“You can’t!” Aras blustered. “You must stay here and help me. You must attach your men to my command.”
“God’s eyes—have you been listening?” Corfe barked. “Narfintyr is gone, his army destroyed. You cannot give me orders—you are not my superior. Now get out of my way!”
The two groups of riders remained opposite each other, the horses beginning to dance as they picked up the tension from their masters. Corfe had intended to have a civilized meeting, a military conclave of sorts where he would fill Aras in on the current situation. They were, after all, on the same side. But instead he found he could not bear the thought of trying to brief this arrogant puppy. His unravelling patience had finally frayed entirely. He wanted only to be on the move again, to get his men some well-earned rest. And to go north, where the real battlefields were. There was no time for bitching and moaning.
One thing, though, that he could not forget.
“Before we depart, Colonel, I must inform you that I must leave behind some score or so of my wounded who are too badly injured to travel. They’re billeted in the upper levels of the keep. Those men are to be looked after as though they were of your own command. I will hold you accountable for the well-being of each and every one of them. Is that clear?”
Aras opened and shut his mouth, his pale face flushed. Behind him, one of his aides muttered audibly: “Playing nursemaid to savages now, are we?”
It was Andruw who nudged his mount forward until it was shoulder to shoulder with the speaker’s.
“I know you, Harmion Cear-Adhur. We went to gunnery school together. Remember?”
The man Harmion shrugged. Andruw grinned that infectious grin of his.
“One of these savages behind me is worth any ten of your parade-ground heroes. And you—you only got those haptman bars by kissing the arse of every officer you were ever placed under. What have you to say to that?” Andruw’s grin had become wild, giving his grimed face a slightly demented aspect. He had his right hand on his sabre.
“Enough,” Corfe said. “Andruw, get back in ranks. You are out of order. Colonel Aras, I apologize for my subordinate’s behaviour.”
Aras got hold of himself. He cleared his throat, nodded to Corfe and finally asked in a civil tone: “Is it actually true? These men of yours have defeated Narfintyr?”
“I do not make a habit of lying, Colonel.”
“You are the same Colonel Cear-Inaf who was at Aekir and Ormann Dyke, are you not?”
“I am.”
Aras’s face changed. He cleared his throat again. “Then might I shake your hand, Colonel, and congratulate you and your men on a great victory? And perhaps I can prevail upon you to stay here for one more night and partake of my headquarters’ hospitality. I can also have some equipment and spare mounts sent over to your men. If you do not mind my saying so, they look as though they need it.”
Corfe rode forward and took the younger man’s hand. “Courteously put. All right, Aras, we’ll remain another night. My senior ensign, Ebro, will acquaint your quartermaster’s department of our needs.”
A ND so they remained, the two little armies encamped upon the muddy plain north of Staed. Aras had wanted to billet his men with the townspeople, but Corfe talked him out of the idea. The local people had suffered enough lately, and they were Torunnans, after all, not some conquered nation. It was enough that they went hungry to provision the soldiers who had lately swamped their countryside, and that their sons had died by the hundred whilst fighting those soldiers.
The camps of the Cathedrallers and Torunnan regulars were kept separate, and between them were Aras’s headquarters tents. The Torunnans seemed at first dubious, then curious, and small parties of men from both camps met at the stream where the horses were watered, and there took wary stock of each other, like two dogs sniffing and circling, unable to decide whether to go for each other’s throats.
Aras’s column was remarkably well stocked with all manner of military supplies. He sent over to the Cathedraller lines wagons full of new lances, pig-iron, charcoal for the field forges, fresh rations, forage and sixty fresh horses.
Corfe, Andruw and Marsch watched them come in. Big-boned bay geldings with matted manes and wild eyes.
“They’re only half broken,” Andruw pointed out.
“What did you expect—the best of his destriers?” Corfe asked him. “If they had three legs apiece I’d still take them. What think you, Marsch? Do they amount to much?”
The big tribesman was looking over the snorting, prancing new arrivals with a practised eye.
“Three-year-olds,” he said. “Only just lost their stones, and still feeling the loss. They’ll quiet down in time. My men will soon break them in.”
“Why is this Aras suddenly kissing your backside, Corfe?” Andruw asked thoughtfully.
“It’s obvious. We head for Torunn tomorrow, back to the court. He wants us to give a good account of him, maybe even let him share in some of the glory.”
Andruw snorted. “Fat chance.”
“Oh, I’m not going to disparage him before the King. I won’t make any friends that way either. But he won’t steal the glory my men bled for.”
T HERE was a feast that night in Aras’s conference tent, a huge flapping structure thirty feet long and high enough to stand upright in. All his officers were there, dressed, to Corfe’s astonishment, in court uniforms, complete with lace cuffs and buckled shoes. There was a Torunnan soldier acting as waiter behind every one of the folding canvas chairs which seated the diners, and the long board table blazed with silver cutlery and tableware. As Corfe, Andruw and Ebro walked in, Andruw laughed aloud.
“We must be lost, Corfe,” he muttered. “I thought we were supposed to be on campaign.”
Corfe was seated at Aras’s right hand at the head of the table, Andruw farther down and Ebro near the bottom. Marsch had declined to come. He had to see to the settling in of the new horses, he said, though Corfe privately thought that the prospect of using a knife and fork terrified him as no battle ever could.
“Some of my staff brought down several deer last week in the march south,” Aras told Corfe. “They’re tolerably well hung by now. I hope you like venison, Colonel.”
“By all means,” Corfe said absently. He sipped wine—good Candelarian, the wine of ships—from a silver goblet, and wondered how large Aras’s baggage train had to be to sustain a headquarters of this magnificence. For an army of under three thousand it was ridiculous.
As the wine flowed and the courses came and went, the table set up a respectable din of talk. Ensign Ebro, Corfe saw, was in his element, regaling the other junior officers with war stories. Andruw was eating and drinking steadily, like a man making up for lost time. He was seated beside an officer in the blue livery of the artillery, and the two were engaged in a lively discussion between wolfed-down bites of food and gulps of wine. Corfe shook his head slightly. The field army of Aekir, John Mogen’s command, had never done things thus. Where had the pomp and ceremony which permeated the entire Torunnan army come from? Perhaps it had to do with soldiering to the rear of an impregnable frontier. Apart from himself and Andruw, no man here had ever fought in a large-scale pitched battle. And with the fall of Aekir, the frontier was no longer impregnable. An entire army, over thirty thousand men, had been destroyed in the city’s fall. The only truly experienced soldiers left in the kingdom were those at the dyke with Martellus. Once again, Corfe felt a thrill of uneasiness at the thought. Had he been Lofantyr, he would be conscripting and drilling men by the thousand, and marching them off to Ormann Dyke. There was a leisurely nature to the High Command’s strategy that was downright alarming.
Aras was talking to him. Corfe collected his thoughts quickly, mustering his civility. He had precious little of it to spare these days.