The Heretic Kings

Unbidden, her face was in Corfe’s mind again, as clear as lamplight. That raven-dark hair, and the way one corner of her mouth had tilted upward when she smiled. His Heria was dead, a burnt corpse in Aekir. That part of him, the part which had loved her, was nothing but ash now also. Perhaps the Merduks had carved something out of his own spirit when they had taken the Holy City: something of the capacity for laughter and loving. But that hardly mattered now.

And yet, and yet. He found himself sca

Sweet blood of the holy Saint, he hoped she had died.

The outrider Corfe had dispatched an hour before came cantering back up the side of the road, scattering trudging refugees like a wolf exploding a flock of sheep. He reined in his exhausted horse and flung a hurried salute, his vambrace clanging against the breast of his cuirass in the age-old gesture.

“Toru

“Are we expected?” Corfe asked.

“Yes. There is a small reception party outside the walls, though they’re having a hell of a time with the refugees.”

“Very good,” Corfe said curtly. “Get back in the ranks, Surian, and go easier on your mount next time.”

“Yes, sir.” Abashed, the youthful trooper rode on down the line. Corfe followed him until he had reached the bumping carriage.

“Holiness.”

The curtains twitched back. “Yes, my son?”

“We’ll be in Toru

The mutilated face of Macrobius stared blindly up at Corfe. He did not seem to relish the prospect.

“It starts again, then,” he said, his voice barely audible over the creak and thump of the moving carriage, the hoofbeats of horses on the paved road.

“What do you mean?”

Macrobius smiled. “The great game, Corfe. For a time I was off the board, but now I find myself being moved on it again.”

“Then it is God’s will, Father.”

“No. God does not move the pieces; the game is an invention of man alone.”

Corfe straightened in the saddle. “We do what we must, Holy Father. We do our duty.”

“Which means that we do as we are told, my son.”

The wreck of a smile once more. Then the curtain fell back into place.

T ORUNNA was one of the later-founded provinces of the Fimbrian Empire. Six centuries previously, it had consisted of a string of fortified towns along the western coast of the Kardian Sea, all of them virtually isolated from one another by the wild Felimbric tribesmen of the interior. As the tribes became pacified Toru

Marshal Kaile Orma

It was one of the ironies of the world that Toru

Toru

A man coming upon Toru

It brought back memories for Corfe as his troop of horsemen and their trundling charge came over the final slopes before the city. A tangled riot of later building meant that Toru

In the suburbs the press of people was worse. There were Toru

Before the new, low-built city gates a tercio of pikemen had been drawn up in ranks and a pair of demiculverins flanked them. Slow-match burned in lazy blue streamers. Corfe was not sure if the show of force was to receive the High Pontiff or to keep the teeming refugees out of the I

The Toru

K ING Lofantyr heard the salute echoing across the city, and paused in his pacing to look out of the tower windows. He pushed aside the iron grilles and stepped out on to the broad balcony. The city was a serried sea of roofs reaching out to the north, but he could glimpse the puffing smoke clouds from the casemates on the walls.

“Here at last,” he said. The relief in his voice was a palpable thing.

“Perhaps now you will sit a while,” a woman’s voice said.

“Sit! How can I sit? How will I ever take my ease again, mother? I should never have listened to Abeleyn; his tongue is too renowned for its persuasiveness. The kingdom is on the brink of ruin, and I brought it there.”

“Pah! You have your father’s gift for drama, Lofantyr. Was it you who brought the Merduks to the gates of Aekir?” the woman retorted sharply behind him. “The kingdom won a great battle of late and is holding the line of the east. You are Toru