Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (57 page)

"Man the boats," Hawkwood said hoarsely.

The crews of the two ship's boats that had survived scrambled down the ship's side, the soldiers clumsy with armour and weapons, the seamen agile as apes.

"Cast off!" Hawkwood shouted as soon as they were seated on the thwarts. There was no need to say anything else; all the crew had been well briefed, and Velasca knew his duty.

The lines were flung clear of the gunwales and the oars were lowered. The men began to row steadily, the exertion squeezing sweat out of their pores despite the youth of the morning. The ship grew smaller behind them.

There was a long gap in the breakers which would have accommodated the
Osprey
the night before, had there been the light to see it. The two boats powered through, lifted and tossed by the breaking waves. Within the reefs the water was calmer and they could see a ribbon of white sand fringing the unbroken curtain of jungle ahead.

"Captain!" one of the men cried. "Captain, look aft, on the landward side of the reef!"

Hawkwood and Murad turned as one to squint into the morning sun.

"I can't -" Murad began, and then was silent.

There on the westward side of the reef was the fragment of a ship. It was a beakhead, part of a keel and a few other skeletal timbers. It looked as though the ship had run full tilt upon the reef, the fore part of the hull riding over it, the rest smashed away and sunk.

It was the
Grace of God
.

Men made the Sign of the Saint at their breasts, murmuring. Hawkwood's eyes were stinging as though in sympathy with his aching shoulder. To have come so far only to fail. So many good men.

"God have mercy on them," he murmured.

"Could any have survived?" Murad asked.

He shook his head slowly, studying the fragmented wreck and the booming surf, the jagged reef. It was sheer fluke that a portion of the ship had remained caught on the reef; it had been wedged there by the explosive force of the breakers. Only a miracle could have preserved those aboard.

"We are alone, then," Murad said. "We are alone," Hawkwood agreed.

The water shallowed. They could feel the heat of the land like a wall. The men raised their oars and a few seconds later the bottom of the boats kissed the sand.

Richard Hawkwood splashed out of the first boat, closely followed by Murad. Through the noise of the breakers out on the reef a glimmer of strange birdsong could be heard from the wall of jungle ahead.

They walked up out of the shallows and stood in hot white sand with the early sun heating their backs. The crews hauled the boats out of the water and stood panting. Soldiers held their arquebuses at the ready.

Murad turned to look at Hawkwood, and without a word they both began walking up the blazing beach, to where the jungle of the Western Continent gleamed dark and impenetrable before them.

The
H
ERETIC
K
INGS

This is the century of the soldier.

- Fulvio Testi, 1641

Prologue

A
LWAYS, MEN MOVE
west. Is it something to do with the path of the sun? They are drawn to it like moths to the flame of a taper.

Many long turning years have slipped by, and still I remain: the last of the founders, my body scarcely my own at the end. I have seen four centuries of the waking world trickle past, their passage scarcely marked by any change in the land I have made my home. Men change, and they like to think that the world changes with them. It does not; it merely tolerates them, and continues to follow its own, arcane revolutions.

And yet there is something in the air, like a whisper of winter in this country which knows no seasons. I feel a change coming.

T
HEY CAME TREADING
the saffron and scarlet course of the sinking sun, as we had always known they would, with their tall ships trailing streamers of weed from worm-eaten hulls.

We watched them from the jungle. Men in salt-encrusted armour with scurvy-swollen faces bearing swords and pikes, and, later, reeking arquebuses, the slow-match glowing and hissing in the wind. Gaunt men of Hebrion, or Astarac, or Gabrion; the sea-rovers of the Old World. Hard-handed buccaneers with the greed dazzling their eyes.

We had come here fleeing something; they had come seeking. We gave them fear to fill their bellies and night-dark terror to plump out their purses. We made of them the hunted, and took from them whatever we desired.

Their ships rotted slowly at their moorings, untenanted and filled with ghosts. A few, a very few, we let live, to take the tale of us back east to the Monarchies of God. In this way, the myth was created. We hid our country behind a curtain of tall tales and dark rumours. We laced the truth with the hyperbole of madness; we beat out a legend as though it were the blade of a sword on a smith's anvil. And we quenched it in blood.

But the change is coming. Four centuries have we lingered here, and our people have slowly filtered back to the east in accordance with the plan. They are everywhere now in Normannia. They command soldiers, they preach to multitudes, they watch over cradles. Some of them have the ear of kings.

The time is come for our keels to recross the Western Ocean, and claim what is ours. The beast will out, in the end. Every wolf will have its day.

Part One

Schism

One

Y
EAR OF THE
S
AINT
551

V
ESPERS HAD LONG
since been rung, but Brother Albrec had affected not to hear. He chewed the end of his quill so that damp bits of feather dropped on to the bench, but he did not notice. His face, squinting in the dim light of the dip, was akin to that of a nearsighted vole, pointed and inquisitive. His hand shook as he turned the page of an ancient parchment which lay before him. When once a corner crumbled at the touch of his nimble fingers he whined a little back in his throat, for all the world like a dog seeing its master leave the room without it.

The words on the parchment were beautifully inscribed, but the ink had faded. It was a strange document, he thought. There were none of the illuminations which had always been thought so necessary an adornment to the holy texts of Ramusio. Only words, stark and bare and elegantly written, but fading under the weight of so many years.

The parchment itself was poor quality. Had the scribe of the time possessed no vellum? He wondered, for this was hand-enscribed, not churned out on one of the famous presses of Charibon. This was old.

And yet it was almost as though the author had not wanted to draw too much attention to the work. And indeed the manuscript had been found, a rolled-up wad of untidy fragments, stuffed into a crack in the wall of one of the lowest of the library levels. Brother Columbar had brought it to Albrec. He had thought perhaps to use the parchment as blotting for the scriptorium, for Charibon still produced handwritten books, even now. But the faint, perfect writing visible upon it had made him hesitate, and bring it to the attention of the Assistant Librarian. Albrec's natural curiosity had done the rest.

Almost he halted, rose from his seat to tell the Chief Librarian Brother Commodius. But something kept the little monk rooted there, reading on in fascination while the other brothers were no doubt sitting down to their evening meal.

The scrap of parchment was five centuries old. Almost as old as Charibon itself, holiest of all the university-monasteries on the continent now that Aekir was gone. When the unknown author had been writing, the Blessed Ramusio had only just been assumed into heaven - conceivably, that great event had happened within the lifetime of the writer.

Albrec held his breath as the petal-thin parchment stuck to his sweating fingers. He was afraid to breathe on it for fear that the ancient, irreplaceable text might somehow blur and run, or blow away like sand under some sudden zephyr.

...and we begged him not to leave us alone and bereft in such a darkening world. But the Blessed Saint only smiled. "I am an old man now," he said. "What I have begun I leave to you to continue; my time here is finished. You are all men of faith; if you believe in the things which I have taught you and place your lives in the hand of God, then there is no need to be afraid. The world is a darkening place, yes, but it darkens because of the will of man, not of God. It is possible to turn the tide of history - we have proved that. Remember, in the years ahead, that we do not merely suffer history, we create it. Every man has in him the ability to change the world. Every man has a voice to speak out with; and if that voice is silenced by those who will not listen, then another will speak out, and another. The truth can be silenced for a time, yes, but not for ever...

The rest of the page was missing, torn away. Albrec leafed through the indecipherable fragments that followed. Tears rose in his eyes and he blinked them away as he realized that the parts which were missing were indeed lost beyond recall. It was as if someone had given a thirsting man in a desert a drop of water to soothe his parched mouth, and then poured away a quart into the sand.

Finally, the little cleric got off his hard bench and knelt on the stone floor to pray.

The life of the Saint, an original text which had never been seen before. It told the story of a man named Ramusio, who had been born and who had lived and grown old, who had laughed and wept and spent sleepless nights awake. The story of the central figure in the faith of the western world, written by a contemporary - possibly even someone who had known him personally...

Even if so much of it had been lost, there was still so much gained. It was a miracle, and it had been granted to him. He thanked God there on his knees for revealing it to him. And he prayed to Ramusio, the Blessed Saint whom he was now beginning to see as a man, a human being like himself - though infinitely superior, of course. Not the iconic image the Church had made him out to be, but a man. And it was thanks to this incredibly precious document before him.

He regained his seat, blowing his nose on the sleeve of his habit, kissing his humble Saint's symbol of bog-oak. The tattered text was beyond price; it was comparable to the
Book of Deeds
compiled by St. Bonneval in the first century. But how much of it was here? How much was legible?

He bent over it again, ignoring the pains that were shooting through his cramped neck and shoulders.

No title page or covering, nothing that might hint at the identity of the author or his patron. Five centuries ago, Albrec knew, the Church had not possessed the virtual monopoly on learning that it did now. In those days many parts of the world had not yet been converted to the True Faith, and rich noblemen had sponsored scribes and artists in a hundred cities to copy old pagan texts or even invent new ones. Literacy had been more widespread. It was only with the rise to prominence of the Inceptines in the last two hundred years or so that literacy had declined again, becoming a preserve of professionals. It was said that all the Fimbrian emperors could both read and write, whereas until recently no western king could so much as spell his own name. That had changed with the new generation of kings that was coming to the fore, but the older rulers still preferred a seal to a signature.