Ships from the West

girls. You will both do as I say.'

The light in his eyes faded. In a more human voice he said, 'Hawkwood, a word with you outside.'

The mage and the mariner left the shocked Queen behind and stood outside her door. Hawkwood watched Golophin warily, and the old wizard grinned.

'What do you think? Did I put the fear of God into her?'

'You old bastard! And into me too.'

'Good. The eyes were a nice touch, I think. Listen Richard, you must get her down to that damned ship by mid-afternoon at the latest. Your vessel is called the Seahare, and is berthed in the Royal yards at the very foot of Admiral's Tower. Do not ask how I purloined her; I would blush to tell you. But she is yours, and all the paperwork is . . .' He grinned again. 'Irrelevant. Everything is ready or almost so. They're lading her with extra stores but she's a flyer, not a fighter - so they tell me - and if I start sending marines aboard it'll arouse suspicion. The current captain is on shore leave, no doubt dipping his wick in some bawdy house. I have spoken to the harbour master, and you are expected, but your passengers are anonymous nobles, no more.'

'Nobles? So who are the others?' Hawkwood asked.

'I'm not yet sure there will be others. That is what I am going to find out now. Just get Isolla down to that ship. And -and look after her, Richard. Quite apart from being Queen, she's a fine woman.'

'I know. Listen Golophin, I haven't thanked you—'

'Don't bother. I need you as much as you needed me. Now I must be gone.' Golophin gripped his arm. 'I will see you again, Captain, of that you may be sure.'

Then he was off, striding down the passageway like a much younger man, albeit one who looked as though he had not eaten in a month.

A flurry of packing - and Hawkwood conscripted into the process by dark little Brienne, Isolla's Astaran maid, who had been with her since childhood. Isolla white-faced and silent, still believing Golophin's rage to be genuine. And then a sub­terranean journey, the little trio hurrying and stumbling by torchlight, weighed down with bags and even a small trunk. From the palace to Admiral's Tower was the better part of half a league, and the first third of the way was a steep-stepped descent of dripping stone, the Queen leading the way with a guttering torch, Hawkwood and Brienne following, unable to see their own feet for the burdens they carried. Hawkwood stepped once on the wriggling softness of a rat, and stumbled. At once, Isolla's strong hand was at his elbow, helping him to his feet. The Queen's face was invisible under a hooded cloak but she was as tall as a man, and up to the burden. Hawkwood found himself admiring her quick, sure gait, and the slender fingers which held aloft the torch. Her perfume drifted back to him as they laboured along, an essence of lavender, like the scent of the Hebros foothills in summer.

At last they came to a door which Isolla unlocked and left open behind them, and stepped out into the lower yards of the tower. All about them was the tumult of the wharves, the screaming gulls. Sea smells of rotting fish and tar and wood and salt. A forest of masts rose up into a clear sky before them, and the sunlight was dazzling, blinding after their under­ground journey. They stood blinking, momentarily bewil­dered by the spectacle. It was Hawkwood who collected his wits first, and led them to their vessel where it floated at its moorings in the midst of a crowd of others.

The Seahare was a lateen-rigged xebec of some three hundred tons, a fast dispatch-runner of the Hebrian navy with a crew of sixty. Three-masted, she could run up both lateen and square- rigged yards depending on the wind. She was a sharp-beaked ship with an overhanging counter and a narrow keel, but she was nonetheless wide in the beam to enhance her stability as a sail platform. Her decks were turtle- built so that any seas which came aboard might run off into the scuppers at once, and above the decks were gratings which ran from the centre line to the ship's rail so that her crew might work dry-shod whilst the water ran off below them. As Golophin had said, she was built for speed, not warfare, and though she had a pair of twelve- pound bow-chasers her broadside amounted to half a dozen light sakers, more to counter a last-minute boarding than to facilitate any real sea battle. Hawkwood's arrival was greeted with unfriendly stares, but as soon as the ladies were below he began shouting out a series of orders which showed that he knew his business. The first mate, a Merduk named Arhuz, was a small, compact man, dark as a seal. He had sailed with Julius Albak thirty years before, and like all of the other sailors he knew of Richard Hawkwood and his great voyage, as a man remembers the nursery rhymes learned as a child. Once the knowledge of the new captain's identity had spread about the ship the men set to work with a will. It was not every day they were to be skippered by a legend.

A great deal of stores had still to be taken on board, and the main hatch was gaping dark and wide as the men hauled on tackles from the yardarms to lower casks and sacks into the hold. Others were trundling more casks from the vast store­rooms under the tower, whilst yet more were coiling away spare cables and hauling aboard reluctant goats and cages of chickens. It looked like chaos, but it was a controlled chaos, and Hawkwood was satisfied that they would complete their victualling in time for the evening tide.

The Royal yards had not yet been engulfed by the panicked disorder that was enveloping the rest of the waterfront, but that disorder was audible beyond the massive walls which separated them from the Inner Roads. Fear was rank in the air, and all the while men looked over their shoulder at the approaching storm which was towering in the west, and swallowing up ever more of the sky as it thundered east­wards. Hawkwood needed no charts in this part of the world; he knew all the coasts around Abrusio as well as the features of his own face, and that face grew grave as he considered what it would be like to beat out of the Inner Roads under a strong westerly. Handy as the xebec might be at dealing with a beam wind, she would have to win some leeway once they made it into the gulf, or that wind might just push them headlong on to the unforgiving coast of Hebrion. But they would have the ebbing flow of the tide beneath the keel, to draw them out of the bay and into the wider gulf beyond. He hoped that would be enough.

Through the years, Hawkwood had taken ships uncounted out of this port into the green waters of the gulf, and then beyond, to Macassar of the Corsairs, to Gabrion which had spawned him and of which he remembered almost nothing now. To the coasts of hot Calmar and the jungles of savage Punt. But all those memories faded into a merry silence beside the one voyage which had made his name. The one that had broken him. No good had come of it that he could see, least of all to himself. But he knew that it would always be irrevocably linked to him - among mariners at least. He had earned a place in history; more importantly, perhaps, he had won a hard-bought right to stand tall in the ranks of the mariners of yore. But he took no pride in it. He knew that it counted for nothing. Men did things because they had to do them, or because they seemed the only thing to do at the time. And afterwards they were lauded as heroes. It was the way the world worked. He knew that now.

But this woman below, she mattered. She mattered to the world, of course - it was important that she survive. But most of all she mattered to him. And he dared not delve deeper into that knowledge, for fear his middle age might come laughing back at him. It was enough that she was here.

For a while Richard Hawkwood, standing there on the quarterdeck of another man's ship with doom approaching out of the west, watched the sailors ready his vessel for sea, and knew that she was below, and was inexplicably happy.

A commotion down on the wharves. Two riders had galloped through the gate and come to a rearing halt before the xebec, scattering mariners and panicking the gulls. A man and a woman dismounted, tawny with dust, and without ceremony or introduction they ran up the gangplank hand in hand, leaving their foam-streaked and blowing mounts stand­ing. Hawkwood, jolted out of his reverie, shouted for the master-at-arms and met them at the rail.

'What the hell is this? This is a king's ship. You can't—'

The woman threw back her richly embroidered hood and smiled at him. 'Hello, Richard. It has been a long time’

It was Jemilla.

PART TWO

The soldier-king