Hawkwood's Voyage

The cheering abated like a retreating gale, became a murmur again and then a silence, so that the hooves of the Khedive’s entourage were loud on the flagged surface of the square.

When Shahr Baraz reached the scaffold he halted and do

At the foot of the scaffold Sibastion Lejer stood in tattered rags, a hooded Merduk soldier on either side of him. His dark eyes glowed with hatred.

The last stand of the Toru

But Lejer—for him a different fate was reserved.

It would be good for the army to watch his death. He had baulked them of a fortune in loot, and left them masters of a dead city. Now they would see their general make him pay for it, and know that he shared their anger.

Shahr Baraz spoke, his voice hollowed by the tall-crested helm.

“I had thought to have you killed by the elephants, like the criminal you are,” he told Lejer matter-of-factly. “You destroyed the jewel of the world out of sheer malice. My people would have made the Aekir you knew into an even more wondrous place, a fit capital for the greatest of the Seven Sultans.

“And yet this I could have forgiven, it being the act of a desperate mind in its greatest extremity. It may be that had your men been knocking on the gates of Orkhan, my own city, I would have burned it rather than see unbelievers trample the prayer mats in the Temple of Ahrimuz.

“And your conduct in the last fight was admirable. You Toru

“But you destroyed one thing that ca

The man in rags straightened to his full height.

“Only this, Merduk. You will never conquer the west. There are too many men there who love their freedom and their faith. Your God is but a shadow cast by ours, and in the end the Blessed Saint will prevail. Kill me and have done with it. I weary of your philosophizing.”

Shahr Baraz nodded, and gestured to the hooded soldiers. Lejer was forced on to his back and his rags torn away. Other Merduks came, also hooded, bearing mallets and iron spikes. The Toru

The kettledrums of the elephants began a low, thunderous roll.

The spikes were hammered in, blood jetting bright in the sunshine. Then Lejer was hauled to his feet, attached to the heavy beam.

A pair of ropes snaked down and were swiftly tied to the two ends of the beam. Men behind the scaffold began to haul, and Lejer was hoisted up on to it. For the first time his mouth opened in a scream, but it was drowned out by the roar of the kettledrums.

They fastened him to the scaffold, the hooded men clambering up after him. Finally they hammered a last spike through both his ankles before climbing down.

The drums stopped. Lejer’s eyes were wide and white in his filthy face. A ribbon of blood trickled down over his chin where he was biting through his lower lip, but he made no sound. Shahr Baraz nodded approvingly, then twitched his reins and began his stately progress back across the square. His aides and staff officers streamed after him.

“What now, Khedive?” Jaffan, his adjutant, asked.

“I want the men redeployed, Jaffan, as soon as is practicable. We must start pla

“We are advancing on the Searil, then?” Jaffan asked, his eyes shining.

“Yes. It will take time, of course; time to reorganize and to consolidate, but we are advancing on the Searil. May Ahrimuz continue to bless our arms as he has done in this place. I will call an indaba of general officers this evening to discuss things in detail.”

“Yes, Khedive!”

“Oh, and Jaffan—”

“Khedive?”

“Make sure that Lejer is dead within the hour. With all his faults, he is a brave man. I do not like to see brave men hanging on gibbets.”

SEVEN

F URTHER west, along the Searil road.

The rain was falling steadily, mourning perhaps the fall of the City of God. The Thurians were hidden behind its diffuse, livid veil; the moisture beaded the air in a mother-of-pearl dimness so all Corfe could see were shapes moving off on every side, occasionally becoming darker and clearer as they staggered nearer then, wraithlike, fading again.

His boots sank calf-deep in the clutching mud, and water rolled down his face as though it were the sweat of his toil. He was tired, chilled to the marrow, numb as a stone.

The fleeing hordes had been passing this way for days. They had scoured a scar across the very face of the earth, a long snake of churned mud almost a third of a league wide obscuring the original slim track that had been the route west. The rain was filling up the broken soil, turning it into something near liquid glue. Along it bodies lay partly submerged every few yards: the ranks were begi

Here and there was the angular shape of a cart askew, sinking in the mud, the carcass of a mule or a pair of oxen sprawled between its shafts. People had already been at the flesh, stripping the bodies clean so that bones glinted palely in the unending rain.

There was shouting away in the rain mist. A fight up ahead by the sound of it. Corfe heard an old man’s voice cry out in pain, the sound of blows. He did not quicken his pace, but slogged wearily along. He had seen a score of such encounters since Aekir; they were as unremarkable as the falling rain.

But suddenly he was in the midst of it. An elderly man, his clothes black with mud and his face hideously scarred, came blundering out of the mist with one hand stretched before him as though feeling his way through the damp air. His other hand clutched something at his breast. There were half a dozen shapes in pursuit, snarling and shouting to one another.

The old man tripped and fell full length in the mud. For a second he lay as if struck down; then he began moving feebly. As he lifted his head Corfe saw that his eyes had been gouged out. They were dark, scabbed pits filled with mud and rain.