Ships from the West by Paul Kearney Page A

was not unique: almost all the Fimbrians who had survived Armagedir had taken Torunnan wives.
    Of the circle of officers and friends which had surrounded the King in those days only he and Aras now remained, and Aras was up in the north holding Gaderion and the Torrin Gap against the Himerians. But there were fresh faces in the army now, a whole host of them. An entirely new generation of officers and soldiers had filled the ranks. They had been youngsters when Aekir had fallen, and the savage struggle to overcome the hosts of Aurungzeb was a childhood story, or something to be read in a book or celebrated in song. In the subsequent years the Merduks had become Torunna’s allies. They worshipped the same God, and the same man as his messenger. Ahrimuz or Ramusio, it was all one. There were Merduk bishops in the Macrobian Church, and Torunnan clerics prayed in the temple of Pir-Sar in Aurungabar, which had once been the cathedral of Carcasson. And in the very Bodyguard of King Corfe himself, Merduks served with honour.
    But the years of near-peace had bred other legacies. The Torunnan army had been a formidable force back in King Lofantyr’s day; now it was widely held to be invincible.
    Formio was not so sure. A certain amount of complacency had crept through the ranks in recent years. And more importantly, the number of veterans left in those ranks was dwindling fast. He had no doubts about his own countrymen - war ran in their blood. And the tribesmen who made up the bulk of the Cathedrallers viewed war as a normal way of life. But the Torunnans were different. Fully three quarters of those now enrolled in the army had never experienced the reality of combat.
    It had been ten years since the Himerians had sent an army into the Torrin Gap. There had been no effort at diplomacy, no warning. It was obvious to the world that the regime which was headed by one pontiff could never recognise or treat with the regime which protected another.
    The enemy had advanced tentatively, feeling their way eastwards. Corfe had moved with breakneck speed, a forced march out of Torunn that left a tenth of the army by the side of the road, exhausted. He had not paused, but had launched into the enemy with the Cathedrallers and the Orphans alone, and had thrown them back over the Torian Plains with huge loss. Formio remembered the wreckage of the Knights Militant as they counter-charged his lines of pikes with suicidal courage but little tactical insight. The big horses, disembowelled and screaming. Their riders pinned by the weight of their armour, trampled to a bloody mire as the Cathedrallers rode over them to finish the job. The Battle of the Torian Plains seemed to have given the Himerian leadership pause for thought. It was said that the mage Bardolin had been present in person, though it had never been confirmed.
    Not once since then had there been a general engagement. The enemy had built outposts of stone and timber and turf and had advanced them as far into the foothills as he dared, but he had not cared to risk another full-scale battle. The Thurian Line, as this system of fortifications had come to be known, now marked the border between Torunna and the Second Empire.
    Ten years, and another turnover of faces. The men of the Torunnan army were as well trained as a professional like
    King Corfe could make them, but they were essentially unblooded.
    This was about to change.
    In the Bladehall the fires had been lit and the map-table was dominated by a representation of Barossa, the land bounded by the Searil and Torrin rivers to east and west, and by the Thurians in the north. Blue and red counters were dotted about the map like gambling tokens. In some respects, Formio thought grimly, that is what they were.
    ‘How are they shaping up, General?’ Corfe asked the Fimb-rian. He held an empty brandy glass in one fist and a crumpled dispatch in the other. Surrounding him were a cluster of other officers, several of whom looked as though