Century of the Soldier: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume Two) (96 page)

A few of the more prosperous citizens who possessed some backbone met the Himerian delegation on the waterfront and were told with firm affability that they were now subjects of the Second Empire, members of the Church of Himerius, and as such, guaranteed protection from any form of rapine or pillage. This cheered them considerably, and they went down on their knees to kiss the ring of the dark-skinned leader of the invaders whose eyes were an unsettling shade of amber. He introduced himself as Orkh, now Presbyter of Hebrion, and his accent was strange, with something of the east about it. When he stumbled in his understanding of the Abrusians' babbling a hooded figure at his side clarified their words in a low voice and an accent that was unmistakably Hebrian.

Since then a few more ships had put in, but to the astonishment of the citizenry, the vast Himerian fleet had disappeared. Old sailors mending nets down on the waterfront sniffed the wind, now veering to the west again, and looked at each other, mystified. Square-rigged vessels such as the Himerian cogs ought to have been embayed in the Gulf of Hebrion by such a breeze, or even run aground. But they had sailed away in the space of a night, seemingly against the wind, and against all that was natural to seafaring experience.

Those ships which had put ashore had disembarked perhaps a thousand troops and these were all the occupation force that it would seem the Second Empire deemed necessary to hold Abrusio, though rumours had come in to the city of more armies on the march in the north and the east. There had been a battle on the borders with Fulk, and the Hebrian forces there were in panicked retreat, it was said. Pontifidad, capital of the Duchy of Imerdon, had capitulated to the invaders after defeat in a battle before her very walls. The Duke of Imerdon had fled for his life with Knights Militant in hot pursuit. And there were even hazier rumours, which no one could verify or account for, that the Himerians had landed in Astarac, and were preparing to besiege Cartigella.

The occupiers of Abrusio were a strange and disparate body. Many wore the robes of Inceptines, but over those robes they had donned black half-armour and they went gauntleted and armed with steel maces. They rode shining ebony horses which were tall and gangling as the camels of the east, and gaunt as greyhounds. Very many of these fearsome clerics were black men, who looked as though they might hail from Punt or Ridawan, but they spoke together in a language that even the most well-travelled mariner had never heard before, and many of them rode with an homunculus perched on their shoulders, or flapping about their shaven heads.

There were Knights Militant who rode the same weird breed of horses as their Inceptine Brothers, but who kept their faces hidden, their eyes glinting behind the T-shaped slot in their closed helms. But the most mysterious of the invaders were those whom the foreign clerics referred to simply as the
Hounds
. These were a type of men who went about in straggling troops, always accompanied by a mounted Inceptine, and they looked as though they came from every nation under heaven. They went barefoot, dressed always in rags, and there was something vulpine and horribly eager about their eyes. They spoke seldom, and had little dealings with the populace, the Inceptines leading them like a shepherd his sheep - or an overseer his slaves - but, unarmoured and ill-kempt though they might be, they frightened the folk of Abrusio more than any of the other Himerians.

"T
HEY HAVE ESCHEWED
the coastal route, the shorter voyage, and have struck out for the open sea," lord Orkh, Presbyter of Hebrion, said in his sibilant, heavily accented Normannic.

"And they are already out of the range of our airborne contingents, I take it, or else this conversation would be entirely different."

Orkh licked his lipless mouth. In the darkened room his fulvous eyes glowed with a light of their own and his skin had a reptilian sheen about it.

"Yes, lord. We expected them to make for the Hebrian Gulf, and the direct route to the Astaran coast, but they -"

"They outsmarted you."

"Indeed. This man who captains the
Seahare
is a mariner of some repute, and is known to you, I believe. Richard Hawkwood, a native of Gabrion."

The simulacrum to which Orkh was speaking went silent. It was a shimmering, luminous likeness of Aruan, and now it frowned. Orkh bent his head before its pitiless gaze.

"
Hawkwood
." Aruan spat the word. Then, abruptly, he laughed. "Fear not, Orkh, I am a victim of my own whim, it would seem. Hawkwood! It would seem that he has more bottom than I gave him credit for." His voice lowered into something resembling the purr of a giant feline. "You have, of course, set in place an alternative plan for the interception of the Hebrian Queen."

"Yes, lord. As we speak, a swift vessel is putting out from the Royal yards."

"Who commands?"

"My lieutenant."

"The renegade? Ah yes, of course. A good choice. His mind is so consumed by irrational hatred that he will fulfil his mission to the letter. How many days' start does Hawkwood have?"

"A week."

"A week! There are weatherworkers among the pursuers, I take it."

Orkh hesitated a moment and then nodded firmly.

"Good. Then we shall consider that loose end taken care of. What of the Hebrian Treasury?"

Here Orkh relaxed a little. "We captured it almost entirely intact, my lord."

"Excellent. And the nobility?"

"Hilario Duke of Imerdon we executed today. That more or less wipes out the top tier of the aristocracy."

"Aside from your turncoat lieutenant, of course."

"He is entirely ours, my lord, I can vouch for it personally. And his status will be useful once things have settled down somewhat."

"Yes, I suppose it will. He is a tool apt for many uses. I do not regret sparing him as I do Hawkwood. But had I allowed Hawkwood, as well as Abeleyn, to die at that time, I could well have lost Golophin." Aruan's shade settled its chin on its chest pensively. "I would I had more like you, Orkh. Men I can truly trust."

Orkh bowed.

"But Golophin will see sense yet, I guarantee it. Good! Get that money in the pockets of those who will appreciate it. Buy every venal soul you can and handle Hebrion with a velvet glove. It is silver filigree to Torunna's iron. Corfe's kingdom we must crush, but Hebrion, ah, she must be wooed... How soon before we can expect the fleet off Cartigella?"

"My captains tell me that with the aid of their weatherworkers they will drop anchor before the city in eight days."

"That will do. I believe that will do. Cartigella will be invested by land and sea, and will be made to see sense as Hebrion has."

"You don't think that the Hebrion Queen is making for her homeland?"

"If she is, the fleet will snap her up, but I doubt it. No, I sense Golophin's hand at work here. He must have healed Hawkwood and spirited the Queen away. He is in Torunn now, and that is where I believe she is going. They are touchingly fond of one another, I am told. All these splendid people we must kill! It is a shame. But then if they were not so worthy, then they would not be worth killing." He smiled, though his face remained without humour.

"Make sure our noble renegade catches this Isolla, Orkh. With her gone, Hebrion will acquiesce to our rule that much more easily. And I will give the kingdom to this man when he kills her. It will doubtless lend even more of an edge to his eagerness when I inform him of his reward. You, I will install in Astarac, for it will prove more troublesome than Hebrion I believe, and you will have to keep an eye on Gabrion. Does that satisfy you?"

For an instant what might have been a thin black tongue flickered between Orkh's lips. "You honour me, lord."

"But now the war in the east gathers pace. The assault on Gaderion will begin soon, and the Perigrainian army is preparing to move on Rone. We will enter Torunna through the back door while knocking at the front. Let their much-vaunted Soldier-King try being in two places at once." Again, the perilous, triumphant smile. The simulacrum began to fade.

"Do not fail me, Orkh," it said casually, and then winked out.

T
HE
H
IBRUSIAN
WAS
a sleek barquentine which displaced some six hundred tones and had a crew of fifty. Square-rigged on the foremast, she carried fore-and-aft sails on main and mizzen, and was designed to be handled by a small ship's company. The Hebrian navy had built her to Richard Hawkwood's experimental designs and her keel had been laid down barely a year before. She had been conceived as a formidable kind of Royal yacht to transport the King and his entourage on state visits abroad, and was luxuriously appointed in every respect. The Himerians had found her laid up in dry dock and had at once launched her down the slipway on Orkh's orders. Renamed the
Revenant
by someone with a black sense of humour, she floated at her moorings now some way from shore in the Outer Roads. Her crew had been trebled by the addition of Himerian troops of all kinds, and she awaited a signal from Admiral's Tower to cast off and go hunting.

The signal came. Three guns fired at short intervals, three bubbles of grey smoke from the battlements preceding the distant boom of their detonation. The
Revenant
slipped her moorings, set jibs and fore-and-aft courses on main and mizzen, and began to carve a bright wake through the choppy sea with the wind square on her starboard beam. On her quarterdeck, the thing which had once been Lord Murad of Galiapeno grinned viciously at the southern horizon, an homunculus perched on its shoulder and chuckling into its ear.

Thirteen

"K
EEP HER THUS
until four bells," Hawkwood told the helmsman. "Then bring her one point to larboard. Arhuz!"

"Skipper?"

"Be prepared to send up the mizzen topsail when we alter course. If the wind backs, call me at once. I am going below."

"Aye, sir," Arhuz answered smartly. He checked the xebec's course on the compass board and then swept the decks with his gaze, noting the angle of the yards, the fill of the sails, the condition of the running rigging. Then he watched the sea and sky, noting the direction of the swell, the position of clouds near and far, all those almost indefinable details which a master-mariner took in and filed away without conscious volition. Hawkwood clapped him on the shoulder, knowing the
Seahare
was in good hands, and went below.

He was exhausted. For days he had been on deck continually, snatching occasional dozes in a sling of canvas spliced to the mizzen-shrouds, and eating upright on the xebec's narrow quarterdeck, with one eye to the wind and another to the sails. He had pushed the crew and the
Seahare
very hard, straining to extract every knot of speed out of the sleek craft and keeping the helmsmen on tenterhooks with minute variations of course to catch errant breezes. The log had been going continually in the forechains and a dozen times a day (and night) the logsman would cast his board into the sea while his mate watched the sands trickling through the thirty-second glass and cry
nip
when the time ran out. And the line would be reeled back in and the knots which had been run out by the ship's passage counted. So far, with a beam wind like this to starboard, the fore-and-aft rig of the xebec was drawing well, and they were averaging seven knots. Seven long sea-miles an hour. In the space of six days, running due south, they had put almost a hundred and ninety leagues between themselves and poor old Abrusio, and by Hawkwood's calculations had long since passed the latitude of northern Gabrion, though that island lay still three hundred miles eastwards. Hawkwood had decided to avoid the narrow waters of the Malacar Straits, and sail instead south of Gabrion itself, entering the Levangore to the west of Azbakir. The Straits were too close to Astarac, and too easily patrolled. But a lot depended on the wind. While veering and backing a point or two in the last few days, it had remained steady and true. Once he changed course for the east, as he would very soon, he would have to think about sending up the square-rigged yards, on the fore and mainmasts at least. Lateen yards were less suited to a stern wind than square-rigged ones. The men would be happier too. The massive lateen yards, which gave the
Seahare
the look of some marvellous butterfly, were heavy to handle and awkward to brace round and reef.

He rubbed his eyes A packet of spray, knocked aboard by the swift passage of the ship's beakhead, drenched the forecastle. The xebec was riding the swell beautifully, shouldering aside the waves with a lovely, graceful motion and almost no roll. Despite this, seasickness had afflicted his supercargo almost from the moment they had left the shelter of Grios Point, and they had remained in their cabins. A fact for which he was inordinately grateful. He had too much to think about to worry about a sparring match between Isolla and Jemilla. And the boy, whose whelp was he? Murad's in the eyes of the world, but Hawkwood had heard court rumours about his parentage. And why else would Golophin have inveigled a passage out of Hebrion for he and his mother if there was not some Royal connection? Here he came now, hauling himself up the companionway and looking as eager as a young hound which has sighted a fox. Alone of the passengers he was unaffected by sea-sickness, and seemed in fact to revel in their swift southward passage, the valiant efforts of the ship. Hawkwood had had several conversations with him on the quarterdeck. He was pompous for one so young, and full of himself of course, but he knew when to keep his mouth shut, which was a blessing.