The Heretic Kings by Paul Kearney Read Free Book Online Page A

the Torrin and Searil rivers by planting eighty tercios of retired soldiers there with their families to provide a tough buffer state between the prospering province to the south and the savages beyond.
    Marshal Kaile Ormann, commander of the Eastern Field Army, dug a huge dyke at the only crossing point of the swift, gorge-cutting Searil river and for forty years it was the easternmost outpost of the Fimbrians, until the founding of Aekir on the Ostian river still farther east. The Torunnans themselves were thus direct descendants of the first Fimbrian soldier-settlers, and the great families of the kingdom all traced their origins back to the most senior officers from among those first tercios. The Royal family of Torunn was descended from the house of Kaile Ormann, the builder of Ormann Dyke.
    It was one of the ironies of the world that Torunna was the first province to rebel against Fimbria and declare its independence from the Electors. It snatched Aekir for itself and was recognized by the then High Pontiff, Ammianus, as a legitimate state in return for four thousand volunteer troops, who were to become the forerunners of the Knights Militant.
    Torunna was thus a cockpit of momentous history in the west, and during the long years of Fimbrian isolation following the empire’s collapse it had become the foremost military power among the new monarchies, the guardian-state both of the Pontiff and the eastern frontier.
    A man coming upon Torunn for the first time—especially from the north—might see in it uncanny similarities to the layout and construction of Fimbir. The old city walls had long ago been enlarged and changed so that they bristled with ravelins, bastions, crownworks and hornworks designed for a later age of warfare, when gunpowder counted for more than sword blades; but there was a certain brutal massiveness about the place which was wholly Fimbrian.
    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 Torunn was surrounded by unwalled suburbs beyond which the grey stone of the walls could be seen lying like the flanks of a great snake amid the roofs and towers of the Outer City. This was the place where he had joined the tercios, where he had been trained, where his adolescence had been roughly hewn into manhood. He was a native of Staed, one of the southern coastal cities of the kingdom. To him, Torunn had seemed like a miracle when first he had seen it. But he had seen Aekir since, and knew what a truly huge city looked like. Torunn housed some fifth of a million people, and that same number were now on the roads leading towards it, seeking sanctuary. The enormity of the problem defeated his imagination.
    In the suburbs the press of people was worse. There were Torunnan cavalry there, struggling to keep order, and open-air kitchens had been set up in all the market places. The noise and the stink were incredible. Torunn had the aspect of one of those apocalyptic religious paintings which depicted the last days of the world. Though Aekir at its fall, Corfe thought bitterly, had been even closer.
    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 Inner City, but as the carriage was spotted the culverins went off in salute, blank charges roaring out in clouds of smoke and spitting flame. From the towers above, other guns began to fire until the walls seemed to ripple with smoke and the thunderous sound recalled for Corfe the Merduk bombardment at Ormann Dyke.
    The Torunnans presented arms, an officer flourished his sabre, and the High Pontiff was welcomed through the gates of Torunn.
    K ING Lofantyr heard the salute echoing across the city, and paused in his