Paul Kearney: Ships from the West

'It's dark as pitch in here. Let me light a lantern.' Hawk-wood fumbled for his tinderbox and after striking flint and steel a dozen times was able to coax into life a ship's lantern which still had some oil in its well. The thick glass was cracked, but that was of no moment. Its yellow kindly light illuminated the creviced features of the wizard opposite and blacked out the sea astern.

'So may I expect you at the gate of Admiral's Tower tomorrow morning?' Golophin asked.

Hawkwood nodded assent.

'Excellent.' The mage tossed a small doeskin bag on the table that clinked heavily. 'An advance on your wages. You might want to outfit yourself with a new wardrobe. Quarters will be arranged in the tower.'

'Will be arranged, or have been arranged?'

Golophin rose and donned his hat. 'Until tomorrow then, Captain,' and he held out a hand.

Hawkwood shook it, rising in turn. His face was a stiff mask. Golophin turned to go, and then halted. 'It is no bad thing when personal inclination and the dictates of policy go together, Captain. We need you, it is true, but I for one am glad to have you besides. The court is full of well-bred snakes. The King has need of one or two honest men around him too.'

He left, stooping as he entered the companionway. Hawk shy;wood listened to him stride forward to the waist, and then there was that scrabbling seagull on deck again, and then silence.

Later, he lay on his oars a cable's length from the Osprey and watched her burn. Somehow the ship reclaimed some of her old beauty as the flames swept up from her decks and roared bright and blazing into the night sky. The fire reflected wet and shining from his eyes and he sat watching until she had burned down to the waterline and the sea began rushing in to quench the inferno. A hissing of steam, and then a murmuring gurgle as what was left of her hull turned over and sank beneath the waves. Hawkwood wiped his face in the choppy darkness.

He'd build their damn navy, and jump through whatever hoops they put in front of him. It was a way of surviving, after all. But his brave ship would never become a mere blueprint in some naval surveyor's office.

He picked up his oars, and began the long haul back to shore.

14th Forialon, Year of the Saint 567

The knot of riders pummelled along the sea cliffs in a billow of tawny dust. Young men on tall horses, they came to a thundering halt scant inches from the edge and sat their snorting mounts there laughing and slapping dust from their clothes. The sun, bright as a cymbal, beat down on the sky-blue sea far below and made the glitter of the horizon too bright for the eye to bear. It caused the sere mountains behind the riders to ripple and shimmer like a vision.

Cantering up to join the horsemen came another, but this was an older man, his dress sombre, and his beard gun-metal grey. His mount came to a sober halt and he wiped sweat from his temples.

'You'll break your damn fool necks if you're not careful. Don't you know the rock is rotten there at the edge?'

Most of the younger men eased their horses away from the fearsome drop sheepishly, but one remained in place, a broad-shouldered youth with pale blue eyes and hair black as a raven's feather. His mount was a handsome grey gelding which stood prick-eared and attentive between his knees.

'Bevan, where would I be without you? I suppose Mother told you to follow us.'

'She did, small wonder. Now get away from the edge, Bleyn. Make an old man happy.'

Bleyn smiled and backed the grey from the brink of the sea cliff one yard, two. Then he dismounted in a motion as easy as the flow of water, patted the neck of the sweating horse and slapped dust from his riding leathers. On foot he was shorter than one would have guessed, with a powerfully built torso set square on a pair of stout legs. The physique of a longshore shy;man topped by the incongruously fine-boned face of an aristocrat.

'We came to see if we could catch a glimpse of the fleet,' he said, somewhat contrite.

'Then look to the headland there – Grios Point. They'll be coming into view any time now, with this breeze. They weighed anchor in the middle of the night.'

The other riders dismounted also, hobbled their horses and unhooked wineskins from their saddles.

'What's it all about anyway, Bevan?' one of them asked. 'Stuck out here in the provinces, we're always the last to know.'

'It's a huge pirate fleet, I hear’ another said. 'Up from the Macassars looking for blood and plunder.'

‘I don't know about pirates,' Bevan said slowly, 'but I do know that your father, Bleyn, had to call up all the retainers on the estate and tear off to Abrusio with them in tow. It's a general levy, and we haven't seen one of those in … oh sixteen, seventeen years now.'

'He's not my father,' Bleyn said quickly, his fine-boned face flushing dark.

Bevan looked at him. 'Now listen-'

'There they are!' one of the others shouted excitedly. 'Just coming round the point.'

They all stared, silent now. The cicadas clicked endlessly in the heat around them, but there was a breeze off the barren mountains at their backs.

Around the rocky headland, over a league away. Coming into view was what resembled a flock of far-off birds perched on the waves. It was the brightness of the sails which was striking at first – the heavy swell partially hid their hulls. Tall men-of-war with the scarlet pennants of Hebrion snapping from their mainmasts. Twelve, fifteen, twenty great ships in line of battle, smashing aside the waves and forging out to sea with the wind on their starboard beam and their sails bright as a swan's wing.

'It's the entire western fleet,' Bevan murmured. 'What in the world . . . ?'

He turned to Bleyn, who was shading his eyes with one hand and peering intently seawards.

'They're beautiful,' the young man said, awed. 'They truly are.'

'Ten thousand men you're looking at there, lad. The greatest navy in the world. Your- Lord Murad will be aboard, and no doubt half the Galiapeno retainers, puking their guts out I'll be bound.'

'Lucky bastards,' Bleyn breathed. 'And here we are like a bunch of widows at a ball, watching them go.'

'What is it all for? Is it a war we haven't heard of?' one of the others asked, perplexed.

'Damned if I know,' Bevan rasped. 'It's something big, to draw out the entire fleet like that.'

'Maybe it's the Himerians and the Knights Militant, come invading at last,' one of the younger ones squeaked.

'They'd come through the Hebros passes, fool. They've no ships worth speaking of.'

'The Sea-Merduks then.'

'We've been at peace with them these forty years or more.'

'Well there's something out there. You don't send a fleet out to sea for the fun of it.'

'Mother will know,' Bleyn said abruptly. He turned and remounted the tall grey in one fluid movement. 'I'm going home. Bevan, you stay with this lot. You'll slow me down.' The gelding pranced like a sprightly ghost below him, snort shy;ing.

'You just wait a moment-' Bevan began, but he was already gone, leaving only a zephyr of dust behind.

Lady Jemilla was a striking woman with hair still as dark as her son's. Only in bright sunlight could the grey be seen threading it through, like silver veining the face of a mine. She had been a famous beauty in her youth, and it was rumoured that the King himself had at one time honoured her with his attentions; but she was now the dutiful well-bred wife of Hebrion's High Chamberlain, Lord Murad of Galiapeno, and had been for almost fifteen years. The colourful escapades that had enlivened her youth were now all but forgotten at court, and Bleyn knew nothing of them.