Ships from the West

Seven

There was a storm, out in the west. For two days now the people of Abrusio had watched it rise up on the horizon until the boiling clouds blotted out fully half the sky. Each evening the sun sank into it like a molten ball of iron sinking into a bed of ash, its descent lit up by the flicker of distant lightning. The clouds seemed unaffected by the west wind that was blowing steadily landwards. They towered like ramparts of tormented stone on the brim of the world, the harbingers of monstrous tidings.

Abrusio was a silent city. For days the wharves had been crowded with people – not dockworkers or mariners or longshoremen, but the common citizenry of the port. They stood in sombre crowds upon the jetties and all along the waterfront, talking in murmurs and staring out past the harbour moles to the troubled horizon beyond. Even at night they remained, lighting fires and standing around them like men hypnotised, watching the lightning. There was little ribaldry or revelry. Wine was passed round and drunk with shy;out enjoyment. All eyes were raised again and again to the mole beacons at the end of the Outer Roads. They would be lit to signal the return of the fleet. To signal victory perhaps, in a war none of the people standing there truly understood.

They could be seen from the palace balconies, these water shy;front fires. It was as though the docks were silently ablaze. Golophin had reckoned there were a hundred thousand people – a quarter of the city's population – standing down there with their eyes fixed on the sea.

Isolla, Queen of Hebrion, stood with the old wizard and looked out at the storm-racked western ocean from one of those palace balconies. She was a tall, spare woman in her forties with a strong face and freckled skin. Her wonderful red-glinting hair had been scraped back from that face and was covered by a simple lace hood.

'What's happening out there, Golophin? It's been too long.'

The wizard set a hand lightly on her shoulder. His glabrous face was dark and set and he opened his mouth to speak, then paused. The hand left her shoulder and bunched into a bony fist. Faint around it grew an angry white glimmer. Then it faded again.

'They're stopping me from going to him, Isolla. It's not Aruan, it's someone or something else. There is a power shy;ful mage out there in that storm, and he has thrown up a barrier that nothing, not ships or wizards or even the elements of the sea and earth itself, can penetrate. I have tried, God knows.'

'What can cannon and cutlasses do against such magic?'

The wizard's jaw clenched. 'I should have been there, it's true. I should have been there.'

'Don't torture yourself. We've been over this.'

'I – I know. He picked his moment well, Isolla. My only hope is that this mage, whoever he is, will have expended himself maintaining this monstrous weather-working spell, and so will not be able to aid in any attack on the ships. They will have to be assaulted using more conventional means, and thus valour, cold steel and gunpowder may yet count for something for those who are trapped out there.'

She did not look at him. 'And if they do not count for enough? What do we do then?'

'We make ready to repel an invasion.'

'An invasion of what, Golophin? The country is near panic, not knowing who we war with. The Second Empire, some say. The Fimbrians say others. In the name of God, what exactly is out there?'

The old wizard did not reply, but traced a glowing shape in the air with one long finger. The shape of a glyph flashed for a second and was gone. Nothing. It was like staring at a stone wall.

'We fight Aruan, and whatever he has brought out of the Uttermost West with him. We know not exactly what we fight Isolla, but we know that it is dedicated to the overthrow of every kingdom in the west. They are out there, in that storm, our enemies, but I cannot tell you what manner of men they are, or if they are men at all. You have heard the stories which have come down through the years, the tales about Hawk-wood's voyage. Some are fanciful, some are not. We know there are ships, but we do not know what is in them. There is a power, but we are not sure who wields it. But it is coming. And I fear that our last attempt to rebuff it has failed.' His voice was thick with grief and a strangled fury. 'It has failed.'

One half of the night sky had been obliterated, but the other was ablaze with stars. It was by these that Richard Hawkwood navigated his little craft. He had found a scrap of canvas that afternoon, barely big enough to cover a nobleman's table, and he had rigged up a rude mast and yard from broken ships' timbers. Now the steady west wind was blowing him back towards Hebrion, though the maintop wreckage that formed his raft was awash in a two-foot swell, and he had to keep one end of the knotted stay that kept his little mast erect tied round his pus-oozing and skinless fist.

His companion, hooded and anonymous, squatted uncon shy;cernedly on the sodden wood as the swell broke over them both and caked them with salt. Hawkwood wedged himself in place, shivering, and regarded the hooded figure with the burning eyes of a fever victim.

'So you came back. What is it this time, Bardolin? Another warning of imminent catastrophe? I fear you are talking to the wrong man. I am fish bait now.'

'And yet, Richard, you strive to survive at every turn. Your actions contradict the brave despair of your words. I have never seen one so determined to live.'

'It is a weakness of mine, I must confess.'

The hood shook with what might have been a silent chuckle. 'I have news for you. You will survive. This wind will waft you back into the very port you sailed from.'

'It's been arranged, then.'

'Everything has been arranged, Captain. Nothing is left to chance in this world, not any more.'

Hawkwood frowned. Something about the dark figure seated opposite him made him hesitate. Then he said: 'Bardo shy;lin?'

The hood was thrown back, to reveal a hawk-nosed, auto shy;cratic face and a hairless pate. The eyes were black hollows in the night, like the sockets in a skull.

'Not Bardolin.'

'Then who in the hell are you?'

‘I have many names, Richard – I may call you Richard? But in the beginning I was Aruan of Garmidalan.' He bowed his head with mocking courtesy.

Hawkwood tried to move, but the murderous lunge he had attempted turned into a feeble lurch. The rope which belayed his little mast had sunk into the burnt flesh of his palm and could not be released. The pain made him retch emptily. Aruan straightened and levered the mast back into place. The canvas flapped, then drew taut again. The two men sat looking at one another as the raft rose and fell on the waves, their crests glittering in the starlight.

'Come to finish the job?' Hawkwood croaked.

'Yes, but not in the way you think. Compose yourself, Captain. If I wished you dead I would not have permitted Bardolin to visit you, and I would not be here now. Look at you! This suffering could have been avoided had you but followed your friend's advice of last night. Your sense of honour is admirable, but misguided.'

Hawkwood could not speak. The pain of his salt-soaked burns was a ceaseless shuddering agony, and his tongue rasped like sand against his teeth.

'You are to be my messenger, Richard. You will return to Abrusio and relay my terms.'

'Terms?' The word felt like crushed glass in his mouth.

'Hebrion and Astarac are defeated, their kings dead, their nobility decimated. Their eggs, shall we say, were all in the one basket. Yes, you will tell me that their land armies are intact, but you have seen the forces at my disposal. There is no army in the world which can stand against my children, even if it is commanded by a Mogen, or a Corfe. I was of Astarac myself once upon a time. I have no wish to see these kingdoms laid waste. I am not a barbarian.' 'You are a monster.'

Aruan laughed softly. 'Perhaps, perhaps. But a monster with a conscience. You will survive, as I have always allowed you to survive, and you will go to your friend Golophin. Hebrion and Astarac must surrender to me, unless you wish to see them suffer the same fate as the fleet they sent against me. It may be better this way, now I think of it. You are a very convincing survivor of disaster, Captain, and you are a good witness.'

'You go to hell.'

'We are all in hell already. Imagine my hosts running amok through all the kingdoms of the west. Imagine the blood, the terror, the mountains of corpses. You want that no more than I. And Golophin, especially, will know that I make no idle boasts. I mean what I say. Hebrion and Astarac must sur shy;render to the Second Empire, hand over all that remains of their nobility, and accept my suzerainty. If they do not, I will make of them a desert, and their peoples I will render into carrion.'

Aruan's eyes lit up as he spoke with a hungry yellow light that had nothing human about it. His voice thickened and deepened. A powerful animal stink lingered a moment, and then was swept away by the wind.

Hawkwood stared at the lightning-shot clouds in their wake. His eyes stung and smarted. 'What manner of thing are you?'

'The new breed, you might say. The future. For centuries men have been pouring their energies into the fighting of their endless, worthless wars, many started in defence of a God they have never seen. Or else they cudgel their brains to think up more efficient ways of winning them – this they call science, the advance of civilisation. They turn their backs on the powers within them, because these are deemed evil. But what is more evil, the magic that heals a wound or the gunpowder that inflicts it? It is baffling to me, Hawkwood. I do not understand why so many clever men think that I and my kind are such an abomination.'

‘I never thought so. I've hired weather-workers before now and been damned glad of them. Torunna's Queen is a witch, it is said, and is respected across the continent. The mage Golophin has been Abeleyn's right hand for twenty years. And Bardolin-'

'Yes – and Bardolin?'

'He was my friend.'

'He is yet.'

'I doubt that somehow.'

'You see? Suspicion. Fear. These names you drop are isolated instances, the exceptions that prove the rule. Four hundred years ago every royal court had a mage, every army had a cadre of wizards, and every city a thriving Thaumatur-gists' Guild. Hedge-witches and oldwives were a part of ordinary life. That cursed Ramusio changed everything, he and his ravings. This God you people worship has hounded my people to the brink of extinction. How can you blame us for fighting back?'

'It was your creature, Himerius, who instigated the worst of the purges eighteen years ago. How was that fighting back?'

Aruan paused. The yellow light flickered again. 'That was a means to an end, painful but necessary. I had to separate my folk from yours; make clear to all men the division between the two.'

'Otherwise, you might have found wizards ranged against you when you attacked the western kingdoms, fighting for their own kings. Your cause would not be so clear-cut. You want power. Don't try to dress it up as a crusade.'

Aruan laughed. 'You are a perceptive man, Richard. Yes, I want power. Why shouldn't I? But in this world, unless you are somebody's son you are nothing. You know that as well as anyone. Why should mankind be ruled by a flock of fools just because they were dropped in a royal bed? I want power. I have the means to take it. I will take it'

Again, Hawkwood stared past his companion, into the storm-shot western sky where the lightnings shivered and the black clouds blotted out the stars. Those fine ships, those kings of men and that huge armament with its guns and its banners and its tall beauty.

'All gone. All of them.'

'Very nearly all. It is a shock, I know. Men place such confidence in an array of power that it blinds them to its weak shy;nesses. Ships must float, and must have wind to propel them.'

'We should have had weather-workers of our own.'

'There are none left, not in all the Five Kingdoms. Whatever you say, they are mine now, the Dweomer-folk. They have suffered for centuries under the rule of blind, bigoted fools. No longer. Their hour is come at last. This narrow land, Captain, is about to be fashioned anew.'

'Golophin did not turn traitor. Not all the Dweomer-folk think of you as their saviour.'

'Ah yes. My friend Golophin. I have not given up on him yet. You and he are very similar – stubborn to the core. Men who cannot be browbeaten or threatened or bought. That is why he is such a prize. I want him to see sense in his own time, and I am willing to wait.'

'Corfe of Torunna will never bow the knee to you either.'

'No. Another noble and misguided fool. He will be dest shy;royed, along with that much-vaunted army of his. My storm will fell the oaks and leave the willows standing, and this little continent of yours will be a better place for it.'

'Save your breath. I caught a glimpse of that better place of yours in the fog. I want no part of it.'

'That is a pity, but I am not surprised. These are the labour pangs of the world. There will be pain, and blood, but a new beginning when it is over. The night is darkest just before the dawn.'

'Spare me the rhetoric. You sound to me the same as any other grasping noble. You're not making a new world, you're just grabbing at the old and destroying anything that stands in your way. Those who fish the seas or till the land will have a change of masters, but their lives will not change. They'll pay their taxes to a different face, is all.'

Aruan bent towards Hawkwood with a smile that was a snarled baring of teeth. 'You are wrong there, Captain. You have no idea what I have in store for the world.' He stood up, seemingly unaffected by the pitching of the raft. 'Deliver my terms to Golophin. He may take them or leave them; I do not negotiate. This wind will bear you home in another day or two. Stay alive, Hawkwood. Deliver your message, and then find a hole to crawl into somewhere. My forbearance is at an end.'

And he was gone. Hawkwood was alone on the raft, the waves black and cold in the night. His hands were cramped in salt-racked torture and the fever in him beat up a blaze within his blood. He shouted wordless defiance at the empty sea, the blank glitter of the uncaring stars.

Dawn saw the Hebros Mountains rise blue and tranquil out of the horizon – but they were to the north. Hawkwood was baffled for a few minutes until he realised that some time in the night he must have passed Grios Point. He had travelled some thirty leagues.

The wind had backed several points in the last few hours and was still right aft, but now it was blowing west-south shy;west. He was being propelled up the Gulf of Hebrion, and the spindrift was flying off the crests of the waves in streamers around him, while the rope which supported his little mast had disappeared into a mound of tight, puffed flesh that had once been his hand.

The sunlight hurt his eyes and he clenched them shut, drifting in and out of delirium. It was the sound of gulls that woke him, a great derisive cloud of them. They were hovering and fighting over a small cluster of herrin-yawls which were hove-to half a league away. The crews were hauling in the catch of the night hand over fist, and even from where he was Hawkwood could see the silver glint of fish flanks as they squirmed in the bulging nets. He tried to rise, to shout, but his throat had closed and he was too weak to raise so much as an arm. No matter. The breeze was at his back, and sending his unwieldy craft right into their midst. Half a glass maybe, and he would be hauled in along with their glinting catch, bearing his fearsome message for the kingdom. And after that was done, if he still lived, he would follow Aruan's advice, and find a hole to climb into. Or maybe the neck of a bottle.

'Where is he?' Isolla asked urgently.

'Peace, Isolla. He is being carried here as we speak by a file of marines.'

'A file may not be enough. Do you hear the crowds down there? I have ordered out the garrison. The city is ablaze with torches.'

Golophin listened. It was a sound like the surf of a distant, raging sea. Tens of thousands of people in a panicked fever of speculation, clogging the streets, choking the city gates. A mob maddened by fear of the unknown. All this in the space of a few hours. Rumour sped faster than a galloping horse, and all over the city men were wailing that the fleet was destroyed, and that they were now about to face an invasion of – what? That was the core of the panic. The ignorance. The yawl which bore the survivor had put in to the Inner Roads late in the afternoon, and the marines sent to fetch him to the palace were moving more slowly than the speculation.

'Have you summoned the nobles?'

'What is left of them. They're waiting in the abbey. My God, Golophin, what does it mean?' There were tears in her eyes, the first time he had seen her weep in many years. She truly loved Abeleyn, and now she was jumping to conclusions about his fate like everyone else. Golophin felt a pang of pure despair. He knew in his heart what this castaway they had found would tell him. But he had to hear it aloud, from someone who had been there.

A thump on the door. They had repaired to the Queen's chambers, as the rest of the palace was in an uproar.

All the best officers of the kingdom had been on board those proud ships. All that were left were time-servers and passed-over incompetents. Hebrion had been decapitated.

If the fleet is lost, Golophin reminded himself. The door was thumped again.

'Enter’ Isolla called, composing herself. A burly marine with a livid scratch on his face put his head round the door. All the maids had been sent away.

'Your majesty, we have him here. We brought him on a handcart, but that got snarled up, so we-'

'Bring him in,' Golophin snapped.

It was Hawkwood. They had not known that. Isolla's hand went to her mouth as the marines carried him in. They set him on the Queen's own four-poster and then stood like men who have had the wind knocked out of them. They were all looking at Golophin, then at the wrecked shape on the bed as though waiting for some explanation. In a kindlier voice, Golophin said; 'There's wine in the antechamber, Sergeant. You and your men help yourselves, and remain there. I shall want to question you later.'

The marines saluted and clanked out. As the door banged shut behind them Golophin leaned over the body on the bed. 'Richard. Richard, wake up. Isolla, bring over that ewer, and the things on the tray. Water, lots of it. Hunt up one of those bloody maids.'

Hawkwood had been terribly injured. Half his beard had been burnt off and his face was a raw, glistening wound which was bubbled with blisters and oozing fluid. His arms and chest had also suffered, and his right fist was a mass of scorched tissue from which a sliced rope's end protruded. He was caked with salt and what looked like old blood.

Golophin trickled water over the split lips and sprinkled drops over the eyelids. 'Richard.' His fingers wriggled and conjured a tiny white ball of flame in the air. He flicked it as one might bat at an annoying fly, and it smote the unconscious mariner on the forehead, sinking into his flesh in the glimmer of a second.

Isolla returned, a maid behind her bearing all manner of cloths and bottles and a steaming bowl. The maid was wide-eyed as an owl, but fled instantly at one look from her mistress.

Hawkwood opened his eyes. The white of one was flooded scarlet.

'Golophin.' A cracked whisper. The wizard trickled more water over his lips and Hawkwood burst into a racking cough. 'Cradle his head, Isolla; raise it up.'

The Queen rested the mariner's battered head on her breast, tears sliding silently down her face.

'Richard, can you talk?' Golophin asked gently.

The eyes, one garish red, glared wildly for a second, terror convulsing his body. Then Hawkwood relaxed like a puppet whose strings have been snipped.

'It's gone. The whole fleet. They destroyed it, Golophin. Every ship.'

Isolla shut her eyes.

'Tell me, Captain.'

'Weather-working – a calm and fog. Monsters out of the air, the sea. Thousands. We had no chance.' 'They're all-'

'Dead. Drowned. Oh God!' Hawkwood's lips drew back from his black gums and a hoarse cry ripped out of him. 'Pain. Ah, stop, stop.' Then it passed.

'I will heal you,' Golophin said. 'And then you will sleep for a long time, Richard.'

'No! Listen to me!' Hawkwood's eyes blazed with fever and anguish. I saw him, Golophin. I spoke to him.'

'Who?'

'Aruan. He let me go. He sent me back.' Hawkwood sobbed dryly. I bear his terms.'

A hand of pure ice closed about Golophin's heart. 'Go on.'

'Surrender. Hand over the nobles. Hebrion and Astarac both. Or he'll destroy them. He can do it. He will. They're coming here on the west wind Golophin, in the storm.'

It poured out of him in a stream of tumbled words. The raft. Aruan's appearance. His words – his implacable reasoning. At last Hawkwood's voice sank into a barely audible croak. 'I'm sorry. My ship. I should have died.'

Isolla caressed his unburnt cheek. 'Hush, Captain. You have done well. You can sleep now.' She looked at Golophin and the old wizard nodded, his face grey.

'Sleep now. Rest.'

Hawkwood stared up at her, and the ghost of a smile flitted across his face. 'I remember you.' Then coughing took him, a fit that made him jump in Isolla's arms. He fought for breath. Then his eyes rolled back, and the air came out of him in a long, tired exhalation. He was still.

'He has suffered too much,' Golophin said. 'I was impatient. I am a fool.'

Isolla bent her head and her shoulders trembled, but she made not a sound.

'He is dead then,' she said at last, calmly.

Golophin set a hand on Hawkwood's chest, and shut his eyes. The mariner's body gave a sudden jolt, and his limbs quivered.

‘I will not permit him to die,' Golophin said fiercely, and as he spoke the Dweomer blazed up in him and spilled out of his eyes, his fingertips. It coiled out of his mouth like a white smoke. 'Get away from him, Isolla.'

The Queen did as she was told, shielding her eyes against the brilliance of Golophin's light. The wizard had been trans shy;formed into a form of pure, pulsing argent. The light waxed until it was unbearable to look at, becoming a shining swirl, a sunburst, and then with a shout it left him and hurled into the inert form on the bed. There was a noiseless concussion that blew out the lamps and sent the bedclothes spiralling into the air even as they crackled and shrivelled away to nothing, and Hawkwood's body thrashed and twitched like the plaything of a mad puppeteer.

The room plunged into darkness save for where Golophin crouched by the bed, breathing hard. The werelight still shone out of his eyes dementedly. Isolla was standing at the far wall as if fixed to it. Something powdery and light was snowing down upon her head, and there was an inexplicable tautness to one side of her face.

'Light a candle,' the wizard's voice said. The lambency of his stare faded and the room was pitch-dark. On the bed, something was groaning.

'I -I can't see, Golophin,' Isolla whispered.

'Forgive me.' A fluttering wick of werelight appeared near the ceiling. Isolla reached for the tinderbox, and retrieved a candle from the floor. The backs of her hands, her clothing, were covered in a delicate layer of white ash. She struck flint and steel, caught the spark in the ball of tinder, and fed it to the candle wick. A more human radiance replaced the were-light.

Golophin laboured to his feet, beating the ash from his robes. When he turned to her Isolla caught her breath in shock. 'My God, Golophin, your face!'

One side of the old wizard's countenance had been trans shy;formed into a tormented mass of scar tissue, like that of a burn long healed. He nodded. 'The Dweomer always exacts a payment, especially when one is in a hurry. Ah, child, I am so sorry. You should not have been here for this. I thought that I alone would suffice.'

'What do you mean?'

He came forward and stroked her cheek gently, the strange tautness there. 'It took you too,' he said simply.

She felt her skin. It was ridged and almost numb in a line running from the corner of her eye to her jaw. Something in her stomach pitched headlong, but she spoke without a quaver. 'It's no matter. How is he?'

They turned to the bed, holding the candle over the blasted coverlet, the ash-strewn and smoking mattress. Hawkwood's ragged, scorched clothes had disappeared. He lay naked on the bed breathing deeply. His beard had gone, and the hair on his scalp was no more than a dark stubble, but there was not a mark on his body. Golophin felt his forehead. 'He'll sleep for a few hours, and when he wakes, he'll be as hale as ever he was. Hebrion has need of him yet.

'Stay here with him, my dear. I must go and take the temperature of the city, and there are one or two errands to be run also.' He looked closely at Isolla, as though deliberating whether to tell her something, then turned away with a pass shy;able pretence at briskness. ‘I may be gone some time. Watch over our patient.'

'As I once watched over Abeleyn?' The grief was raw in her voice. She remembered another evening, a different man

restored by Golophin's power. But there had been hope back then.

Golophin left without replying.