Ships from the West

'They are the great unknown quantity in this equation. Clearly, they favour the Empire for the moment, but only because they consider our armies to be the greater threat. I believe they think they can manage Aruan – consider how easy it would be for them to send a host eastwards to sack Charibon. If we are considering it, you may be sure they have. No, they want the Empire to break us down, along with the other members of the Alliance, and then they will strike, thinking to rebuild their ancient hegemony out of the ruins of a war-torn continent. They are mistaken. Once the true scale of this war becomes apparent, I am hoping they will think again.'

'And if they don't?' Formio asked, looking his king in the eye.

'Then we'll have to beat them as well.'

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.'