The Second Empire (16 page)

He thought about Avila sometimes, and about Macrobius, and could not help but wonder how things were in the Torunnan capital. But for some reason he thought mostly about the cavalry officer he had once briefly encountered outside the walls of Torunn. Corfe Cear-Inaf, now the commander-in-chief of all the Torunnan armies. The Sultan seemed obsessed by him, though to the Merduks he was known only as the leader of the scarlet cavalry. They had not yet learnt his name. Albrec gained the impression that the Merduk army in general existed in a state of constant apprehension, awaiting the descent of the terrible red horsemen upon them. Hence the current emphasis on fortification.

And Heria, the Sultan’s chief concubine, pregnant by him and soon to become his queen—she could very well be this Corfe Cear-Inaf’s lost wife. Albrec locked that knowledge deep within himself and resolved never to divulge it to anyone. It would wreck too many lives. It might even tip the balance of the war. Let this Torunnan general remain nameless.

And yet—and yet the despair in her eyes was so painful to behold. Might she not take some comfort from the fact that her husband was alive and well? On this matter Albrec was torn. He was afraid he might inflict further pain on someone who had already suffered so much. What good would it do her anyway? The situation was like some ethics problem set for him during his novitiate. The choice between two courses of action, both ambiguous in their outcome, but one somehow more spiritually correct than the other. Except here he held in his hands the power to make or break lives.

A clamour of keys and clicking locks at his door announced another summons. The rat glanced once at him and then bolted for its hole. It was not mealtime. Albrec sat on the edge of his bed. It was very late; unusual for him to be wanted at this hour.

But when the door swung open it was not the familiar figure of the turnkey who stood there, but a Merduk mullah, a richly dressed man with a beard as broad as a spade, and the cloaked and veiled figure of a woman. They entered his cell without a word and shut the door behind them.

The woman doffed her veil for a brief second to let him see her face. It was Heria. The mullah sat down upon Albrec’s solitary chair without ceremony. His face was familiar. Albrec had spoken to him before at a dinner.

“Mehr Jirah,” the mullah said. And in heavily accented Normannic: “We talk four—five days—” He looked appealingly at Heria.

“You and Mehr Jirah spoke last week,” she said smoothly. “He wished to speak to you again, in private. The guards have been bribed, but we do not have much time and his Normannic is sparse, so I will interpret.”

“By all means,” Albrec said. “I appreciate his visiting me.”

The mullah spoke in his own tongue now, and after a moment’s thought Heria translated. Albrec thought he sensed a smile behind the veil.

“First he asks if you are a madman.”

Albrec chuckled. “You know the answer to that, lady. Some have labelled me an eccentric, though.”

Again, the speech in Merduk, her interpretation of it.

“He is an elder in the
Hraib
of the Kurasin in the Sultanate of Danrimir. He wants to know if your claims about the Prophet are mere devilment, or if they are based on any kind of evidence.”

Albrec’s heart quickened. “I told him when we spoke before that they are based on an ancient document which I believe to be genuine. I would not make such claims if I did not believe in my soul that they are true. A man’s beliefs are not something to make a jest out of.”

When this was translated Mehr Jirah nodded approvingly. He seemed then to hesitate for a long while, his head bent upon his breast. One hand stroked his voluminous beard. At last he sighed and made a long speech in Merduk. When he had finished Heria stared at him, then collected herself and rendered it into Normannic in a voice filled with wonder.

“The Kurasin are an old tribe, one of the oldest of all the Merduk
Hraib
. They had the privilege of being the first of the eastern peoples to hear the preachings of the Prophet Ahrimuz, almost five centuries ago. They hold a tradition that the Prophet crossed the Jafrar Mountains from the west, alone, on a mule, and that he was a pale-skinned man who did not speak their tongue but whose holiness and learning were self-evident. He dwelled with the Kurasin for five years before travelling on northwards to the lands of the Kambak
Hraib
. In this way the True Faith came to the Merduk peoples: through this one man they deemed a Prophet sent by God, who came out of the west.”

Albrec and the mullah looked at one another as Heria finished translating. In the Merduk cleric’s eyes was a mixture of fear and confusion, but Albrec felt uplifted.

“So he believes me then.”

Merduk and Normannic. A long, halting speech by Mehr Jirah. Heria spoke more swiftly now. “He is not sure. But he has studied some of the books which were saved from the Library of Gadorian Hagus in Aekir. Many of the sayings of St Ramusio and the Prophet Ahrimuz are the same, down to the very parables they used to illustrate their teachings. Perhaps the two men knew each other, or Ramusio was a student of Ahrimuz—”

“They were one and the same. He knows that. I can see it in his eyes.”

When this was translated there was a long silence. Mehr Jirah looked deeply troubled. He spoke in a low voice without looking at Albrec.

“He says you speak the truth. But what would you have him do about it?”

“This truth is worth more than our lives. It must be declared publicly, whatever the consequences. The Prophet said that a man’s soul suffers a kind of death every time he tells a lie. There have been five centuries of lies. It is enough.”

“And your people, the Ramusians, will they wish to hear the truth also?”

“They are beginning to hear it. The head of my faith in Torunn, Macrobius, he believes it. It is only a matter of time before men start to accept it. This war must end. Merduks and Ramusians are brothers in faith and should not be slaying one another. Their God is the same God, and his messenger was a single man who enlightened us all.”

Mehr Jirah rose.

“He will think upon your words. He will think about what to do next.”

“Do not think too long,” Albrec said, rising also.

“We must go.” The Merduk opened the cell door. As he was about to leave he turned and spoke one last time.

“Why were we chosen to do this thing, do you think?”

“I do not know. I only know that we were, and that we must not shirk the task God has assigned us. To do so would be the worst blasphemy we could commit. A man who spends his life in the service of a lie, knowing it to be a lie, is offencive to the eyes of God.”

Mehr Jirah paused in the doorway, and then nodded as Heria interpreted Albrec’s words. A moment later he was gone.

“Will he do anything?” Albrec asked her.

“Yes, though I don’t know what. He is a man of genuine piety, Merduk or no. He is the only one out of all of them who does not despise me. I’m not sure why.”

Perhaps he knows quality when he sees it, Albrec found himself thinking. And out of his throat the words came tumbling as though without conscious volition.

“Your husband in Aekir. Was his first name Corfe?”

Heria went very still. “How do you know that?”

A rattle of metal up the corridor beyond Albrec’s cell. Men talking, the sound of boots on stone. But Heria did not move.

“How do you know that?” she repeated.

“I have met him. He is still alive. Heria”—the words rushed out of him as someone outside shouted harshly in Merduk—“he is alive. He commands the armies of Torunna. He is the man who leads the red horsemen.”

The knowledge had almost a physical heft as it left him and entered her. He believed for an instant that she would fall to the floor. She flinched as if he had struck her and sagged against the door.

The turnkey appeared on the threshold. He looked terrified, and plucked at Heria’s sleeve whilst jabbering in Merduk. She shook him off.

“Are you sure?” she asked Albrec.

He did not want to say it for some reason, but he told the truth. “Yes.”

A soldier appeared at the door, a Merduk officer. He pulled Heria away looking both exasperated and frightened. The door was slammed shut, the keys clicking the lock into place again. Albrec slumped down on the bed and covered his face with his hands. Blessed Saint, he thought, what have I done?

TEN

I T was spring when they first sighted the Hebros Mountains on the horizon, and Hawkwood bent his head at the tiller and let the tears come silently for a while. Around him others of the crew were more vocal, loudly thanking God for their deliverance, or sobbing like children. Even Murad was not unmoved. He actually shook Hawkwood’s hand. “You are a master-mariner indeed, Captain, to make such a landfall.”

Hebrion loomed up steadily out of the dawn haze, the mountains tinted pink as the sun took them. They had weathered North Cape five days ago, beat before a passing storm in the Gulf of Hebrion, and were now sailing up Abrusio’s huge trefoil-shaped bay with a perfect south-west breeze on the larboard quarter. They had been away almost eight months, and the brave
Osprey
was sinking under them at last, every able-bodied man taking a shift at the pumps. But the water was almost over the orlop and Bardolin had had to be rechained in the master’s cabin or he would have drowned in the bilge.

Fair winds almost all the way, and apart from the one squall which had almost sunk them they had had a swift passage, and the accuracy of their landfall was indeed nothing short of miraculous. Hawkwood was burnt dark as mahogany by the sun, and he stood at the tiller in rags, his beard and unkempt hair frosted by salt and sea wind, his eyes two blue flashes startling in so swarthy a face. With the aid of his cross-staff, the accumulated lore of a lifetime at sea and a string of good luck, he had brought the
Osprey
home at last after one of the longest voyages of recorded history. And surely one of the most disastrous.

The seventeen survivors of the expedition at liberty stood on deck and stared as the carrack wheeled smoothly round to north-north-east and the familiar shoreline slid past on the larboard side. There was still snow on the Hebros, but only a light dusting of it, and the sun was warm on their naked backs—not the punishing hothouse heat of the west, but a refreshing spring warmth. They could see Abrusio’s heights rising up out of the haze ahead, and one of the soldiers cried out, pointing at the little flotilla of fishing yawls off the port beam as though they were some marvell.

Abrusio. They saw now the ruined expanses of the Lower City, the devastation of the docks, and the frantic rebuilding work that was going on there, thousands of men at work on miles of scaffolding. Hawkwood and Murad looked at one another. They had missed a war or some great natural disaster in their time away, it seemed. What other surprises were waiting for them in the old port-city?

“Back topsails!” Hawkwood cried as the
Osprey
slid through the sparsely populated wharves, all of which seemed damaged in some way or other. The Inner Roads were almost deserted of vessels, though the Hebrian naval yards were crammed full of warships, most of which were under repair.

“Stand ready with the bow-line there!”

The carrack slowed as the sails were backed and spilled their wind. Half a dozen men stood at the beakhead, ready to leap ashore with the heavy mooring ropes and make them fast to the bollards there. A small crowd had gathered on the quayside. Men were shading their eyes and pointing at the battered ship, some arguing with each other and shaking their heads. Hawkwood smiled. There was a slight jar as the
Osprey
came up against the rope buffers at the lip of the wharves.

“Tie her off lads. We’re home.”

Men leapt overboard and made the ship fast. Then they embraced each other, laughing, weeping, jumping up and down like a crowd of bronzed ragamuffins gone mad.

“Your Excellency,” Hawkwood said with heavy irony, “I have brought you home.”

The nobleman stared at him, and smiled. “Excellency no more. My title expired with the colony, as did yours, master Hawkwood. You will die a commoner after all.”

Hawkwood spat over the carrack’s side. “I can live with that. Now get your aristocratic backside off my ship.”

Nothing in Murad’s eyes. No shared comradeship, no sense of achievement, nothing. He turned away without another word and walked off the ship. The
Osprey
was so low in the water that one no longer had much of a climb down from the ship’s rail to the wharf. Murad continued walking, a grotesque, tatterdemalion figure which drew a battery of stares from the crowd that was gathering. None of them dared accost him, though, despite their consuming curiosity. The last Hawkwood saw of him he was negotiating the burnt expanse of what had been the Lower City, his face set towards the heights whereon Hebrion’s Royal palace loomed up out of the dawn haze.

Done with him at last, Hawkwood thought, and thanked God for it—for a whole host of things.

“Is that the
Gabrian Osprey
? Is that really her?” someone shouted out from the buzzing throng on the wharf.

“Aye, it’s her. Come home from the edge of the world.”

“Ricardo! Ricardo Hawkwood! Glory be to God!”

A short, dark man in rich but soiled garments of blue and yellow pushed through the crowd. He wore the chain of a port captain. “Richard! Ha, ha, ha! I don’t believe it. Back from a watery grave.”

Hawkwood climbed over the ship’s rail, and staggered as the unmoving stone of the wharf met his feet. It seemed to be gently rising and falling under him.

“Galliardo,” he said with a smile, and the short man clasped his hand and shook it as though he meant to wring it off. There were tears in his eyes.

“I had a mass said for you these six months past. Oh God, Richard, what has happened to you?”

The press of bodies about Hawkwood was almost unbearable. Half the dock workers in the area seemed to have gathered about the
Osprey
to look and wonder and hear her storey. Hawkwood blinked away his joy at landfall and tried to make himself think.