crown has kept the information to itself until now, for reasons of state, you understand. But the time is ripe at last for this information to be exploited.”
“The crown, you say. Then the King himself is behind this?”
“I am the King’s kinsman. I speak for him in this also.”
A crown-sponsored voyage. Hawkwood experienced mixed feelings. The Hebrian crown had sponsored several expeditions down the years, and the captains of some had become rich, even ennobled as a result. But many others had lost their ships, their lives and their reputations.
“How do I know you come from the King?” he asked at last.
Wordlessly, Murad reached into his belt pouch and produced two rolls of parchment weighed down with heavy seals. Hawkwood unrolled them with sweating hands. One was a Royal letter of credit for the hiring and provisioning of two ships of between eighty and two hundred tons, and the other was a letter of authorization conferring upon Lord Murad of Galiapeno the governorship of the new colony to be founded in the west with the powers of viceroy. A list of conditions followed. Hawkwood let the parchments spring back in on themselves.
“They seem genuine enough.” In truth, he was shocked. He felt as though he were cruising in through shoaling water without a leadsman in the bows.
“Why me?” he asked. “There are many captains in Abrusio, and the crown owns many ships. Why hire a small independent who is not even Hebrionese?”
“You fulfill certain . . . conditions. I want two ships owned by the same man; that way it is easier to keep a track of things. You are a skilled seaman, not afraid to sail the lonelier sea lanes beyond sight of land. It is amazing, the number of so-called sea captains who do not feel comfortable unless they have a coastline within spitting distance of their hull.”
“And?”
“And, I have something you want.”
“What?”
“Your crew, Hawkwood, those men of yours currently interned in the catacombs. Take on this commission and they will be returned to you the same day.”
Hawkwood met the cold eyes and scimitar smile, and knew he was being manipulated by the same forces which governed kingdoms.
“What if I refuse the commission?”
Murad’s smile did not waver. “Six of them are marked down for the pyre tomorrow. I would be sorry to see such worthy men go to the flames.”
“It may be that I value my own skin over theirs,” Hawkwood blustered.
“There is that, of course. But there is also the fact that certain captains with a large proportion of foreigners and heretics in their crew are open to investigation themselves, especially since some of those captains are not even Hebrionese to begin with.”
So there it was: the sword hanging over his head. He had expected something like this from the moment he had seen the Royal letters. He uncurled his fist from around the wine glass lest it break.
“Come now, Captain, think about what is being offered you. The lives of your crew, a chance to make history, to join the ranks of the great in this world. The riches of a new world beyond the bend of the seas.”
“What concessions can I expect, always assuming that this venture works out as you have planned it?”
Murad watched him for a moment, gauging.
“The man who sails me to my governorship can expect certain prerequisites. Monopolies, Captain. If you wish, the only ships which sail from our new colony will be constructed in your yards. A modest tariff on incoming and outgoing cargoes will finance whatever ambitions you have. There may”—and here Murad could not stop himself from sneering—“even be a title in it for you. Think of passing that down to your sons.”
Estrella was barren. There would never be any sons for Hawkwood. He wondered if Murad somehow knew that, and felt like flinging his glass in the sneering aristocrat’s face.
Yet again the agonized question: had it been his child that Jemilla had aborted?
Hawkwood stood up. He felt soiled and filthy. He wanted a living deck under his feet, a sea wind in his hair.
“I will think over your proposition.”
Murad looked surprised, then shrugged. “As you will. But do not take too long, Captain. I must know by tomorrow morning if your men are to be spared their ordeal.”
“I will think over your proposition,” Hawkwood repeated. He tossed some small, greasy coins on the table and then walked away, losing himself in the lifestream of the port. He was going to find some stinking pothouse and drink himself into oblivion, and in the morning he would send word to this aristocratic serpent accepting his offer.
“T HAT, lord, was the Street of the Silversmiths. Already our men have recovered half a ton of the metal, melted by the heat of the burning. It is the only thing which survived.”
The horses of the entourage picked their way gingerly in between the broken masonry, the charred wood— some beams still had tiny flames licking at them—and the scattered bricks. The corpses had been hauled from their path and the way cleared a little, but Shahr Baraz could see objects which seemed to be thick lengths of burnt logs inside the ruins on either side. Bodies, immolated until they were nothing but the stumps of torsos. They had been so thoroughly burned that they presented no threat of disease. The reek of ash and smoke was the only smell in the air. Shahr Baraz nodded approvingly. The clean-up crews had done their work well.
For as far as the eye could see the desolation extended. The shells of buildings towered in abject ruin, burnt black, gutted, half fallen. Their remains were as bare as gravestones, the foundations buried in rubble, like black crags standing in the breakers of a grey sea. Aekir had become a ghostly place. Already it seemed like a monument, the ruin of a long-dead civilization.
Jaffan was jovially pointing out other landmarks gleaned from books and maps. Even the more stolid of his staff, Shahr Baraz thought, seemed a bit drunk, as though the victory were a potent spirit still singing in the blood five days after the event. The enormity of the thing they had achieved had been slow in sinking home in the aftermath of reorganization and the crushing of the last resistance. Now, as they rode unhindered through what had been the greatest and holiest city of the unbelievers in the world, they were at last savouring the taste of triumph.
For Shahr Baraz, the triumph had a bitter aftertaste. Aekir had been burned to the ground. The day after the city’s fall, he had been forced to order its evacuation by all troops and let the fires burn themselves out. The huge walls still stood, as did the more robust buildings, including the palaces of the High Pontiff, the cathedral and other public buildings. But the poor brick of much of the city had collapsed in the intense heat of the burning and vast expanses of the space within the walls were levelled plains of dust, rubble and ash.
The rubble and the ash had cost his army almost fifty thousand men to win.
Three leagues to the east of the city, the female prisoners covered almost nine acres. A good proportion of those would remain with the army. His men had earned them. And trundling back to Orkhan was a train of waggons two leagues long; the spoils of Aekir sent back to the Sultan Aurungzeb. The richest city in the world should have yielded more in the way of plunder, but most of it had gone up in smoke ere his troops were able to come to it. The men were restless as a result. Well, that restlessness would be put to good use.
Aekir was a shell. It would require the labour of several lifetimes to rebuild it, but Shahr Baraz did not doubt that it would be done. Aurungzeb wanted Aekir to be his capital some day. Aurungabar he had said he would rename it, but he had been drunk at the time.
A cat darted out of a cleft between the stones and sped across the street, startling the lead horses. The staff officers fought the excited animals into submission. Shahr Baraz’s own mount laid back his ears, but the old general talked to him softly and he remained quiet. The young men were too impatient with horses these days. They treated them like tools instead of companions. He would have a word with the cavalry-quartermaster when they returned to camp.
Jaffan had regained his composure. He was pointing out something else. . . ah, yes. The spires of Carcasson. They loomed through the smoke haze like the horns of some huge, crouching beast. What would they do with that place? Baraz wondered. It was his own ambition to found a university in Aekir before he died, and Carcasson—what a library it would make! And in the centre, where the Ramusians had worshipped their idols, would be the prayer mats of Ahrimuz.
