Ships from the West

Around the rocky headland, over a league away. Coming into view was what resembled a flock of far-off birds perched on the waves. It was the brightness of the sails which was striking at first - the heavy swell partially hid their hulls. Tall men-of-war with the scarlet pennants of Hebrion snapping from their mainmasts. Twelve, fifteen, twenty great ships in line of battle, smashing aside the waves and forging out to sea with the wind on their starboard beam and their sails bright as a swan's wing.

'It's the entire western fleet,' Bevan murmured. 'What in the world . . . ?'

He turned to Bleyn, who was shading his eyes with one hand and peering intently seawards.

'They're beautiful,' the young man said, awed. 'They truly are.'

'Ten thousand men you're looking at there, lad. The greatest navy in the world. Your— Lord Murad will be aboard, and no doubt half the Galiapeno retainers, puking their guts out I'll be bound.'

'Lucky bastards,' Bleyn breathed. 'And here we are like a bunch of widows at a ball, watching them go.'

'What is it all for? Is it a war we haven't heard of?' one of the others asked, perplexed.

'Damned if I know,' Bevan rasped. 'It's something big, to draw out the entire fleet like that.'

'Maybe it's the Himerians and the Knights Militant, come invading at last,' one of the younger ones squeaked.

'They'd come through the Hebros passes, fool. They've no ships worth speaking of.'

'The Sea-Merduks then.'

'We've been at peace with them these forty years or more.'

'Well there's something out there. You don't send a fleet out to sea for the fun of it.'

'Mother will know,' Bleyn said abruptly. He turned and remounted the tall grey in one fluid movement. 'I'm going home. Bevan, you stay with this lot. You'll slow me down.' The gelding pranced like a sprightly ghost below him, snort­ing.

'You just wait a moment—' Bevan began, but he was already gone, leaving only a zephyr of dust behind.

Lady Jemilla was a striking woman with hair still as dark as her son's. Only in bright sunlight could the grey be seen threading it through, like silver veining the face of a mine. She had been a famous beauty in her youth, and it was rumoured that the King himself had at one time honoured her with his attentions; but she was now the dutiful well-bred wife of Hebrion's High Chamberlain, Lord Murad of Galiapeno, and had been for almost fifteen years. The colourful escapades that had enlivened her youth were now all but forgotten at court, and Bleyn knew nothing of them.

Murad's fiefdom, tucked away on the Galapen Peninsula south-west of Abrusio, was something of a backwater, and the high manse which had housed his family for generations was an austere fortress-like edifice built out of cold Hebros stone. In the heat of high summer it still retained an echo of winter chill and there was a low fire burning in the cavernous hearth of Jemilla's apartments. She was running over the household accounts at her desk, whilst beside her an open window afforded a view of the sun-baked olive groves of her hus­band's estates like some brightly lit fragment of a sunnier world.

The clamour of her son's arrival was unmistakable. She smiled, losing ten years in an instant, and knuckled her small fists into the hollow of her back as she arched, cat-like, from the desk.

The door opened and a grinning footman appeared. 'Lady—'

'Let him in, Dominan.' 'Yes, lady.'

Bleyn blew in like a gale, reeking of horse and sweat and warm leather. He embraced his mother, and she kissed him on the lips. 'What is it this time?'

'Ships - a million ships - well a great fleet at any rate. They passed by Grios Point this morning. Bevan tells me that Murad is aboard, with the retainers he took to Abrusio last month. What's afoot, Mother? What great events are sailing us by this time?' Bleyn collapsed on to a nearby couch, shedding dust and horsehair over its antique velvet.

'He is Lord Murad to you, Bleyn,' Jemilla said tartly. 'Even a son must not be too familiar when his father is of the high nobility.'

'He's not my father.' An automatic snap of petulance. Jemilla leaned forward wearily, lowering her voice in turn. 'To the world he is. Now, these ships—'

'But we know better, Mother. Why pretend?'

'If you want to keep your head on your shoulders, then to you he must be Father also. Prate to your friends all you want - I have them watched. But in front of strangers, you will swallow this pill with a smile. Understand me now, Bleyn. I am tired explaining.'

'I am tired pretending. I am seventeen, Mother - a man in my own right.'

'When you cease pretending, this man you have suddenly become will no longer have a life to be tired of, I promise you. Abeleyn will not tolerate a cuckoo - not yet - for all that that Astaran whore has a womb as barren as a salted field.'

'I don't understand. Surely even a bastard heir is better than no heir at all.'

'It comes of the Civil War. He wants everything absolutely clear. A legitimate king's heir, with whom no one can quibble. He is not yet fifty, and she is younger. And they have that sorcerer Golophin weaving his spells, coaxing his seed into her year by year.'

'And all for nothing.'

'Yes. Be patient, Bleyn. He will come to his senses in the end and realise, as you say, that a bastard is better than nothing.' Jemilla smiled as she said this, and her smile was not altogether pleasant. She saw how it wounded him. Well and good - it was something he would have to get used to.

She ruffled his dust-caked hair. 'What is this about a fleet of ships then?'

He was sullen, slow to answer, but she could see the curiosity burning away the sulk.

'The whole battle fleet, Bevan says. What's going on, Mother? What war have we missed?'

Now it was she who paused. 'I - I don't know.'

'You must know. He tells you everything.'

'He does not. I know little more than you do. All the households have been turned out, and there has been a Grand Alliance signed, the likes of which has not been seen since the days of the First Empire. Hebrion, Astarac —'

'—Gabrion, Torunna and the Sea-Merduks. Yes Mother, that has been old news for months now. So the Himerians are finally invading - is that it? But they have no fleet worth speaking of. And Bevan said our ships are westbound. What's out there but empty ocean?'

'What indeed? A host of rumours and legends, perhaps. A myth about to be made flesh.'

'And now you talk in riddles again. Cannot you ever give me a straight answer?'

'Hold your tongue', Jemilla snapped. 'You're barely seven­teen summers old in the way of the world, and you think you can bandy words with me and belittle your - your father? Whelp.'

He subsided, glowering.

In a softer tone she went on, 'There are legends of a land out in the uttermost west, a new world that remains undiscovered and uninhabited. They are the stuff of chil­dren's bedtime stories here in Hebrion, and have been for centuries. But what if the children's tales were true - what if there was indeed a vast, unknown continent out there in the west - and what if I told you that Hebrian ships had already been there, Hebrian feet had trodden those uncharted strands?'

‘I would say, bravo for Hebrian enterprise, but what has this to do with the armada I saw this morning?'

'There's been talk at court, Bleyn, and even here I have caught the gist of it. Hebrion is about to face the threat of invasion, it would seem.'

'So it is the Himerians!'

'No. It is something else. Something from the west.'

'The west? Why - aha - you mean there really is some new empire out beyond the sea? Mother, this is amazing news! How can you sit there so calm? What marvellous times we live in!' Bleyn leapt up and began striding back and forth across the chamber, slapping the palms of his hands together in his excitement. His mother watched him dourly. Still a boy, with a boy's enthusiasms, and a boy's ignorance. She had thought to have done better. Perhaps if his father had truly been Abeleyn - or Murad - he would have been different, but this pup was the progeny of one Richard Hawkwood, a man Jemilla might once, ironically enough, have actually loved ­the only man she might once have loved - but a commoner, and thus useless to her life and her ambitions. Still, she thought, one must work with the tools one is given. And he is my son, after all. I am his mother. And I do love him