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The horsemen rode on, leaving Ribeiro behind them. The young monk shook his fist at them, and then his
whole frame seemed to sag. Corfe helped Macrobius to his feet.
 Come on, Father. We ll see if we can t get you a roof over your head tonight, and something warm in
your belly. Let the great ones argue over the fate of the west. It is our concern no more.
 Oh, but it is, my son, it is. If it is not the concern of us all, then we may as well lie down here on the
ground and wait for death to take us.
 We ll think about that another time. Come. Ho! Ribeiro! Give me a hand with the old man!
But Ribeiro seemed not to have heard. He was standing with one hand over the eye he could still see out
of, and his lips were moving silently.
They joined the straggling crowds of ragged and wild-eyed people who were disappearing into the
eastern gate of the dyke. They sank calf-deep in mud what was left of the Western Road and were
shoved and jostled as they went. Eventually, though, the darkness of the barbican was around them, and
then they were within the walls of the last Ramusian outpost east of the Searil river.
There was chaos within the defences.
People everywhere, in all states of filth and desperation. They stood in huddles around fires on the very
drill ground and the interior walls of the fortifications were lined with primitive shelters and lean-tos that
had been thrown up to combat the rain. Some enterprising souls had set up market stalls of sorts, selling
whatever they had brought with them out of the wreck of Aekir. Corfe saw a mule being butchered,
people hanging round the carcass like gore-crows. There were women, pathetically haggard, who were
offering themselves to passers-by for food or money, and here and there some callous souls were playing
dice on a cloak thrown over the mud.
Corfe glimpsed violence, also. There were groups of men with long knives extorting anything of value
from fellow refugees, once the Torunnans had passed by. He wondered if Pardal s comrades had made
it this far.
What he saw disturbed him. There seemed to be little order within the fortress, no organization or
authority. True, men in Torunnan black were on the battlements, their armour gleaming darkly, but they
appeared thin on the ground, as though the garrison were not up to strength. And no effort had been
made, it seemed, to bring the mob of fleeing civilians under control. If Corfe were in command here, he d
have them herded west, well clear of the dyke, and then perhaps try and rig up provisions for them and
police the camps with what men he could spare. But this this was mere anarchy. Was Martellus still in
command, or had there been some reshuffle which had engendered this chaos?
He found a spot to stop in the shadow of one of the eastern revetments, kicking a couple of sullen young
men from the space. They left after a hard stare at the sabre and the ragged remnants of the uniform, but
Corfe was too weary and troubled to care. He collected pieces of wood there were plenty lying about,
and he guessed that the refugees had demolished some of the inner stockades and catwalks and got a
fire going with the greatest difficulty. By that time the light was beginning to fail, and across the open
ground within the fortress campfires were flickering into life like lambent stars, whilst if he stood up he
could see across the Searil river to where the lights of the dyke burned by the thousand. People were
crossing the bridge by torchlight in an unending procession and the eastern gates remained open despite
the dimming light, which seemed to Corfe to be the merest madness: in the dark, Merduks might mingle
with the swarm of civilians entering the fortress and gain access to the interior. Who was in command
here? What kind of fool?
Ribeiro was uncommunicative and seemed shaken by the fact that Macrobius had not immediately been
recognized. He sat with his swollen head in his hands and stared into the flames of Corfe s fire as though
he were looking for some revelation.
Macrobius, however, was almost serene. He sat on the wet ground, the firelight making a hideous mask
out of his savaged face, and nodded to himself. Corfe had seen that look before, on men about to go into
battle. It meant they no longer feared death.
Could this crazy old man really be the High Pontiff?
His stomach rumbled. They had eaten nothing in the past day and a half, and precious little in the days
before that. In fact, the last time he had eaten a solid meal . . .
The last time, it had been Heria who had prepared it, and brought it to him at his post on the wall of
Aekir. It had been dark then, as it was now. They had stood together on the catwalk looking out at the
campfires of the Merduk thousands, smelling the tar and smoke of the siege engines, the stench of death
that hung over the city continually. He had begged her to go once more, but she would not leave him.
That had been the last time he had ever seen his wife; that heartbreaking smile, one corner of her mouth [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]