“Lord God.” She wiped her mouth, straightened and pushed at the door.
It gave easily, and she was in the King’s bedroom, a place she knew well.
She paused, wondering if the alarm would be raised quickly, if Golophin the demon was even now raging towards her with terrible spells on his lips to blast her out of existence. Well, she was where she had wanted to be.
She approached the great ornate bed in which she and Abeleyn had cavorted in the humid nights of late summer, the balcony screens flung wide to let in a breath of air off the sea. Candles burning now, as there had been then, and Abeleyn’s head on the pillows.
She stood over the prostrate King like a dark, bloody angel come to fetch his soul away. And realized why they hid him here, why there was nothing but rumour about his condition.
She touched the dark curls, for a moment feeling something akin to pity; and then wrenched away the covers with one violent tug.
A tattered fragment of a man below them, naked to her gaze, his stumps muzzled in linen wraps. His chest moved as he breathed, but the pallor of death was about him, his lips blue in the candlelight, the eyes sunken in their sockets. He could not be long for this world, the King of Hebrion.
“Abeleyn,” she whispered. And then louder, more confidently: “Abeleyn!”
“He cannot hear you,” a voice said.
She spun around, the lamp-flame guttering wildly. Golophin was standing behind her as silently as an apparition. She could not speak: the terror closed her throat on a scream.
The old mage looked like something unholy made incarnate by night shadow and candle-flame. His eyes glittered with an inhuman light, and one of them was weeping tears of black blood down his cheek.
“My lady Jemilla,” he said, and glided forward across the stone with never the sound of a footfall. “It is late for you to be up. In your condition.”
She was more afraid than she had ever been in her life, but she fought a swift, soundless battle with her terror, mastered herself, composed her face.
“I wanted to see him,” she said hoarsely.
“Now you have seen him. Are you happy?”
“He’s dead, Golophin. He is not a man any more.” Her voice grew calmer by the second, though she was calculating furiously, wondering if a scream would be heard if uttered here. Wondering if anyone would come to investigate it. The old mage looked like some night-dark prowling fiend with his bright eyes and skull-like countenance.
“I bear the King’s heir,” she said as he approached her.
“I know.” He was only pulling the covers back up over the King’s exposed body. She could almost smell the fury in him, but his actions were gentle, his voice controlled.
“You cannot touch me, Golophin.”
“I know.”
“You had no right to keep me from him.”
“Do not talk to me of rights, lady,” the wizard said, and his voice made her hair stand on end. “I serve the King, and I will do so to the last breath in my body or his. If you do anything to injure him, I will kill you.”
Said so quietly, so calmly. It was not a threat, it was a statement of fact.
“You cannot touch me. I bear the King’s heir,” she said, her voice a squeak.
“Get out.” Venom dripped from the words. Hatred hung heavy in the air of the room between them. She felt that violence was not far off. She retreated from the bed, one shaking hand still holding the lamp, the other cradling her abdomen.
“I will be treated according to my station,” she insisted. “I will not be shut away, or be forgotten. You will not muzzle me, Golophin. I will tell the world what I bear. You cannot stop me.”
The old mage merely stared at her.
“I will have my due,” she hissed at him suddenly, venom for venom.
She could not bear his eyes any longer. She turned and left the room without looking back, aware that he watched her all the way, never blinking.
“H ERE he comes,” Andruw said. “Full of piss and vinegar.”
They watched as the knot of horsemen drew near, pennons billowing in a breeze off the grey sea. And behind them nearly three thousand men in full battle array waited in formation, the field guns out to their front, cavalry in reserve at the rear. Classic Torunnan battle formation. Classic, and unimaginative.
“Do you know this Colonel Aras?” Corfe asked his adjutant.
“Only by reputation. He’s young for the job, a favourite of the King’s. Thinks he’s John Mogen come again, and is too easy on his men. He’s had a few skirmishes with the tribes, but hasn’t seen any real fighting.”
Real fighting. Corfe was still amazed at how much of the Torunnan army had not seen any real fighting. Torunnan military reputation had been built up by the men of the Aekir garrison, once considered the best troops in the world outside Fimbria. But the Aekir garrison were all dead, or slaves in Ostrabar. What was left were second-line troops, except for Martellus’s tercios at the dyke. And now it was these second-line troops that would have to take on the Merduk invasion, and beat the armies which had taken Aekir. It was a chilling prospect.
The rest of his own men, the Cathedrallers, were drawn up behind him in two ranks. Scarcely three hundred of them able to mount a horse out of the five hundred he had started south with. His command was being inexorably worn down, despite the victories he had won. The men needed a rest, a refit, fresh horses. And reinforcements.
Aras’s party reined to a halt in front of Corfe and Andruw. Their armour was shining, their horses well-fed. They wore the standard Torunnan cavalry armour, much lighter than the Merduk gear Corfe’s men had. Corfe was keenly aware that he and his men looked like a horde of barbaric scare-crows, clad in scarlet-daubed Merduk war harness, eyes hollow with weariness, their mounts scarred and exhausted.
“Greetings, Colonel Cear-Inaf,” the lead rider opposite said. A young man, red-haired and pale, his freckles so dense as to make him look suntanned. He had the big hands of a horseman and he sat his mount well, but compared to Corfe’s troopers he seemed a mere boy.
“Colonel Aras.” Corfe nodded. “You have a fine command.”
Aras sat visibly straighter in the saddle. “Yes. Good men. Now that we have arrived, we can get on with the business at hand. I take it Narfintyr and his army have decamped from the vicinity, else you would not be here.” And he smiled. Corfe heard some of the tribesmen muttering angrily behind him. They understood enough Normannic to grasp what was being said.
“Indeed,” Corfe answered civilly. “I fear Narfintyr is far away by now. But you’re welcome to try and catch him if you like.”
Aras’s smile grew brittle. “That is why I am here. I am sure your men have striven nobly under you, but you must now leave it to me and my command to get the job done.”
Corfe was very tired. He had almost forgotten what it was like not to be tired. He was too tired even to be angry. Or to boast.
“Narfintyr has fled across the Kardian,” he said. “My men and I have destroyed his army. There are over a thousand prisoners locked in the halls of his castle as I speak. I leave the last of the mopping up to you, Colonel. I am taking my command north again.”
There was a pause. “I don’t understand,” Aras said, still struggling to smile.
“We’ve done your job for you, it seems, sir,” Andruw said, grinning. “If you doubt us, there’s a pyre to the south of the town with seven hundred corpses on it, still smouldering. Narfintyr’s finest.”
Aras blinked rapidly. “But you . . . I mean, where are the rest of your men? I thought you had only a few tercios.”
“We’re all here, Colonel,” Corfe told him wearily. “There were enough of us to do what was needed. You can stand down your own men. As I said, we leave for the north at once. I must get back to the capital.”