“I didn’t know they made bishops so young these days.”
“Or colonels either, for that matter. I came here from Charibon with… with a friend of mine.”
“Wait! I know you, I think. Didn’t we run into you and your friend? You were with a couple of Fimbrians on the Northern Road a few months back. Corfe stopped and talked to you.”
“You have a good memory.”
“Your friend—he was the one without a nose. Where’s he today? Keeping out of the way of the high and mighty?”
“I… I don’t know where he is. I tell you what though, we’ll drink to him. A toast to Albrec. Albrec the mad, may God be good to him.”
And they clinked their glasses together, before gulping down the good wine.
“W E have reason to believe he is still alive, this errant bishop of yours,” Odelia said. “And what is more, he is moving freely in the Merduk court, spreading his message. As far as we know, the Merduk mullahs are debating this message even now.”
Macrobius nodded. “I knew he would succeed. He has the same aura of destiny about him as that I sensed in Corfe here. Well, mayhap it is better this way. The thing is taken out of our hands after all. I see no option but to broadcast the news abroad here in Torunna also. The time for discussion and debate is past. We must begin spreading the word of the new faith.”
“Quite a revelation, this new faith of yours,” Corfe said quietly.
Odelia had told him what was engendering the rancourous argument in the Papal palace. He had been as astonished as anyone, but had tended to think of it as a Church affair. The Merduks were purportedly engaged in the same debate: that gave it a different colour entirely. There might be military ramifications.
The Pontiff, the Queen and Corfe were closeted in Macrobius’s private quarters at the end of a long, tiring day much given over to speech and spectacle. The whole occasion had been a complete success, Odelia had been keen to point out. Her coronation had been ratified by the Church, and everyone had witnessed the Pontiff greet Corfe like a long-lost friend. Anyone seeking to destabilise the new order would think twice after seeing the rapturous welcome given to them by the crowds, and the apparent amity between the Crown and the Church.
“If the Merduks take this Albrec’s message to heart, will it affect their conduct of the war?” Odelia asked.
“I do not know,” the Pontiff told her. “There are men of conscience amongst the Merduk nation, we have always known that. But men of conscience do not often have the influence necessary to halt wars.”
“I agree,” Corfe put in. “The Sultan will keep fighting. Everything points to the fact that this campaign is meant to be the climax of the entire war. He means to take Torunn, and he will not let the mullahs get in his way—not now. But if we can survive through to the summer, it may be that a negotiated end to the war will be more feasible.”
“An end to the war,” Odelia said. “My God, could that be possible? A final end to it?”
“I spoke to Fournier yesterday. He is as insufferably arrogant as always, but when I persevered he deigned to tell me that the Merduk armies are completely overstretched, with desertions rising daily. If this next assault fails, he cannot see how the Sultan will continue. The Minhraib campaigned right through last year’s harvest. If they do so a second year running, then Ostrabar will face famine. This is Aurungzeb’s last throw.”
“I had no idea,” Odelia said. “I don’t think of them as men with crops and families. To me they are more like… like cockroaches. Kill one and a dozen more appear. So there is hope at last—a light at the tunnel’s end.”
“There is hope,” Corfe said heavily. “But as I say, he is betting everything on this last assault. We could be facing as many as a hundred and fifty thousand enemy in the field.”
“Should we not then stay behind these walls and stand siege? We could hold out for months—well past harvest.”
“If we did that he could send the Minhraib home and contain us with a smaller force. No. We need to make him commit every man he has. We have to push him to the limit. To do that, we will have to take to the field and challenge him openly.”
“Corfe,” Macrobius said gently, “the odds you speak of seem almost hopeless.”
“I know, I know. But victory for us is a different thing from the kind of victory the Merduks need. If we can smash up their army somewhat—blunt this last assault—and yet keep Torunn from undergoing a siege, then we will have won. I believe we can do that, but I need some advantage, some chance to even things up a little. I haven’t found it yet, but I will.”
“I pray to God you do,” Macrobius said. His eyeless face was sunken and gaunt, vivid testimony to what Merduks would do in the hour of their victory.
“If this happens, if you manage to halt this juggernaut of theirs, what then?” Odelia asked. “How much can we expect to regain, or lose by a negotiated peace?”
“Ormann Dyke is gone for ever,” Corfe said flatly. “That is something we must get used to. So is Aekir. If the kingdom can be partitioned down the line of the Searil, then we will have to count ourselves fortunate. It all depends on how well the army does in the field. We’ll be buying back our country with Torunnan blood, literally. But my job is to kill Merduks, not to bargain with them. I leave that to Fournier and his ilk. I have no taste or aptitude for it.”
You will acquire one though. I will see to that, Odelia thought. And out loud she said: “When, then, will the army take to the field?”
Corfe sat silently for what seemed a long time, until the Queen began to chafe with impatience. Macrobius appeared serene.
“I need upwards of nine hundred warhorses, to replace our losses and mount the new recruits that are still coming in,” Corfe said finally. “Then there are the logistical details to work out with Passifal and the quartermaster’s department. This will be no mere raid. When we leave Torunn this time we must be prepared to stay out for weeks, if not months. To that end the Western Road must be repaired and cleared, depots set up. And I mean to conscript every able-bodied man in the kingdom, whatever his station in life.”
Odelia’s mouth opened in shock. “You cannot do that!”
“Why not? The laws are on the statute books. Theoretically they are in force already, except for the fact that they have never actually been enforced.”
“Even John Mogen did not try to enforce them—wisely. He knew the nobles would have his head on a spear if he ever even contemplated such a thing.”
“He did not have to do it at Aekir. Every man in the city willingly lent a hand in the defence, even if it was only to carry ammunition and plug breaches.”
“That was different. That was a siege.”
Corfe’s fist came hurtling down on to the table beside him with a crash that astonished both the Queen and the Pontiff. “There will be no exceptions. If I conscript them, then I can leave an appropriate garrison in the city and still take out a sizeable field army. The nobles in the south of the kingdom all have private armies—I know that only too well. It is time these privately raised forces shared in the defence of the kingdom as a whole. Today I had orders written up commanding these blue-bloods to bring their armed retainers in person to the capital. If my calculations are correct, the local lords alone could add another fifteen thousand men to the defence.”
“You do not have the authority—” Odelia began heatedly.
“Don’t I? I am commander-in-chief of Torunna’s military. Lawyers may quibble over it, but I see every armed man in the kingdom as part of that military. They can issue writs against me as much as they like once the war is over, but for now I will have their men, and if they refuse, by God I’ll hang them.”