They bent her over a pile of broken furniture, splintered wood piercing her breasts and belly. Then one mounted her from behind and began thrusting into her torn insides. There was only the pain, the blooming firelight, the hands grasping hers so tightly they were numb. Something soft was pushed against her lips and she pulled her head back from the smell, but her hair was grasped and a voice spoke in Normannic: open up. She took the thing into her mouth and it grew large and rigid and was pushed back down her throat until she gagged. They thrust into her from both directions. Warm liquid cascaded down her naked back and the men cursed and laughed. Liquid pulsed into her mouth, salty and foul. The thing in there softened again and slid out between her lips. She vomited, the taste of her bile somehow cleaner, though it scalded her lips and tongue.
The hands released her and she slumped on to the hard cobbles. They were cold and wet beneath her. It is over, she thought. It is done.
Then another knot of soldiers strode up, pushing aside the first group, and she was seized upright once again.
The dawn air was full of the smell of burning, the blue winter horizon smudged with smoke. The mobs of horsemen took their time to rub down their mounts, assemble in the square and root in their saddlebags for breakfast. Finally a series of orders was shouted out and the troopers mounted. Their horses were burdened with wineskins, flapping chickens, bolts of cloth and clinking sacks. Their officers were already outside the town, on a hill to the south. With them was a gaggle of splendidly accoutred senior commanders from the Merduk main body, their banner-bearers holding up bravely flapping silk flags in the freshening wind.
Finally the heavily burdened cavalry formed up and filed out of the gutted wreck of Berrona. Some were sullen and heavy-headed. A few were nodding in the saddle, and yet others seemed to be still drunk with the excesses of the night. They pointed their horses’ noses to the south, where less than two miles away a vast Merduk camp sprawled across the land. They rode with the rising sun an orange blaze in their left eyes and the town smouldering behind them. Near the rear of their meandering and straggling column half a dozen waggons trundled and jolted along, drawn by mules, cart-horses and plodding oxen. A conglomeration of naked, bleeding and sodden humanity crouched in the waggons, silent as statues. Around them some of the soldiers of the Sultan, light at heart, began singing to welcome the dawn of the new day.
Arja had her head bent into her knees to shut out the world. She and the other women of the town-those who had survived-huddled together for warmth and comfort in the beds of the waggons. Some of them were sobbing soundlessly, but most were dry-eyed and seemed almost to be elsewhere, their minds far away. Thus it hardly registered upon them when the Merduks stopped singing.
The waggon halted. Men were shouting. Arja lifted her head.
The Merduk column had coalesced into a formless crowd of mounted men who milled about in disorder. What was happening? Some of the Merduks were throwing their garnered loot from their saddles in panic. Others were fumbling for the matchlocks at their pommels. Officers were yelling, frantic.
Then Arja saw what had caused the transformation. On the hillside behind the burnt-out wreck of Berrona a long line of men had appeared, thousands of them. They were still a mile away, but they were coming on at a run. Black-clad soldiers, some carrying guns, others with shouldered pikes. They advanced with the drilled remorselessness of some terrible machine.
“The army is here!” one of the women called out gladly. “The Torunnans have come!” A nearby Merduk trooper hacked her furiously about the head with his scimitar and she toppled over the side of the waggon.
A few minutes of chaos as the Merduks hovered, indecisive. Then the whole body of cavalry took off to the south in a muck-churning, frenzied gallop. The waggons were left behind along with a litter of discarded plunder.
It was painful to regain interest in the world, almost like coming alive again in some agonising wrench of rebirth. Arja raised herself to her bloody knees the better to see what was happening. Tears coursed down her face.
The ground under the wheels of the waggons seemed to shake with a subterranean thunder. It was both a noise and a physical sensation. The Torunnans were bypassing the burnt-out streets of the town, their formation dividing neatly and with no loss of speed. But they would never catch up with the fleeing Merduk cavalry-they were all on foot. Arja felt a hot blaze of pure hatred flare up in her heart. The Merduks would get away. They had killed her father and her brother, and they would get away.
The thunder in the ground grew more intense. It was an audible roar now, as though a furious river were coursing under the stones and heather of the hills.
– And then they burst into view with all the sudden fury of an apocalypse. A great mass of cavalry erupted in a long line from behind a ridge to the south, at right angles to the fleeing Merduks. Arja heard a horn call ring out clear and free above the awesome rumble of the horses. The riders were armoured in scarlet, and singing as they came.
The Merduks looked over their right shoulders, and even at this distance Arja could see the naked terror on their faces. They kicked their mounts madly, tossing away booty, weapons, even helmets. But they were not fast enough.
The red horsemen ploughed into the mob of Merduk cavalry like a vermilion thunderbolt. She saw dozens of the lighter enemy horses actually hurled end over end by the impact. A thrashing Merduk trooper was lifted high into the air on the end of a lance. The enemy seemed to simply melt away. The red tide engulfed them, annihilating hundreds of men in the space of heartbeats. Only a few dozen Merduks broke free of the murderous scrum of men and horses, to continue their manic flight south towards their main camp. More were running about on foot, screaming, but the heavily armoured scarlet cavalry hunted them down like rabbits, spearing them as they ran or trampling them underfoot. Then there was another horn call and at once the horsemen broke off the pursuit and began to re-form in a neat line. A black and crimson banner billowed above their heads bearing some device she could not quite make out. The whole engagement had taken not more than three or four minutes.
The Torunnan infantry were running past the waggons now, panting men with sweat pouring down their faces and their eyes glittering like glass. They kept their line as though connected by invisible chains, and as they ran a great animal growl seemed to be coming from their throats. One man hurriedly seized Arja’s hand as he passed by and kissed it before running on. Others were weeping as they ran, but all kept their ranks. The smoke from their lit match hung in the air after they had passed, like some acrid perfume of war. As they reached the ranks of the cavalry ahead, the horsemen split swiftly in two and took up position on their flanks. Then the united formation advanced again, at a fast march this time, and began eating up the ground between them and the Merduk camp with the calm inexorability of a tidal wave.
It seemed to Arja in that moment one of the most glorious things she had ever seen.
THIRTEEN
The ceremony was a simple one, as befitted the steppes where it had ultimately originated. It took place in the open air, with the Thurians providing a magnificent backdrop of white peaks on the northern horizon. The ruins of Ormann Dyke’s Long Walls glowered nearby like ancient monuments, and the Searil river rushed foaming to the west.
Two thousand Merduk cavalry, caparisoned in all the finery they possessed, surrounded an isolated quartet of figures, making three parts of a hollow square about them. On the fourth side a special dais had been constructed and canopied with translucent silk. The wind twisted and turned the fine material like smoke, giving glimpses of the Royal concubines seated on scarlet and gold cushions within, the eunuchs standing to their rear like pale statues. A host of gaudy figures clustered around the foot of the dais, fleeting flashes of winter sunlight sparkling off an emperor’s ransom in gems and precious metals. To the rear of the surrounding cavalry, a dozen elephants stood, painted out of all recognition, hung with silk and brocade and embellished with gold and leather harness. On their backs were wide kettle-drums and a band of Merduk musicians gripping horns and pipes. As the ceremony began the kettle-drums rumbled out with a sound like a distant barrage of artillery, or thunder in the mountains. Then there was silence but for the wind hissing over the hills of northern Torunna.