Ships from the West

Nine

Gaderion had begun life as a timber-built blockhouse on a stream-girt spur of the Thurian mountains. The Fimbrians had stationed troops there to police the passage of the Torrin Gap and levy tolls on the caravans that passed through from west to east, or east to west. When their empire fell apart the station was abandoned, and the only relic left of their presence was the fine road which they had constructed to speed the passage of their armies.

The Torunnans had built a series of staging posts in the gap, and around these had grown up a straggling network of taverns and livery stables which catered for travellers. But these had withered away over the years, first of all in the retrenchment which had followed the crisis of the Merduk Wars, and then in the years after the Schism, when trade between Torunna and Almark had all but died out.

More recently, a Merduk army had begun work on a fortress in the gap, before suffering defeat in the Battle of Berrona. King Corfe, in the years following Armagedir, had had the entire region surveyed, and at the point where the road was pinched in a narrow valley between the buttresses of the two mountain chains, he had had a hilltop spur levelled, and on its summit had constructed a large fortress complex which in size at least would come to rival long-lost Ormann Dyke. In the subsequent years the defences had been extended for almost half a league, to command the entire pass, and Gaderion now consisted of three separate fortifications, all connected by massive curtain walls.

To the south-east was the donjon on its steep spur of black rock. This was a squat citadel with walls fully fifty feet thick to withstand siege guns. There was a spring within its perimeter, and below it bomb proofs had been hewn out of the living gutiock to house a fair-sized army, and enough supplies to sustain them for at least a year. Here also were the adminis shy;trative offices of the garrison, and the living quarters of the commanding officer. In the midst of these was a taller feature, a blunt spike of rock which at one time in the youth of the world had been a plug of molten lava within the walls of a volcano. The walls had worn away, leaving this ominous fist of basalt standing alone. There had been a pagan altar on its summit when Corfe's engineers had first surveyed it. Now it had been partially hollowed out with immense, costly, dan shy;gerous labour, and provided a last-ditch refuge within the donjon itself, and a lofty look-out which gave a bird's-eye view of the entire Torrin river valley and the mountains on either side. Light guns had been sited in embrasures in its impregnable sides, and they commanded every approach. Men called this ominous-looking tower of stone the Spike.

The donjon and the Spike loomed over this flat-floored valley, which was perhaps three quarters of a mile wide. The soil here was fertile and dark, watered by the chill stream which hundreds of miles to the south and east grew into the Torrin river, and the soldiers of the garrison tended plots of land in the shadow of the fortress despite the mountain-swift growing season and the killer frosts of the winter. There were currently twenty-eight thousand men stationed at Gaderion. Many of them had wives who lived nearby, and a scattering of stone and log houses dotted the valley east of the walls. Officially, this was frowned upon, but in fact it was discreetly tolerated, else the separation between the men and their families would have been well-nigh unsupportable.

Square in the middle of the valley was a low, circular knoll some fifty feet high, and on this had been built the second of Gaderion's fortresses. The redoubt was a simple square structure with triangular casemates at each corner to catch any foes who reached the walls in a deadly crossfire. The North Road ran through it under the arches of two heavily defended gates, and before these gates were two redans which each mounted a battery of guns. Within the walls were housed the stables of the Royal couriers who kept Gaderion in touch with the larger world, and it was here also that the main sortie force of the fortress was billeted: some eight thousand men, half of them cavalry.

The last of Gaderion's fortresses was the Eyrie. This had been tacked on like a swallow's nest to the steep cliffs of the Candorwir, the mountain whose peak overlooked the valley on its western side. The stone of Candorwir had been hollowed out to accommodate three thousand men and fifty great guns, and the only way they could be reached was by a dizzy single-track mule path which had been blasted out of the very flank of the mountain. The guns of the Eyrie and the donjon formed a perfect crossfire which transformed the floor of the Torrin valley into a veritable killing ground in which each feature had been mapped and ranged. The gunners of Gaderion could, if they wished, shoot accurately at these features in the dark, for each gun had a log board noting the traverse and elevation of specified points on the approach to the walls.

The three fortresses, formidable in themselves, had a weak link which was common to all. This was the curtain wall. Forty feet high and almost as thick, it ranged in strange tortuous zig shy;zags across the valley floor connecting the donjon to the redoubt and the redoubt to the cliffs at the foot of the Eyrie. Sharp-angled bartizans pocked its length every three hundred yards, and four thousand men were stationed along it, but strong though it seemed, it was the weakest element of the defences. Only a few guns were sited in its casemates, as Corfe had long ago decided that it was the artillery of the three fortresses which would protect the wall, not the wall itself. If it were overrun, then those three would still dominate the valley too thoroughly to allow the passage of troops. To force the passage of the Torrin Gap, an attacker would have to take all of them: the donjon, the redoubt, and the Eyrie. All told, twelve thousand men manned their defences, which left a field army of sixteen thousand to conduct offensive operations and patrols. Once this had seemed more than ample, but General Aras, officer commanding Gaderion, was no longer so sure.

Some six leagues to the north and west of Gaderion the narrow, mountain-girt gap opened out into the wider land of the Torian Plains beyond, and in the tumbled foothills which marked the last heights of the mountains a line of turf and timber structures signalled the beginning of the Thurian Line, the easternmost redoubt of the Second Empire. Here, with the conscripted labour of thousands, the forces of Himerius had reared up a great clay and wood barrier, part defensive wall, part staging post. It meandered over the grassy hills like a monstrous serpent, bristling with stockades and gabions and revetments. There were few heavy guns stationed along it, but huge numbers of men patrolled its unending length, and to the rear they had constructed sod-walled towns and roads of crushed stone. The smoke of their fires could be seen for miles, an oily smudge on the hem of the sky, and their shanty towns were surrounded by muddy quagmires through which columns of troops trudged ceaselessly, and files of cavalry plunged fetlock-deep. Here were garrisoned men of a dozen different countries and kingdoms reaching from Fulk in the far west to Gardiac in the heights of the Jafrar. Knights of Perigraine, looking like chivalric relics on their magnificently caparisoned chargers. Clanking gallowglasses from Finnmark with their greatswords and broadaxes. Almarkan cuirassiers with pistols strapped to their saddles. Knights Militant, as heavily armoured as the Perigrainians, but infinitely more businesslike. And Inceptines, no longer monks in habits, but now tonsured warriors on destriers wielding maces and clad in black-lacquered steel. They led ragged columns of men who wore no armour, wielded no weapons, but who were the most feared of all Himerius's soldiers: the Hounds of God. When a troop of these trotted down one of the muddy garrison streets, everyone, even the hulking gallowglasses, made room for them. The Torun-nans had yet to meet these things in battle, but they were the secret weapon upon which the Empire based many hopes.

A savage, low-intensity warfare had flickered over this disputed ground between the two defence lines now for several months. Each side sent out patrols to gather intelli shy;gence on the other, and when these met no quarter was asked or given. Scarcely two sennights previously, a Torunnan flying column of a thousand cuirassiers had slipped through the foothills to the north-east of the Thurian Line undetected, and had burned the bridges over the Tourbering river a hundred miles to the north. However, on their way back the Himerians had been ready for them, and barely two hundred of the heavy horsemen had survived to see the walls of Gaderion again.

A small group of lightly armed Torunnan cavalry reined in as evening drew on and prepared to bed down for the night on a low bluff within sight of the endless skein of lights that was the Thurian Line. They had been out of Gaderion three days on a reconnaissance, riding the entire length of the enemy fortifications, and were to return to barracks in the morning. Half their number stood guard while the rest unsaddled, rubbed down and fed their mounts, and then unrolled their damp bedrolls. When this had been done, the dismounted troopers remained standing and watchful as their comrades did the same. Five dozen tired, grimy men who wanted nothing more than to get through the night and back to their bunks, a wash, and a hot meal. The Torunnans were forbidden to light fires when between the lines, and thus their camps had been chill and cheerless, their food ration scarcely less so. By the time the horse lines were pegged out in the wooded ground at the foot of the bluff and the animals hobbled and deep in nosebags, it had become almost fully dark, the last light edging down behind the jagged sentinel bulk of Candor-wir behind them, and the seven stars of the Scythe bright and stark in a cloudless night sky.

The troopers' young officer, a lanky youth with straw-coloured hair, stood watching the line of lights glittering on the world perhaps ten miles away to the north and west. They arced across the land like a filigree necklace, too delicate to seem threatening. But he had seen them up close, and knew that the Himerians decorated those ramparts with Torunnan heads mounted on cruel spikes. The bodies they left out as carrion within gunshot of the walls.

'All quiet, sir', the troop sergeant told his officer, a shadow among other, faceless shadows.

'All right, Dieter. Turn yourself in as well. I reckon I'll watch for a while.'

But the sergeant did not move. He was staring down at the Thurian Line like his officer. 'Funny, behind the walls it's lively as an ants' nest someone has poked with a stick, but there's not hide nor hair of the bastards out here. Not one patrol! I haven't seen the like, and I've been stationed up here these past four years.'

'Yes, there's a bad smell in the air all right. Maybe the rumours are true, and it's the start of the war at last.'

'Saint's blood, I hope not.'

The young ensign turned to his sergeant, his senior by twenty years, and grinned. 'What's that? Aren't you keen to have a go at them, Dieter? They've been skulking behind those ramparts for ten years now. It's about time they came out and let us get at them.'

Dieter's face was expressionless. 1 was at Armagedir, lad, and in the King's Battle before that. I was no older than you are now and thought much the same. All young men's minds work the same way. They want to see war, and when they have seen it, they never want to see it again, providing they live through it.'

'No glory, eh?'

'Roche, you've been up here a year now. How much glory have you seen?'

'Ah, but it's just been this damn skirmishing. I want to see what a real fight is like, where the battle lines are a mile long and the thunder of it shakes the earth.'

'Me, I just want to get back to my bed, and the wife in it.'

'What about young Pier? He'll soon be of an age to sit a saddle or shoulder a pike. Is he to follow you into the tercios?'

'Not if I can help it.'

'Ah, Dieter, you're tired is all.'

'No, it's not that. It's the waiting, I think. These bastards have been building things up for a decade now, since the Torian Plains battle. They own everything between the Mai shy;vennors and the Cimbrics, right up to the sultanates in the Jafrar, and still they want more. They won't stop till we break 'em. I just want to get on with it, I suppose. Get it over with.'

He stopped, listening. In the horse lines among the trees the animals were restless and quarrelsome, despite being as tired as their riders. They were tugging at the picket ropes, trying to rear though their forelegs were securely hobbled.

'Something in the wind tonight,' the young ensign said lightly, but his face was set and hard.

The night was silent save for the struggling horses. The sentries down at the lines were trying to calm them, cursing and grabbing at their skewed nosebags.

'Something,' Dieter agreed. 'Sir, do you smell that?'

The ensign sniffed the air doubtfully. 'There must be an old fox's den nearby. That's what is spooking the horses.'

'No, it's different than that. Stronger.'

One of the sentries came running up to the two men with his sabre drawn. The metal glinted coldly in the starlight.

'There's something out there in the dark sir, something moving. It was circling the camp, and then I lost it in that gully down on the left. It's in the trees.'

The young officer looked at his sergeant. 'Stand to.'

But the nickering of the horses exploded into a chorus of terrified, agonising shrieks that froze them all where they stood. The sentries came running pell-mell from the horse lines, terrified. 'There's something down in there, Sergeant!'

'Stand to!' Dieter yelled at the top of his voice, though all through the bivouac men were already struggling out of their bedrolls and reaching for their weapons.

'What the hell's going on down there?'

'We couldn't see. They came out of the gully. Some kind of animals, black as a wolf's throat and moving on their hindquarters like men. But they aren't men, sir.'

Horses were trying pitifully to drag themselves up the rocky slope to the bivouac where their riders stood, trailing their picket ropes. But their forelegs were securely hobbled and they reared and screamed and tumbled to their sides and kicked out maniacally to their rear. The men could see the black berry-shine of blood on them now. One had been disembowelled and was slipping in its own entrails.

'Sergeant Dieter', the ensign said in a voice that shook, 'take a demi-platoon down to the horse lines and see what is happening there.'

Dieter looked at him a moment and then nodded. He bawled out at the nearest men and a dozen followed him reluctantly down into the wooded hollow from which the hellish cacophony of dying beasts resounded.

The rest of the men formed up on the bluff and watched them as they struck a path through the melee of terrified and dying beasts still struggling out of the trees. Two men were knocked from their feet. Dieter left them there, telling them to unhobble every horse they could. The terror-stricken animals mobbed the men, looking to their riders for protection. Then Dieter's group disappeared into the bottomless shadow of the wood that straggled along the foot of the bluff.

A stream of horses was galloping up the slope now as they were loosed of their restraints. The men tried to catch and soothe them but most went tearing off into the night. The men gathered around the ensign were as much baffled as afraid, and angry at the savagery of the attack on their horses. Many of the mounts that had escaped were bleeding from deep-slashed claw marks.

A single shout, cut short, as though the wind had been knocked out of the shouter.

'That was Dieter', one of the men on the bluff said.

There were alder and birch down in the hollow below the bivouac, and these began thrashing as though men were shaking their branches. Cursing the darkness, those on the hill peered down the slope, past the keening, crippled horses that littered the ground, and saw a line of black figures loom out of the trees like a cloud of shadow. The smell in the air again, but stronger now – the musk-like stink of a great beast. Something sailed across the night sky and thudded to the ground just short of their feet. They heard a noise that after shy;wards many would swear had resembled human laughter, and then one of their number was pointing at the thrown object lying battered and glistening on the earth before them. Their sergeant's head.

The things in the trees seemed to melt away into the dark shy;ness, branches springing back to mark their passing. The men on the hill stood as though turned to stone, and in the sudden quiet even the screaming of the horses died away.

The lady Mirren's daily rides were a trial to both her assigned bodyguards, and her ladies-in-waiting. Each morning just after sunrise, she would appear at the Royal stables where Shamarq, the ageing Merduk who was head groom, had her horse Hydrax saddled and waiting for her. With her would be the one among her ladies-in-waiting who had chosen the short straw that morning, and a suitable young officer as escort. This morning it was Ensign Baraz, who had been kicking his heels about the Bladehall for several days until he had caught the eye of General Comillan. He had accepted his new role with as much good grace as he could muster, and now his tall grey stood fretting and prancing beside Hydrax, a pair of pistols and a sabre strapped to its saddle. Gebbia, the lady who was to accompany them, had been assigned a quiet chestnut palfrey which she nonetheless eyed with something approaching despair.

The trio set off out of the north-west postern in the city walls and kicked into a swift canter, Gebbia's palfrey bobbing like a toy in the wake of the two larger horses ahead. Mirren's marmoset clung to her neck and bared its tiny teeth at the fresh wind, trying to lick the air with its tongue. The riders avoided the wagon-clogged Kingsway, and struck off towards the hills to the north of the city. Not until the horses were snorting and blowing in a cloud of their own steam did Mirren rein in. Baraz had kept pace with her but poor Gebbia was half a mile behind, the palfrey still bobbing simple-mindedly along.

'Why a court lady cannot be made to ride a decent horse I do not know’ Torunna's Princess complained.

Baraz patted his sweating mount's neck and said nothing. He was regretting the King's momentary interest in him, and was wondering if he would ever be sent to a tercio to do some real soldiering. Mirren turned to regard his closed face. 'You sir, what's your name?'

'Ensign Baraz, my lady – yes, that Baraz.' He was getting tired of the reaction his name produced, too.

'You ride well, but you seem more put out even than Gebbia. Have I offended you?'

'Of course not, lady.' And as she continued to stare at him, 'It's just that I was hoping for a more – more military assign shy;ment. His majesty has attached me to the High Command as a staff officer-'

'And you wanted to get your hands dirty instead of escort shy;ing galloping princesses about the countryside.' Baraz smiled. 'Something like that'

'Most of the young bloods are very keen to escort the galloping Princess.'

Baraz bowed in the saddle. 'I am uncouth. I must apologise, lady. It is of course an honour-'

'Oh, stow it, Baraz. It's not as though I blame you. Were I a man, I would feel the same way. Here comes Gebbia. You would think she had just ridden clear across Normannia. Gebbia! Clench your knees together and kick that lazy screw a little harder or you'll lose us altogether.'

Gebbia, a pretty dark-haired little thing whose face was flushed with exertion, could only nod wordlessly, and then look appealingly at Baraz.

'We should perhaps walk them a while to let them cool down,' he ventured.

'Very well. Ride beside me, Ensign. We shall head up to the hilltop yonder, and then maybe I'll allow you to race me.'.

The three horses and their riders proceeded more sedately up the long heather and boulder-strewn slope, whilst before them the sun rose up out of a roseate wrack of tumbled cloud on the undulating horizon. A falcon wheeled screaming out of the sun towards Torunn and shrank to a winged speck within seconds, though Mirren followed its course keenly with palm-shaded eyes. The marmoset gibbered unhappily and she shushed it. 'No Mij, it was just a bird is all.'

'You understand him?' Baraz asked, curious.

'In a way. He's my familiar,' and she laughed as his eyes widened. 'Didn't you know that Dweomer runs in the blood of the Fantyrs? The female line, at any rate. From my mother I gained witchery and from my father the ability to ride any shy;thing on four legs.'

'You can cast spells then?'

'Would you like me to try?' She wagged the fingers of one hand at him and he recoiled despite himself. Mirren laughed again. ‘I have little talent, and there is no one to tutor me save Mother. There are no great mages left in Torunna. They have all fled to join Himerius and the Empire, it is said.'

‘I have never seen magic worked.'

Mirren waved an arm, frowning, and Baraz saw a haze of green-blue light follow in its wake, as though trailed by her sleeve. It gathered on her open palm and coalesced into a ball of bright werelight. She sent it circling in a blazing blur round Baraz's astonished face, and then it winked out like a snuffed candle.

'You see? Mountebank tricks, little more.' She shrugged with a rare sadness, and he saw at once her father's face in hers. Her eyes were warmer, but the same strength was in the line of the jaw and the long nose. Baraz began to regret his assignment a little less.

Mirren stared at him with the sadness still on her face, then turned to her lady-in-waiting.

'Don't try to keep up with us, Gebbia; you'll only fall off.' And to Baraz: 'Ready for that race?'

Without another word she let out a yell and kicked Hydrax on. The big bay sprang into an instant canter, then quickened into a full-blooded gallop, his black mane flying like a flag. Baraz watched her go, startled, but noting how well she sat, sidesaddle or no, and then dug both heels into his own horse's flanks.

He had thought to go easy on her, and let her stay a little ahead, but he found instead that she was leaving him quickly behind, and had to ride in earnest, his grey dipping and rising under him on the rough ground. Once he had to pull up hard on the reins as the gelding tripped and almost went headlong and it took every ounce of his skill to draw level with her as they reached the broad plateau at the summit of the ridgeline, and she slowed to a canter again, then a trot, and finally a slow walk.

'Not bad,' Mirren told him. The marmoset had wrapped itself around her neck and was as bright-eyed as she. 'Now Mij, ease off a little there; you'll have me strangled.'

There was a rough upland track here on the ridge, and as they walked their horses along it they could look down on the sprawl of the capital behind them. They were some five or six miles out of the gates, and poor Gebbia was a mere dot on the land below, still trotting gamely upwards.

They passed the ruins of a house, or hill croft, its roof beams long since fallen in like charred ribs in the crumbling shadow of its walls.

'My father tells me there were many farms here in the hills outside the city before the war. Then the Merduks came and-' Mirren coloured. 'Ensign Baraz, I am so sorry.'

Baraz shrugged. 'What you say is true, lady. My people raped this part of the world before your father threw them back at Armagedir. It was an ugly time.'

'And now a descendant of the great Shahr Baraz of Aekir wears a Torunnan uniform and takes orders from a Torunnan king. Does that not seem odd to you?'

'When the wars ended I was a toddler. I grew up knowing that Ramusio and Ahrimuz were the same man. I have worshipped alongside Ramusians all my life. The older men remember things the way they were, but the younger know only the world the way it is now. And it is better like this.'

'I certainly think so.'

They smiled at each other in the same moment, and Baraz felt a warmth creep about his heart. But the moment was broken by the urgent squeaks of Mirren's familiar.

'Mij! What in the world is wrong?'

The little animal was clambering distractedly about her shoulders, hissing and crying. She halted her horse to calm it and Baraz took her reins as she bodily seized the tiny creature and stared into its face. It grew quiet, and whimperingly climbed into the hollow of her hood where it lay chittering to itself.

'He's terrified, but all he can show me is the face of a great black wolf.' Mirren took back her reins, troubled.

'There's someone on the track ahead of us,' Baraz told her. He loosened his sabre in its scabbard. A tall figure was standing some way in the distance, seemingly oblivious of their presence. He was motionless as a piece of statuary, and was staring down at the walls of the capital, mustard-coloured in the morning light, and the blue shine of the estuary beyond where the Torrin widened on its way to the sea.

'He doesn't look dangerous,' Mirren said. 'Oh, Baraz, stop topping it the bodyguard. It's just a beggar or vagabond. Look – there's another one, off to one side. They seem lost, and old, too.'

They rode up to the men, who appeared to be absorbed in the contemplation of the city in the distance. One was sitting with his back to a stone and a hood which seemed like a monk's cowl was pulled over his head. He might have been asleep. The other was dressed in a travel-stained robe, buff-coloured with dust, and a wide-brimmed hat which hid his face in shadow. A bulging haversack hung from one bony shoulder.

'Good morning, fathers,' Baraz greeted them as they ap shy;proached. 'Are you heading for the city?'

The man on the ground did not stir, but the other answered. 'Yes, that is my goal.' His voice was deep as a well.

'You've a fair step to go then.'

The man did not reply at once. He seemed weary, if the sag of his shoulders was anything to go by. He looked up at the two riders and for the first time they saw his face and gasped involuntarily.

'Who might you two be then?'

‘I am Ensign Baraz of the Torunnan army, and this is-'

'The Princess Mirren, daughter of King Corfe himself. Well, this is a happy chance.' The man smiled, and they saw that despite the ruin which constituted one side of his face, his eyes were kindly.

'How do you know who I am?' Mirren demanded.

And now the man sitting on the ground raised his head and spoke for the first time. 'Your familiar told us.'

Baraz drew his sabre and nudged the grey forward until he was between Mirren and the strange pair. 'State your names and your business in Torunna,' he rasped, dark eyes flashing.

The man on the ground rose to his feet. He also seemed tired. The two might have been nothing more than a pair of road-weary vagabonds, but for that last statement, and the aura of unquiet power which hung about them.

'They're wizards’ Mirren said.

The disfigured older man doffed his wide-brimmed hat. 'Indeed we are, my dear. Young man, our business is our own, but as for our names, well I am Golophin of Hebrion, and my companion-'

'Will remain nameless, for now,' the other interrupted. Baraz could see a square jaw and broken nose under the cowl, but little else.

'Golophin!' Mirren cried. 'My father speaks often of you. The greatest mage in the world, it is said.'

Golophin chuckled, replacing his hat. 'Perhaps not the greatest. My companion here might bridle at such an assump shy;tion.'

'What are you doing here in Torunna? I thought you were still in Abrusio.'

‘I have come to see King Corfe, your father. I have some news for him.'

'What of your taciturn comrade?' Baraz asked, pointing at him with his sword.

As he gestured with the blade the weapon seemed to flick out of his grip. It spun coruscating in the air for a second and then flicked away into the heather, stabbing into the ground so that the hilt stood quivering. Baraz shook his hand as though it had been burned, mouth gaping.

‘I do not like blades pointed in my face,' Golophin's com shy;panion said mildly.

'You had best leave us be,' Golophin told Baraz. 'My friend and I were in the middle of a little altercation when you arrived, hence his testiness.'

'Golophin, there is so much I must ask you,' Mirren said.

'Indeed? Well child, you may ask me anything you like, but not right now. I am somewhat preoccupied. It might be best if you said nothing of this meeting. The fewer folk who know I am here the better.' Then he looked at his companion, and laughed. The other's mouth crooked under the cowl in answer.

'You may tell your father, though. I will see him tonight, or possibly tomorrow morning.'

'What is this news you have come to deliver? I will take it to him.'

Golophin's ravaged face hardened into a mask. 'No, one so young should not have to bear such tidings.' He turned to Baraz. 'See the lady safe home, soldier.'

Baraz glared at him. 'You may be sure I will.'

Spring might be in the air, but up here in the hills there was still an algid bite to the air when the wind got up, and as the day drew on Golophin and his companion kindled a fire with a blast of rubescent theurgy and sat on pads of gathered heather warming themselves at the transparent flames. As the afternoon waned and the sun began to slide behind the white peaks of the Cimbrics in the west, Golophin was aware that a third person had joined them, a small, silent figure which sat cross-legged just outside the firelight.

'That is an abomination,' the old mage told his companion.

'Perhaps. I am no longer sure I care greatly. One can become accustomed to all sorts of things, Golophin.' The speaker had thrown back his cowl at last and now was revealed as a middle-aged man with close-cropped grey hair and a prize shy;fighter's face. He reached into the breast of his habit and brought forth a steel flask. Unscrewing the top, he took a sip and then tossed it across the fire. Golophin caught it deftly and drank in his turn. 'Hebrionese akvavit. I applaud your taste, Bard.'

'Call it a perk of the job.'

'Call it what it is: spoils of war.'

'Hebrion was my home also, Golophin.'

'I have not forgotten that, you may be sure.'

A tension fizzled across the flames between them, and then slackened as Bardolin chuckled. 'Why Golophin, your hauteur is almost impressive.'

'I'm working on it.'

'It is pleasant, this, sitting here as though the world were not on fire around us, listening to the hunting bats and the sough of the wind in the heather. I like this country. There is an austerity to it. I do not wonder that it breeds such sol shy;diers.'

'You met these soldiers in the field I hear, a decade ago. So are you become a general now?'

Bardolin bowed. 'Not much of a one, it must be said. Give me a tercio and I know what to do. Give me an army and I will admit to being somewhat ill at ease.'

"That doesn't bode well for your master's efforts in this part of the world, Presbyter.'

'We have generals, Golophin, ones who may surprise you. And we have numbers. And the Dweomer.'

"The Dweomer as a weapon of war. In the days before the Empire – the First Empire – it is said that certain kings fielded regiments of mages. But it has never been recorded that they tolerated the presence of shifters in their armies. Not even the ancients were barbarian enough for that.'

'You speak whereof you know nothing.'

'I know enough. I know that the thing seated across the fire from me is not Bardolin of Carreirida, and the succubus which hides silent in the shadows behind you was not conjured up for his comfort.'

'And yet she is a comfort, nonetheless.'

'Then why are you here? To sit and wax nostalgic about the old days?'

'Is that so inexplicable, so hard to believe?' Golophin dropped his eyes. 'I don't know. Ten, twelve years ago I thought there was a part of my apprentice which could still be saved. I am no longer so sure. I am consorting with the enemy now.'

'It does not have to be that way. I am still the Bardolin you knew. Because of me, Hawkwood is alive.'

'That was your master's whim.'

'Partly. The survival of the other had nothing to do with me though, you may be sure.' 'What other?'

'The Presbyter of Hebrion's right hand.' I don't understand, Bard.'

‘I can tell you no more. I, also, am consorting with the enemy do not forget.'

The two wizards stared at each other without animosity, only a gentle kind of sadness.

'It is not as though Hebrion has been destroyed, Golophin,' Bardolin said softly. 'It has merely suffered a change in ownership.'

'That sounds like the self-justification of the thief.'

'You are so damned wilful – and wilfully blind.' Here Bardolin leaned forward so that the firelight carved a crannied mask out of his bluff features.

"The fleet did not make landfall in Hebrion out of a mere whim, Golophin. Your – our – homeland is vital to Aruan's plans. It so happens that Hebrion, and the Hebros Mountains, were once part of the Western Continent.'

'How can you-'

'Let me finish. At some time in the unimaginable past Normannia and the west were one great land mass, but they split apart aons ago, drifting like great lilypads and letting the ocean flood in between them. Aruan and his chief mages have been conducting research into the matter for many years.'

'So?'

'So, there is something, some element or mineral in the very bowels of the Western Continent which is in effect the essence of the energy we know as magic. Pure theurgy, running like a vein of precious ore through the very bedrock of the earth. It is that which has made Aruan what he is.'

'And you what you have become, I take it.'

'This energy runs through the Hebros also, for the Hebros and the mountains of the Western Continent were once part of the same chain. That is why Hebrion has always been home to more of the Dweomer-folk than any other of the Five King shy;doms. That is why Hebrion had to fall. Golophin, you have no conception of the great researches that are underway, in the west, at Charibon, even in Perigraine. Aruan is close to solving an ancient and paramount riddle. What are the Dweomer-folk, and how were they created? Is it in fact possible to imbue an ordinary man with the Dweomer, and make of him a mage?'

Golophin found his bitter reply dying in his mouth. Despite himself, he was fascinated. Bardolin smiled.

'Think of the progress this army of mages can make in the pursuit of pure knowledge, given all the materials they need, allowed to proceed in peace with their studies. Golophin, for the first time in history, the bowels of the Library of St Garaso in Charibon have been opened up and laid bare. There are treatises and grimoires down there that predate the First Empire. They have been sealed away by the Church for centuries, and now they are finally being studied by those who can understand them. I have seen a first edition of Ardinac's Bestiary-'

'No! They were all destroyed by Willardius.'

Bardolin laughed, and threw his hands up in the air. 'I've seen it, I tell you! Golophin, listen to me, think about this. Imagine what a mind like yours, allied to that of Aruan, could mean for the progress of learning, both theurgical and other shy;wise. An eighth Discipline is only the beginning. This is a precious opportunity, a crux of history right here and now, with the bats squeaking round our ears in the hills north of Torunn. It may be there are things about our regime that you find distasteful – no man is perfect, not even Aruan. But damn it all, our motives are pure enough. To lead mankind down a different path.

'At this time, there is a fork in the road. Man can either follow what he terms as science, and develop ever more efficient means of killing, and build a world where there is no place for the Dweomer, and which will eventually see its death. Or he can embrace his true heritage, and become something entirely different. A society can be created in which theurgy is part of daily commerce, and learning is treasured above the soot-stained tinkering of the artisan. At this point in history, mankind must choose between these two destinies, and that choice will be made in a tide of blood, because that is the way of revolutions. But that, regrettable though it may be, does not make the choice invalid.

'Join us, Golophin, in the name of God. Perhaps we can spare the world some of that bloodletting.'

The two men stared intently across the fire at one another. Golophin could not speak. For the first time in his long life he did not know what to say.

'I'm not asking you to decide now. But at least think about it.' Bardolin rose. 'Aruan has been away from Normannia a long time. It is a foreign country to him. But that is not true for us. Learned though he is, we possess a familiarity with this world of today that he lacks. He respects you, Golophin. And if your conscience still niggles, think on this: I am convinced you would have more influence over his deeds as a counsellor and friend rather than as an antagonist.

'As for me, my friend you have always been, and yet remain – whatever you might choose to believe.'

Bardolin rose to his feet with the smooth alacrity of a much younger man. 'Think about it, Golophin. At least do that. Farewell.'

And he was gone, only a slight stirring in the air, a faint whiff of ozone to mark his passing. Golophin did not move, but stared into the firelight like a blind man.