Century of the Soldier: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume Two) (108 page)

T
HE
M
ERDUK ARMY
marched out before sunrise, when the streets were as quiet as they ever became in the capital. They formed up in
Hor-el Kadhar
where once the statue of Myrnius Kuln had frowned, and then led off in long files by prearranged streets to the west gate. It was a cold, clear night with the sun not yet begun to glimmer over the Jafrar in the east, and King Corfe of Torunna, who had once fled through this very gate as Aekir burned about him, was not yet in the high foothills of the Cimbrics. Nasir was leading fifteen thousand heavily armoured cavalry westwards to the aid of the kingdom which had once been his people's bitterest foe. But he was young, and dwelt seldom on such ironies. Besides, half of his own blood belonged to that people. As did his new wife, whom he already knew he loved.

T
HAT SAME DAWN
found two ships coursing swift as cantering horses across the eastern Levangore. Their masts were rigid with almost every sail they possessed and their decks were black with men. All through the previous evening and the night they had been hurtling north-north-east with the freshening wind on their larboard quarters, and now to port loomed the purple shapes of the southern Cimbric Mountains as they marched down to the sea east of the Candelan River. Torunna, last free kingdom of the west, rising up in the dawn light, with the snow on the summits of the mountains catching the sun first, so that they tinted scarlet and pink and seemed to be disembodied shapes floating over the darker hills below.

Murad stared at that sunrise briefly and then focused once more on the ship ahead. The xebec had tried to lose them in the night, but the moonlight had been too bright and the eyes of the pursuers too keen. She was little more than four cables ahead now, almost within gunshot, and the
Revenant
was closing the gap.

The thing which had once been the Lord of Galiapeno glanced aft to see a man in the black of an Inceptine habit standing before the mainmast, solid and unyielding as a stone gargoyle despite the pitch and roll of the barquentine. From him there seemed to hum a silent vibration which could be felt underfoot in the wood of the decks. A soundless thrumming which, Murad knew, was responsible for the present speed, or part of it.

For Richard Hawkwood was too canny a sailor to be caught by conventional seamanship. He had survived the storm sent to sink him and they had almost lost him in the great sea-wastes of the Levangore, until one of Murad's homonculi had glimpsed him by chance as it flew high and far beyond its master in search of news. There would be no second storm - such tactics were obviously inadequate. No, to Murad's great joy Aruan had given him leave to capture the
Seahare
intact if he chose, and dispose of her crew in any way he wished - provided Hebrion's queen met her end in the process. What a pleasure it would be to meet up with his old shipmate and comrade again, and to preside over his unhurried death.

Murad knew much of death. On the night of the fleet's destruction he had become lost in the fog on his way back from the flagship, and thus had watched from his longboat as that great armada was reduced to matchwood all about him. He remembered prising the fingers of desperate drowning survivors from the gunwales of his little craft less they swamp it in their panic. He had bade his men row them out, far out into the fog, and there they had leant on their oars and watched the ships burning through the mist, listening to the screams. They had escaped that great slaughter, or so he had thought.

Then the mage had come in a furious storm of black flame which incinerated Murad's companions in a flashing second and seemed like to do the same to himself. But a curious thing had happened.

I know you
, a voice had said. Murad had lain in the smoking bottom of the longboat with the swells washing around his charred body and the thing had hovered over him like a great bat. He felt he were being turned this way and that for inspection, though he had not been touched.

Kill him,
another voice said, a familiar voice. But the first laughed.

I think not. He may well prove useful
.

Kill him!

No. Put aside your past hates and prejudices. You and he are more similar than you think. He is mine.

And thus had Murad of Galiapeno been taken into the service of the Second Empire.

And he had been willing to serve. All his life he had hated mages and witches and the workings of the Dweomer, but more than that, Murad had chafed at his subordination to men he deemed less able than himself, even Hebrion's last King. Now he took orders from one he acknowledged to be his superior, and there was a strange comfort in it. He was at last glad to merely do as he was told, and if the orders he received chimed with his own inclinations, so much the better. As for the Dweomer, well, he had become reconciled to it, for was it not now a part of him?

And what was more, he would be ruler of Hebrion once this woman he pursued was dead. It had been promised, and Aruan always kept his promises.

"R
UN OUT THE
bow-chasers," he said, and his crew jumped to do his bidding. A few of them were ordinary mercenaries, sailors of many navies, but most were tall, gleaming black men of the Zantu. They had cast aside their horn carapaces and now teams of them hauled, sweating, on the cables which trundled out the forward-aimed guns of the ship until they came to bear on the stern of their prey.

"Usunei!"

"Yes, lord."

"Let us see if we cannot scratch his paintwork. Fire when ready."

The grunting gun-crews levered the two culverins round with handspikes while the gun-captains sighted along the bronze barrels with smoking slow-match grasped in their fists. At last they were content and held up their free hands. As the bow of the ship rose, they whipped the match across the touch-holes, springing aside with the grace of panthers as the culverins went off as one and leapt inboard, squealing on their trucks. A cloud of smoke went up and was quickly winnowed into nothing by the wind and the speed of the ship's passage. Watching intently, Murad saw two splashes just short of the
Seahare's
stern.

"Good practice! More elevation there, and we shall have her."

The next shots could be followed by those with quick eyes; two dark blurs which punched holes in the chase's mizzen-course and sent splinters flying from something in her waist. Murad laughed and clapped his hands, and the guncrew's faces split in wide, fanged grins.

A minute later the chase's wounded mizzen-course split from top to bottom and flapped madly from the yard. Spray struck Murad in the mouth and he licked the salt-tang of it away, his eyes shining. The
Seahare
lost speed. The next pair of shots went home in the mizzen-rigging and he saw a small, wriggling figure blown off the yard and flung into the sea.

"More speed!" Murad screamed. "You there, give us another two knots and we'll have them before breakfast!"

The hooded Inceptine to whom he spoke did not answer, but he seemed to hunch over within his robe, and the tone of the vibration filling the ship rose by an octave. The
Revenant
dipped deeply and water came flooding in the chaser gunports, green and cold. The masts creaked and complained and the backstays were wringing taut, but nothing gave away. The weatherworker was not moving the ship, but the water within which it travelled, and spreading out all around the ship's hull was a violent turbulence of broken, foaming spray at odds with the natural swell of the sea about them. The ship trembled and shook as though it were being rattled in the grip of some undersea giant, and several of the crew were knocked off their feet, but Murad stood on the wave-swept forecastle gripping one of the foremast shrouds, and the light in his eyes grew to a yellow fire. They drew nearer to their prey. Now only a cable and a half - three hundred yards - separated the tip of the barquentine's bowsprit and the
Seahare'
s taffrail.. In half a glass they would be abreast. Murad raised his voice. "All hands, prepare for boarding!" and a homonculus wheeled out of the rigging and settled on his shoulder. About him on the forecastle clustered a great mob of the Zantu, now clad again in their black horn armour and clicking their pincers impatiently. The armour began as a natural construct of horn and leather, but when a man donned it, he became somehow part of it, and it augmented his strength as well as protecting his flesh. The Zantu were fearsome warriors in their own right, but when wearing their black harness they were well-nigh invincible.

"Remember!" Murad yelled, "the captain is to be taken alive, and the woman's body I must see with my own eyes. The rest are yours."

The Zantu had fasted for days in anticipation of this hour, and from the depths of their shining masks their eyes glittered with hunger and anticipation.

Murad could actually recognise Hawkwood now. He stood at the stern of his ship with an oddly familiar dark-haired boy beside him, and shouted orders that were lost in the wind and the foaming tumult of the waves. The
Seahare
suddenly yawed hard a-port so that she revealed her full broadside, such as it was. Six gun-ports gaping, and then the side of the ship disappeared in a bank of smoke, and a heartbeat later came the roar of the reports. Murad felt the wind of one shot pass his head, and it staggered him. The rest smashed down the full length of the
Revenant
, leaving chaos in their wake. Blocks and fragments of rigging were hurled through the air and the close-packed boarding party was blasted to pieces, so that the scuppers ran with blood and fragments of men were blown as far aft as the quarterdeck.

The humming tremble of the ship's hull ceased, and looking aft Murad saw that one cannonball had cut his weatherworking Inceptine in two. The
Revenant
lost speed and the foaming water about her began to settle into a more rational wake.

"Get me back my speed!" he shrieked at the ship's master, a renegade Gabrionese who stood white-faced by the wheel. "Shoot them! Catch them. Sink them, for the love of God!"

The master put the wheel about and the barquentine yawed in her turn, exposing her much heavier metal. "Fire!" he shouted, and the gun-crews collected their wits and sent off a ragged broadside.

But the Zantu were not the well-trained sailors of Hawkwood's crew. Murad saw three of the balls strike home amidships, and a hail of wood splinters went flying as the
Seahare's
larboard rail was demolished, but most went high, slicing cables in the rigging but doing little serious damage.

Both ships had lost speed now, and both were turning back to starboard, into the wind. An arquebus ball zipped past Murad's ear and he ducked instinctively. Hawkwood had several sailors with small-arms firing from his stern. There were a series of splashes in the xebec's wake; they were throwing their dead overboard. Murad beat his fist on the forecastle rail in his frustration and his homunculus jumped up and down on his shoulder, screeching.

"More sail!" he shouted to the master. "If they escape then your life is forfeit, Master Mariner."

The crew raced up the shrouds and began piling on every scrap of canvas the barquentine possessed. Staysails and jibs were flashed out and the
Revenant
began to accelerate through the water at something approaching her previous rate. The xebec still had not sent up a new mizzen-course, and they were gaining again. Murad ignored the arquebus balls that whined and snicked about him, and helped the depleted chaser-crews run out their guns once more. They fired on the rise and this time the shots smashed square into the
Seahare's
stern, sending timbers flying through the air and tossing one of the arquebusiers into the sea. Murad laughed again, and called for more men to come forward.

Another party of Zantu joined him by the chasers. Aboard the
Seahare
a party of men were busy on the quarterdeck and the odd ball came hissing overhead from their arquebusiers. Barely fifty yards separated the two ships now. Murad could see Hawkwood clearly; he was manning the ship's wheel himself, watching the barquentine as it came up hand over fist. That dark boy was helping him, and to one side of them was Isolla herself. She was aiming an arquebus. Murad, startled, saw the smoke spurt from its muzzle, and something thumped the side of his head. He went down and the homunculus squawked harshly. Labouring back to his feet he realised he was deaf on one side, and when he put up a hand it came away wet. Isolla had shot off half his ear.

Furious, he opened his mouth, but at that moment the
Seahare
made a sharp turn to port, going directly before the wind. As she turned her guns went off in measured sequence, and the
Revenant
was raked again, the cannonballs passing the full length of the ship.

Her sails shivered, then banged taut, and she fell away before the wind. Looking aft, Murad saw that the ship's wheel had been splintered into pieces and the master lay dead beside it along with the helmsman. The decks were slimy and slick with blood and everywhere fragments of jagged wood and scraps of flesh lay piled amid sliced cables and shattered blocks. Murad dashed aft to the companionway and shouted at the Zantu who staggered there, dazed and bewildered. "Get below to the tiller and steer her from there! You others, get back to your guns and commence firing!"

He climbed to the quarterdeck, slipping in blood and cursing, his hand held to the ragged meat where his ear had been. The two vessels were sailing directly before the wind now, on parallel courses less than a cable's length apart. They were pointed at the long inlet which housed the Torunnan port of Rone; Hawkwood was making a run for shore.