Corfe looked west, to the moorland which rolled featurelessly to the horizon. Andruw was out there somewhere, hunting the Merduk cavalry. It would be a few hours yet before he could be expected to arrive. If he arrived at all, Corfe told himself quickly, as if to forestall bad luck.
The army was running past him now, and his restive horse danced and snorted as the great crowd of men passed by. He thought he could feel the very vibration of those tens of thousands of booted feet through his saddle. He heard his name shouted by short-of-breath voices. Equipment rattling, the smell of the match, already lit, the stench of many bodies engaged in hard labour. A distilled essence of men about to plunge into war.
Then the thumping of hooves on the upland turf, and Rusio had reined in beside him accompanied by a gaggle of staff officers.
“We’ve got them, General! We’re going to knock them flying!” he chortled.
“Get your horse batteries out to the front, Rusio. I want them unlimbered and firing before the infantry go in. First rank halts and gives them a volley: the other ranks keep going. You know the drill. See to it!”
Rusio’s grin faded. He saluted and sped off.
Galloping six-horse teams now pulled ahead of the infantry, each towing a six-pounder. The artillery unlimbered with practised speed and their crews began loading frantically. Then the first lanyard was pulled, the first shell went arcing out of a cannon muzzle-you could actually follow it if you possessed quick eyes-and crashed into scarlet ruin in the ranks of the deploying Murduks. A damn good shot, even at such close range. The cannon barrels were depressed almost to the horizontal, so close were the gunners to the enemy.
Twenty-four guns were deployed now, and they began barking out in sequence, the heavy weapons leaping back as they went off. Those gunners knew their trade all right, Corfe thought approvingly.
Some of the first salvo was long; instead of hitting the Merduk front line it landed in the rear elements, sowing chaos and slaughter-but that was just as good. The gunners had orders to elevate their pieces to maximum once their own infantry passed them by, and keep lobbing shells on an arc into the Merduk rear. That would disrupt the arrivall of any reinforcements.
Four salvoes, and then the infantry was running past the guns. They were in a line a league long and four ranks deep, a frontage of one yard per man-and despite his quip the night before, Corfe had kept back some three thousand veterans as a last-ditch reserve, in case disaster struck somewhere. These three thousand were in field-column, and formed up beside him as he sat his horse surrounded by his bodyguard and a dozen couriers.
The first Torunnan rank halted, brought their arquebuses into the shoulder, and then fired. Six thousand weapons going off at once. Corfe heard the tearing crackle of it a second after he had watched the smoke billow out of the line. The enemy host was virtually hidden by a cliff of grey-white fumes. The other three Torunnan lines charged through the first and disappeared into the reek of powder-smoke, a formless roar issuing from their throats as they went. It would be like a vision of hell in there as they came to close quarters with the enemy.
That was it: the army was committed, and had caught the Merduks before they had properly deployed. The first part of his plan had worked.
Andruw reined in his horse and held up a hand. Behind him the long column of men halted. He turned to Ebro. “Hear that?”
They listened. “Artillery,” Ebro said. “They’re engaged.”
“Damn, that was quick.” Andruw frowned. “Trumpeter, sound battle-line. Morin, take a squadron out to the north. Find me these bastards, and find them quick.”
“It shall be so.” The tribesman grinned. He shouted in Cimbric, and a group of Cathedrallers peeled off and pelted away after him northwards.
“We should have run across them by now,” Andruw fretted. “What are they doing, hiding down rabbit holes? They must be making slower time than we’d thought. Courier, to me.”
A young ensign pranced up, unarmoured and mounted on a long-limbed gelding. His eyes were bright as those of an excited child. “Sir!”
“Go to General Cear-Inaf. Tell him we still have not located the enemy cavalry, and our arrivall on the battlefield may be delayed. Ask him if our orders stand. And make it quick!”
The courier saluted smartly and galloped off, clods of turf flying in the wake of his eager horse.
“Twenty-five thousand horsemen,” Andruw said irritably. “And we can’t find hide nor hair of them.”
“They’ll turn up,” Ebro said confidently. Andruw glared at him, and realised how easy it was to be confident when there was a superior around to make the hardest decisions. Then, “Hear that?” he said again.
Arquebus fire, a rolling clatter of it to the south of them.
“The infantry has got stuck in,” he said. “That’s it-they can’t break off now. They’re in it up to their ears. Where the hell is that damned enemy cavalry?”
Corfe sat his horse and watched the battle rage before him like some awesome spectacle laid on for his entertainment. He hated this-watching men dying from a distance with his sword still in its scabbard. It was one of the burdens of high rank he thought he would never get used to.
What would he be doing if he were the Merduk khedive? The first instinct would be to shore up the sagging line. The Torunnans had pushed it clear back to the row of trees, but there the Merduks seemed to have rallied, as men often will about some linear feature in the terrain. Their losses had been horrific in those first few minutes of carnage, but they had the numbers to absorb them. No-if the khedive was second-rate he would send reinforcements to the line; but if he were any good, he would tell the men there to hang on, and send fresh regiments out on the flanks, seeking to encircle the outnumbered Torunnans. But which flank? He had his cavalry out on his right somewhere, so the odds were it would be the left. Yes, he would build up on his left flank.
Corfe turned to the waiting veterans who stood leaning their elbows on their gun rests and watching.
“Colonel Passifal!”
The white-haired quartermaster saluted. “Sir?”
“Take your command out on our right, double-quick. Don’t commit them until you see the enemy feeling around the end of our line. When you do, hit them hard, but don’t join our centre. Keep your men mobile. Do you understand?”
“Aye, sir. You reckon that’s where they’ll strike next?”
“It’s what I would do. Good luck, Passifal.”
The unearthly din of a great battle. Unless it had been experienced, it was impossible to describe. Heavy guns, small arms, men shouting to encourage themselves or intimidate others. Men screaming in agony-a noise unlike any other. It coalesced into a stupendous barrage of sound which stressed the senses to the point of overload. And when one was in the middle of it-right in the belly of that murderous madness-it could invade the mind, spurring men on to inexplicable heroism or craven cowardice. Laying bare the very core of the soul. Until it had been experienced, no man could predict how he would react to it.
Passifal’s troops doubling off, a dark stain on the land. En masse, soldiers seen from a distance looked like nothing so much as some huge, bristling caterpillar slithering over the face of the earth. Men in the centre of a formation like that would see nothing but the back of the man in front of them. They would be treading on heels, cursing, praying, the sweat stinging their eyes. The heroic balladeers knew nothing of real war, not as it was waged in this age of the world. It was a job of work: sheer hard drudgery punctuated by brief episodes of unbelievable violence and abject terror.
There! Corfe felt a moment of intense satisfaction as fresh Merduk regiments arrived to extend the line on the right, just as he had thought they would. They were getting into position when Passifal’s column slammed into them, all the weight of that tight-packed body of men. The Merduks were sent flying, transformed from a military formation into a mob in the time it took for a man to peel an apple. Passifal re-formed his own men into a supported battle-line, and they began firing, breaking up attempts by the enemy to rally. He might be a quartermaster, but he still knew his trade.