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boatswain hung, drawn and quartered. He took a gulp of wine. Those were the days, following the
coast round to the easternmost of the Hebrionese, and then across the Fimbrian Gulf to Narbosk. There
is something about the sea that is in our blood, we Hebrians. Maybe we do not have veritable saltwater
running in our veins like the Gabrionese, but the tilt of a deck under our feet is always in the manner of a
homecoming.
He stared into his wine.
I will see this land the greatest seapower on the earth ere I die, Murad if I am spared, and if grasping
clerics do not finish me before my time.
Your reign will be a long and glorious one, Majesty. People will look back on it in later years and
wonder what men were like who lived then, what giants they were.
The king looked up and laughed, seeming like a boy as he threw back his head. I put on my breeches
one leg at a time the same as everyone else, kinsman. No, it is the glow of history, the mist of the
intervening years that confers glory on a man. It may be that I will be remembered solely because the
Holy City fell in my reign, and my troops stayed home chasing witches instead of joining the defence of
the west. Posterity is a fickle thing. Look at my father.
Murad said nothing. Bleyn II had been a tyrannical ruler and a fanatically pious man. It was rumoured
that the current purge had been first suggested by him a dozen years before, but the old Mage Golophin
had talked him out of it. Now the Inceptines were portraying him as the ideal of a saintly king, and his son
was described in a hundred pulpits as a wild young man, good-hearted but wayward and totally lacking
in respect for the representatives of the Blessed Saint on earth. Relations between crown and Church did
not seem destined to improve.
And yet the navy and the army worshipped Abeleyn, and in the pikes of the soldiers and the culverins of
the ships rested the power behind the throne. So the Inceptines trod warily, and hastened to bring their
own swords, the Knights Militant, into the city.
I have heard that none of the Aekir garrison escaped, Murad said sombrely, following his own train of
thought. Thirty-five thousand men.
You heard wrong, the King told him. Sibastion Lejer brought almost ten thousand men out of the city
and is fighting a rearguard action on the Searil road.
Murad wanted to ask his king how he knew, how news travelled so swiftly over seven hundred leagues,
but stopped himself. Golophin would have his ways and means. But if Golophin was avoiding
Abeleyn . . .
Duty calls, Abeleyn said. I must meet another delegation from the guilds this afternoon. Thanks to you,
Murad, I may have a crumb of comfort for the Thaumaturgists Guild. Golophin may even begin talking
to me again. Just as well. There is the Conclave of Kings to prepare for in a month s time.
Is it still going ahead? Murad asked, surprised.
Now more than ever. Lofantyr of Torunn will be shrieking for more troops, of course, and Skarpathin of
Finnmark will be convinced that the next blow is to fall upon him. I foresee a trying time, especially as the
Synod meets a short while before, so we will have their worthy resolutions to debate also. I tell you,
Murad, you are lucky in only having to worry about a hazardous voyage into the unknown. The shoals
between palaces are more difficult to navigate.
Murad rose, and bowed deeply. With your permission I will leave you to your navigating, Majesty.
As he left the shade of the cypresses the punishing sunlight bore down on him, and he saw the cluster of
secretaries gather round their monarch like flies feeding off a corpse. The image was an unlucky one, and
Murad banished it from his mind. He would have his ships, and his men, and he would have his city in the
west.
He had not told the King that there was a log accompanying the rutter which detailed that voyage to the
west of a century ago, and he was glad that he had kept the knowledge to himself. If the King had read
the tattered pages he would most likely have found nothing. Murad himself had had a hard time
deciphering the scrawled writing and stained parchment of the document, and the entries were hard to
find but they were there.
They referred to the very first expedition to the west, three centuries before the master of the Faulcon
had made his ill-fated voyage. It was a venture that had ended, as far as Murad could make out, in
slaughter and madness.
But that had been a long time ago. Such things became garbled and fantastic with every passing year.
There would be nothing in the west that Hebrian arquebuses and pikes could not face down.
Time enough to worry about such things when the fabled Western Continent was looming off his bow
with its secrets, its dangers and its unknown riches. It would be too late then for anyone to turn back.
FIVE
R ICHARD Hawkwood opened the ornate grille that enclosed the balcony and stood naked, sipping his
wine. There was no breeze. It was unheard of for the Hebrian trade to fail so early in the year. He could
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