“Closer to seventy-five,” Corfe retorted. “But we will not have to walk all the way. Colonel Passifal.”

The Quartermaster General nodded. “There are a score of heavy grain lighters tied up at the wharves. Each of them could hold eight or nine hundred men with ease. With the wind coming off the sea, as it does for weeks at this time of year, they’ll be able to make a fair pace upstream, despite the current. And they are equipped with heavy sweeps for when the wind fails. I have spoken to their crews: they usually make an average of four knots up the Torrin at this time of year. General Cear-Inaf’s command could be up amongst the foothills in the space of five or six days.”

“How very ingenious,” Count Fournier murmured. “And if the Merduks assault us whilst the General and the cream of our army is off on his river outing? What then?”

Corfe stared at the thin, sharp-bearded nobleman, and smiled. “Then there will have been a failure of intelligence, my dear Count. Your agents keep sending back despatches insisting that the Merduks are even more disorganised than we are at present. Do you distrust the judgement of your own men?”

Fournier shrugged. “I raise hypotheses, that’s all, General. In war one must prepare for the unexpected.”

“I quite agree. I shall remain in close contact with what transpires here in the capital, never fear. If the enemy assaults Torunn in my absence, Rusio will hold them at bay before the walls and I will pitch into their rear as soon as I can bring my command back south. Does that hypothesis satisfy you?”

Fournier inclined his head slightly but made no reply.

There were no further objections to Corfe’s plan, but the meeting dragged on for another hour as the High Command wrestled with the logistic details of feeding a large army in a city already swollen with refugees. When at last they adjourned the Queen kept her seat and ordered Corfe to do likewise. The last of the remaining officers left and Odelia sat watching her young general with her chin resting on one palm whilst he rose and began pacing the spacious chamber helplessly.

“It was a good move,” she told Corfe. “And it was necessary. You have taken the wind out of their sails.”

“It was a political move,” Corfe snarled. “I never thought I’d see the day I handed over an army to a man I distrust merely to gain his loyalty—loyalty which should be freely given, in a time like this.”

“You never thought you’d see the day when you’d be in a position to hand out armies,” she shot back. “At this level, Corfe, the politics of command are as important as any charge into battle. Rusio was a figurehead for the discontented. Now you have brought him into your camp, and defused their intrigues—for a while at least.”

“Will he be that grateful, then?”

“I know Rusio. He’s been marking time in the Torunn garrison for twenty years. Today you handed him his heart’s desire on a plate. If you fall, he will fall too—he knows that. And besides, he is not such a pitiful creature as you suppose. Yes, he will be grateful, and loyal too, I think.”

“I just hope he has the ability.”

“Who else is there? He’s the best of a mediocre lot. Now rest your mind over it. The thing is done, and done well.”

She rose with her skirts whispering around her, the tall lace ruff making her face into that of a doll—were it not for the magnificent green eyes which flashed therein. She took his arm, halted his restless pacing.

“You should rest more, let subordinates do some of the running for a change. You are no longer an ensign, nor yet a colonel. And you are exhausted.”

He stared at her out of sunken eyes. “I can’t. I couldn’t even if I wanted to.”

She kissed him on the lips, and for a moment he yielded and bent into her embrace. But then the febrile restlessness took him again and he broke away.

“God’s blood, Corfe!” she snapped, exasperated. “You can’t save the world all by yourself!”

“I can try, by God.”

They glared at one another with the tension crackling in the air between them, until both broke into smiles in the same instant. They had shared memories now, intimacies known only to each other. It made things both easier and harder.

“We are quite a team, you and I,” the Queen said. “Given half a chance I think we might have conquered the world together.”

“As it is I’ll be happy if we can survive.”

“Yes. Survival. Corfe, listen to me. Torunna is at the end of its strength—you know that as well as or better than I. The people have buried a king and crowned a queen in the same week—the first queen ever to rule alone in our history. We are swamped with the survivors of Aekir and a third of the realm lies under the boot of the invader whilst the capital itself is in the front line.”

Corfe held her eyes, frowning. “So?”

She turned away and began pacing the room much as he had done, her hands clasped before her, rings flashing as her fingers twisted them.

“So hear me out and do not speak until I am finished.

“My son was a weak man, Corfe. Not a bad man, but weak. He did not have the necessary qualities to rule well—not many men do. This kingdom needs a strong hand. I have the ability—we both know it—to give Torunna that strong hand. But I am a woman, and so every step I take is uphill. The only reason I am tolerated on the throne is because there are no other alternatives present. The cream of Torunna’s nobility died in the King’s Battle around their monarch. In any case, Torunnans have never set as much store upon bloodlines as have the Hebrionese, say. But Count Fournier is quite capable of dreaming up some scheme to take power out of my hands and invest it in some form of committee.”

Unable to help himself, Corfe interrupted. “That son of a bitch? He’d have to get through the entire army to do it.”

Odelia smiled with genuine pleasure, but shook her head. “The army would have no say in the matter. But I am taking the long road to my destination. Corfe, Torunna needs a king—that is the long and the short of it.

“I want you to marry me and take the throne.”

Thunderstruck, he sank down on to a chair. There was a long pause during which the Queen appeared increasingly irritated.

“Don’t look at me as if I’d just grown an extra head! Think about it rationally!”

He found his voice at last. “That’s ridiculous.”

She clawed the air, eyes blazing furiously. “Open up your blasted mind, Corfe. Forget about your fears and prejudices. I know how humble your origins are, and I care not a whit. You have the ability to be a great king—more importantly, a great warleader. You could pull the country through this war—”

“I can’t be a king. Great God, lady, I even feel uncomfortable in shoes!”

She threw back her head and laughed. “Then decree that everyone must wear boots or go barefoot! Put the petty rubbish out of your mind for a moment, and think about what you could accomplish.”

“No—no. I am no diplomat. I could not negotiate treaties or—or dance angels on the head of a pin—”

“But you would have a wife who could.” And here her voice was soft, her face grave as a mourner’s. “I would be there, Corfe, to handle the court niceties and the damn protocol. And you—you would have the army wholly your own.”

“No, I don’t understand. We are already there, aren’t we? I have the army, you have the throne. Why change things?”

She leaned close. “Because it could be that others will change them for us. You may have won over Rusio today, but you pushed the rest of them further into a corner. And that is when men are at their most dangerous. Corfe, there is no legal precedent in this kingdom for a queen to rule alone, and thus no legal basis.”

“There is no law forbidding it, is there?” he asked stubbornly.

“I don’t know—no one does for sure. I have clerks rifling through the court archives as we speak, hoping to turn something up. The death of the King has shocked all the office-seekers for the moment—they glimpsed the cliff upon which this kingdom teeters. But sooner or later the shock will wear off, and my position will be challenged. And if they manage to curb my powers even slightly, there is a good chance they will be able to take the army away from you.”