The Iron Wars

“What ho, the popinjay,” Andruw said, rubbing his eyes, managing a tired grin.

Corfe began removing the court uniform and do

“It’s all they could find, apparently,” Andruw told him. “I don’t give a damn. I’d have slept in a ditch, the men too. The horses are being well looked after, though. I made sure of that. They too have straw to lie on.”

“Let the men sleep. You three come with me. We have work to do.”

His three officers obeyed him like laboured old men. The expression on Corfe’s face quelled any questions they might have had.

Toru

Companies of Toru

The prospective recruits were encamped a mile from the walls, out of the swamp of the refugees. They had posted sentries, Corfe was gratified to see, and as he and his three comrades puffed up the slope to meet them a knot of riders thundered out of their lines, coming to a mud-splattering halt ten yards away. The lead rider, a young, raven-dark man as slender as a girl, called out in the language of the tribes, and Marsch called back. Corfe heard his own name mentioned, and the dark rider’s eyes bored into him.

“I hope they don’t put too much store by appearances,” Andruw muttered. “We should have ridden.”

The dark rider dismounted in one fluid movement, and came forward. He was shorter even than Corfe, and he wore old-fashioned chainmail of exquisite workmanship. A long, wickedly curved sabre hung at his side, and Corfe noted the light lance dangling from the pommel of his horse’s saddle.

“This is Morin,” Marsch said. “He is of the Cimbriani. He has six hundred of his people here. The rest are Feldari, and a few of my own people, the Felimbri. He has been elected warleader by the host.”

Corfe nodded.

The dark tribesman, Morin, launched into a long and passionate speech in his own language.

“He wishes to know if it is true that his men are to fight the Merduks only,” Marsch translated.

“Tell him it’s true.”

“But he also says that he will fight the Toru

Corfe and Andruw looked at each other. “Toru

“They want to fight,” Marsch said simply, whilst beside him Ensign Ebro, a prime example of Toru

“Tell Morin,” Corfe said, holding the eyes of the dark tribesman, “that as long as his people serve under me, they shall be treated like men, and I shall speak for them in everything. If I break faith with them, then may the seas rise up and drown me, may the green hills open up and swallow me, may the stars of heaven fall on me and crush me out of life for ever.”

It was the ancient oath of the mountain tribes which Marsch and the rest of the Cathedrallers had once sworn to him. When Marsch had finished translating it to Morin, the dark tribesman instantly fell on one knee and offered Corfe the hilt of his sabre—and Corfe heard the same words coming back at him in the rolling tongue of the Cimbriani.

His little army had just grown by a thousand men.

TEN

I T would take not two days but three to get the command ready for the road north. Thirteen hundred men and almost two thousand horses, plus a baggage train of some two hundred mules. The entire column had been fitted out in the discarded Merduk armour which lay mouldering in a quartermaster’s warehouse, and the new men’s gear was lathered in red paint, just as that of the original Cathedrallers had been. They had looked somewhat askance at the Merduk equipment at first. Unlike Marsch and his five hundred, they possessed their own weapons and wore finely wrought mail hauberks, but Corfe had insisted that they don the same armour his original command had fought in down south. Also, he wanted heavy cavalry, the shattering impact of an armoured charge. Half of the newcomers had powerful recurved compound bows of horn and mountain yew and bristling quivers hung from their cantles, but they were now outfitted with the lances of the Merduk heavy horse. They were to be shock troops, pure and simple.

Thirteen hundred men, a thousand of whom had never been part of a regimented military command before. Corfe organized them into twenty-six troops, fifty strong each, and sprinkled the three hundred survivors of his original command throughout the new units as NCOs. Two troops made up a squadron, and four squadrons a wing: thus three wings, plus a squadron in reserve to guard the baggage and spare horses. Corfe made Andruw, Ebro and Marsch wing commanders, Ebro almost speechless with gratitude at being given a real command at last.

All very well on paper, but the reality was infinitely more complex. It took a day and a half to equip the new men and reorganize the command. Morin, it turned out, spoke good Norma

The command was heterogenous to an extreme, liable to sub-divide along the lines of tribe. The new men saw themselves as Cimbriani or Feldari rather than Cathedrallers, but once they had a few battles under their belt, Corfe knew that would change.

Their camp was a buzzing maelstrom of activity, night and day. Andruw and a couple of squadrons busied themselves with the collection of stores from a reluctant and somewhat outraged Toru

He worked his men hard, but no harder than he worked himself. By the third day the three wings were able, with a certain amount of cursing and jostling, to move from road column to line of battle at a single trumpet call from Cerne, Corfe’s bugler. Their efforts would have made a Toru