Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (28 page)

"Abrusio is a colourful city, perched as it is on the edge of the Western Ocean. Ships call there from every part of Normannia, both Ramusian and Merduk. The population of the place is a hybrid, a conglomeration of the dregs of a hundred other cities. And in such a soil, Brothers, heresy takes root easily.

"The King of Hebrion is a young man. He had a great father, Bleyn the Pious whose name you all know, but the son is not hewn out of the same wood. He had a wizard as a tutor in his youth, scorning the wisdom of his Inceptine teachers, and as a result he lacks a certain... respect for the authority and the traditions of the Church."

Escriban of Perigraine grinned. "You mean he's his own man."

"I mean nothing of the sort," Himerius snapped, suddenly peevish. "I mean that if he is left to do as he will the Church's influence in Hebrion may be irrevocably damaged, and then the Saint knows what flotsam and jetsam from the corners of the world will take root in Abrusio. I have acted to prevent this, seeking to cleanse the city and eventually the kingdom, but my sources tell me that the moment I left the place the scale of the purge was reduced, no doubt on the orders of the King."

"Nothing like a few burnings to bring them flocking to the Church on their knees," Marat of Almark said gruffly. "You did right, Brother."

"Thank you. At any rate, dear colleagues, I mean to bring the whole affair up at the Synod once it is convened. Abeleyn of Hebrion must be taught not to flout the authority of the Church."

"What do you mean to do, excommunicate him?" Heyn of Torunna asked incredulously.

"Let us say that the threat of excommunication is sometimes as effective as the act itself."

"You forget one thing, Brother," Betanza said, his fingers playing restlessly with his Saint symbol. "Only the High Pontiff has the authority to excommunicate - or otherwise chastise - an anointed Ramusian king. As mere Prelate, you cannot touch him."

"All the more reason for choosing the new Pontiff as soon as possible," Himerius said, unperturbed.

There was a silence as the others digested this.

"Is this really the time to be picking arguments with kings?"

Heyn asked at last. "Are there not enough crises facing the west without adding more?"

"This is the best time," Himerius said. "The prestige of the Church has been badly damaged by the fall of Macrobius, of Aekir and the loss of the army of Knights Militant there. We must regain the initiative, use our influence as a coherent body and prove to the west that we are still the ultimate authority on the continent."

"Do we let Ormann Dyke fall, then, in order to prove how powerful we are?" Escriban asked.

"If we do, then later generations will abhor our names - and rightly so," Heyn said hotly.

"There is no reason that the dyke should fall," Himerius said, "but it is the responsibility of Torunna, not of the Church."

Heyn stood up at that, scraping back his chair. His black habit flapped around his thin form as he put his back to the fire, his eyes smouldering like the gledes at its heart.

"This talk of
responsibility
... the west has a responsibility to aid Torunna at this time. If the Merduks take the dyke, then Torunn itself will almost certainly fall and the heathens will have no other barrier to their advance save the heights of the Cimbrics. And what if they turn north, skirting the mountains? Then it will be our precious Charibon next in line. Will it be our responsibility then to defend it - or should we wait until the Merduk tide is lapping at the gates of Abrusio?"

"You are excited, Brother," Betanza said soothingly. "And with reason. It cannot be easy for you."

"Yes. I'll bet Lofantyr has all but got the thumbscrews on you, Heyn," Escriban said. "What did you promise him before you came here? An army of the Knights? The Lancers of Perigraine? Or perhaps the Cuirassiers of Almark."

Heyn scowled. His face was like a bearded skull in the firelight.

"Not all of us see life as one big joke, Escriban," he said venomously.

Betanza thumped a large hand on the table, setting the glasses dancing and startling them all.

"
Enough!
We did not assemble here to trade insults with one another. We are the elders of the Church, the inheritors of the tradition of Ramusio himself. There will be no pettiness. We cannot afford the time for it."

"Agreed," old Marat said into his white beard. "It seems to me there are two issues confronting us at this time, Brothers. First, the High Pontiffship. It must be decided before anything else, for it affects everything. And secondly, these purges which our Hebrian brother has instigated and wishes to see extended. Do we want to see them across the Five Kingdoms? Personally, I'm in favour of them. The common folk of the world are like cattle; they need to feel the drover's stick once in a while."

"Merion of Astarac is one of your cattle, Marat," said Escriban. "He will not vote for a continent-wide pogrom, I'll tell you now."

"He is only one man, and there are five of us." Marat glanced about the table, and then smiled. He looked like a benevolent patriarch, but his eyes held no humour. "Good," he said.

Heyn remained by the fire, isolated. At last he said:

"Torunna has not the resources to undertake a purge at the moment. We will need outside help."

Betanza nodded, his, bald head shining. "But of course, Brother. I am sure I can let you have a sizeable contingent of the Knights to aid God's work in your beleaguered prelacy."

"Six thousand?"

"Five."

"Very well."

Himerius drained the last of his wine, looking like a hawk which had just stooped on a fat pigeon. "It is good to have these things out in the open, to talk them over with friends, amicably, without rancour." His eyes met Betanza's. He nodded imperceptibly.

Escriban of Perigraine chuckled.

"What about the Pontiffship?" Betanza asked. "Who here wishes to stand?"

"Oh, please, Brother Betanza," Escriban said with feigned shock. "Must you be so blunt?"

Another silence, more profound this time. In accepting Himerius's proposals the decision had more or less been made, but no one wanted to voice what they all knew.

"I will stand, if God will grant me the strength," Himerius said at last, a little annoyed that no one had publicly urged him to.

Betanza sighed. "So be it. This is entirely informal, of course, but I must ask you, Brothers, if there are any objections to Brother Himerius's candidature."

Still, no one spoke. Heyn turned away to face the fire. "Will no one else put themselves forward?" Betanza waited a moment and then shrugged. "Well, we have a candidate to put to the Synod. It remains to be seen what the College of Bishops makes of it."

But they all knew that the Bishops voted with their respective Prelates. The High Pontiffship of the western world had effectively been decided: by five men in a firelit room over dinner.

Fourteen

A
UTUMN IN THE
Malvennor Mountains. Already the snow had begun to block the higher passes, and from the vast peaks streamers and banners of white were being billowed out by the freshening wind.

Abeleyn pulled the fur of his collar tighter around his throat and stared up at the high land to the east and north. The Malvennors were fifteen thousand feet above sea level, and even here, on the snow-pocked hills at their knees, the air was sharp and thin and the guides had warned the party of the dangers of mountain sickness and snow blindness.

He was five weeks out of Abrusio, on his way to the Conclave of Kings at Vol Ephrir in Perigraine. His ship had made a rapid passage across the Fimbrian Gulf, docking at the breakaway Fimbrian city of Narbukir, then he had gone aboard a river boat for the laborious journey up the Arcolm river, taking to horses when the Arcolm was no longer navigable. He could see the river now, a narrow stream running and foaming through the icicle-dripping rocks off to one side. Further up in the mountains it was said that a man might bestride it if he had long legs. Hard to believe that down on the gulf its mouth formed an estuary fully three leagues wide.

The rest of the party were still below, labouring up the steep slopes towards him. He had a tolerably large escort: two hundred Hebrian arquebusiers and swordsmen and eighty heavy cavalry armed with lances and paired matchlock pistols. Then there were the muleteers of the pack-train, the cooks, the grooms, the smiths and the score of other servants who made up his travelling household. All told, some four hundred men accompanied the King of Hebrion across the Malvennor Mountains; a modest enough show. Only a king would ever be allowed to take such a force into a foreign country. It was part and parcel of the dignity of monarchs.

"We'll camp here, and attempt the pass in the morning," the King said to his chief steward.

The man bowed in the saddle and then wrenched his horse around to begin the job of setting up camp.

The King sat relaxed in the saddle and watched the ungainly straggling groups of men and animals gradually coalesce on the slope below him. The horses were finding it heavy going. If the snow grew much deeper - and it would - then they would all be afoot, hauling their mounts behind them. The snows had come early this year, and there was a bitter wind winnowing the high peaks. The baking heat of Abrusio seemed like a dream.

"Is it here you hope to meet up with King Mark, sire?" a woman's voice asked.

"Hereabouts." The King turned to regard the hooded lady who sat her palfrey behind him. The fine-stepping horse was feeling the cold; it was not the best of mounts for a journey such as this. "I hope you have good walking boots with you, lady. That nag of yours will drop in its tracks ere we've put another ten leagues behind us."

The lady Jemilla threw back her hood. Her dark hair was bound up in circled braids around her head, held in place with pearl-topped pins. Two larger pearls shone like little moons in her earlobes. Her eyes sparkled in the snow-light.

"The walk will do me good. I am putting on weight." Abeleyn grinned. If so, he had not noticed. He looked down the hillside. His staff were erecting the huge hide tents, and he could see the dull flicker of a fire. His toes were numb in his fur-lined boots and his breath was whipped away from his lips, but he did not immediately ride down to the warmth of the fires. Rather he gazed south, along the line of the mountains to where Astarac loomed blue with distance on the southern side of the Arcolm river. If truth be told, they were in Astarac now, for the Arcolm had always been the traditional boundary between Astarac and Fimbria. But up in the mountains such technicalities were irrelevant. Shepherds herded their goats from one kingdom to another without formalities, as they always had. Up here the niceties of borders and diplomacy seemed like a faraway farce to be played out in the palaces of the world.

"When will he arrive, do you think?" Jemilla asked.

She was becoming a little familiar of late. He must watch that.

"Soon I hope, lady, soon. But he will be here no quicker for our watching. Come, let us warm ourselves and give our poor mounts a rest." He kicked his horse into motion down the icy slope.

Jemilla did not follow him at once. She sat her shivering steed and stared at the King's retreating back. One gloved hand felt her stomach tentatively, and for a moment her face became as hard as glass. Then she followed her king and lover down to the growing bustle of the camp, and the fires that were burning orange and yellow against the snow.

T
HE WIND HAD
blown up into a gale. Abeleyn held his hands out to the glowing brazier - they would be running out of coal soon - and listened to the snowstorm that had come upon them with the swooping in of night. Perhaps he should have taken the sea route, south-east through the Malacar Straits, but then he would have needed a small fleet as escort. To the corsairs, a Hebrian king would have been too tempting a target to let by unmolested, despite - or perhaps because of - the long standing accommodations they had had with the Hebrian crown.

And besides, he needed this chance to talk openly with King Mark before the intrigue of the conclave swallowed them all.

Something struck the side of the tent, seemingly propelled by the wind. It scrabbled there for a moment, and the steward came in from the adjoining extension. There was the clatter of plates from in there; they were clearing the remains of dinner.

"Was there something, sire? I thought I heard -"

"It was nothing, Cabran. Dismiss the servants, will you? They can finish in the morning."

The steward bowed, then left for the spacious extension, clapping his hands at the serving maids. Abeleyn rose and let slip the heavy hide curtain that shut out their noise.

"Sire." It was the bodyguard at the entrance. "We've something here. It struck the tent, and you told us to look out for -"

"Yes," Abeleyn snapped. "Bring it here, and then let no others enter."

The tent flap was thrown back and a heavily cloaked and armoured man thrust his way in, admitting a gust of snow and chill air. He had something in his hands, which he left on the low cot at a nod from Abeleyn.

"Thank you, Merco. Have you men a decent fire out there?"