Century of the Soldier: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume Two) (106 page)

They were ten days out of Torunn, and the first, easy stage of their journey was behind them. They had been three days on the river, and after the interminable disembarkation had been five days more marching across the quiet farmland of northern Torunna, cheered to the echo at every village and town and freely given all the food supplies they needed. A thousand mules and seven thousand horses had cropped the new spring grass of every pasture in their path down to the roots, and the Torunnan King had every evening summoned the local landowners about him and had compensated them in gold coin from his own hand.

But the kindly plains were behind them now, and so were the lower foothills. They were on the knees of the Cimbric mountains, highest in the western world, and their sweating faces were set towards the snows and glaciers of the high places. And the battle which would be fought on their other side.

C
ORFE SAT HIS
horse on the brow of a tall, crag-faced hillock, and watched as his army streamed past. Beside him were Felorin, General Comillan of the bodyguard, Ensign Baraz, and a sable-clad man on foot, Marshal Kyne, commander of the Orphans now that Formio was left behind in the capital.

The Cathedrallers were in the van, five thousand of them leading their warhorses by the bridle, most of them natives of these very hills. Next came ten thousand picked Torunnans armed with arquebuses and sabres, then the Orphans, ten thousand Fimbrian exiles with their pikes balanced on their shoulders, and then the straggling length of the mule train. Bringing up the rear would be the five hundred heavy cavalry of Corfe's bodyguard in their black
Ferinai
armour.

In the midst of both the Torunnan infantry and the Orphans, light guns were being manhandled along, sometimes lifted bodily over deep-running streams and broken boulders that had tumbled from the heights above. They were six-pounder horse-artillery, three batteries' worth in total. All that Corfe dared try and take across the mountains.

All told, more than twenty-six thousand men were trekking westwards into the fastnesses of the Cimbrics this bright spring morning, and their column stretched along an inadequate track which bore them for almost four miles. It was not the largest army Torunna had ever sent forth to war, but Corfe felt that it must surely be one of the most formidable. The best fighting men of four disparate peoples were represented in that long column; Torunnans, Fimbrians, Cimbric tribesmen, and Merduks. If they succeeded in making their way through the mountains, they would find themselves alone and unsupported on the far side, and arrayed against them would be armies from all over the remainder of the world. They would have to take Charibon then, or they would be destroyed, and with them the last, best hope of this earth.

The end was very close now - the climax of the last and greatest war that men would fight in this age of the world. Hebrion was gone, as was Astarac, and Almark and Perigraine were subjugated. Of all the Monarchies of God, Torunna alone now stood free.

I will raze Charibon to the ground
, Corfe thought as he sat his horse and watched his army march past.
I will slaughter every wizard and shapeshifter and witch I find. I will make of Aruan's fall a terrible lesson for all the future generations of the world. And his Inceptine Order I shall wipe from the face of the earth.

A gyrfalcon wheeled in a wide circle about his head, as though looking for him. Finally it came to earth as swiftly as though it were stooping on prey, and perched on the withered branch of a rowan tree to one side. Corfe rode away from his officers so that he might speak without being overheard.

"Well, Golophin?"

"Your path exists, Corfe, though perhaps
path
is an optimistic word. The sky is clear halfway through the Cimbrics, but on their western flanks a last spring blizzard rages, and the snow there is deepening fast."

Corfe nodded. "I expected no less. We have it from the Felimbri that winter lies longest on the western side of the divide; but the going is easier there all the same." He gestured to where the army marched before him, like a barbed serpent intent on worming its way into the heart of the mountains. "Once we leave the foothills behind us and get above the snowline, we will meet with the tail of the great glacier that the tribes name Gelkarac, the
Cold-Killer
. It will be our road through the peaks."

"It is a dangerous road. I have seen this glacier. It is pitted and creviced like a pumice-stone, and avalanches roar down on it from the mountains about."

"If wishes were horses, beggars would ride," Corfe said with a wry smile. "I would we all might sprout wings and fly across the mountains, but since we cannot, we must take whichever way we can." He paused, and then asked, "How go things where - where you are now, Golophin?"

"Aurungabar has been cowed by the return of Nasir with his host, and he has been recognised by all as the Sultan of Ostrabar. He will combine his coronation and his wedding in one ceremony, as soon as Mirren enters the city."

Corfe's breath clicked in his throat. "And how far has she to go?"

"Another five days will see her within the gates. She has left the waggons behind and has been making her way very swiftly with a small entourage on horseback."

Corfe smiled at that. "Of course she has. And you, Golophin - when do you return to the army?"

"Tonight, I hope, when you camp. I meet this evening with Shahr Baraz the Younger. He has something on his mind, it seems. After that, I will remain with the army until the end. It seems to me you will need my help ere you are done with the Cimbric Mountains, sire. Fare well."

And with that the gyrfalcon took off from its perch, leaving the wizened rowan shaking behind it, and disappeared into the low cloud that hung over the peaks of the nearest mountains. Corfe nudged his mount back to where his officers stood patiently.

"Tomorrow, gentlemen," he said, his eyes following the bird's flight, "we will enter the snows."

B
UT THE SNOWS
came to them first. As they were pitching camp that evening a chill gale of wind came roaring down from the heights, and in its train whirled a swift, blinding blizzard of hard snow, dry as sand and almost as fine. Many men were caught unawares, and saw their leather tents ripped out of their hands to billow high in the air and vanish. Cloaks were plucked out of packs and sent flying, and the campfires were flattened and quenched. The mules kicked and panicked and some broke free from their drovers and galloped back down the way they had come, while a few, crazed by the impact of a flapping tent which had come tumbling out of the snow at them like a fiend, jumped over a low cliff and landed in broken agony on the rocks below, their packs smashing open and spraying black gunpowder upon the snow.

The blizzard created a wall about the huddled thousands who darkened the face of the hills, and it was several hours before some kind of order was restored, tents made fast to crags and weighted down with stones, mules hobbled and picketed into immobility, and the troops wolfing down cold rations about the smoking embers of their campfires.

The wind eased off with the rising of the moon, and Corfe, standing outside his skewed tent, looked up to see that the sky was clearing, and the stars were out in their millions, flickering with far-off flames of red and blue and casting faint shadows on the drifts of deep, fine snow that now crunched underfoot. They had been somehow transported to a different world, it seemed; one of blank, twinkling greyness lit up by the moon so that the drifts seemed strewn with tiny diamonds, and men were black silhouettes in the moonlight whose breath steamed and clouded about them.

In the morning, the troops were up well before the dawn, and the tent-sheets were stiff as boards under their numb fingers. The water in their canteens had thickened to a slush that made the teeth ache, and if bare metal touched naked skin it clutched it in a frozen grip painful to break free of.

Comillan trudged through the snow to the King's tent. Corfe was blowing on his gauntleted hands and looking up at the way ahead through the narrow passes whilst behind him the dawn was a pale blueness in the sky, and the stars still twinkled coldly above.

"Eleven mules lost, and one hapless lad who went out for a piss in the night and was found this morning. Aside from that, we seem to be in one piece." When the King did not respond, Comillan ventured, "It will be heavy going today I'm thinking."

"Aye, it will," Corfe said at last. "Comillan, I want you to pick thirty good men and send them forward on foot - they can leave their armour behind. We need a trail blazed for the main body. Tribesmen like yourself, for preference."

"Yes, sir."

"Are these sudden blizzards usual this late in the foothills?"

"In spring? No. But they are not unknown. Last night was just a taster. But it sharpened up the men at least. The winter gear is being dug out of packs, and they're gathering wood while they can. I'll load as much as I can on the mules. We'll need it in the high passes."

"Very good."

"I take it the wizard did not return, sire?"

"No, he did not. Perhaps mages are as blinded by blizzards as the rest of us."

An hour later the sun was over the horizon and rising fast, into an unclouded blue sky which seemed as brittle and transparent as glass. The world was a white, glaring brightness and the soldiers smudged the hollows of their eyes with mud or soot to reduce the glare while some held leaves between their teeth to prevent the blistering of their lower lips. Comillan's trailblazers forged ahead with the easy pace of men who are in familiar country, while behind them the great column grew strung-out and disjointed as the rest of the army trudged wearily upwards, even the cavalry afoot and leading their snorting mounts by the bridle. Entire tercios were assigned to each of the artillery pieces, and dragged them up the steep, snowbound track by main force.

When Corfe paused, gasping, to look back, he could see the green land of Torunna blooming out below him like some kindlier world forgotten by winter, and sunlight shining off the Kardian Sea in a half-guessed glitter on the edge of the horizon. The Torrin river snaked and meandered across his kingdom, bright as a sword-blade, and here and there were the dun stains of towns leaking plumes of smoke to bar the cerulean vault overhanging them.

The sky held clear for two more days, and while no more snow fell, and the wind remained light and fitful from the south-east, the temperature plummeted so that men walked with their cloaks frosted white by frozen breath, and icicles hung from the bits of the horses. The snow became hard as rock underfoot, which made for better going, but on the steeper stretches men had to go ahead of the main column and hack rude stairs out of the ice with mattocks, or else there would have been no purchase for the thousands of booted and hoofed feet following.

They were high up in the mountains now, and far enough within their winding flanks that the view of the land below was cut off, and they were surrounded on all sides by spires of frozen rock, blinding snowfields, and hoar-white slopes of scree and boulder. In the dark freezing nights Corfe halved the length of sentry duty, for an hour at a time was as much as the men could bear out of their blankets, and few fires were lit, for they were trying to conserve their meagre store of wood for some future emergency.

So, they came to the end of all manmade tracks, and found themselves at the foot of the Gelkarak glacier, and stared in wonder at what seemed to be a broken and tumbled cliff of pale grey translucent rock. Except that it was not stone, but ancient ice which had come oozing down from the mountainsides in millennia of winters to form a vast, solid river fully half a mile wide, and many fathoms deep.

"We'll have to rig up ropes and pulleys at the top to haul up the animals and the guns," Corfe said to Comillan and Kyne, who stood swathed in furs beside him. "We'll work through the night; there's no time to play with. Comillan, you handle the horses. Kyne, give Colonel Rilke a hand with his guns." The King stared at a sky, which was still largely clear, but ahead of them sullen clouds gathered on the peaks, heavy with snow.

They were two days and a night hauling up the horses and mules and artillery pieces one by one to the top of the glacier. There was little engineering skill about it. The commanders had teams of up to three hundred men hauling on a cat's cradle of ropes at the lip of the glacier, and even the most recalcitrant mule could not argue with that amount of brute force.

On the second day of this rough portage the clouds arrived above them and snow started in again. Not the wicked blizzard of before, but a heavy silence of fat white flakes which accumulated with amazing speed, until the teams at the top of the glacier were labouring thigh-deep, and the ropes were buried. Yet more men were put to clearing the snow from the bivouacs, and half a dozen fell into hidden crevasses and were lost. A company of Felimbric tribesmen from the Cathedrallers then explored up the glacier for several miles, roped together and feeling their way step by step. They marked each crevasse with an upright pike thrust into the snow, a dark rag flying from the tip, and thus blazed a safe road for the army to follow. And still it grew colder, and the men's lungs began to labour in the thinning air.

They lost a field piece and six mules as a whole series of rime-stiff ropes snapped in the same instant and they tumbled down the cliff of the glacier's end, but at the end of their fifth day in the mountains proper, the army was united on the back of Gelkarak itself, and the advance went on.