Ships from the West

Hawkwood could not speak. The pain of his salt-soaked burns was a ceaseless shuddering agony, and his tongue rasped like sand against his teeth.

'You are to be my messenger, Richard. You will return to Abrusio and relay my terms.'

'Terms?' The word felt like crushed glass in his mouth.

'Hebrion and Astarac are defeated, their kings dead, their nobility decimated. Their eggs, shall we say, were all in the one basket. Yes, you will tell me that their land armies are intact, but you have seen the forces at my disposal. There is no army in the world which can stand against my children, even if it is commanded by a Mogen, or a Corfe. I was of Astarac myself once upon a time. I have no wish to see these kingdoms laid waste. I am not a barbarian.' 'You are a monster.'

Aruan laughed softly. 'Perhaps, perhaps. But a monster with a conscience. You will survive, as I have always allowed you to survive, and you will go to your friend Golophin. Hebrion and Astarac must surrender to me, unless you wish to see them suffer the same fate as the fleet they sent against me. It may be better this way, now I think of it. You are a very convincing survivor of disaster, Captain, and you are a good witness.'

'You go to hell.'

'We are all in hell already. Imagine my hosts running amok through all the kingdoms of the west. Imagine the blood, the terror, the mountains of corpses. You want that no more than I. And Golophin, especially, will know that I make no idle boasts. I mean what I say. Hebrion and Astarac must sur­render to the Second Empire, hand over all that remains of their nobility, and accept my suzerainty. If they do not, I will make of them a desert, and their peoples I will render into carrion.'

Aruan's eyes lit up as he spoke with a hungry yellow light that had nothing human about it. His voice thickened and deepened. A powerful animal stink lingered a moment, and then was swept away by the wind.

Hawkwood stared at the lightning-shot clouds in their wake. His eyes stung and smarted. 'What manner of thing are you?'

'The new breed, you might say. The future. For centuries men have been pouring their energies into the fighting of their endless, worthless wars, many started in defence of a God they have never seen. Or else they cudgel their brains to think up more efficient ways of winning them - this they call science, the advance of civilisation. They turn their backs on the powers within them, because these are deemed evil. But what is more evil, the magic that heals a wound or the gunpowder that inflicts it? It is baffling to me, Hawkwood. I do not understand why so many clever men think that I and my kind are such an abomination.'

‘I never thought so. I've hired weather-workers before now and been damned glad of them. Torunna's Queen is a witch, it is said, and is respected across the continent. The mage Golophin has been Abeleyn's right hand for twenty years. And Bardolin—'

'Yes - and Bardolin?'

'He was my friend.'

'He is yet.'

'I doubt that somehow.'

'You see? Suspicion. Fear. These names you drop are isolated instances, the exceptions that prove the rule. Four hundred years ago every royal court had a mage, every army had a cadre of wizards, and every city a thriving Thaumatur-gists' Guild. Hedge-witches and oldwives were a part of ordinary life. That cursed Ramusio changed everything, he and his ravings. This God you people worship has hounded my people to the brink of extinction. How can you blame us for fighting back?'

'It was your creature, Himerius, who instigated the worst of the purges eighteen years ago. How was that fighting back?'

Aruan paused. The yellow light flickered again. 'That was a means to an end, painful but necessary. I had to separate my folk from yours; make clear to all men the division between the two.'

'Otherwise, you might have found wizards ranged against you when you attacked the western kingdoms, fighting for their own kings. Your cause would not be so clear-cut. You want power. Don't try to dress it up as a crusade.'

Aruan laughed. 'You are a perceptive man, Richard. Yes, I want power. Why shouldn't I? But in this world, unless you are somebody's son you are nothing. You know that as well as anyone. Why should mankind be ruled by a flock of fools just because they were dropped in a royal bed? I want power. I have the means to take it. I will take it'

Again, Hawkwood stared past his companion, into the storm-shot western sky where the lightnings shivered and the black clouds blotted out the stars. Those fine ships, those kings of men and that huge armament with its guns and its banners and its tall beauty.

'All gone. All of them.'

'Very nearly all. It is a shock, I know. Men place such confidence in an array of power that it blinds them to its weak­nesses. Ships must float, and must have wind to propel them.'

'We should have had weather-workers of our own.'

'There are none left, not in all the Five Kingdoms. Whatever you say, they are mine now, the Dweomer-folk. They have suffered for centuries under the rule of blind, bigoted fools. No longer. Their hour is come at last. This narrow land, Captain, is about to be fashioned anew.'

'Golophin did not turn traitor. Not all the Dweomer-folk think of you as their saviour.'

'Ah yes. My friend Golophin. I have not given up on him yet. You and he are very similar - stubborn to the core. Men who cannot be browbeaten or threatened or bought. That is why he is such a prize. I want him to see sense in his own time, and I am willing to wait.'

'Corfe of Torunna will never bow the knee to you either.'

'No. Another noble and misguided fool. He will be dest­royed, along with that much-vaunted army of his. My storm will fell the oaks and leave the willows standing, and this little continent of yours will be a better place for it.'

'Save your breath. I caught a glimpse of that better place of yours in the fog. I want no part of it.'

'That is a pity, but I am not surprised. These are the labour pangs of the world. There will be pain, and blood, but a new beginning when it is over. The night is darkest just before the dawn.'

'Spare me the rhetoric. You sound to me the same as any other grasping noble. You're not making a new world, you're just grabbing at the old and destroying anything that stands in your way. Those who fish the seas or till the land will have a change of masters, but their lives will not change. They'll pay their taxes to a different face, is all.'

Aruan bent towards Hawkwood with a smile that was a snarled baring of teeth. 'You are wrong there, Captain. You have no idea what I have in store for the world.' He stood up, seemingly unaffected by the pitching of the raft. 'Deliver my terms to Golophin. He may take them or leave them; I do not negotiate. This wind will bear you home in another day or two. Stay alive, Hawkwood. Deliver your message, and then find a hole to crawl into somewhere. My forbearance is at an end.'

And he was gone. Hawkwood was alone on the raft, the waves black and cold in the night. His hands were cramped in salt-racked torture and the fever in him beat up a blaze within his blood. He shouted wordless defiance at the empty sea, the blank glitter of the uncaring stars.

Dawn saw the Hebros Mountains rise blue and tranquil out of the horizon - but they were to the north. Hawkwood was baffled for a few minutes until he realised that some time in the night he must have passed Grios Point. He had travelled some thirty leagues.

The wind had backed several points in the last few hours and was still right aft, but now it was blowing west- south­west. He was being propelled up the Gulf of Hebrion, and the spindrift was flying off the crests of the waves in streamers around him, while the rope which supported his little mast had disappeared into a mound of tight, puffed flesh that had once been his hand.

The sunlight hurt his eyes and he clenched them shut, drifting in and out of delirium. It was the sound of gulls that woke him, a great derisive cloud of them. They were hovering and fighting over a small cluster of herrin- yawls which were hove-to half a league away. The crews were hauling in the catch of the night hand over fist, and even from where he was Hawkwood could see the silver glint of fish flanks as they squirmed in the bulging nets. He tried to rise, to shout, but his throat had closed and he was too weak to raise so much as an arm. No matter. The breeze was at his back, and sending his unwieldy craft right into their midst. Half a glass maybe, and he would be hauled in along with their glinting catch, bearing his fearsome message for the kingdom. And after that