“My son was a weak man, Corfe. Not a bad man, but weak. He did not have the necessary qualities to rule well—not many men do. This kingdom needs a strong hand. I have the ability—we both know it—to give Torunna that strong hand. But I am a woman, and so every step I take is uphill. The only reason I am tolerated on the throne is because there are no other alternatives present. The cream of Torunna’s nobility died in the King’s Battle around their monarch. In any case, Torunnans have never set as much store upon bloodlines as have the Hebrionese, say. But Count Fournier is quite capable of dreaming up some scheme to take power out of my hands and invest it in some form of committee.”
Unable to help himself, Corfe interrupted. “That son of a bitch? He’d have to get through the entire army to do it.”
Odelia smiled with genuine pleasure, but shook her head. “The army would have no say in the matter. But I am taking the long road to my destination. Corfe, Torunna needs a king—that is the long and the short of it.
“I want you to marry me and take the throne.”
Thunderstruck, he sank down on to a chair. There was a long pause during which the Queen appeared increasingly irritated.
“Don’t look at me as if I’d just grown an extra head! Think about it rationally!”
He found his voice at last. “That’s ridiculous.”
She clawed the air, eyes blazing furiously. “Open up your blasted mind, Corfe. Forget about your fears and prejudices. I know how humble your origins are, and I care not a whit. You have the ability to be a great king—more importantly, a great warleader. You could pull the country through this war—”
“I can’t be a king. Great God, lady, I even feel uncomfortable in shoes!”
She threw back her head and laughed. “Then decree that everyone must wear boots or go barefoot! Put the petty rubbish out of your mind for a moment, and think about what you could accomplish.”
“No—no. I am no diplomat. I could not negotiate treaties or—or dance angels on the head of a pin—”
“But you would have a wife who could.” And here her voice was soft, her face grave as a mourner’s. “I would be there, Corfe, to handle the court niceties and the damn protocol. And you—you would have the army wholly your own.”
“No, I don’t understand. We are already there, aren’t we? I have the army, you have the throne. Why change things?”
She leaned close. “Because it could be that others will change them for us. You may have won over Rusio today, but you pushed the rest of them further into a corner. And that is when men are at their most dangerous. Corfe, there is no legal precedent in this kingdom for a queen to rule alone, and thus no legal basis.”
“There is no law forbidding it, is there?” he asked stubbornly.
“I don’t know—no one does for sure. I have clerks rifling through the court archives as we speak, hoping to turn something up. The death of the King has shocked all the office-seekers for the moment—they glimpsed the cliff upon which this kingdom teeters. But sooner or later the shock will wear off, and my position will be challenged. And if they manage to curb my powers even slightly, there is a good chance they will be able to take the army away from you.”
“So there it is.”
“So there it is. You see now the sense of what I am suggesting? As King you would be untouchable.”
He jumped to his feet, stalked across the room with his mind in a maelstrom. Himself a king—absurd, utterly absurd. He would be a laughing-stock. Torunna would be the joke of the world. It was impossible. He reeled away from even the contemplation of it.
And marriage to this woman. Oddly, that disturbed him more than the idea of the crown. He turned and looked at her, to find that she was standing before the fire staring into the flames as though waiting for something. The firelight made her seem younger, though she was old enough to be Corfe’s mother. That old.
“Would it be so terrible to be married to me?” she asked quietly, and the prescience of her question made Corfe start. She was a witch, after all. Could she read minds as well as everything else?
“Not so terrible,” he lied.
“It would be a marriage of convenience,” she said, her voice growing hard. “You would no longer have to come to my bed. I am beyond child-bearing age so there would be no question of an heir. I do not ask you for love, Corfe. That is a thing for the poets. We are talking about a route to power, nothing more.” And she turned her back on him and leaned her hands on the mantel as a man might.
Again, that pain in his heart when he looked at her, and imagined the golden hair turned raven, the green eyes grey. Ah, Heria. Lord God, I miss you.
He did not want to hurt this formidable yet vulnerable woman. He did not love her—doubted if he would ever love her or any other woman again. And yet he liked her, very much. More than that, he respected her.
He strode over to the fireplace, stood behind the Queen and placed his hands on hers so that they were standing one within the other. She leaned back into his body and their fingers intertwined, the ornate rings on hers digging into his flesh. Pain, yes. But he did not mind. Nothing good came without pain in this life. He knew that.
“I would have you as a wife,” he said, and in that moment he believed he meant it. “But the kingship is too lofty a prize for me. I am not the stuff of Royalty.”
Odelia turned and embraced him, and when she drew back she looked strangely jubilant, as though she had won something.
“Time will tell,” was all she said.
F IFTY leagues from where Corfe and his Queen stood the new winter camps of the Merduk army were almost complete. Tens of thousands of men were toiling here, as they had toiled ceaselessly in the days since the King’s Battle. Their redeployment—it was not a withdrawal, or a retreat—entailed a massive labour. They had felled a fair-sized forest to raise a series of stockades which stretched for miles. They had dug ditches and set up thickets of abatis out to the west, all covered by dug-in batteries of artillery. They had erected tall watchtowers, created roads of corduroyed logs and set up their tents within the new defences. A veritable city had sprung up on the plains west of Ormann Dyke, the new roads leading to it thronged with troops coming and going, supply-waggons, artillery limbers, fast-moving couriers and trudging gangs of Torunnan slaves serving as forced labour. Farther east, nestled within yet more lines of field fortifications, a vast supply depot had been set up, and boxes, sacks and barrels of food and ammunition were piled in lines half a mile long and twenty feet high. Crates of blankets and spare uniforms and tents were stacked to one side by the thousand. Waggons plied the bumpy log roads between the depot and the camps continuously, keeping the front-line troops fed and clothed. Perhaps ten square miles of the Torunnan countryside had been thus transformed into the largest and most populous armed camp in the world. Although Aurungzeb, Sultan of Ostrabar, was commander-in-chief of this mighty host, it now included large contingents from the sultanates of Nalbeni, Ibnir and Kashdan. The Merduk states had set aside their differences and were finally combining to settle the issue with the Ramusians once and for all. They aimed now at nothing less than the conquest of all Normannia as far as the Malvennors, and had decided to stop there only because of the dread name of Fimbria.
Aurungzeb himself and his household were not in the winter camps, but had relocated to Ormann Dyke in order to pass the cold weeks of waiting more comfortably. Ostrabar’s Sultan stood this day on the tower from which Martellus the Lion had once watched the Merduk assaults break upon the dyke’s impregnable defences, and silken Merduk banners now flew above the Long Walls that Kaile Ormann had reared up centuries before.
“Shahr Johor,” Aurungzeb boomed.
One of the gaggle of soldiers and courtiers who hovered nearby stepped forward. “My Sultan?”
“Do you know how many of our men died trying to take this fortress?”
“No Highness, but I can find out—”
“It was a question, not an order. Almost thirty thousand, Shahr Johor. And in the end we never took it, we only outflanked it, and forced its evacuation. It is the greatest fortress in the world, it is said. And you know what?”
Shahr Johor swallowed, seeing the flush creep into his sultan’s swarthy cheeks. “What, Highness?”
But the explosion did not happen. Instead, Aurungzeb spoke in a low, reasonable tone. “It is utterly useless to us.”
“Yes, Highness.”
“The Fimbrians, curse their names, constructed it that way. Approaching it from the east, it is unconquerable. But if by some chance you happen to capture it intact, then it is worthless. All the defences face east. From the west, it is indefensible. Very clever, those Fimbrian engineers must have been.”
The courtiers and soldiers waited, wondering if this strange calm were the herald of an unprecedented rage. But when Aurungzeb turned to face them he looked thoughtful.
“I want this fortress destroyed.”
Shahr Indun Johor blinked. “Highness?”
“Are you deaf? Level it. I want the dyke filled in, I want the walls cast down and the tower broken. I want Ormann Dyke wiped off the face of the earth. And then, using the same stones, you shall create another fortress, on the east bank of the river, facing west. If by some freakish chance the Ramusians ever manage to push back our armies, then we shall halt them here, on the Searil. And we shall bleed them white as they did us. And Aekir, my new capital, it shall be safe. Golden Aurungabar, greatest city of the world. See to it, Shahr Johor. Gather together our engineers. I want a set of plans drawn up for me to see by tonight. And a modell. Yes, a scale modell of how it will look, Ormann Dyke obliterated and this new fortress in its place. I must think of a name…”
Shahr Johor bowed, unnoticed, and left the summit of the tower to do his master’s bidding. The courtiers who remained looked at one another. Never before had they heard their master speak of anything save advances and victories, and now here he was planning for defeat. What had happened?”
A flabby, glabrous palace eunuch piped up, “My Sultan, do you truly believe that the accursed Unbelievers could ever push our glorious armies back to the Searil? Surely, they are in their death throes. We shall soon be feasting in the palace of Torunn.”
Aurungzeb stared moodily out at the ancient fortress below him. “I wish I had your optimism, Serrim. This general of the red horsemen. My spies tell me that he is now commander-in-chief of all the Torunnan forces. He and his damned scarlet cavalry have saved the Torunnans from destruction twice now.”
“Who is this man, lord? Do we know? Perhaps our agents—”
Aurungzeb snorted with mirth. “He is, by all accounts, a hard man to kill.”
Then his mood soured again. “Leave me, all of you. No—Ahara, you will remain.” He broke into halting Normannic. “Ramusian, you stay here also.” And in Merduk again: “The rest of you, get out of my sight.”
The tower cleared of people, leaving two figures behind. One was a small man in a black habit whose wrists were bound with silver chains. The other was a slim, silk-clad woman whose face was hidden behind a jewelled veil. Aurungzeb beckoned the woman over, the thunder on his brow lifting a little. He twitched aside her veil and caressed a pale cheek.
“Heart of my heart,” he murmured. “How does it go with you and my son?”
Heria stroked her abdomen. The bulge was visible now. “We are well, my lord. Batak has used his arts to examine the child. It is a healthy boy. In five months, he shall be born.” She spoke in the Merduk tongue.
Aurungzeb beamed, encircled Heria’s shoulders with one massive arm and sighed with contentment.
“How I love to hear you use our speech. It must become your own. The lessons will continue—that tutor has earned his pay.” He lowered his voice. “I shall make you my queen, Ahara. You are a follower of the Prophet now, and you shall be the mother of a sultan one day. My heir cannot have a mere concubine for a dam. Would you like that? Would you like to be a Merduk queen?” And here Aurungzeb set his huge hands on her shoulders and scrutinized her face.