Paul Kearney.

Monarchies of G.o.d.

Hawkwoods Voyage.

For the Museum Road bunch: John, Dave, Sharon, Felix, and Helen; and for Dr. Marie Cahir, partner in everything.

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord, and his wonders in the deep.

Psalm 107:23-24

PROLOGUE.

YEAR OF THE SAINT 422.

A ship of the dead, it coasted in on the northwest breeze, topsails still set but the yards braced for a long-lost wind on the open ocean. The yawlsmen sighted it first, on the eve of St. Beynac's Day. It was heeling heavily, even on the slight swell, and what was left of its canvas shuddered and flapped when the breeze fell.

It was a day of perfect blueness-sea and sky vast, even reflections of one another. A few gulls flapped expectantly round the silver-filled nets the yawl crews were hauling in hand over fist, and a school of gleaming oyvips were sporting off to port: an unlucky omen. Within each, it was said, howled the soul of a drowned man. But the wind was kind, and the shoal was large-it could be seen as a broad shadow under the hull, twinkling now and then with the bright flank of a twisting fish-and the fishermen had been here since the forenoon watch, filling their nets with the sea's uncertain bounty, the dark line of the Hebrionese coast a mere guess off behind their right shoulders.

The skipper of one yawl shaded his eyes, paused and peered out to sea, blue stone glinting out from rippled leather, his chin bristling with hairs as pale as those on the stem of a nettle. Water shadow writhed luminously in the hollows of his eyesockets.

"There's a sight," he muttered.

"What is it, Fader?"

"A carrack, lad, a high-seas ship by the looks of her. But the canvas is hanging in strips off her yards-there's a brace flying free. And she's made a ton of water, if I'm any judge. She's taken a pounding, all right. And what of the crew? Un-handy lubbers."

"Maybe they're dead, or wore out," his son said eagerly.

"Maybe. Or maybe sick of the plague as I hears ravages them eastern lands. The curse o' G.o.d on unbelievers."

The other men in the yawl paused at that, staring darkly out at the oncoming vessel. The wind veered a point-they felt it shift out of one eye-and the strange ship lost way. She was hull up, her battered masts black against that uncertain band of horizon that is either sea or sky. Water dripped from the men's hands; the fish flapped feebly in the nets, forgotten and dying. Droplets of sweat gathered on noses and stung their eyes: salt in everything, even the body's own water. They looked at their skipper.

"It's salvage, if the crew's all dead," one man said.

"It's an unlucky ship that coasts in from the empty west and no sign of life aboard," another muttered.

"There's naught out there but a thousandscore leagues of unsailed sea, and beyond that the very rim ofthe earth."

"There may be men alive aboard her in need of help," the skipper said sternly. His son gazed at him with round eyes. For a moment, the stares of all his crew were fixed on his face. He felt them like he did the warmth of the sun, but his seamed visage revealed nothing as he made his decision.

"We'll close with her. Jakob, set the forecourse, brace her round. Gorm, get these nets in and hail the other boats. They should stay. There's a good shoal here, too good to let by."

The crew leapt to their tasks, some sullen, some excited. The yawl was two-masted, the mizzen stepped abaft the rudder head. She would have to beat into the landward breeze to board the carrack. Men on the other boats paused in the hauling of their catch to watch as the yawl closed on her goal. The bigger vessel was broadside on to the swell, listing to starboard as the waves broke on her windward side. As the yawl drew close, her crew broke out sweeps and strained at the heavy oars whilst the skipper and a few others stood poised on the gunwale, ready to make the perilous leap on to the side of the carrack.

She towered darkly above them now, a looming giant, her running rigging flying free, the lateen yard on her mizzen a mere stump and the thick wales that lined her side smashed and splintered as though she had squeezed through a narrow place. There was no sign of life, no reply to the skipper's hail. Surrept.i.tiously, men at the sweeps paused in their labour to make the Sign of the Saint at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

The skipper leapt, grunted at the impact as he hit the carrack's side, hauled himself over her rail and stood panting. The others followed, two with their dirks in their teeth as if they expected to fight their way aboard. And then the yawl drew off, her mate putting her about on the port tack. She would heave to, keep the wind on her weather bow and ride out the breeze. The skipper waved at her as she eased away.

The carrack was wallowing low in the water and the wind was working on her high fore- and sterncastles. There was no sound but the hiss and lap of the sea, the creak of wood and rigging, the thump of a staved cask that rolled back and forth in the scuppers. The skipper raised his head as he caught the whiff of corruption. He met the knowing gaze of old Jakob. They nodded at each other. There was death aboard, corpses rotting somewhere.

"The Blessed Ramusio preserve us, let it not be the plague," one man said hoa.r.s.ely, and the skipper scowled.

"Hold your tongue, Kresten. You and Daniel see what you can do to put her before the wind. It's my belief her seams are working in this swell. We'll see if we can't get her into Abrus...o...b..fore she spews her oak.u.m and sinks her bow."

"You're going to bring her in?" Jakob asked.

"If I can. We'll have to look below though, see if she's anywhere near settling." The roll of the ship made him lurch a little. "Wind's picking up. That's all to the good if we can get her head round. Come, Jakob."

He pushed open one of the doors in the sterncastle and entered the darkness beyond. The bright blue day was cut off. He could hear Jakob padding barefoot and breathing heavily behind him in the sudden gloom. He stopped. The ship heaved like a dying thing under his feet-that smell of putrefaction, stronger now, rising even over the familiar sea smells of salt and tar and hemp. He gagged as his hands, groping, found another door.

"Sweet Saint!" he breathed, and pushed it open.Sunlight, bright and blazing, flooding through shattered stern windows. A wide cabin, a long table, the gleam of falchions crossed on a bulkhead, and a dead man sitting watching him.

The skipper made himself move forward.

There was water underfoot, sloshing about with the heave of the ship. It looked as though a following sea had swamped the windows; at the forward end of the cabin was a tangle of clothing, weapons, charts, and a small bra.s.sbound chest, much battered. But the dead man sat upright in his chair with his back to the stern windows and the brown skin stretched tight as parchment over the lines of his skull. His hands were shrunken claws. The rats had gnawed him. His chair was fixed in wooden runners to the deck, and he was tied into the chair by line after line of sodden cordage. It looked as though he had bound himself; the arms were free. A tattered sc.r.a.p of paper was clenched in one decaying fist.

"Jakob, what is this we see?"

"I know not, Captain. There has been devilry at work in this ship. This man was the master-see the charts?-and there is a broken cross-staff here too. But what happened to him that he did this?"

"There is no explaining it-not yet. We must go below. See if you can find a lantern here, or a candle. I must have a look at her hold."

"The hold?" The old man sounded doubtful.

"Yes, Jakob. We must see how fast she is making water, and what her cargo is."

The light left the windows and the motion of the ship grew easier as the men on deck put her before the wind. Jakob and his captain gave a last look at the dead master and his skull face, and left. Neither told the other what he was thinking: the dead man had ended his tenure of the world with his face distorted by terror.

B RIGHT sunlight again, the clean spray of the sea. The other boarders were busy with the lifts and braces, moving yards far heavier than they were used to. The skipper barked a few orders. They would need canvas and fresh cordage. The mainmast shrouds were ripped to shreds on the port side; a wonder she had not rolled out the mast.

"No storm ever did this to a ship," Jakob said, and ran his h.o.r.n.y hands along the ship's rail. The wood was torn, punctured. Bitten, the skipper thought, and he felt a cold worm of fear coil in his stomach.

But he shut his face to Jakob's look of enquiry.

"We are mariners, not philosophers. Our task is to make the ship swim. Now are you coming with me or shall I ask one of the youngsters?"

They had sailed the Hebrionese coast for more than two-score years together, weathered more storms than they could remember, hauled in a million fish. Jakob nodded mutely, anger burning away his fear.

The tarpaulins over the hatchways were flapping and torn. It was dark there, in the very bowels of the ship, and they lowered themselves down with care. One of the others had found and lit a lantern. It was pa.s.sed down into the dark and by its beam they found themselves surrounded by crates, casks and sacks. There was a musty smell in the air, and again the faint stink of corruption. They could hear the swirl and gurgle of water deeper in the hold, the rolling rumble of loose cargo, the creak of the ship's overworked hull. The stink of the bilge, usually overpowering in a large ship, had been overwhelmed by incoming seawater.They made their slow way along an avenue between the cargo, the lantern beam swinging shadows in chaotic directions. They found the remains of rats half eaten, but none alive. And there was no sign of the crew. The master in his cabin above might have been piloting the ship alone and unaided until his death.

Another hatch, and a companion ladder leading down, deep into utter blackness. The ship creaked and groaned under their feet. They could no longer hear the voices of their shipmates above, in that other world of salt air and spray. There was only this hole opening on nothingness, and beyond the wooden walls that surrounded them nothing but the drowning sea.

"Water down there, deep enough too," Jakob said, lowering the lantern through the hatch. "I see it moving, but there's no spume. If it's a leak, it's slow."

They paused, peering down into a place neither of them wanted to see. But they were mariners, as the skipper had said, and no man bred to the sea could stand idle and watch a ship die.

The skipper made as if to start down, but Jakob stopped him with an odd smile and went first, the breath rattling audibly in his throat. The skipper saw the light break and splinter on multifaceted water, things bobbing in it, a splash amid the chiaroscuro of shadow and flame.

"Bodies here." Jakob's voice came up, distorted, far away. "I think I've found the crew. Oh sweet G.o.d, his blessed Saints-"

There was a snarling, and Jakob screamed. The lantern went out and in the blackness something thrashed the water into a fury. The skipper glimpsed the yellow gleam of an eye, like a ravening fire far off on a pitch-dark night. His lips formed Jakob's name but no sound came out; his tongue had turned to sand.

He backed away and b.u.mped into the sharp corner of a crate. Run, some part of his mind shrieked at him, but his marrow had become like granite within his very bones.

Then the thing was swarming up the companion towards him, and he had not even the time to mouth a prayer before it was rending his flesh, and the yellow eyes were witness to his soul's flight.

PART ONE.

THE FALL OF AEKIR.

ONE.

YEAR OF THE SAINT 551.

T HE City of G.o.d was burning . . .

Long plumes of fire sailed up from the streets like wind-coiled banners, detaching to consume themselves and become lost in the grim thunderheads of impenetrable smoke that lowered above the flames. For miles along the Ostian river the city burned and the buildings crumbled, their collapse lost in the all-encompa.s.sing roar of the fire. Even the continuing noise of battle by the western gates, where the rearguard was still fighting, was swallowed up by the bellowing inferno.

The cathedral of Carca.s.son, greatest in the world, stood stark and black against the flames, a solitary sentinel horned with steeples, nippled with domes. The ma.s.sive granite shrugged off the heat but the lead on the roof was melting in rivulets and the timber beams were blazing all along their length. The bodies of priests littered the steps; the Blessed Ramusio gazed down sorrowfully with a horde of the lesser saints in attendance, their eyes cracking open, the bronze staffs they held buckling in the inferno. Here and there a gargoyle, outlined in scarlet, grinned malevolently down.The palace of the High Pontiff was full of looting troops. The Merduks had ripped down tapestries, hacked apart relics for the precious stones that adorned them, and now they were drinking wine out of the Holy Vessels whilst they waited their turn with captured women. Truly, Ahrimuz had been good to them today.

Further westwards within the city, the streets were clogged with fleeing people and the troops who had been stationed here to guard them. Hundreds were trampled underfoot in the panic, children abandoned, the old and slow kicked aside. More than once a collapsing house would bury a score of them in a fury of blazing masonry, but the rest would spare hardly a glance. Westwards they forged, west towards the gates still held by Ramusian troops, the last remnant of John Mogen's Torunnans, once the most feared soldiers in all the west. These were a desperate rabble now, their valour bled away by the siege and the six a.s.saults which had preceded the last. And John Mogen was dead. Even now, the Merduks were crucifying his body above the eastern gate where he had fallen, cursing them to the last.

The Merduks poured through the city like a tide of c.o.c.k-roaches, glinting and barbed in the light of the fires, their faces shining, sword arms b.l.o.o.d.y to the elbows. It had been a long siege and a good fight, and at last the greatest city of the west was theirs for the taking. Shahr Baraz had promised to let them loose once the city had fallen and they were intent on plunder. It was not they who were burning the city, but the retreating western troops. Sibastion Lejer, lieutenant of Mogen, had sworn to let not one building fall intact into the hands of the heathens and he and a remnant of men still under orders were methodically burning the palaces and a.r.s.enals, the storehouses and pleasure theatres and churches of Aekir, and slaughtering anyone, Merduk or Ramusian, who tried to stop them.

C ORFE watched the tall curtains of flame shift against the darkened sky. The smoke of the burning had brought about a premature twilight, the end of a long day for the defenders of Aekir; for many thousands, the last day.

He was on a flat rooftop, apart from the maelstrom of screaming people below. The sound of them carried up in a solid wave. Fear, anger, desperation. It was as though Aekir itself were screaming, the tormented city in the midst of its death throes, the fire incinerating its vitals. The smoke stung Corfe's eyes and he wiped them clear. He could feel ashes settling on his brow like a black snow.

A tatterdemalion figure, no longer the dapper ensign, he was scorched, ragged and bloodied. He had cast aside his half-armour in the flight from the walls, and wore only his doublet and the heavy sabre that was the mark of Mogen's men. He was short, lithe, deep-eyed. In his gaze alternated murder and despair.

His wife was somewhere down there, enjoying the attentions of the Merduks or trampled underfoot in some cobbled alley, or a burnt corpse in the wreck of a house.

He wiped his eyes again. d.a.m.n smoke.

"Aekir cannot fall," Mogen had told them. "It is impregnable, and the men on its walls are the best soldiers in the world. But that is not all. It is the Holy City of G.o.d, first home of the Blessed Ramusio. It cannot fall." And they had cheered.

A quarter of a million Merduks had proved otherwise.

The soldier in him wondered briefly how many of the garrison had or would escape. Mogen's bodyguards had fought to the death after he had gone down, and that had started the flight. Thirty-five thousand men had garrisoned Aekir. If a tenth of them made it through to the Ormann line they would be lucky."I can't leave you, Corfe. You are my life. My place is here." So she had said with that heartbreakingly lopsided smile of hers, the hair as dark as a raven's feather across her face. And he, fool, fool, fool, had listened to her, and to John Mogen.

Impossible to find her. Their home, such as it was, had been in the shadow of the eastern bastion, the first place to fall. He had tried to get through three times before giving up. No man lived there now who did not worship Ahrimuz, and the women who survived were already being rounded up. Handmaidens of Ahrimuz they would become, inmates of the Merduk field brothels.

d.a.m.ned stupid b.i.t.c.h. He had told her a hundred times to move, to get out before the siege lines began to cut the city off.

He looked out to the west. The crowds pulsed that way like sluggish blood in the arteries of a felled giant. It was rumoured that the Ormann road was still open all the way to the River Searil, where the Torunnans had built their second fortified line in twenty years. The Merduks had left that one slim way out deliberately, it was said, to tempt the garrison into evacuation. The population would be choking it up for twenty leagues. Corfe had seen it before, in the score of battles that had followed after the Merduks had first crossed the Jafrar Mountains.

Was she dead? He would never know. Oh, Heria.

His sword arm ached. He had never before been a part of such slaughter. It seemed to him that he had been fighting for ever, and yet the siege had lasted only three months. It had not, in fact, been a siege as The Military Manual knew one. The Merduks had isolated Aekir and then had commenced to pound it into the ground. There had been no attempt to starve the city into submission. They had merely kept on attacking with reckless abandon, losing five men for every defender who fell, until the final a.s.sault this morning. It had been pure savagery on the walls, a to and fro of carnage, until the critical moment had been reached, the cup finally br.i.m.m.i.n.g over and the Torunnans had begun the trickle off the ramparts which had turned into a rout. Old John had roared at them, before a Merduk scimitar cut him down.

There had been near panic after that. No thought of a second line, a fighting retreat. The bitter tension of the siege, the multiple a.s.saults, had left them too worn, as brittle as a rust-eaten blade. The memory made Corfe ashamed. Aekir's walls had not even been breached; they had simply been abandoned.

Was that why he had paused, was standing here now like some spectator at an apocalypse? To make up for his flight, perhaps.

Or to lose himself in it. My wife. Down there somewhere, alive or dead.

Rumbling booms, concussions that shook the smoke-thick air. Sibastion was touching off the magazines.

Crackles of arquebus fire. Someone was making a stand. Let them. It was time to abandon the city, and those he had loved here. Those fools who chose to fight on would leave their corpses in its gutters.

Corfe started down off the roof, wiping his eyes angrily. He probed the stairway before him with his sabre like a blind man tapping his stick.

It was suffocatingly hot as he came out on the street, and the acrid air made his throat ache. The raw sound of the crowds. .h.i.t him like a moving wall, and then he was in amongst them, being carried along like a swimmer lost in a millrace. They stank of terror and ashes and their faces seemed hardly human to him in the h.e.l.lish light. He could see unconscious men and women being held upright by the closeness of the throng, small children crawling upon the serried heads as though they were a carpet. Men were being crushed at the edges of the street as they were smeared along the sides of the confining walls. He could feel the bodies of others under his feet as he was propelled along. His heel slid on the face of a child. The sabre was lost, levered out of his hand in the press. He tilted his face to the shrouded sky, the flamingbuildings, and fought for his share of the reeking air.

Lord G.o.d, he thought, I am in h.e.l.l.

A URUNGZEB the Golden, third Sultan of Ostrabar, was dallying with the pert b.r.e.a.s.t.s of his latest concubine when a eunuch paddled through the curtains at the end of the chamber and bowed deeply, his bald pate shining in the light of the lamps.

"Highness."

Aurungzeb glared, his black eyes boring into the temerarious intruder, who remained bowed and trembling.

"What is it?"

"A messenger, Highness, from Shahr Baraz before Aekir. He says he has news from the army that will not wait."

"Oh, won't it?" Aurungzeb leapt up, hurling aside his pouting companion. "Am I at the beck and call, then, of every hairless eunuch and private soldier in the palace?" He kicked the eunuch sprawling. The glabrous face twisted silently.

Aurungzeb paused. "From the army, you say? Is it good news or bad? Is the siege broken? Has that dog Mogen routed my troops?"

The eunuch hauled himself to his hands and knees and wheezed at the fantastically coloured carpet. "He would not say, Highness. He will only relay the news to you personally. I told him this was very irregular but-" Another kick silenced him again.