SIX.

A terrace shaded by a canopy of stickreed stems, the earthen water jars hanging from every corner to add some moisture to the arid air. In the shade the heat was bearable, and Hawkwood had his hands about a flagon of cold beer as though he were warming them.

The quayside tavern was busy both inside and out. It was an up-market sort of place, not a sailor's haunt, more the kind of place a landsman would imagine a sailor to frequent. Periodically men watered the street in front of the tables so that patrons would not be sullied by the rising dust as the waggons and carts and mules and oxen and peasants and sailors and soldiers sauntered past.

But the beer was good, straight up from a cold subterranean taproom below the street, and there was a fine view of the harbour. Hawkwood could just pick out the tall mainmast of the Osprey, berthed at long last, her hatches open and men hauling on tackles to bring the precious cargo out into the white sunlight.

Galliardo had a.s.sured him that the Inceptines no longer came down to the wharves to check the ship crews for foreigners. Things had relaxed somewhat, but Hawkwood had still left orders that none of the Osprey's crew who were not native-born Hebrionese were to be allowed ash.o.r.e. The men had not protested: news of Julius Albak's fate had raced through the port like fire. Yawlsmen on the herrin run reported that Abrus...o...b..und ships were diverting to Cherrieros and even Pontifidad. The madness could not last. If it did, trade would be ruined.

Hawkwood sipped his beer and picked at his bread. He could hardly hear himself think with the noise of the tavern and the wharves surrounding it. He wished the wind would pick up. He felt almost marooned by the unmoving air, though many a time he had cursed the Hebrian trade as it blew in his teeth and he beat up into it, tack upon tack, trying to clear the headland beyond the harbour.

He must promote himself a new first mate, take on more hands. Would Billerand relish promotion?

For some reason he thought of his wife, delicate little Estrella. He had been back five days and still he had not been home. He hated her tears, her hysterics, her protestations of love. She was like some nervous little bird when he was around, forever darting about and c.o.c.king one eye to look at him for approval. It drove him mad. He would far rather be clawed and abused by that high-born b.i.t.c.h, Jemilla.

I love Jemilla, a whisper inside him said, but he hunted the thought quickly out of his mind.

A n.o.bleman on a black destrier clove a path down the crowded street like a crag breaking a wave. He was thin to the point of emaciation, and he wore sable riding leathers, even in the heat. His face was long, narrow, marred by a badly puckered scar, and his hair hung in sweaty strings to his shoulders. A basket-hilted rapier was scabbarded by his side. He reined in and dismounted as the keeper of the tavern rushed out, clucking solicitously and brushing the dust from his shoulders. He batted the man from him, caressed the destrier's muzzle as a liveryman led it away, and then stalked over to Hawkwood's table, his spurs jingling. Hawkwood rose.

"My lord Murad of Galiapeno. You are late."

Murad said nothing, but sat and slapped dust from his thighs with a doeskin gauntlet. The tavern keeperset a decanter of wine and two gla.s.ses on the table, and bowed as he retreated. Hawkwood chuckled.

"Something amuses you?" Murad asked, pouring the wine. He somehow managed to give an aura of world-weary contempt that immediately set Hawkwood's teeth on edge.

"You said you wanted this meeting to be discreet."

"That does not mean we must tryst in some stinking pothouse. Do not worry, Captain; the people I must be discreet for would never come so far down into the city."

Hawkwood sampled the wine. It was a Gaderian red, one of the finest he had ever tasted, and yet when Murad sipped his he grimaced as though it were vinegar.

"You said in your missive that you might have need of my ships. Do you have a cargo you wish to transport?"

Murad smiled. His lips were as thin as blood-starved leeches. "A cargo. Yes, I suppose so. I wish to commission you, Captain, and both your vessels, to undertake a voyage with myself and several others as pa.s.sengers."

"To where?"

"West."

"The Hebrionese, the Brenn Isles?" Hawkwood was puzzled. Hebrion was the westernmost kingdom in the world.

"No." Murad's voice lowered suddenly, became almost conspiratorial.

"I mean to sail across the Western Ocean, to a continent that exists on the other side."

Hawkwood blinked for a moment, and finally found his voice. "There is no such continent."

"And if I were to tell you that you are mistaken, and that I know where it lies and how to get there?"

Hawkwood hesitated. His first impulse was to tell this n.o.bleman that he was either a liar or a fool-or both-but something in the man's manner stopped him.

"I would need convincing."

Murad leaned back, satisfied. "Of course you would. No sane captain would risk his ships on a foolhardy venture without some manner of surety." He leaned forward again until Hawkwood could smell the wine and garlic on his breath.

"I have the rutter of a ship which accomplished the voyage to the west and returned safely. I can tell you, Captain, that the crossing of the Western Ocean took this vessel some two and a half months, with favourable winds, and that it was bound out of this very port. One has but to keep on a certain lat.i.tude for some twelve hundred leagues, and the same landfall can be made."

"I have never heard of this ship, or this voyage," said Hawkwood, "and my family has been at sea for five generations. Why is this discovery not better known?"

"The master died soon after the return voyage, and the voyage itself took place a century ago. The Hebrian crown has kept the information to itself until now, for reasons of state, you understand. But the time is ripe at last for this information to be exploited.""The crown, you say. Then the King himself is behind this?"

"I am the King's kinsman. I speak for him in this also."

A crown-sponsored voyage. Hawkwood experienced mixed feelings. The Hebrian crown had sponsored several expeditions down the years, and the captains of some had become rich, even enn.o.bled as a result. But many others had lost their ships, their lives and their reputations.

"How do I know you come from the King?" he asked at last.

Wordlessly, Murad reached into his belt pouch and produced two rolls of parchment weighed down with heavy seals. Hawkwood unrolled them with sweating hands. One was a Royal letter of credit for the hiring and provisioning of two ships of between eighty and two hundred tons, and the other was a letter of authorization conferring upon Lord Murad of Galiapeno the governorship of the new colony to be founded in the west with the powers of viceroy. A list of conditions followed. Hawkwood let the parchments spring back in on themselves.

"They seem genuine enough." In truth, he was shocked. He felt as though he were cruising in through shoaling water without a leadsman in the bows.

"Why me?" he asked. "There are many captains in Abrusio, and the crown owns many ships. Why hire a small independent who is not even Hebrionese?"

"You fulfill certain . . . conditions. I want two ships owned by the same man; that way it is easier to keep a track of things. You are a skilled seaman, not afraid to sail the lonelier sea lanes beyond sight of land. It is amazing, the number of so-called sea captains who do not feel comfortable unless they have a coastline within spitting distance of their hull."

"And?"

"And, I have something you want."

"What?"

"Your crew, Hawkwood, those men of yours currently interned in the catacombs. Take on this commission and they will be returned to you the same day."

Hawkwood met the cold eyes and scimitar smile, and knew he was being manipulated by the same forces which governed kingdoms.

"What if I refuse the commission?"

Murad's smile did not waver. "Six of them are marked down for the pyre tomorrow. I would be sorry to see such worthy men go to the flames."

"It may be that I value my own skin over theirs," Hawkwood bl.u.s.tered.

"There is that, of course. But there is also the fact that certain captains with a large proportion of foreigners and heretics in their crew are open to investigation themselves, especially since some of those captains are not even Hebrionese to begin with."

So there it was: the sword hanging over his head. He had expected something like this from the moment he had seen the Royal letters. He uncurled his fist from around the wine gla.s.s lest it break.

"Come now, Captain, think about what is being offered you. The lives of your crew, a chance to makehistory, to join the ranks of the great in this world. The riches of a new world beyond the bend of the seas."

"What concessions can I expect, always a.s.suming that this venture works out as you have planned it?"

Murad watched him for a moment, gauging.

"The man who sails me to my governorship can expect certain prerequisites. Monopolies, Captain. If you wish, the only ships which sail from our new colony will be constructed in your yards. A modest tariff on incoming and outgoing cargoes will finance whatever ambitions you have. There may"-and here Murad could not stop himself from sneering-"even be a t.i.tle in it for you. Think of pa.s.sing that down to your sons."

Estrella was barren. There would never be any sons for Hawkwood. He wondered if Murad somehow knew that, and felt like flinging his gla.s.s in the sneering aristocrat's face.

Yet again the agonized question: had it been his child that Jemilla had aborted?

Hawkwood stood up. He felt soiled and filthy. He wanted a living deck under his feet, a sea wind in his hair.

"I will think over your proposition."

Murad looked surprised, then shrugged. "As you will. But do not take too long, Captain. I must know by tomorrow morning if your men are to be spared their ordeal."

"I will think over your proposition," Hawkwood repeated. He tossed some small, greasy coins on the table and then walked away, losing himself in the lifestream of the port. He was going to find some stinking pothouse and drink himself into oblivion, and in the morning he would send word to this aristocratic serpent accepting his offer.

"T HAT, lord, was the Street of the Silversmiths. Already our men have recovered half a ton of the metal, melted by the heat of the burning. It is the only thing which survived."

The horses of the entourage picked their way gingerly in between the broken masonry, the charred wood-some beams still had tiny flames licking at them-and the scattered bricks. The corpses had been hauled from their path and the way cleared a little, but Shahr Baraz could see objects which seemed to be thick lengths of burnt logs inside the ruins on either side. Bodies, immolated until they were nothing but the stumps of torsos. They had been so thoroughly burned that they presented no threat of disease.

The reek of ash and smoke was the only smell in the air. Shahr Baraz nodded approvingly. The clean-up crews had done their work well.

For as far as the eye could see the desolation extended. The sh.e.l.ls of buildings towered in abject ruin, burnt black, gutted, half fallen. Their remains were as bare as gravestones, the foundations buried in rubble, like black crags standing in the breakers of a grey sea. Aekir had become a ghostly place.

Already it seemed like a monument, the ruin of a long-dead civilization.

Jaffan was jovially pointing out other landmarks gleaned from books and maps. Even the more stolid of his staff, Shahr Baraz thought, seemed a bit drunk, as though the victory were a potent spirit still singing in the blood five days after the event. The enormity of the thing they had achieved had been slow in sinking home in the aftermath of reorganization and the crushing of the last resistance. Now, as they rode unhindered through what had been the greatest and holiest city of the unbelievers in the world, they were at last savouring the taste of triumph.For Shahr Baraz, the triumph had a bitter aftertaste. Aekir had been burned to the ground. The day after the city's fall, he had been forced to order its evacuation by all troops and let the fires burn themselves out. The huge walls still stood, as did the more robust buildings, including the palaces of the High Pontiff, the cathedral and other public buildings. But the poor brick of much of the city had collapsed in the intense heat of the burning and vast expanses of the s.p.a.ce within the walls were levelled plains of dust, rubble and ash.

The rubble and the ash had cost his army almost fifty thousand men to win.

Three leagues to the east of the city, the female prisoners covered almost nine acres. A good proportion of those would remain with the army. His men had earned them. And trundling back to Orkhan was a train of waggons two leagues long; the spoils of Aekir sent back to the Sultan Aurungzeb. The richest city in the world should have yielded more in the way of plunder, but most of it had gone up in smoke ere his troops were able to come to it. The men were restless as a result. Well, that restlessness would be put to good use.

Aekir was a sh.e.l.l. It would require the labour of several lifetimes to rebuild it, but Shahr Baraz did not doubt that it would be done. Aurungzeb wanted Aekir to be his capital some day. Aurungabar he had said he would rename it, but he had been drunk at the time.

A cat darted out of a cleft between the stones and sped across the street, startling the lead horses. The staff officers fought the excited animals into submission. Shahr Baraz's own mount laid back his ears, but the old general talked to him softly and he remained quiet. The young men were too impatient with horses these days. They treated them like tools instead of companions. He would have a word with the cavalry-quartermaster when they returned to camp.

Jaffan had regained his composure. He was pointing out something else. . . ah, yes. The spires of Carca.s.son. They loomed through the smoke haze like the horns of some huge, crouching beast. What would they do with that place? Baraz wondered. It was his own ambition to found a university in Aekir before he died, and Carca.s.son-what a library it would make! And in the centre, where the Ramusians had worshipped their idols, would be the prayer mats of Ahrimuz.

Baraz's thoughts darkened. The retreating Torunnans had fired the library of Gadorian Hagus as they retreated. Two hundred thousand books and scrolls, some of them dating back into the dim history before the days of the Fimbrian Hegemony. All of them had been lost. Horb, Shahr Baraz's secretary, had been in tears at the news.

John Mogen would not have done that. He would have known that the Merduks would have preserved the library and would have left it intact behind him. But this Lejer fellow, he was a barbarian. He deserved the fate which awaited him.

They were riding to view his crucifixion.

The cavalcade turned left, into the afternoon sun. The buildings, or their remnants, receded on either side and all of a sudden there was a s.p.a.ce before them, a square fully a sixth of a league wide. This was the Square of Victories, built by the Fimbrian Elector Myrnius Kuln himself. It was the largest square in the world, and drawn up in it to meet their general were a hundred and twenty thousand Merduk troops in full battle array.

The cavalcade halted before that sea of faces. Rank on rank of soldiers with their pikes held upright in salute, the slow-match of the Hraibadar arquebusiers drifting in blue streamers down the breeze, the drawn tulwars of the Subadars and Jefadars and Imrahins catching the faint sunlight in serried glitters. The cavalry was there, regiment by regiment, the tall headdresses of the horses nodding and waving, theirriders stock-still. Beyond them the elephants stood in long lines, so fantastically caparisoned so as to seem like animals out of some fabled bestiary. In the towers that perched on their broad backs their crews swayed as the beasts shifted from foot to foot; they did not like the feel of the grit underfoot.

Notoriously footsore creatures, elephants. Dozens had been crippled by caltrops in the last a.s.sault.

Shahr Baraz's staff took up their places behind him in a momentary stillness. The old Khedive was helmetless and the wind swayed the long white hair of his topknot, the two ends of his drooping moustache. His face seemed hardly lined despite his age, and his eyes were almost invisible within their slits. He sat his steed as easily as a young man, in black and gold lacquered armour, his scimitar sheathed at one thigh. His horse, a tall grey gelding, bore a black chamfron and a tall yellow crest, and its tail was bound up with white ribbons.

Shahr Baraz tightened his knees, and his mount started forward into the square at an easy canter.

There was a murmur of sound from the a.s.sembled army. As the old Khedive approached the centre of the square it swelled into a roar. The army was cheering him, three sides of the gargantuan s.p.a.ce erupting as the thousands upon thousands of throats joined in an air-shaking storm of noise. Then it began to form words, a phrase repeated over and over again: "Hor-la Kadhar, Hor-la Khadar!"

Glory to G.o.d they were chanting, thanking their creator for this moment of triumph, this spectacle of their greatness. And their cheers were directed at Shahr Baraz on his horse near the heart of their formations. Glory to G.o.d for this evidence of His love for them, this victory of victories.

"Hor-la Kadhar," Shahr Baraz whispered, his eyes stinging with tears that he would not let fall. He whipped out his scimitar so that it was a white flash in the sunlight, and the cheering redoubled. They would hear it for leagues, he thought. They would hear the Merduk army giving praise to the One True G.o.d, and they would tremble, those unbelievers, knowing at last that the time of the Saint had ended and the time of the Prophet was beginning.

Shahr Baraz sheathed his scimitar. The blood was racing through him like a spring tide, making him young again. The gelding caught his mood and began to dance beneath him. The pair continued on their way to the scaffold that had been set up in the square where the statue of Myrnius Kuln stood looking on with granite eyes, as he had looked on for six centuries in this city he had founded. The Khedive's staff caught up with him, their silk surcoats flapping like banners, the battle fanions streaming like brightly coloured serpents above their heads.

The cheering abated like a retreating gale, became a murmur again and then a silence, so that the hooves of the Khedive's entourage were loud on the flagged surface of the square.

When Shahr Baraz reached the scaffold he halted and donned his war-helm. It was black with a long neck guard and full cheekpieces that made the wearer's face into a mask. Set atop it was a representation of a crescent moon, a curving horn two feet across encased in silver. It was the badge of the Baraz clan.

At the foot of the scaffold Sibastion Lejer stood in tattered rags, a hooded Merduk soldier on either side of him. His dark eyes glowed with hatred.

The last stand of the Torunnans had ended a few leagues outside the city, on a low hillock beside the Searil road. There the remnants of John Mogen's once great army had turned at bay, to be annihilated by the ma.s.sed Merduk forces. Only a handful had survived the last savage hand-to-hand struggle, and these, having refused service in the Merduk army, were already on their way eastwards in chains so thatthe people of Ostrabar might have a look at the soldiers who had defied them for sixty years, since the crossing of the Jafrar Mountains and the first battles between Merduk and Ramusian.

But Lejer-for him a different fate was reserved.

It would be good for the army to watch his death. He had baulked them of a fortune in loot, and left them masters of a dead city. Now they would see their general make him pay for it, and know that he shared their anger.

Shahr Baraz spoke, his voice hollowed by the tall-crested helm.

"I had thought to have you killed by the elephants, like the criminal you are," he told Lejer matter-of-factly. "You destroyed the jewel of the world out of sheer malice. My people would have made the Aekir you knew into an even more wondrous place, a fit capital for the greatest of the Seven Sultans.

"And yet this I could have forgiven, it being the act of a desperate mind in its greatest extremity. It may be that had your men been knocking on the gates of Orkhan, my own city, I would have burned it rather than see unbelievers trample the prayer mats in the Temple of Ahrimuz.

"And your conduct in the last fight was admirable. You Torunnans will be long remembered by us as the n.o.blest enemy we ever had, and in John Mogen I had a worthy adversary. I would that he had survived, so that we might speak of the future together. The Prophet tells us that all men take different roads to the same place. For men such as us the roads lead to a soldier's death. We have that in common.

"But you destroyed one thing that cannot be replaced. You took the wisdom of the past ages, the voices of great men, the acc.u.mulated knowledge of centuries, and you wantonly burned it, removing it for ever from the earth and ensuring that your people and mine could never enjoy it again. For that you have earned death, and you will die like the traitor to later generations that you are. You will be crucified.

Have you anything to say, Sibastion Lejer?"

The man in rags straightened to his full height.

"Only this, Merduk. You will never conquer the west. There are too many men there who love their freedom and their faith. Your G.o.d is but a shadow cast by ours, and in the end the Blessed Saint will prevail. Kill me and have done with it. I weary of your philosophizing."

Shahr Baraz nodded, and gestured to the hooded soldiers. Lejer was forced on to his back and his rags torn away. Other Merduks came, also hooded, bearing mallets and iron spikes. The Torunnan's arms were stretched out across a stout beam of wood and the spikes poised over his wrists.

The kettledrums of the elephants began a low, thunderous roll.

The spikes were hammered in, blood jetting bright in the sunshine. Then Lejer was hauled to his feet, attached to the heavy beam.