FOURTEEN

I T was raining as the long column of weary men and horses filed through the East Gate, and they churned the road into a quagmire of shin-deep mud as they came. An exhausted army, straggling back over the hills to the north for miles—an army that had in its midst a motley convoy of several hundred waggons and carts, all brimming over with silent, huddled civilians, some with oilcloths pulled over their heads, others sitting numbly under the rain. Almost every waggon had a cluster of filthy footsoldiers about it, fighting its wheels free of the sucking muck. The entire spectacle looked like some strange quasi-military exodus.

Corfe, Andruw, Marsch and Formio stood by and watched while the army and its charges filed through the gate of the Torunnan capital. The guards on the city walls had come out in their thousands to watch the melancholy procession, and they were soon joined by many of the citizens so that the battlements were packed with bobbing heads. No-one cheered—no one was sure if the army was returning in defeat or victory.

“How many altogether, do you think?” Andruw asked.

Corfe wiped the ubiquitous rain out of his eyes. “Five, six thousand.”

“I reckon they took another two or three away with them,” Andruw said.

“I know, Andruw, I know. But these, at least, are safe now. And that army was crippled before we gave up the pursuit. We have delivered the north from them—for the time being.”

“They are like a dog which cannot be trained,” Formio said. “It lunges forward, you rap it on the muzzle and it draws back. But it keeps lunging forward again.”

“Yes. Persistent bastards, I’ll give them that,” Andruw said with a twisted smile.

The army had virtually destroyed the Merduk force they had encountered outside Berrona, charging down on them while they were still frantically trying to form up outside their camp. But once they had been broken and hurled back inside the campsite the battle had degenerated into a murderous free-for-all. For inside the tents had been thousands of brutalised Torunnan women, inhabitants of the surrounding towns gathered together for the pleasure of the Merduk troops. Ranafast’s Torunnans had run wild after the discovery, slaying every Merduk in sight. Corfe estimated the enemy dead at over eleven thousand.

But while the army had been embroiled in the butchery within the camp, several thousand of the enemy had managed to flee intact, and they had taken with them a large body of captives. Corfe’s men had been too spent to follow them far, and snow had begun to drive down on the wings of a bitter wind off the mountains. The pursuit had been abandoned, and after digging four hundred graves for their own dead the army had re-formed for the long march south. The waggons had slowed them down, and they had shared their rations with the rescued prisoners. With the result that not a man of the army had eaten in the last three days, and half the Cathedrallers were now on foot. As their overworked mounts had collapsed, they had been carved up and eaten by the famished soldiers. Six hundred good warhorses were now mere jumbles of bones on the road behind them. But the campaign had been successful, Corfe reminded himself. They had done what he had set out to do. It was simply that he could take no joy in it.

“Beer,” Andruw said with feeling. “A big, frothing mug of the stuff. And a wedge of cheese so big you could stop a door with it. And an apple.”

“And fresh-baked bread,” Marsch added. “With honey. Anything but meat. I will not eat meat again for a month. And I would sooner starve than eat another horse.”

Corfe thought of the Queen’s chambers, a bath full of steaming water and a roaring fire. He had not taken his boots off in a week and his feet felt swollen and sodden. The leather straps of his armour were green with mould and the steel itself was a rusted saffron wherever the red paint had chipped away. Only the blade of John Mogen’s sword was bright and untarnished. He had Merduk blood under his nails.

“The men need a rest,” he said. “The whole army needs to be refitted, and we’ll have to send south for more horses. I wonder how Rusio has been getting on while we’ve been away.”

“I’ll wager his backside has not been far from a fire the whole time,” Andruw retorted. “Send out some of those paper-collar garrison soldiers next time, Corfe. Remind them what it’s like to feel the rain in their face.”

“Maybe I will, Andruw. Maybe I will. For now, I want you three to go on inside the city. Make sure that the men are well bedded down—no bullshit from any quartermasters. I want to see them drunk by nightfall. They deserve it.”

“There’s an order easily obeyed.” Andruw grinned. “Marsch, Formio, you heard the man. We have work to do.”

“What about you, General?” Formio asked.

“I think I’ll stand here awhile and watch the army march in.”

“Come on, Corfe, get in and out of the rain,” Andruw cajoled. “They won’t march any faster with you standing here.”

“No, you three go on ahead. I want to think.”

Andruw clapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t philosophize too long. You may find all the beer drunk by the time you walk through the gate.”

Andruw and Marsch mounted their emaciated horses and set off to join the column, but Formio lingered a moment.

“We did all we could, General,” he said quietly.

“I know. It’s just that it never feels as though it’s enough.”

The Fimbrian nodded. “For what it is worth, my men are content to serve under you. It seems that Torunna can produce soldiers too.”

Corfe found himself smiling. “Go on, see to your troops, Formio. And thank you.” He realised that he had just been given the greatest professional compliment of his life.

Formio set off in the wake of Marsch and Andruw without another word.

C ORFE stood alone until the rearguard came into sight almost an hour later, then he mounted his horse and trotted down to join them. Two hundred Cathedrallers under Ebro and Morin, their steeds’ noses drooping inches from the ground.

“What’s the storey, Haptman?” he asked.

Ebro saluted. The pompous young officer Corfe had first met the previous year was now an experienced leader of men with the eyes of a veteran. He had come a long way.

“Five more horses in the last two miles,” Ebro told him. “Another day and I reckon we’d all be afoot.”

“No sign of the enemy?”

Ebro shook his head. “General, I do believe they’re halfway back to Orkhan by now. We put the fear of God into them.”

“That was the idea. Good work, Ebro.”

The scarlet-armoured horsemen filed past in a muddy stream. Some of them looked up as they passed their commander and nodded or raised a hand. Many had shrivelled Merduk heads dangling from their pommels. Corfe wondered how few of his original galley slaves were left now. He sat his horse until they had all passed by and then finally entered the East Gate himself, the last man in the army to do so. The heavy wooden and iron doors boomed shut behind him.

I T was very late by the time he finally entered his chambers. He had visited the wounded in the military hospitals, racking his brains to try and address every man by his name, singling out those whom he had seen in battle and reminding them of their courage. He had gripped the bony fist of one wounded Cimbric tribesman as the man died then and there, in front of him. Those days in the open, eating horseflesh, rattling in agony in the back of a springless waggon, only to lose the fight when placed at last in a warm bed with clean blankets. The tribesman had died saying Corfe’s name, understanding no word of Normannic.

Then there had been the dwindling horse-lines, seeing to it that the surviving mounts were well looked after, and then a half-dozen meetings with various quartermasters to ensure that the freed prisoners Corfe had brought south were being looked after. Most of them had been billeted with the civilian population. And at the last there had been a beer with Andruw, Marsch, Formio, Ranafast and Ebro, standing in a rowdy barracks and gulping down the tepid stuff by the pint, the six of them clinking their jugs together like men at a party whilst around them the soldiers did the same, most of them naked, having cast off their filthy clothes and rusted armour. Corfe had left his officers to their drinking and had staggered off towards the palace, both glad and reluctant to leave the warmth and comradeship of the barracks.