The Second Empire (13 page)

Andruw picked his way through the fires towards him, then dug into his saddlebags. He handed his general a wooden flask.

“Have a snort, Corfe. It’ll keep the cold out. Compliments of Captain Mirio.”

Corfe unstoppered the neck and had a good swallow. The stuff seemed to burn his mouth, and blazed a fiery path all the way down his gullet. His eyes watered and he found himself gasping for air.

“I swear, Andruw, you’ll go blind one of these days.”

“Not me. I’ve the constitution of a horse.”

“And about as much sense. What about the powder?”

Andruw looked back across the camp. “We lost six barrels, and another eight are wet through. God knows when we’ll have a chance to dry them.”

“Damn. That eats into our reserves. Well, we’ve enough to fight a couple of good-sized engagements, but I want Ranafast’s men made aware that they can’t go firing it off like it’s free.”

“No problem.”

Two more figures came picking their way out of the flickering dark towards them. When they drew closer Corfe saw that it was the unlikely duo of Marsch and Formio. Formio looked as slight as an adolescent beside the bulk of the towering tribesman, his once dapper sable uniform now a harlequin chequer of mud. Marsch was clad in a greasy leather gambeson. He looked happier than he had for days.

“What is this, a meeting of the High Command?” Andruw asked derisively. “Here you two—have some of this. Privileges of rank.”

Formio and Marsch winced over the rough grain liquor much as Corfe had done.

“Well, gentlemen?” their commanding officer asked.

“We found those stores that were lost overboard,” Formio said, wiping his mouth. “They had come up against a sandbank two miles downstream.”

“Good, we need all the match we can get. Marsch?”

The big tribesman threw the wooden flask back to Andruw. “Our horses are in a better way than I thought, but we need two days to”—he hesitated, groping for the word—“to restore them. Some would not eat on the boats and are weak.”

Corfe nodded. “Very well. Two days, but no more. Marsch, in the morning I want you and Morin to saddle up a squadron of the fittest horses and begin a reconnaissance of the area, out to five miles. If you are seen by a small body of the enemy, hunt them down. If you find a large formation, get straight back here. Clear?”

Marsch’s face lifted in a rare smile. “Very clear. It shall be so.”

Andruw was still gulping out of Mirio’s flask. He sat, or rather half fell, on his saddle and stared owlishly into the campfire, leaning one elbow on the pommel.

“Are you all right?” Corfe asked him.

“In the pink.” His gaiety had disappeared. “Tyred though. Lord, how those boats did stink! I’m glad I’m a cavalryman and not a sailor.”

Marsch and Corfe reclined by the fire also. “Makes a good pillow, a war saddle does,” Andruw told them, giving his own a thump. “Not so good as a woman’s breast though.”

“I thought you were an artilleryman, not a horse-soldier,” Corfe baited him. “Forgetting your roots, Andruw?”

“Me? Never. I’m just on extended loan. Sit down, Formio, for God’s sake. You stand there like a graven image. Don’t Fimbrians get tyred?”

The young Fimbrian officer raised an eye-brow and then did as he was bidden. He shook his head when Andruw offered the wooden flask to him once again. Andruw shrugged and took another swig. Marsch, Formio and Corfe exchanged glances.

“Do you remember the early days at the dyke, Corfe? When they came roaring down from the hills and my guns boomed out, battery after battery? What a sight! What happened to those gunners of mine, I wonder? They were good men. I suppose their bones lie up around the ruins of the dyke now, in the wreckage of the guns.”

Corfe stared into the fire. The artillerymen of Ormann Dyke, Ranafast had told them, had been part of the thousand-man rearguard which had covered Martellus’s evacuation of the fortress. None of them had escaped.

A curlew called out, spearing through the night as though lost in the dark. They heard a horse neighing off along the Cathedraller lines, but apart from that the only sounds were the wind in the grass and the crackling of the campfires. Corfe thought of his own men, the ones he had commanded in Aekir. They were a long time dead now. He found it hard to even remember their faces. There had been so many other faces under his command since then.

“Soldiers die—that is what they do,” Formio said unexpectedly. “They do not expect to fall, and so they keep going. But in the end that is what happens. Men who have no hope of life, they either cease to fight or they fight like heroes. No-one knows why; it is the way of things.”

“A Fimbrian philosopher,” Andruw said, but smiled to take some of the mockery out of his words. Then his face grew sombre again. “I was born up here, in the north. This is the country of my family, has been for generations. I had a sister, Vanya, and a little brother. God alone knows where they are now. Dead, or in some Merduk labour camp I expect.” He tilted up the bottle again, found it was empty, and tossed it into the fire. “I wonder sometimes, Corfe, if at the end of this there will be anything left of our world worth saving.”

Corfe set a hand on his shoulder, his eyes burning. “I’m sorry, Andruw.”

Andruw laughed, a strangled travesty of mirth. His eyes were bright and glittering in the flame-light. “All these little tragedies. No matter. I hadn’t seen them in years. The life of a soldier, you know? But now that we are up here, I can’t help wondering about them.” He turned to the Fimbrian who sat silently beside him. “You see, Formio, soldiers are people too. We are all someone’s son, even you Fimbrians.”

“Even we Fimbrians? I am relieved to hear it.”

Formio’s mild rejoinder made them laugh. Andruw clapped the sable-clad officer on the back. “I thought you were all a bunch of warrior monks who dine on gunpowder and shit bullets. Have you family back in the electorates, Formio?”

“I have a mother, and a—a girl.”

“A girl! A female Fimbrian—just think of that. I reckon I’d wear my sword to bed. What’s she like, Formio? You’re amongst friends now, be honest.”

The black-clad officer hung his head, clearly embarrassed. “Her name is Merian.” He hesitated, then reached into the breast of his tunic and pulled out a small wooden slat which split in two, like a slim book.

“This is what she looks like.”

They crowded around to look, like schoolboys. Formio held an exquisite miniature, a tiny painting of a blonde-haired girl whose features were delicate as a deer’s. Large, dark eyes and a high forehead. Andruw whistled appreciatively.

“Formio, you are a lucky dog.”

The Fimbrian tucked the miniature away again. “We are to be married as soon—as soon as I get back.”

None of them said anything. Corfe realised in that moment that none of them expected to survive. The knowledge should have shocked him, but it did not. Formio had been right in what he said about soldiers.

Andruw rose unsteadily to his feet. “Gentlemen, you must excuse me. I do believe I’m going to spew.”

He staggered, and Corfe and Marsch jumped up, grasped his arms and propelled him into the shadows, where he bent double and retched noisily. Finally he straightened, eyes streaming. “Must be getting old,” he croaked.

“You?” Corfe said. “You’ll never be old, Andruw.” And an instant later he wished he had never said such an unlucky thing.

EIGHT

G OLOPHIN wiped the sweat from his face with an already damp cloth and got up from the workbench with a groan. He padded over to the window and threw open the heavy shutters to let the quicksilver radiance of a moonlit night pour into the tower chamber. From the height whereon he stood he could see the whole dark immensity of south-western Hebrion below, asleep under the stars. The amber glow of Abrusio lit up the horizon, the moon shining liquid and brilliant upon the waves of the Great Western Ocean out to the very brim of the world beyond. He sniffed the air like an old hound, and closed his eyes. The night had changed. A warmer breeze always came in off the sea at this time of the year, like a promise of spring. At long last, this winter was ending. At one time he had thought it never would.

But Abeleyn was King again, Jemilla had been foiled, and Hebrion was, finally, at peace. Time perhaps to begin wondering about the fate of the rest of the world. A caravel from Candelaria had put into Abrusio only the day before with a cargo of wine and cinnamon, and it had brought with it news of the eastern war. The Torunnan King had been slain before the very gates of his capital, it was said, and the Merduks were advancing through the Torrin Gap. Young Lofantyr dead, Golophin thought. He had hardly even begun to be a king. His mother would take the throne, but that might create more problems than it solved. Golophin did not give much for Torunna’s chances, with a woman on the throne—albeit a capable one—the Merduks to one side and the Himerians to the other.

Closer to home, the Himerian Church was fast consolidating its hold over a vast swathe of the continent. That polite ninny, Cadamost, had invited Church forces into Perigraine with no thought as to how he might ever get them out again. What would the world look like in another five years? Perhaps he was getting too old to care.

He stretched and returned to the workbench. Upon it a series of large glass demi-johns with wide necks sat shining in the light of a single candle. They were all full of liquid, and in one a dark shape quivered and occasionally tapped on the glass which imprisoned it. Golophin laid a hand on the side of the jar. “Soon, little one, soon,” he crooned. And the dark shape settled down again.

“Another familiar?” a voice asked from the window. Golophin did not turn round.

“Yes.”

“You Old World wizards, you depend on them too much. I think sometimes you hatch them out for companionship as much as anything else.”

“Perhaps. They have definite uses, though, for those of us who are not quite so… adept, as you.”

“You underestimate yourself, Golophin. There are other ways of extending the Dweomer.”

“But I do not wish to use them.” Golophin turned around at last. Standing silver in the moonlight by the window was a huge animal, an eldritch wolf which stood on its hind legs, its neck as thick as that of a bull. Two yellow lights blinked above its muzzle.

“Why this form? Are you trying to impress me?”

The wolf laughed, and in the space of a heartbeat there was a man standing in its place, a tall, hawk-faced man in archaic robes.

“Is this better?”

“Much.”

“I commend you on your coolness, Golophin. You do not even seem taken aback. Are you not at least a little curious about who I am and what I am doing here?”

“I am curious about many things. I do not believe you come from anywhere in the world I know. Your powers are… impressive, to say the least. I assume you are here to enlighten me in some fashion. If you were going to kill me or enslave me you could have done so by now, but instead you restored my powers. And thus I await your explanations.”

“Well said! You are a man after my own heart.” The strange shape-shifter walked across the chamber to the fireplace where he stood warming his hands. He looked around at the hundreds of books which lined the circular walls of the room, noted one, and took it down to leaf through.

“This is an old one. No doubt much of it is discredited now. But when I wrote it I thought the ideas would last for ever. Man’s foolish pride, eh?” He tossed the aged volume over to Golophin.
The Elements of Gramarye
by Aruan of Garmidalan. It was hand-written and illuminated, because it had been composed and copied in the second century.

“You can touch things. You are not a simulacrum,” Golophin said steadily, quelling the sudden tremble in his hands.

“Yes. Translocation, I call it. I can cross the world, Golophin, in the blink of an eye. I am thinking of announcing it as a new Discipline. It is a wearying business, though. Do you happen to have any wine?”

“I have Fimbrian brandy.”

“Even better.”

Golophin set down the book. There was an engraving of its author on the cover. The same man—Lord above, it was the same man! But he would have to be at least four centuries old.

“I think I also need a drink,” he said as he poured out two generous measures of the fragrant spirit from the decanter he kept filled by the fire. He handed one to his guest and Aruan—if it truly could be he—nodded appreciatively, swirled the liquid around in the wide-necked glass and sipped it with gusto.

“My thanks, brother mage.”

“You would seem to have discovered something even more startling than this
translocation
of yours. The secret of eternal youth, no less.”

“Not quite, but I am close.”

“You are from the uttermost west, the place Bardolin disappeared to. Aren’t you?”

“Ah, your friend Bardolin! Now there is a true talent. Golophin, he does not even begin to appreciate the potential he harbours. But I am educating him. When you see him again—and you will soon—you may be in for a surprise. And to answer your question: yes, I come from the west.”

Golophin needed the warmth of the kindly spirit in his throat. He gulped it down as though it were beer.

“Why did you restore my powers, Aruan? If that is who you are.”

“You were a fellow mage in need. Why not? I must apologise for the… abrupt nature of the restoration. I trust you did not find it too wearing.”

It had been the most agonising experience Golophin had ever known, but he said nothing. He was afraid. The Dweomer stank in this man, like some pungent meat left to rot in a tropical clime. The potency he sensed before him was an almost physical sensation. He had never dreamt anyone could be so powerful. And so he was afraid—but absolutely fascinated too. He had so many questions he did not know where to begin.

“Why are you here?” he asked at last.

“A good idea. Start out with the most obvious one. Let us just say that I am on a grand tour of the continent, catching up on things. I have so much to see, and so little time! But also, I have always had a liking for Hebrion. Do you know, Golophin, that there are more of the Dweomer-folk here in this kingdom than in any other? Less, since the purges orchestrated by the Mother Church, of course, but still an impressive number. Torunna is almost wholly deserted by our people now, Almark never had many to begin with—too close to Charibon. And in Fimbria there was some kind of mind-set which seemed to militate against our folk from the earliest times. One could hypothesize endlessly on the whys and wherefores, but I have come to believe that there is something in the very bones of the earth which causes Dweomer-folk to be born, an anomaly which is more common in some locations than others. Were your parents mages?”

“No. My father was an official in the Merchants’ Guild.”

“There—you see? It is not heredity. There is some other factor at work. We are freaks of nature, Golophin, and have been persecuted as such for all of recorded history. But that will change.”

“What of Bardolin? What have you done with him?”