Paul Kearney - Monarchies of God 2 - The Heretic Kings

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Also by Paul Kearney
HAWKWOOD’S VOYAGE
Book One of The Monarchies of God
For my brothers,
Sean and James Kearney
Acknowledgments to:
John McLaughlin, Richard Evans and Jo Fletcher, for their patience and hard work on my behalf
WHAT WENT BEFORE . . .
I T is over half a millennium since the birth of the Blessed Saint Ramusio, the man who brought the light of
true belief into the western world. The empire of the Fimbrians, which once spanned the wide continent
of Normannia, is only a dim memory. Their empire has been transformed into a series of powerful
kingdoms, and the Fimbrian Electorates have remained isolated within their borders for over four
centuries, indifferent to events beyond them.
But now things are taking place which cannot be ignored. Aekir, the Holy City on the eastern frontier and
seat of the High Pontiff Macrobius, head of the Church, has fallen to the teeming armies of the heathen
Merduks, who have been pressing on the eastern frontier of the Ramusian kingdoms for decades.
Caught up in the fury of its fall, Corfe Cear-Inaf flees westwards, one of the few of its defenders who has
survived. On the refugee-choked road he befriends an old man the Merduks have blinded, and finds out
that he is none other than Macrobius himself, who escaped unrecognized by the troops of Shahr Baraz,
the Merduk general. Corfe is nursing his own private grief: he left his wife in Aekir, and believes her
dead. Unknown to him, however, she survived the assault and was captured and sent to the court of the
Sultan as spoils of war to join his harem. Corfe and Macrobius trek westwards along with thousands of
others, seeking sanctuary in the impregnable fortress of Ormann Dyke, the west’s last line of defence
after Aekir.
In the meantime, across the continent, the mariner Richard Hawkwood returns from a voyage to find that
in this time of fear and uncertainty the militant Churchmen of the Inceptine Order are cracking down on
anyone in the great port-capital of Abrusio, first city of the kingdom of Hebrion, who is either a user of
magic, or a foreigner. Since half of Hawkwood’s crew are not native to Hebrion, they are hauled off to
await the pyre. Hebrion’s king, Abeleyn, tries to do what he can to limit the scale of the purge in the
raucous old port, and at the same time is involved in a battle of wills with his senior Churchman,
Himerius, who has instigated it, and who has also asked the Church to send him aid in the form of two
thousand Knights Militant, the fanatical military arm of the Church.
The wizard Bardolin is also affected by this purge. He befriends a young female shape-shifter, rescuing
her from one of the city patrols, but it seems likely to be only a temporary reprieve. Then his old teacher,
the King’s wizardly (and proscribed) advisor, the mage Golophin, tells him of a possible way out. The
Hebrian King is sponsoring a westward voyage of exploration and colonization, and its ships will have
room for a sizable contingent of the Dweomer-folk who at this moment are being hunted down across the
kingdom.
The captain of the expedition is none other than Richard Hawkwood, who has been blackmailed into
taking on the mission by an ambitious minor noble, Murad of Galiapeno. Murad is after a kingdom of his
own, and he believes that there is a lost continent somewhere across the expanse of the Great Western
Ocean. He possesses an ancient rutter recording a long-ago voyage to such a continent. He does not tell
King Abeleyn, or Hawkwood, that the earlier westward voyage ended in death and madness, with a
werewolf aboard ship.
The expedition sets sail, Hawkwood having said goodbye to his volatile, nobly born mistress, the lady
Jemilla, and to his wan, hysterical wife Estrella. But the ships are burdened with one last, unwelcome
passenger. The Inceptine cleric Ortelius takes ship with the explorers, no doubt so that the Church can
keep an eye on this unorthodox voyage.
M EANWHILE ; in the east, events are proceeding apace. Corfe and Macrobius finally arrive at
Ormann Dyke, where Macrobius is recognized and welcomed and Corfe is once more an officer in the
Torunnan army. The Merduk Sultan, Aurungzeb, orders an immediate assault on the dyke against the
better judgement of the old general, Shahr Baraz. Two successive attacks fail, the second in large part
due to the efforts of Corfe himself. When the Sultan orders a third attack, his orders communicated via a
homonculus, Shahr Baraz refuses outright and kills the homonculus, thus crippling and disfiguring
Aurungzeb’s court mage, Orkh. Shahr Baraz then flees into the steppes of the east, and campaigning
comes to an end for the winter. Ormann Dyke is safe, for the present. Promoted to colonel by the dyke’s
commander, Martellus the Lion, Corfe is to escort Macrobius to the Torunnan capital, Torunn, where the
old Pontiff has now taken on new stature.
For the Church has split down the middle. In Macrobius’ absence the Prelates of the Five Kingdoms
have elected the hardline Prelate of Hebrion, Himerius, as the new Pontiff, and he refuses to accept that
Macrobius is alive. Matters come to a head at the Conclave of Kings in Vol Ephrir, which all the
monarchs of Ramusian Normannia attend. At this conference, three kings—Abeleyn of Hebrion, Mark of
Astarac (who is Abeleyn’s ally and soon to be his brother-in-law) and Lofantyr of embattled
Torunna—recognize Macrobius as the rightful Pontiff, whereas every other Ramusian ruler on the
continent sides with Himerius. This produces a religious schism of vast proportions, and the prospect of
fratricidal war amongst the Ramusian states at a time when the Merduk threat has never been worse. But
that is not the only event of the moment which occurs at the conclave.
The Fimbrians, so long isolated, have sent envoys to the meeting to offer their troops to any state which
needs them—for a price. The hard-pressed Lofantyr of Torunna immediately takes the envoys up on
their offer, and requests that a Fimbrian force be sent to aid his fought-out troops at Ormann Dyke. But
Abeleyn is uneasy, sure that the Fimbrians have a secret agenda of their own; dreams of rekindling their
empire, perhaps.
As the conclave breaks up in acrimony and hostility, Abeleyn receives another notable piece of
information. His newly acquired mistress, the lady Jemilla, is, she informs him, pregnant with his child.
Abeleyn sets out for home knowing that the Church has done its best to take over his kingdom in his
absence, and that he has a bastard heir on the way.
W HILE Normannia is riven by war and religious discord, Hawkwood’s two ships are sailing steadily
westwards. Murad, to Hawkwood’s annoyance, takes a couple of the female passengers as servants and
bedmates. One of the pair is Bardolin’s ward, the young shape-shifter, Griella. She hates Murad, but
something in her responds to his cruelty as he responds to the strange feral nature he senses within her.
Bardolin is both jealous and afraid of the consequences of their liaison, but there is nothing he can do.
The ship survives a terrible storm but is blown far off course. When a calm ensues, Hawkwood calls
upon the talents of Pernicus, a weather-worker, to bring them a wind, despite the objections of the
Inceptine, Ortelius, who insists that the voyage is cursed. The wind comes, but not for long. Pernicus is
found butchered in the hold, his wounds inflicted by what seems to be some sort of beast.
As the ships crawl westwards they lose contact with each other, and Hawkwood does not know if his
other vessel is still afloat or sunk. There is enough trouble to occupy him on his own ship, however. His
first mate is killed next, and a cabin-boy disappears. Bardolin, sure that Griella is behind the killings,
confronts her, but becomes convinced that she is innocent of them, leaving him baffled. The ship comes
to resemble a prison, with guards everywhere and a mutinous, terrified crew. Only Hawkwood’s
authority and Murad’s savage discipline keep passengers and crew in line.
But one dark night the beast on board strikes at Hawkwood, Murad and Bardolin themselves. There are
two werewolves in the attack: one turns out to be Ortelius, the other the missing cabin-boy, nursing his
grievances ever since Hawkwood cast him aside. In the ensuing battle Griella shifts into her beast form to
protect her lover, Murad, and Bardolin dispatches the other lycanthrope with a bolt of Dweomer. Griella
dies of her wounds, however, leaving Murad horrified and grief-stricken.
The unhappy ship sails on, and finally the lookouts sight land. They have reached the Western Continent
at last, but they are the only ones to have done so. The wreck of Hawkwood’s other ship is visible on the
reef which rings the strange coast, and there is no sign of survivors.
Hawkwood’s Voyage ends with the explorers finally setting foot on the shores of this new land. They
have no idea what to expect but they know that Ortelius was trying to prevent them from getting here, as
something has prevented ships from surviving the westward voyage for three centuries and more. They
suspect that this new world is inhabited. But by whom, or what?
This is the century of the soldier.
Fulvio Testi, 1641
PROLOGUE
A LWAYS , men move west. Is it something to do with the path of the sun? They are drawn to it like
moths to the flame of a taper.
Many long turning years have slipped by, and still I remain: the last of the founders, my body scarcely my
own at the end. I have seen four centuries of the waking world trickle past, their passage scarcely
marked by any change in the land I have made my home. Men change, and they like to think that the
world changes with them. It does not; it merely tolerates them, and continues to follow its own, arcane
revolutions.
And yet there is something in the air, like a whisper of winter in this country which knows no seasons. I
feel a change coming.
T HEY came treading the saffron and scarlet course of the sinking sun, as we had always known they
would, with their tall ships trailing streamers of weed from worm-eaten hulls.
We watched them from the jungle. Men in salt-encrusted armour with scurvy-swollen faces bearing
swords and pikes, and, later, reeking arquebuses, the slow-match glowing and hissing in the wind. Gaunt
men of Hebrion, or Astarac, or Gabrion; the sea-rovers of the Old World. Hard-handed buccaneers
with the greed dazzling their eyes.
We had come here fleeing something; they had come seeking. We gave them fear to fill their bellies and
night-dark terror to plump out their purses. We made of them the hunted, and took from them whatever
we desired.
Their ships rotted slowly at their moorings, untenanted and filled with ghosts. A few, a very few, we let
live, to take the tale of us back east to the Monarchies of God. In this way, the myth was created. We
hid our country behind a curtain of tall tales and dark rumours. We laced the truth with the hyperbole of
madness; we beat out a legend as though it were the blade of a sword on a smith’s anvil. And we
quenched it in blood.
But the change is coming. Four centuries have we lingered here, and our people have slowly filtered back
to the east in accordance with the plan. They are everywhere now in Normannia. They command
soldiers, they preach to multitudes, they watch over cradles. Some of them have the ear of kings.
The time is come for our keels to recross the Western Ocean, and claim what is ours. The beast will out,
in the end. Every wolf will have its day.
PART ONE
SCHISM
ONE
YEAR OF THE SAINT 551
V ESPERS had long since been rung, but Brother Albrec had affected not to hear. He chewed the end
of his quill so that damp bits of feather dropped on to the bench, but he did not notice. His face, squinting
in the dim light of the dip, was akin to that of a near-sighted vole, pointed and inquisitive. His hand shook
as he turned the page of an ancient parchment which lay before him. When once a corner crumbled at the
touch of his nimble fingers he whined a little back in his throat, for all the world like a dog seeing its
master leave the room without it.
The words on the parchment were beautifully inscribed, but the ink had faded. It was a strange
document, he thought. There were none of the illuminations which had always been thought so necessary
an adornment to the holy texts of Ramusio. Only words, stark and bare and elegantly written, but fading
under the weight of so many years.
The parchment itself was poor quality. Had the scribe of the time possessed no vellum? he wondered, for
this was hand-enscribed, not churned out on one of the famous presses of Charibon. This was old.
And yet it was almost as though the author had not wanted to draw too much attention to the work. And
indeed the manuscript had been found, a rolled-up wad of untidy fragments, stuffed into a crack in the
wall of one of the lowest of the library levels. Brother Columbar had brought it to Albrec. He had thought
perhaps to use the parchment as blotting for the scriptorium, for Charibon still produced hand-written
books, even now. But the faint, perfect writing visible upon it had made him hesitate, and bring it to the
attention of the Assistant Librarian. Albrec’s natural curiosity had done the rest.
Almost he halted, rose from his seat to tell the Chief Librarian, Brother Commodius. But something kept
the little monk rooted there, reading on in fascination while the other brothers were no doubt sitting down
to their evening meal.
The scrap of parchment was five centuries old. Almost as old as Charibon itself, holiest of all the
university-monasteries on the continent now that Aekir was gone. When the unknown author had been
writing, the Blessed Ramusio had only just been assumed into heaven—conceivably, that great event had
happened within the lifetime of the writer.
Albrec held his breath as the petal-thin parchment stuck to his sweating fingers. He was afraid to breathe
on it for fear that the ancient, irreplaceable text might somehow blur and run, or blow away like sand
under some sudden zephyr.
. . . and we begged him not to leave us alone and bereft in such a darkening world. But the Blessed
Saint only smiled. “I am an old man now,” he said. “What I have begun I leave to you to
continue; my time here is finished. You are all men of faith; if you believe in the things which I
have taught you and place your lives in the hand of God, then there is no need to be afraid. The
world is a darkening place, yes, but it darkens because of the will of man, not of God. It is
possible to turn the tide of history—we have proved that. Remember, in the years ahead, that we
do not merely suffer history, we create it. Every man has in him the ability to change the world.
Every man has a voice to speak out with; and if that voice is silenced by those who will not listen,
then another will speak out, and another. The truth can be silenced for a time, yes, but not for
ever . . .
The rest of the page was missing, torn away. Albrec leafed through the indecipherable fragments that
followed. Tears rose in his eyes and he blinked them away as he realized that the parts which were
missing were indeed lost beyond recall. It was as if someone had given a thirsting man in a desert a drop
of water to soothe his parched mouth, and then poured away a quart into the sand.
Finally, the little cleric got off his hard bench and knelt on the stone floor to pray.
The life of the Saint, an original text which had never been seen before. It told the story of a man named
Ramusio, who had been born and who had lived and grown old; who had laughed and wept and spent
sleepless nights awake. The story of the central figure in the faith of the western world, written by a
contemporary—possibly even someone who had known him personally . . .
Even if so much of it had been lost, there was still so much gained. It was a miracle, and it had been
granted to him. He thanked God there on his knees for revealing it to him. And he prayed to Ramusio,
the Blessed Saint whom he was now beginning to see as a man, a human being like himself—though
infinitely superior, of course. Not the iconic image the Church had made him out to be, but a man. And it
was thanks to this incredibly precious document before him.
He regained his seat, blowing his nose on the sleeve of his habit, kissing his humble Saint’s symbol of
bog-oak. The tattered text was beyond price; it was comparable to the Book Of Deeds compiled by St.
Bonneval in the first century. But how much of it was here? How much was legible?
He bent over it again, ignoring the pains that were shooting through his cramped neck and shoulders.
No title page or covering, nothing that might hint at the identity of the author or his patron. Five centuries
ago, Albrec knew, the Church had not possessed the virtual monopoly on learning that it did now. In
those days many parts of the world had not yet been converted to the True Faith, and rich noblemen had
sponsored scribes and artists in a hundred cities to copy old pagan texts or even invent new ones.
Literacy had been more widespread. It was only with the rise to prominence of the Inceptines in the last
two hundred years or so that literacy had declined again, becoming a preserve of professionals. It was
said that all the Fimbrian emperors could both read and write, whereas until recently no western king
could so much as spell his own name. That had changed with the new generation of kings that was
coming to the fore, but the older rulers still preferred a seal to a signature.
His eyes stung, and Albrec rubbed them, sparking lights out of the darkness under their closed lids. His
friend Avila would have missed him at dinner, and might even try to seek him out. He often scolded
Albrec for missing meals. No matter. Once he saw this rediscovered jewel . . .
The quiet thump of a door shutting. Albrec blinked, looking about him. One hand pulled a sheaf of loose
papers over the old document while the other reached for the lamp.
“Hello?”
No answer. The archive room was long and cluttered, shelves piled high with books and scrolls dividing
it up into compartments. It was also utterly dark, save where Albrec’s trembling lamp flame flickered in a
warm circle of yellow light.
Nothing.
The library had its share of ghosts, of course; what ancient building did not? Working late sometimes,
clerics had felt cold breath on their cheeks, or sensed a watching presence. Once the Senior Librarian,
Commodius, had spent a night in vigil in the library praying to Garaso, the saint for whom it was named,
because some novices had become terrified by the shadows they swore gathered there after dark.
Nothing had come of it, and the novices had been ribbed for weeks afterwards.
A sliding scrape in the blackness beyond the light of the lamp. Albrec got to his feet, gripping his
A-shaped Saint’s symbol.
Sweet Saint that watches over me
In all the lightless spaces of the night
he prayed the ancient prayer of travellers and pilgrims.
Be thou my lamp and guide and staff,
And keep me from the anger of the beast.
Two yellow lights blinked in the darkness. Albrec received a momentary impression of something huge
hulking in the shadow. The hint of an animal stink which lasted only a second, and then was gone.
Someone sneezed, and Albrec’s start rocked the table behind him. The lamplight fluttered and the wick
hissed as oil spilled upon it. Shadows swooped in as the illumination guttered. Albrec felt the hard oak of
the symbol creak under the white bones of his fingers. He could not speak.
A door again, and the pad of naked feet on the bare stone of the floor. A shape loomed up out of the
darkness.
“You’ve missed dinner again, Brother Albrec,” a voice said.
The figure came into the light. A tall, gaunt, almost hairless head with huge ears and fantastically winged
eyebrows on either side of a drooping nose. The eyes were bright and kindly.
Albrec let out a shuddering breath. “Brother Commodius!”
One eyebrow quirked upward. “Who else were you expecting? Brother Avila asked me if I would look
in on you. He is doing penance again—the Vicar-General will tolerate only so many bread fights of an
evening, and Avila’s aim is none so good. Have you been digging in the dust for gold, Albrec?”
The Senior Librarian approached the table. He always walked barefoot, winter and summer, and his feet,
splayed and black-nailed, were in proportion to his nose.
Albrec’s breathing was under control again.
“Yes, Brother.” Suddenly the idea of telling the Senior Librarian about the rediscovered text did not
appeal to Albrec. He began to babble.
“One day I hope to find something wonderful down here. Do you know that almost half the texts in the
lower archives have never been catalogued? Who knows what may await me?”
Commodius smiled, becoming a tall, comical goblin. “I applaud your industry, Albrec. You have a true
love of the written word. But do not forget that books are only the thoughts of men made visible, and not
all those thoughts are to be tolerated. Many of the uncatalogued works of which you speak are no doubt
heretical; thousands of scrolls and books were brought here from all over Normannia in the days of the
Religious Wars so that the Inceptines might appraise them. Most were burned, but it is said that a good
number were laid in corners and forgotten. So you must be careful what you read, Albrec. The merest
whiff of unorthodoxy in a text, and you must bring it to me. Is that clear?”
Albrec nodded. He was sweating. Somewhere in his mind he was wondering if withholding facts would
be construed as a sin. He remembered his own private store of scrolls and manuscripts that he had
hoarded away to save from the fire, and his unease deepened.
“You look as white as paper, Albrec. What’s wrong?”
“I—I thought there was something else in here, before you came.”
This time both eyebrows shot up the hairless head. “The library has been playing its tricks again, eh?
What was it this time, a whisper in your ear? A hand on your shoulder?”
“It was . . . a feeling, no more.”
Commodius laid a massive, knot-knuckled fist on Albrec’s shoulder and shook him affectionately. “The
faith is strong in you. Albrec. You have nothing to worry about. Whatever ghosts this library is home to
cannot touch you. You are girded with the armour of true belief; your faith is both a beacon to light the
darkness and a sword to cleave the beasts which lurk therein. Fear cannot conquer the heart of a true
believer in the Saint. Now come: I mean to rescue you for a while from the dust and the prowling ghosts.
Avila has saved some supper for you and insists you be made to eat it.”
One great hand propelled Albrec irresistibly away from his work table, whilst the other scooped up the
lamp. Brother Commodius paused to sneeze again. “Ah, the unsettled dust of the years. It settles in the
chest you know.”
When they had exited the darkened room Commodius produced a key from his habit and locked the
door behind them. Then the pair continued up through the library to the light and noise of the refectories
beyond.
F AR to the west of Charibon’s cloisters, across the ice-glittering heights of the Malvennor Mountains.
There is a broad land there between the mountains and the sea beyond, an ancient land: the birthplace of
an empire.
The city of Fimbir had been built without walls. The Electors had said that their capital was fortified by
the shields of the Fimbrian soldiery; they needed no other defence.
And there was truth in their boast. Almost uniquely among the capitals of Normannia, Fimbir had never
been besieged. No foreign warrior had ever entered the massively constructed City of the Electors unless
he came bearing tribute, or seeking aid. The Hegemony of the Fimbrians had ended centuries before, but
their city still bore the marks of empire. Abrusio was more populous, Vol Ephrir more beautiful, but
Fimbir had been built to impress. Were it ever to become deserted, the poets said, men of later
generations might suppose that it had been reared up by the hands of giants.
East of the city were the parade grounds and training fields of the Fimbrian army. Hundreds of acres had
been cleared and flattened to provide a gaming board of war upon which the Electors might learn to
move their pieces. A hill south of the fields had been artificially heightened to provide a vantage point for
generals to regard the results of their tactics and strategy. Nothing that ever occurred in battle, it was
said, had not already been replicated and studied upon the training fields of Fimbir. Such were the tales
that the tercios of the conquerors had engendered over the years and across the continent.
A cluster of men stood now on the vantage point of the hill overlooking the fields. Generals and junior
officers alike, they were clad in black half-armour, their rank marked only by the scarlet sashes that some
wore wrapped beneath their sword belts. A stone table that was a permanent fixture here stood in their
midst, covered with maps and counters. Coprenius Kuln himself, the first Fimbrian emperor, had set it
here eight hundred years previously.
Horses were hobbled off to one side, to mount order-bearing couriers. The Fimbrians did not believe in
cavalry, and this was the only use they had for the animals.
On the training fields below, formations of men marched and counter-marched. Fifteen thousand of them,
perhaps, their feet a deep thunder on the ground that had hardened with the first frosts. A cold early
morning sunlight sparked off the glinting heads of their pikes and the barrels of shouldered arquebuses.
They looked like the massed playthings of a god left lying on a nursery floor and come to sudden,
beetling life.
Two men strolled away from the cluster of officers on the hill and stood apart, looking down on the
panoply and magnificence of the formations below. They were in middle age, of medium height,
broad-shouldered, hollow-cheeked. They might have been brothers save that one wore a black hole
where his left eye should have been, and the hair on that side of his head had become silver.
“The courier, Caehir, died at his own hand last night,” the one-eyed man said.
The other nodded. “His legs?”
“They took them off at the knee; there was no saving them. The rot had gone too far, and he had no wish
to live as a cripple.”
“A good man. Pity to lose one’s life because of frostbite, no more.”
“He did his duty. The message got through. By now, Jonakait and Merkus will be in the passes of the
mountains also. We must hope they meet with better luck.”
“Indeed. So the Five Kingdoms have split. We have two Pontiffs and a religious war in the offing. And all
this while the Merduks howl at the gates of the west.”
“The men at Ormann Dyke; they must be soldiers.”
“Yes. That was a fight. The Torunnans are no mean warriors.”
“But they are not Fimbrians.”
“No, they are not Fimbrians. How many of our people are we to send to their aid?”
“A grand tercio, no more. We must be cautious, and see how this division of the kingdoms goes.”
The Fimbrian with the unmutilated face nodded fractionally. A grand tercio comprised some five
thousand men: three thousand pike and two thousand arquebusiers, plus the assorted gunsmiths,
armourers, cooks, muleteers, pioneers and staff officers who went with them. Perhaps six thousand in all.
“Will that be enough to save the dyke?”
“Possibly. But our priority is not so much to save Ormann Dyke as to establish a military presence in
Torunna, remember.”
“I find I am in danger of thinking like a general instead of a politician, Briscus.”
The one-eyed man named Briscus grinned, showing a range of teeth with smashed gaps between them.
“Kyriel, you are an old soldier who sniffs powder-smoke in the wind. I am the same. For the first time in
living memory our people will leave the bounds of the electorates to do battle with the heathen. It is an
event to quicken the blood, but we must not let it cloud our judgement.”
“I do not altogether like farming our men out as mercenaries.”
“Neither do I; but when a state has seventy thousand unemployed soldiers on hand, what else can one do
with them? If Marshal Barbius and his contingent impress the Torunnans sufficiently, then we will have all
the Ramusian kingdoms crying out for our tercios. The time will come when every capital will have its
contingent of Fimbrian troops, and then—”
“And then?”
“We will see what we can make out of it, if it happens.”
They turned to look down on the training fields once more. The pair were dressed no differently from the
other senior officers on the hill, but they were Fimbrian Electors and represented half the ruling body of
their peculiar country. A word from them, and this army of thousands would march off the training fields
and into the cauldron of war wherever they saw fit to wage it.
“We live in an age where everything will change,” one-eyed Briscus said quietly. “The world of our
forefathers is on the brink of dissolution. I feel it in my bones.”
“An age of opportunity, also,” Kyriel reminded him.
“Of course. But I think that before the end all the politicians will have to think like soldiers and the
soldiers like politicians. It reminds me of the last battle by the Habrir river. The army knew the Electors
had already signed away the Duchy of Imerdon, and yet we deployed that morning and fought for it
nonetheless. We won, and threw the Hebrians in disorder back across the fords. Then we gathered up
our dead and marched away from Imerdon for ever. It is the same feeling: that our armies can win any
battle they choose to fight, and yet in the end it will make no difference to the outcome of things.”
“You wax philosophical this morning, Briscus. That is unlike you.”
“You must forgive me. It is a hazard of advancing years.”
From the formations below, lines of smoke puffed out and seconds later the clattering rumble of arquebus
fire reached them on the hill. Regiments of arquebusiers were competing against each other to see who
could reload the fastest, shooting down lines of straw figures that had been set up on the plain. Volley
followed volley, until it seemed that a high-pitched thunder was being generated by the very earth and
was clawing up to heaven. The plain below became obscured by toiling clouds of powder-smoke, the
fog of war in its most literal sense. The heady smell of it drifted up to the two Electors on the hillside and
they snuffed it in like hounds scenting a hare on a winter’s morning.
A third figure left the gaggle of officers around the stone table and stood to attention behind the Electors
until the pair had noticed him. He was a square man; what he lacked in height he made up for in width.
Even his chin was as regular as the blade of a shovel, his mouth a lipless gash above it partially obscured
by a thick red moustache. His hair was cut so short as to stand up like the cropped mane of a horse; the
mark of a man who often wore a helm.
“Well, Barbius?” Briscus asked the man. “How do they fare?”
Barbius stared straight ahead. “They’re about as handy as a bunch of seamstresses on a cold morning,
sir.”
Briscus snorted with laughter. “But will they pass?”
“I’ll work them up a little more before we go, sir. Three rounds a minute, that’s our goal.”
“The Torunnans think themselves well-drilled if they can get off two in that time,” Kyriel said quietly.
“They’re not Torunnans, sir—with respect.”
“Damn right, by God!” Briscus said fervently. His one eye flashed. “I want your command to be as
perfect as you can make it, Barbius. This will be the first Fimbrian army the rest of the kingdoms have
seen in action for twenty-five years. We want to impress.”
“Yes, sir.” Barbius’ face had all the animation of a closed helm.
“Your baggage train?”
“Fifty carts, eight hundred mules. We travel light, sir.”
“And you’re happy with the route?”
Here Barbius allowed himself the merest sliver of a smile. “Through the Narian Hills by way of Tulm, and
so to Charibon for the Pontifical blessing. Along the south-eastern shore of the Sea of Tor and down into
Torunna by way of the Torrin Gap.”
“And another Pontifical blessing from the other Pontiff,” Kyriel added, his eyes dancing.
“You’ve been briefed on your behaviour and that of your men?” Briscus said, serious now.
“Yes, sir. We are to be as respectful as possible to the Pontiff and the Church authorities, but we are not
to be deflected from our line of march.”
“There is nothing on that line which has the remotest chance of stopping a Fimbrian grand tercio,” Briscus
said, his eye narrowing. “But you are to avoid the slightest friction with anyone, especially Almarkans.
That is clear, Marshal? You are a nameless functionary; you are obeying orders. All complaints, protests
and similar are to be directed to Fimbir, and you are not to delay your march for anything.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Let them think you are a mindless soldier whose job is to do as he is told. If you pause to argue with
them just once, then they will wrap you up in coils of Inceptine law and hamstring you. This army must
get through, Marshal.”
摘要：

AlsobyPaulKearneyHAWKWOOD’SVOYAGEBookOneofTheMonarchiesofGodFormybrothers,SeanandJamesKearneyAcknowledgmentsto:JohnMcLaughlin,RichardEvansandJoFletcher,fortheirpatienceandhardworkonmybehalfWHATWENTBEFORE . . .ITisoverhalfamillenniumsincethebirthoftheBlessedSaintRamusio,themanwhobroughtthelightoftrue...

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