Hawkwood's voyage

TWO

“Sweet God!” Hawkwood said. “What is happening?”

“Vast heaving there!” the boatswain roared, eyeing a flapping sail. “Brace round that foretopsail, you God-damned eunuchs. Where do you think you are, a two-copper curiosity show?”

The Grace of God, a square-rigged caravel, slid quietly into Abrusio at six bells in the forenoon watch, the water a calm blue shimmer along her sides dotted with the filth of the port. Where the sun struck the sea there was a white glitter, painful to look at. A faint north-west breeze-the Hebrionese trade-enabled her to waft in like a swan, with hardly a rope to be touched by the staring crew despite the outrage of the boatswain.

Abrusio. They had heard the bells of its cathedral all through the last two turns of the glass, a ghostly echo of piety drifting out to sea.

Abrusio, capital of Hebrion and greatest port of the Five Kingdoms. It was a beautiful sight to behold when coming home from even a short coasting voyage such as the Grace’s crew had just completed; an uneasy cruise along the Macassar coast, haggling with the Sea-Rovers over tolls, one hand to their dirks and the slow-match burning alongside the culverins all the while. But profitable, despite the heat, the flies, the pitch melting in the seams and the marauding river lizards. Despite the feast drums at night along the bonfire-studded coast and the lateen-winged feluccas with their cargoes of grinning corsairs. Safe in the hold were three tons of ivory from the skeletons of great marmorills, and fragrant Limian spice by the hundredweight. And they had lost only one man, a clumsy first-voyager who had leaned too far out over the rail as a shallowshark passed by.

Now they were back among the Monarchies of God, where men made the Sign of the Saint over their viands and the Blessed Ramusio’s likeness stared down upon every crossroads and market place.

Abrusio was home port for almost half of them, and contained the shipyard where the Grace’s keel had been laid down thirty years before.

Two things struck the seaward observer about Abrusio: the forest and the mountain.

The forest sprouted out of the glassy bay below the city, a vast tangle of masts and spars and yards, like the limbs of a leafless wood, perfect in their geometry, interconnected with a million rigging lines. Vessels of every nationality, tonnage, rig, complement and calling were anchored in the bay of Abrusio by the hundred, from coastal hoys and yawls with their decks asprawl with nets and shining fish to ocean-going carracks bedecked with proud pennants. And the Navy of Hebrion had its yards here also, so there were tall war-carracks, galleys and galleasses by the score, the wink of breastplate and helmet on quarterdecks and poops, the slow flap of the heavy Royal standards on mainmasts, the pendants of admirals on mizzens.

Two more things about this floating forest, this waterborne city: the noise and the smell. There were hoys offloading their catches, merchantmen at the quays with their hatches open and gangs hauling on tackles to bring forth from their bellies the very life’s blood of trade. Wool from Almark, amber from Forlassen, furs from Fimbria, iron from Astarac, timber from the tall woods of Gabrion, best in the world for the building of ships. The men that worked the vessels of the port and the countless waggons on the wharves set up a rumbling murmur of sound, a clatter, a squeal of trucks, a creak of wood and hemp that carried for half a mile out to sea, the very essence of a living port.

And they stank. Further out to sea on such a still day drifted the smell of unwashed humanity in its tens of thousands, of fish rotting in the burnished sunlight, of offal tossed into the water to be quarrelled over by hordes of gulls, of pitch from the shipyards, ammonia from the tanneries; and underlying it all a heady mixture, like a glimpse of foreign lands, a concoction of spices and new timber, salt air and seaweed, an elixir of the sea.

That was the bay. The mountain, also, was not what it seemed. From afar it looked to be a blend of dust and ochre stone, pyramidal in shape, hazed with blue smoke. Closer inshore an approaching mariner would see that a hill reared up from the teeming waterfront and built upon it, row upon row, street upon narrow, crowded street, was the city itself, the house walls whitewashed and thick with dust, the roofs of faded red clay from the inland tile works of Feramuno. Here and there a church thrust head and lofty shoulders above the throng of humbler dwellings, its spire a spike reaching for blue, unclouded heaven. And here and there was the stone-built massiveness of a prosperous merchant’s house-for Abrusio was a city of merchants as well as of mariners. Indeed, some said that a Hebrian must be one of three things at birth: a mariner, a merchant or a monk.

Towards the summit of the low hill, making it higher than it truly was and giving it the aspect of a steep-sided mountain, was the citadel and palace of the King, Abeleyn IV, monarch of Hebrion and Imerdon, admiral of half a thousand ships.

The dark granite walls of his fortress-palace had been reared up by Fimbrian artificers four centuries before, and over their high walls could be glimpsed the tallest of the King’s cypresses, the jewels of his pleasure gardens. (A fifth of the city’s water consumption, it was rumoured, went on keeping those gardens green.) They had been planted by the King’s forebears when the first Hebrion shrugged off the decaying Fimbrian yoke. They flickered now in the awful heat, and the palace swam like a mirage of the Calmari desert.

Beside the King’s palace and pleasure gardens the monastery of the Inceptine Order shimmered also. So-called because they were the first religious order founded after the visions of the Blessed Ramusio brought light to the darkness of the idol-worshipping west (indeed, some would have folk believe that Ramusio himself founded them), the Inceptines were the religious watchdogs of the Ramusian kingdoms.

Palace and monastery, they frowned down together over the sprawling, stinking, vibrant city of Abrusio. A quarter of a million souls toiled and bargained and revelled beneath them, natives of the greatest port in the known world.

“Sweet God,” Richard Hawkwood had said. “What is happening?”

He had reason to speculate, for over the upper half of Abrusio a black smoke hung in the limpid air, and a worse stink was wafting over the crowded port towards his ship. Burning flesh. The gibbets of the Inceptines were crowded with sticklike shapes and a pall of scorched meat hung sickeningly far out to sea, more greasy and unclean than the foulest odour of the sewers.

“They’re sending heretics to the pyre,” the boatswain said, disgusted and awed. “God’s Ravens are at it again. The Saints preserve us!”

Old Julius, the first mate, an easterner with a face as black as pitch, looked at his captain with wide eyes, his dusky countenance almost grey. Then he bent over the rail and hailed a bumboat close by, packed to the gills with fruit, its pilot a broad hideous fellow who lacked an eye.

“Ho! What’s in the air, friend? We’re back from a month-long cruise down in the Rovers’ kingdoms and our tongues are hanging out for news.”

“What’s in the air? Cannot your nostrils take in the stink of it? Four days it’s been hanging over the city, honest old Abrusio. We’re a haven of sorcerers and unbelievers it seems, every one of them in the pay of the sultans. God’s Ravens are ridding us of them, in their kindness.” He spat over the gunwale into water becoming thick with the detritus of the port. “And I’d watch where you go with that dark face, friend. But wait-you’ve been out a month, you say. Have you heard the news from the east? Surely to God you know?”

“Know what, fellow?” Julius cried out impatiently.

The bumboat was being left behind. Already it was half a cable abaft the port beam. The one-eyed man turned to shout:

“We are lost, my friends! Aekir has fallen!”

T HE port captain was waiting for them as one of Abrusio’s tugs, her crew straining at the oars, towed them to a free wharf. The breeze had failed entirely and the brassy heat beat down unrelentingly on the maze of ships and men and docks, shortening tempers and loosening rigging. And all the while the slick stench of the pyres hung in the air.

Once the dock-hands had moored them to bollards fore and aft, Hawkwood collected his papers and stepped ashore first, reeling as his sea-accustomed legs hit the unyielding stone of the wharf. Julius and Velasca, the boatswain, would see that the offloading was conducted correctly. The men would be paid and no doubt would scatter throughout the city seeking sailors’ pleasures, though they would find little pleasure tonight, Hawkwood thought. The city was busying along at something like its normal, frenetic pace, but it seemed subdued. He could see sullen looks, even open fear on the faces of the dock-hands who stood ready to help with the offloading; and they regarded the Grace’s crew, at least half of whom were foreigners out of one port or another, with some suspicion. Hawkwood felt the heat, the bustle and the uneasiness working him up into a black mood, which was strange considering that only hours before he had been looking forward to the voyage’s end. He shook hands with Galliardo Ponera, the port captain whom he knew well, and the two fell into step as they wove their way to the port offices.

“Ricardo,” the port captain said hurriedly, “I must tell you-”

“I know, lord God I know! Aekir has fallen at last and the Ravens are seeking scapegoats, hence the stink.” The “Inceptines’ incense” it was sometimes called, that bleary reek which marked the end of heretics.

“No, it is not that. It is the orders of the Prelate. I could do nothing-the King himself can do nothing.”

“What are you prattling about, Galliardo?” The port captain was a short man, like Hawkwood himself, and once a fine seaman. A native of the Hebrionese, his skin was burnt as dark as mahogany, making for brilliant smiles. But he was not smiling now.

“You have returned from Macassar, the Malacar Islands?”

“So?”

“There is a new law, an emergency measure the Inceptines have badgered the King into drawing up. I would have got you word, warned you to divert to another port-”

But Hawkwood had halted in his tracks. Marching down the wharf towards them was a demi-tercio of Hebriate Marines, and at their head a brother of the Inceptines in rich black, the “A” sign that was the symbol of the Saint swinging from a golden chain at his breast, glinting painfully in the sun. He was youngish, apoplectic-looking in his heavy robes and the blaring heat, but his face was shining with self-importance. He halted before Hawkwood and Galliardo and the marines crashed to attention behind him. Hawkwood pitied them in their armour. Their sergeant met his eyes and raised his own a fraction towards heaven. Hawkwood smiled despite himself, then bowed and kissed the brother’s hand, as was expected.

“What can we do for you, Brother?” he asked brightly, though his heart was sinking fast.

“I am on God’s business,” the brother said. Sweat dripped from his nose. “It is my duty to inform you, Captain, that in his infinite wisdom the Prelate of Hebrion has come to a painful but necessary decision under God, to whit, foreigners who are not of the Five Ramusian Kingdoms of the West, or of states in vasselage to the above, are to be denied entry to their kingdoms, lest they with their unholy beliefs contaminate still further the sorry souls of our peoples and bring further calamities upon their heads.”

Hawkwood stood rigid with anger, but the brother went on in a rushed monotone, as if he had said the words many times before:

“I am therefore bound to search your ship, and on finding any persons on board who come under the writ of the Prelate, am to escort them from this place to a place of security, there to retain them until our spiritual guides at the head of the august order of which I am a minuscule part have decided what is to be their fate.” The brother wiped his brow and appeared slightly relieved.

Hawkwood spat with feeling over the side of the wharf into the oily water. The Inceptine did not seem offended. Sailors, soldiers and others of the lower orders often expressed themselves similarly.

“So if you will stand aside, Captain. .”

Hawkwood drew himself up. He was not tall-the brother topped him by half a head-but he was as broad as a door with the arms of a longshoreman. Something cold in the sea-grey of his eyes halted the Inceptine in his tracks.

Behind the cleric the marines broiled silently.

“I am Gabrionese, Brother,” Hawkwood said in a quiet voice.

“I have been made aware of that. Special dispensation has been granted to your countrymen in recognition of their gallant efforts at Azbakir. You need not worry, Captain. You are exempt.”

Hawkwood felt Galliardo’s hand on his arm.

“What I am saying, Brother, is that many of my crew, though not of the kingdoms or even of the no-doubt-worthy vassal states of the kings, are fine seamen, honest citizens, and worthy comrades. Some of them I have sailed with all my life, and one even took part in the battle of which you speak, a battle which saved southern Normannia from the Sea-Merduks.”

He spoke hotly, thinking with rage of Julius Albak, a secret worshipper of Ahrimuz but who as a boy, a mere child out of Ridawan, had stood on the deck of a Gabrionese war-carrack as three Merduk galleys rammed and boarded, one after the other. That was at Azbakir. The Gabrionese, consummate seamen but proud, wilful and stubborn, had stood alone that day and turned aside the fleets of the Sea-Merduks off the Calmaric coast as they sought to invade southern Astarac and Candelaria, the soft underbelly of the west.

“What were you at the time of Azbakir, Brother? A seed in your father’s loins? Or were you out in the world and still shitting yellow?”

The Inceptine flushed dark, and behind him Hawkwood saw the marine sergeant’s face struggling to maintain a wooden blankness.

“I should have expected no more from a Gabrionese corsair. Your time will come, Captain, and that of all your stiff-necked countrymen. Now stand aside or you will share the fate of the unbelievers in our midst a little early.”

And when Hawkwood did not move: “Sergeant, shift me this impious dog!”

The sergeant hesitated. He met Hawkwood’s eyes for a second. It was almost as if they had made an agreement on something. Hawkwood stood aside, hand on dirk.

“Were it not for your calling, Priest, I would spit you like the black, liverless fowl you are,” he said, his voice icy as spindrift off the northern sea.

The Inceptine quailed. “Sergeant!” he screeched.

The marine moved forward purposefully, but Hawkwood let him and his fellows clank past him towards his ship, closely followed by the cleric. The brother turned once they were past.

“I know your name, Gabrionese. The Prelate will soon know it also, I promise you.”

“Flap away, Raven,” Hawkwood jeered, but Galliardo pulled him along.

“For the Saint’s sake, Ricardo, come away. We can do nothing here but make things worse. Do you want to end up on a gibbet?”

Hawkwood moved stiffly, a sea creature out of its element. The blood had filled his face.

“Come to my offices. We will discuss this. Maybe we can do something.”

The marines were boarding the Grace. Hawkwood could hear the official drone of the Inceptine’s voice again.

Then there was a splash, and one of the crew had leapt over the side and was swimming with no visible destination in mind. The Inceptine shouted and Hawkwood, as if in a nightmare, saw a marine level his arquebus.

A sharp report that seemed to stun the port into silence for a moment, a heavy globe of smoke that obscured the ship’s rail, and then the man was no longer swimming but was a dead, bobbing thing in the filthy water.

“Holy God!” Galliardo said, shocked, staring. Around the wharves work ceased as men paused to look on. The marine sergeant’s voice could be heard bellowing angrily.

“May God curse them,” Hawkwood said slowly, his voice thick with grief and hatred. “May He curse all black-robed Ravens that practice such foulness in His name.”

The dead man had been Julius Albak.

Galliardo pulled him away by main strength, the sweat pulsing down his dark face in shining beads. Hawkwood let himself be dragged from the wharf, but stumbled like an old man, his eyes blind with tears.

Abeleyn IV, King of Hebrion, was not happy either. Though he knelt in the required manner to kiss the Prelate’s ring, there was a stiffness, a certain reluctance about his gesture that betrayed his feelings. The Prelate laid a hand on his dark circleted head.

“You wish to speak to me, my son.”

Abeleyn was a proud young man in the prime of life. More, he was a king, one of the Five Kings of the West; and yet this old man never failed to treat him like an erring, wilful but ultimately amiable child. And it never failed to irritate him.

“Yes, Holy Father.” He straightened. They were in the Prelate’s own apartments. High, massive stone walls and the vaulted ceiling kept out the worst of the heat. Far off Abeleyn could hear the brothers singing Prime, preparing for their midday meal. He had misjudged the timing of his visit: the Prelate would be impatient for his lunch, no doubt. Well, let him be.

Tapestries depicting scenes from the life of the Blessed Ramusio relieved the austere grandeur of the chamber. There was good carpet underfoot, sweet oil burning in censers, the glint of gold in the hanging lamps, a tickle of incense in the nostrils. On either side of the Prelate an Inceptine sat on a velvet-covered stool. One had pen and parchment, for all conversations were recorded here. Behind him Abeleyn could hear the boots of his bodyguards clumping softly as they knelt also. Their swords had been left at the door: not even a king came armed into the Prelate’s presence. Since Aekir, and the disappearance of the High Pontiff in the wreck of the city’s fall, the five Prelates of the Kingdoms were God’s direct representatives on earth. Abeleyn’s mouth twitched. It was rumoured that the High Pontiff, Macrobius IV, had wished to leave Aekir early on in the siege to preserve the Holy Person, but John Mogen and his Torunnans had convinced him otherwise, saying that for the Pontiff to flee the city would be to acknowledge defeat. It was said that Macrobius had had to be locked in a storeroom of his own palace to convince him.

Abeleyn’s mood soured. The west would need men like Mogen in the times to come. He had been worth half a dozen kings.

As Abeleyn rose a low stool was brought for him, and he sat at the Prelate’s feet, for all the world like an apprentice at the foot of his master. Abeleyn swallowed anger and made his voice as even as silk.

“We have spoken about this edict concerning the heretics and foreigners of the city, and we have agreed that it is necessary to root out the disloyal, the unbelieving, the treacherous. .”

The Prelate inclined his head, smiling graciously. With his large nose and keen eyes he looked like a liver-spotted eagle nodding on a perch.

“. . but, Father, I noticed you have included in the wording of the edict the cantrimers, the mindrhymers, the petty Dweomer-users of the kingdom-the folk who possess any kind of theurgical ability. Already my soldiers, under the leadership of your brothers, are rounding up these people. What for? Surely you cannot mean to consign them to the flames?”

The Prelate continued to smile. “Oh, but I do, my son.”

Abeleyn’s mouth became a scar in his face, as though a bitter fruit had been placed therein.

“But that would mean hunting out every oldwife who cures warts, every herbalist who spells his wares, every-”

“Sorcery is sorcery, my son. All theurgy comes from the same source. The Evil One.” The Prelate was like a saintly tutor humouring a dull-witted pupil. One of Abeleyn’s bodyguards stirred angrily, but a glance from one of the Inceptines quelled him.

“Father, in doing this you could send thousands to the pyre, even members of my own court. Golophin the Mage, one of my own advisers-”

“God’s work is never easy. We live in trialling times, as you should know better than anyone, my lord King.”

Abeleyn, interrupted twice in as many minutes, struggled to keep his voice from rising. He felt an urge to pick up the Prelate and dash his brains out against a convenient wall.

He smiled in his turn. “But surely you must at least recognize the practical difficulties involved in fulfilling such an edict, especially at a time like this. The Torunnans are crying out for reinforcements to halt the Merduk push and hold the Searil line. I am not sure”-here Abeleyn’s smile took on a particular sweetness-“I am not sure I can spare you the men to carry out your edict.”

The Prelate beamed back. “Your concern does you credit, my son. I know that the temporal cares of the moment lie heavy on your shoulders, but do not fear. God’s will shall be done. I have asked for a contingent of the Knights Militant to be dispatched from the home of our order at Charibon. They will relieve you somewhat of the burden you bear. Your soldiers will be freed for service elsewhere, in the defence of the Ramusian kingdoms and the True Faith.”

Abeleyn went white, and at his look even the Prelate seemed to shrink.

“I do what I can for the good of the kingdom, my lord King.”

“Indeed.” The Prelate was playing for higher stakes than Abeleyn had thought. Whilst his own soldiers were off on the frontier helping the Torunnans, the Knights Militant-the military arm of the Church-would have free rein in Abrusio. His spies should have informed him of this before today, but it was notoriously difficult to eavesdrop on the doings of the Inceptines. They were as tightly knit as chainmail. Abeleyn beat down the simmering fury and chose his words with care.

“Far be it for me, Father, to point out to you, one of the lords of the Church, what may or may not be necessary or desirable in God’s eyes. But I do feel bound to say that your edict-our edict-has not been well received among the populace. Abrusio, as you are well aware, is a port, the most important in the west. It survives on trade, trade with other kingdoms, other nations and other peoples. Therefore in the way of things a certain number of foreigners filter through and make lives for themselves here in Hebrion. And there are Hebrians living in a dozen other countries of Normannia-even in Calmar and distant Ridawan.”

The Prelate said nothing. His eyes were like two sea-polished shards of jet. Abeleyn ground on.

“Trade lives on goodwill, on accommodation, and on compromise. It has been represented to me that this latest edict could do much towards strangling our trade with the southern kingdoms and the city-states of the Levangore-Merduk lands, yes, but they have not lifted a finger against us since Azbakir, forty years ago, and their galleys help us keep the Malacar Straits free of the corsairs.”

“My son,” the Prelate said, his smile as warm as flint, “it grieves me to hear you speak thus, as though your concerns were those of a common merchant rather than those of a Ramusian king.”

There was a sudden, dead silence in the chamber. The scribe’s quill described an inky screech across his parchment. No one spoke thus to a king in his own kingdom.

“It is unfortunate,” Abeleyn said into the hush, “but I feel I cannot send to Torunna the reinforcements which are so needed there. I feel, Holy Father, that the True Faith can be safeguarded here by my men as well as on the frontier. As you have so ably made clear to me, threats to the crown can come from any quarter, within and without its borders. I think it prudent that my troops continue their work in conjunction with the Church here, in Abrusio; and though you have not, in your graciousness, rebuked me, I feel I have not taken a responsible enough role in these matters until now. Henceforth the lists of the suspects, the heretics, the foreigners-and the sorcerers, of course-will be brought to me so that I may confirm them. I will then pass them on to you. As you say, these are trialling times. It grieves me to think that a man of your piety and advanced years should have the twilight of his life disturbed by such distasteful matters. I will endeavour to lift some of your burden. It is the least I can do.”

The Prelate, a vigorous man in his fifties, inclined his head, but not before Abeleyn had glimpsed the fire in his cold eyes. They had both revealed their weapons, had put their pieces on the board and shifted them in the opening moves. Now the real negotiations would have to begin, the haggling for advantage that men called diplomacy. And Abeleyn had the upper hand. The Prelate had revealed his strategy too soon.

So I must debate with this old man, Abeleyn thought darkly, manoeuvre for advantage in my own kingdom. And the Torunnans; they will have to stand alone for a while longer because this grasping cleric chooses to see how far he can flex his muscles with me.