A pair of ropes snaked down and were swiftly tied to the two ends of the beam. Men behind the scaffold began to haul, and Lejer was hoisted up on to it. For the first time his mouth opened in a scream, but it was drowned out by the roar of the kettledrums.

They fastened him to the scaffold, the hooded men clambering up after him. Finally they hammered a last spike through both his ankles before climbing down.

The drums stopped. Lejer's eyes were wide and white in his filthy face. A ribbon of blood trickled downover his chin where he was biting through his lower lip, but he made no sound. Shahr Baraz nodded approvingly, then twitched his reins and began his stately progress back across the square. His aides and staff officers streamed after him.

"What now, Khedive?" Jaffan, his adjutant, asked.

"I want the men redeployed, Jaffan, as soon as is practicable. We must start planning our next move.

You will send the quartermaster-general to me after lunch and we will discuss a new supply route."

"We are advancing on the Searil, then?" Jaffan asked, his eyes shining.

"Yes. It will take time, of course; time to reorganize and to consolidate, but we are advancing on the Searil. May Ahrimuz continue to bless our arms as he has done in this place. I will call an indaba of general officers this evening to discuss things in detail."

"Yes, Khedive!"

"Oh, and Jaffan-"

"Khedive?"

"Make sure that Lejer is dead within the hour. With all his faults, he is a brave man. I do not like to see brave men hanging on gibbets."

SEVEN.

F URTHER west, along the Searil road.

The rain was falling steadily, mourning perhaps the fall of the City of G.o.d. The Thurians were hidden behind its diffuse, livid veil; the moisture beaded the air in a mother-of-pearl dimness so all Corfe could see were shapes moving off on every side, occasionally becoming darker and clearer as they staggered nearer then, wraithlike, fading again.

His boots sank calf-deep in the clutching mud, and water rolled down his face as though it were the sweat of his toil. He was tired, chilled to the marrow, numb as a stone.

The fleeing hordes had been pa.s.sing this way for days. They had scoured a scar across the very face of the earth, a long snake of churned mud almost a third of a league wide obscuring the original slim track that had been the route west. The rain was filling up the broken soil, turning it into something near liquid glue. Along it bodies lay partly submerged every few yards: the ranks were beginning to thin. Folk who had fled Aekir with nothing more than the tunics on their backs were shivering and shuddering as they trudged towards the dubious sanctuary of the Torunnan lines. The very old and the very young were the first to falter; most of the bodies Corfe had pa.s.sed were those of children and the elderly.

Here and there was the angular shape of a cart askew, sinking in the mud, the carca.s.s of a mule or a pair of oxen sprawled between its shafts. People had already been at the flesh, stripping the bodies clean so that bones glinted palely in the unending rain.

There was shouting away in the rain mist. A fight up ahead by the sound of it. Corfe heard an old man's voice cry out in pain, the sound of blows. He did not quicken his pace, but slogged wearily along. He had seen a score of such encounters since Aekir; they were as unremarkable as the falling rain.

But suddenly he was in the midst of it. An elderly man, his clothes black with mud and his face hideously scarred, came blundering out of the mist with one hand stretched before him as though feeling his waythrough the damp air. His other hand clutched something at his breast. There were half a dozen shapes in pursuit, snarling and shouting to one another.

The old man tripped and fell full length in the mud. For a second he lay as if struck down; then he began moving feebly. As he lifted his head Corfe saw that his eyes had been gouged out. They were dark, scabbed pits filled with mud and rain.

The pursuers became more visible, a rag-tag crowd of wild-eyed men. They carried cudgels and poniards. One bore a pike with a broken shaft. He poked the old man with the splintered end.

"Come on, grandfather, let us have the pretty bauble and perhaps we will let you live. It's little good to you anyway. You'll never see it glitter no more."

The old man tried to struggle to his knees, but the mud held him fast. His breath was coming in hoa.r.s.e whines.

"I beg you, my sons," he bleated, "in the name of the Blessed Saint, let me be." Corfe could see now that dangling from a chain around his wizened neck was the A-shaped symbol of the praying hands, the badge of a Ramusian cleric. It was smeared with mud, but the yellow gleam of gold and precious stones could be made out through the filth.

"Have it your own way then, you G.o.d-d.a.m.ned Raven."

The men closed in on the p.r.o.ne figure like vultures moving in on a carca.s.s. The old man's body began jerking up and down as they tried to wrest the chain off his neck.

Corfe was level with the scuffle. He could either step off to one side and continue on his way or walk right through the middle of them. He stopped, hesitating, furious with himself for even caring.

There was a squawk of anguish from the old man as the chain broke free. The men laughed, one holding it aloft like a trophy.

"You accursed priests," he said, and kicked the old man in the ribs. "Your sort always have gold about you, even if all around is ruin and wreckage."

"Cut his saintly throat, Pardal," one of the men said. "He should have stayed to burn in his precious holy city."

The man named Pardal bent with a steel glitter in his fist. The old man groaned helplessly.

"That's enough, lads," Corfe heard himself say, for all the world as though he were back in barracks breaking up a brawl.

The men paused. Their victim blinked withered eyelids on bleeding holes. One side of his face was as black as a Merduk's with the mud.

"Who's that?"

"Just a traveller, like yourselves. Has not there been enough murder done these past days, without you adding to it? Leave the old crow alone. You have what you want."

The men peered at him, curious and wary.

"What are you, a Knight Militant?" one asked."Nay," another said. "See his sabre? That's the weapon of Mogen's men. He's a Torunnan."

The man called Pardal straightened. "The Torunnans died with Mogen or with Lejer. He's got that pig-sticker off a corpse."

"What else do you think he's got?" another asked greedily. The men growled and moved into a line confronting Corfe. Six of them.

Corfe drew out the heavy sabre in one fluid movement.

"Who'll be first to test whether I be one of Mogen's men or no?" he asked. The sabre danced in his hand. He loosened his feet in the gripping muck.

The men stared at him doubtfully, then one said: "What's that in your pouch, fellow?"

Corfe tapped his bulging belt pouch, smiling, and said truthfully: "Half a turnip."

"Throw it over here, and maybe we won't cut off your p.r.i.c.k."

"Come and get it, you long streak of yellow s.h.i.t."

The six paused, greed and fear fighting a curious battle on their countenances.

Then: "Take him!" one of them bellowed, and they were lurching towards Corfe with their weapons upraised.

He moved aside. They bunched on him, which was what he had hoped for. A jab of the sabre point made one throw himself backwards, to slip and tumble in the slithery mud. As he brought the blade back Corfe smashed the heavy basket hilt into another of their faces. The short spike on the hilt ripped up the man's nostril with a spray of dark blood, and he turned aside with a cry.

Corfe whirled-too slowly. A cudgel caught him just above the ear, grazing his skull and tearing the skin and hair. He hardly felt the blow, but ducked low and swung at the man's knee, feeling the crunch of bone and cartilage up his forearm as the keen blade destroyed the joint.

He tore the sabre free and the man fell, tripping up another. Corfe swung at the nape of the tripped man's neck, saw the flesh slice apart and again felt the familiar jar as the sabre broke through the bone.

No more of them came at him. He stood with the sword held at the ready position, hardly panting. His head was ringing and he could feel the burning swell of the blow that had landed there, but he felt as light as thistledown. There was laughter fluttering in his throat like some manic, trapped bird.

One man lay dead, his head attached to his body only by the clammy gleam of the windpipe. Another was sitting holding his mangled knee, groaning. A third had both hands clutched to the hole in his face.

The other three looked at Corfe darkly.

"The b.a.s.t.a.r.d is a Torunnan after all," one said with disgust. "Aren't you?" he asked Corfe.

Corfe nodded.

"We'll leave you to your Raven then, Torunnan. May you have joy of each other."

They helped up the crippled man and stumbled off into the curtain of the rain, joining the other anonymous shapes who were staggering westwards. The dead man's blood darkened the mud, rain-stippled. Corfe felt strangely let down. With a flash of insight he realized he had been hoping to dieand leave his own corpse on the churned ground. The knowledge sapped his strength. His shoulders sagged, and he sheathed the sabre without cleaning it. There was only himself again, and the rain and the mud and the shadows pa.s.sing by.

Someone else was stumbling towards him: a robed shape bent over as if burdened with pain. It was a young monk, his tonsure a white circle in the gloom. He splashed to his knees beside the old, eyeless man who lay forgotten on the ground.

"Master," he sobbed. "Master, they have killed you." There was a black bar of blood striping the young monk's face. Corfe joined him, kneeling in the mud like a penitent.

The terrible face on the ground twitched. The mouth moved, and Corfe heard the old man say in a whisper of escaping breath: "G.o.d has forsaken us. We are alone in a darkening land. Sweet Saint, forgive us."

The monk cradled his master's head in his lap, weeping. Corfe stared at the pair dull-eyed, still somewhat blasted at finding himself yet living. But there was something here at least-something for him to do.

"Come," he said, tugging at the monk's arm. "We'll find us some shelter, a s.p.a.ce out of the rain. I have food I'm willing to share."

The young man stared at him. His face was swollen grotesquely on one side and Corfe thought there were bones broken there.

"Who are you, that has saved my master's life?" he asked. "What blessed angel sent you to watch over us?"

"I'm just a soldier," Corfe told him irritably. "A deserter fleeing west like the rest of the world. No angel sent me." The young man's piety soured his humour further. He had seen too many horrors lately to give it credence.

"Well, soldier," the monk said with absurd formality, "we are in your debt. I am Ribeiro, a novice of the Antillian Order." He paused, almost as if he were weighing something up in his mind. Then he looked down at the wreck of a man whose savaged head was pillowed on his knees. "And this is His Holiness the High Pontiff of the Five Monarchies, Macrobius the Third."

T HE rain had stopped with the rising of the moon, and it looked as though the night sky would clear.

Already Corfe could see the long curve of Coranada's scythe twinkling around the North Star.

He threw another piece of wood on the fire, relishing the heat. His back was sodden and cold, but his face was aglow. The saturated leather of his boots was steaming and beginning to split, what with the heat and the rough usage. Mud was dropping in hard scales from his drying garments.

He shook his head testily. The blood pooled in his ear had dried to a black crust, affecting his hearing.

He would see about that when dawn came.

He was huddled under an ox-waggon, burning the spokes of its shattered wheels for fuel. Ribeiro was asleep but the old man-Macrobius-was awake. It was somehow awful to see him blink like that, the eyelids sunken and wrinkled over the pits which had once housed his sight. Corfe could see now that he wore the black habit of the Inceptines, and that once the garment had been rich and full. It was a mosaic of mud and blood and broken threads now, and the old man shivered within it despite the warmth of the flames."You do not believe us," the old priest said. "You do not believe that I am who I say I am."

Corfe stabbed a stick into the fire's glowing heart and said nothing.

"It is true, though. I am-or was-Macrobius, head of the Ramusian Faith, guardian of the Holy City of Aekir."

"John Mogen was its guardian, and the men who died there with him," Corfe said roughly.

"And were you, my son, one of Mogen's men?"

It was eerie, having a conversation with an eyeless man. Corfe's glare went unheeded.

"I heard those brigands talk. They called you a Torunnan. Were you one of the garrison?"

"You talk too much, old man."

For a second the man's face changed; the saintly look fled and something like a snarl pa.s.sed over it. That too faded, though, and the old man laughed ruefully.

"I ask your pardon, soldier. I am not much used to blunt speech, even yet. It must be that G.o.d is chastising me for my pride. 'The Proud shall be humbled, and the Meek shall be raised above them.' "

"There aren't many meek folk abroad tonight," Corfe retorted. "It surprises me that the pair of you got so far without getting your holy throats slit." As he spoke, he saw again the place where the old man's eyes had been and cursed himself for his clumsiness.

"I'm sorry," he grated. "We have all suffered."

Macrobius' fingers touched the ragged pits in his face gingerly. " 'And those who do not see me, though they have eyes, yet they will be blind,' " he whispered. He bent his head, and Corfe thought he would have wept had he been able.

"The Merduks found me cowering in a storeroom in the palace. They gouged out my sight with gla.s.s from the windows. They would have slain me, but the building was in flames and they were in haste. They thought me just another priest, and left me for dead as they had left a thousand others. It was Ribeiro who found me." Macrobius laughed again, the sound more like the croak of a crow. "Even he did not know at first who I was. Perhaps that is my fate now, to become someone else. To atone for what I did and did not do."

Corfe stared closely at him. He had seen the High Pontiff before, conducting the ritual blessings of the troops and sometimes at High Table when he had been commanding the guard for the night, but it had been at a distance. There was only the vague impression of a grey-haired head, a thin face. How much we need the eyes, he thought, to truly know someone, to give them an ident.i.ty.

It was true that Mogen had purportedly made the High Pontiff a prisoner in his own palace to keep him from fleeing the city-the Knights Militant in the garrison had almost created an internal war when they had heard-but surely it was impossible that this wreck, this decrepit flotsam of war, was the religious leader of the entire western world?

No. Impossible.

Corfe poked the blackened turnip out of the fire and nudged the old man beside him, who seemed lost in some interior wilderness."Here. Eat."

"Thank you, my son, but I cannot. My stomach is closed. Another penance, perhaps." He bent over the young monk who was sleeping to one side and shook his shoulder gently.

Ribeiro woke with a start, his eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with nightmares. His mouth opened and for an instant Corfe thought he would scream, but then he seemed to shiver and, scrubbing at one eye with a grubby knuckle, he sat up. His face was a dark purple bruise, and the cheekbone on one side had swollen out to close the eye and stretch the skin to a shiny drum tightness.

"The soldier has food here, Ribeiro. Eat and keep up your strength," Macrobius said.

The young monk smiled. "I cannot, Master. I cannot chew. There is nothing left of my teeth but shards.

But I am not so hungry anyway. You must have sustenance-you are the important one."

Corfe stared towards the starlit heaven, stifling his exasperation. The smell of the charred turnip brought the water running round his tongue. He wondered what ridiculous impulse had made him risk his life to save these two pious fools.

But he knew the answer to that. It was the darkest impulse of all.