Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (40 page)

"And Ormann Dyke?"

"What of it?"

"The dyke needs those men, Holiness. Without them it will surely fall."

"Then so be it. Its commander should have thought of that before he started elevating blind old men to the position of High Pontiff."

Betanza was silent. As the Knights Militant were quartered in Charibon they were nominally under the command of the head of the Inceptine Order. But never in living memory had a Vicar-General flouted the wishes of his Pontiff.

"The men are already on the march," Betanza said. "They must be halfway to Torunna by now."

"Then recall them," Himerius snapped. "Torunna shall receive nothing from me until it extirpates this impostor."

"I beg you to consider, Holiness... What if this man is who he says he is?"

"Impossible, I tell you. Are you questioning my judgement, Brother?"

"No. It is just that I do not want you to make a mistake."

"I am directly inspired by the Blessed Saint, as his representative on earth. Trust me. I know."

"By rights we should reassemble the Synod and put this to the convened Colleges and Prelates."

"They're happily trekking homewards by now. It would waste too much time. They will be informed in due course. What is the matter with you, Brother Betanza? Do you doubt the word of your Pontiff?"

One of the powers inherent in the Pontifical office was the nomination or removal of the Vicar-General of the Inceptines. Betanza looked his superior in the eye.

"Of course not, Holiness. I only seek to cover every contingency."

"I am glad to hear it. It is always better when the Vicar-General and the Pontiff have a good working relationship. It can be disastrous if they do not. Think of old Baliaeus."

Baliaeus had been a Pontiff of the last century who had quarrelled with his Vicar-General, removed the man from office and assumed the position himself in addition to his Pontiffship. The event had scandalized the entire Ramusian world, but none had attempted to reinstate the unfortunate head of the Inceptines. The man had died a reclusive hermit in a cell up in the Cimbrics.

"But you are no Baliaeus, Holiness," Betanza said, smiling.

"I am not. Old friend, we have worked too hard and striven too long to see what we laboured for torn away from us."

"Indeed." So if Himerius went, Betanza went. That much was clear at least.

"In any case," Himerius went on suavely, "we may be worrying over nothing. You have said yourself that the dyke must fall. If it does, the impostor will fall with it and all those who believe in him there. Our problems will be at an end."

Betanza stared at him, open-mouthed.

"That will do, my lord Vicar-General. Have the scribes sent to me when you leave. I will dictate the dispatches this evening. We must strike whilst the iron is hot."

Betanza got up, bowed and kissed his Pontiff's ring. He left the room without another word.

Brother Rogien was waiting for him as he exited. He strode along the wide corridors of Charibon with Rogien silent at his side. He could hear Vespers being sung from half a dozen college chapels and smell the enticing aromas from the kitchens of the monastery.

Rogien was an older man, broad-shouldered and stooped, with hair as white and fine as the down on a day-old chick. He was Betanza's deputy, experienced in the ways of Inceptine intrigue.

"He will not even investigate it!" Betanza raged at last, striding along at a swift, angry pace.

"What did you think, that he would tamely lie down and accept it?" Rogien asked caustically. "All his life he has coveted the position he now occupies. He is more powerful than any king. It is not a thing to be abandoned lightly."

"But the way he goes about it! He will recall the Knights promised to Torunna; he will alienate Heyn and the Torunnan king. He will gladly see Ormann Dyke fall rather than risk his own position!"

"So? We knew that was what would happen."

"I have been a soldier of sorts, Rogien. I commanded men in my youth and maybe that gives me a different outlook. But I tell you that this man will see the west riven by fire and ruin if he thinks it will advance his own cause one jot."

"You have attached yourself to him," Rogien said implacably. "His fortunes are yours. You worked with him to gain the Pontiffship; he helped vote you into your position. You cannot turn around now and forsake him. It will ruin you."

"Yes, I know!"

They reached the Vicar-General's quarters, dismissed the Knights at the door and went inside, lighting candles as they did so.

"You would never have become head of the order were it not for him," Rogien went on. "Your age and your late vocation counted against you. It was Himerius's lobbying that swung the Colleges. You are his creature, Betanza."

The Vicar-General poured himself wine from a crystal decanter, made the Sign of the Saint with a clenched fist and drank the wine at a gulp.

"Yes, his creature. Is that what they will say in the history books? That Betanza stood by whilst his Pontiff brought down the west? Can the man be so blinkered that he is unable to see what he is doing? By all means, denounce the impostor; but withhold the Torunnan reinforcements as well? That smacks of paranoia."

Rogien shrugged. "He is willing to take no risks. He knows it will bring Lofantyr to heel quicker than anything else. And you have to admit it would look odd were the High Pontiff to send troops to bolster the garrison of a fortress which has raised up a rival High Pontiff."

"Yes, there is that, I suppose." Betanza smiled wryly and poured his colleague and himself more wine. "Mayhap I am losing my skill at the Inceptine game."

"You bring to it the wisdom of a man who has not worn a black habit his whole life. You were a nobleman once, a lay-leader. But that is in the past. If you are to survive and to prosper, you must learn to think wholly as an Inceptine. The order must retain its pre-eminence. Let the kings worry about the defence of the west; it is their province. We must concern ourselves with the spiritual welfare of the Ramusian world - and what would happen to it were there to be two Pontiffs? Chaos, anarchy, a schism that might take years to heal. Think on that, Brother."

Betanza regarded his subordinate with sour humour.

"I think sometimes that you would be better off sitting in my chair and I in a soldier's harness before Ormann Dyke, Rogien."

"As you are Himerius's creature, I am yours, lord."

"Yes," the Vicar-General said quietly. "You are."

He threw back his wine. "Send a half-dozen of our quickest scribes to the High Pontiff's chambers. He will be wanting to dictate his dispatches at once. And warn off a squad of our dispatch-riders to be ready for a long journey."

Rogien bowed. "Will there be anything else? Shall I have your meal sent up, or will you eat in hall?"

"I am not hungry. I must be alone for a while. I must think, and pray. That will be all, Rogien."

"Very well, my lord." The older man left.

Betanza moved to the window and threw back the heavy shutters. A keen air smelling of snow wafted into the dim room. He could see where the majestic Cimbrics loomed right at the shores of the Sea of Tor, the last light of the sun touching their white peaks while the rest of the world was sinking into shadow. Eighteen days the messenger had been on the road. The dyke had most likely already fallen and his worries were academic. The largest army yet seen could be even now resuming its march westwards, and he remained here splitting hairs with an egocentric Churchman.

He smiled. What Inceptine was not egocentric, ambitious, imperious? Even the novices behaved like princes when they walked the streets of the fisher villages.

It would cause trouble. He could feel it in his bones. It was not just the Merduk war; there were other straws in the wind tonight. The Conclave of Kings would be convening very soon; he would know more then. He had his informants in place.

A time of change was approaching. Attitudes were shifting, not just among the common people but among kings and princes. Himerius already had the aspect of a man on the defensive. But perhaps his efforts would be no more effectual than the efforts of those few unfortunates who were fighting and dying along the Searil River at this very moment. The mood of the age could not be turned around by a few ambitious men, even ones as powerful as the High Pontiff.

He wondered if Macrobius were truly alive. There was little chance of it, of course, and the likeliest explanation for the dispatch they had received that afternoon was the one proffered by Himerius. But if the impostor were the old Pontiff, Betanza doubted very much whether Himerius would step down. There would be a schism: two Pontiffs, a divided Ramusian continent with the Merduks baying at its borders. Such a scenario did not bear thinking about.

He left the window, shutting out the cold air and the sunset-tinted mountains. Then he knelt on the stone floor and began to pray.

Nineteen

A
N UNENDING EXPANSE
of ocean, blue as the cerulean vault which arced down to meet it, unbroken on every horizon. Limitless as the space between stars.

And on that unruffled ocean a minuscule speck, a tiny piece of flotsam overlooked by the elements. A ship, and the souls contained within its wooden walls.

T
HE
O
SPREY
W
AS
becalmed. After three days and nights the storm had veered off to the north-west, having had its diversion and driven the carrack uncounted leagues off her course. Then the wind had died, leaving the sea as glassily calm as the water in a millpond on a still summer's day. The ship's company had watched the black towering banners of the storm billow off into the distance, taking the darkness and the cold with them, and they had been left with an eerie silence, an absence of noise that they could not quite account for until they remembered the absence of the wind.

The ship was a battered hulk, a relic of the proud vessel which had sailed out of Abrusio harbour a scant month before. The main topmast had gone, and its passing had torn chunks out of the larboard sterncastle. The gun that had been wrenched overboard had also ripped a hole in the ship's side so that the carrack looked as though some immense monster had been chewing on it. Rags and loose ends of rigging dangled everywhere and the normally smooth lines of the ropes which formed the rigging itself were bunched and untidy after being knotted and spliced countless times throughout the storm.

The ship was floating in a greasy pool of her own filth. Around the hull floated human waste and detritus, fragments of wood and hemp, and even the bloated corpses of a pair of sheep. The miasma of the stagnant surroundings stank out the ship along with the familiar reek of her bilge, now somewhat sluiced out by the tons of seawater the ship had made and pumped away throughout the tempest. The ship's boats were full of holes so the crew could not even tow the carrack out of the area. And the heat battered down relentlessly from a sun that seemed made of beaten brass. The pitch bubbled in the seams and, as the upper deck dried, so the planking opened and let water drip down through the ship, soaking everything. The ship's company became accustomed to finding mould and strange fungi sprouting in the unlikeliest of dark corners throughout the carrack.

19th day of Midorion, year of the Saint 551.

Flat calm. The fourth day with no wind. The ship is still in the doldrums. By my estimate we have been blown some one hundred and eighty leagues off our course to the south-west or south-south-west. From cross-staff observations I believe that we are on the approximate latitude of Gabrion, but my calculations must needs be largely guesswork. In the middle of the worst of the storm the glass was neglected for almost half a watch, and so our timings must begin anew and dead reckoning becomes ever more unreliable.

There is only one recourse that I can see to help us make up our lost northing, and that is Pernicus, the weather-worker. If he can be prevailed upon to conjure up a favourable wind then we may yet make landfall ere the winter storms begin. But I know what prejudices such a line of action would evoke. I must talk to the man Bardolin, who seems to have become a spokesman of sorts for the passengers since the storm, and, of course, Murad. But I will be damned to the bottom if I will endanger my ship any further for the religious fanaticism of a cursed Raven whom no one wanted on this ship in the first place.

Hawkwood looked over what he had written and then, cursing under his breath, he scored out the last sentence heavily and retrimmed his quill.

Ortelius will surely see reason. It may be a choice between utilizing the abilities of the weather-worker or, at best, extending the voyage by a good two months. At worst it could mean our deaths.

Crew employed about the ship on repairs. We will be swaying up a new topmast in the first dog-watch, and then working on the ship's boats. I must report the deaths of Rad Misson, Essen Maratas and Heirun Japara, all able seamen. May the Company of the Saints find a place for their benighted souls, and may the Prophet Ahrimuz welcome Heirun to his garden.