Ahead of the Torunnans and Fimbrians as they formed up on the plain more tent encampments sprawled amid a web of gravel roads, and beyond them the tricorne tower of the Cathedral of the Saint loomed tall and stark, matched in height by the Library of Saint Garaso and the Pontiff's Palace close by, all connected by the Long Cloisters. That was the heart of Charibon, and of the Second Empire itself. Those buildings must all be laid in ruin and their inhabitants destroyed if the head of this snake were to be cut off.
Albrec had passionately disagreed when Corfe had told him of his intentions back in Torunn, but Albrec was not a soldier, and he was not here, staring at the vast factory of war that Charibon had become. Corfe would rather a thousand books burn than he needlessly lose a single one of his men, and he would see the history of ages go up in smoke rather than let one scion of Aruan's evil brood escape. This he had impressed upon his officers and his men in a council of war held up in the hills, though Golophin, who had attended, had said nothing.
'They have no pickets out,' Ensign - Haptman rather -Baraz said incredulously. 'Sir, I believe they're all asleep.'
'Let us hope so, Haptman.' Corfe looked up and down at the line which stretched out of sight in the raw dawn light. Then he breathed in deep. 'Alarin, signal the advance.'
Corfe's colour-bearer was a Cimbric tribesman, a close kinsman of Felorin's. He now stood up in his stirrups and waved the sable and scarlet banner of Torunna forward and back, for no bugle calls were to be used until the army had joined battle. The signal was taken up all down the line, and slowly and in silence that huge ordered crowd of men began to move, and became a muffled creeping darkness which edged closer to the tents of the enemy, bristling with barbed menace. Anyone looking closely at the war harness of the army's soldiers would have rubbed their eyes and stared, for every man had welded to his armour short spikes of iron nails, and even the horses' chamfrons and breastplates were similarly adorned, whilst the spear points of the Fimbrians and lanceheads of the Cathedrallers were not bright winking steel, but black iron also. Save for the scarlet of the Cathedrallers, the appearance of the army was sombre as a shadow, with hardly a gleam of bright metal to be seen.
When they had advanced two miles Corfe ordered the reserve to edge farther out on the left, for they were passing the camps of the Knights Militant about their citadel. There was activity there now where there had been none before, and he could see squadrons of cavalry mounting their horses. And then a bright series of horn calls split the morning and from the summit of the citadel's tower a grey smoke went up.
'It would seem the enemy has clambered out of bed at last,' he said mildly. 'Baraz, ride to Colonel Olba with the reserve and tell him to drop back farther and cover our left rear. He is to go into square if necessary, but he is to be prepared to ward off the Knights Militant from the main body.'
'Sir!' Baraz galloped off.
'Ensign Roche.'
'Yes, sir.' The young officer's horse was dancing under him and his eyes were bright as glass. He was about to see a real battle at last.
'Go to Marshal Kyne in the middle of the phalanx, and tell him that he is to keep advancing for Charibon itself, even if he loses contact with the arquebusiers on his left. He has my leave to detach a flank guard if he sees fit, but he must keep moving regardless. Clear?'
'Yes, sir!' Clods of turf flew through the air like birds as Roche wheeled his horse away in turn.
Yes, the enemy was awake all right. A mile in front of the army men were tumbling out of their tents and forming up with confused haste. They were in Almarkan blue, arquebusiers and sword-and-buckler men. Many thousands of them were now preparing to bar the way into Charibon. As they milled about, the bells of the Cathedral of the Saint, and those of every other church in the monastery-city began to peal the alarm, and Corfe could see that the streets of Charibon were clogging with troops rushing south and east to meet him. Out to the west of the city he could see other formations moving on the plain, Finnmarkan gallowglasses according to the word of his scouts. They had vast camps out there, but had two miles to march before they would be on his flank. Corfe drew the Answerer, and the ancient pattern-welded iron of John Mogen's sword glittered darkly as it left the scabbard. He raised it in the air and led the Bodyguard out to the left rear of the Cathedra Hers. The Torunnan army was eating up the yards to Charibon at a fearsome pace, and was now deployed in a great L-shape with the base of the L facing west. Not a single battlecry or shout came from the ranks; the only sound was the dull thunder of all those thousands of hoofs and feet.
'Ensign Brascian,' said Corfe to another of his young staff who clustered about him. 'Go to Colonel Rilke of the artillery. You will find him with the Cathedrallers. Tell him to deploy his guns to the west at once and commence to engage the Knights Militant. Then find Comillan and say he is to charge the Knights at his own discretion, but he is not to pursue. He is not to pursue, is that clear?'
'Very clear, sir.'
'He is to pull back as soon as the enemy is halted and in disorder, and the guns will cover his withdrawal. Then he is to hold himself in readiness for further orders.'
Seven or eight thousand of the Knights Militant had now formed up in a long line facing east, in front of their citadel and the tents that were pitched at its foot. They would advance very soon, and must be neutralised. Corfe watched Brascian pelt off, slapping his horse's rump with the flat of his sabre. He disappeared into the sea of red-armoured horsemen that was the Cathedrallers, and scant minutes later the ranks of the cavalry parted and the gun teams began to emerge and set up before them. The Cathedrallers halted behind the line of six-pounders and dressed their ranks. For all that they were composed mainly of the Cimbric tribes, they were as well disciplined as Torunnan regulars now, and Corfe's heart swelled at the sight of them. What had once been a motley band of ill-armed galley slaves had over the years become the most feared body of cavalry in the world.
The Knights Militant began to advance, a tonsured Presbyter out to their front and waving them on with his mace. They too were heavily armoured, with the Saint's Symbol picked out in white upon their breastplates, and their faces were hidden behind their closed helms. Their horses were of the fine, long-limbed strain which had been bred as hunters and palfreys on the Torian Plains for centuries by the aristocracy of Almark, but they were smaller in stature than the massive destriers of the Cathedrallers. The horses of Corfe's mounted arm were descended from those brought east by the Fimbrians, back in the ancient days when some of their troops still went mounted, and the best of these had been stolen and raided by the tribesmen of the Cimbrics over the years, and for centuries after had been selected and bred purely for size and courage. For war.
The startling boom of a gun as the first six-pounder went off, followed by a close-spaced salvo from all three batteries. Rilke had trained his gun teams well. Hardly had the cannons jumped back on their carriages than his men were levering them forward again, worming and sponging them out, and reloading. They were using canister, hollow metal shells filled with scores of arquebus balls, and as the smoke cleared the carnage they produced was awesome to see. All along the front of the Knights' line horses were tumbling screaming to their sides, crushing their riders, or rearing up with their bowels exposed or backing frantically away from the deadly hail to crash into their fellows behind them. The Knights' advance stalled in bloody confusion. The horse of their Presbyter was galloping riderless about the field with gore streaming from its holed neck and flanks, and its owner lay motionless in the grass behind it, his tonsure pale as a porcelain bowl on the trampled turf.
'Now', Corfe whispered, banging his gauntleted hand on his knee. 'Go now!’
fired their second salvo he spurred out to the front of his men with his colour-bearer in tow, and with a wordless cry ordered them forward. The hunting horns of the Cimbrics sounded full and clear over the screams of maimed horses and men, and that huge line of armoured cavalry began to move, like some monstrous titan whose leash had been slipped. Corfe's heart went there with them as they quickened into a trot, a canter, and then the lances came down in a full-blooded charge to contact. The earth trembled under them and the tribesmen began to sing the terrible battle paean of their native hills, and still singing they ploughed into the enemy formations like the blade of a hot knife sinking into butter. The first and second lines of Cathedrallers made a deep scarlet wedge in the ranks of the Knights Militant, and the smaller horses of the Himerians were knocked off their feet by the impact of that charge. The Cathedrallers discarded their broken and bloody lances and fired a volley of matchlock pistols at point-blank range, adding to the carnage and the panic. Then the silver horn calls signalled the withdrawal, and the first two lines turned about and fell back, covered by the advance of the third and fourth ranks, who rode through their files, formed up neatly and fired a rolling pistol volley in their turn. Comillan's command trotted back across the field unmolested and seemingly unscathed, though Corfe could see the scarlet bodies which littered the plain they left behind them. But these were as nothing compared to the great wreckage of carcasses and steel-clad carrion which had once been the proud ranks of the Knights Militant.
The survivors of the charge, many now on foot, streamed back across the plain through the trampled debris of their tented camp, and sought sanctuary about the walls of their citadel. The Torunnan advance continued.
Aruan, aghast, watched the ruin of his Knights from the high tower of the Pontifical Palace. Inceptine clerks and errand-runners clustered about him like black flies settling on a wound, but none dared meet their master's blazing eyes.- As his gaze went hither and thither across the wide battlefield, he saw the Almarkan troops south of Charibon stand to fire a volley of ragged arquebus fire. The oncoming Torunnans were not even checked, but closed up their ranks and marched over the bodies of their dead. Even as he watched, the pikes of the Orphans came down from the vertical and became a bristling fence of bitter points which reflected no light. The Almarkans could not withstand that fearsome sight, and began to fall back to the dubious shelter of their encampment, pausing to fire as they went. The Torunnan phalanx paused, and the thousand arquebusiers within its ranks fired in their turn. Then out of the smoke the Orphans marched on once more. They did not seem to be men, but rather minute cogs in some great, terrible engine of war, as unstoppable as a force of nature.
Aruan's eyes rolled back in his head and a great snarling came from his throat. His aides backed away, but he was utterly indifferent to them. He gathered his strength and launched a bolt of pure, focussed power into the east, like a puissant broadhead propelled by a bow of immense force. This lightning-swift Dweomer scrap carried the message of his mind's demand.
Bardolin, to me.
He came back to himself and snapped at his aides without looking at them, his eyes still fixed on the vast panorama of the smoking battlefield below.
'Loose the Hounds,' he said.
The Torunnan line opened out. As the main body of the infantry advanced, the Cathedrallers turned north and covered their open flank, and with them came Rilke's guns. But in the gap left by the departure of the red horsemen, Colonel Olba's reserve formation shook out from column into line of battle, and faced west to guard against any fresh attack by the remnants of the Knights. Near the apex of these two lines the Torunnan King, his standard rippling sable and scarlet above him, took up position surrounded by his Bodyguard.
From the north-west the long columns of glittering mail-clad gallowglasses, the storm troops of the Second Empire, approached, while from their camps along the shores of the Torian Sea trotted fresh contingents of Almarkans and Perigrainians and Finnmarkans. The blue sky was dotted with the tiny flapping shapes of homunculi running their master's errands. Aruan was recalling every tercio that remained between the Cimbrics and the Narian Hills to the defence of Charibon. And still the bells tolled madly in the churches, and the Torunnans came on like a wave of black iron.
It was Golophin who sensed their coming first. He stiffened in the saddle of the army mule which was his preferred mount and seemed almost to sniff the air.
'Corfe,' he cried. 'The Hounds!'
The King looked at him, and nodded. He turned to Astan his bugler. 'Sound me the "halt".'
Clear and cold over the tumult of the battle the horn call rang out. As soon as the notes had died the buglers of other companies and formations took it up, and in seconds the entire battle-line had stopped moving, and the Orphans grounded their pikes. Those two miles and more of armed men and stamping horses paused as though waiting, and the field became almost quiet except for stray spatters of gunshots here and there and the neighing of impatient destriers. To the north the bells of Charibon had fallen silent.
Golophin seemed to be listening. He stood up tense and stiff in his stirrups while his mule shifted uneasily under him. Soon all the men of the army could hear it. The mad, cacophonous chorus of a wolf pack in full cry, but magnified so that it rose up over the trampled and bloodstained and scorched grass of the battlefield and seemed to issue from the very air about their heads.
'Arquebusiers, stand by!' Corfe shouted, raising the Answerer, and down through the army the order was repeated, while the Cathedrallers clicked open their saddle-holsters and reached for their matchlocks.
They came in a huge pack, hundreds, thousands of them. From the centre of Charibon they poured along the streets in a fanged, hairy torrent, their eyes glaring madly and their claws clicking and sliding on the cobbles. The human troops of Aruan made way for them in terror, shrinking against walls and ducking into doorways. But the Hounds ignored them. Running now on four legs, now on two, they burst out of the narrow streets and formed up vast as a cloud on the plain before Charibon, marshalled by mail-clad Inceptines. Lycan-thropes of every shape and variety imaginable milled there, yapping and snarling and hissing their hatred at the silent ranks of the Torunnans, a tableau from some primeval nightmare.
The Almarkans, who were caught between the two lines, streamed west in utter panic, collapsing the last of their tents behind them, some dropping their weapons as they ran. They were not professionals but shepherds of the Narian Hills, fishermen from the shores of the Hardic Sea, and they wanted no part of the slaughter to come.
Corfe stared narrowly at the mobs of shifters who snapped and spat by the thousand before his men, but yet obeyed the commands of their Inceptine leaders and remained in place. He shaded his eyes and looked up at the high buildings of Charibon itself, less than a mile away now, and wondered if perhaps one of the figures he saw standing there was the architect of these monstrosities. A small group of men was watching from the tower next to the cathedral - one of them must be Aruan, surely. And even as he watched the air seemed to shimmer about them, and ere he looked away, rubbing his watering eyes, he was sure their number had increased by one.
In that moment, the Hounds of God sprang forward. They loped through the ruined camp of the Almarkans looking from afar like a tide of rats, and the roaring, howling and snarling they made as they came on made the horses rear up and fight their bridles in fear. Corfe gave no order, for his men knew what to do. The Hounds ran straight up to his line in a boiling mass, and with them came an overpowering, awful stink, heavy as smoke.
With forty yards to go the Orphans levelled their pikes once more, and every firearm in the entire army was discharged in one long, stertorous volley that seemed to go on for ever. The front of the army was hidden in a solid wall of smoke and a moment later hundreds and hundreds of werewolves and shifters of all shapes and misshapes came hurtling out of it and threw themselves upon the Torunnan front rank.
The army seemed to shudder at the impact, and was at once engaged in hand-to-hand combat all along its length, and Corfe could see soldiers being flung through the air and smashed and clawed off their feet. But every time a shifter struck one of Corfe's men, no matter how glancing the blow, it shrieked and at once collapsed. Soon at the feet of the Orphans and the Torunnans of the front line a horrible tidemark built up, a barricade of nude bodies. For when the shifters were so much as grazed by the spiked iron of the Torunnan armour, the Dweomer left them, and their beast-bodies melted away.
As the smoke of the initial volley cleared and drifted in rent patches out to sea, it was possible to perceive the carnage that the arquebusiers had wrought. Thousands of naked corpses littered the plain, in places lying piled in mounds three and four deep. The grass was dark and slimy with their blood.
The attack of the Hounds faltered. Even through the blood rage that impelled them they finally realised their mistake, and began to pull back from that deadly line of iron-clad men. They streamed away in their hundreds, trampling their Inceptine officers or, snarling, beating them aside. But there Was to be no chance even in retreat. As soon as they broke off the army's arquebuses were levelled again, and Corfe heard the voices of his officers bellowing out. Another volley, and another. Every round his men fired was made not of lead, but of pure iron, and the heavy bullets snicked and whined and scythed across the battlefield so that the surviving Hounds were cut down in swathes as they withdrew. When the smoke finally cleared again the plain was empty of life, and the corpses of Aruan's most feared troops littered it like a ghastly windfall. They had been utterly destroyed. An eerie silence fell over the field, as though all men were astounded by the sight.
Corfe turned to Astan his bugler and simply nodded. The tribesman put his horn to his lips and blew. The Torunnan advance began again.
'Golophin has betrayed us,' Aruan said, his voice harsh as stone. 'He has told the Torunnans how to kill us.'
Bardolin stood with the last shifting threads of the Dweomer dwindling about him. His clothes smelled slightly scorched and his face was wan with fatigue. 'Any hedge witch could have told them the same.'
'There are none left in Torunna. No, it was Golophin. He has chosen his side at last. A pity. I thought he would see sense in the end.' Aruan's eyes seemed slightly out of focus, as if they could not quite take in the enormity of the spectacle before them.
"Their infantry are entering the city’ he said. 'Bardolin, in God's name, what kind of men are these? Does nothing daunt them?'
The Hebrian mage did not answer his question. 'The Hounds have failed us, for the moment. There are others we can call on when the time is right. But for now we must fight the enemy sword to sword. Reinforcements are on their way from the north, and the south. Corfe has made a brave fight of it, but he cannot win, not against the numbers we will bring to bear on him.'