Paul Kearney - Monarchies of God 3 - Iron Wars

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The Iron Wars

WHAT WENT BEFORE . . .

F IVE centuries ago two great religious faiths arose which were to dominate the entire known world.

They were founded on the teachings of two men. In the west, St Ramusio; in the east, the Prophet

Ahrimuz.

The Ramusian faith rose at the same time that the great continent-wide empire of the Fimbrians was

coming apart. The greatest soldiers the world had ever seen, the Fimbrians had become embroiled in a

vicious civil war which enabled their conquered provinces to break away one by one and become the

Seven Kingdoms. Fimbria dwindled to a shadow of her former self, her troops still formidable, but her

concerns confined exclusively to the problems within the borders of the homeland. And the Seven

Kingdoms went from strength to strength—until, that is, the first hosts of the Merduks began pouring

over the Jafrar mountains, quickly reducing their numbers to five.

Thus began the great struggle between the Ramusians of the west and the Merduks of the east, a

sporadic and brutal war carried on for generations, which, by the sixth century of Ramusian reckoning,

was finally reaching its climax.

For Aekir, greatest city of the west and seat of the Ramusian Pontiff, finally fell to the eastern invaders

in the year 551. Out of its sack escaped two men whose survival was to have the greatest consequences

for future history. One of them was the Pontiff himself, Macrobius—thought dead by the rest of the

Ramusian kingdoms and by the remainder of the Church hierarchy. The other was Corfe Cear-Inaf, a

lowly ensign of cavalry, who deserted his post in despair after the loss of his wife in the tumult of the

city’s fall.

But the Ramusian Church had already elected another Pontiff, Himerius, who was set upon purging the

Five Kingdoms of any remnant of the Dweomer-folk—the practitioners of magic. The purge caused

Hebrion’s young king, Abeleyn, to accept a desperate expedition into the uttermost west to seek the

fabled Western continent, an expedition led by his ruthlessly ambitious cousin, Lord Murad of

Galiapeno. Murad blackmailed a master mariner, one Richard Hawkwood, into navigating the voyage,

and as passengers and would-be colonists they took along some of the refugee Dweomer-folk of

Hebrion, including one Bardolin of Carreirida. But when they finally reached the fabled west, they

found that a colony of lycanthropes and mages had already existed there for centuries under the aegis of

an immortal arch-mage, Aruan. Their exploratory party was wiped out, only Murad, Hawkwood and

Bardolin surviving.

Back in Normannia, the Ramusian Church was split down the middle as three of the Five Kingdoms

recognized Macrobius as the true Pontiff, while the rest preferred the newly elected Himerius. Religious

war eruped as the three so-called Heretic Kings—Abeleyn of Hebrion, Mark of Astarac and Lofantyr of

Torunna, fought to retain their thrones. They all succeeded, but Abeleyn had the hardest battle to fight.

He was forced to storm his own capital, Abrusio, by land and sea, half-destroying it in the process.

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The Iron Wars

Farther east, the Torunnan fortress of Ormann Dyke became the focus of Merduk assault, and there

Corfe distinguished himself in its defence. He was promoted and, catching the eye of Torunna’s Queen

Dowager, Odelia, was given the mission of bringing to heel the rebellious nobles in the south of the

kingdom. This he undertook with a motley, ill-equipped band of ex-galley slaves, which was all the king

would allow him. Plagued by the memory of his lost wife, he was, mercifully, unaware that she had in

fact survived Aekir’s fall, and was now the favourite concubine of the Sultan Aurungzeb himself.

The momentous year 551 drew to a close. In Almark, the dying king Haukir bequeathed his kingdom to

the Himerian Church, transforming it into a great temporal power. And in Charibon two humble monks,

Albrec and Avila, stumbled upon an ancient document, a biography of St Ramusio which stated that he

was one and the same as the Merduk Prophet Ahrimuz. The monks fled Charibon, but not before a

macabre encounter with the chief librarian of the monastery city, who turned out to be a werewolf. They

ran into the teeth of a midwinter blizzard, collapsing into the snow.

A ND now all over the continent of Normannia, the armies are once more on the march.

In thy faint slumbers I by thee have watched,

And heard thee murmur tales of iron wars . . .

Henry IV, Part I

PROLOGUE

I N the sweating nightmare-fever of the dark he felt the beast enter his room and stand over him. But that

was impossible. Not from so far, surely—

Oh, sweet God in heaven, overlord of earth, be with me now . . .

Prayers, prayers, prayers. The mockery of it, he praying to God, whose soul was black as pitch and

already sold. Already lost and consigned to the fires of eons.

Sweet Ramusio, sit with me. Be near me now in this lost hour.

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The Iron Wars

He wept. It was here, of course it was. It was watching, patient as a stone. He belonged to it. He was

damned.

Soaked in perspiration, he opened his gummy eyelids to the all-embracing dark of his midnight room.

Tears had fled down the sides of his neck as he slept and the heavy furs of his bed were awry. He gave a

start at their lumpen, hairy shape. But it was nothing. He was alone after all, thank God. Nothing but the

quiet winter night wheeling in its chill immensity beyond the room.

He scratched flint and steel together from the bedside table, and when the tinder caught transferred the

seed of sparks to his candle. A light, a point of reference in the looming murk.

Utterly alone. He was without even the God he had once reverenced and to whom he had devoted the

best years of his life. Clerics and theologians said that the Creator was everywhere, in every niche and

pocket of the world. But He was not here, in this room. Not tonight.

Something else was coming, though. Even now he could sense it hurtling through the dark towards him

as unstoppable as the turning sun, its feet hardly setting down upon the dormant world. It could cover

continents and oceans in the blink of an eye.

The furs on his bed gave a twitch, and he yelped. He clawed his way to the headboard, eyes starting out

of his head, heart hammering behind his ribs.

They gathered themselves into a mound, a hulking mass of hair. And then they began to grow, bulking

out in the dimness and the candleflame, the room a sudden playground of moving shadows as the light

flickered and swam.

The furs rose and rose in the bed, towering now. And when they loomed over him, tall as some

misshapen megalith, two yellow eyes blinked on in their midst, bright-hungry as an arsonist’s flame.

It was here. It had come.

He fell on his face amid the damp linen sheets, wor-shipping. Truly here—he could smell the musk of

its presence, feel the heat of the enormous form. A drop of spit fell from its maw and as it struck his

neck it sizzled there, burning him.

Greetings, Himerius, the beast said.

“Master,” the prostrate cleric whispered, grovelling in his soiled bed.

Be not afraid, its voice said without a sound. Himerius’s reply was inarticulate, a gargle of terror.

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The Iron Wars

The time is here, my friend, it said. Look up at me. Sit up and see.

A huge paw, fingered and taloned like some mockery of man and beast, raised him to his knees. Its pads

scorched his skin through the wool of his winter shift.

The face of the winter’s wolf, its ears like horns above a massive black-furred skull in which the eyes

glared like saffron lamps, black-slitted. A foot-long fanged muzzle from which the saliva dripped in

silver strings, the black lips drawn back taut and quivering. And caught in the teeth, some glistening

vermilion gobbet.

Eat.

Himerius was weeping, terror flooding his mind. “Please master,” he blubbered. “I am not ready. I am

not worthy—”

Eat.

The paws clamped on to his biceps and he was lifted off his feet. The bed creaked under them. His face

was drawn close to the hot jaws, its breath sickening him, like the wet heat of a jungle heavy with

putrefaction. A gateway to a different and unholy world.

He took the gobbet of meat in his mouth, his lips bruised in a ghastly kiss against the fangs of the wolf.

Chewed, swallowed. Fought the instinct to retch as it slid down his gullet as though seeking the blood-

dark path to his heart.

Good. Very good. And now for the other.

“No, I beg you!” Himerius wept.

He was thrown to his stomach on the bed and his shift was ripped from his back with a negligent wave

of the thing’s paw. Then the wolf was atop him, the awesome weight of it pinioning him, driving the air

out of his lungs. He felt he was being suffocated, could not even cry out.

I am a man of God. Oh Lord, help me in my torment!

And then the sudden, screaming pain as it mounted him, pushing brutally into his body with a single,

rending thrust.

His mind went white and blank with the agony. The beast was panting in his ear, its mouth dripping to

scald his neck. The claws scored his shoulders as it violated him and its fur was like the jab of a million

needles against his spine.

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The Iron Wars

The beast shuddered into him, some deep snarl of release rising from its throat. The powerful haunches

lifted from his buttocks. It withdrew.

You are truly one of us now. I have given you a precious gift, Himerius. We are brethren under the light

of the moon.

He felt that he had been torn apart. He could not even lift his head. There were no prayers now, nothing

to plead to. Something precious had been wrenched out of his soul, and a foulness bedded there in its

place.

The wolf was fading, its stink leaving the room. Himerius was weeping bitterly into the mattress, blood

trickling down his legs.

“Master,” he said. “Thank you, master.”

And when he raised his head at last he was alone on the great bed, his chamber empty, and the wind

picking up to a howl around the deserted cloisters outside.

PART ONE

MIDWINTER

The spirit which knows not how to submit, which retires from no danger because it is

formidable, is the soul of a soldier.

Robert Jackson, A Systematic View on the Formation, Discipline and Economy of Armies,

1804

ONE

N OTHING Isolla had been told could have prepared her for it. There had been wild rumours, of course,

macabre tales of destruction and slaughter. But the scale of the thing still took her by surprise.

She stood on the leeward side of the carrack’s quarterdeck, her ladies-in-waiting silent as owls by her

side. They had a steady north-wester on the larboard quarter and the ship was plunging along before it

like a stag fleeing the hounds, sending a ten-foot bow-wave off to leeward which the weak winter

sunlight filled full of rainbows.

She had felt not a smidgen of sickness, which pleased her; it was a long time since she had last been at

sea, a long time since she had been anywhere. The breakneck passage of the Fimbrian Gulf had been

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摘要：

TheIronWarsWHATWENTBEFORE...FIVEcenturiesagotwogreatreligiousfaithsarosewhichweretodominatetheentireknownworld.Theywerefoundedontheteachingsoftwomen.Inthewest,StRamusio;intheeast,theProphetAhrimuz.TheRamusianfaithroseatthesametimethatthegreatcontinent-wideempireoftheFimbrianswascomingapart.Thegre...

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