Turkos put the point of his sabre carefully on a dead man’s deerskin coat and leaned on it and breathed. He felt as if he’d run a mile.
Athena gave a great kick, and sighed. Bloody foam poured out of her mouth, and she died.
Turkos sat on his haunches by her and wept. He had a long cut across the base of his left thumb and he could see the layer of fat beneath the skin – where had that come from? And there was something in his lower leg. And Athena was dead. He had to discover her death anew, three or four times, like a man touching the stump of a missing tooth. He didn’t want her to be dead. He didn’t want to have sacrficed her.
‘Do you think there is a paradise for animals?’ he asked.
The old hunter nodded. ‘Lady Tara has a place for animals,’ he said. He looked around. ‘We should keep moving.’
Turkos mastered himself, but his eyes were hot and full. ‘I loved that horse,’ he said.
‘Then look for her in Tara’s fields, running with the deer and the foxes – no predators and no prey.’ The old man was all but chanting the words. ‘Now get your arse on my horse and let’s ride.’
In an hour they made the first of Osawa’s outposts, and Turkos gave the password and the alarm was sounded, and mounted messengers went off to the villages of the Southern Huran with news of the coming attack. With a day to prepare, none would be taken by surprise.
Turkos returned to the ancient wall tower at Osawa to read months’ worth of news as quickly as he could manage. But attempting to prepare a small fortress for siege by a vast and better-armed army precluded examining much beyond the surface knowledge that the Emperor was a prisoner of the Duke of Thrake, and that his immediate commander, the Logothete, was dead.
While his precious store of mangonels were winched onto the walls and corner towers, he read the two most recent dispatches.
The new Megas Ducas was an Alban mercenary, and – Turkos read the most recent dispatch several times with growing excitement – he was marching towards the border with an army. He – Giannis Turkos – was ordered to collect his mobile garrison and march to meet the Megas Ducas, escorting any fur merchants in Osawa and surrounding villages and their wares.
Of course he was. He was intent on protecting the Empire’s share of the fur trade.
Turkos read both dispatches one more time and then stood at his work table, a dirty bandage around his left hand which was held high in the air to stop the flow of blood, while with his right he tried to write as small as ever he’d learned from the monks in Eressos. He wrote the detailed dispatch in the latest code he had available and sent off four copies, one each for all the birds in the tower. As the last great black and white messenger bird soared away, he closed the shutters of his office against the cold and walked down the curving interior steps to the ground floor, where the hunter lay napping on the guardroom bed.
Turkos woke him. ‘I’d let you sleep, but you’ll want to be gone before the fighting starts,’ he said. ‘Here’s your gold,’ he added, and extended his hand to clasp the hunter’s, ‘and here are my thanks.’
The old man smiled sleepily. ‘I won’t miss the show,’ he said. ‘But I’ll take the gold.’
Later that afternoon, the first war canoes slipped ashore a few miles north of Osawa. A Kree chief stepped out of the first canoe and received Big Pine’s arrow in his throat, He died, thrashing, in the icy water. Big Pine’s war party screeched-
– and the war began.
Part Two
Chapter Thirteen
North of Liviapolis – Mag
When the army marched north from the parade ground, they marched in their new white wool cotes with their best weapons and gear, and they made a fine show. Most men had water in their canteens, and the provident had a length of sausage and some hardtack in their scrips.
They marched away west, up the road to Alba, and the further they went, the more men worried.
Mag had never held any kind of command before. She had the natural power of an older woman – the wisdom that comes with the end of youth’s ambition, plus a little more from her hermetical talents. She had led the altar guild of her small town, and she had helped manage supplies in a castle under siege.
She had sixty women and a dozen lances under John le Bailli, her lover, under her command. She had lost sleep over their preparations. The wagons were loaded to the tops of their steep, outward-jutting sides, and the carts were loaded, and there were water casks and spare sewing needles and tents and mess kettles and dried meat and thread and horseshoes-
None of that caused her a moment’s concern. She could read, and she could write well enough.
But when the train – fifty great wagons and twenty carts and sixty-six mules – passed under the arch of the palace gate and rolled noisily into the gathering dusk, she felt more alone than she had ever felt in her life. She clung to le Bailli’s hand when he mounted the lead wagon box with her in a very uncommanderly way, and he smiled at her in the dark and kissed her lips.
‘I’m terrified,’ she muttered.
Le Bailli laughed. ‘It does me good to see it, woman of wonders.’ He leaned back to stretch his legs and ease his back, caught his spurs on the wagon’s front boards and almost fell off.
She guffawed.
He laughed with her.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Command is easy when you are young, and harder and harder as you get older.’
‘Oh, shut up with your scary philosophy,’ she said, and hugged him a moment. ‘What have I forgotten?’
‘Spare earwax?’ he asked.
For a moment she fell for it . . .
. . . and then she swatted him.
He laughed. ‘Put it away. Whatever you have forgotten, we will now live without.’ He looked back along the line of wagons. ‘How many are new?’
‘All but six,’ she confessed. The wagons had been built at the Navy Yard to hide them from prying eyes – she’d used hermetical means to hide them still further.
‘Best military wagons I’ve ever seen. He’s spent a great deal of money on this,’ le Bailli said.
Mag nodded. ‘Yes.’
Le Bailli nodded. ‘You’re a company officer and I’m a lowly corporal. I don’t need to know, I’m sure.’ He grinned. ‘But by God, woman, it seems we’re marching into the mountains in winter. What’s he doing?’
Mag laughed. ‘He’s being himself. Mysterious, arrogant, and probably victorious.’ She kissed le Bailli. ‘We’re about to pass the gates, Corporal. Go defend my wagons from the enemy, before I use your handsome body for a distraction from the stress of command.’
‘Anytime,’ he said, and gave her a little interest on the investment of her kiss before stepping off the wagon into the saddle of his horse, who grunted as if to disapprove of all this showmanship.
Mag’s convoy rolled into a camp prepared by Gelfred’s men – stakes and lines laid out for tents, and a strong picket of cavalry covering their arrival. When the army arrived half an hour later, they found their tents up and most messes had cooked food waiting.
The Morean volunteers ate their hot food, slept in their prepared tents, and didn’t desert.
And the next morning, they rose before dawn in the foggy cold, and marched away over the mountains towards the Green Hills.
The weather was superb. The roads were frozen and hard, but the sun was bright, and every man was mounted.
On the third day, as they jogged along at a fast walk over rolling downs full of sheep and cattle, the army passed corpses – little knots of men.
Ser Michael turned to Ranald Lachlan. They were climbing a tall ridge dominating the main road into Thrake. Mountains rolled away to the north and west. Off to the north-west they could see the looming walls of Kilkis, which the Albans called Middleburg. It was a mighty fortress dominating the crossroads where the North Road and West Road met. At the foot of the fortress sat the last town east of the Inn of Dorling.