"What of their numbers, Corfe?" Andruw shouted. "What do you make them?"

How to set a figure to that broiling ma.s.s of humanity? But Corfe was a soldier, a professional. His mind played with figures in his head.

"Nine or ten thousand in the first wave," he shouted back, the smoke aching his throat already. "But that's just the first wave."

Andruw grinned out of a blackened face. "Plenty for everyone then."They were at the foot of the walls now, a roaring mult.i.tude horned with scaling ladders and baying like animals. The rising sun lit up the further hills, shafted through the billowing powder smoke and made something ethereal and beautiful out of it, the defenders seeming to be flat silhouettes in the fiery reek.

The gunners of the lighter pieces depressed their guns to maximum and began firing down into the packed ma.s.ses below, whilst the arquebusiers were holding fire, waiting for Andruw's order.

Scaling ladders thumping against the battlements. Grapnels, ropes and a shower of crossbow bolts that knocked down half a dozen men in Corfe's vision alone. The ladders began to quiver as the enemy climbed up them.

"Hold your fire, arquebusiers!" Andruw shouted. A few nervous men were already letting loose.

Faces at the top of the ladders, black as fiends from h.e.l.l.

"Fire!"

A rippling series of explosions as two thousand arquebuses went off almost as one. Many ladders crashed back down in the press below, unbalanced by the death throes of the men at their tops. Others remained, and more of the enemy continued their climb.

"Fork-men, to the front!" the order went out, and Torunnans came forward bearing objects shaped like long-handled pitchforks. Two or three of the defenders would push these against the scaling ladders and send them out in a slow, graceful arc, packed with men, to swing down into red ruin in the ma.s.sed ranks at the foot of the walls.

The a.s.sault paused, checked. The noise of men shouting and shrieking, the boom of cannon and crack of arquebus were deafening.

"Have they no strategy at all?" Andruw was asking Corfe. "They're like a ram b.u.t.ting a gate. Do they reckon nothing of casualties?"

"They don't have to," Corfe told him. "Remember what Martellus said? Attrition. They are losing men by the thousand, we by the score. But they can afford to lose their thousands. They are as numberless as the sand of a beach."

They stood near the gate that was the main entrance to this part of the fortress. The sun was rising rapidly and a rosy-gold light was playing over the scene. They could see through gaps in the smoke to where fresh forces were already being marshalled on the hills beyond. The Merduk guns were being brought into play now, but they were firing high. Most of their shots seemed to be falling into the Searil, raising fountains of white, shattered water.

"So they use explosive sh.e.l.ls, too," Andruw said, surprised.

It was something the Ramusians had invented only twenty years ago.

"Yes, and incendiaries. I hope we have enough firefighters."

"Fire is the last thing we have to worry about. Here they come again."

A fresh surge at the foot of the walls. Crossbow bolts came clinking and cracking against the battlements in a dark hail. Men fell screaming from the catwalks.

Another a.s.sault, the ladders lifted up and thrown down once more. The ground at the bottom of the fortifications was piled with corpses and wreckage."I don't like it," Corfe said. "This is too easy."

"Too easy!"

"Yes. There is no thought behind these a.s.saults. I think they are a cover for something else. Even Shahr Baraz does not throw his men's lives away for no gain."

There was an earth-shuddering concussion that seemed to come from beneath their very feet. Almost the entire gatehouse was enveloped in thick smoke through which flame speared and flapped.

"They've blown the gate!" Andruw cried.

"I'll see to it. Stay here. They'll make another a.s.sault to cover the breaching party."

Corfe ran down the wide stairs to the courtyards and squares below. Torunnan soldiers and refugee civilians were running about carrying powder, shot, wounded men, match and water. He seized on a group of a dozen who possessed arquebuses and led them into the shadow of the gatehouse.

There in the arch a fierce fire was burning, and the ma.s.sive gates were askew on their hinges, white scars marking the shattered wood. Already the Merduk engineers were swarming through the gaps and a hundred more were cl.u.s.tered behind them. It was like watching dark maggots writhing in a wound.

"Present pieces!" Corfe yelled to his motley command, and the arquebuses were levelled.

"Give fire!"

The volley flung back a score of Merduks who were clambering through the wrecked gates.

"Out swords. Follow me!" Corfe cried, and led the Torunnans at a run.

They stepped over wriggling, maimed men and began slashing and hewing in the burning gloom of the arch like things possessed. In a few moments there were no Merduks left alive inside the gatehouse, and those trying to force their way through the battered portals had limbs and heads lopped off by the defenders.

The fire spread. Corfe was dimly aware of men with water buckets. He hacked the fingers off a hand that was pulling at the broken gate. Then someone was tugging him away.

"The murder-holes! They're going to use them. Out of the gateway!"

He allowed himself to be hauled away, half blind with sweat and smoke. The Torunnans fell back.

Immediately the Merduks were squirming through the gates again. In seconds a score of them were on the inside and more of their fellows were joining them by the moment.

"Now!" a voice yelled somewhere.

A golden torrent poured down on the hapless Merduks from holes in the ceiling of the gatehouse. It was not liquid, but as soon as it struck the men below they screamed horribly, tearing at their armour and dropping their swords. They flailed around in agony for long minutes whilst their comrades halted outside, watching in helpless fury.

"What is it?" Corfe asked. "It looks like-"

"Sand," he was told by a grinning soldier. "Heated sand. It gets inside the armour and fries them to acinder. More economical than lead, wouldn't you say?"

"Make way, there!" A gunnery officer and a horde of blackened figures were man-hauling two broad-muzzled falcons into position before the gate. As the torrent of sand faltered the Merduks outside began clambering inside again with what seemed to Corfe to be arrant stupidity or maniac courage.

The falcons went off. Loaded with sc.r.a.p metal, they did the remains of the gates little damage, but the Merduks in the archway were blown to shreds. Blood and fragments of flesh, bone and viscera plastered the interior of the archway.

"They're falling back!" someone yelled.

It was true. The attack on the gate was being abandoned for the moment. The Merduks were drawing away.

"Keep these pieces posted here, and get engineers to work on these gates," Corfe commanded the gunnery officer, not caring what his rank might be. "I'll send men down from the wall to reinforce you as soon as I can."

Without waiting for a reply, he ran for the catwalk stairs to rejoin the men on the battlements.

Another a.s.sault-the cover for the breaching party-had just been thrown back. Men were reloading the cannons frantically, charging their arquebuses, doctoring minor wounds. The dead were tossed off the parapet like sacks; time for the solemnities later.

Andruw's sabre was b.l.o.o.d.y and his eyes startlingly white in a filthy face. "What about the gate?"

"It's holding, for the moment. They're persistent b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. I'll give them that. We sent half a hundred of them to join their prophet before they drew back."

Andruw laughed heartily. "By sweet Ramusio's blessed blood, they'll not walk over us without a stumble or two. Was it as tight as this at Aekir, Corfe?"

Corfe turned away, face flat and ugly.

"It was different," he said.

M ARTELLUS watched the failure of the a.s.sault from his station on the heights of the citadel. His officers were cl.u.s.tered about him, grave but somehow jubilant. The Merduk host was drawing back like a snarling dog that has been struck on the muzzle. All over the eastern barbican on the far side of the river a vast turmoil of rising smoke shifted and eddied, shot through with flame. Even here, over a mile away, it was possible to hear the hoa.r.s.e roar of a mult.i.tude in extremity, a formless, surf-like sound that served as background to the rolling thunder of the guns.

"He's lost thousands," one of the senior officers was saying. "What is he thinking of, to throw troops bare-handed against prepared fortifications like that?"

A messenger arrived from the eastern bank, his face grimed and his chest heaving. Martellus read the dispatch with thin lips, then dismissed him.

"The gate is damaged. We would have lost it, were it not for the efforts of my new aide. Andruw puts his own casualties at less than three hundred."

Some of the other officers grinned and stamped. Others looked merely thoughtful. They eyed the retreatof the attacking Merduk regiments-orderly despite the barrage that the Torunnan guns were laying down-then their gazes moved up the hillsides, to where the main host was encamped in its teeming thousands and the Merduk batteries squatted silent and ominous.

"He's playing with us," someone said. "He could have continued that attack all day, and not blinked an eye at the casualties."

"Yes," Martellus said. The early light filled his eyes with tawny fire and made a glitter out of the white lines in his hair. "This was an armed reconnaissance, no more, as I said it would be. He now knows the location of our guns and the dispositions of the eastern garrison. Tomorrow he will attack again, but this time it will not be a sudden rush, unsupported and ill-disciplined. Tomorrow we will see Shahr Baraz a.s.sault in earnest."

H UNDREDS of miles away to the west. Follow the Terrin river northwards to where the gap between the Cimbric Mountains and the Thurians opens out. Pa.s.s over the glittering Sea of Tor with its dark fleets of fishing boats and its straggling coastal towns. There, in the foothills of the western Cimbrics, see the majestic profile of Charibon, where the bells of the cathedral are tolling for Vespers and the evening air is thickening into an early night in the shadow of the towering peaks.

In the apartments that had been made over to the new High Pontiff Himerius, the great man himself and Betanza, Vicar-General of the Inceptine Order sat alone, the attending clerics dismissed. The muddy, travel-worn man who had been with them minutes before had been led away to a well-earned bath and bed.

"Well?" Betanza asked.

Himerius' eyes were hooded, his face a maze of crannied bone dominated by the eagle nose. As High Pontiff he wore robes of rich purple, the only man in the world ent.i.tled to do so unless the Fimbrian emperors were to come again.

"Absurd nonsense, all of it."

"Are you so sure, Holiness?"

"Of course! Macrobius died in Aekir. Do you think the Merduks would have missed such a prize? This eyeless fellow is an impostor. The general at the d.y.k.e, this Martellus, he has obviously circulated this story in order to raise the morale of his troops. I cannot say I blame the man entirely-he must be under enormous pressure-but this really is inexcusable. If he survives the attack on the d.y.k.e I will see to it that he is brought before a religious court on charges of heresy."

Betanza sat back in his thickly upholstered chair. They were both by the ma.s.sive fireplace, and broad logs were burning merrily on the hearth, the only light in the tall-ceilinged room.

"According to this messenger," Betanza said carefully, "Torunn was informed also. Eighteen days he says it took to get here, and four dead horses. Torunn will have had the news for nigh on a fortnight."

"So? We will send our own messengers denying the validity of the man's claim. It is too absurd, Betanza."

The Vicar-General's high-coloured face was dark as he leaned back out of the firelight.

"How can you be so sure that Macrobius is dead?" he asked.

Himerius' eyes glittered. "He is dead. Let there be no question about it. I am High Pontiff, and noTorunnan captain of arms will gainsay me."

"What are you going to do?"

Himerius steepled his fingers together before his face.

"We will send out riders at once-tonight-to every court in Normannia-all the Five monarchies. They will bear a Pontifical bull in which I will denounce this impostor and the man who is behind him-this Martellus, the Lion of Ormann d.y.k.e."

Himerius smiled.

"I will also send a private letter to King Lofantyr of Torunna, expressing my outrage at this heretical occurrence and telling him of my reluctance to commit our Knights Militant to the defence of his kingdom whilst that same kingdom harbours a pretender to my own position, an affront against the Holy Office I occupy, a stink in the nostrils of G.o.d."

"So you will withhold the troops you promised Brother Heyn," Betanza said. He sounded tired.

"Yes. Until this thing is dealt with Torunna shall receive no material aid from the Church."

"And Ormann d.y.k.e?"

"What of it?"

"The d.y.k.e needs those men, Holiness. Without them it will surely fall."

"Then so be it. Its commander should have thought of that before he started elevating blind old men to the position of High Pontiff."

Betanza was silent. As the Knights Militant were quartered in Charibon they were nominally under the command of the head of the Inceptine Order. But never in living memory had a Vicar-General flouted the wishes of his Pontiff.

"The men are already on the march," Betanza said. "They must be halfway to Torunna by now."

"Then recall them," Himerius snapped. "Torunna shall receive nothing from me until it extirpates this impostor."

"I beg you to consider, Holiness . . . What if this man is who he says he is?"

"Impossible, I tell you. Are you questioning my judgement, Brother?"

"No. It is just that I do not want you to make a mistake."

"I am directly inspired by the Blessed Saint, as his representative on earth. Trust me. I know."

"By rights we should rea.s.semble the Synod and put this to the convened Colleges and Prelates."

"They're happily trekking homewards by now. It would waste too much time. They will be informed in due course. What is the matter with you, Brother Betanza? Do you doubt the word of your Pontiff?"

One of the powers inherent in the Pontifical office was the nomination or removal of the Vicar-General of the Inceptines. Betanza looked his superior in the eye.

"Of course not, Holiness. I only seek to cover every contingency.""I am glad to hear it. It is always better when the Vicar-General and the Pontiff have a good working relationship. It can be disastrous if they do not. Think of old Baliaeus."

Baliaeus had been a Pontiff of the last century who had quarrelled with his Vicar-General, removed the man from office and a.s.sumed the position himself in addition to his Pontiffship. The event had scandalized the entire Ramusian world, but none had attempted to reinstate the unfortunate head of the Inceptines.

The man had died a reclusive hermit in a cell up in the Cimbrics.

"But you are no Baliaeus, Holiness," Betanza said, smiling.

"I am not. Old friend, we have worked too hard and striven too long to see what we laboured for torn away from us."

"Indeed." So if Himerius went, Betanza went. That much was clear at least.