He looked up and out to where the savage peaks of the Cimbric Mountains brooded, white and indomitable. The snow was blowing in great streaks and banners from their summits, as though the mountains were smoking. The world was on fire; the world he had known as a boy and a young man tottered on the brink of dissolution. If only Aekir had not fallen, he found himself thinking. If only Macrobius had not been lost.

Such thinking was absurd, of course, and dangerous. They all had to make the best of it. But why did he feel so afraid, so apprehensive of the future? Perhaps it was the change in Himerius. The Pontiff had always been a proud, vain man, capable of ruthless intrigue. But now it seemed that the ambition had left the faith behind. The man never prayed any more. Could that be right, in the head of the Church? And that odd light in his eyes occasionally, at night. It seemed otherworldly. Unsettling.

I am tyred, Betanza thought. I am tyred, and I am older than I think I am. Why not step down and walk the cloisters, contemplate the world beyond this one, and the God Who created it? It is what I donned this habit to do, after all.

But he knew the answer even as he asked the question. He would not stand down because he was afraid of whom Himerius might find to replace him. Already half the Church hierarchy had been reshuffled—Escriban, Prelate of Perigraine, was gone already. He had too independent a mind to sit easily with the New Order. Himerius had installed Pieter Goneril in his place, a nonentity who would do exactly as he was told. And Presbyter Quirion of the Knights Militant, as good a man as ever lifted a sword in the service of the Church, and a personal friend—he was gone too, rotting in some little Almarkan border town. He had lost Hebrion to King Abeleyn, and over a thousand Knights besides. That could not be forgiven.

Charibon has become a Royal court, Betanza thought. We are nothing more than errand-runners for its black-clad monarch. And our faith? What has happened to it?

He found it hard to admit to himself what nagged at him most, and caused him to wake up sweating in the middle of the cold nights. An old scrap of wandering prophecy dreamt up by a madman, but a madman who was nevertheless one of the founding fathers of the Church.

And the Beast shall come upon the earth in the days of the Second Empire of the world. And he shall rise up out of the west, the light in his eyes terrible to behold. With him shall come the Age of the Wolf, when brother will slay brother. And all men shall fall down and worship him.

Betanza had never been much of a reader before he set aside his ducal robes and donned the black habit. In fact, strictly speaking, he had been illiterate. But he had learnt his letters in his years with the Church, and now he found reading to be an occupation he loved. He had shelves of books in his chambers, amongst them certain tomes which, were they found in the possession of a novice, might just consign that novice to the pyre. He had begun collecting them after the strange murder of Commodius the Chief Librarian in the bowels of the great Library of Saint Garaso. There was a chill in his gut as he recalled the lines from The Book of Honourius. A madman’s ravings or true prescience? No-one could say. And why had Commodius been murdered? Again, no-one knew. His investigations had led nowhere. The two monks who were the prime suspects had disappeared into the night. Oddly, Himerius had seemed unconcerned, more preoccupied with sealing off the catacombs below the library than with tracking down the murderers.

Lord God, it was cold! Would spring never come? What a terrible year.

Himerius had taken to roving the battlements of the cathedral trailed by a gaggle of scribes and subordinates. It helped him think, he said. That was why they were up here now, insects scurrying along the backbone of a slumbering stone giant, Charibon spread out below them like a toy city. The Sea of Tor was still frozen about its margins, and Betanza could see crowds of the local people out fishing on the ice. The winter had been hard on them, and harder still was the billeting in their homes of troops. Lines of soldiers marched into Charibon every day, it seemed. The monastery-city was becoming an armed camp.

Himerius strolled along the battlements dictating to his scribes. Betanza did not move, and only one cleric elected to remain with him. Old Rogien, head of the Pontifical household. His wrinkled face seemed almost transparent in the harsh light, the veins blue at his temples.

“Thinking, Brother?”

Betanza smiled. “I have much to ponder.”

“Haven’t we all? His Holiness is a man of phenomenal abilities.”

“Phenomenal, yes.”

“You sound a little disgruntled, Brother.”

“Me?” Betanza glanced at the Pontiff’s group. They were out of earshot. And he had known Rogien a long time. “Not disgruntled, Rogien. Apprehensive perhaps.”

“Ah. Well, in time of war that is every man’s right.”

“We are not soldiers, though.”

“Aren’t we? We may not wear mail and wield swords, but we are warriors of a sort nonetheless.”

“And Charibon is not a barracks for all the soldiery of Almark.”

“But we are on the frontier now, Betanza. They say the Merduks have been sighted even on the eastern shores of the Sea of Tor itself. Charibon was sacked once, by the Cimbric tribes. Would you have it sacked again?”

Betanza grimaced. “You know very well that is not what I mean.”

“Maybe I do.” Rogien lowered his voice and drew close.

“But you will not find me admitting it.”

“Why not? Is free speech no longer allowed in Charibon?”

Rogien chuckled. “Come now, Betanza, since when has free speech ever been allowed in Charibon?”

“You speak of heresy. I speak of policy.” Betanza was not amused. But the older monk was unfazed.

“It is all the same these days. If you do not know that yet, then you have not been paying attention. Come now, Brother—you were a duke, a man of power in the secular world. Are you so naive? Relearn the skills which you used before you donned that habit. They will prove invaluable in the days to come.”

“Damn it, Rogien, I did not become a monk to become some monastic aristocrat.”

“Oh please, Brother. You are a member of the most politicized religious order in the world—more than that, you are its head. Don’t come the martyred ascetic to me. If you meant what you say you’d be in a grey habit and bare feet, preaching to the poor in some dung-heap town in Astarac.”

Betanza could not reply. Rogien was right, of course. But it did not help.

“Come,” he said, nodding to the receding backs of the Pontiff and his entourage. “We’re being left behind.”

“No, Brother,” Rogien said coldly. “You are being left behind.”

SIX

T HE old conference chamber of the Torunnan High Command was a cavernous place, the walls lined with marble pillars, the fireplaces at each end large enough for a grown man to stand upright within. The ceiling arched up into a gloom of ancient rafters all hung with banners and battle-flags whose bright colours had been dimmed by age and smoke and dust—and the blood of the men who had died carrying them in battle. The building dated back to the Fimbrian Hegemony, but it had not been used in years, King Lofantyr preferring to meet his generals in more congenial chambers in the palace. But Queen Odelia, now ruler of Torunna, had reopened the hall wherein John Mogen and Kaile Ormann had once propounded their strategies. As the hierarchy of the Torunnan army gathered for their first conference with the new commander-in-chief, the ghosts of those past giants seemed to loom heavily out of the shadows.

The assembled officers were clad in their court dress, blue for the artillery, black for infantry and deep burgundy for the cavalry. They were an imposing crowd, though an experienced commander might have noted that they were all either very young or very old for their rank. Torunna’s most talented officers were all dead. John Mogen and Sibastion Lejer at Aekir, Pieter Martellus at Ormann Dyke, Martin Menin in the King’s Battle. What remained was the rump of a once great military machine. Torunna had come to the end of the rope. There were no more reserves to call up, and no-one expected the Fimbrians to send another army to their rescue, not after the first one had been decimated to little purpose up on the North More. It was true that the Cimbric tribes were trickling down out of the mountains to join them in ever increasing numbers, but none of the men present in that historic chamber thought much of the military abilities of those savages, for all that they had accomplished under General Cear-Inaf. They were a freakish anomaly, no more. Their presence at the King’s funeral had been in bad taste, it was widely agreed, but the crowds had clamoured to see the famously exotic red horsemen stand guard in rank on scarlet rank as Lofantyr was laid to rest.