Ships from the West

Unforgivably, Hawkwood had nodded off. He jerked up­right with a start, a sense of urgent knowledge burning in his mind. As his eyes focused he took in the steady glow of the lamp motionless in its gimbals, the blur of the chart on the table before him resolving itself into the familiar coastal line of Hebrion, the shining dividers lying where they had dropped from his limp fingers. He had been dozing for a few minutes, no more, but something had happened in that time. He could feel it.

And he looked up, to see he was not alone in the cabin.

A darkness there in the corner, beyond the reach of the light. It was crouched under the low ship timbers. For an instant he thought he saw two lights wink once, and then the darkness coalesced into the silhouette of a man. Above his head eight bells rang out, announcing the end of the middle watch. It was four hours after midnight, and dawn was racing towards him over the Hebros Mountains far to the east. It would arrive in the space of half a watch. But here on the Western Ocean, night reigned still.

'Richard. It is good to see you again.'

Hawkwood tilted the lamp, and saw standing in the corner of the cabin the robed figure of Bardolin. He shot to his feet, letting the lamp swing free and career back and forth to create shadowed chaos out of the cabin. He lurched forward, and in a moment had grasped Bardolin's powerful shoulders, bruis­ing the flesh under the black robes. A wild grin split his face, and the mage answered it. They embraced, laughing - and the next instant Hawkwood drew back again as if a snake had lunged at him. The smile fled.

'What are you come here for?' His hand went to his hip, but he had unslung his baldric, and the cutlass hung on the back of his chair.

'It's been a long time, Captain,' Bardolin said. As he advanced into the light, Hawkwood retreated. The mage held up a hand. 'Please, Richard, grant me a moment - no calling out or foolishness. What has it been, fifteen years?'

'Something like that'

'I remember Griella and I searching the docks of old Abrusio for the Osprey that morning' - a spasm of pain ran across his face - 'and the brandy I shared with Billerand.'

'What happened to you, Bardolin? What did they do to you?'

The mage smiled.

'How the world has changed under our feet. I should never have gone into the west with you, Hawkwood. Better to have burned in Hebrion. But that's all empty regret now. We cannot unmake the past, and we cannot wish ourselves other than we are.'

Hawkwood's hammering heart slowed a little. His hand edged towards the hilt of the cutlass. 'You'd best do it and have done then.'

'I'm not here to kill you, you damned fool. I'm here to offer you life.' Suddenly he was the old Bardolin again; the dreamy menace retreated. ‘I owe you that at least. Of them all, you were the only one who was a friend to me.'

'And Golophin.'

'Yes - him too. But that's another matter entirely. Hawk­wood, grab yourself a longboat or a rowboat or whatever passes for a small insignificant craft among you mariners, and get into it. Push off from this floating argosy and her consorts, and scull out into the empty ocean if you want to see the dawn.'

'What's going to happen?'

'You're all dead men, and your ships are already sunk. Believe me, for the love of God. You have to get clear of this fleet.'

'Tell me, Bardolin.'

But the strange detachment had returned. It did not seem to Hawkwood that it was truly Bardolin who smiled now.

'Tell you what? For the sake of old friendship I have done my best to warn you. You were always a stubborn fool, Captain. I wish you luck, or if that fails, a quick and painless end.'

He faded like the light of a candle when the sun brightens behind it, but Hawkwood saw the agony behind his eyes ere he disappeared. Then was alone in the cabin, and the sweat was running down his back in streams.

He heard the gunfire and the shrieking up on deck, and knew that whatever Bardolin had tried to warn him about had begun.

Four

Snow lay bright and indomitable on the peaks of the Cimbrics, and beyond their blinding majesty the sky was blue as a kingfisher's back. But spring was in the air, even as high up as this, and the margins of the Sea of Tor were ringed with only a mash of undulating pancake ice which opened and closed silently around the bows and sterns of the fishing boats that plied its waters.

In Charibon the last yard-long icicles had fallen from the eaves of the cathedral and the lead of the roof was steaming in the sunlight. The monks could be heard singing Sext. When they were done they would troop out in sombre lines to the great refectories of the monastery-city for their midday meal, and when they had eaten they would repair to the scriptoriums or the library or the vegetable and herb gardens or the smithies to continue the work which they offered up to God along with their songs. These rituals had remained unchanged for centu­ries, and were the cornerstones of monastic life. But Charibon itself, seat of the Pontiff and tabernacle of western learning, had changed utterly since the Schism of eighteen years before.

It had always been home to a large military presence, for here were the barracks and training grounds of the Knights Militant, the Church's secular arm. But now it seemed that the austere old city had exploded into an untidy welter of recent building, with vast swathes of the surrounding plain now covered with lines of wooden huts and turf-walled tents, and linking them a raw new set of gravel-bedded roads spider-webbing out in all directions. West to Almark they went, north to Finnmark, south to Perigraine, and east to the Torrin Gap, where the Cimbrics and the tall Thurians halted, leaving an empty space against the sky, a funnel through which invading armies had poured for millennia.

And on the parade grounds the armies mustered, bristling masses of armoured men. Some on horseback with tall lances and pennons crackling in the wind, others on foot with shouldered pikes, or arquebuses, and others manhandling the carriages of long-muzzled field guns, waving rammers and linstocks and sponges and leading trains of mules which drew rattling limbers and caissons. The song of the monks in their quiet cloisters was drowned out by the cadenced tramp of booted feet and the low thunder of ten thousand horses. The flags of a dozen kingdoms, duchies and principalities flapped over their ranks. Almark, Perigraine, Gardiac, Finn-mark, Fulk, Candelaria, Touron, Tarber. Charibon was now the abode of armies, and the seat of Empire.

The Fimbrian embassy had been billeted in the old Pontifical Palace which overlooked the Library of Saint Garaso and the Inceptine cloisters. Twelve men in trailworn sable, they had tramped at their fearsome pace across the Malvennor Moun­tains, over the Narian Hills and down on to the plains of Tor to consult with the Pontiff Himerius in Charibon. They had marched for miles amid the tented and log-hewn city which had sprung up around the monastery, noting with a profes­sional eye the armouries and smithies and horse lines, the camp discipline of the huge host dwelling there, and the endless lines of supply wagons that came and went to the rich farmlands of the south and west, all under tribute now. Almark and Perigraine were no longer counted among the monarchies of the Five Kingdoms. Himerian presbyters ruled them, priestly autocrats answerable only to the High Pontiff himself, and King Cadamost had shaved his head and become an Inceptine novice.

It was twelve years since the Fimbrian Electors had signed the Pact of Neyr with the Second Empire, wherein they had professed complete neutrality in the doings of the continent outside their borders. They had sent an army east to aid Torunna against the Merduk, only to see half of it destroyed and the other half desert to the command of the new Torunnan king. This had brought to an abrupt halt their dreams of rekindling some form of imperial power in Normannia, and to add insult to injury they had in subsequent years seen a steady trickle of their best soldiers desert and take ship for the east, where they had joined the tercios of King Corfe and his renegade Fimbrian general, Formio. The Torunnan victories of sixteen years before had shaken the Electorates, who had long been accustomed to viewing all other western powers as inferior in military professionalism to themselves. But the heterogeneous army which Corfe had led to such savage victories against the Merduk had given them