time and sail them out to whatever bucolic utopia you will have carved out of the wilderness. This thing will blow over once the true extent of the Merduk threat is realized.” He paused. “After Ormann Dyke falls there will be less of this nonsense. The clerics will be brushed aside, and the soldiers will come into their own. We have only to ride out the storm.”
“After Ormann Dyke falls? What makes you think it will? Golophin, that would be a disaster to rival the taking of Aekir.”
“There is little hope that it will stand,” Golophin said firmly. “Lejer’s men were overwhelmed this morning, and soon the Searil line will be fatally disorganized by the refugees streaming west. Shahr Baraz’s army will surely move once more.”
“You’re positive?”
Golophin smiled. “You have your imp, I have my gyrfalcon. I can see the earth spread out beneath me. The mobs of fugitives on the western roads, the blackened ruins of Aekir, the lines of Ramusian slaves trekking north under the lash, may God help them. And I can see the columns of Merduk heavy cavalry fanning out from where Lejer’s men fought their last stand. I can see Shahr Baraz, a magnificent old man with the soul of a poet. I would like to talk to him some day. He has served kings as I have.”
Golophin rubbed his eyes. “Abeleyn knows this. It has helped convince him. I will not be going with him to the Conclave of Kings next month, though. I am needed here, and I must be discreet these days. It will be Abeleyn’s job to try and convince the other monarchs of the knife-edge we teeter on. It may be that he will even save the dyke; who knows?”
He stood up and retrieved his hat. “What about it, Bardolin? Will you take ship? Your little shifter can come along if you’ve a mind to continue your research, but I can do nothing for poor Orquil, I’m afraid. He must make his peace with God.”
Bardolin looked around at the rooms which had been his home for twenty years. He missed the breezy exuberance of young Orquil, and it was a shattering blow to realize the boy was beyond saving. The knowledge left him feeling very old, obsolete. But even his battered old nose could sniff the hint of burning flesh that hung on the air. The city would be a long time getting free of it. And Bardolin was sick of it.
He raised his glass.
“To foreign shores,” he said.
A terrace shaded by a canopy of stickreed stems, the earthen water jars hanging from every corner to add some moisture to the arid air. In the shade the heat was bearable, and Hawkwood had his hands about a flagon of cold beer as though he were warming them.
The quayside tavern was busy both inside and out. It was an up-market sort of place, not a sailor’s haunt, more the kind of place a landsman would imagine a sailor to frequent. Periodically men watered the street in front of the tables so that patrons would not be sullied by the rising dust as the waggons and carts and mules and oxen and peasants and sailors and soldiers sauntered past.
But the beer was good, straight up from a cold subterranean taproom below the street, and there was a fine view of the harbour. Hawkwood could just pick out the tall mainmast of the
Hawkwood sipped his beer and picked at his bread. He could hardly hear himself think with the noise of the tavern and the wharves surrounding it. He wished the wind would pick up. He felt almost marooned by the unmoving air, though many a time he had cursed the Hebrian trade as it blew in his teeth and he beat up into it, tack upon tack, trying to clear the headland beyond the harbour.
He must promote himself a new first mate, take on more hands. Would Billerand relish promotion?
For some reason he thought of his wife, delicate little Estrella. He had been back five days and still he had not been home. He hated her tears, her hysterics, her protestations of love. She was like some nervous little bird when he was around, forever darting about and cocking one eye to look at him for approval. It drove him mad. He would far rather be clawed and abused by that high-born bitch, Jemilla.
I love Jemilla, a whisper inside him said, but he hunted the thought quickly out of his mind.
A nobleman on a black destrier clove a path down the crowded street like a crag breaking a wave. He was thin to the point of emaciation, and he wore sable riding leathers, even in the heat. His face was long, narrow, marred by a badly puckered scar, and his hair hung in sweaty strings to his shoulders. A basket-hilted rapier was scabbarded by his side. He reined in and dismounted as the keeper of the tavern rushed out, clucking solicitously and brushing the dust from his shoulders. He batted the man from him, caressed the destrier’s muzzle as a liveryman led it away, and then stalked over to Hawkwood’s table, his spurs jingling. Hawkwood rose.
“My lord Murad of Galiapeno. You are late.”
Murad said nothing, but sat and slapped dust from his thighs with a doeskin gauntlet. The tavern keeper set a decanter of wine and two glasses on the table, and bowed as he retreated. Hawkwood chuckled.
“Something amuses you?” Murad asked, pouring the wine. He somehow managed to give an aura of world-weary contempt that immediately set Hawkwood’s teeth on edge.
“You said you wanted this meeting to be discreet.”
“That does not mean we must tryst in some stinking pothouse. Do not worry, Captain; the people I must be discreet for would never come so far down into the city.”
Hawkwood sampled the wine. It was a Gaderian red, one of the finest he had ever tasted, and yet when Murad sipped his he grimaced as though it were vinegar.
“You said in your missive that you might have need of my ships. Do you have a cargo you wish to transport?”
Murad smiled. His lips were as thin as blood-starved leeches. “A cargo. Yes, I suppose so. I wish to commission you, Captain, and both your vessels, to undertake a voyage with myself and several others as passengers.”
“To where?”
“West.”
“The Hebrionese, the Brenn Isles?” Hawkwood was puzzled. Hebrion was the westernmost kingdom in the world.
“No.” Murad’s voice lowered suddenly, became almost conspiratorial.
“I mean to sail across the Western Ocean, to a continent that exists on the other side.”
Hawkwood blinked for a moment, and finally found his voice. “There is no such continent.”
“And if I were to tell you that you are mistaken, and that I know where it lies and how to get there?”
Hawkwood hesitated. His first impulse was to tell this nobleman that he was either a liar or a fool—or both— but something in the man’s manner stopped him.
“I would need convincing.”
Murad leaned back, satisfied. “Of course you would. No sane captain would risk his ships on a foolhardy venture without some manner of surety.” He leaned forward again until Hawkwood could smell the wine and garlic on his breath.
“I have the rutter of a ship which accomplished the voyage to the west and returned safely. I can tell you, Captain, that the crossing of the Western Ocean took this vessel some two and a half months, with favourable winds, and that it was bound out of this very port. One has but to keep on a certain latitude for some twelve hundred leagues, and the same landfall can be made.”
“I have never heard of this ship, or this voyage,” said Hawkwood, “and my family has been at sea for five generations. Why is this discovery not better known?”
“The master died soon after the return voyage, and the voyage itself took place a century ago. The Hebrian
