Ships from the West

Two

The first primroses were out, and new bracken was curling up in gothic-green shoots through the massed needles of the pinewoods. That smell in the wind – of pine resin and new grass and growing things; a clean sharpness from which the chill was finally departing, to be replaced by something new.

The horses had caught the flavour of the air and were prancing and nipping at each other like colts. The two riders ahead of the main party let them have their heads, and were soon galloping full tilt along the flank of one of the great upland fells which formed this part of the world. When their mounts were blowing and steaming, they reined them in again, and continued at an amble.

'Hydrax is coming on well,' the man said. 'It seems you have a talent there, after all.'

His companion, a girl or young woman, curled her lip. 'I should think so. Shamarq says that if I spend any more time on horseback I'll be bow-legged. But who would notice in court dress anyway?'

The man laughed, and they rode on in companionable silence, the horses picking their way through the tough gnarls of hill heather. Once the girl pointed wordlessly skywards, to where a solitary raptor soared in the north. The man followed her finger and nodded.

Half a mile behind them a straggling band of some forty riders followed doggedly. Some were richly dressed ladies, others armoured cavalrymen. One bore a silk banner which whipped and twisted in the wind so that its device was impossible to make out. Many led heavily laden pack-mules that clanked as they walked.

The man turned in the saddle. 'We'd best let them catch up. They're not all centaurs like you.'

'I know. Briseis rides like a frog on a griddle. And Gebbia is not much better.'

'They're ladies-in-waiting, Mirren, not horse troopers. I'll wager they sew and cook a good deal better than they ride. Well, sew at any rate.'

That curl of the lip again. The man smiled. He was a broad-shouldered fellow in middle age, his once dark hair grey at the temples, giving him the look of a grizzled badger. Old scars marked his weather-beaten face and his eyes were deep-hollowed, grey as a winter sea, and there was a coldness to them that softened only when he looked upon the girl at his side. He sat his mount with the consummate ease of a born horseman, and his clothing, though well-made, was plain and unadorned. It was also black, dark as a panther's pelt with no hint of colour to relieve it.

The girl at his side, in contrast, was dressed in bright brocade heavily worked with pearls and gems, with a lace ruff at her white throat and a finely woven linen and wire headdress on her yellow hair. She sat her horse like a young queen. Her elegance was marred, however, by the battered old riding cloak she had thrown over her shoulders. It was a soldier's cloak, and had seen hard service, though it had been lovingly repaired many times. Peeping out from under its folds there appeared for a moment the wizened face of a marmoset. It sniffed the bracing air, shuddered, and withdrew once more.

'Must we go back, Father?' the girl asked her sombrely clad companion. 'It's been such fun.'

Her father, the King of Torunna, set his warm hand atop her fingers on the reins.

"The best things,' he said quietly, 'are better not savoured too long.' And there came into his cold eyes a shadow that held no hope of spring. Seeing it, she took his hand and kissed it.

‘I know. Duty calls once more. But I'd rather be out here like this than warm in the greatest palace of the world.' He nodded. 'So would I.'

The thud and snuffle and chatter of the party behind them as they caught up, and Corfe turned his horse to greet them.

'Felorin, I believe we may begin to make our way back to the city. Turn this cavalcade around, and warn the steward. We will make camp one hour before sunset. I trust you to find a suitable site. Ladies, I commend your forbearance. This last night in tents, and tomorrow you shall be in the comfort of the palace. I entrust you to the care of my Bodyguard. Felorin, the Princess and I will catch you up in a few hours. I have somewhere I wish to go.'

'Alone, sire?' the rider called Felorin asked. He was a slender whip of a man whose handsome face was a swirl of scarlet tattoos. He wore a black surcoat with vermilion trim shy;ming, and a cavalry sabre bounced at his thigh.

'Alone. Don't worry, Felorin. I still know my way about this part of the world.'

'But the wolves, sire-'

'We have fleet horses. Now stop clucking at me and go seek out tonight's campsite.'

Felorin saluted, looking discontented and concerned, and then turned his horse about and sped off to the rear of the little column. The cavalcade, turning about, made a clanking, bray shy;ing, confusing circus of soldiers, ladies and servants, restive mules, mincing palfreys. Corfe turned to his daughter.

'Come, Mirren.' And he led her off into the hills at a fast canter.

The clouds broke open above their heads, and flooding out of the blueness came bright sunlight which kindled the flanks of the fells and made them a tawny and russet pelt running with tumbled shadow. Mirren followed her father as he pounded along what appeared to be an old, overgrown track nestled in the encroaching heather. The horses' hoofs thudded on hard, moss-green gravel instead of soggy peat, and they picked up speed. The track ran straight as an arrow into the east; in summer it would be well-nigh invisible beneath the bracken.

Corfe slowed to a walk and his daughter wrestled her own mount to a similar pace beside him. Despite her youth her horse, Hydrax, was a solid bay fully as large as her father's black gelding. A martingale curbed some of his wilder head-tossing, but he was still prancing mischievously under her.

'That bugger will have you off one of these days,' Corfe said.

'I know. But he loves me. It's high spirits is all. Father, what's all the mystery? Where are we going? And what is this old road we're on?'

'You've not much notion of history – or geography – despite those tutors we gathered from the four corners of the world. I take it you know where we are?'

'Of course,' Mirren said scornfully. 'This is Barossa.'

'Yes. The Place of Bones, in Old Normannic. It was not always named so. This is the old Western Road, which once ran from Torunn clear to what was Aekir.'

'Aurungabar,' his daughter corrected him.

'Yes, by way of Ormann Dyke . . .'

'Khedi Anwar.'

'The very same. This was the spine of Torunna once upon a time, this old track. The Kingsway runs to the north-west, some twelve leagues, but it's barely fifteen years old. Before Torunna even existed, before this region was known as Barossa, it was the easternmost province of the old empire. The Fimbrians built this road we trot upon, as they built most things that have endured in the world. It's forgotten now, such are men's memories, but once it was the highway of armies, the route of fleeing peoples.'

'You – you came along this way from Aurungabar when you were just a common soldier,' Mirren ventured, with a timidity quite unlike her.

'Yes,' Corfe said. 'Yes, I did. Almost eighteen years ago.' He remembered the mud, the cold rain, and the hordes of broken people, the bodies lying by the hundred at the side of the road.

'The world is different now, thank God. Up along the Kingsway they've cleared the woods and burnt off the heather and planted farms in the very face of the hills. There are towns there where before it was wilderness. And here, where the towns used to be before the war came, the land has been given back to nature, and the wolves roam unmolested. History turns things on their heads. Perhaps it is no bad thing. And there, up ahead – can you see the ruins?'

A long ridgeline rose ahead of them, a dark spatter of trees marking its crest. And at its northern end could be seen broken walls of low stone, like blackened teeth jutting up from the earth. But closer to, there rose up from the flatter land a tumulus, too symmetrical to be of nature. Atop it a stone cairn stood stark against the sky. The birdsong which had been brash and cheery about them all morning had suddenly stilled. 'What is this place?' Mirren asked in a whisper.

Corfe did not answer, but rode on to the very foot of the tall mound. Here he dismounted, and gave Mirren his hand as she followed suit. The marmoset reappeared and swarmed up to her shoulder, its tail curling about her neck like a scarf.

There were stone flags set in the grass, and the pair climbed up them until they stood before the cairn on the summit. It was some five feet high, and a granite slab had been set upon its top. There were words chiselled into the dark stone.

Here lie we, Tormina's dead.

Whose lives once bought a nation liberty.

Mirren's mouth opened. 'Is this-?'

'The ruins you see were once a hamlet named Armagedir,' Corfe said quietly. 'And the mound?'

'A grave barrow. We gathered all those whom we could find, and interred them here. I have many friends in this place, Mirren.'

She took his hand. 'Does anyone else come here any more?'

'Formio and Aras and I, once every year. Apart from that, it is left to the wolves and the kites and the ravens. Since the mound was raised, this world of ours has moved on at a pace I would never once have believed possible. But it exists in its present form only because of the men whose bones moulder underneath our feet. That is something you, as my daughter, must never forget, even if others do.'

Mirren made as if to speak, but Corfe silenced her with a gesture. 'Wait.'

Arrowing out of the west there came a single bird, a falcon or hawk of some kind. It circled their heads once, and then plummeted towards them. The marmoset shrieked, and Mirren soothed it with a caress. The bird, a large gyrfalcon, alighted on the grass mere feet away, and spent a few seconds rearranging its pinion feathers before opening its hooked beak and speaking in the low mellifluous voice of a grown man.

'Your majesty. We are well met.'

'Golophin. What tidings from the west?'

The bird cocked its head to one side to bring one inhuman yellow eye to bear. 'The combined fleet put to sea three days ago. They are cruising in the area of North Cape and have a squadron out keeping watch on the western approaches to the Brenn Isles. Nothing as yet.'

'But you're sure the enemy is at sea.'

'Oh yes. We've had a picket line of galliots cruising beyond the Hebrionese for four months. In the last sennight every one of them has disappeared. And a fair portion of the northern herrin fleet has failed to make it back to port, and yet the weather has been fine and clear. There's something out there, all right.'

'What of your raptor's eyes?'

A pause, as if the bird were distracted or Golophin was considering his words. 'My familiar is based here, in Torunna, for the moment, your majesty, to keep whole the link between east and west.'

'Charibon then. What news?'

'Ah – there I have something a little more tangible. The Himerian armies are breaking up winter quarters as I speak. They will be on the march within a fortnight I would hazard, or as soon as the Torrin Gap is free of the last drifts. The Thurian Line is awash with marching men.'

'It has begun then,' Corfe breathed. 'After all this time, the curtain has risen.'

'I believe so, sire.'

'What of the Fimbrians?'

'No word as yet. They are playing a waiting game. The Pact of Neyr may have broadcast their neutrality to the world, but they will have to climb down from their fence sooner or later.'

'If this yet-unseen fleet manages to make landfall it could well make up their minds for them.'

'And it will also mean a two-front war.'

'Yes of course.'

'I trust, sire, that all your preparations are in hand?'

'The principal field army awaits only my word to march, and General Aras has the northern garrison on alert at Gaderion. You will let me know as soon as anything hap shy;pens?'

'Of course, sire. May I convey to you the compliments and greetings of your Royal cousin Abeleyn of Hebrion? And now I must go.'

The bird's wings exploded into a flurry of feathers and it took off like a loosed clothyard, soaring up into the spring blue. Corfe watched it go, frowning.

'So that was Golophin – or his familiar, at least,' Mirren said, eyes bright. 'The great Hebrian mage. I've heard so much about him.'

'Yes. He's a good man, though his years are beginning to tell on him now. He took it hard, his apprentice going the way he did.'

'Ah, the Presbyter of the Knights. Is it true he is a werewolf as well as a mage?'

Corfe looked at his daughter closely. 'Someone has been listening at keyholes.'

Mirren flushed. 'It is common folklore, no more.'

'Then you will know that our world is threatened by an unholy trinity. Himerius the anti-Pontiff, Aruan the sorcerer, now Vicar-General of the Inceptine Order, and Bardolin, another arch-mage, who is Presbyter of the Knights Militant. And yes, this Bardolin is rumoured to be a shifter. He was Golophin's friend, and brightest pupil. Now he is Aruan's creature, body and soul. And Aruan is the greatest of the three, for all that he has the lesser rank in the eyes of the world.'

'They say that Aruan is an immortal, the last survivor of an ancient race of men who arose in the west, but who destroyed themselves in ages past with dabbling in black sorcery,' Mirren whispered.

'They say a great deal, but for once there is a nubbin of truth under all the tall tales. This Aruan came out of nowhere scarcely six years ago now, landing at Alsten Island with a few followers in strange-looking ships. Himerius at once recognised him as some kind of messianic prodigy and admitted him to the highest circles of power. He claims to be some form of harbinger of a better age of the world. He is immensely old, that we know, but as for the lost race of conjurors – well, that's a myth, I'm sure. In any case, he has the armies of Perigraine and Almark and half a dozen other principalities to call upon, as well as the Orders of the Knights Militant and the mysterious Hounds. The Second Empire, as this unholy combine is known, is a fact of our waking world-'

'The Fimbrians,' Mirren interrupted. 'What will they do?'

'Ah, there's the rub. Which way will the Electorates jump? They've been hankering after a rekindling of their hegemony ever since the fall of Aekir, but this new thearchy has stymied them. I'm not sure. We will be fighting for the self-determina shy;tion of all the Ramusian kingdoms, and that is not something the Fimbrians would particularly like to see. On the other hand, they do not want to watch the Himerians become invincible, either. I reckon they'll wait it out until we and Charibon have exhausted ourselves, and then step in like hyenas to pick over the bones.'

'I've never known a war,' Mirren said with uncharacteristic timidity. She stroked the marmoset which perched on her shoulder. 'What is it like, Father?'

Corfe stared out over the barren swells of the upland moors. Sixteen years ago, this quiet emptiness had been the epicentre of a roaring holocaust. If he tried, he was sure he would hear the thunder of the cannon echoing still, as it echoed always in the dark, hungry spaces of his mind.

'War is a step over the threshold of hell,' he said at last. 'I pray you never experience it first hand.'

'But you were a great general – you commanded armies -you were a conqueror.'

Corfe looked down at her coldly. 'I was fighting for survival. There's a difference.'

She was undaunted. 'And this next war – it also is about survival, is it not?'

'Yes. Yes, it is. We have not sought this battle; it has been thrust upon us – remember that.' His voice was sombre as that of a mourner.

But the hunger and the darkness within him were crowing and cackling with glee.