Paul Kearney - Monarchies of God 1 - Hawkwoods Voyage

For the Museum Road bunch: John, Dave, Sharon, Felix, and Helen; and for Dr. Marie Cahir,

partner in everything.

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters; these see the works of the Lord,

and his wonders in the deep.

Psalm 107:23-24

PROLOGUE

YEAR OF THE SAINT 422

A ship of the dead, it coasted in on the northwest breeze, topsails still set but the yards braced for a

long-lost wind on the open ocean. The yawlsmen sighted it first, on the eve of St. Beynac’s Day. It was

heeling heavily, even on the slight swell, and what was left of its canvas shuddered and flapped when the

breeze fell.

It was a day of perfect blueness—sea and sky vast, even reflections of one another. A few gulls flapped

expectantly round the silver-filled nets the yawl crews were hauling in hand over fist, and a school of

gleaming oyvips were sporting off to port: an unlucky omen. Within each, it was said, howled the soul of

a drowned man. But the wind was kind, and the shoal was large—it could be seen as a broad shadow

under the hull, twinkling now and then with the bright flank of a twisting fish—and the fishermen had been

here since the forenoon watch, filling their nets with the sea’s uncertain bounty, the dark line of the

Hebrionese coast a mere guess off behind their right shoulders.

The skipper of one yawl shaded his eyes, paused and peered out to sea, blue stone glinting out from

rippled leather, his chin bristling with hairs as pale as those on the stem of a nettle. Water shadow writhed

luminously in the hollows of his eyesockets.

“There’s a sight,” he muttered.

“What is it, Fader?”

“A carrack, lad, a high-seas ship by the looks of her. But the canvas is hanging in strips off her

yards—there’s a brace flying free. And she’s made a ton of water, if I’m any judge. She’s taken a

pounding, all right. And what of the crew? Un-handy lubbers.”

“Maybe they’re dead, or wore out,” his son said eagerly.

“Maybe. Or maybe sick of the plague as I hears ravages them eastern lands. The curse o’ God on

unbelievers.”

The other men in the yawl paused at that, staring darkly out at the oncoming vessel. The wind veered a

point—they felt it shift out of one eye—and the strange ship lost way. She was hull up, her battered

masts black against that uncertain band of horizon that is either sea or sky. Water dripped from the men’s

hands; the fish flapped feebly in the nets, forgotten and dying. Droplets of sweat gathered on noses and

stung their eyes: salt in everything, even the body’s own water. They looked at their skipper.

“It’s salvage, if the crew’s all dead,” one man said.

“It’s an unlucky ship that coasts in from the empty west and no sign of life aboard,” another muttered.

“There’s naught out there but a thousandscore leagues of unsailed sea, and beyond that the very rim of

the earth.”

“There may be men alive aboard her in need of help,” the skipper said sternly. His son gazed at him with

round eyes. For a moment, the stares of all his crew were fixed on his face. He felt them like he did the

warmth of the sun, but his seamed visage revealed nothing as he made his decision.

“We’ll close with her. Jakob, set the forecourse, brace her round. Gorm, get these nets in and hail the

other boats. They should stay. There’s a good shoal here, too good to let by.”

The crew leapt to their tasks, some sullen, some excited. The yawl was two-masted, the mizzen stepped

abaft the rudder head. She would have to beat into the landward breeze to board the carrack. Men on

the other boats paused in the hauling of their catch to watch as the yawl closed on her goal. The bigger

vessel was broadside on to the swell, listing to starboard as the waves broke on her windward side. As

the yawl drew close, her crew broke out sweeps and strained at the heavy oars whilst the skipper and a

few others stood poised on the gunwale, ready to make the perilous leap on to the side of the carrack.

She towered darkly above them now, a looming giant, her running rigging flying free, the lateen yard on

her mizzen a mere stump and the thick wales that lined her side smashed and splintered as though she had

squeezed through a narrow place. There was no sign of life, no reply to the skipper’s hail. Surreptitiously,

men at the sweeps paused in their labour to make the Sign of the Saint at their breasts.

The skipper leapt, grunted at the impact as he hit the carrack’s side, hauled himself over her rail and

stood panting. The others followed, two with their dirks in their teeth as if they expected to fight their way

aboard. And then the yawl drew off, her mate putting her about on the port tack. She would heave to,

keep the wind on her weather bow and ride out the breeze. The skipper waved at her as she eased

away.

The carrack was wallowing low in the water and the wind was working on her high fore- and

sterncastles. There was no sound but the hiss and lap of the sea, the creak of wood and rigging, the

thump of a staved cask that rolled back and forth in the scuppers. The skipper raised his head as he

caught the whiff of corruption. He met the knowing gaze of old Jakob. They nodded at each other. There

was death aboard, corpses rotting somewhere.

“The Blessed Ramusio preserve us, let it not be the plague,” one man said hoarsely, and the skipper

scowled.

“Hold your tongue, Kresten. You and Daniel see what you can do to put her before the wind. It’s my

belief her seams are working in this swell. We’ll see if we can’t get her into Abrusio before she spews her

oakum and sinks her bow.”

“You’re going to bring her in?” Jakob asked.

“If I can. We’ll have to look below though, see if she’s anywhere near settling.” The roll of the ship made

him lurch a little. “Wind’s picking up. That’s all to the good if we can get her head round. Come, Jakob.”

He pushed open one of the doors in the sterncastle and entered the darkness beyond. The bright blue

day was cut off. He could hear Jakob padding barefoot and breathing heavily behind him in the sudden

gloom. He stopped. The ship heaved like a dying thing under his feet—that smell of putrefaction, stronger

now, rising even over the familiar sea smells of salt and tar and hemp. He gagged as his hands, groping,

found another door.

“Sweet Saint!” he breathed, and pushed it open.

Sunlight, bright and blazing, flooding through shattered stern windows. A wide cabin, a long table, the

gleam of falchions crossed on a bulkhead, and a dead man sitting watching him.

The skipper made himself move forward.

There was water underfoot, sloshing about with the heave of the ship. It looked as though a following sea

had swamped the windows; at the forward end of the cabin was a tangle of clothing, weapons, charts,

and a small brassbound chest, much battered. But the dead man sat upright in his chair with his back to

the stern windows and the brown skin stretched tight as parchment over the lines of his skull. His hands

were shrunken claws. The rats had gnawed him. His chair was fixed in wooden runners to the deck, and

he was tied into the chair by line after line of sodden cordage. It looked as though he had bound himself;

the arms were free. A tattered scrap of paper was clenched in one decaying fist.

“Jakob, what is this we see?”

“I know not, Captain. There has been devilry at work in this ship. This man was the master—see the

charts?—and there is a broken cross-staff here too. But what happened to him that he did this?”

“There is no explaining it—not yet. We must go below. See if you can find a lantern here, or a candle. I

must have a look at her hold.”

“The hold?” The old man sounded doubtful.

“Yes, Jakob. We must see how fast she is making water, and what her cargo is.”

The light left the windows and the motion of the ship grew easier as the men on deck put her before the

wind. Jakob and his captain gave a last look at the dead master and his skull face, and left. Neither told

the other what he was thinking: the dead man had ended his tenure of the world with his face distorted by

terror.

B RIGHT sunlight again, the clean spray of the sea. The other boarders were busy with the lifts and

braces, moving yards far heavier than they were used to. The skipper barked a few orders. They would

need canvas and fresh cordage. The mainmast shrouds were ripped to shreds on the port side; a wonder

she had not rolled out the mast.

“No storm ever did this to a ship,” Jakob said, and ran his horny hands along the ship’s rail. The wood

was torn, punctured. Bitten, the skipper thought, and he felt a cold worm of fear coil in his stomach.

But he shut his face to Jakob’s look of enquiry.

“We are mariners, not philosophers. Our task is to make the ship swim. Now are you coming with me or

shall I ask one of the youngsters?”

They had sailed the Hebrionese coast for more than two-score years together, weathered more storms

than they could remember, hauled in a million fish. Jakob nodded mutely, anger burning away his fear.

The tarpaulins over the hatchways were flapping and torn. It was dark there, in the very bowels of the

ship, and they lowered themselves down with care. One of the others had found and lit a lantern. It was

passed down into the dark and by its beam they found themselves surrounded by crates, casks and

sacks. There was a musty smell in the air, and again the faint stink of corruption. They could hear the

swirl and gurgle of water deeper in the hold, the rolling rumble of loose cargo, the creak of the ship’s

overworked hull. The stink of the bilge, usually overpowering in a large ship, had been overwhelmed by

incoming seawater.

They made their slow way along an avenue between the cargo, the lantern beam swinging shadows in

chaotic directions. They found the remains of rats half eaten, but none alive. And there was no sign of the

crew. The master in his cabin above might have been piloting the ship alone and unaided until his death.

Another hatch, and a companion ladder leading down, deep into utter blackness. The ship creaked and

groaned under their feet. They could no longer hear the voices of their shipmates above, in that other

world of salt air and spray. There was only this hole opening on nothingness, and beyond the wooden

walls that surrounded them nothing but the drowning sea.

“Water down there, deep enough too,” Jakob said, lowering the lantern through the hatch. “I see it

moving, but there’s no spume. If it’s a leak, it’s slow.”

They paused, peering down into a place neither of them wanted to see. But they were mariners, as the

skipper had said, and no man bred to the sea could stand idle and watch a ship die.

The skipper made as if to start down, but Jakob stopped him with an odd smile and went first, the breath

rattling audibly in his throat. The skipper saw the light break and splinter on multifaceted water, things

bobbing in it, a splash amid the chiaroscuro of shadow and flame.

“Bodies here.” Jakob’s voice came up, distorted, far away. “I think I’ve found the crew. Oh sweet God,

his blessed Saints—”

There was a snarling, and Jakob screamed. The lantern went out and in the blackness something thrashed

the water into a fury. The skipper glimpsed the yellow gleam of an eye, like a ravening fire far off on a

pitch-dark night. His lips formed Jakob’s name but no sound came out; his tongue had turned to sand.

He backed away and bumped into the sharp corner of a crate. Run, some part of his mind shrieked at

him, but his marrow had become like granite within his very bones.

Then the thing was swarming up the companion towards him, and he had not even the time to mouth a

prayer before it was rending his flesh, and the yellow eyes were witness to his soul’s flight.

PART ONE

THE FALL OF AEKIR

ONE

YEAR OF THE SAINT 551

T HE City of God was burning . . .

Long plumes of fire sailed up from the streets like wind-coiled banners, detaching to consume themselves

and become lost in the grim thunderheads of impenetrable smoke that lowered above the flames. For

miles along the Ostian river the city burned and the buildings crumbled, their collapse lost in the

all-encompassing roar of the fire. Even the continuing noise of battle by the western gates, where the

rearguard was still fighting, was swallowed up by the bellowing inferno.

The cathedral of Carcasson, greatest in the world, stood stark and black against the flames, a solitary

sentinel horned with steeples, nippled with domes. The massive granite shrugged off the heat but the lead

on the roof was melting in rivulets and the timber beams were blazing all along their length. The bodies of

priests littered the steps; the Blessed Ramusio gazed down sorrowfully with a horde of the lesser saints in

attendance, their eyes cracking open, the bronze staffs they held buckling in the inferno. Here and there a

gargoyle, outlined in scarlet, grinned malevolently down.

The palace of the High Pontiff was full of looting troops. The Merduks had ripped down tapestries,

hacked apart relics for the precious stones that adorned them, and now they were drinking wine out of

the Holy Vessels whilst they waited their turn with captured women. Truly, Ahrimuz had been good to

them today.

Further westwards within the city, the streets were clogged with fleeing people and the troops who had

been stationed here to guard them. Hundreds were trampled underfoot in the panic, children abandoned,

the old and slow kicked aside. More than once a collapsing house would bury a score of them in a fury

of blazing masonry, but the rest would spare hardly a glance. Westwards they forged, west towards the

gates still held by Ramusian troops, the last remnant of John Mogen’s Torunnans, once the most feared

soldiers in all the west. These were a desperate rabble now, their valour bled away by the siege and the

six assaults which had preceded the last. And John Mogen was dead. Even now, the Merduks were

crucifying his body above the eastern gate where he had fallen, cursing them to the last.

The Merduks poured through the city like a tide of cock-roaches, glinting and barbed in the light of the

fires, their faces shining, sword arms bloody to the elbows. It had been a long siege and a good fight, and

at last the greatest city of the west was theirs for the taking. Shahr Baraz had promised to let them loose

once the city had fallen and they were intent on plunder. It was not they who were burning the city, but

the retreating western troops. Sibastion Lejer, lieutenant of Mogen, had sworn to let not one building fall

intact into the hands of the heathens and he and a remnant of men still under orders were methodically

burning the palaces and arsenals, the storehouses and pleasure theatres and churches of Aekir, and

slaughtering anyone, Merduk or Ramusian, who tried to stop them.

C ORFE watched the tall curtains of flame shift against the darkened sky. The smoke of the burning had

brought about a premature twilight, the end of a long day for the defenders of Aekir; for many thousands,

the last day.

He was on a flat rooftop, apart from the maelstrom of screaming people below. The sound of them

carried up in a solid wave. Fear, anger, desperation. It was as though Aekir itself were screaming, the

tormented city in the midst of its death throes, the fire incinerating its vitals. The smoke stung Corfe’s eyes

and he wiped them clear. He could feel ashes settling on his brow like a black snow.

A tatterdemalion figure, no longer the dapper ensign, he was scorched, ragged and bloodied. He had

cast aside his half-armour in the flight from the walls, and wore only his doublet and the heavy sabre that

was the mark of Mogen’s men. He was short, lithe, deep-eyed. In his gaze alternated murder and

despair.

His wife was somewhere down there, enjoying the attentions of the Merduks or trampled underfoot in

some cobbled alley, or a burnt corpse in the wreck of a house.

He wiped his eyes again. Damn smoke.

“Aekir cannot fall,” Mogen had told them. “It is impregnable, and the men on its walls are the best

soldiers in the world. But that is not all. It is the Holy City of God, first home of the Blessed

Ramusio. It cannot fall.” And they had cheered.

A quarter of a million Merduks had proved otherwise.

The soldier in him wondered briefly how many of the garrison had or would escape. Mogen’s

bodyguards had fought to the death after he had gone down, and that had started the flight. Thirty-five

thousand men had garrisoned Aekir. If a tenth of them made it through to the Ormann line they would be

lucky.

“I can’t leave you, Corfe. You are my life. My place is here.” So she had said with that

heartbreakingly lopsided smile of hers, the hair as dark as a raven’s feather across her face. And he, fool,

fool, fool, had listened to her, and to John Mogen.

Impossible to find her. Their home, such as it was, had been in the shadow of the eastern bastion, the first

place to fall. He had tried to get through three times before giving up. No man lived there now who did

not worship Ahrimuz, and the women who survived were already being rounded up. Handmaidens of

Ahrimuz they would become, inmates of the Merduk field brothels.

Damned stupid bitch. He had told her a hundred times to move, to get out before the siege lines began to

cut the city off.

He looked out to the west. The crowds pulsed that way like sluggish blood in the arteries of a felled

giant. It was rumoured that the Ormann road was still open all the way to the River Searil, where the

Torunnans had built their second fortified line in twenty years. The Merduks had left that one slim way

out deliberately, it was said, to tempt the garrison into evacuation. The population would be choking it up

for twenty leagues. Corfe had seen it before, in the score of battles that had followed after the Merduks

had first crossed the Jafrar Mountains.

Was she dead? He would never know. Oh, Heria.

His sword arm ached. He had never before been a part of such slaughter. It seemed to him that he had

been fighting for ever, and yet the siege had lasted only three months. It had not, in fact, been a siege as

The Military Manual knew one. The Merduks had isolated Aekir and then had commenced to pound it

into the ground. There had been no attempt to starve the city into submission. They had merely kept on

attacking with reckless abandon, losing five men for every defender who fell, until the final assault this

morning. It had been pure savagery on the walls, a to and fro of carnage, until the critical moment had

been reached, the cup finally brimming over and the Torunnans had begun the trickle off the ramparts

which had turned into a rout. Old John had roared at them, before a Merduk scimitar cut him down.

There had been near panic after that. No thought of a second line, a fighting retreat. The bitter tension of

the siege, the multiple assaults, had left them too worn, as brittle as a rust-eaten blade. The memory made

Corfe ashamed. Aekir’s walls had not even been breached; they had simply been abandoned.

Was that why he had paused, was standing here now like some spectator at an apocalypse? To make up

for his flight, perhaps.

Or to lose himself in it. My wife. Down there somewhere, alive or dead.

Rumbling booms, concussions that shook the smoke-thick air. Sibastion was touching off the magazines.

Crackles of arquebus fire. Someone was making a stand. Let them. It was time to abandon the city, and

those he had loved here. Those fools who chose to fight on would leave their corpses in its gutters.

Corfe started down off the roof, wiping his eyes angrily. He probed the stairway before him with his

sabre like a blind man tapping his stick.

It was suffocatingly hot as he came out on the street, and the acrid air made his throat ache. The raw

sound of the crowds hit him like a moving wall, and then he was in amongst them, being carried along like

a swimmer lost in a millrace. They stank of terror and ashes and their faces seemed hardly human to him

in the hellish light. He could see unconscious men and women being held upright by the closeness of the

throng, small children crawling upon the serried heads as though they were a carpet. Men were being

crushed at the edges of the street as they were smeared along the sides of the confining walls. He could

feel the bodies of others under his feet as he was propelled along. His heel slid on the face of a child. The

sabre was lost, levered out of his hand in the press. He tilted his face to the shrouded sky, the flaming

buildings, and fought for his share of the reeking air.

Lord God, he thought, I am in hell.

A URUNGZEB the Golden, third Sultan of Ostrabar, was dallying with the pert breasts of his latest

concubine when a eunuch paddled through the curtains at the end of the chamber and bowed deeply, his

bald pate shining in the light of the lamps.

“Highness.”

Aurungzeb glared, his black eyes boring into the temerarious intruder, who remained bowed and

trembling.

“What is it?”

“A messenger, Highness, from Shahr Baraz before Aekir. He says he has news from the army that will

not wait.”

“Oh, won’t it?” Aurungzeb leapt up, hurling aside his pouting companion. “Am I at the beck and call,

then, of every hairless eunuch and private soldier in the palace?” He kicked the eunuch sprawling. The

glabrous face twisted silently.

Aurungzeb paused. “From the army, you say? Is it good news or bad? Is the siege broken? Has that dog

Mogen routed my troops?”

The eunuch hauled himself to his hands and knees and wheezed at the fantastically coloured carpet. “He

would not say, Highness. He will only relay the news to you personally. I told him this was very irregular

but—” Another kick silenced him again.

“Send him in, and if he has bad news then I’ll make a eunuch of him too.”

A jerk of his head sent the concubine scurrying into the corner. From a jewelled chest the Sultan took a

plain dagger with a worn hilt. It had seen much use, but had been put away as though it were something

hugely precious. Aurungzeb tucked it into his waist sash, then clapped his hands.

The messenger was a Kolchuk, a race the Merduks had long ago conquered in their march west. The

Kolchuks ate reindeer and made love to their sisters. Moreover, this man stood tall before Aurungzeb

despite the hissings of the eunuch. He had somehow bypassed the Vizier and the Chamberlain of the

Harem to come this far. It must be news indeed. If it was bad tidings Aurungzeb would make him less tall

by a head.

“Well?”

The man had the unknowable eyes of the Kolchuks; flat stones behind slits in his expressionless face. But

there was something of a glow about him, despite the fact that he swayed slightly as he stood. He smelt

of dust and lathered horse, and Aurungzeb noticed with interest that there was a gout of dried blood

blackening the gut of his armour.

Now the man did fall to one knee, but his face remained tilted upwards, shining.

“The compliments of Shahr Baraz, Commander in Chief of the Second Army of Ostrabar, Highness. He

begs leave to report that, should it please your excellency, he has taken possession of the infidel city of

Aekir and is even now cleansing it of the last of the western rabble. The army is at your disposal.”

Aekir has fallen.

The Vizier burst in followed by a pair of tulwar-wielding guards. He shouted something, and they grasped

the kneeling Kolchuk by the shoulders. But Aurungzeb held up a hand.

“Aekir has fallen?”

The Kolchuk nodded, and for a second the inscrutable soldier and the silk-clad Sultan smiled at each

other, men sharing a triumph only they could appreciate. Then Aurungzeb pursed his lips. It would not do

to press the man for information; that would smack of eagerness, even gracelessness.

“Akran,” he barked at his glowering, uncertain Vizier. “Quarter this man in the palace. See that he is fed,

bathed, and has whatever he wishes.”

“But Highness, a common soldier—”

“Do it, Akran. This common soldier could have been an assassin, but you let him slip past you into the

very harem. Had it not been for Serrim”—here the eunuch coloured and simpered—“I would have been

taken totally by surprise. I thought my father had taught you better, Akran.”

The Vizier looked bent and old. The guards shifted uneasily, contaminated with his guilt.

“Now go, all of you. No, wait. Your name, soldier. What is it and with whom do you serve?”

The Kolchuk gazed at him, remote once more. “I am Harafeng, Lord. I am one of the Shahr’s

bodyguard.”

Aurungzeb raised an eyebrow. “Then, Harafeng, when you have eaten and washed, the Vizier will bring

you back to me and we will discuss the fall of Aekir. You have my leave to go, all of you.”

The Kolchuk nodded curtly, which made Akran splutter with indignation, but Aurungzeb smiled. As soon

as he was alone in the chamber his smile turned into a grin which split his beard, and it was possible to

see the general of men that he had briefly been in his youth.

Aekir has fallen.

Ostrabar was counted third in might of the Seven Sultanates, coming after Hardukh and ancient Nalbeni,

but this feat of arms, this glorious victory, would propel it into the first rank of the Merduk sultanates, and

Aurungzeb at its head. Centuries hence they would talk of the sultan who had taken the holiest and most

populous city of the Ramusians, who had broken the army of John Mogen.

The way lay open to Torunn itself now; there remained only the line of the River Searil and the fortress of

Ormann Dyke. Once they fell there was no line of defence until the Cimbric Mountains, four hundred

miles further west.

“Ahrimuz, all praise to thee!” the Sultan whispered through his grin, and then said sharply, “Gheg.”

A homunculus sidled from behind one of the embroidered curtains, flapped its leathery little wings and

perched on a nearby table.

“Gheg,” it said in a tiny, dry voice, its face a picture in cunning malevolence.

“I wish to speak to your keeper, Gheg. Summon him for me.”

The homunculus, no larger than a pigeon, yawned, showing white needle-teeth in a red mouth. One

clawed hand scratched its crotch negligently.

“Gheg hungry,” it said, disgruntled.

Aurungzeb’s nostrils flared. “You were fed last night, as fine a babe as you could wish. Now get me your

keeper, hell-spawn.”

The homunculus glowered at him, then shrugged its tiny shoulders. “Gheg tired. Head hurts.”

“Do as I say or I’ll spit you like a quail.”

The homunculus smiled: a hideous sight. Then a different light came into its glowing eyes. In a deep,

human tone it said, “I am here, Sultan.”

“Your pet is somewhat sullen of late, Orkh—one of the reasons I use him so seldom nowadays.”

“My apologies, Highness. He is getting old. I shall consign him to the jar soon and send you a new

one . . . What is your wish?”

“Where are you?” It was odd to hear petulance from such a big, hirsute figure.

“It is no matter. I am close enough. Have you a boon you would ask of me?”

Aurungzeb struggled visibly to control his temper.

“I would have you look south, to Aekir. Tell me what transpires there. I have had news. I wish to see it

substantiated.”

“Of course.” There was a pause. “I see Carcasson afire. I see siege towers along the inner walls. There is

a great burning, the howls of Ramusians. I congratulate you, Highness. Your troops run amok through the

city.”

“Shahr Baraz. What of him?”

Another moment’s silence. When the voice came again it held mild surprise.

“He views the crucified body of John Mogen. He weeps, Sultan. In the midst of victory, he weeps.”

“He is of the old Hraib. He mourns his enemy, the romantic fool. The city burns, you say?”

“Yes. The streets are crawling with unbelievers. They fire the city as they go.”

“That will be Lejer, the dastard. He will leave us nothing but ashes. A curse on him and his children. I’ll

have him crucified, if he is taken. Is the Ormann road open?”

The homunculus had come out in beads of shining sweat. It trembled and its wing tips drooped. The

voice which came out of it did not change, however.

“Yes, Highness. It is clogged with carts and bodies, a veritable migration. The House of Ostrabar reigns

supreme.”

Eighty years before the House of Ostrabar had consisted solely of Aurungzeb’s grandfather and a trio of

hardy concubines. Generalship, not lineage, had reared it up out of the eastern steppes. If the Ostrabars

could not win battles themselves, they hired someone who could. Hence Shahr Baraz, who had been

Khedive to Aurungzeb’s father. Aurungzeb had commanded troops competently in his youth, but he

could not inspire them in the same way. It was a lack he had never ceased to resent. Shahr Baraz, though

originally an outsider, a nomad chief from far Kambaksk, had served three generations of Ostrabars

honestly and ably. He was now in his eighties, a terrible old man much given to prayer and poetry. It was

well that Aekir had fallen when it did; Shahr Baraz’s long life was near its close, and with it would go the

last link between the Sultans and the horse-borne chieftains of the steppes who had preceded them.

Shahr Baraz had recommended that the Ormann road be left open. The influx of refugees would weaken

and demoralize the men who manned the line of the Searil river, he said. Aurungzeb had wondered if

some outdated chivalry had had a hand in the decision also. No matter.

“Tell the—” he began, and stopped. The homunculus was melting before his eyes, glaring at him

reproachfully as it bubbled into a foul-smelling pool.

“Orkh! Tell the Khedive to push on to the Searil!”

The homunculus’ mouth moved but made no sound. It dissolved, steaming and reeking. In the nauseous

puddle it became it was possible to make out the decaying foetus of a child, the wing-bones of a bird, the

tail of a lizard. Aurungzeb gagged and clapped his hands for the eunuchs. Gheg had outlived its

usefulness, but no doubt Orkh would send him another of the creatures soon. He had other

messengers—not so swift, perhaps, but just as sure.

Aekir has fallen.

He began to laugh.

TWO

“S WEET 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.

Paul Kearney - Monarchies of God 1 - Hawkwoods Voyage

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