They left. The doors closed.
“Sweet blood of the Blessed Saint!” the King exclaimed, leaping to his feet. “A conspiracy!”
“Shut up and sit down!” Menin yelled in the same voice. He might have been addressing a wayward recruit. Beside him, Colonel Aras was aghast, though the others present seemed more embarrassed than anything else.
Lofantyr sat down. He looked as though he might burst into tears.
“Forgive me, sire,” Menin said in a lower voice. His once ruddy face was the colour of parchment, as if he was realizing what he had just done. “This has gone quite far enough. I do not want the rank-and-file privy to our . . . disagreements. I am thinking of your dignity, the standing of the crown itself, and the good of the army. We cannot precipitate a war amongst ourselves, not at this time.” Sweat set his bald pate gleaming. “I am sure General Cear-Inaf will agree.” He looked at Corfe, and his eyes were pleading.
“I agree, yes,” Corfe said. His heart was thumping as though he were in the midst of battle. “Men say things in the heat of the moment which they would never otherwise contemplate. I must apologize, sire, for both myself and my officers.”
There was a long unbearable silence. The King’s breathing steadied. He cleared his throat. “Your apologies are accepted.” He sounded as hoarse as a crow. “We are unwell, and will retire. General Menin, you will conduct the meeting in our absence.”
He rose, and staggered like a drunken man. They all stood, and bowed as he wove his way to the door.
“Guards!” Menin called. “See the King to his chamber, and fetch the Royal physician to him. He is—he is unwell.”
The door closed, and they resumed their seats. None of them could meet one another’s eyes. They were like children who have caught their father in adultery.
“Thank you, General,” Corfe said finally.
Menin glared at his subordinate. “What else was I to do? Condone a civil war? The lad is young, unsure of himself. And we shamed him.”
The lad was scarcely younger than Corfe, but no one pointed this out.
“Been hidden behind his mother’s skirts too long,” Admiral Berza said bluntly. “You did right, Menin. It’s common knowledge that General Cear-Inaf’s troops could wipe the floor with the rest of the army combined.”
Menin cleared his throat thunderously. “Gentlemen, we have business still to attend to here, matters which cannot be postponed. The deployment of the army—”
“Hold on a moment, Martin,” Berza said, addressing General Menin by his rarely heard first name. “First I suggest we take advantage of His Majesty’s . . . indisposition to air a few things. There’s too much damned intrigue and bad feeling around this fucking table, and I’m well-nigh sick of it.”
“Admiral!” Count Fournier exclaimed, shocked. “Remember where you are.”
“Where I am? I’m in a meeting convened to discuss our response to a military invasion of our country, and for hours I’ve been forced to listen to a stream of administrative piddle and procedural horseshit. According to the King, all we have to do is sit with our thumbs up our arses and the enemy will obediently march into the muzzles of our guns. That, gentlemen, is a surrender of the initiative which could prove fatal to our cause.”
“For a foreigner and a commoner, you are remarkably patriotic, Admiral,” Fournier sneered.
Berza turned in his seat. His broad whiskered face was suffused with blood but he spoke casually. “Why you insignificant blue-veined son of a bitch, I’ve bled for Torunna more times than you’ve taken it up the arse from that painted pansy you call an aide.”
Fournier’s face went chalk-white.
“Call me out if you dare, you self-important little prick.” The Admiral grinned maliciously. Corfe had to nudge Andruw, who was trying desperately not to let his mirth become audible.
“Gentlemen, gentlemen,” General Menin said. “Enough of this. Admiral Berza, you will apologize to the count.”
“In hell I will.”
“You will ask his pardon or you will be expelled from this meeting and suspended from command.”
“For what? Telling the truth?”
“Johann—” Menin growled.
“All right, all right. I apologize to the worthy gentleman for calling him a prick, and for insinuating that he is an unnatural bugger with a taste for pretty young men. Will that suffice?”
“It’ll have to, I suppose. Count Fournier?”
“The good of my country comes before any personal antipathies,” Fournier said, with a definite emphasis on the “my.”
“Indeed. Now, gentlemen, the army,” Menin went on. “We are, it seems, committed to a . . . defensive posture, but that does not mean we cannot sortie out in force. It would be a pity to let the foe entrench and camp in peace before the walls. General Cear-Inaf, according to the battle plan the King and I have drawn up, your command—it was to have gone to Colonel Aras, of course, but circumstances change—will be our chief sortie force, since it has a significant proportion of heavy cavalry. Your men will be re-billeted within easy distance of the North Gate and will hold themselves in a state of readiness should a sortie be called for. In the general engagement that will no doubt follow the Merduk repulse from the walls, your men will form the centre reserve of the army, and as such will remain to the rear until called upon. I hope that is clear.”
Exceedingly clear. Corfe and Andruw glanced at one another. They would bleed before the walls, wear the Merduks down; and if the decisive battle were finally fought, they would be safely in the rear. “All the work and none of the glory,” Andruw muttered. “Things don’t change.”
“Perfectly clear, sir,” Corfe said aloud.
“Is this strategy yours or the King’s, Martin?” the irrepressible Berza asked.
“It—it originated with His Majesty, but I have had my hand in it as well.”
“In other words he thought it up, and you had to make the best of it.”
“Admiral. . .” Menin glowered warningly. Berza held up a hand.
“No, no, I quite understand. He is our King, but the poor fellow doesn’t know one end of a pike from the other. We are outnumbered—what? Five, six to one?—it makes sense that we rely on walls to equal the odds. But no army ever won a war by letting itself become besieged, Martin, you know that as well as I. We cannot win that way. It will be Aekir over again.”
A gloom hung over the chamber, oppressing everyone. It was Formio who broke the silence. “Numbers mean nothing,” he said. “It is the quality of the men that counts. And the leadership which directs them.”
“Fimbrian wisdom has always come cheap,” Fournier retorted. “If platitudes won wars there would never be any losers.” Formio shrugged.
Finally, reluctantly, Menin cleared his throat and in an oddly savage tone of voice he said, “General Cear-Inaf, you were at Aekir, and again at Ormann Dyke. Perhaps,”—it evidently pained Menin to say it—“perhaps you could give us the benefit of your—ah, unique, experience.”
All eyes were on him again, but there was not so much of hostility in them now. They are afraid, Corfe thought. They are finally facing the truth of things.
“Aekir was stronger than Torunn, and we had John Mogen—but Aekir fell,” he said harshly. “Ormann Dyke was stronger than Aekir, and we had Martellus—but the dyke fell also. If Torunn is besieged, it will fall, and with it the rest of the kingdom. And if Torunna goes under, then so will Perigraine and Almark. That is reality, not speculation.”
“Then what would you have us do?” Menin asked quietly.
“Take to the field with the men we have. It is the last thing the enemy expects. And we must do it at once, try to defeat the foe piecemeal before the two Merduk armies have fully integrated. Shahr Baraz lost many of his best men before the dyke and much of the remaining enemy strength will be the peasant levy, the Minhraib. We seek them out, hit them hard, and the odds will be substantially reduced. The Merduk always encamp the Minhraib separately from the Ferinai and the Hraibadar—the elite troops. I would undertake to lead out two thirds of the garrison and take on the Minhraib. At the same time, Admiral Berza should assault this coastal supply base of theirs and destroy it, then put the fleet to patrolling the Kardian so that there will be no more amphibious flanking manoeuvres such as the one which lost us the dyke. With the bulk of his levies destroyed or scattered, his supply lines threatened and the weather worsening, I think Aurungzeb will be forced to withdraw.”