The Heretic Kings

had to keep them tightly wrapped in oilskin packets.

And Hawkwood was ennobled. Plain Richard Hawkwood had become Lord Hawkwood, albeit lord of nothing and nowhere. But it was a hereditary title. Hawkwood had ennobled his family for ever, if he managed to return to Hebrion and raise a family. Old Johann, his rascally father, would have been uproariously delighted, but to Hawkwood it seemed an empty gesture, meaningless in the midst of this steaming jungle.

He sat in his crude hut sorting through what documents he had brought from the ship. Velasca was on the carrack with a skeleton crew. The vessel had been rewatered and they had also taken on board several hundredweight of coconuts, one of the few fruits growing here which Hawkwood recognized.

His original ship’s log was gone, lost in the fire which had come close to destroying his ship, and with it the ancient rutter of Tyrenius Cobrian, the only other record of a voyage into the west. Hawkwood had started a new log, of course, but flipping through it he realized with a cold start that there was no sure way he could ever find his way back to Fort Abeleius or this anchorage were he to undertake a second voyage in the wake of the first. The storm which had driven them off course had upset his calculations, and the loss of the log had made things worse for he could not remember every change of course and tack since then. The best he might do was to hit upon the Western Continent at the approximate latitude his cross-staff told him this was and then cruise up and down until he rediscovered the place.

He thought of telling Murad, but decided against it. The scarred nobleman was like a spring being compressed too tightly these days, more haughty and savage than ever. It would do no good.

It was dimming outside, and Hawkwood immediately struck himself a light, a precious candle from their dwindling store. Scarcely had he done so when the dark came, a settling of deep shadow which at some indefinable point became true night.

He dipped his nub of a quill in the inkwell and began to write his log.

26th day of Endorion, ashore Fort Abeleius, year of the Saint 551—though only a few sennights remain of the old year, and soon we will be into the Saint’s days which denote the turning of the calendar.

The palisade was finished today, and we have begun the task of felling some of the huge trees which stand within its perimeter. Murad’s plan is to lop them a little at a time and use them for construction and firewood. He will never uproot them; I think such trees must have roots running to the core of the earth.

The building work proceeds apace. We have a governor’s residence—the only building with a floor, though it has an old topsail for its back wall. I dine there tonight. Civilization comes to the wilderness.

Hawkwood reread his entry. He was becoming loquacious now that he no longer had to write of winds and courses and sailing arrangements. His log was turning into a journal.

At last we have dry powder, though keeping it so in this climate has tried the wits of every soldier among us. It was Bardolin who suggested sealing the powder-horns with wax. He has become a little odd, our resident mage. Murad regards him as the leader of the colonists, the scientific problem-solver, but also as something of a fraud. Whether this last attitude of his is assumed or not I do not know. Since his peasant lover turned out to be a shifter, Murad has been different—at once less sure of himself and more autocratic. But then who among us was not changed by that weird voyage and its horrors?

I would that Billerand were here, or Julius Albak, my shipmates of old. Our company is the poorer without them, and I am not entirely happy with Velasca as first mate. His navigation leaves a lot to be desired.

“Captain?” a voice said beyond the sailcloth flap that served as Hawkwood’s door.

“Come in, Bardolin.”

The mage entered, stooping. He looked older, Hawkwood thought. His carriage had always been so upright, his face so battered and grizzled that he seemed made out of some enduring stone; but the years were beginning to tell on him now. His forehead shone with sweat, and like everyone else’s his neck and arms were blotched with insect bites. The imp that rode on his shoulder seemed as sprightly as ever, though. It leapt on to the crate which Hawkwood used as a desk and he had gently to pry the inkwell out of its tiny hands.

“What cheer, comrade wizard?” Hawkwood asked the old mage.

Bardolin collapsed on the heap of leaves and seacloak which had been piled into a bed.

“I have been purifying water for the invalids among us. I am tired, Captain.”

Hawkwood produced a rotund bottle from behind his crate and offered it. “Drink?”

They both had a gulp straight from the neck, and spluttered over the good brandy.

“That calms the bones,” Bardolin said appreciatively, and nodded towards the open log. “Writing for posterity?”

“Yes. The habit of a master-mariner’s lifetime, though I am in danger of becoming a chronicler.” Hawkwood shut the heavily bound book and rewrapped it in its oilcloth. “Ready for tomorrow?”

Bardolin rubbed the shadows under his eyes. “I suppose . . . How does it feel to be a lord?”

“I still sweat, the mosquitoes still feed off me. It is not so different.”

Bardolin smiled. “What conceit we have, we men. We throw up a squalid camp like this and name it a colony. We distribute titles amongst ourselves, we lay claim to a country which has existed without us since time’s dawn; we impose our rules upon things we are utterly ignorant of.”

“It is how society is made,” Hawkwood said.

“Yes. How did the Fimbrians feel, do you think, when they came together in their tribes nine centuries ago and made themselves into one people? Was there a shadow of their empire flickering about them, even then? History. Give it a hundred years and it will make heroes and villains out of every one of us—if it remembers us.”

“The world rolls on. It is for us to make what we can of it.”

The old mage stretched. “Of course. And tomorrow we will see a little more of it. Tomorrow the governor sets out to explore this place he has claimed.”

“Would you rather be playing hide-and-seek with the Inceptines back in Abrusio?”

“Yes. Yes, I would. I am afraid, Captain, truly afraid. I am frightened of what we will find here in the west. But curious also. I would not stay behind tomorrow for all the world. It is man’s insufferable curiosity which makes him set sail across unknown seas; it is a more potent force even than greed or ambition—you know that, I think, better than anyone.”

“I’m as ambitious and greedy as the next man.”

“But curiosity drove you here.”

“That, and Murad’s blackmail.”

“Aha! Our noble governor again! He has brought us all into the tangle of his own machinations. We are flies trembling in his web. Well, even spiders have their predators. He is beginning to realize that, in spite of his bluster and arrogance.”

“Do you hate him then?”

“I hate what he represents: the blind bigotry and pride of his caste. But he is not as bad as some; he is not stupid, nor does he wilfully ignore the truth, no matter what he says.”

“You have too many new ideas, Bardolin, I too find it hard to accommodate some of them. Your hills which spout flames and ash—those I can believe. I have heard men talk of them before. But this smell of magic from the trees and soil; from the land itself. An earth which circles the sun. A moon bombarded by stones from beyond the sky . . . Everyone knows that our world is at the heart of God’s creation, even the Merduks.”

“That is the Church talking.”

“I am no blind son of the Church, you know that.”

“You are a product of its culture.”

Hawkwood threw up his hands. Bardolin exasperated him, but he could not dislike the man. “Drink some more brandy, and stop trying to right the wrongs of society for a while.”

Bardolin laughed, and complied.

T HEY were to venture into the interior again in the morning, and Murad’s dinner was both a social event and a planning conference. He had killed the last of the chickens, as if to prove to the world that he had no fears for