Ships from the West

Nineteen

Aurungabar had seen a sultan and his queen buried, and a new sultan and his queen wed and crowned, all in the same month. The city was still unsettled and volatile, but the presence within its walls of a host of soldiery entirely loyal to Sultan Nasir had a considerable soothing effect. The harem had been purged of all those who had fomented intrigue in the brief interregnum and Ostrabar's absolute ruler had proved his mettle, acting swiftly and without mercy. A youth he might be, but he had an able vizier in the shape of Shahr Baraz the Younger, and it was rumoured that his new Ramusian wife was a great aid to him in the consolidation of his position. A sorceress of power she was reputed to be, even mightier than her witch of a mother. Unruly Aurungabar had been swiftly cowed therefore, and it was rumoured through shy;out the city that the Sultan already felt sure enough of his position to wish to set out immediately for the wars of the west.

He was closeted with his new vizier in one of the smaller suites off the Royal Bedchamber. He sat at a desk leafing through a pile of papers whilst Shahr Baraz stood looking over his shoulder, pointing something out now and again, and the spring rain lashed at the windows and the firelight sprang up yellow in the hearth to one side. A set of Merduk half-armour stood on a wooden stand by the door, and a scab-barded tulwar had been set on the mantelpiece. At last Nasir rubbed his eyes and straightened back from the desk with a mighty yawn. He was slim and dark, with olive skin and grey eyes, and he was dressed in a robe of black silk which shimmered in the firelight.

'All this can wait, Baraz. It's frivolous stuff, this granting of offices and remission of taxes.'

'It is not, Nasir,' the older man said forcefully. 'Through such little boons you buy men's loyalty.'

'If it must be bought it is not worth having.'

Shahr Baraz gave a twisted smile. 'That sounds like your mother speaking.'

Nasir bowed his head, and his clear eyes darkened. 'Yes. I never thought I would get it this way, Baraz. Not this way.'

The vizier laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I know, my Sultan. But it rests on your shoulders now. You will grow into it in time. And you have made a fair beginning.'

Nasir's face lit up again, and he turned round. 'Only fair?' They both laughed.

The door was knocked, and without further ceremony the Queen entered, also clad in midnight silk. Her golden hair was down and her marmoset clung to her shoulder cluttering gently, its eyes bright as jewels.

'Nasir, are you ever coming to bed? It's hours past the middle of the-' She saw Shahr Baraz and folded her arms.

Nasir rose and went to her. The vizier watched them as they looked upon each other, half shy still, but an eagerness in their eyes. That, at least, had turned out well, he thought. One must be thankful for small mercies. And those not so small.

'I'm being drowned in dusty details,' Nasir told his wife, 'when all I want is to get on the road with the army.'

'Are you sure that is all you want, my lord?' They grinned at one another like two mischievous children, and indeed they were neither of them yet eighteen years of age.

'The army marches in the morning, my Queen,' Shahr Baraz said, his deep old voice bringing them up short.

'I knew that,' Mirren said with the laughter gone from her face. 'Golophin spoke to me. He has been in and out of here for days. If Nasir is to be up before the dawn he must have some rest at least.'

‘I quite agree,' Shahr Baraz said. 'Now the Sultan and I have some last business to attend to, lady, and the night is passing.'

Mirren's eyes narrowed, and the marmoset hissed at Shahr Baraz. The rebellion in her face faded however, seeing the vizier's implacable eyes. She kissed Nasir on the mouth and left. When the Sultan turned around with a sigh he found the old man shaking his head and smiling.

'You make a handsome pair, the dark and the gold. Your children will be fair indeed, Nasir. You have found yourself a fine queen, but she is as strong-willed and stubborn as an army mule.' When Nasir's mouth opened in outrage Shahr Baraz laughed, and bowed. 'So says Golophin. For he has spoken to me also, the old meddler. She is her father's daughter in more ways than one. And in truth she reminds me somewhat of-' And then he stopped, though they both knew what he had been about to say.

The Merduk army marched out before sunrise, when the streets were as quiet as they ever became in the capital. They formed up in Glory of God Square where once the statue of Myrnius Kuln had frowned, and then led off in long files by prearranged streets to the West Gate. It was a cold, clear night with the sun not yet begun to glimmer over the Jafrar in the east, and King Corfe of Torunna, who had once fled through this very gate as Aekir burned about him, was not yet in the high foothills of the Cimbrics. Nasir was leading fifteen thousand heavily armoured cavalry westwards to the aid of the kingdom which had once been his people's bitterest foe. But he was young, and dwelt seldom on such ironies. Besides, half of his own blood belonged to that people. As did his new wife, whom he already knew he loved.

That same dawn found two ships coursing swift as cantering horses across the eastern Levangore. Their masts were rigid with almost every sail they possessed and their decks were black with men. All through the previous evening and the night they had been hurtling north-north-east with the freshening wind on their larboard quarters, and now to port loomed the purple shapes of the southern Cimbric Mountains as they marched down to the sea east of the Candelan river. Torunna, last free Kingdom of the West, rising up in the dawn light with the snow on the summits of the mountains catching the sun first, so that they tinted scarlet and pink and seemed to be disembodied shapes floating over the darker hills below.

Murad stared at that sunrise briefly and then focused once more on the ship ahead. The xebec had tried to lose them in the night, but the moonlight had been too bright and the eyes of the pursuers too keen. She was little more than four cables ahead now, almost within gunshot, and the Revenant was closing the gap.

The thing which had once been the Lord of Galiapeno glanced aft to see a man in the black of an Inceptine habit standing before the mainmast, solid and unyielding as a stone gargoyle despite the pitch and roll of the barquentine. From him there seemed to hum a silent vibration which could be felt underfoot in the wood of the decks. A soundless mrumming which, Murad knew, was responsible for the present speed, or part of it.

For Richard Hawkwood was too canny a sailor to be caught by conventional seamanship. He had survived the storm sent to sink him and they had almost lost him in the vast sea wastes of the Levangore, until one of Murad's homunculi had glimpsed him by chance as it flew high and far beyond its master in search of news. There would be no second storm -such tactics were obviously inadequate. No, to Murad's great joy Aruan had given him leave to capture the Seahare intact if he chose, and dispose of her crew in any way he wished -provided Hebrion's Queen met her end in the process. What a pleasure it would be to meet his old shipmate and comrade again, and to preside over his unhurried death.

Murad knew much of death. On the night of the fleet's destruction he had become lost in the fog on his way back from the flagship, and thus had watched from his longboat as that great armada was reduced to matchwood all about him. He remembered prising the fingers of desperate drowning survivors from the gunwales of his little craft lest they swamp it in their panic. He had bade his men row them out, far out into the fog, and there they had leant on their oars and watched the ships burning through the mist, listening to the screams. They had escaped that slaughter, or so he had thought.

Then the mage had come in a furious storm of black flame which incinerated Murad's companions in a flashing second and seemed like to do the same to himself. But a curious thing had happened.

‘ know you, a voice had said. Murad had lain in the smoking bottom of the longboat with the swells washing around his charred body, and the thing had hovered over him like a great bat. He felt he were being turned this way and that for inspection, though he had not been touched.

Kill him, another voice said, a familiar voice. But the first laughed.

‘ think not. He may well prove useful.

Kill him!

No. Put aside your past hates and prejudices. You and he are more similar than you think. He is mine.

And thus had Murad of Galiapeno been taken into the service of the Second Empire.

And he had been willing to serve. All his life he had hated mages and witches and the workings of the Dweomer, but more than that Murad had chafed at his subordination to men he deemed less able than himself, even Hebrion's last King. Now he took orders from one he acknowledged to be his superior, and there was a strange comfort in it. He was at last glad to merely do as he was told, and if the orders he received chimed with his own inclinations, so much the better. As for the Dweomer, well he had become reconciled to it, for was it not now a part of him?

And what was more, he would be ruler of Hebrion once this woman he pursued was dead. It had been promised, and Aruan always kept his promises.

'Run out the bow-chasers,' he said, and his crew jumped to do his bidding. A few of them were ordinary mercenaries, sailors of many navies, but most were tall, gleaming black men of the Zanru. They had cast aside their horn carapaces and now teams of them hauled sweating on the cables which trundled out the forward-aimed guns of the ship until they came to bear on the stern of their prey.

'Usunei!' 'Yes, lord.'

'Let us see if we cannot scratch his paintwork. Fire when ready.'

The grunting gun crews levered the two culverins round with handspikes while the gun captains sighted along the bronze barrels with smoking slow-match grasped in their fists. At last they were content and held up their free hands. As the bow of the ship rose they whipped the match across the touch-holes, springing aside with the grace of panthers as the culverins went off as one and leapt inboard, squealing on their trucks. A cloud of smoke went up and was quickly win shy;nowed into nothing by the wind and the speed of the ship's passage. Watching intently, Murad saw two splashes just short of the Seahare's stern.

'Good practice! More elevation there, and we shall have her.'

The next shots could be followed by those with quick eyes: two dark blurs which punched holes in the xebec's mizzen course and then sent splinters flying from something in her waist. Murad laughed and clapped his hands, and the gun crew's faces split in wide, fanged grins.

A minute later the xebec's wounded mizzen course split from top to bottom and flapped madly from the yard. Spray struck Murad in the mouth and he licked the salt tang of it away, his eyes shining. The Seahare lost speed. The next pair of shots went home in the mizzen rigging and he saw a small, wriggling figure blown off the yard and flung into the sea.

'More speed!' Murad screamed. 'You there, give us another two knots and we'll have them before breakfast!'

The hooded Inceptine to whom he spoke did not answer, but he seemed to hunch over within his robe, and the tone of the vibration which filled the ship rose by an octave. The Revenant dipped deeply and water came flooding in the chaser gunports, green and cold. The masts creaked and complained and the backstays were wringing taut, but nothing gave away. The weather-worker was not moving the ship, but the water within which it travelled, and spreading out all around the ship's hull was a violent turbulence of broken, foaming spray which was at odds with the natural swell of the sea about them. The ship trembled and shook as though it were being rattled in the grip of some undersea giant, and several of the crew were knocked off their feet, but Murad stood on the wave-swept forecastle gripping one of the foremast shrouds, and the light in his eyes grew to a yellow fire. They drew nearer to their prey. Now only a cable and a half – three hundred yards – separated the tip of the barquentine's bowsprit and the Seahare's taffrail. In half a glass they would be abreast. Murad raised his voice. 'AH hands, prepare for boarding!', and an homunculus wheeled out of the rigging and settled on his shoulder. About him on the forecastle clustered a great mob of the Zantu, now clad again in their black horn armour and clicking their pincers impatiently. The armour began as a natural construct of horn and leather, but when a man donned it, he became somehow part of it, and it augmented his strength as well as protecting his flesh. The Zantu were fearsome warriors in their own right, but when wearing their black harness they were well-nigh invincible.

'Remember!' Murad yelled. 'The captain is to be taken alive, and the woman's body I must see with my own eyes. The rest are yours.'

The Zantu had fasted for days in preparation of this hour, and from the depths of their shining masks their eyes glittered with hunger and anticipation.

Murad could actually recognise Hawkwood now. He stood at the stern of his ship with an oddly familiar dark-haired boy beside him, and shouted orders that were lost in the wind and the foaming tumult of the waves. The Seahare suddenly yawed hard a port so that she revealed her full broadside, such as it was. Six gun-ports gaping, and then the side of the ship dis shy;appeared in a bank of smoke, and a heartbeat later came the roar of the retorts. Murad felt the wind of one shot pass his head, and it staggered him. The rest smashed down the full length of the Revenant, leaving chaos in their wake. Blocks and fragments of rigging were hurled through the air and the close-packed boarding party was blasted to pieces, so that the scuppers ran with blood and fragments of men were blown as far aft as the quarterdeck.

The humming tremble of the ship's hull ceased, and looking aft Murad saw that one cannonball had cut his weather-working Inceptine in two. The Revenant lost speed and the foaming water about her began to settle into a more rational wake.

'Get me back my speed!' he shrieked at the ship's master, a renegade Gabrionese who stood white-faced by the wheel. 'Shoot them! Catch them, sink them for the love of God!'

The master put the wheel about and the barquentine yawed in her turn, exposing her much heavier metal. 'Fire!' he shouted, and the gun crews collected their wits and sent off a ragged broadside.

But the Zantu were not the well-trained sailors of Hawk-wood's crew. Murad saw three of the balls strike home amidships, and a hail of wood splinters went flying as the Seahare's larboard rail was demolished, but most went high, slicing cables in the rigging but doing little serious damage.

Both ships had lost speed now, and both were turning back to starboard, into the wind. An arquebus ball zipped past Murad's ear and he ducked instinctively. Hawkwood had several sailors with small arms firing from his stern. There was a series of splashes in the xebec's wake; they were throw shy;ing their dead overboard. Murad beat his fist on the forecastle rail in his frustration and his homunculus jumped up and down on his shoulder, screeching.

'More sail!' he shouted to the master. 'If they escape then your life is forfeit, master mariner.'

The crew raced up the shrouds and began piling on every scrap of canvas the barquentine possessed. Staysails and jibs were flashed out and the Revenant began to accelerate through the water at something approaching her previous rate. The xebec still had not sent up a new mizzen course, and they were gaining again. Murad ignored the arquebus balls that whined and snicked about him, and helped the depleted chaser crews run out their guns once more. They fired on the rise and this time the shots smashed square into the Seahare's stern, sending timbers flying through the air and tossing one of the arquebusiers into the sea. Murad laughed again, and called for more men to come forward.

Another party of Zantu joined him by the chasers. Aboard the Seahare a party of men were busy on the quarterdeck and the odd ball came hissing overhead from their arquebusiers. Barely fifty yards separated the two ships now. Murad could see Hawkwood clearly; he was manning the ship's wheel himself, watching the barquentine as it came up hand over fist. That dark boy was helping him, and to one side of them was Isolla herself. She was aiming an arquebus. Murad, startled, saw the smoke spurt from its muzzle, and something thumped the side of his head. He went down and the homunculus squawked harshly. Labouring back to his feet he realised he was deaf on one side, and when he put up a hand it came away wet. Isolla had shot off half his ear.

Furious, he opened his mouth, but at that moment the Seahare made a sharp turn to port, going directly before the wind. As she turned her guns went off in measured sequence, and the Revenant was raked again, the cannonballs passing the full length of the ship.

Her sails shivered, then banged taut, and she fell away before the wind. Looking aft, Murad saw that the ship's wheel had been splintered into pieces and the master lay dead beside it along with the helmsman. The decks were slimy and slick with blood and everywhere fragments of jagged wood and scraps of flesh lay piled amid sliced cables and shattered blocks. Murad dashed aft to the companionway and shouted at the Zantu who staggered there, dazed and bewildered. 'Get below to the tiller and steer her from there! You others, get back to your guns and commence firing!'

He climbed to the quarterdeck, slipping in blood and curs shy;ing, his hand held to the ragged meat where his ear had been. The two vessels were sailing directly before the wind now, on parallel courses less than a cable's length apart. They were pointed at the long inlet which housed the Torunnan port of Rone; Hawkwood was making a run for shore.

Both ships began firing again, broadside to broadside. The

Revenant had heavier guns and more of them, but the Sealwre's were better served, and more accurate. She was slower in the water, though, and her pumps were sending thick jets of water out to port. Murad must have holed her below the waterline.

The lean nobleman's spirits rose. His crew had taken severe casualties, but there were still enough of them to board the enemy. He shouted down the hatch to the tiller deck below: 'Hard a starboard!'

The Revenant made the turn sluggishly, but managed two points into the wind until her beakhead pointed square at the xebec's larboard forechains. The gap closed frighteningly quickly, and before Murad could even shout a warning the ships had collided with a massive jolt that knocked everyone aboard them both from their feet. The Revenant's bowsprit splintered with a sickening crash and tore loose to rake down the xebec's side, only to be halted again by the mainchains. There it stuck in a fearsome snarl of broken wood and cordage and iron trapping, and the two ships continued before the wind hopelessly entangled, both out of command.

Murad recovered his wits and his feet quickly, and drew his rapier. 'Boarders away!' he shrieked, and ran down the length of his ship to where the wreckage of the bow joined her to the enemy xebec. Two dozen unarmoured Zantu gunners follow shy;ed him clutching boarding axes and cutlasses and roaring like beasts. They crossed the perilous bridge of wrecked spars with the sea foaming below them and charged down on to the waist of the xebec. The Seahare was low in the water now; they had indeed breached her hull with their gunfire, and she was sinking under them.

Three or four gunshots met the invaders, and one of Murad's followers was blown off the side to plunge into the sea. Then Hawkwood was there – Haivkivood, at last - with a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other, and the two were glaring naked hate at one another while all about them their ship's companies engaged in a savage hand-to-hand fight in the waist and along the gangways of the Seahare.

Hawkwood's pistol misfired, a flash in the pan and no more. Murad laughed and closed with him, darting in the flicker of the rapier whilst his homunculus went for the mariner's eyes.

The pair were in the midst of a murderous mob of fighting men, but they might have been alone in the world for all the notice they took. Hawkwood drew his dirk and stabbed at the flapping homunculus even while clashing Murad's blade aside. The little creature screamed and fastened itself on the back of his neck, biting, reaching round for his eyes with its needle claws, flapping its wings. Murad lunged forward, still laughing, and the tip of the rapier pierced the mariner's thigh a full three inches. He twisted the blade as he withdrew and Hawkwood fell to one knee. The homunculus had clawed out one of his eyes, but he dropped the dirk and seized the little beast in his fist. He clenched his fingers about it and popped its tiny ribs, then threw it dying at Murad.

Murad batted it aside. It was not a familiar, merely a messenger, and thus no loss to him. He sprang forward again, a great joy rising in him, and drew back his sword for the kill.

But he was buffeted by the melee which raged about them, and thrown off-balance. Cursing, he reached forward again but something struck him in the side, a blunt blow that knocked the breath out of him. He hissed in pain. A woman stood over Hawkwood – it was Isolla. Her face was scarred by fire but he knew her at once, though she wore a seaman's jacket over her skirts. Her face was white and resolute, fearless. She fired the arquebus at point-blank range.

And missed. In the push and shove of the scrum the barrel was knocked aside. The muzzle blast scorched Murad's hair and half blinded him. He grabbed the barrel with his free hand and stabbed at her with his rapier. His blade caught her below the collar bone and sank deep, deep through her heart. She crumpled and slid off the bloody steel to lie on top of Hawkwood. Murad grinned and raised the rapier to finish the job.

But there was a sudden, savage blow to the side of his neck. It numbed his left arm and made him stumble in astonishment and pain. His lemon yellow eyes flickered as the Dweomer which bound his burned limbs together faltered. He turned, and the rapier slipped from his nerveless fingers.

Bleyn stood there, his own stepson. And in his hand Hawkwood's dirk, bloody to the hilt. The boy's face was livid and glaring, though his cheeks were running with tears. Murad reached out his good hand towards him, utterly baffled. 'What-?' he began.

But Bleyn darted forward and punched the dirk into his chest. It stuck there, grating through his breastbone, and Murad sank to his knees.

'How . . . ?'

Hawkwood was staring at him, his remaining eye glittering, Isolla's body cradled in his arms. The inhuman light in Murad's own eyes winked out, and for a few seconds his old dark gaze met Hawkwood's maimed stare in startled dis shy;belief. 'I didn't know-'

Hawkwood simply gazed on him, without hatred or anger, and watched the life flit from Murad's face. The nobleman's chin sank on his breast and he toppled over on to the bloody deck, mere burnt carrion. Around him his followers saw their leader's death and faltered, and were beaten back into the sea.

They abandoned the Seahare and tossed flaming torches up on to the decks of the Revenant as they took to the boats. In the gathering dusk the waves were full of dark faces and others were diving off the sides of the barquentine and swimming out to them. They shot them in the water or hacked their hands from the sides of the boats as they tried to climb on board. Finally they drew clear, their wake lit by the blazing ship behind them, and landed the ship's boats on the shelving shore east of Rone, and stood a while with the surf beating about their knees and watched the Revenant burning against the evening sky. At last the fire reached the powder room, and the barquentine vanished in a bright explosion that echoed and re-echoed in a sharp, brief thunder about the hills of the inlet. For a long while afterwards the wreckage tumbled and splashed down in the quiet waters of the bay, and the evening darkened into night upon the waters.

Richard Hawkwood had fulfilled his mission and had brought Hebrion's Queen to Torunna, and they buried her on a hilltop overlooking the sea and set a cairn of stones upon her grave.