Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (16 page)

"So Murad will slaughter his way to a Hebrian hegemony on the shores of this primitive land, and the sorcerers who are his cargo will be the living artillery which backs him up?"

"Yes. It was the only way, Golophin. The colonists must be hardy, talented, able to defend themselves. What better way to ensure that they survive than to make every one a sorcerer, a herbalist, a weather-worker, or even a true thaumaturgist?"

Or a shifter
, Golophin thought to himself, remembering Bardolin's new ward. But he said nothing of that.

"A king's motives are never simple," he intoned at last. "I should have remembered that."

"I do my best with what God sees fit to give me."

"God, and Murad of Galiapeno. I would you had found another man to lead this expedition. He has a face I do not like. There is murder written in it and as for the ambition of which you spoke I do not think even he has yet plumbed the depths of it."

"It was his discovery, his idea. I could not take it away from him without making an enemy."

"Then tie him to you. Make sure he knows how long the arm of the Hebrian crown can be."

"You are beginning to sound like an old woman, Golophin."

"Maybe I am, but there is wisdom in the words of old women too, you know."

Abeleyn grinned, looking boyish in the dim tavern light. "Come, will you not return to the court and assume your rightful place?"

"What, crouching behind your throne and whispering in your ear?"

It was the popular Inceptine image of the King's wizardly advisor.

"No, sire," Golophin went on. "It is too early yet. Let us see how the Synod goes, and this conclave of yours. I have a feeling, like the ache in an old wound before a storm. I think the worst is yet to come; and not all of it is drawing in from the east."

"You were ever free with prophecies of doom, despite the fact that you are no seer," Abeleyn said. His good humour had thinned. The boy had disappeared. It was a man who stood up and held out a strong hand to the old mage. "I must go. Tongues wag in the court. They think I have a woman down near the waterfront."

"An old woman?" Golophin asked, with one eye closed.

"A friend, Golophin. Even kings need those."

"Kings most of all, my lord."

T
HE NIGHT WAS
as close as ever. Abeleyn and his bodyguards strolled up the street as nonchalantly as if they were three nightwatchmen. The closed carriage was in a courtyard at the top, the horses standing stock-still, patient as graven images. The bodyguards clambered up behind whilst Abeleyn let himself inside.

There was a scratch of steel, a shower of sparks, then a glow. As the candle lantern took the flame, the interior of the curtained coach flickered with glowing gold. The carriage lurched into motion, the hooves of the horses clicking on the cobbles.

"Well met, my lord," the lady Jemilla said, her white face olive-coloured in the swaying candlelight.

"Indeed, my lady. I am sorry to have kept you waiting for so long."

"The wait was no trouble. It sharpens the anticipation."

"Indeed? Then I must make sure to keep you waiting more often." The King's tone seemed casual, but there was a tenseness about him that he had not evidenced whilst in the tavern with Golophin.

Jemilla threw off her dark, hooded cloak. Underneath she wore one of the tight-fitting dresses of the court. It emphasized the perfect lines of her collarbones, the smoothness of the skin on her breastbone.

"I hope, my lord, that you have not been squandering yourself on one of the lower-city doxies. That would grieve me extremely."

She was ten years older than the King. Abeleyn felt the difference now as he met the dancing darkness of her eyes. He was no longer the ruler of a kingdom, the commander of armies. He was a young man on the brink of some glorious dispensation. It had always been this way with her. He half resented it. And yet it was the reason he was here.

The lady Jemilla unfastened the laces of her bodice whilst Abeleyn watched, fascinated. He saw the high, dark-nippled breasts spring out, red-marked where the tight clothing had imprisoned them.

Their quiet noises were hidden by the creak of leather and wood, the rattle of the ironbound wheels, the clatter of the horses' progress. The carriage wound its leisurely way up Abrusio Hill towards the Noble quarter, whilst down on the waterfront the gaudy riot of the pothouses and brothels continued to paint the hot night in hues of flesh and scarlet, and in the harbour the quiet ships floated stark and silent at their moorings.

The high clouds shifted; the stars wheeled overhead in the nightly dance of heaven. Men sitting on the sea walls in the reek of fish and weed with bottles at their feet paused in their low talk to sniff the air and feel its sudden caress as it moved against their faces. Canvas flapped idly once, twice; then it bellied out as the moving air took it. The glassy sea, a mirror for the shining stars, broke up in swell on swell as the clouds rose higher out on the Western Ocean. Finally the men on the sea wall could feel it in their hair, and they looked at one another as if they had experienced some common revelation.

The breeze grew, freshening and veering until it was blowing steadily from the north-west, in off the sea. It swayed the countless ships at their moorings until the mooring ropes creaked, raised smokes of dust off the parched streets of the city and stirred the branches of the King's cypresses, moving inland to refresh sweat-soaked sleepers. The Hebrian trade wind had started up again at last.

Nine

B
ARDOLIN STARED IMPASSIVELY
at the wreckage of his home. The tower's massive walls had shrugged off the fury of the mob, but the interior had been gutted. The walls were black with soot, the floor inches deep in it. Someone had smashed the jar of Ur-blood and it had gelled into a slithering, gelatinous, slug-like creature, incorporating the ashes and the fragments of scale and bone that were all that was left of his specimen collection. It was the Ur-creature that had finally frightened them off, he guessed. He stared at it as its pseudopodia blindly touched the air, trying to make sense out of this new world it had been so violently born into.

For a second Bardolin felt like reshaping it, adding the crocodile skull that lay mouldering in a corner, giving it the sabre-cat claws he had picked up on a trip to Macassar, and then launching the finished, unholy beast into the streets to wreak his revenge. But he settled for unbinding the Ur-blood from its gathered organic fragments and letting it sink, mere liquid again, into the scorched floor.

All gone - everything. His books, some of which dated back to before the Fimbrian Hegemony, his spell grimoires, his references, his collections of birdskins and insects, even his clothes.

The imp tiptoed across the ravaged chamber with wide, bewildered eyes. It clambered up Bardolin's shoulder and nestled in the hollow of his neck, seeking reassurance. He could feel the fear and confusion in its mind. Thank God he had removed it from the rejuvenating jar before he had left and had taken it with him, hidden in the bosom of his robe. Otherwise it would be one more rotting mess amid the littered debris.

There were things here which disturbed him, unanswered questions amid the ruin of his home which hinted at larger answers; but he was too blasted and bewildered to tackle them now. How had they forced the mage bolt on the door? How had they known he was not at home, but was away watching poor Orquil burn?

Orquil. He shut his eyes. Despite the cool sea breeze that washed over the city like a blessing, he could still smell burnt flesh. Not in the air, but off his own clothes. He had stood at the foot of the boy's pyre looking up into his apprentice's pitifully young face, as pale as chalk, but smiling somehow; and he had smote him with a bullet of pure thaumaturgy as potent as his grief and rage could make. The boy had been dead before the first flames began to lick round his shins. The first life Bardolin had ever taken with magic, though he had taken many more with blade and arquebus ball.

There will be more taken by magic before I am done
, he promised himself, the bitter anger rising in him. He wondered if Griella felt like this when the black change was upon her. That unfocused hatred, the mounting fury craving outlet in some act of extreme violence.

But that was not the mage way. Anger did no one any good. And besides, if Bardolin were truly honest with himself, he would have to admit that it was guilt that fuelled his rage as much as grief. The fact that he himself had not burned.

Griella entered the blasted room. She had a sack slung over one slim shoulder and her hands were black with ash.

"I tried to salvage some things, but there's not much left."

She smiled as the imp chirruped at her, but then her face went flat again. "If you had let me stay, I would have stopped it," she said.

Bardolin did not look at her.

"How? By slaughtering them like cattle? And then the city guard would have been swarming over this place like flies around summer dung."

"I don't think so. I think they would not have come here whatever happened. I think they were told to stay away."

Bardolin did look at her now, startled by the depth of her reasoning.

"Something does not smell right, it is true," he admitted.

"Golophin has ensured our safety, by order of the King himself; but someone else is determined to hurt us ere we take ship for the West."

"Well, we've less to pack at any rate," Griella said brightly. Her smile eventually drew an answering one from him. The heavy sun pouring through the splintered windows gave her hair the aspect of beaten bronze. Her very skin seemed golden.

"You are still sure you want to take ship with me, then?"

Bardolin asked.

"Of course! I shall become your new apprentice, to replace the one they burned today. And I shall keep you safe. Not even when the change is upon me would I hurt you, I think."

Bardolin said nothing. When she had come round from the spell of unconsciousness she had been both furious and fascinated. She had never dreamed there could be a power to knock out a full-blooded shifter in the midst of the change. She had been a little in awe of him afterwards. But she was young, and she was not apt for an apprenticeship in the Seven Disciplines; shifters never were. And there was an aspect of her he had glimpsed whilst wrestling the beast down into' oblivion, a hunger that was not part of the werewolf she became, but that was buried in her human soul. He had seen it only briefly, flickering as if in the depths of a long abyss, but it gave him doubts as to the wisdom of letting her accompany him on the voyage.

But what alternative was there for her here in Abrusio? She had been abused before; it would happen again, and then she would become the beast once more, and she would be hunted down. They would cut off the beast's head with a silver knife and stick it on a spear in the market place. In a few hours the head would change, and it would be her brown eyes staring down, that bronze helmet of shining hair atop the ragged stump of the neck. He had seen it before. He could not allow it to happen to her, and he would not yet allow himself to ask why.

He rose to his feet. He had only a leather satchel to carry; they had saved pitifully little. His magicks would be crude for a while, and reduced in power, for his memory was not up to the task of remembering all the subtleties and nuances of casting that were necessary to make a piece of thaumaturgy perfect. He hoped that some of his fellow passengers on the voyage would be able to help him regain his lost knowledge.

The imp crawled into the bosom of his robe, not minding the smell of the pyre. New clothes; he must have new clothes, and get rid of this reek.

"Let us leave this place," he said. "We have things to do. I would like to see these ships that are to bear us, and perhaps buy a few things to make the voyage more tolerable."

"Salt beef and wormy bread are what sailors eat," Griella informed him. "And unwatered wine. They wash in seawater, when they wash at all, and they use each other in the way a man uses a woman."

"Enough," Bardolin said, uncomfortable with hearing such things from such a young mouth. "To the harbour, then. Let's take a look at these terrible seafarers."

There was one thing he could still do, though. As they left through the shattered doorway of his burned-out tower, Bardolin traced in the stone lintel a glyph of warding. It flamed briefly as his fingers brushed the stone, then died into invisibility. If anyone came after, picking around the bones of his home, the glyph would burst into an inferno and mayhap burn the bastards while they rummaged.

T
O A LANDSMAN,
the Great Harbour of Abrusio was a vast and labyrinthine place. Now that the Hebrian trade had started up again, ships that had lain becalmed beyond the curve of the horizon were working in under all the canvas they could bear. The place was a stinking chaos of shouting men, squealing trucks and pulleys, creaking rope and thundering noise as a convoy of caravels out of Cartigella disgorged their cargoes of wine tuns on the quays and the enormous barrels were rolled up into waiting waggons which in turn would transport them to the public cellars.