Paul Kearney - Monarchies of God 4 - The Second Empire

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Other Ace Books by Paul Kearney
HAWKWOOD’S VOYAGE
Book One of The Monarchies of God
THE HERETIC KINGS
Book Two of The Monarchies of God
THE IRON WARS
Book Three of The Monarchies of God
For John McLaughlin
WHAT WENT BEFORE . . .
F IVE centuries ago two great religious faiths arose which were to dominate the entire known world.
They were founded on the teachings of two men: in the west, St. Ramusio; in the east, the Prophet
Ahrimuz.
The Ramusian faith arose at the same time that the great continent-wide empire of the Fimbrians was
coming apart. The greatest soldiers the world had ever seen, the Fimbrians had become embroiled in a
vicious civil war which enabled their conquered provinces to break away one by one and become the
Seven Kingdoms. Fimbria dwindled to a shadow of her former self, her troops still formidable, but her
concerns confined exclusively to the problems within the borders of the homeland. And the Seven
Kingdoms went from strength to strength—until, that is, the first hosts of the Merduks began pouring
over the Jafrar mountains, quickly reducing their numbers to five.
Thus began the great struggle between the Ramusians of the west and the Merduks of the east, a
sporadic and brutal war carried on for generations which, by the sixth century of Ramusian reckoning,
was finally reaching its climax.
For Aekir, greatest city of the west and seat of the Ramusian Pontiff, finally fell to the eastern invaders in
the year 551. Out of its sack escaped two men whose survival was to have the greatest possible
consequences for future history. One of them was the Pontiff himself, Macrobius—thought dead by the
rest of the Ramusian Kingdoms and by the remainder of the Church hierarchy. The other was Corfe
Cear-Inaf, a lowly ensign of cavalry, who deserted his post in despair after the loss of his wife in the
tumult of the city’s fall.
But the Ramusian Church had already elected another Pontiff, Himerius, who was set upon purging the
Five Kingdoms of any remnant of the Dweomer-Folk, the practitioners of magic. The purge caused
Hebrion’s young king, Abeleyn, to accept a desperate expedition into the uttermost west to seek the
fabled Western Continent, an expedition led by his ruthlessly ambitious cousin, Lord Murad of
Galiapeno. Murad blackmailed a master mariner, one Richard Hawkwood, into leading the voyage, and
as passengers and would-be colonists they took along some of the refugee Dweomer-Folk of Hebrion,
including one Bardolin of Carreirida. But when they finally reached the fabled west, they found that a
colony of lycanthropes and mages had already existed there for centuries under the aegis of an immortal
arch-mage, Aruan. Their exploratory party was wiped out, with only Murad, Hawkwood and Bardolin
surviving.
Back in Normannia, the Ramusian Church was split down the middle as three of the Five Kingdoms
recognised Macrobius as the true Pontiff, while the rest preferred the newly elected Himerius. Religious
war erupted as the three so-called Heretic Kings—Abeleyn of Hebrion, Mark of Astarac and Lofantyr
of Torunna, fought to keep their thrones. They all succeeded, but Abeleyn had the hardest battle to fight.
He had to storm his own capital, Abrusio, by land and sea, half-destroying it in the process. And in the
moment of his final victory, he was smashed down by a stray shell, which blasted what remained of his
body into a deep coma.
As Abeleyn lay senseless, administered to by his faithful wizard Golophin, a power struggle began. His
mistress Jemilla strove to set up a Regency to govern the kingdom, which would recognise the right of her
unborn child—nominally, the King’s—to succeed to the throne. Golophin and Isolla, Abeleyn’s Astaran
fiancée, worked in their turn to curb Jemilla’s ambitions. After the weary Golophin’s sorcerous powers
were restored by the unexpected intervention of Aruan from the West, Abeleyn was roused from his
coma, his missing legs replaced by magical limbs of wood.
All across the continent, the Monarchies of God were in a state of violent flux. In Almark, the dying King
Haukir bequeathed his kingdom to the Himerian Church, transforming it overnight into a great temporal
power. The man at its head, Himerius, was in fact a puppet of the Western sorcerer Aruan, and after a
strange and agonising initiation, he had become a lycanthrope like his master.
And in Charibon two of his humbler fellow-clerics, Albrec and Avila, stumbled upon an ancient
document, a biography of St Ramusio which stated that he was one and the same as the Merduk Prophet
Ahrimuz. The two monks, guilty of heresy, fled Charibon, but not before a macabre encounter with the
chief librarian of the monastery city, who also turned out to be a werewolf. They ran into the teeth of a
midwinter blizzard, and would have died in the snow had they not been rescued by a passing Fimbrian
army, which was on its way east to support the Torunnans in their great battles against the Merduks. The
monks finally made their weary way to Torunn itself, there to confront Macrobius with the momentous
knowledge they carried.
Further east, the great Torunnan fortress of Ormann Dyke became the focuss of the Merduk assaults,
and there Corfe distinguished himself in its defence. He was promoted and, catching the eye of Torunna’s
Queen Dowager, Odelia, was given the mission of bringing to heel the rebellious nobles in the south of
the kingdom. This he undertook with a motley, ill-equipped band of ex-galley slaves which was all the
Torunnan King would allow him. Plagued by the memory of his lost wife, he was, mercifully, unaware
that she had in fact survived Aekir’s fall and was now the favourite concubine of the Sultan Aurungzeb
himself—and bearing his child.
The Merduks finally abandoned their costly frontal assaults and outflanked Ormann Dyke by sea, forcing
the fortress’s evacuation. The retreating garrison joined up with the Fimbrians who had arrived, too late,
to reinforce them, and the combined force would have been destroyed at the North More, had not Corfe
disobeyed orders and taken his own command north to break them out of their encirclement. As it was,
half of the two armies were lost, and Corfe, thanks to the intrigues of the Torunnan Queen-Mother,
became General of the remainder. He and Odelia became lovers, which added to the whispering
campaign against him at court, and further prejudiced young King Lofantyr against him.
Lofantyr led the entire remaining Torunnan army into the field in a last-ditch attempt to halt the advancing
Merduks, and in a titanic battle north of his capital he lost his wife. Corfe wrenched a bloody victory of
sorts out of the débâcle, and once more brought the army home—this time to be made
Commander-in-Chief.
The year 551 had ended, and another chapter in Normannia’s turbulent history was about to be written.
Over the horizon, Richard Hawkwood’s battered ship was making its tortured voyage home at last,
bearing news of the terrible New World that was stirring in the West.
PROLOGUE
T HE makeshift tiller bucked under their hands, bruising ribs. Hawkwood gripped it tighter to his sore
chest along with the others, teeth set, his mind a flare of foul curses—a helpless fury which damned the
wind, the ship, the sea itself, and the vast, uncaring world upon which they raced in mad career.
The wind backed a point—he could feel it spike into his right ear, heavy with chill rain. He unclenched his
jaws long enough to shriek forward over the lashing gale.
“Brace the yards—it’s backing round. Brace around that mainyard, God rot you!”
Other men appeared on the wave-swept deck, tottering out of their hiding places and staggering across
the plunging waist of the carrack. They were in rags, some looking as though they might once have been
soldiers, with the wreck of military uniforms still flapping around their torsos. They were clumsy and
torpid in the bitter soaking spindrift, and looked as though they belonged in a sick-bed rather than on the
deck of a storm-tossed ship.
From the depths of the pitching vessel a terrible growling roar echoed up, rising above the thrumming
cacophony of the wind and the rageing waves and the groaning rigging. It sounded like some huge, caged
beast venting its viciousness upon the world. The men on deck paused in their manipulation of the sodden
rigging, and some made the Sign of the Saint. For a second sheer terror shone through the exhaustion that
dulled their eyes. Then they went back to their work. The men at the stern felt the heavings of the tiller
ease a trifle as the yards were braced around to meet the changing wind. They had it abaft the larboard
beam now, and the carrack was powering forward like a horse breasting deep snow. She was sailing
under a reefed mainsail, no more. The rest of her canvass billowed in strips from the yards, and where
the mizzen-topmast had once been was only a splintered stump with the rags of shrouds flapping about it
in black skeins.
Not so very far now, Hawkwood thought, and he turned to his three companions.
“She’ll go easier now the wind’s on the quarter.” He had to shout to be heard over the storm. “But keep
her thus. If it strengthens we’ll have to run before it and be damned to navigation.”
One of the men at the helm with him was a tall, lean, white-faced fellow with a terrible scar that distorted
one side of his forehead and temple. The remnants of riding leathers clung to his back.
“We were damned long ago, Hawkwood, and our enterprise with us. Better to give it up and let her sink
with that abomination chained in the hold.”
“He’s my friend, Murad,” Hawkwood spat at him. “And we are almost home.”
“Almost home indeed! What will you do with him when we get there, make a watchdog of him?”
“He saved our lives before now—”
“Only because he’s in league with those monsters from the west.”
“—And his master, Golophin, will be able to cure him.”
“We should throw him overboard.”
“You do, and you can pilot this damned ship yourself, and see how far you get with her.”
The two glared at one another with naked hatred, before Hawkwood turned and leaned his weight
against the trembling tiller with the others once more, keeping the carrack on her easterly course. Pointing
her towards home.
And in the hold below their feet, the beast howled in chorus with the storm.
26th Day of Miderialon, Year of the Saint 552.
Wind NNW, backing. Heavy gale. Course SSE under reefed mainsail, running before the wind.
Three feet of water in the well, pumps barely keeping pace with it.
Hawkwood paused. He had his knees braced against the heavy fixed table in the middle of the
stern-cabin and the inkwell was curled up in his left fist, but even so he had to strain to remain in his seat.
A heavy following sea, and the carrack was cranky for lack of ballast, the water in her hold moving with
every pitch. At least with a stern wind they did not feel the lack of the mizzen so much.
As the ship’s movement grew less violent, he resumed his writing.
Of the two hundred and sixty-six souls who left Abrusio harbour some seven and a half months
ago, only eighteen remain. Poor Garolvo was washed overboard in the middle watch, may God
have mercy on his soul.
Hawkwood paused a moment, shaking his head at the pity of it. To have survived the massacre in the
west, all that horror, merely to be drowned when home waters were almost in sight.
We have been at sea almost three months, and by dead-reckoning I estimate our easting to be
some fifteen hundred leagues, though we have travelled half as far as that again to the north. But
the southerlies have failed us now, and we are being driven off our course once more. By
cross-staff reckoning, our latitude is approximately that of Gabrion. The wind must keep backing
around if it is to enable us to make landfall somewhere in Normannia itself. Our lives are in the
hand of God.
“The hand of God,” Hawkwood said quietly. Seawater dripped out of his beard on to the battered log
and he blotted it hurriedly. The cabin was sloshing ankle-deep, as was every other compartment in the
ship. They had all forgotten long ago what it was like to be dry or have a full belly; several of them had
loose and rotting teeth and scars which had healed ten years before were oozing: the symptoms of
scurvy.
How had it come to this? What had so wrecked their proud and well-manned little flotilla? But he knew
the answer, of course, knew it only too well. It kept him awake through the graveyard watch though his
exhausted body craved oblivion. It growled and roared in the hold of his poor Osprey. It raved in the
midnight spasms of Murad’s nightmares.
He stoppered up the inkwell and folded the log away in its layers of oilskin. On the table before him was
a flaccid wineskin which he slung around his neck. Then he sloshed and staggered across the pitching
cabin to the door in the far bulkhead and stepped over the storm-sill into the companion-way beyond. It
was dark here, as it was throughout every compartment in the ship. They had few candles left and only a
precious pint or two of oil for the storm-lanterns. One of these hung swinging on a hook in the
companionway, and Hawkwood took it and made his way forward to where a hatch in the deck led
down into the hold. He hesitated there with the ship pitching and groaning around him and the seawater
coursing around his ankles, then cursed aloud and began to work the hatch-cover free. He lifted it off a
yawning hole and gingerly lowered himself down the ladder there, into the blackness below.
At the ladder’s foot he wedged himself into a corner and fumbled for the flint and steel that was
contained in a bottom compartment of the storm-lantern. An aching, maddening time of striking spark
after spark until one caught on the oil-soaked wick of the lantern and he was able to lower the thick glass
that protected it and stand it in a pool of yellow light.
The hold was eerily empty, home only to a dozen casks of rotting salt meat and noisome water that
constituted the last of the crew’s provisions. Water pouring everywhere, and the noise of his poor
tormented Osprey an agonised symphony of creaks and moans, the sea roaring like a beast beyond the
tortured hull. He laid a hand against the timbres of the ship and felt them work apart as she laboured in
the gale-driven waves. Fragments of oakum floated about in the water around his feet. The seams were
opening. No wonder the men on the pumps could make no headway. The ship was dying.
From below his feet there came an animal howl which rivalled even the thundering bellow of the wind.
Hawkwood flinched, and then stumbled forward to where another hatch led below to the bottom-most
compartment of the ship, the bilge.
It was stinking down here. The Osprey’s ballast had not been changed in a long time and the tropical
heat of the Western Continent seemed to have lent it a particularly foul stench. But it was not the ballast
alone which stank. There was another smell down here. It reminded Hawkwood of the beasts’ enclosure
in a travelling circus—that musk-like reek of a great animal. He paused, his heart hammering within his
ribs, and then made himself walk forward, crouching low under the beams, the lantern swinging in a
chaotic tumble of light and dark and sloshing liquid. The water was over his knees already.
Something ahead, moving in the liquid filth of the bilge. The rattle of metal clinking upon metal. It saw him
and ceased its struggles. Two yellow eyes gleamed in the dark. Hawkwood halted a scant two yards
from where it lay chained to the very keelson of the carrack.
The beast blinked, and then, terrible out of that animal muzzle, came recognizable speech.
“Captain. How good of you to come.”
Hawkwood’s mouth was as dry as salt. “Hello Bardolin,” he said.
“Come to make sure the beast is still in his lair?”
“Something like that.”
“Are we about to sink?”
“Not yet—not just yet, anyway.”
The great wolf bared its fangs in what might have been a grin. “Well, we must be thankful.”
“How much longer will you be like this?”
“I don’t know. I am beginning to control it. This morning—was it morning? One cannot tell down
here—I stayed human for almost half a watch. Two hours.” A low growl came out of the beast’s mouth,
something like a moan. “In the name of God, why do you not let Murad kill me?”
“Murad is mad. You are not, despite this—this thing that has happened to you. We were friends,
Bardolin. You saved my life. When we get back to Hebrion I will take you to your master, Golophin. He
will cure you.” Even to himself Hawkwood’s words felt hollow. He had repeated them too many times.
“I do not think so. There is no cure for the black change.”
“We’ll see,” Hawkwood said stubbornly. He noticed the lumps of salt meat which bobbed in the filthy
water of the bilge. “Can’t you eat?”
“I crave fresher meat. The beast wants blood. There is nothing I can do about it.”
“Are you thirsty?”
“God, yes.”
“All right.” Hawkwood unslung the wineskin he had about his neck, tugged out the stopper, and hung the
lantern on a hook in the hull. He half crawled forward, trying not to retch at the stench which rose up
about him. The heat the animal gave off was unearthly, unnatural. He had to force himself close to it and
when the head tilted up he tipped the neck of the wineskin against its maw and let it drink, a black tongue
licking every drop of moisture away.
“Thank you, Hawkwood,” the wolf said. “Now let me try something.”
There was a shimmer in the air, and something happened that Hawkwood’s eyes could not quite follow.
The black fur of the beast withered away and in seconds it was Bardolin the Mage who crouched there,
naked and bearded, his body covered in saltwater sores.
“Good to have you back,” Hawkwood said with a weak smile.
“It feels worse this way. I am weaker. In the name of God, Hawkwood, get some iron down here. One
nick, and I am at peace.”
“No.” The chains that held Bardolin fast were of bronze, forged from the metal of one of the ship’s
falconets. They were roughly cast, and their edges had scored his flesh into bloody meat at the wrists and
ankles, but every time he shifted in and out of beast form, the wounds healed somewhat. It was an
interminable form of torture, Hawkwood knew, but there was no other way to secure the wolf when it
returned.
“I’m sorry, Bardolin . . . Has he been back?”
“Yes. He appears in the night-watches and sits where you are now. He says I am his—I will be his right
hand one day. And Hawkwood, I find myself listening to him, believing him.”
“Fight it. Don’t forget who you are. Don’t let the bastard win.”
“How much longer? How far is there to go?”
“Not so far now. Another week or ten days perhaps. Less if the wind backs. This is only a passing
squall—it’ll soon blow itself out.”
“I don’t know if I can survive. It eats into my mind like a maggot. . . stay back, it comes again. Oh sweet
Lord God—”
Bardolin screamed, and his body bucked and thrashed against the chains which held him down. His face
seemed to explode outwards. The scream turned into an animal roar of rage and pain. As Hawkwood
watched, horrified, his body bent and grew and cracked sickeningly. His skin sprouted fur and two
horn-like ears thrust up from his skull. The wolf had returned. It howled in anguish and wrenched at its
confining chains. Hawkwood backed away, shaken.
“Kill me—kill me and give me peace!” the wolf shrieked, and then the words dissolved into a manic
bellowing. Hawkwood retrieved the storm-lantern and retreated through the muck of the bilge, leaving
Bardolin alone to fight the battle for his soul in the darkness of the ship’s belly.
What God would allow the practise of such abominations upon the world he had made? What manner of
man would inflict them upon another?
Unwillingly, his mind was drawn back to that terrible place of sorcery and slaughter and emerald jungle.
The Western Continent. They had sought to claim a new world there, and had ended up fleeing for their
lives. He could remember every stifling, terror-ridden hour of it. In the wave-racked carcase of his
once-proud ship, he had it thrust vivid and unforgettable into his mind’s eye once again.
PART ONE
RETURN OF THE MARINER
ONE
T HEY had stumbled a mile, perhaps two, from the ashladen air on the slopes of Undabane. Then they
collapsed in on each other like a child’s house of playing cards, what remained of their spirit spent. Their
chests seemed somehow too narrow to take in the thick humidity of the air around them. They lay
sprawled in the twilit ooze of the jungle floor while half-glimpsed animals and birds hooted and shrieked
in the trees above, the very land itself mocking their failure. Heaving for a breath, the sweat running down
their faces and the insects a cloud before their eyes.
It was Hawkwood who recovered first. He was not injured, unlike Murad, and his wits had not been
addled, unlike Bardolin’s. He sat himself up in the stinking humus and the creeping parasitic life which
infested it, and hid his face in his hands. For a moment he wished only to be dead and have done with it.
Seventeen of them had left Fort Abeleius some twenty-four days before. Now he and his two
companions were all that remained. This green world was too much for mortal men to bear, unless they
were also some form of murderous travesty such as those which resided in the mountain. He shook his
head at the memory of the slaughter there. Men skinned like rabbits, torn asunder, eviscerated, their
innards churned through with the gold they had stolen. Masudi’s head lying dark and glistening in the
roadway, the moonlight shining in his dead eyes.
Hawkwood hauled himself to his feet. Bardolin had his head sunk between his knees and Murad lay on
his back as still as a corpse, his awful wound laying bare the very bone of his skull.
“Come. We have to get farther away. They’ll catch us else.”
“They don’t want to catch us. Murad was right.” It was Bardolin. He did not raise his head, but his voice
was clear, though thick with grief.
“We don’t know that,” Hawkwood snapped.
“I know that.”
Murad opened his eyes. “What did I tell you, Captain? Birds of like feather.” He chuckled hideously.
“What dupes we poor soldiers and mariners have been, ferrying a crowd of witches and warlocks to
their masters. Precious Bardolin will not be touched—not him. They’re sending him back to his brethren
with you as the ferryman. If anyone escaped, it was I. But then, to where have I escaped?”
He sat up, the movement starting a dark ooze of blood along his wound. The flies were already black
about it. “Ah yes, deliverance. The blest jungle. And we are only a few score leagues from the coast.
Give it up, Hawkwood.” He sank back with a groan and closed his eyes.
Hawkwood remained standing. “Maybe you’re right. Me, I have a ship still—or had—and I’m going to
get off this God-cursed country and out to sea again. New Hebrion no less! If you’ve any shred of duty
left under that mire of self-pity you’re wallowing in, Murad, then you’ll realise we have to get back home,
if only to warn them. You’re a soldier and a nobleman. You still understand the concept of duty, do you
not?”
The bloodshot eyes snapped open again. “Don’t presume to lecture me, Captain. What are you but the
sweeping of some Gabrionese gutter?”
Hawkwood smiled. “I’m a lord of the gutter now, Murad, or had you forgotten? You ennobled me
yourself, the same time you made yourself governor of all this—” He swept out his arms to take in the
ancient trees, the raucous jungle about them. Bitter laughter curdled in his throat. “Now get off your noble
arse. We have to find some water. Bardolin, help me, and stop mooning around like the sky has just
fallen in.”
Amazingly enough, they obeyed him.
T HEY camped that night some five miles from the mountain, by the banks of a stream. After
Hawkwood had browbeaten Bardolin into gathering firewood and bedding, he sat by Murad and
examined the nobleman’s wounds. They were all gashed and scratched to some degree, but Murad’s
spectacular head injury was one of the ugliest Hawkwood had ever seen. The scalp had been ripped free
of the skull and hung flapping by his left ear.
“I’ve a good sailmaker’s needle in my pouch, and some thread,” he told Murad. “It may not turn out too
pretty, but I reckon I can get you battened down again. It’ll smart some, of course.”
“No doubt,” the nobleman drawled in something approaching his old manner. “Get on with it while
there’s still light.”
“There are maggots in the flesh. I’ll clear them out first.”
“No! Let them be. I’ve seen men worse cut up than this whose flesh went rotten for the lack of a few
good maggots. Sew them in there, Hawkwood. They’ll eat the dead meat.”
“God almighty, Murad!”
“Do it. Since you are determined that we are to survive, we may as well go through the motions. Where
is that cursed wizard? Maybe he could make himself useful and magick up a bandage.”
Bardolin appeared out of the gloom, a bundle of firewood in his arms. “He killed my familiar,” he said.
“The Dweomer in me is crippled. He killed my familiar, Hawkwood.”
“Who did?”
“Aruan. Their leader.” He dropped his burden as though it burnt. His eyes were as dead as dry slate. “I
will have a look, though, if you like. I may be able to do something.”
“Stay away from me!” Murad shouted, shrinking from the mage. “You murderous dastard. If I were fit
for it I’d break your skull. You were in league with them from the first.”
“Just see if you can get a fire going, Bardolin,” Hawkwood said wearily. “I’ll patch him up myself. Later,
we must talk.”
The pop of the needle going through Murad’s skin and cartilage was loud enough to make Hawkwood
wince, but the nobleman never uttered a sound under the brutal surgery, only quivered sometimes like a
horse trying to rid itself of a bothersome fly. By the time the mariner was done the daylight was about to
disappear, and Bardolin’s fire was a mote of yellow brightness on the black jungle floor. Hawkwood
surveyed his handiwork critically.
“You’re no prettier than you were, that’s certain,” he said at last.
Murad flashed his death’s-head grin. The thread crawled along his temple like a line of marching ants,
and under the skin the maggots could be seen squirming.
They drank water from the stream and lay on the brush that Bardolin had gathered to serve as beds while
around them the darkness became absolute. The insects fed off them without respite, but they were too
weary to care and their stomachs were closed. It was Hawkwood who pinched himself awake.
“Did they really let us go, you think? Or are they waiting for nightfall to spring on us?”
“They could have sprung on us fifty times before now,” Murad said quietly. “We have not exactly been
swift, or careful in our flight. No, for what it’s worth, we’re away. Maybe they’re going to let the jungle
finish the job. Maybe they could not bring themselves to kill a fellow sorcerer. Or there may be another
reason we’re alive. Ask the wizard! He’s the one has been closeted with their leader.”
They both looked at Bardolin. “Well?” Hawkwood said at last. “We’ve a right to know, I think. Tell us,
Bardolin. Tell us exactly what happened to you.”
The mage kept his eyes fixed on the fire. There was a long silence while his two companions stared
steadily at him.
“I am not entirely sure myself,” he said at last. “The imp was brought to the top of the pyramid in the
middle of the city by Gosa. He was a shape-shifter—”
“You surprise me,” Murad snorted.
“I met their leader, a man named Aruan. He said he had been high in the Thaumaturgists’ Guild of
Garmidalan in Astarac a long time ago. In the time of the Pontiff Willardius.”
Murad frowned. “Willardius? Why, he’s been dead these four hundred years and more.”
“I know. This Aruan claims to be virtually immortal. It is something to do with the Dweomer of this land.
There was a great and sophisticated civilisation here in the west at one time, but it was destroyed in a
huge natural cataclysm. The mages here had powers hardly dreamt of back on the Old World. But there
was another difference . . .”
“Well?” Murad demanded.
“I believe they were all shifters as well as mages. An entire society of them.”
“God’s blood,” Hawkwood breathed. “I thought that was not possible.”
“So did I. It is unheard of, and yet we have seen it ourselves.”
Murad was thoughtful. “You are quite sure, Bardolin?”
“I wish I were not, believe me. But there is another thing. According to this Aruan, there are hundreds of
his agents already in Normannia, doing his bidding.”
“The gold,” Hawkwood rasped. “Normannic crowns. There was enough of it back there to bribe a king,
to hire an army.”
“So he has ambitions, this shifter-wizard of yours,” Murad sneered. “And how exactly do you fit into
them, Bardolin?”
“I don’t know, Murad. The Blest Saint help me, I don’t know.”
We will meet again, you and I, and when we do you will know me as your lord, and as your friend.
The parting words of Aruan burnt themselves across Bardolin’s brain. He would never reveal them to
anyone. He was his own man, and always would be despite the foulness he now felt at work within him.
“One thing I do know,” he went on. “They are not content to remain here, these shifter-mages. They are
going to return to Normannia. Everything I was told confirms it. I believe Aruan intends to make himself a
power in the world. In fact he has already begun.”
“If he can make a werewolf of an Inceptine then his words are not idle,” Hawkwood muttered,
remembering their outwards voyage and Ortelius, who had spread such terror throughout the ship.
“A race of were-mages,” Murad said. “A man who claims to be centuries old. A network of shifters
spread across Normannia spending his gold, running his errands. I would say you were crazed, had I not
seen the things I have on this continent. The place is a veritable hell on earth. Hawkwood is right. We
must get back to the ship, return to Hebrion, and inform the King. The Old World must be warned. We
will root out these monsters from our midst, and then return here with a fleet and an army and wipe them
from the face of the earth. They are not so formidable—a taste of iron and they fall dead. We will see
what five thousand Hebrian arquebusiers can do here, by God.”
For once, Hawkwood found himself wholly in agreement with the gaunt nobleman. Bardolin seemed
troubled, however.
“What’s wrong now?” he asked the wizard. “You don’t approve of this Aruan’s ambitions, do you?”
“Of course not. But it was a purge of the Dweomer-folk which drove him and his kind here in the first
place. I know what Murad’s proposal will lead to, Hawkwood. A vast, continent-wide purge of my
people such as has never been seen before. They will be slaughtered in their thousands, the innocent
along with the guilty. We will drive all of Normannia’s mages into Aruan’s arms. That is exactly what he
wants. And his agents will not be so easy to uncover at any rate. They could be anyone—even the
nobility. We will persecute the innocent while the guilty bide their time.”
“The plain soldiers of the world will take their chances,” Murad retorted. “There is no place on this earth
for your kind any more, Bardolin. They are an abomination. Their end has been coming for a long time.
摘要：

OtherAceBooksbyPaulKearneyHAWKWOOD’SVOYAGEBookOneofTheMonarchiesofGodTHEHERETICKINGSBookTwoofTheMonarchiesofGodTHEIRONWARSBookThreeofTheMonarchiesofGodForJohnMcLaughlinWHATWENTBEFORE . . .FIVEcenturiesagotwogreatreligiousfaithsarosewhichweretodominatetheentireknownworld.Theywerefoundedontheteachings...

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