"It still stands then, the d.y.k.e?" Macrobius asked querulously.

"It stands," Corfe told him, "though it looks as though half the world is trekking westwards through it."

Ribeiro joined them at the hilltop and stared down at the teeming fortress, the river, the bristling ridges beyond.

"G.o.d be praised!" he said thickly. He knelt and kissed Macrobius' knuckle. "We will find someone who will recognize you for who you really are, Your Holiness. Your sojourn in the wilderness is ended. You are come back into your kingdom."

Macrobius shook his head, smiling slightly.

"I have no kingdom. I never had, unless it be in the souls of men. Always I was a mere cipher, a figurehead. Perhaps my hand helped guide the tiller a little, but that is all. I know that now, and I do not know if I would greatly care to be such a figure again."

"But you must! Holiness-"

"Patrol coming," Corfe said brusquely, wearying of this pious raving. "Torunnan heavy horse-cuira.s.siers by the look of them."

The cavalry troop was forcing a way out of the clogged gate of the eastern defences. They parted the flow of refugees like a rock splitting a wave, and then their mounts were stepping through the broken mud of the hillside below Corfe and his companions. Corfe did not move. He doubted that, what with the filth and wear of the past days, his clothing was recognizable as a Torunnan uniform. There was no reason for the hors.e.m.e.n to note three more ragged refugees.

But Ribeiro was sliding and tumbling down the sodden hillside, waving his arms and shouting. His habit billowed out above his thin limbs like the wings of an ungainly bird. The lead hors.e.m.e.n reined in. Corfe swore rabidly.

"What is he doing?" Macrobius asked. There was real fear in his voice.

"The d.a.m.n fool is . . . ach, they'll think he's merely mad."

Ribeiro was talking to the halted cavalry. Corfe could not make out what he was saying, but he could guess.

"He's probably trying to convince them that you're the Pontiff."

Macrobius shook his head as if in pain. "But I am not-not any more. That man died in Aekir. There is no Macrobius any more."

Corfe looked at him quickly. Something in the tone of the old man's voice, some note of loss and resignation, struck a painful chord in his own breast. For the first time he wondered if this Macrobiusmight indeed be whom he said he was.

"Easy, Father. They'll put his claims down to the ravings of a demented cleric, no more."

Macrobius sank to his knees in the mud. "Let them leave me alone. I am in darkness, and always will be.

I am no longer even sure of the faith which once sustained me. I am a coward, soldier of Mogen. You fought to save the City of G.o.d whilst I cowered in a storeroom, imprisoned in my own palace lest I flee and take the heart of the city with me."

"We are all cowards, in one way or another," Corfe said with rough gentleness. "Were I a braver man, I'd be lying dead before Aekir myself, along with my wife."

The old man raised his head at that. "You left your wife in Aekir? I am sorry, my friend, very sorry."

The hors.e.m.e.n rode on, leaving Ribeiro behind them. The young monk shook his fist at them, and then his whole frame seemed to sag. Corfe helped Macrobius to his feet.

"Come on, Father. We'll see if we can't get you a roof over your head tonight, and something warm in your belly. Let the great ones argue over the fate of the west. It is our concern no more."

"Oh, but it is, my son, it is. If it is not the concern of us all, then we may as well lie down here on the ground and wait for death to take us."

"We'll think about that another time. Come. Ho! Ribeiro! Give me a hand with the old man!"

But Ribeiro seemed not to have heard. He was standing with one hand over the eye he could still see out of, and his lips were moving silently.

They joined the straggling crowds of ragged and wild-eyed people who were disappearing into the eastern gate of the d.y.k.e. They sank calf-deep in mud-what was left of the Western Road-and were shoved and jostled as they went. Eventually, though, the darkness of the barbican was around them, and then they were within the walls of the last Ramusian outpost east of the Searil river.

There was chaos within the defences.

People everywhere, in all states of filth and desperation. They stood in huddles around fires on the very drill ground and the interior walls of the fortifications were lined with primitive shelters and lean-tos that had been thrown up to combat the rain. Some enterprising souls had set up market stalls of sorts, selling whatever they had brought with them out of the wreck of Aekir. Corfe saw a mule being butchered, people hanging round the carca.s.s like gore-crows. There were women, pathetically haggard, who were offering themselves to pa.s.sers-by for food or money, and here and there some callous souls were playing dice on a cloak thrown over the mud.

Corfe glimpsed violence, also. There were groups of men with long knives extorting anything of value from fellow refugees, once the Torunnans had pa.s.sed by. He wondered if Pardal's comrades had made it this far.

What he saw disturbed him. There seemed to be little order within the fortress, no organization or authority. True, men in Torunnan black were on the battlements, their armour gleaming darkly, but they appeared thin on the ground, as though the garrison were not up to strength. And no effort had been made, it seemed, to bring the mob of fleeing civilians under control. If Corfe were in command here, he'd have them herded west, well clear of the d.y.k.e, and then perhaps try and rig up provisions for them and police the camps with what men he could spare. But this-this was mere anarchy. Was Martellus still in command, or had there been some reshuffle which had engendered this chaos?He found a spot to stop in the shadow of one of the eastern revetments, kicking a couple of sullen young men from the s.p.a.ce. They left after a hard stare at the sabre and the ragged remnants of the uniform, but Corfe was too weary and troubled to care. He collected pieces of wood-there were plenty lying about, and he guessed that the refugees had demolished some of the inner stockades and catwalks-and got a fire going with the greatest difficulty. By that time the light was beginning to fail, and across the open ground within the fortress campfires were flickering into life like lambent stars, whilst if he stood up he could see across the Searil river to where the lights of the d.y.k.e burned by the thousand. People were crossing the bridge by torchlight in an unending procession and the eastern gates remained open despite the dimming light, which seemed to Corfe to be the merest madness: in the dark, Merduks might mingle with the swarm of civilians entering the fortress and gain access to the interior. Who was in command here? What kind of fool?

Ribeiro was uncommunicative and seemed shaken by the fact that Macrobius had not immediately been recognized. He sat with his swollen head in his hands and stared into the flames of Corfe's fire as though he were looking for some revelation.

Macrobius, however, was almost serene. He sat on the wet ground, the firelight making a hideous mask out of his savaged face, and nodded to himself. Corfe had seen that look before, on men about to go into battle. It meant they no longer feared death.

Could this crazy old man really be the High Pontiff?

His stomach rumbled. They had eaten nothing in the past day and a half, and precious little in the days before that. In fact, the last time he had eaten a solid meal . . .

The last time, it had been Heria who had prepared it, and brought it to him at his post on the wall of Aekir. It had been dark then, as it was now. They had stood together on the catwalk looking out at the campfires of the Merduk thousands, smelling the tar and smoke of the siege engines, the stench of death that hung over the city continually. He had begged her to go once more, but she would not leave him.

That had been the last time he had ever seen his wife; that heartbreaking smile, one corner of her mouth quirking upwards, one eyebrow lifting. He remembered her going down the steps from the wall, the torchlight shining on her hair.

Two hours later the final a.s.sault had begun, and then his world had been utterly destroyed.

He felt a hand on his arm and started. It was wholly dark but for the fire. The open ground within the fortress was a flame-st.i.tched blueness in which shadows moved aimlessly.

"She is gone to G.o.d's rest, my son. You no longer have to fear for her," Macrobius said softly.

"How did you-?"

"You had relaxed, as though in a dream, and then I felt your muscles go as rigid as wood. I am good, I find, at recognizing suffering in others these days. She is with Ramusio in the company of the Saints of heaven. Nothing more can touch her."

"I hope so, old man. I hope so."

He could not voice, even to himself, the fear that Heria might yet be alive and suffering torment at the hands of those eastern animals. And so he prayed that his wife was dead.

He stood up abruptly, shaking off the priest's hand.

"Food. We have to eat if we're to be good for anything. Ribeiro, look after the old man."The young monk nodded. His face was shiny and discol-oured, like a bruised fruit, and he kept spitting out bits of teeth. Privately Corfe did not give much for his chances.

He strode off between the fires, stepping over exhausted bodies lying unconscious on the sodden ground, brushing aside two women who tried to solicit him. It was only in extremity that the true depths and heights of human nature were visible. Folk who had been civilized, upright, even downright saintly in Aekir before its fall were now wh.o.r.es and thieves and murderers.

And cowards, he added to himself. Let us not forget cowards.

No man could truly say what he was until he had been pushed to the edge of things with the precipice of his own ruin staring up at him. Things changed that close to the brink, and people changed too. Rarely, Corfe believed, for the better.

He turned aside at the approach of two Torunnan troopers, twitching his sabre behind his body so it would not be seen. He was not sure what his position might be with the army, whether he was a deserter or a mere straggler, but he felt guilty enough in his own mind not to want to find out.

He had not been afraid on abandoning Aekir. He had seen most of the men he commanded slaughtered on the walls, and had been caught up in the headlong retreat that followed. After that, knowing Heria was lost to him, one way or another, he had merely wanted to leave the blood and the smoke behind. It had been a bitter thing, but he could not remember being afraid. He could not remember feeling anything much. The events in which he had been caught up had seemed too vast for human emotion.

But away from the roaring chaos of that day, he was not so sure. Had it been fear? At any rate, his duty would have been to stay with Lejer's rearguard and fight on. He would be dead by now in that case, or marching east under a Merduk capture yoke.

"You there!" a voice barked. "Halt where you are. What's that you're carrying?"

Two fellow Torunnans. They had noticed the sabre after all. Corfe contemplated running for a second, but then smiled at the absurdity of the idea. He had nowhere else to go.

The Torunnans were in black and scarlet, their half-armour lacquered so that it was like shining ebony.

Sabres that were the twin of Corfe's hung by their sides and they wore the light helms with beak-like nose guards that were typical of their race. One also carried an arquebus over his shoulder, but the slow-match was not lit.

"Where did you get that weapon?" the one without the arquebus demanded.

"From a dead Torunnan," Corfe said carelessly.

The man's breath hissed through his teeth. "You G.o.d-d.a.m.ned vulture, I'll stick you like a pig-" But then his companion stopped him.

"Wait, Han. What's that he's wearing?"

They both stared, and Corfe could almost have laughed at the dawning comprehension on their faces.

"Yes, I am Torunnan also. John Mogen was my general, and I saw him die on the eastern wall of Aekir.

Any other questions?"

I T puzzled Corfe that he was being taken so seriously. He paced the stone floor of the anteroom, listening to the voices rising and falling on the other side of the door. The two troopers had brought himhere at once, across the crowded Searil bridge to the d.y.k.e and into the very heart of the fortress on the western bank.

Here the chaos had been even greater than it was across the river. The refugees had set up a kind of shanty town of sticks and canvas and whatever else they could find within the fortress, and it spilled beyond the towering walls out into the surrounding countryside. Everywhere fires glittered in the night, stretching far across the land and roughly following the line of the Western Road. Everywhere there was the hubbub and stink of an enormous camp.

It troubled Corfe to see Ormann d.y.k.e in this state. He had always thought of it as impregnable, but then he had thought the same about Aekir in the months before its fall. He had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach as he waited to be called in by General Pieter Martellus, the commanding officer. He had seen the long lines of waggons waiting in the drill yards piled high with supplies, and he had seen the activity along the horse lines, the blacksmiths working through the night, their forges like little h.e.l.l-lit caverns. He had a feeling the d.y.k.e was being abandoned without a battle, and despite the detachment he affected the knowledge shook him to the core. If the d.y.k.e fell, what hope was there for Torunn itself?

He was called in at last, and found himself in a high-ceilinged room built entirely of stone but for black beams as thick as his waist criss-crossing near the roof. A fire burned in a deep brazier and there was a long table covered with maps and papers, and so many quills that it seemed a flock of birds had just been startled into flight from there. A group of men stood or sat around the table, some smoking pipes. They stared at him as he entered.

He saluted, acutely conscious of his wretched appearance and the mud that was falling from his boots to clod the floor.

One man, whom Corfe recognized as Martellus, stood up, throwing aside a quill as though it were a dart.

The troops called him "the Lion," not without reason. He had a mane and beard of s.h.a.ggy black hair shot through with grey and russet tints, and his eyebrows shadowed his cavernous sockets. He was a huge man, but surprisingly slim-waisted-quite unlike the barrel-chested firebrand that had been John Mogen.

He had been Mogen's lieutenant for ten years and had a reputation for cold-blooded severity. There were also barrack rumours that he was a wizard of sorts. His pale eyes regarded Corfe unblinkingly.

"We are told you were at Aekir," he said, and his voice was as deep as the splash of a coin at a well's bottom. "Is this so?"

"Yes, sir."

"You were one of Mogen's command?"

"I was."

"Why did you not join Lejer in his rearguard?"

Corfe's heart hammered as the officers watched him intently, some with their pipes halfway to their mouths. They were Torunnans like himself, the much-vaunted warrior race. It had been the Torunnans who had first thrown off the Fimbrian yoke, Torunnans who had beaten back the first of the Merduk invasions. That tradition seemed to hang heavy in the room now, along with the unfamiliar taste of defeat.

Mogen had been their best, and they knew it. The garrison of Aekir had been widely recognized as the finest army in the world. No one had ever contemplated its defeat-especially these men, the generals of the last fortress of the west. But none of them had been at Aekir: how could they know?"There was no time. After the eastern bastion fell-after Mogen died-there was a rout. My men were all dead. I got cut off . . ." His voice trailed away. He remembered the flames, the panic of the mobs, the falling buildings. He remembered his wife's face.

Martellus continued to stare at him.

"I'd had enough of the killing," he said, his words grating out unwillingly. "I wanted to look for my wife.

When I failed to find her it was too late to join Lejer. I got caught up in the crowd. I-" He hesitated, then went on, his gaze never leaving Martellus's cold eyes: "I fled with the rest into the countryside."

"You deserted," someone said, and there was a murmur round the table.

"Maybe I did," Corfe said, surprising himself with his calmness. "Aekir was burning. There was nothing left in the city to fight for. Nothing I cared about. Yes, I deserted. I ran away. Do with me what you will.

I am tired, and have come a long way."

One man thumped the table angrily at this, but Martellus held up a hand then stood with his hands behind his back, the red light from the brazier making his face seem more than ever like that of a feline predator.

"Easy, gentlemen. We did not bring this man here to judge him, but to gain information. What is your name, Ensign?"

"Corfe. Corfe Cear-Inaf. My father served under Mogen also."

"Inaf, yes. I know the name. Well, Corfe, I have to tell you that you are the first Torunnan soldier we have seen who came out of Aekir alive. The best field army of the Five Monarchies is no more. You may be its last survivor."

Corfe gaped, unable to believe it. "There have been no more? None?"

"Not one. The Merduks took many hundreds prisoner after Lejer's last battle, that much we know. They are destined for crucifixion in the east. No others have got this far."

Corfe bowed his head. He was alive, then, when every other Torunnan who had fought under Mogen was dead or captured. The shame of it made his face burn. Small wonder the men around the table seemed so hostile. In all the thousands of men who had been part of that army, only Corfe had fled and saved his own skin. The knowledge staggered him.

"Take a seat," Martellus said, not unkindly. "You look as though you need it."

He fumbled for a chair and sat down, his head in his hands. "What do you want of me?" he whispered.

"As I said, information. I want to know the composition of the Merduk army. I want to know how badly Mogen's men damaged it before the end. And I want to know why Aekir fell."

Corfe looked up. "Are you going to stay here, to fight the Merduk again?"

"Yes."

"It doesn't seem that way to me."

The men at the table stirred at his words. Martellus glared at them to silence them, then nodded. "Some of the garrison have been transferred west, to Torunn. Thus we are short-handed."

"How many? On whose orders?""On the orders of King Lofantyr himself. Twelve thousand will be left here for the defence of the d.y.k.e, no more."

"Then the d.y.k.e will fall."