“You are also the only Torunnan officer to have survived Aekir’s fall. You must be a man of luck.”
Corfe’s face became a stiff mask. “I don’t much believe in luck, my lady.”
“But it exists. It is that indefinable element which in war or peace—but especially in war—sets a man apart from his fellows.”
“If you say so.”
She smiled. “Aekir has marked you, Corfe. Before the siege you were an ensign, a junior officer. In the months since you have soared to the rank of colonel purely on merit. Aekir’s fall may have been the counterweight to your ascent.”
“I would give all my rank, and more besides, to have Aekir back again,” Corfe said with some heat. And to have Heria again, his soul cried out.
“Of course,” she said soothingly. “But now you are here in Torunn, friendless and penniless, an officer without a command. Merit is not always enough in this world. You must have something else.”
“What?”
“A . . . sponsor, perhaps. A patron.”
Corfe paused, frowning. At last he said: “Is that why I am here? Am I to become your client, lady?”
She sipped her wine. “Loyalty is more precious than gold at court, for if it is to be real it cannot be bought. I want a man whom gold cannot buy.”
“Why? For what purpose?”
“For my own purposes, and those of the state. You know that Lofantyr has been excommunicated by the rival Pontiff Himerius. His nobles know Macrobius is alive—they have seen him with their own eyes. But some do not choose to believe what they see, because it suits them. Torunna is boiling with rebellion; men of rank never need much in the way of an excuse to repudiate their liege-lord. If nothing else, Corfe, I think Aekir and Ormann Dyke have burnt loyalty into you, whether you like it or not. That kind of loyalty, when it is accompanied with real ability, is a rare thing.”
“There must be some men loyal to the King in the kingdom,” Corfe growled.
“Men tend to have families; they put that loyalty first. If they serve the crown well, it is because they want advancement not only for themselves but for their families also. Thus are the great houses of the nobility created. It is a necessary but dangerous exchange.”
“What do you want of me, lady?” Corfe asked wearily.
“I have spoken to the Pontiff of you, Corfe. He also thinks highly of you. He tells me you have no family, no roots now that the Holy City is no more.”
Corfe bent his head. “Perhaps.”
She rose from her chair and came over to him. Her hands encircled his face, the fingertips just touching his cheekbones. He could smell the lavender her dress had been stored in, the more subtle perfume that rose off her skin. The brilliant eyes held his.
“There is pain in you, a rawness that may never scab over entirely,” she said in a low voice. “It is this which drives you on. You are a man without peace, Corfe, without hope of peace. Was it Aekir?”
“My wife,” he said, his voice half strangled in his throat. “She died.”
The fingertips brushed his face as lightly as a bee nuzzling a flower. Her eyes seemed enormous: viridian orbs with utter black at their core.
“I will help you,” she said.
“Why?”
She leaned down. Her face seemed almost to glow. Her breath stirred his forelock.
“Because I am only a woman, and I need a soldier to do my killing for me.” Her voice was as low as the bass note of a lute, dark as heather honey. Her lips brushed his temple and the hair on the back of his neck rose like the pelt of a cat caught in a thunderstorm. They remained like that for an endless second, breathing each other’s breath.
Then she straightened, releasing him.
“I will procure a command for you,” she said, suddenly brisk. “A flying column. You will take it wherever I wish to send it. You will do whatever it is I want you to do. In return—” She hesitated and her smile made her seem much younger. “In return, I will protect you, and I will see that the intrigues of the court do not hamstring your every move.”
Corfe looked up at her from his stool. He was not tall; even had he been standing their eyes would just have been level with each other.
“I still don’t understand.”
“You will. One day you will. Go to the court chamberlain. Tell him you have need of funds; if he objects, tell him to come to me. Procure for yourself a more fitting wardrobe.”
“What of the King?” Corfe asked.
“The King will do as he is told,” she snapped, and he saw the iron in her, the hidden strength. “That is all, Colonel. You may go.”
Corfe was bewildered. As he stood up she did not move away at once and he brushed against her. Then she turned away from him.
He bowed to her slender backbone, and left the chamber without another word.
I T was a featureless, windswept land. Flat salt marshes spread out for miles in every direction but the sea. The only sounds were the piping of marsh birds and the hissing of the wind in the reeds. Off to the north-west the Hebros Mountains loomed, their knees already pale with snow.
The longboats were ferrying the last of the stores from the ship. The soldiers had lit fires on the firmer of the reed islands and were busy constructing shelters to keep out the searching wind. Abeleyn stood by one of the fires and stared out at the skewed hulk of the beached carrack. Dietl was beside him, his eyes red-rimmed with grief and pain. They had sealed his stump with boiling pitch, but the agony of seeing his ship in such a pass seemed to have affected him more than the loss of his hand.
“When I come into my kingdom again, you shall have the best carrack in the state fleet, Captain,” Abeleyn told him gently.
Dietl shook his head. “Never was there such a ship. She broke my heart, faithful to the last.”
They had heaved the guns overboard as the ship took on more and more water, then the heavier of the stores and finally the fresh water casks. The carrack had grounded upon a sandbar with the sea swirling around her hatches, and there had settled, canting to one side as the tide went out. It was a narrow bar, and as the supporting water withdrew her back had broken with an agonized screeching and groaning that seemed almost sentient.
Abeleyn clapped Dietl on his good shoulder and walked away from the fire. “Orsini!”
“Yes, sire.” Sergeant Orsini was immediately on hand. He was the only soldier of any rank remaining with Abeleyn’s company: the officers had gone down fighting in the two nefs.
“What have we got, Sergeant? How many and how much?”
Orsini blinked, his mind turning it over.
“Some sixty soldiers, sire, maybe a dozen of your own household attendants, and the remaining crew of the carrack numbers near thirty. But of that total, maybe twenty are wounded. There’s two or three won’t last out the night.”
“Horses?” Abeleyn asked tersely.
“Drowned in the hold, most of ’em, sire, or shot through with splinters in the battle. We managed to get out your own gelding and three mules. It’s all there is.”
“Stores?”
Orsini looked at the mounds of waterlogged sacks, crates and casks that were piling up on the little island and its neighbours, half hidden in the yellow reed beds.
“Not much, sire, not for a hundred men. Supplies for a week if we’re easy on ’em. Ten days at a pinch.”
“Thank you, Sergeant. You’ll have a guard rota set up, of course.”
“Yes, sire. Nearly every man salvaged his arquebus, though the powder’ll take a while to dry.”
“Good work, Orsini. That’s all.”
The sergeant went back to his work. Abeleyn’s mouth tightened as he watched the parties of soaked, bloodied and exhausted men setting up their makeshift camp on the soggy reed islands. They had fought a battle, struggled to bring a dying ship to shore, and now they would have to scrabble for survival on this remote coast. He had heard not a word of dissension or complaint. It humbled him.