Formio set off in the wake of Marsch and Andruw without another word.
Corfe stood alone until the rearguard came into sight almost an hour later, then he mounted his horse and trotted down to join them. Two hundred Cathedrallers under Ebro and Morin, their steeds’ noses drooping inches from the ground.
“What’s the storey, Haptman?” he asked.
Ebro saluted. The pompous young officer Corfe had first met the previous year was now an experienced leader of men with the eyes of a veteran. He had come a long way.
“Five more horses in the last two miles,” Ebro told him. “Another day and I reckon we’d all be afoot.”
“No sign of the enemy?”
Ebro shook his head. “General, I do believe they’re halfway back to Orkhan by now. We put the fear of God into them.”
“That was the idea. Good work, Ebro.”
The scarlet-armoured horsemen filed past in a muddy stream. Some of them looked up as they passed their commander and nodded or raised a hand. Many had shrivelled Merduk heads dangling from their pommels. Corfe wondered how few of his original galley slaves were left now. He sat his horse until they had all passed by and then finally entered the East Gate himself, the last man in the army to do so. The heavy wooden and iron doors boomed shut behind him.
It was very late by the time he finally entered his chambers. He had visited the wounded in the military hospitals, racking his brains to try and address every man by his name, singling out those whom he had seen in battle and reminding them of their courage. He had gripped the bony fist of one wounded Cimbric tribesman as the man died then and there, in front of him. Those days in the open, eating horseflesh, rattling in agony in the back of a springless waggon, only to lose the fight when placed at last in a warm bed with clean blankets. The tribesman had died saying Corfe’s name, understanding no word of Normannic.
Then there had been the dwindling horse-lines, seeing to it that the surviving mounts were well looked after, and then a half-dozen meetings with various quartermasters to ensure that the freed prisoners Corfe had brought south were being looked after. Most of them had been billeted with the civilian population. And at the last there had been a beer with Andruw, Marsch, Formio, Ranafast and Ebro, standing in a rowdy barracks and gulping down the tepid stuff by the pint, the six of them clinking their jugs together like men at a party whilst around them the soldiers did the same, most of them naked, having cast off their filthy clothes and rusted armour. Corfe had left his officers to their drinking and had staggered off towards the palace, both glad and reluctant to leave the warmth and comradeship of the barracks.
It seemed a crowd of people was waiting for him when he arrived, all bobbing and bowing and eager to lay hands on him. For once he was happy to have a crowd of flunkeys around, unbuckling straps, pulling off his boots, bringing him a warm woollen robe. They had built a blazing fire in the hearth and closed the shutters on the pouring rain beyond the balcony. They brought in ewers of steaming water and trays of food and drink. They would have washed him too if he had let them. He ordered them out and performed that task himself, but he was too tyred to use the towells that had been left out and sat alone watching the flames with his bare feet stretched out to the hearth, a puddle of water on the flagged stone of the floor below him. His skin was white and wrinkled and there was still dead men’s blood under his nails, but he did not care. He was too weary even to pick at the tray of delicacies they had set out for him, though he poured himself some wine and gulped it down in order to warm his innards. So good to be alone, to have silence and no immediate decisions to make. To just feel the kindly wine warm him and hear the rain rattling at the window.
“Hail, the conquering hero,” a voice said. “So you are back.”
He did not turn round. “I’m back.”
The Torunnan Queen came into the firelight. He had not heard her enter the room.
“You look exhausted.”
Odelia was dressed in a simple linen gown, and her hair hung loose around her shoulders, shining in the firelight. She looked like a young woman ready for bed.
“I waited for you,” she said, “but they said you were somewhere in the city, with the army.”
“I had things to do.”
“I’m sure you had. You have been nearly six weeks away. Could you not have found time to visit your Queen and tell her about the campaign?”
“I was going to leave it until the morning. I’m meeting the High Command at dawn.”
Odelia pulled a chair up beside him. “So tell me now, plainly, without all the military technicalities.”
He stared at the flamelight which the wine had trapped scarlet in his glass. It was as though a little heart struggled to beat in there.
“We found a Merduk army near Berrona, close to the Searil, and destroyed it. They had been ravaging the whole country up around there. They took the women and murdered the men. The entire region is littered with corpses, depopulated. A wilderness. The march back to Torunn was… difficult. The waggons slowed us down and we went short of food. Half the horses are gone, but our casualties were very light, considering. I believe the Torrin Gap is secure again, at least for a while.”
“Well, that is news indeed. I congratulate you, Corfe. Your band of heroes has done it again. How many Merduks did they kill this time?”
He thought of the unbelievable slaughter within the Merduk camp, all order lost, men squirming for their lives in the thick mud, shrieking. Ranafast’s Torunnans had captured two hundred of the enemy as they tumbled out of their tents and cut the throats of every last one. No quarter. No prisoners.
“What news here, in the capital?” he asked, ignoring her question.
“Berza’s fleet has defeated the Nalbenic ships in an action off the Kardikian coast. There will be no more ship-borne supplies for Aurungzeb’s armies. Fournier’s spies tell us that the Sultan has found himself a wife. He demolished Ormann Dyke and married her in the ruins. She is rumoured to be a Ramusian.”
Corfe stirred. “Ormann Dyke is-”
“No more. Yes. Kaile Ormann’s walls have been cast down, and the Merduks are busy rearing up another fortress on the east bank of the river. It would seem they intend to stay.”
“It could be a good sign-a signall that the Sultan is beginning to think defensively.”
“I am glad to hear it.”
“This wife of his. Why should he marry a Ramusian? He has a whole harem of Merduk princesses to bed, or so I had always heard.”
“She is supposed to be a great beauty, that is all we know.”
“Maybe she’ll have an influence on him.”
“Perhaps. I would not put too much store in the wiles of women! They are overrated.”
“Coming from you, Your Majesty, that is hard to credit.”
She leaned forward and kissed him. “I am different.”
“That I believe.”
“Come to bed, Corfe. I have missed you.”
“In a moment. I want to feel my feet again, and remember what a chair feels like under my arse.”
She laughed, throwing her head back, and in that moment he loved her. He shunted the feeling aside, swamped by guilt, confusion, even a kind of shame. He did not love her. He would not.
“Fournier has been busy in my absence, I take it.”
“Oh, yes. By the way, did you ever meet a little deformed monk named Albrec?”
Corfe frowned. “I don’t think so. No-wait. Yes, once, outside Torunn. He had no nose.”
“That’s the one. Macrobius has told me that the fellow went out to preach to the Merduks.”
“There is a fool for every season, I suppose. What did they do, crucify him?”
“No. He is something of a fixture in the Merduk court, pontificating about the brotherhood of man and such.”
“We seem very well informed about the doings of the Merduk court.”