year before, Murad had sat here with him and first proposed the expedition to the west. It was no longer the same world. They were no longer the same men of that summer morning.
The King had aged in a year. His dark hair was brindled with grey and he bore scars on his face even as Murad did. He was taller than he had been, Murad was convinced, and he walked with an awkward gait, the legacy of the wounds he had suffered in the storming of the city. He smiled as his kinsman approached, though the lean nobleman had not missed the initial shock on his face, quickly mastered.
“Cousin, it is good to see you.”
They embraced, then each held the other at arm’s length and studied the other man’s face.
“It’s a hard journey you’ve been on,” Abeleyn said.
“I might say the same of you, sire.”
The King nodded. “I expected word from you sooner. Did you find it, Murad, your Western Continent?”
Murad sat down beside the King on the stone bench that stood sun-warmed in the garden. “Yes, I found it.”
“And was it worth the trip?”
For a second, Murad could not speak. Pictures in his mind. The great cone of Undabane rising out of the jungle. The slaughter of his men there. The jungle journey. The pitiful wreck of Fort Abeleius. Bardolin howling in the hold of the ship in nights of wind. He shut his eyes.
“The expedition was a failure, sire. We were lucky to escape with our lives, those of us who did. It was—it was a nightmare.”
“Tell me.”
And he did. Everything from the moment of weighing anchor in Abrusio harbour all those months ago through to mooring the ship again that very morning. He told Abeleyn virtually everything; but he did not mention Griella, or what Bardolin had become. And Hawkwood’s part in the tale was kept to a minimum. The survivors had pulled through thanks to the determination and courage of Lord Murad of Galiapeno, who had never despaired, even in the blackest of moments.
The birds sang their homage to the morning, and Murad could smell juniper and lavender on the breeze. His storey seemed like some cautionary tale told around a sailor’s fireside, not something which could actually have happened. It was a bad dream which at last he had woken from, and he was in the sunlit reality of his own world again.
“Join me for lunch,” the King said at last when Murad was done. “I also have a tale to tell, though no doubt you’ve heard a part of it already.”
The King rose with an audible creaking of wood, and the pair of them left the garden together, the birds singing their hearts out all around them.
T HE message was brought to Golophin in the palace by a breathless boy straight from the waterfront. He had eluded every footman and guard and was bursting with news. The
Golophin gave the boy a silver crown for his pains and halted in his tracks. He had an idea he knew what Hawkwood’s cargo was. He snapped to an eavesdropping palace attendant that he wanted his mule saddled up at once, and then repaired to his apartments in the palace to gather some books and herbs that he thought he might need.
Isolla found him there, packing with calm haste.
“Something has come up,” he explained. “I must leave for my tower at once. I may be gone a few days.”
“But haven’t you heard the news? Some lord who went off to find the Western Continent has come back. He’s to be the star of a levee this afternoon.”
“I had heard,” Golophin said with a smile. “Lord Murad is known to me. But a friend of mine is… is in trouble. I am the only one who can help him.”
“He must be a close friend,” Isolla said, obviously curious. She had not thought Golophin close to anyone except perhaps the King himself.
“He was a pupil of mine for a time.”
A pageboy knocked and poked his head around the door. “The mule is saddled and ready, sir.”
“Thank you.” Golophin slung his packed leather bag over one thin shoulder, clapped his broad-brimmed hat on his pate, and kissed Isolla hurriedly. “Watch over the King while I’m away, lady.”
“Yes, of course. But Golophin—”
And he was gone. Isolla could have stamped her foot with frustration and curiosity. Then again, why not indulge herself? Much though she liked Golophin, she sometimes found his air of world-weary superiority infuriating.
She would miss the levee and the explorer’s tales, but something told her that Golophin’s urgent errand was tied into the arrivall of this ship from the west.
Isolla strode off to her chambers. She needed to change into clothes more suitable for riding.
ELEVEN
T HE army woke up in the black hour before the dawn, and in the frigid darkness men stumbled and cursed and blew on numbed fingers as they strapped on their armour and gnawed dry biscuit. Corfe shared a mug of wine with Marsch and Andruw while the trio stood and watched the host of men about them come to life.
“Remember to keep sending back couriers,” Corfe said through teeth clenched against the cold. “I don’t care if there’s nothing to report; at least they’ll keep me updated on your location. And don’t for God’s sake pitch into anything large before the main body comes up.”
“No problem,” Andruw said. “And I won’t teach your grandmother how to suck eggs, either.”
“Fair enough.” The truth was that Corfe hated to send the Cathedrallers off under someone else’s command—even if it were Andruw. He was beginning to realise that his elevated rank entailed sacrifice as well as opportunity. He shook the hands of Marsch and Andruw and then watched them disappear into the pre- dawn gloom towards the horse-lines. A few minutes later the Cathedrallers began to saddle up, and within half an hour they were riding out in a long, silent column, the sunrise just beginning to lighten up the lowering cloud on the horizon before them.
By midmorning the remainder of the army, some six and a half thousand men in all, was strung out in a column half a league long whose head pointed almost due east. In the van rode Corfe, surrounded by the fifteen or so cuirassiers who were all that remained of Ormann Dyke’s cavalry regiment. His trumpeter, Cerne, had insisted on remaining with him, and Andruw had ceremoniously left behind a further half-dozen of the tribesmen as a kind of bodyguard. Behind this little band of horsemen marched five hundred Torunnan arquebusiers followed by Formio’s two thousand Fimbrians, and then another group of some three thousand arquebusiers under Ranafast. After them came the mule train of some six hundred plodding, bad-tempered, heavily laden animals, and finally a rearguard of almost a thousand more Torunnans.
For the first few miles of their advance they could actually glimpse the Cathedrallers off close to the horizon: a black smudge in an otherwise grey and drear landscape. But towards noon the country began to rise in long, stony ridges across the line of march which slowed their progress and obscured their view of the terrain to the east. By early afternoon the cloud had broken up and there were wide swathes of sunlight come rushing across the land, let slip by fast-moving mare’s-tails high above their heads. At the eastern limit of sight, they could see black bars rising straight into the air and then leaning over as they were taken by the high altitude winds. The smoke from the towns aflame along the River Searil. The infantry stared at the smoke as they marched, and the winding column of men toiled along in simmering silence.
Camp was made that night in the shelter of a tall ridge. Sentries paced its summit and Corfe allowed the men to light fires, since the high ground hid them from the east and south. It was bitterly cold, and the
