The Heretic Kings (40 page)

“We are holding our own rather nicely,” Sastro di Carrera said with satisfaction. His perch on a balcony high in the Royal palace afforded him a fine view of Lower Abrusio, almost half of which lay in flickering ruin.

“I think we have exhausted the main effort of the enemy,” Presbyter Quirion agreed. “But a part of the fleet, a strong squadron, has not been in sight for days. Rovero may have sent it off somewhere to create some devilment, and the main part of Hebrion’s navy is at anchor beyond the Great Harbour. I fear they may assault the booms soon.”

“Let them,” Sastro said airily. “The mole forts house a score of heavy guns apiece. If Rovero sends in his ships to force the entrance to the harbour they will be cut to pieces by a deadly crossfire. No, I think we have them, Quirion. This is the time to see whether they will consider a negotiated surrender.”

Quirion shook his round, close-cropped head. “They’re in no mood for talking yet, unless I miss my guess. They still have a goodly force left to them, and our own men are thinly stretched. They will make another effort soon, by ship perhaps. We must remain vigilant.”

“As you wish. Now, what of my coronation plans? I trust they are forging ahead?”

Quirion’s face took on a look of twisted incredulity. “We are in the middle of a half-fought war, Lord Carrera. This is hardly the time to begin worrying about pomp and ceremony.”

“The coronation is more than that, my dear Presbyter. Don’t you think that the presence in Abrusio of an anointed king, blessed by the Church, will be a factor in persuading the rebels to lay down their arms?”

Quirion was silent for a moment. From the city below came the odd crack of arquebus fire where pickets were taking potshots at each other, but compared to the hellish chaos of the past days Abrusio seemed almost tranquil.

“There may be something in what you say,” he admitted at last. “But we will not be able to stump up much in the way of pomp for a time yet. My men and yours are too busy fighting to keep what we have.”

“Of course, but I ask you to bear it in mind. The sooner this vacuum is filled the better.”

Quirion nodded and then turned away. He leaned on the balcony rail and stared out over the maimed city.

“They say that fifty thousand of the citizens perished in the fire, quite apart from the thousands who died in the fighting,” he said. “I don’t know about you, Lord Carrera, but for me that is a heavy load for conscience to bear.”

“They were heretics, the scrapings of the sewers. Of no account,” Sastro said scornfully. “Do not let your conscience grow tender on their behalf, Quirion. The state is better off without them.”

“Perhaps.

“Well
perhaps
you would care to walk with me and show me your plans for the defence of the Upper City.”

“Yes, Lord Carrera,” Quirion said heavily. As he turned away from the balcony, however, he had a moment of agonizing doubt. What had he done here? What kind of creature was he making a king of?

The moment passed, and he followed Sastro into the planning chamber of the palace, where the senior officers of their forces were awaiting them.

T HERE was no beauty in ships for the lady Jemilla. To her they were little more than complicated instruments of torture, set to float on an element which might have been designed specifically to cause her discomfort.

But there were times when she could dimly see some of the reasons why men held them in such awe and reverenced them so. They were impressive, if nothing else.

She was taking a turn about the poop-deck of the
Providence
, the flagship of Rovero and Abeleyn’s squadron. If she did not spend too much time looking at the gentle rise and fall of the horizon and concentrated instead on the cold wind which fanned her pale cheeks, then she might almost enjoy the motion. In any case, she would rather die than be sick here on deck, in front of five hundred sailors and marines and soldiers, all of whom were stealing privy glances up at her as she paced heavily to and fro from one bulwark to the other.

The flagship was a magnificent two-decker mounting some fifty guns, four-masted and with high-built fore- and stern-castles. Seen from aft, with her gold ornament and long galleries hanging over her wake, she looked like nothing so much as some baroque church front. But her decks presented an entirely different aspect. They had already been strewn with sand so that when the time came the gunners and sailors would not slip in their own blood. The guns had been run out, the firetubs set around the mast butts, and the slow-match which would set off the guns already lit and spreading its acrid reek about the ship. They were cleared for action. Abrusio was just over a league away. The admiral had told her they were doing six knots, and would raise the city in less than half an hour. She would be confined when that happened in the dark below-decks, in the murky stench of bilge and close-packed humanity which was the particular hallmark of every warship. So she was making the most of the fresh air, preparing herself for the ordeal ahead.

Abeleyn joined her on the poop. He was in half-armour, black-lacquered steel chased with silver and with a scarlet sash about his middle. He looked every inch the sovereign as he stood there with one hand resting on his sword hilt and the other cradling the open-faced helm which he would wear into battle. Jemilla found herself curtseying to him without conscious volition. He seemed to have grown in stature somehow, and she noticed for the first time the streaks of grey in his curly hair behind the temples.

“I trust you are enjoying your last moments of freedom, lady,” he said, and something in the way he said it made her shiver.

“Yes, sire. I am no sailor, as you know. I would stay up here throughout the battle if I could.”

“I believe you would.” Abeleyn smiled, his regal authority falling from him. He was a young man again. “I have seen seasick marines lift their heads and forget about their malady the moment the guns begin to roar. Human nature is a strange thing. But I will feel better knowing that you are safe below the waterline.”

She bowed slightly. “I am selfish. I think only of myself, and sometimes forget the burden I bear, the King’s child.” She could not resist reminding him, though she knew he disliked her doing it.

Sure enough, his face hardened. The boy disappeared again.

“You had best go below, lady. We will be within range of the city batteries in less than half a glass.”

“As you wish, sire,” she said humbly, but as she started for the companion ladder she paused and set her hand on his. “Be careful, Abeleyn,” she whispered.

He gripped her hand briefly and smiled with his mouth alone. “I will.”

The squadron went about, the sails on every ship flashing in and out as one, obedient to the signal pennants of the flagship. They were around the last headland and could see in the distance Abrusio Hill, the sprawl of the city itself and the fleet which stood ready beyond its harbours.

The sight was a shock for Abeleyn, no matter that he had tried to prepare himself for it. It seemed to him at first glance that his capital was entirely in ruins. Swathes of rubble-strewn wasteland stretched across the city, and fires were burning here and there. Only the western waterfront and the Upper City on the hillside seemed unchanged. But Old Abrusio was destroyed utterly.

As the squadron was sighted, the fleet began its salute, some four hundred vessels suddenly coming alive in clouds of smoke and flame, a thunder which echoed across the hills inland and carried for miles out to sea as the King was saluted and welcomed back to his kingdom. The salute was the signal for the battle to commence, and before its last echoes had died away the warships of Hebrion had unfurled their sails and were weighing anchor. The blank rounds of a moment before were replaced by real cannonballs, and the bombardment of the mole forts which protected the Great Harbour had begun.

The staggering noise of a fleet action was something which had to be experienced for anyone to believe it. Added to the guns of the ships now was the return fire of the batteries on the city walls and the harbour forts. As his squadron edged closer to the eastern half of the Lower City, where his forces would attempt their landing, Abeleyn saw the water about the leading squadrons of the fleet erupt in geysers of foam as the first rounds went home. Topmasts were shattered by high-ranging shells and came crashing down in tangles of rigging and wood and billowing canvas. The bulwarks of the leading ships were swept with deadly chain shot, splinters of oak spraying through the gun crews like charges of canister. But still the great ships in the vanguard sailed on, their chasers firing across their bows and producing puffs of rubble and flame from the casemates of the forts.

Abeleyn saw one tall carrack dismasted entirely, her towering yards shattered and crumpling over her side. She yawed as the fallen spars dragged her to one side and in a moment had collided with one of her sister-ships. But the battle for the mole forts and the boom was being obscured by rising clouds of pale powder-smoke. It seemed that the whole surface of Abrusio’s Great Harbour, over a mile from one end of it to the other, was a seething cauldron which bubbled steam, amid which the masts of ships could be glimpsed as the smoke rolled and toiled in vast thunderheads across the broken face of the sea.

The
Providence
’s guns were roaring, softening up the waterfront where the marines and soldiers of the squadron would make their landing. On the formation’s vessels the fighting men stood in unbroken ranks amidships, their lips moving in prayer, their hands checking armour and weapons one last time. Three thousand men to carry the eastern half of Abrusio and hack a way up to the palace. They seemed pitifully few to Abeleyn, but he had to remind himself that the fleet was doing its part in the Great Harbour, and Mercado’s men would be assaulting across the burnt wasteland of the western city also. With luck, his own forces should not have too many of the enemy to contend with.

He could see the sea walls of eastern Abrusio now, scarcely three cables away. The water was deep here, seven fathoms at least, and even the carracks would be able to run in close to the walls to support the landing parties with point-blank fire.

The longboats and cutters of the squadron were already on the booms, and sailors and marines were hauling together in sweating crowds to swing them out over the ship’s sides and down to the water so far below. All this while the guns bellowed out broadside after broadside and were answered by the wall batteries. Abeleyn had to hold himself upright, unflinching, as rounds began to whistle and crash home on the carrack. A longboat took a direct hit and exploded in a spray of jagged wood and gore, men flung in all directions, ropes flapping free. But the work went on, and the small boats were lowered down the sides of the ships one by one. There were scores of them, enough to carry over a thousand men in the first wave.

“Your boat is ready, sire,” Admiral Rovero shouted over the noise, his lopsided mouth seemingly built to concentrate the force of his voice. Abeleyn nodded. He felt a touch of warmth as Sergeant Orsini fell into step beside him, and took a moment to grip the man’s shoulder. Then he put one leg over the bulwarks and began climbing down the rope ladder hanging there while a yard away on the other side of him the culverins exploded and were reloaded, running in and out like monsters let loose and then restrained.

He was in the boat, his heart almost as loud as the gunfire in his head. The vessel was already packed with men, struggling with oars and arquebuses and swords and ladders. Abeleyn stepped over them to the prow, where the laddermen were squatting ready. He waved his hand at the helmsman, and they cast off from the looming carrack along with half a dozen other crowded boats. The men’s oars dipped, and they began to move over the shot-stitched water.

An agonizing time of simply sitting there while they crawled forward towards the walls. There were scores of boats in the water, a mass of close-packed humanity crammed into them, dotting the deadly space between the hulls of the warships and the sea walls of the city. But they took few casualties in that choppy approach. The broadsides of the carracks were smothering the wall batteries with fire like mother hens protecting their chicks. Abeleyn felt that if he stuck up a hand into the air he could catch a cannonball, so thick was the volume of shot screaming overhead. To his own alarm, he had a momentary urge to throw up. Several of the men in the boat had already done so. It was the waiting, the drawing tight of the nerves to unbearable tautness. Abeleyn swallowed a mouthful of vomit that was searing his throat. Kings could not afford to show such weaknesses.

They were at the wall, the boat’s bow bumping against the weathered stone. Showers of rock were falling down on them as the shells from the carracks ploughed into the defences above their heads. The naval gunners would elevate their fire at the last moment, giving their comrades as much cover as possible in that murderous time of grappling with the ungainly ladders.

The laddermen stood up with their bulky charge—a fifteen-foot ladder with hooks of steel at its top which were clanging against the stone. They swayed and lurched, their legs held steady by their comrades, until finally the ladder had hooked on to an embrasure above.

Abeleyn pushed them out of the way and climbed first. Golophin and Mercado would have railed at him for such foolishness, but he felt there was nothing else to do. The King must be seen to take the lead. If these men showed their willingness to die for him, then he too must illustrate it in return.

So intent, so utterly concentrated were his thoughts, that he did not even pause to wonder if any of the men would follow him. The spectre of his death was something which hovered gleefully, cackling at his shoulder. His feet were leaden in their boots. He pictured his precious body torn asunder, riddled with bullets, tossed down into the bloody water below. His life ended, his vision of the world, unique and unrecoverable, made extinct. The strain was so great that for a second the wall in front of his nose seemed to turn slightly red, echoing the thunder of blood through his booming arteries.