Century of the Soldier: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume Two) (99 page)

The decision was made. They would try and weather the Gripe and strike out for the northern coast. If the southerlies finally kicked in after they had left this squall behind, then they would have the broad reaches of the Hebrian Sea to manoeuvre in instead of fighting for sea-room all along the southern coast of Gabrion. They would have to risk the Straits. It could not be helped.

If we make it that far
, Hawkwood thought. He kept thinking of Isolla's arms about him, the salt taste of her lips unmoving under his own. He could not puzzle out what it might mean, and he regretted the brandy she must have tasted on his mouth.

The ship came round, and the blast of the wind shifted from the back of his head to his left ear. The xebec began to roll as well as pitch now, a corkscrew motion that shipped even more water forward, whilst the pressure on the rudder sought to tear the spokes of the ship's wheel from the fists of the helmsmen. They hooked on the relieving tackles to aid them, but Hawkwood could almost feel the ropes slipping on the drum below.

"Steer small!" he shouted to the helmsmen. They had too little sea-room to work with, and her course must be exact.

Bleyn came up on deck wearing an oilskin jacket too large for him. "What can I do?" he shouted shrilly.

"Go below. Help man one of the pumps."

He nodded, grinned like a maniac, and disappeared again. The pumps were sending a fine spout of water out to leeward but the
Seahare
was making more than they could cope with.

As if conjured up by Hawkwood's concern, the ship's carpenter appeared.

"Pieto!" Hawkood greeted him. "How does she swim?"

"We've three feet of water in the well, Captain, and it's gaining on us. She was always a dry ship, but this course is opening her seams. There's oakum floating about all over the hold. Can't we put her back before the wind?"

"Only if you want to break her back on Gabrion. Keep the pumps going, Pieto, and rig hawse-bags forward. We have to ride this one out." The carpenter knuckled his forehead and went below looking discontented and afraid.

Hawkwood found himself loving his valiant ship. The
Seahare
shouldered aside the heavy swells manfully - they were breaking over her port quarter as well now - and kept her sharp beakhead on course despite the wrenchings of her rudder. She seemed as stubbornly indomitable as her captain.

This was being alive, this was tasting life. It was better than anything that could be found at the bottom of a bottle. It was the reason he had been born.

Hawkwood kept his station on the windward side of the quarterdeck and felt the spray sting his face and his good ship leap lithe and alive under his feet, and he laughed aloud at the black clouds, the drenching rain, and the malevolent fury of the storm.

Fourteen

C
ORFE HAD DECREED
that the funeral should be as magnificent as that of a king's, and in the event Queen Odelia was laid to rest with a sombre pomp and ceremony that had not been seen in Torunn since the death of King Lofantyr almost seventeen years before. Formio's Orphans lined the streets with their pikes at the vertical, and a troop of five thousand Cathedrallers accompanied the funeral-carriage to the cathedral where Torunna's Queen was to be interred in the great family vault of the Fantyrs. The High Pontiff himself, Albrec, intoned the funeral oration and the great and the good of the kingdom packed the pews and listened in their sober finery. With Odelia went the last link with an older Torunna, a different world. Many in the crowd cast discreet glances at the brindled head of the King, and wondered if the rumours of an imminent Royal wedding were true. It was common knowledge that the Queen had wanted her husband to be re-wedded before even her corpse was cold, but to whom? What manner of woman would be chosen to fill Odelia's throne, now that they were at open war with the might of the Second Empire, and Hebrion had already fallen and Astarac was tottering? The solemnity of those gathered to bid farewell to their Queen was not assumed. They knew that Torunna approached one of the most critical junctures in her history, more dangerous perhaps than even the climax of the Merduk Wars had been. And there were rumours that already Gaderion was beset, General Aras hard-pressed to hold the Torrin Gap. What would Corfe do? For days thousands of conscripts had been mustering in the capital and were now undergoing their provenance. Torunn had become a fortress within which armies mustered. Whither would they go? No-one save the High Command knew, and they were close-lipped as confessors.

When the funeral was over, and Odelia's body had been laid in the Royal crypt, the mourners left the cathedral one by one, and only a lonely pair in the front rank of pews remained. The King - his bodyguard Felorin standing in the shadows - and General Formio. After a brief word Formio departed, laying his hand on the back of the King's neck and giving him a gentle shake. They smiled at each other, and Corfe bent his head again, the circlet that had been Kaile Ormann's glinting on his brow. At last the King rose, Felorin following like a shadow, and knocked on the door of the cathedral sacristy. A hollow voice said "Enter," and Corfe pushed the massive ironbound portal open. The Pontiff Albrec stood within flanked by a pair of Inceptines, who were in the process of disrobing him. His friend Avila, Bishop of Torunn, stood to one side. He bowed as Corfe entered. Behind the clerics gleamed a gallery of chalices and reliquaries and a long rail hung with the rich ceremonial garments a Pontiff must needs don at times like this.

"A noble ceremony," Avila said. "The Queen deserved no less." The years had heightened the aristocratic lines of his face. The ignorant might mistake him for the Pontiff, and not the pigeon-plump, mutilated little man that was Albrec.

"Leave us, Brothers," Albrec said crisply, and the two Inceptines bent low before King and Pontiff, and departed through a small side-door. Avila hesitated a moment, and at a nod from Albrec he bowed once more before the King, and followed them without a word.

"Corfe - will you give me a hand? Albrec asked, tugging at his richly embroidered chasuble.

"Felorin," the King said, "wait outside and see no-one enters."

The tattooed soldier nodded wordlessly and heaved shut the great sacristy door behind him with a dull boom.

Corfe helped Albrec out of his ceremonial apparel and hung it up on the rail behind, whilst the little cleric pulled a plain black Inceptine habit over his head and, puffing slightly, kissed his Saint's symbol and settled it about his neck. The air wheezed in and out of the twin holes where his nose had been.

There was a fire burning in a small stone hearth which had been ingeniously hewn out of a single block of Cimbric basalt. They stood before it, warming their hands like men who have been labouring together out in the cold. It was Albrec who broke the silence.

"Are you still set on this thing?"

"I am. She would have wished it. It was her last wish, in fact. And she was right. The kingdom needs it. The girl is already on the road."

"The kingdom needs it," Albrec repeated. "And what of you, Corfe?"

"What of me? Kings have duties as well as prerogatives. It must be done, and done soon, ere I leave on campaign."

"What of Heria? Is there any word on how she is taking this thing?"

Corfe flinched as though he had been struck. "No word," he said. He stood rubbing one hand over the other before the flames as though he were washing them. "It has been sixteen years since last I saw her face, Albrec. The joy we shared so long ago is like a dream now." Something thickened in Corfe's voice and his face grew hard and set as the basalt of the burning hearth before him. "One cannot live by memory, least of all when one is a king."

"There are other women in the world, other alliances which could be sought out," Albrec said gently.

"No. This is the one the country needs. One day, Albrec, I foresee that Torunna and Ostrabar will be one and the same, a united kingdom wherein the war we fought will be but a memory, and this part of the world will know true peace at last. Anything, any sacrifice, any pain, is worth the chance of that happening."

Albrec bowed his head, his eyes fixed on Corfe's tortured face.
And you, my friend
, he thought,
what of you
?

"Golophin has been transporting messages swiftly as a hawk's flight. Aurungzeb knows of Odelia's death, and we have both agreed on a small, a - a subdued ceremony, as soon as the girl arrives. There will be no public holiday or grand spectacle, not so soon after - after today. The people will be told in time, and I will be able to leave for the war without any more delay. I want you to conduct the ceremony, Albrec." Corfe waved an arm. "In here, away from the gawpers."

"In the sacristy?"

"It's as good a place as any other."

Albrec sighed and rubbed at the stumps where long ago frost had robbed him of his fingers. "Very well. But, Corfe, I say this to you. Stop punishing yourself for what fate has visited upon you. It is not your fault, nor is it anything to feel ashamed over.
What's done is done
." He reached up and set a hand on Corfe's shoulder. The Torunnan King smiled.

"Yes, of course. You sound like Odelia." A strangled attempt at a laugh. "God's blood, Albrec, but I miss her. She was one of the great friends of my life, along with Andruw, and Formio, and others long dead. She was another right hand. Had she been a man, she would have made a fine king." He pushed the palm of his hand into the hollow of one eye. "Perhaps I should have told her. She might not have been so insistent on this thing."

"Odelia? No, she would still have wanted it, though it would have tortured her much as it is tormenting you. It is as well she never knew who Ostrabar's Queen is."

"Ostrabar's Queen... I wonder sometimes - even now I wonder - about how it was for her, what nightmares she must have suffered as I fled Aekir with my tail between my legs."

"That's enough," Albrec said sternly. "What's done is done. You cannot change the past, you can only hope to make the future a better place."

Corfe looked at the little cleric, and in his bloodshot fire-glazed eyes Albrec saw something that shook him to the core. Then the King smiled again.

"You are right, of course." He tried to make his voice light. "Do you realise that Mirren will have a stepmother younger than she is? They will be friends, I hope." The word
hope
sounded strange coming out of his mouth. He embraced the disfigured little monk as though they were brothers, and then knelt and kissed the Pontifical ring. "I must away, Holiness. A king's time is not his own. Thank you for yours." Then he spun on his heel and thumped the sacristy door. Felorin opened it for him, and they left together, the King and his shadow. Albrec stared unseeing into the depths of the bright fire before him, not hearing his Inceptine helpers re-enter the room and stand reverently behind him. He was still shaken by the light he had seen in Corfe's eye. It was the look of a man who cannot find peace in life, and who means to seek it in death.

I
N THE MIDST
of the crowded activity that currently thronged Torunn, few remarked upon the entry into the city of a Merduk caravan several days later. It was some thirty waggons strong, and halfway down their column a curtained palanquin bobbed, borne on the shoulders of eight brawny slaves. They had been given an escort of forty Cathedraller cavalry, and entered the city via the north gate, where the guards had been told to expect them. Merduk ambassadors and their entourages were a common sight in Torunn these days, and no-one remarked as the caravan made its stately way to the hill overlooking the Torrin estuary on which loomed the granite splendour of the palace, its windows all draped black in mourning for Torunna's dead Queen.

Ensign Baraz was within the palace courtyard as the heavily-laden covered waggons rattled through the gates, drawn by camels whose heads bobbed with black and white ostrich-feathers. He drew up the ceremonial guard and at his crisp command they flashed out their sabres in salute. The palanquin came to a halt upon the shoulders of the sweating slaves, and a bevy of silk-veiled Merduk maids lifted back the curtains to reveal a barely discernible form within. This shape was helped out with the aid of a trio of footstools and the ministrations of the maids and stood, somewhat uncertain, with the cold spring wind tugging at her veil. Baraz stepped forward and bowed. "Lady," he said in Merduk, "you are very welcome in the city of Torunn and kingdom of Torunna."

He got no farther through the flowery speech of welcome he had devised the night before after the King had peremptorily informed him of his mission. A stout Merduk matron with black eyes flashing above her veil waddled forward and demanded to know who he was and why the King was not here to greet his bride-to-be in person.

"He has been unavoidable detained," Baraz said smoothly. "Preparations for the war -"

"Sibir Baraz! I know you! I served in your father's household ere he was transferred to the palace. My brave boy, how you've grown!" the Merduk matron enfolded Baraz in her huge arms and tugged his head down to rest in her heaving, heavily scented cleavage. "Do you not know Haratta, who wiped your nose when you could barely say your name?"

With difficulty Baraz extricated himself from her soft clutch. Behind him, a fit of coughing had spread throughout the men of the honour guard and the eyes of the slim girl who had been in the palanquin were dancing.