Ships from the West (29 page)

The repairs had taken the better part of a week, and even now the ship was making more water than Hawkwood liked, and the pumps had to be manned for half a glass in every watch. But they were still afloat, and they seemed to have outrun their pursuers with a mixture of luck, good seamanship, and the valour of a swift-sailing ship. The ship’s company were a crowd of whey-faced ghosts who dropped off to sleep as soon as they were off their feet, but they were alive. The worst was over.

Hawkwood put the traverse board away in the binnacle-housing, noted the ship’s position in the crowded chart that was his mind, and yawned mightily. His belt hung slack about his waist; he would have to make another hole in it soon. But at least he had hair on his head once more, a salt-and-pepper crop which stood up like the bristles of a brush on his scalp.

Ordio, one of the more capable master’s mates, had the watch. He was scanning the brilliant night sky with studied nonchalance, standing by the larboard rail. They were two glasses into the morning watch, and it would be dawn in another hour. When they had finally made landfall, Hawkwood promised himself, he would sleep the clock around. He had not had more than an hour or two’s uninterrupted rest in weeks.

‘Call me if the wind changes,’ he told Ordio automatically, and went below, staggering a little with the ever-present tiredness. The blankets in his swinging cot were damp and smelled of mould, but he could not have cared less. He drew off his sodden clothes and crawled under them gratefully and was asleep in moments.

He woke some time later, instantly alert. The sun had come up by now despite the darkness in the cabin, and the
Seahare
was still on her course, though by the tone of the water running past the hull she had picked up a knot or so. But it was not that which had woken him. There was someone else in the cabin.

He sat up, throwing the blankets aside in the closed darkness, but two hands on his shoulders stopped him from getting to his feet. He flinched as a pair of cold lips were placed on his own, and then the warm tongue came questing over his teeth. His hands came up to cup the face of the one who kissed him, and he felt under his fingers the ridged scar tissue on the otherwise smooth cheek. Tsolla.’

But she said no word, only pushed him back down into the cot. There were rustlings and the click of buttons, and she climbed in beside him, shivering at the touch of the fetid blankets on her skin. Her hair was down and covered both their faces with its feather-touch as they sought each other in the darkness. The cot swung and the ropes which supported it creaked and groaned in time with their own smothered sounds. When they were done her skin was hot and moist under his hands and their bodies were glued together by sweat. He started to speak, but her hand covered his mouth and she kissed him into silence. She climbed off the cot and he heard her bare feet padding on the wood of the deck as she dressed. He raised himself up on one elbow and saw her slim silhouette in the cracks of light which slipped under the cabin door.

‘Why?’ he asked.

She was tying up her hair, and paused, letting it tumble once more about her shoulders. ‘Even queens need a little comfort now and again.’

‘Would you still need it, if you were not a queen of a lost kingdom?’

‘If I were not a queen, Captain, I would not be here - nor you either.’

‘If you were not a queen I would marry you, and you would be happy.’

She hesitated, and then said quietly, ‘I know.’ Then she gathered her things and slipped out of the door as silently as she must have arrived.

Two more days passed in the bright spring blue of the sea, and the routine of the ship became a way of life for all of them, ruled by bells, punctuated by unremarkable meals. As the
Seahare
sailed steadily onwards it became their entire world, self-contained and ordered. They had a fair wind, a sky uncluttered save by a little high cloud, and no sight of any other ship, though the lookouts were kept at the masthead day and night. It seemed strange to Hawkwood. The Levangore, especially the western Levangore, was crossed by the busiest sea lanes in the world, and yet in all their passage of it thus far they had sighted not a single sail.

The wind kept backing round until it was east-south-east, and in order to preserve some of their speed, Hawkwood altered course to north-north-east so it was on the beam. To larboard they could see now the blue shapes of the Malvennor Mountains that formed the backbone of Astarac, Isolla’s birthplace. She spent hours standing at the leeward rail, watching the land of her childhood drift past. The lookouts kept their gaze fixed on the open sea, and thus it was she who came to Hawkwood in the afternoon watch, and pointed at the southwestern horizon.

‘What do you make of that, Captain?’

Hawkwood stared, and saw dark against the blue shadows of the mountains a sombre stain on the air, a high column rising blackly against the sky.

‘Smoke,’ he said. ‘It’s some great, far-off fire.’

‘It is Garmidalan,’ Isolla whispered. ‘I know it. They are burning the city.’

All day she remained on deck staring over the larboard quarter at the distant smoke, and as the daylight faded it was possible for all to see the red glow on the western horizon which had nothing to do with sunset.

Bleyn appeared on deck at dusk, having stayed dutifully by his sea-sick mother all day, and joined Isolla at the rail. An unlikely friendship had grown up between the two, and when Hawkwood saw the both of them standing together at his ship’s side with the swell of the sea rising and falling behind them he felt an almost physical ache in his heart, and knew not why.

‘Sail ho!’ the lookout called down from the masthead. ‘Where away?’

‘Fine off the port quarter, skipper. She’s hull down and with not too much canvas abroad, but I do believe she’s ship-rigged.’

Hawkwood dashed up the starboard shrouds, then the futtock shrouds into the maintop. The lookout was on the crossyards above him. He peered back along their wake, slightly phosphorescent in the gathering starlight, and caught the nick on the red and yellow glimmer of the horizon. He wiped his watering eyes but could make out nothing more. The strange ship, if ship it were, was on almost the same course as they, but it must have no more than reefed courses up or he’d have seen them pale against the sky. Not in a hurry then.

He did not like it all the same, and began bellowing orders from the maintop.

‘All hands! All hands to make sail! Arhuz, send up topgallants and main and mizzen staysails.’

‘Aye, sir. Rouse out, rouse out, you sluggards! Get up that rigging before I knot me a rope’s end.’

In minutes the rigging was full of men, and a crowd of them climbed past Hawkwood on the way to loose the topgallant sail. As the extra canvas was sheeted home and the yards braced round he felt the ship give a quiver, and the dip of her bow became more pronounced. Her wake grew even brighter with turbulence and he could feel the masts creaking and straining. The
Seahare
picked up speed like a spurred thoroughbred. Hawkwood stared aft again.

There - the pale shapes of sails being unfurled. Despite their extra speed, the stranger was hull up now. She must be a swift sailer indeed, and have a large crew to cram on so much extra sail in so little time. Fore and aft sails on main and mizzen - so she was a barquentine then. God almighty, she was fast. Hawkwood felt a momentary chill settle in his stomach.

He looked down at the deck below. They were lighting the stern lanterns at the taffrail.

‘Belay there! Douse those lights!’

The mood on board changed instantly. He saw pale faces looking up into the rigging at him, and then over the stern to where the strange ship was visible even from the quarterdeck she was coming up so fast.

Hawkwood swallowed, cursing the sudden dryness in his mouth. A row of lights appeared along the barquentine’s sides. She was opening her gun-ports. He hung his head a moment and then called out hoarsely:

‘Master-at-arms, beat to quarters. Prepare for battle.’

He climbed slowly down from the maintop whilst the deck exploded into a crowded, frantic activity below him. The enemy had caught up with them once more.

Eighteen

The last of the wagons had been abandoned and now the men of the army were bent under the weight of their packs, while at the rear of their immense column a clanking, braying cavalcade of heavily burdened mules were cursed forward by their drovers. They had left behind the last paved road and were now forging upwards along a single stony mountain track whilst above them the Cimbrics reared up in peak on peak, and the snow blew in streaming banners from their summits.

They were ten days out of Torunn, and the first, easy stage of their journey was behind them. They had been three days on the river, and after the interminable disembarkation had been five days more marching across the quiet farmland of northern Torunna, cheered to the echo at every village and town and freely given all the food supplies they needed. A thousand mules and seven thousand horses had cropped the new spring grass of every pasture in their path down to the roots, and the Torunnan King had every evening summoned the local landowners about him and had compensated them in gold coin from his own hand.

But the kindly plains were behind them now, and so were the lower foothills. They were on the knees of the Cimbric Mountains, highest in the western world, and their sweating faces were set towards the snows and glaciers of the high places. And the battle which would be fought on their other side.

Corfe sat his horse on the brow of a tall, crag-faced hillock, and watched as his army streamed past. Beside him were Felorin, General Comillan of the Bodyguard, Ensign Baraz, and a sable-clad man on foot, Marshal Kyne, commander of the Orphans now that Formio was left behind in the capital.

The Cathedrallers were in the van, five thousand of them leading their warhorses by the bridle, most of them natives of these very hills. Next came ten thousand picked Torunnans armed with arquebuses and sabres, then the Orphans, ten thousand Fimbrian exiles with their pikes balanced on their shoulders, and then the straggling length of the mule train. Bringing up the rear would be the five hundred heavy cavalry of Corfe’s Bodyguard in their black
Ferinai
armour.

In the midst of both the Torunnan infantry and the Orphans, light guns were being manhandled along, sometimes lifted bodily over deep-running streams and broken boulders which had tumbled from the heights above. They were six-pounder horse-artillery, three batteries’ worth in total. All that Corfe dared try and take across the mountains.

All told, more than twenty-six thousand men were trekking westwards into the fastnesses of the Cimbrics this bright spring morning, and their column stretched along the inadequate track which bore them for almost four miles. It was not the largest army Torunna had ever sent forth to war, but Corfe felt that it must surely be one of the most formidable. The best fighting men of four disparate peoples were represented in that long column: Torunnans, Fimbrians, Cimbric tribesmen, and Merduks. If they succeeded in making their way through the mountains, they would find themselves alone and unsupported on the far side, and arrayed against them would be armies from all over the remainder of the world. They would have to take Charibon then, or they would be destroyed, and with them the last, best hope of this earth.

The end was very close now - the climax of the last and greatest war that men would fight in this age of the world. Hebrion was gone, and Astarac, and Almark and Perigraine were subjugated. Of all the Monarchies of God, Torunna alone now stood free.

I will raze Charibon to the ground, Corfe thought as he sat his horse and watched his army march past. I will slaughter every wizard and shape-shifter and witch I find. I will make of Aruan’s fall a terrible lesson for all the future generations of the world. And his Inceptine Order I shall wipe from the face of the earth.

A gyrfalcon wheeled in a wide circle about his head, as though looking for him. Finally it came to earth as swiftly as though it were stooping on prey, and perched on the withered branch of a rowan tree to one side. Corfe rode away from his officers so that he might speak without being overheard.

‘Well, Golophin?’

‘Your path exists Corfe, though perhaps “path” is an optimistic word. The sky is clear halfway through the Cimbrics, but on their western flanks a last spring blizzard rages, and the snow there is deepening fast.’

Corfe nodded. ‘I expected no less. We have it from the Felimbri that winter lies longest on the western side of the divide; but the going is easier there all the same.’ He gestured to where the army marched before him, like a barbed serpent intent on worming its way into the heart of the mountains. ‘Once we leave the foothills behind us and get above the snowline we will meet with the tail of the glacier the tribes name Gelkarak, the “Cold-Killer”. It will be our road through the peaks.’

‘It is a dangerous road. I have seen this glacier. It is pitted and creviced like a pumice stone, and avalanches roar down on it from the mountains about.’

‘Beggars would ride, if wishes were horses,’ Corfe said with a wry smile. ‘I would we all might sprout wings and fly across the mountains, but since we cannot we must take whichever way we can.’ He paused, and then asked, ‘How go things where - where you are now, Golophin?’

‘Aurungabar has been cowed by the return of Nasir with his host, and he has been recognised by all as the Sultan of Ostrabar. He will combine his coronation and his wedding in one ceremony, as soon as Mirren enters the city.’

Corfe’s breath clicked in his throat. ‘And how far has she to go?’

‘Another five days will see her within the gates. She has left the wagons behind and has been making her way very swiftly with a small entourage on horseback.’

Corfe smiled at that. ‘Of course she has. And you, Golophin - when do you return to the army?’

‘Tonight I hope, when you camp. I meet this evening with Shahr Baraz the Younger. He has something on his mind, I believe. After that, I will remain with the army until the end. It seems to me you will need my help ere you are done with the Cimbric Mountains, sire. Fare well.’