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.