Ships from the West

Twelve

In squares and at street corners the people gathered in sub shy;dued crowds while those who could read relayed the content of the daily bulletins to their fellow citizens.

This day were executed Hilario, Duke of Imerdon, Lord Queris of Hebriera, and Lady Marian of Fulk, they having been found guilty of conspiring against the Presbyter of Hebrion, Lord Orkh. May Almighty God have mercy on their souls.

A reward of five hundred silver crowns is offered for information leading to the arrest and apprehension of the following …

And here a long list of names followed, which those reading the bulletin intoned in stentorian voices, watching always to see if any of the Knights Militant, or worse an Inceptine, were near.

No one knew how or where the executions took place, and the names of the dead all belonged to the nobility of Hebrion. Thus while the common folk might feel anger, even outrage, at this unseen slaughter of their betters, they were largely un shy;affected by it. And besides, there was a new nobility to get used to.

Thus the life of Abrusio, which had shuddered to a trembl shy;ing halt for days after the first landings, slowly began to return to something approaching normality. Market stalls were cauti shy;ously opening again, and taverns began to fill up in the evenings as folk became less afraid to walk the streets at night. There was no curfew, no martial law, just the daily bulletins, their wording unchanged but for the names they listed. Even the soldiers of the garrison had been merely told to stack arms and return to barracks. There was talk of a treaty having been signed, a peaceful annexation, and certainly the new rulers of Hebrion were busy men. They had taken up residence not in the palace but in the old Inceptine abbey, as befitted a group of churchmen, and from the abbey the couriers rode in unending streams, while in the harbour every Royal vessel remaining had received a boarding party of Himerians and was frantically readying to put to sea.

It was not so bad, on the whole, and people looked back to the hysteria which had followed the rumours of the fleet's destruction with a kind of abashed wonder. They forget, or chose not to remember, the storm which had smote the city, the thunderheads which had hidden the sun and darkened the face of the waters at noon, and the sea lightnings which had capered madly, striking people in the streets, setting light to houses. Only the deluge which had followed had stopped the city from burning a second time. The black clouds had burst overhead and people had scurried for cover as the rain came down in rods, flattening the waves which the west wind had reared up, turning the steep streets in the Upper City into tawny rivers.

There were those who said that in the heart of the lightnings and the hammering rain the sky had not been empty. Things had been circling below the lowering clouds. Monstrous things which were not birds. But people chose not to dwell on that now, and those who insisted were ignored and even ridiculed.

As the storm had lifted, and the daylight returned, the horizon had become dark with ships. There were a few fools who wiped the rain out of their eyes and cheered the return of King Abeleyn, but they were soon hushed. Out of the west, the enemy had come to claim his prize.

The soldiers of the garrison, many little more than frighten shy;ed boys, ran out the great guns of the mole forts and barricaded the wharves of the waterfront. A few public-spirited citizens helped them, but most locked themselves indoors, as if they could somehow will the invaders away, while many others choked the city gates with wagons and carts and laden mules, and set off for the dubious sanctuary of the Hebros Mountains. Perhaps a hundred thousand of

Abrusio's population departed in this manner, churning up the North Road in a frenzied exodus. In their midst rode many noblemen with fortunes stuffed into bulging saddlebags, and a canny teamster might line his pockets handsomely if he were willing to sell his cart to some desperate aristocratic family.

The enemy fleet had backed their topsails within a half league of the moles and there they had ridden out the breeze, which had backed round to south-south-east. Only a few Himerian vessels had put in towards the Inner Roads, flying flags of truce. Archaic, cog-like ships, they had sailed smoothly past the staring gun crews of the moles and moored at the foot of Admiral's Tower and disgorged not the beasts of nightmare that the populace had feared, but a dignified group of black-clad clerics under a flapping white flag. The gunners of the mole forts had held their fire in fear as much as anything else, for the fleet which had hove-to beyond Abru shy;sio's massive breakwaters was larger than anything they had ever seen. And what was more, on the decks of those innumerable ships there were massed tens of thousands of armoured figures. They might take a heavy toll of such a host, should the Himerians try to force the passage of the moles, but they would be overwhelmed in the end. Their senior officers, all well-bred second-raters, had fled the city days earlier and so the common soldiery of Abrusio, in the absence of definite orders, waited to see what might happen. They trusted to the white flags of the invaders and the rumours of the mysterious treaty which had been doing the rounds of the city ever since the flight of the Queen.

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 as shy;tonishment of the citizenry the vast Himerian fleet had dis shy;appeared. 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 per shy;haps 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 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 homunculous 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 ‘I-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 Incep shy;tine, 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.

'They 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 con shy;tingents 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 Scahare is a mariner of some repute and is known to you, I believe. Richard Hawk shy;wood, 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! 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 weather-workers 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 weather-workers they will drop anchor before the city in eight days.'

'That will do. I believe that will do. Cartigella will be in shy;vested by land and sea, and will be made to see sense as Hebrion has.'

'You don't think that the Hebrian 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 Hawk shy;wood 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, 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 pre shy;paring to move on Rone from its bases in Candelaria. 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.

The Hibrusian was a sleek barquentine which displaced some six hundred tonnes 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 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. Re shy;named 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 homunculous perched on its shoulder and chuckling into its ear.