Century of the Soldier: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume Two) (111 page)

He had no illusions about the slimness of the thread from which his men's survival hung, and he knew that even if they were victorious before the monastery-city, there was little hope of their ever returning to Torunna. But this was the head of the snake here before him, and if it were destroyed, the west might yet rise again and throw off the yoke. That chance was worth the sacrifice of this army. And as for his own life, he knew that it had been twisted beyond hope of happiness, and he would be content to lay it down here.

Ahead of the Torunnans and Fimbrians as they formed up on the plain, more tent encampments sprawled amid a web of gravel roads, and beyond them the tricorne tower of the cathedral of the Saint loomed tall and stark, matched in height by the library of Saint Garaso and the Pontiff's palace close by, all connected by the long cloisters. That was the heart of Charibon, and of the Second Empire itself. Those buildings must all be laid in ruin and their inhabitants destroyed if the head of this snake were to be cut off.

Albrec had passionately disagreed when Corfe had told him of his intentions back in Torunn, but Albrec was not a soldier, and he was not here, staring at the vast factory of war that Charibon had become. Corfe would rather a thousand books burn than he needlessly lose a single one of his men, and he would see the history of ages go up in smoke rather than let one scion of Aruan's evil brood escape. This he had impressed upon his officers and his men in a council of war held up in the hills, although Golophin, who had attended, had said nothing.

"They have no pickets out," Ensign - Haptman rather - Baraz said, incredulously. "Sir, I believe they're all asleep."

"Let us hope so, Haptman." Corfe looked up and down at the line which stretched out of sight in the raw dawn light. Then he breathed in deep. "Alarin, signal the
Advance
."

Corfe's colour-bearer was a Cimbric tribesman, a close kinsman of Felorin's. He now stood up in his stirrups and waved the sable and scarlet banner of Torunna forward and back, for no bugle-calls were to be used until the army had joined battle. The signal was taken up all down the line, and slowly and in silence the huge ordered crowd of men began to move, and became a muffled creeping darkness which edged closer to the tents of the enemy, bristling with barbed menace. Anyone looking closely at the war-harness of the army's soldiers would have rubbed their eyes and stared, for every man had welded short iron nails to his armour, and even the horses' chamfrons and breastplates were similarly adorned, whilst the spear-points of the Fimbrians and lanceheads of the Cathedrallers were not bright winking steel, but black iron also. Save for the scarlet of the Cathedrallers, the appearance of the army was sombre as a shadow, with hardly a gleam of bright metal to be seen.

When they had advanced two miles Corfe ordered the reserve to edge farther out on the left, for they were passing the camps of the Knights Militant about their Citadel. There was activity there now where there had been none before, and he could see squadrons of cavalry mounting their horses. And then a bright series of horn-calls split the morning and from the summit of the citadel's tower a grey smoke went up.

"It would seem the enemy has clambered out of bed at last," he said mildly. "Baraz, ride to Colonel Olba with the reserve and tell him to drop back further and cover our left rear. He is to go into square, if necessary, but he is to be prepared to ward off the Knights Militant from the main body."

"Sir!" Baraz galloped off.

"Ensign Roche."

"Yes, sir." The young officer's horse was dancing under him and his eyes were bright as glass. He was about to see a real battle at last.

"Go to Marshal Kyne in the middle of the phalanx, and tell him that he is to keep advancing for Charibon itself, even if he loses contact with the arquebusiers on his left. He has my leave to detach a flank guard if he sees fit, but he must keep moving regardless. Clear?"

"Yes, sir!" Clods of turf flew through the air like birds as Roche wheeled his horse away in turn.

Yes, the enemy were awake all right. A mile in front of the army, men were tumbling out of their tents and forming up with confused haste. They were in Almarkan blue, arquebusiers and sword-and-buckler men. Many thousands of them were now preparing to bar the way into Charibon. As they milled about, the bells of the cathedral of the Saint, and those of every other church in the monastery city, began to peal the alarm, and Corfe could see that the streets of Charibon were clogging with troops rushing south and east to meet him. Out to the west of the city he could see other formations moving on the plain: Finnmarkan gallowglasses, according to the word of his scouts. They had vast camps out there, but had two miles to march before they would be on his flank. Corfe drew the Answerer, and the ancient pattern-welded iron of John Mogen's sword glittered darkly as it left the scabbard. He raised it in the air and led the bodyguard out to the left rear of the Cathedrallers. The Torunnan army was eating up the yards to Charibon at a great pace, and was now deployed in a great L-shape with the base of the L facing west. Not a single battlecry or shout came from the ranks; the only sound was the dull thunder of all those thousands of hooves and feet.

"Ensign Brascian," said Corfe to another of his young staff who clustered about him. "Go to Colonel Rilke of the artillery. You will find him with the Cathedrallers. Tell him to deploy his guns to the west at once and commence to engage the Knights Militant. Then find Comillan and say he is to charge the Knights at his own discretion, but he is not to pursue. He is not to pursue, is that clear?"

"Very clear, sir."

"He is to pull back as soon as the enemy is halted and in disorder, and the guns will cover his withdrawal. Then he is to hold himself in readiness for further orders."

Seven or eight thousand of the Knights Militant had now formed up in a long line facing east, in front of their citadel and the tents pitched at its foot. They would advance very soon, and must be neutralised. Corfe watched Brascian pelt off, slapping his horse's rump with the flat of his sabre. He disappeared into the sea of red-armoured horsemen that was the Cathedrallers, and scant minutes later the ranks of the cavalry parted and the gun-teams began to emerge and set up before them. The Cathedrallers halted behind the line of six-pounders and dressed their ranks. For all that they were composed mainly of the Cimbric tribes, they were as well disciplined as Torunnan regulars now, and Corfe's heart swelled at the sight of them. What had once been a motley band of ill-armed galley slaves had over the years become the most feared body of cavalry in the world.

The Knights Militant began to advance, a tonsured Presbyter out to their front and waving them on with his mace. They too were heavily armoured, with the Saint's Symbol picked out in white upon their breastplates, and their faces were hidden behind their closed helms. Their horses were of the fine, long limbed strain which had been bred as hunters and palfreys on the Torian Plains for centuries by the aristocracy of Almark, but they were smaller in stature than the massive destriers of the Cathedrallers. The horses of Corfe's mounted arm were descended from those brought east by the Fimbrians, back in the ancient days when some of their troops still went mounted, and the best of these had been stolen and raided by the tribesmen of the Cimbrics over the years and for centuries after had been selected and bred purely for size, and courage. For war.

The startling boom of a gun as the first six-pounder went off, followed by a close-spaced salvo from all three batteries. Rilke had trained his gun-teams well. Hardly had the cannon jumped back on their carriages than his men were levering them forward again, worming and sponging them out, and reloading. They were using canister, hollow metal shells filled with scores of arquebus-balls, and as the smoke cleared the carnage they produced was awesome to see. All along the front of the Knights' line horses were tumbling screaming to their sides, crushing their riders, or rearing up with their bowels exposed or backing frantically away from the deadly hail to crash into their fellows behind them. The Knights' advance stalled in bloody confusion. The horse of their Presbyter was galloping riderless about the field with gore streaming from its holed neck and flanks, and its owner lay motionless in the grass behind it, his tonsure pale as a porcelain bowl on the trampled turf.

"
Now
," Corfe whispered, banging his gauntleted hand on his knee. "
Go now
."

Comillan seemed to have read his thought, for as soon as the artillery had fired their second salvo he spurred out to the front of his men with his colour-bearer in tow, and with a wordless cry ordered them forward. The hunting-horns of the Cimbrics sounded full and clear over the screams of maimed horses and men, and the huge line of armoured cavalry began to move, like some monstrous titan whose leash had been slipped. Corfe's heart went with them as they quickened into a trot, and then a canter, and the lances came down in a full-blooded charge to contact. The earth trembled under them and the tribesmen now began to sing the terrible battle-paean of their native hills, and still singing they ploughed into the enemy formations like the blade of a hot knife sinking into butter. The first and second lines of Cathedrallers made a deep scarlet wedge in the ranks of the Knights Militant, and the smaller horses of the Himerians were knocked off their feet by the impact of the charge. The Cathedrallers discarded their broken and bloody lances and fired a volley of matchlock pistols at point-blank range, adding to the carnage and the panic. Then the silver horn-calls signalled the
Withdrawal
, and the first two lines turned about and fell back, covered by the advance of the third and fourth ranks, who rode through their files, formed up neatly and fired a rolling pistol-volley in their turn. Comillan's command trotted back across the field unmolested and seemingly unscathed, though Corfe could see the scarlet bodies which littered the plain they left behind them. But these were as nothing compared to the great wreckage of carcasses and steel-clad carrion which had once been the proud ranks of the Knights Militant.

The survivors of the charge, many now on foot, streamed back across the plain through the trampled debris of their tented camp, and sought sanctuary about the walls of their citadel. The Torunnan advance continued.

A
RUAN, AGHAST, WATCHED
the ruin of his Knights from the high tower of the Pontifical palace. Inceptine clerks and errand-runners clustered about him like black flies settling on a wound, but none dared meet their master's blazing eyes. As his gaze went hither and thither across the wide battlefield, he saw the Almarkan troops south of Charibon stand to fire a volley of ragged arquebus fire. The oncoming Torunnans were not even checked, but closed up their ranks and marched over the bodies of their dead. Even as he watched, the pikes of the Orphans came down from the vertical and became a bristling fence of bitter points which reflected no light. The Almarkans could not withstand that fearsome sight, and began to fall back to the dubious shelter of their encampment, pausing to fire as they went. The Torunnan phalanx paused, and the thousand arquebusiers within its ranks fired in their turn. Then out of the smoke the Orphans marched on once more. They did not seem to be men, but rather minute cogs in some great, terrible engine of war, as unstoppable as a force of nature.

Aruan's eyes rolled back in his head and a great snarling came from his throat. His aides backed away but he was utterly indifferent to them. He gathered his strength and launched a bolt of pure, focused power into the east, like a puissant broadhead propelled by a bow of immense force. This lightning-swift Dweomer-scrap carried the message of his mind's demand.

Bardolin, to me
.

He came back to himself and snapped at his aides without looking at them, his eyes still fixed on the vast panorama of the smoking battlefield below.

"Loose the Hounds," he said.

T
HE
T
ORUNNAN LINE
opened out. As the main body of the infantry advanced, the Cathedrallers turned north and covered their open flank, and with them came Rilke's guns. But in the gap left by the departure of the red horsemen, Colonel Olba's reserve formation shook out from column into line of battle, and faced west to guard against any fresh attack by the remnants of the Knights. Near the apex of these two lines the Torunnan King, his standard rippling sable and scarlet above him, took up position surrounded by his bodyguard.

From the north-west the long columns of glittering mail-clad gallowglasses, the stormtroopers of the Second Empire, approached, while from their camps along the shores of the Torian Sea trotted fresh contingents of Almarkans and Perigrainians and Finnmarkans. The blue sky was dotted with the tiny flapping shapes of homonculi running their masters' errands. Aruan was recalling every tercio that remained between the Cimbrics and the Narian Hills to the defence of Charibon. And still the bells tolled madly in the churches, and the Torunnans came on like a wave of black iron.

It was Golophin who sensed their coming first. He stiffened in the saddle of the army mule which was his preferred mount and seemed almost to sniff the air.

"Corfe," he cried. "The Hounds."

The King looked at him, and nodded. He turned to Astan his bugler. "Sound me the
Halt.
"

Clear and cold over the tumult of the battle the horn-call rang out. As soon as the notes had died the buglers of other companies and formations took it up, and in seconds the entire battle-line had stopped moving, and the Orphans grounded their pikes. Those two miles and more of armed men and stamping horses paused as though waiting, and the field became almost quiet except for stray spatters of gunshots here and there and the neighing of impatient destriers. To the north the bells of Charibon had fallen silent.