Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) Read Online Free

of Ostrabar had consisted solely of Aurungzeb's grandfather and a trio of hardy concubines. Generalship, not lineage, had reared it up out of the eastern steppes. If the Ostrabars could not win battles themselves, they hired someone who could. Hence Shahr Baraz, who had been khedive to Aurungzeb's father. Aurungzeb had commanded troops competently in his youth, but he could not inspire them in the same way. It was a lack he had never ceased to resent. Shahr Baraz, though originally an outsider, a nomad chief from far Kambaksk, had served three generations of Ostrabars honestly and ably. He was now in his eighties, a terrible old man much given to prayer and poetry. It was well that Aekir had fallen when it did; Shahr Baraz's long life was near its close, and with it would go the last link between the Sultans and the horse-borne chieftains of the steppes who had preceded them.
    Shahr Baraz had recommended that the Ormann road be left open. The influx of refugees would weaken and demoralize the men who manned the line of the Searil river, he said. Aurungzeb had wondered if some outdated chivalry had had a hand in the decision also. No matter.
    "Tell the -" he began, and stopped. The homunculus was melting before his eyes, glaring at him reproachfully as it bubbled into a foul-smelling pool.
    "Orkh! Tell the khedive to push on to the Searil!"
    The homunculus's mouth moved but made no sound. It dissolved, steaming and reeking. In the nauseous puddle it became it was possible to make out the decaying foetus of a child, the wing-bones of a bird, the tail of a lizard. Aurungzeb gagged and clapped his hands for the eunuchs. Gheg had outlived its usefulness, but no doubt Orkh would send him another of the creatures soon. He had other messengers - not so swift, perhaps, but just as sure.
    Aekir has fallen.
    He began to laugh.

Two
     
    "S WEET G OD !" H AWKWOOD said. "What is happening?"
    "Vast heaving there!" the boatswain roared, eyeing a flapping sail. "Brace round that foretopsail, you God-damned eunuchs. Where do you think you are, a two-copper curiosity show?"
    The Grace of God , a square-rigged caravel, slid quietly into Abrusio at six bells in the forenoon watch, the water a calm blue shimmer along her sides dotted with the filth of the port. Where the sun struck the sea there was a white glitter, painful to look at. A faint north-west breeze - the Hebrionese trade - enabled her to waft in like a swan, with hardly a rope to be touched by the staring crew despite the outrage of the boatswain.
    Abrusio. They had heard the bells of its cathedral all through the last two turns of the glass, a ghostly echo of piety drifting out to sea.
    Abrusio, capital of Hebrion and greatest port of the Five Kingdoms. It was a beautiful sight to behold when coming home from even a short coasting voyage such as the Grace' s crew had just completed; an uneasy cruise along the Macassar coast, haggling with the Sea-Rovers over tolls, one hand to their dirks and the slow-match burning alongside the culverins all the while. But profitable, despite the heat, the flies, the pitch melting in the seams and the marauding river lizards. Despite the feast drums at night along the bonfire-studded coast and the lateen-winged feluccas with their cargoes of grinning corsairs. Safe in the hold were three tons of ivory from the skeletons of great marmorills, and fragrant Limian spice by the hundredweight. And they had lost only one man, a clumsy first-voyager who had leaned too far out over the rail as a shallowshark passed by.
    Now they were back among the Monarchies of God, where men made the Sign of the Saint over their viands and the Blessed Ramusio's likeness stared down upon every crossroads and market place.
    Abrusio was home port for almost half of them, and contained the shipyard where the Grace' s keel had been laid down thirty years before.
    Two things struck the seaward observer about Abrusio: the forest and the mountain.
    The forest sprouted out of the