The Heretic Kings: Book Two of The Monarchies of God Read online

  His eyes stung, and Albrec rubbed them, sparking lights out of the darkness under their closed lids. His friend Avila would have missed him at dinner, and might even try to seek him out. He often scolded Albrec for missing meals. No matter. Once he saw this rediscovered jewel . . .

  The quiet thump of a door shutting. Albrec blinked, looking about him. One hand pulled a sheaf of loose papers over the old document while the other reached for the lamp.

  “Hello?”

  No answer. The archive room was long and cluttered, shelves piled high with books and scrolls dividing it up into compartments. It was also utterly dark, save where Albrec’s trembling lamp flame flickered in a warm circle of yellow light.

  Nothing.

  The library had its share of ghosts, of course; what ancient building did not? Working late sometimes, clerics had felt cold breath on their cheeks, or sensed a watching presence. Once the Senior Librarian, Commodius, had spent a night in vigil in the library praying to Garaso, the saint for whom it was named, because some novices had become terrified by the shadows they swore gathered there after dark. Nothing had come of it, and the novices had been ribbed for weeks afterwards.

  A sliding scrape in the blackness beyond the light of the lamp. Albrec got to his feet, gripping his A-shaped Saint’s symbol.

  Sweet Saint that watches over me

  In all the lightless spaces of the night

  he prayed the ancient prayer of travellers and pilgrims.

  Be thou my lamp and guide and staff,

  And keep me from the anger of the beast.

  Two yellow lights blinked in the darkness. Albrec received a momentary impression of something huge hulking in the shadow. The hint of an animal stink which lasted only a second, and then was gone.

  Someone sneezed, and Albrec’s start rocked the table behind him. The lamplight fluttered and the wick hissed as oil spilled upon it. Shadows swooped in as the illumination guttered. Albrec felt the hard oak of the symbol creak under the white bones of his fingers. He could not speak.

  A door again, and the pad of naked feet on the bare stone of the floor. A shape loomed up out of the darkness.

  “You’ve missed dinner again, Brother Albrec,” a voice said.

  The figure came into the light. A tall, gaunt, almost hairless head with huge ears and fantastically winged eyebrows on either side of a drooping nose. The eyes were bright and kindly.

  Albrec let out a shuddering breath. “Brother Commodius!”

  One eyebrow quirked upward. “Who else were you expecting? Brother Avila asked me if I would look in on you. He is doing penance again—the Vicar-General will tolerate only so many bread fights of an evening, and Avila’s aim is none so good. Have you been digging in the dust for gold, Albrec?”

  The Senior Librarian approached the table. He always walked barefoot, winter and summer, and his feet, splayed and black-nailed, were in proportion to his nose.

  Albrec’s breathing was under control again.

  “Yes, Brother.” Suddenly the idea of telling the Senior Librarian about the rediscovered text did not appeal to Albrec. He began to babble.

  “One day I hope to find something wonderful down here. Do you know that almost half the texts in the lower archives have never been catalogued? Who knows what may await me?”

  Commodius smiled, becoming a tall, comical goblin. “I applaud your industry, Albrec. You have a true love of the written word. But do not forget that books are only the thoughts of men made visible, and not all those thoughts are to be tolerated. Many of the uncatalogued works of which you speak are no doubt heretical; thousands of scrolls and books were brought here from all over Normannia in the days of the Religious Wars so that the Inceptines might appraise them. Most were burned, but it is said that a good number were laid in corners and forgotten. So you must be careful what you read, Albrec. The merest whiff of unorthodoxy in a text, and you must bring it to me. Is that clear?”

  Albrec nodded. He was sweating. Somewhere in his mind he was wondering if withholding facts would be construed as a sin. He remembered his own private store of scrolls and manuscripts that he had hoarded away to save from the fire, and his unease deepened.

  “You look as white as paper, Albrec. What’s wrong?”

  “I—I thought there was something else in here, before you came.”

  This time both eyebrows shot up the hairless head. “The library has been playing its tricks again, eh? What was it this time, a whisper in your ear? A hand on your shoulder?”

  “It was . . . a feeling, no more.”

  Commodius laid a massive, knot-knuckled fist on Albrec’s shoulder and shook him affectionately. “The faith is strong in you. Albrec. You have nothing to worry about. Whatever ghosts this library is home to cannot touch you. You are girded with the armour of true belief; your faith is both a beacon to light the darkness and a sword to cleave the beasts which lurk therein. Fear cannot conquer the heart of a true believer in the Saint. Now come: I mean to rescue you for a while from the dust and the prowling ghosts. Avila has saved some supper for you and insists you be made to eat it.”

  One great hand propelled Albrec irresistibly away from his work table, whilst the other scooped up the lamp. Brother Commodius paused to sneeze again. “Ah, the unsettled dust of the years. It settles in the chest you know.”

  When they had exited the darkened room Commodius produced a key from his habit and locked the door behind them. Then the pair continued up through the library to the light and noise of the refectories beyond.

  F AR to the west of Charibon’s cloisters, across the ice-glittering heights of the Malvennor Mountains. There is a broad land there between the mountains and the sea beyond, an ancient land: the birthplace of an empire.

  The city of Fimbir had been built without walls. The Electors had said that their capital was fortified by the shields of the Fimbrian soldiery; they needed no other defence.

  And there was truth in their boast. Almost uniquely among the capitals of Normannia, Fimbir had never been besieged. No foreign warrior had ever entered the massively constructed City of the Electors unless he came bearing tribute, or seeking aid. The Hegemony of the Fimbrians had ended centuries before, but their city still bore the marks of empire. Abrusio was more populous, Vol Ephrir more beautiful, but Fimbir had been built to impress. Were it ever to become deserted, the poets said, men of later generations might suppose that it had been reared up by the hands of giants.

  East of the city were the parade grounds and training fields of the Fimbrian army. Hundreds of acres had been cleared and flattened to provide a gaming board of war upon which the Electors might learn to move their pieces. A hill south of the fields had been artificially heightened to provide a vantage point for generals to regard the results of their tactics and strategy. Nothing that ever occurred in battle, it was said, had not already been replicated and studied upon the training fields of Fimbir. Such were the tales that the tercios of the conquerors had engendered over the years and across the continent.

  A cluster of men stood now on the vantage point of the hill overlooking the fields. Generals and junior officers alike, they were clad in black half-armour, their rank marked only by the scarlet sashes that some wore wrapped beneath their sword belts. A stone table that was a permanent fixture here stood in their midst, covered with maps and counters. Coprenius Kuln himself, the first Fimbrian emperor, had set it here eight hundred years previously.

  Horses were hobbled off to one side, to mount order-bearing couriers. The Fimbrians did not believe in cavalry, and this was the only use they had for the animals.

  On the training fields below, formations of men marched and counter-marched. Fifteen thousand of them, perhaps, their feet a deep thunder on the ground that had hardened with the first frosts. A cold early morning sunlight sparked off the glinting heads of their pikes and the barrels of shouldered arquebuses. They looked like the massed playthings of a god left lying on a nursery floor and come to sudden, beetling life.
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  Two men strolled away from the cluster of officers on the hill and stood apart, looking down on the panoply and magnificence of the formations below. They were in middle age, of medium height, broad-shouldered, hollow-cheeked. They might have been brothers save that one wore a black hole where his left eye should have been, and the hair on that side of his head had become silver.

  “The courier, Caehir, died at his own hand last night,” the one-eyed man said.

  The other nodded. “His legs?”

  “They took them off at the knee; there was no saving them. The rot had gone too far, and he had no wish to live as a cripple.”

  “A good man. Pity to lose one’s life because of frostbite, no more.”

  “He did his duty. The message got through. By now, Jonakait and Merkus will be in the passes of the mountains also. We must hope they meet with better luck.”

  “Indeed. So the Five Kingdoms have split. We have two Pontiffs and a religious war in the offing. And all this while the Merduks howl at the gates of the west.”

  “The men at Ormann Dyke; they must be soldiers.”

  “Yes. That was a fight. The Torunnans are no mean warriors.”

  “But they are not Fimbrians.”

  “No, they are not Fimbrians. How many of our people are we to send to their aid?”

  “A grand tercio, no more. We must be cautious, and see how this division of the kingdoms goes.”

  The Fimbrian with the unmutilated face nodded fractionally. A grand tercio comprised some five thousand men: three thousand pike and two thousand arquebusiers, plus the assorted gunsmiths, armourers, cooks, muleteers, pioneers and staff officers who went with them. Perhaps six thousand in all.

  “Will that be enough to save the dyke?”

  “Possibly. But our priority is not so much to save Ormann Dyke as to establish a military presence in Torunna, remember.”

  “I find I am in danger of thinking like a general instead of a politician, Briscus.”

  The one-eyed man named Briscus grinned, showing a range of teeth with smashed gaps between them. “Kyriel, you are an old soldier who sniffs powder-smoke in the wind. I am the same. For the first time in living memory our people will leave the bounds of the electorates to do battle with the heathen. It is an event to quicken the blood, but we must not let it cloud our judgement.”

  “I do not altogether like farming our men out as mercenaries.”

  “Neither do I; but when a state has seventy thousand unemployed soldiers on hand, what else can one do with them? If Marshal Barbius and his contingent impress the Torunnans sufficiently, then we will have all the Ramusian kingdoms crying out for our tercios. The time will come when every capital will have its contingent of Fimbrian troops, and then—”

  “And then?”

  “We will see what we can make out of it, if it happens.”

  They turned to look down on the training fields once more. The pair were dressed no differently from the other senior officers on the hill, but they were Fimbrian Electors and represented half the ruling body of their peculiar country. A word from them, and this army of thousands would march off the training fields and into the cauldron of war wherever they saw fit to wage it.

  “We live in an age where everything will change,” one-eyed Briscus said quietly. “The world of our forefathers is on the brink of dissolution. I feel it in my bones.”

  “An age of opportunity, also,” Kyriel reminded him.

  “Of course. But I think that before the end all the politicians will have to think like soldiers and the soldiers like politicians. It reminds me of the last battle by the Habrir river. The army knew the Electors had already signed away the Duchy of Imerdon, and yet we deployed that morning and fought for it nonetheless. We won, and threw the Hebrians in disorder back across the fords. Then we gathered up our dead and marched away from Imerdon for ever. It is the same feeling: that our armies can win any battle they choose to fight, and yet in the end it will make no difference to the outcome of things.”

  “You wax philosophical this morning, Briscus. That is unlike you.”

  “You must forgive me. It is a hazard of advancing years.”

  From the formations below, lines of smoke puffed out and seconds later the clattering rumble of arquebus fire reached them on the hill. Regiments of arquebusiers were competing against each other to see who could reload the fastest, shooting down lines of straw figures that had been set up on the plain. Volley followed volley, until it seemed that a high-pitched thunder was being generated by the very earth and was clawing up to heaven. The plain below became obscured by toiling clouds of powder-smoke, the fog of war in its most literal sense. The heady smell of it drifted up to the two Electors on the hillside and they snuffed it in like hounds scenting a hare on a winter’s morning.

  A third figure left the gaggle of officers around the stone table and stood to attention behind the Electors until the pair had noticed him. He was a square man; what he lacked in height he made up for in width. Even his chin was as regular as the blade of a shovel, his mouth a lipless gash above it partially obscured by a thick red moustache. His hair was cut so short as to stand up like the cropped mane of a horse; the mark of a man who often wore a helm.

  “Well, Barbius?” Briscus asked the man. “How do they fare?”

  Barbius stared straight ahead. “They’re about as handy as a bunch of seamstresses on a cold morning, sir.”

  Briscus snorted with laughter. “But will they pass?”

  “I’ll work them up a little more before we go, sir. Three rounds a minute, that’s our goal.”

  “The Torunnans think themselves well-drilled if they can get off two in that time,” Kyriel said quietly.

  “They’re not Torunnans, sir—with respect.”

  “Damn right, by God!” Briscus said fervently. His one eye flashed. “I want your command to be as perfect as you can make it, Barbius. This will be the first Fimbrian army the rest of the kingdoms have seen in action for twenty-five years. We want to impress.”

  “Yes, sir.” Barbius’ face had all the animation of a closed helm.

  “Your baggage train?”

  “Fifty carts, eight hundred mules. We travel light, sir.”

  “And you’re happy with the route?”

  Here Barbius allowed himself the merest sliver of a smile. “Through the Narian Hills by way of Tulm, and so to Charibon for the Pontifical blessing. Along the south-eastern shore of the Sea of Tor and down into Torunna by way of the Torrin Gap.”

  “And another Pontifical blessing from the other Pontiff,” Kyriel added, his eyes dancing.

  “You’ve been briefed on your behaviour and that of your men?” Briscus said, serious now.

  “Yes, sir. We are to be as respectful as possible to the Pontiff and the Church authorities, but we are not to be deflected from our line of march.”

  “There is nothing on that line which has the remotest chance of stopping a Fimbrian grand tercio,” Briscus said, his eye narrowing. “But you are to avoid the slightest friction with anyone, especially Almarkans. That is clear, Marshal? You are a nameless functionary; you are obeying orders. All complaints, protests and similar are to be directed to Fimbir, and you are not to delay your march for anything.”

  “Of course, sir.”

  “Let them think you are a mindless soldier whose job is to do as he is told. If you pause to argue with them just once, then they will wrap you up in coils of Inceptine law and hamstring you. This army must get through, Marshal.”

  Barbius looked the Elector in the eye for the first time. “I know, sir.”

  “Very well. Good luck. You are dismissed.”

  Barbius slapped a forearm against his cuirass and left them. Kyriel watched him go, pulling at his lower lip with one restless hand.

  “We are walking a rope here, Briscus.”

  “Don’t I know it. Himerius must accept that we are going to help Torunna, heretic king or no; but we cannot afford to alienate him completely.”<
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  “I see what you mean, about soldiers and politicians.”

  “Yes. We live in a complicated world, Kyriel, but of late it’s become even more interesting than it was before.”

  T WO

  T HE King was gone, and there were those who said that he would never be coming back.

  Abrusio.

  Capital of the Kingdom of Hebrion, greatest port of the western world—indeed, some would say of the entire world. Only ancient Nalbeni might vie with Abrusio for the title.

  For centuries the Royal House of the Hibrusids had ruled in Hebrion and their palace had frowned down over the raucous old port. There had of course been dynastic squabbles, internecine warfare, obscure marital entanglements; but in all that time the Royal house had never relaxed its grip on the throne.

  Things had changed.

  Winter had come to the west, propelled on the wings of war. The armies that battled on the eastern frontiers of the continent had withdrawn to their winter quarters and it seemed that the ships which plied the western seas had followed their example. The trade lanes of nations grew emptier as the waning year grew colder.

  In Abrusio the Great Harbour, the Inner and Outer Roads as the other harbours were named, the sea itself, were whipped into a broken swell of tumultuous waves, white-tops gilding their tips. A steady roar of surf pounded the huge man-made moles that sheltered the harbours from the worst of the winter storms, and the beacon towers were lit along their length, gleaming flames battling the wind to warn approaching ships of the shallows and mark the harbour entrances.