured to the howling, slaughtering tribesmen who were following the retreating army and turning their rout into a murderous nightmare.
“I don’t think I could stop them if I tried, Corfe.”
B Y nightfall it was over. Hedeby’s citadel had been surrendered by the town headsman, the nobility of the place having been killed in the battle. Corfe billeted his troops in the castle itself. The remains of Duke Ordinac’s forces were scattered refugees, lost somewhere in the surrounding countryside. Many had surrendered in the town square, too exhausted to flee any farther. These were imprisoned in the castle cells. The people of the town, in terror of the bloody, weirdly armoured barbarians in their midst, refused them nothing in the way of food, drink, or anything else they had a mind to take, though Corfe issued stark orders against any maltreatment of the citizens. He had seen too much of that at Aekir to countenance it from men under his own command.
Four hundred of the duke’s men had died on the field, and another tenscore were bleeding and screaming wounded, most of whom would follow their dead comrades into eternity. Corfe’s men had lost less than a hundred, most of the casualties being incurred by the tercio which had engaged the enemy pikes head on.
Ordinac kept a good larder, and there was a feast for those well enough to stomach it that night, the tribesmen drinking and eating at the long tables of the castle hall, waited on by terrified serving attendants—Corfe had seen to it that these were male—and recounting the stories of what they had personally done in the battle lately fought. It was like a scene from an earlier, cruder age, when men put glory in battle above all other things. Corfe did not greatly care for it, but he let the men have their fun. They had earned it. He was amused to see Ensign Ebro flushed and drinking in the midst of the rest, being slapped on the back and not resenting it. Clearly the relief of having seen out his first battle without disgrace had unbent him. He was roaring with laughter at jokes told in a language he could not understand.
Corfe went out of the smoky hall to stand on the old-fashioned battlements of Hedeby Castle and look down on the town and the land below, dark under the stars. Up on the hill overlooking the town there was a dull red glow. The townspeople had dragged the bodies of the slain there on Corfe’s orders and made a pyre of them. There they lay, Torunnan men-at-arms and duke and Felimbric tribesmen, all burning together. Corfe thanked his luck that his men did not seem to require elaborate burial rites. As long as the corpse burned with a sword in its hand, they were happy. Such strange men; he had come close to loving them today as they followed him without question or hesitation. Such loyalty was beyond the fortunes of kings.
Footsteps behind him, and he found himself flanked by Andruw and Marsch, the tribesman clutching a flaccid wineskin.
“Drunk already?” Andruw asked, though he might have asked the same question of himself.
“I needed air,” Corfe told him. “Why are you two out here missing the fun?”
“The men want to toast their commander,” Marsch said gravely.
He had been drinking solidly the whole evening, but he was as steady as a rock. He offered the wineskin to his colonel, and Corfe took a squirt of the thin, acidic wine of southern Torunna into his mouth. The taste brought back memories of his youth. He had come from this part of the world, though he had been stationed so long in the east that he nearly forgot it. Had he not joined the army at a tender age he might have been burning on that pyre on the hilltop right now, fighting for his overlord in a war whose cause he knew little of and cared less for.
“Are the pickets posted?” he asked Andruw.
The younger officer blinked owlishly. “Yes, sir. Half a mile out of town, sober as monks, and mounted on the best horses the stables could provide. Corfe, Marsch and I have been meaning to talk to you.” Andruw draped an arm about Corfe’s shoulders. “Do you know what we’ve found here?”
“What?”
“Horses.” It was Marsch who was speaking now. “We have found many horses, Colonel, big enough for destriers. It would seem that this duke of yours had a passion for breeding horses. There are over a thousand in studs scattered over the countryside to the south. Some of the castle attendants told us.”
Corfe turned to look Marsch in the eye. “What are you saying, Ensign?”
“My people are natural born horsemen. It is the way we prefer to fight. And this armour we wear: most of it is the armour of heavy cavalrymen anyway . . .” Marsch trailed off, his eyebrows raised.
“Cavalry,” Corfe breathed. “So that’s it. I was a cavalry officer myself once.”
Andruw was grinning at him. “The property of traitors is confiscate to the crown, you know. But I’m sure Lofantyr will not miss a few nags. He’s been niggardly enough to us so far.”
Corfe stared out at the fire-split night. The pyre of the slain was like a dull eye watching him.
“On horseback we’d have more mobility and striking power, but we’d also need a baggage train of sorts, a mobile forge, farriers.”
“There are men among the tribe who can shoe horses and doctor them. The Felimbri value their horseflesh above their wives,” Marsch said, with perfect seriousness. Andruw choked on a mouthful of wine and collapsed into laughter.
“You’re drunk, Adjutant,” Corfe said to him.
Andruw saluted. “Yes, Colonel, I am. My apologies, Marsch. Have a drink.”
The wineskin did the rounds between the three of them as they leaned against the battlements and narrowed their eyes against the chill of the wind that came off the sea.
“We will equip the men with horses then,” Corfe said at last. “That’s eight squadrons of cavalry we’ll have, plus spares for every man and a baggage train for forage and the forge. Mules to carry the grain—there’s plenty about the town. And then—”
“And then?” Andruw and Marsch asked together.
“Then we march on Duke Narfintyr at Staed, get there before Lofantyr’s other column and see what we can do.”
“I’ve heard folk in the town say that Narfintyr has three thousand men,” Andruw said, momentarily sobered.
“Numbers mean nothing. If they’re of the same calibre as the ones we fought today we’ve nothing to worry about.”
The moon was rising, a thin sliver, a horned thing of silver which Marsch bowed to.
“ ‘Kerunnos’ Face,’ we call it,” he said in answer to the questioning looks of the two Torunnans. “It is the light of the night, of the twilight, of a dwindling people. My tribe is almost finished. Of its warriors, who once numbered thousands, there are only we few hundred left and some boys and old men up in the mountains. We are the last.”
“Our people have fought you for generations,” Corfe said. “Before us it was the Fimbrians, and before that the Horse-Merduks.”
“Yes. We have fought the world, we Felimbri, but our time is almost done. This is the right way to end it. It was a good fight, and there will be other good fights until the last of us dies a free man with sword in hand. We can ask for nothing more.”
“You’re wrong, you know,” Andruw spoke up unexpectedly. “This isn’t the end of things. Can’t you feel it? The world is changing, Marsch. If we live to old age we will have seen it become something new, and what is more we will have been a part of the forces that did the changing of it. Today, in a small way, we began something which will one day be important . . .” He trailed off. “I’m drunk, friends. Best ignore me.”