“We have come to the parting of the ways,” Barbius went on. “In the morning the column will continue toward Ormann Dyke, and you will go south to Torunn. Joshelin and Siward will go with you. There are all manner of brigands in these hills, more now since Aekir’s fall and the war in the east. They will be your guards and will remain with you as long as you need them.”
Albrec chanced a look at Joshelin, that grizzled campaigner, and was rewarded with a glare. Clearly, the old soldier was not enamoured of the idea. He remained silent, however.
“Thank you,” the little monk said to Barbius.
The marshal poured some wine into the tin cups that were all to be had in camp. He and the two monks sipped at it, while Formio, Joshelin and Siward sat staring into space with the peculiar vacancy of soldiers awaiting orders. There was a long, awkward silence. Clearly, Marshal Barbius was not a believer in small-talk. He seemed preoccupied, as if half his mind were elsewhere. His adjutant, too, seemed subdued, even for a Fimbrian. It was as if the two of them were burdened with some secret knowledge they dare not share.
“It only remains for me then to wish you Godspeed and good travelling,” Barbius said finally. “I rejoice to see you both in such good health, after your travails. I hope you find journey’s end what you wish it to be. I hope we all do . . .” He stared into his cup. In the dim tent the wine within seemed black as old blood.
“I will not keep you from your sleep then, Fathers. That is all.” And he turned from them to the table, dismissing them from his mind. Joshelin and Siward filed out silently. Avila looked furious at the curt dismissal but he drained his wine, muttered something about manners and followed the two soldiers outside. Albrec lingered a moment, though he was not sure why he did.
“Is the news from the dyke bad, Marshal?” he asked.
Barbius turned as though surprised to find him still there. “That is a matter for the military authorities of the world,” he said wryly.
“What should I say to the Torunnan authorities if they ask me about it?” Albrec persisted.
“The Torunnan authorities are no doubt well enough informed without seeking the opinion of a refugee monk, Father,” the younger adjutant, Formio, said, but he smiled to take the sting out of his words, un-Fimbrian in that also.
“The dispatches I send out daily will have kept them up to date,” Barbius said gruffly. He hesitated. There was some enormous pressure on him; Albrec could sense it.
“What has happened, Marshal?” the little monk asked in a low voice.
“The dyke is already lost,” Barbius said at last. “The Torunnan commander Martellus has ordered its evacuation.”
Albrec was thunderstruck. “But why? Has it been attacked?”
“Not as such. But a large Merduk army has arrived on the Torunnan coast south of the mouth of the Searil River. The dyke has been outflanked. Martellus is trying to extricate his men—some twelve thousand of them, all told—and lead them back to Torunn, but he is being caught between the two sides of a vice. He is conducting a fighting withdrawal from the Searil, pressed by the army that was before the dyke, whilst the new enemy force comes marching up from the coast to cut him off.” Barbius paused. “My mission as I see it has changed. I am no longer to reinforce the dyke because the dyke no longer exists. I must attack this second Merduk army and try to hold it off long enough for Martellus’s men to escape to the capital.”
“What is the strength of this second army?” Albrec asked.
“Perhaps a hundred thousand men,” Barbius said tonelessly.
“But that’s preposterous!” Albrec protested. “You have only a twentieth of that here. It’s suicide.”
“We are Fimbrian soldiers,” Formio said, as if that explained everything.
“You’ll be massacred!”
“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” Barbius said. “In any case, my orders are clear. My superiors approve. The army will move south-east to block the Merduk advance from the coast. Mayhap we will remind the west how Fimbrians conduct themselves on the battlefield.”
He turned away. Albrec realized he knew he was ordering his men to their deaths.
“I will pray for you,” the little monk said haltingly.
“Thank you. Now, Father, I wish to be alone with my adjutant. We have a lot to do before morning.”
Albrec left the tent without another word.
P OWER is a strange thing, the lady Jemilla thought. It is intangible, invisible. It can sometimes be bought and sold like grain, at other times no amount of money on earth can purchase it.
She had some power now, some small store of it to wield as she saw fit. For a woman in the world she had been born into, it was impossible to possess the trappings of power as men possessed them. Armies, fleets, cannon. The impedimenta of war. It was said that the most powerful woman in the world was the Queen Dowager of Torunna, Odelia, but even she had to hide behind her son the King, Lofantyr. No Ramusian nation would ever tolerate a queen who ruled alone, without apology for her sex. Or they had not thus far at least. Women who possessed ambition had to use other means to gain their ends. Jemilla had realized that while she was still a child.
She held the lives of two men in the palm of her hand, and that power had gained her her freedom. Allowing herself to be taken by the two guards had been unpleasant but necessary. She blocked out of her mind the acts she had performed for them in the dark firelight of her chambers, and reminded herself instead that with one word she could have them hung. It was not permitted for palace guards to couple with noble ladies in their care. They knew it—they had done so as soon as their lust was spent and she had risen from the bed still shining with their effluent, laughing at them. Which was why she was free to wander the palace whenever one of them was on duty outside her door.
Such a simple thing. It worked with common soldiers as easily as it worked with kings.
It was well after midnight, and she was prowling the palace corridors like a wraith wrapped in hooded silk. She was looking for Abeleyn.
The Royal chambers were guarded, of course, but there were untold numbers of secret passageways and tunnels and alcoves in the palace, some of which predated Abrusio itself, and it was in search of these that she was out here creeping in the echoing dark. Abeleyn had told her of them months ago, one airless night in the Lower City when they were both spent and sweat-soaked with the late summer stars glittering beyond the window and two of the King’s bodyguards discreet as shadows in the courtyard of the inn below. He used the secret ways of the palace to come and go as he pleased, without fanfare or remark, and take his pleasure in the riotous night life of Old Abrusio below, as free and easy as any young man with a pocketful of gold and a nose for mischief. It was—had been—a glorious game to him to roam the backstreets and alleys of the teeming city, to wear a disguise and drink beer and wine in filthy but lively taverns, to feel the buttocks of some Lower City slut wriggling in his lap. And to be their king, and they not know it. Perhaps to forget it himself for a while, to be a young man with nothing tripping at his heels, a high-living gentleman and no more.
There had been a light to him, Jemilla thought, not without regret. Something that had nothing to do with being a king but was part of the man himself. He had been easy to like, pleasant to bed, the boy in him counting for more than the monarch. But then the summer had ended, and this winter had come hurtling down upon the world full of blood and fire and powdersmoke. And Abeleyn had changed, had grown. There were times after that when he frightened her, not with any threat or violence, but simply with the steady stare of his dark eyes. He had become a king indeed, much good it had done him.