Ships from the West

range of us, and then have switched their focus and unleashed this storm, which they think will propel the ship to its doom.'

'And will they succeed?'

'Even a preternatural storm can be weathered like any other, given good seamanship and a little luck. We're not beaten yet!' He smiled. Perhaps it was the brandy, or the storm, but he felt a certain sense of licence.

'You're wet through. You must try and keep yourself out of the water. Huddle in your cot under a blanket if you have to.'

She shrugged, and gave a wry smile. 'It's pouring in the door and down from the ceiling. There's not a dry spot in this ship I believe.'

Hawkwood leaned towards her on an impulse and kissed her cold lips.

Isolla jerked back, astonished. Her fingers went to her mouth. 'Captain, you forget yourself! Remember who I am.'

'I've never forgotten,' Hawkwood said recklessly, 'Not since that day on the road all those years ago when your horse threw a shoe, and you served me wine in Golophin's tower.'

'I am Hebrion's Queen!'

'Hebrion is gone, Isolla, and in a day or two we may all be dead.'

He reached for her again, but she backed away. He cornered her by the door and set his hands on the bulkhead on either side of her, the bottle still clenched in one fist. Around them the ship pitched and heaved and groaned and the water swept cold about their legs and the wind howled up on deck like a live thing, a sentient menace. Hawkwood bent his head and kissed her once more, throwing all sense of caution to the ravening wind. This time she did not draw away, but it was like kissing a marble statue, a tang of salt on stone.

He leant his forehead on her damp shoulder with a groan. 'I'm sorry.' The moment where all had been possible faded like the mirage it had been, burning away with the brandy fumes in his head.

'Forgive me, lady.' He was about to leave her when her hands came up and clasped his face. They stared at one another. Hawkwood could not read her eyes.

'You are forgiven, Captain’ she said softly, and then she lowered her face into the hollow of his neck and he felt her tremble. He kissed her wet hair, baffled and exhilarated at the same time. Half a minute she remained clinging to him, then she straightened and without looking at him or saying another word, she left, splashing up the companionway towards her own cabin. Hawkwood remained frozen, like a man stunned.

When he finally came back up on deck he felt oddly detached, as though the survival of the ship was not something that was important any longer. There were four men on the wheel now, and the remainder of the crew were huddled in the half-deck under the wheel, sheltering from the wind. Hawkwood roused himself and checked their course by the compass board. They were hurtling east-north-east, and if he was any judge the Seahare must be making at least nine knots. Before the squall they had been perhaps fifty leagues to windward of the Gabrionese coast. At their current speed they would run aground in some sixteen hours. There was no time to play with. His mind clear, Hawkwood stood by the wheel, clutched the lifeline, and bellowed at the helmsmen, 'Two points to port. I want her brought round to north-north-east, lads. Arhuz!'

'Aye, sir.' The first mate looked as dark and drowned as a seal.

'I want a sea anchor veered out from the stern on a five-hundred-fathom length of one-inch cable. Use one of the topgallant sails. It should cut down on our leeway.' Arhuz did not answer, but nodded grimly and left the quarterdeck, calling for a working party to follow him below.

The decision was made. They would try and weather the Gripe and strike out for the northern coast. If the southerlies finally kicked in after they had left this squall behind, then they would have the broad reaches of the Hebrian Sea to manoeuvre in instead of fighting for sea room all along the southern coast of Gabrion. They would have to risk the straits. It could not be helped.

If we make it that far, Hawkwood thought. He kept think­ing of Isolla's arms about him, the salt taste of her lips unmoving under his own. He could not puzzle out what it might mean, and he regretted the brandy she must have tasted on his mouth.

The ship came round, and the blast of the wind shifted from the back of his head to his left ear. The xebec began to roll as well as pitch now, a corkscrew motion that shipped even more water forward, whilst the pressure on the rudder sought to tear the spokes of the ship's wheel from the fists of the helmsmen. They hooked on the relieving tackles to aid them, but Hawkwood could almost sense the ropes slipping on the drum below.

'Steer small!' he shouted to the helmsmen. They had too little sea room to work with, and her course must be exact.

Bleyn came up on deck wearing an oilskin jacket too large for him. 'What can I do?' he shouted shrilly.

'Go below. Help man one of the pumps.' He nodded, grinned like a maniac, and disappeared again. The pumps were sending a fine spout of water out to leeward, but the Seahare was making more than they could cope with. As if conjured up by Hawkwood's concern, the ship's carpenter appeared.

'Pieto!' Hawkood greeted him. 'How does she swim?'

'We've three feet of water in the well, Captain, and it's gaining on us. She was always a dry ship, but this course is opening her seams. There's oakum floating about all over the hold. Can't we put her back before the wind?'

'Only if you want to break her back on Gabrion. Keep the pumps going Pieto, and rig hawse bags forward. We have to ride this one out'

The carpenter knuckled his forehead and went below look­ing discontented and afraid.

Hawkwood found himself loving his valiant ship. The Seahare shouldered aside the heavy swells manfully - they were breaking over her port quarter as well now - and kept her sharp beakhead on course despite the wrenchings of her rudder. She seemed as stubbornly indomitable as her captain.

This was being alive, this was tasting life. It was better than anything that could be found at the bottom of a bottle. It was the reason he had been born.

Hawkwood kept his station on the windward side of the quarterdeck and felt the spray sting his face and his good ship leap lithe and alive under his feet, and he laughed aloud at the black clouds, the drenching rain, and the malevolent fury of the storm.

Fourteen

Corfe had decreed that the funeral should be as magnificent as that of a king's, and in the event Queen Odelia was laid to rest with a sombre pomp and ceremony that had not been seen in Torunn since the death of King Lofantyr almost seventeen years before. Formio's Orphans lined the streets with their pikes at the vertical, and a troop of five thousand Cathedrallers accompanied the funeral carriage to the cathedral where Torunna's Queen was to be interred in the great family vault of the Fantyrs. The High Pontiff himself, Albrec, intoned the funeral oration and the great and the good of the kingdom packed the pews and listened in their sober finery. With Odelia went the last link with an older Torunna, a different world. Many in the crowd cast discreet glances at the brindled head of the King, and wondered if the rumours of an imminent Royal wedding were true. It was common knowledge that the Queen had wanted her husband to be re-wedded before even her corpse was cold, but to whom? What manner of woman would be chosen to fill Odelia's throne, now that they were at open war with the might of the Second Empire, and Hebrion had already fallen and Astarac was tottering? The solemnity of those gathered to bid farewell to their Queen was not assumed. They knew that Torunna approached one of the most critical junctures in her history, more dangerous perhaps than even the climax of the Merduk Wars had been. And there were rumours that already Gaderion was beset, General Aras hard-pressed to hold the Torrin Gap. What would Corfe do? For days thou­sands of conscripts had been mustering in the capital and were now undergoing their Provenance. Torunn had become a fortress within which armies gathered. Whither would they go? No one save the High Command knew, and they were close-lipped as confessors.

When the funeral was over, and Odelia's body had been laid in the Royal crypt, the mourners left the cathedral one by one, and only a lonely pair in the front rank of pews remained. The King, and standing in the shadows Felorin his bodyguard, and General Formio. After a brief word Formio departed, laying his hand on the back of the King's neck and giving him a gentle shake. They smiled at each other, and then Corfe bent his head again, the circlet that had been Kaile Ormann's glinting on his brow. At last the King rose, Felorin following like a