There was naked murder on his face. Odelia looked away. She had never believed she could be afraid of any man, but the savagery that scoured his spirit occasionally leapt out of his eyes like some eldritch fire. It unnerved her. For how many men had those eyes been their last sight on earth? She sometimes thought she had no idea what he was truly capable of, for all that she loved him.
“All right then,” she said. “You shall have your conscription. I will put my name to your orders, but I warn you, Corfe, you are making powerful enemies.”
“The only enemies I am concerned with are those encamped to the east. I piss on the rest of them. Sorry, Father.”
Macrobius smiled weakly. “Her Majesty is right, Corfe. Even John Mogen did not take on the nobility.”
“I need men, Father. Their precious titles will not be worth much if there is no kingdom left for them to lord about in. Let it be on my head alone.”
“Don’t say such things,” Odelia said with a shiver. “It’s bad luck.”
Corfe shrugged. “I don’t much believe in luck any more, lady. Men make their own, if it exists. I intend to take an army of forty thousand men out of this city in less than two sennights, and it will be tactics and logistics which decide their fate, not luck.”
“Let us hope,” Macrobius said, touching Corfe lightly on the wrist, “that faith has something to do with it also.”
“When men have faith in themselves, Father,” Corfe said doggedly, “they do not need to have faith in anything else.”
A LBREC and Mehr Jirah met in a room within Ormann Dyke’s great tower, not far from the Queen’s apartments. It was the third hour of the night and no-one was abroad in the vast building except a few yawning sentries. But below the tower thousands of men worked through the night by the light of bonfires. On both banks of the Searil river they swarmed like ants, demolishing in the west and rebuilding in the east. The night-black river was crowded with heavy barges and lighters full to the gunwale with lumber, stone and weary working parties, and at the makeshift docks which had been constructed on both sides of the river scores of elephants waited patiently in harness, their mahouts dozing on their necks. The Sultan had decreed that the reconstruction of Ormann Dyke would be complete before the summer, and at its completion it would be renamed Khedi Anwar, the Fortress of the River.
The chamber in which Albrec and Mehr Jirah sat was windowless, a dusty store-room which was half full of all manner of junk. Fragments of chain mail, the links rusted into an orange mass. Broken sabre blades, rotting Torunnan uniforms, even a box of moldy hardtack much gnawed by mice. The two clerics, having nodded to each other, stood waiting, neither able to speak the other’s tongue. At last they were startled by the swift entry of Queen Ahara and Shahr Baraz. The Queen was got up like a veiled Merduk maid, and Shahr Baraz was dressed as a common soldier.
“We do not have much time,” the Queen said. “The eunuchs will miss me in another quarter-hour or less. Albrec, you are leaving for Torunn tonight. Shahr Baraz has horses and two of his own retainers waiting below. They will escort you to within sight of the capital.”
“Lady,” Albrec said, “I am not sure—”
“There is no time for discussion. Shahr Baraz has procured you a pass that will see you past the pickets. You must preach your message in Torunna as you have here. Mehr Jirah agrees with us in this. Your life is in danger as long as you remain at Ormann Dyke.”
Albrec bowed wordlessly. When he straightened he shook the hands of Mehr Jirah and Shahr Baraz. “Whatever else I have found amongst the Merduks,” he said thickly, “I have found two good men.”
Heria translated the brief sentence and the two Merduks looked away. Shahr Baraz produced a leather bag with dun coloured clothing poking out of its neck.
“Wear these,” he said in Normannic. “They are clothes of a Merduk mullah. A holy man. May—may the God of Victories watch over you.” Then he looked at Heria, nodded and left. Mehr Jirah followed without another word.
“I can still preach here too, lady,” Albrec said gently.
“No. Go back to him. Give him this.” She handed the little monk a despatch scroll with a military seal. “They are plans for the forthcoming campaign. But do not tell who gave them to you, Father.”
Albrec took the scroll gingerly. “I seem to make a habit of bearing fateful documents. Was there no other way you could get this to Torunn? I am not much of a courier.”
“Two men we have sent out already,” Heria said in a low voice. “Merduk soldiers with Ramusian blood in them—Shahr Baraz’s retainers. But we do not know if they got through.”
Albrec looked at her wonderingly. “So he is in on it too? How did you persuade him?”
“He said his father would have done it. The Shahr Baraz who took Aekir would not have condoned a war fought in the way Aurungzeb fights it today. And besides, my Shahr Baraz is a pious man. He thinks the war should stop, since the Ramusians are brothers in faith. Mehr Jirah and many of the mullahs think likewise.”
“Come with me, Heria,” Albrec said impulsively. “Come back to your people—to your husband.”
She shook her head, the grey eyes bright with tears above the veil. “It is too late for me. And besides, they would miss me within the hour. We would be hunted down. No, Father, go back alone. Help him save my people.”
“Then at least let me tell him you are alive.”
“No! I am dead now, do you hear? I am not fit to be Corfe’s wife any more. This is my world now, here. I must make the best of it I can.”
Albrec took her hand and kissed it. “The Merduks have a worthy Queen then.”
She turned away. “I must go now. Take the stairs at the bottom of the passage outside. They lead out to the west court-yard. Your escort awaits you there. You will have several hours start—they won’t miss you until after dawn. Go now, Father. Get the scroll to Corfe.”
Albrec bowed, his eyes stinging with pity for her, and then did as he was bidden.
EIGHTEEN
A LL day they had been trooping into the city, a motley procession of armed men in livery all the colours of the rainbow. Some were armed with nothing more than halberds and scythes on long poles, others were splendidly equipped with arquebuses and sabres. Most were on foot, but several hundred rode prancing warhorses in half-armour and had silk pennons whipping from their lance heads.
Corfe, General Rusio and Quartermaster Passifal stood on the battlements of the southern barbican and watched them troop in. As the long serried column trailed to an end a compact group of five hundred Cathedraller cavalry came up behind them, Andruw at their head. As the tribesmen passed through the gateway below Andruw saluted and winked, then was lost to view in a cavernous clatter of hooves as he and his men entered the city.
“That’s the last contingent will make it this week, General,” Passifal said. He was consulting a damp sheaf of papers. “Gavriar of Rone has promised three hundred men, but they’ll be a long time on the road, and the Duke of Gebrar, old Saranfyr, he’s put his name down for four hundred more, but it’s a hundred and forty leagues from Gebrar if it’s a mile. We’ll be lucky to see them inside a month.”
“How many do we have then?” Corfe asked.
“Some six thousand retainers, plus another five thousand conscripts—most of them folk from Aekir.”
“Not as many as we had hoped,” Rusio grumbled.
“No,” Corfe told him. “But it’s a damn sight better than nothing. I can leave six or seven thousand men to garrison the city and still march out with—what? Thirty-six or seven thousand.”