Then we embarked, the horses and grooms going on a ship that had been converted for the purpose. My own Sea-Holly had arrived, but was to carry men of the Trained Bands, who had decided to go to war even though, strictly, they were not so required. The Trained Bands were a militia intended to defend Selford itself, and not go abroad on expeditions, but their officers desired glory no less than other officers, and with some fine speeches and a little money, they convinced their battalions to cross the seas and fight the rebels. They had already been across once, after all.
The crossing was made with the protection of the warships of the navy, including the Lady Tern, now renamed the Sovereign, and beyond the weathering of squalls we arrived at the Island without incident, though with most of our troop being wretched and sick for the whole voyage. The wind backed just as we came to the River Brood, and so we spent a day warping up the river, capstans clanking, and arrived after nightfall, in freezing rain.
All the choice billets had already been taken up, so our horses were stabled in the prayer hall of a monastery outside the town, the troopers crowding the monks out of their cells and sending them into the world to beg for shelter. Lord Utterback and I enjoyed the quarters of the abbot, which were filled with the odor of incense, and graced with expensive hangings, with furniture imported from the Empire, and with a beautiful feather bed with a canopy, which Utterback appropriated for himself. I slept on a couch in the anteroom, and was grateful that the monks had not devoted themselves entirely to austerity.
I joined Utterback when he reported to the Knight Marshal, who had taken up residence in the citadel as a guest of Sir Andrew de Berardinis. I had nearly forgot my first impressions of the Queen’s Captain General, but the memory returned at the sight of the frail old man in the coat of sable fur, his charms hanging off his belt and around his neck. At first sight of the old man, I had a presentiment of onrushing catastrophe, a storm in bright armor fast approaching, and the Knight Marshal trying to hold it back it with his frail arms. I wondered what I was doing there, and then remembered that I had nowhere else to be.
Armies were full of men with nothing to lose, and I was one of them. I had failed at everything, and if I failed at soldiering, no-one would care.
At Roundsilver Palace, the Captain General had brought two young men as his supporters, and now he had a half dozen with him. I learned they were his grandsons. The old man greeted Utterback in his mumbling voice, and offered us mulled wine. My lord introduced me, and the puffy eyes viewed me without recognition, and moved away.
“I have taken your advice, Sir Erskine,” I told him.
The puffy eyes returned to my face, and as comprehension had clearly not dawned, I chose to clarify. “On the occasion, at His Grace of Roundsilver’s, when I related the story of how I had put a stop to the depredations of the outlaw Basil of the Heugh, you advised me to join the Queen’s Army.”
“I do not recall the occasion,” he said vaguely, “but I have long advised that all men should join the army and serve their Queen.”
I saw in the wan light the opalescent glimmer of cataracts in both his eyes, and realized that he was nearly blind. It struck me that he was a metaphor for this entire war, and perhaps all wars, a sightless, senescent groping for glory and treasure.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
We suffered inexplicable halts followed by inexplicable marches. Half the time the army went to bed hungry, with the wagons leagues back, the oxen dragging them from one ditch to the next with mud packed around the axles. Even the string of pack-mules I’d persuaded Utterback to purchase sometimes never found us.
The siege train, with the duke’s two great guns, was days behind.
We could have avoided this by taking either of the military coast roads built in ancient times by the Aekoi, but that would have allowed Clayborne to sweep in behind us and seize our base at Longfirth. And so we marched straight for Howel, or as straight as our mire-beset road permitted.
I had also discovered why I had purchased more than one horse. My gentle mare, Daffodil, had died in Longfirth of nightshade that had been mixed in her fodder by whatever careless person had cut the grass the previous autumn, and my bay courser, Shark, had died on the march of a colic. That left me with Phrenzy, an ill-tempered animal who over the weeks I had brought to a grudging obedience, and who I hoped would be as savage to the enemy as he was to me.
The whole campaign had been a shambles from the first day. I wondered if all wars were like this, or if I were simply unlucky.
On maps, the mountains of the Cordillerie were a neat line stretching from the northern coast of Bonille to the city of Lippholme on Lake Gurlidan, but I was in the act of learning that the Cordillerie was not a single row of mountains, but many long, irregular folds of ground rising up one after the next. Each time the army climbed one pass, it was only to view another, higher pass beyond.
Today was no exception. The army had toiled up from Mankin Clough, where the lucky among us had been billeted in the town, only to top the pass and view another, higher slope beyond. The next ridge was heavily crowned by dark pines that obscured the location of the pass, and for all I knew, Clayborne’s entire army might be hidden in those trees.
The dragoons, who I could see already dropping into the next valley, would be scouting the pass by sundown.
No one knew where Clayborne or his rebel army was, but it was certain that we would have to fight before the Queen’s Army reached Howel. A defense of one of the passes was very possible, but Clayborne might choose to wait until the Queen’s Army descended to the plain of Howel, where the many rivers and bogs formed natural lines of defense, and where our supply would have to cross every pass in the Cordillerie before it reached us.
I turned my horse’s head and trotted across tall, sere meadow grass to where the Utterback Troop waited in an untidy mass by the side of the road. They were dismounted and resting their horses, which were splashed to the shoulder, and for lack of any other occupation cropping the brown grass. Lord Utterback stood apart, his eye to a glass as he viewed the ridge ahead. I drew Phrenzy to a halt and dropped the reins.
“My lord,” said I. “Can you explain to me the function of dragoons?”
For certainly I did not understand their purpose. They were cavalry, but they fought not with sword or pistol, but rather with a special weapon called the dragon, after which they took their name. The dragon was either a very heavy pistol or a very short blunderbuss, with a bell mouth sometimes cast in the shape of a dragon’s mouth, and intended to be used one-handed. It had a very short range and was very inaccurate, and once it was discharged the dragoons had to withdraw to reload. It seemed they would be quite useless in battle.
“The purpose of dragoons,” said Lord Utterback, “is to make we of the demilances feel superior to them.”
“That seems reasonable,” I said. I looked over my shoulder at the valley beyond.