Murad knew much of death. On the night of the fleet's destruction he had become lost in the fog on his way back from the flagship, and thus had watched from his longboat as that great armada was reduced to matchwood all about him. He remembered prising the fingers of desperate drowning survivors from the gunwales of his little craft lest they swamp it in their panic. He had bade his men row them out, far out into the fog, and there they had leant on their oars and watched the ships burning through the mist, listening to the screams. They had escaped that slaughter, or so he had thought.

Then the mage had come in a furious storm of black flame which incinerated Murad's companions in a flashing second and seemed like to do the same to himself. But a curious thing had happened.

‘ know you, a voice had said. Murad had lain in the smoking bottom of the longboat with the swells washing around his charred body, and the thing had hovered over him like a great bat. He felt he were being turned this way and that for inspection, though he had not been touched.

Kill him, another voice said, a familiar voice. But the first laughed.

‘ think not. He may well prove useful.

Kill him!

No. Put aside your past hates and prejudices. You and he are more similar than you think. He is mine.

And thus had Murad of Galiapeno been taken into the service of the Second Empire.

And he had been willing to serve. All his life he had hated mages and witches and the workings of the Dweomer, but more than that Murad had chafed at his subordination to men he deemed less able than himself, even Hebrion's last King. Now he took orders from one he acknowledged to be his superior, and there was a strange comfort in it. He was at last glad to merely do as he was told, and if the orders he received chimed with his own inclinations, so much the better. As for the Dweomer, well he had become reconciled to it, for was it not now a part of him?

And what was more, he would be ruler of Hebrion once this woman he pursued was dead. It had been promised, and Aruan always kept his promises.

'Run out the bow-chasers,' he said, and his crew jumped to do his bidding. A few of them were ordinary mercenaries, sailors of many navies, but most were tall, gleaming black men of the Zanru. They had cast aside their horn carapaces and now teams of them hauled sweating on the cables which trundled out the forward-aimed guns of the ship until they came to bear on the stern of their prey.

'Usunei!' 'Yes, lord.'

'Let us see if we cannot scratch his paintwork. Fire when ready.'

The grunting gun crews levered the two culverins round with handspikes while the gun captains sighted along the bronze barrels with smoking slow-match grasped in their fists. At last they were content and held up their free hands. As the bow of the ship rose they whipped the match across the touch-holes, springing aside with the grace of panthers as the culverins went off as one and leapt inboard, squealing on their trucks. A cloud of smoke went up and was quickly win­nowed into nothing by the wind and the speed of the ship's passage. Watching intently, Murad saw two splashes just short of the Seahare's stern.

'Good practice! More elevation there, and we shall have her.'

The next shots could be followed by those with quick eyes: two dark blurs which punched holes in the xebec's mizzen course and then sent splinters flying from something in her waist. Murad laughed and clapped his hands, and the gun crew's faces split in wide, fanged grins.

A minute later the xebec's wounded mizzen course split from top to bottom and flapped madly from the yard. Spray struck Murad in the mouth and he licked the salt tang of it away, his eyes shining. The Seahare lost speed. The next pair of shots went home in the mizzen rigging and he saw a small, wriggling figure blown off the yard and flung into the sea.

'More speed!' Murad screamed. 'You there, give us another two knots and we'll have them before breakfast!'

The hooded Inceptine to whom he spoke did not answer, but he seemed to hunch over within his robe, and the tone of the vibration which filled the ship rose by an octave. The Revenant dipped deeply and water came flooding in the chaser gunports, green and cold. The masts creaked and complained and the backstays were wringing taut, but nothing gave away. The weather-worker was not moving the ship, but the water within which it travelled, and spreading out all around the ship's hull was a violent turbulence of broken, foaming spray which was at odds with the natural swell of the sea about them. The ship trembled and shook as though it were being rattled in the grip of some undersea giant, and several of the crew were knocked off their feet, but Murad stood on the wave-swept forecastle gripping one of the foremast shrouds, and the light in his eyes grew to a yellow fire. They drew nearer to their prey. Now only a cable and a half - three hundred yards - separated the tip of the barquentine's bowsprit and the Seahare's taffrail. In half a glass they would be abreast. Murad raised his voice. 'AH hands, prepare for boarding!', and an homunculus wheeled out of the rigging and settled on his shoulder. About him on the forecastle clustered a great mob of the Zantu, now clad again in their black horn armour and clicking their pincers impatiently. The armour began as a natural construct of horn and leather, but when a man donned it, he became somehow part of it, and it augmented his strength as well as protecting his flesh. The Zantu were fearsome warriors in their own right, but when wearing their black harness they were well-nigh invincible.

'Remember!' Murad yelled. 'The captain is to be taken alive, and the woman's body I must see with my own eyes. The rest are yours.'

The Zantu had fasted for days in preparation of this hour, and from the depths of their shining masks their eyes glittered with hunger and anticipation.

Murad could actually recognise Hawkwood now. He stood at the stern of his ship with an oddly familiar dark-haired boy beside him, and shouted orders that were lost in the wind and the foaming tumult of the waves. The Seahare suddenly yawed hard a port so that she revealed her full broadside, such as it was. Six gun-ports gaping, and then the side of the ship dis­appeared in a bank of smoke, and a heartbeat later came the roar of the retorts. Murad felt the wind of one shot pass his head, and it staggered him. The rest smashed down the full length of the Revenant, leaving chaos in their wake. Blocks and fragments of rigging were hurled through the air and the close-packed boarding party was blasted to pieces, so that the scuppers ran with blood and fragments of men were blown as far aft as the quarterdeck.

The humming tremble of the ship's hull ceased, and looking aft Murad saw that one cannonball had cut his weather-working Inceptine in two. The Revenant lost speed and the foaming water about her began to settle into a more rational wake.

'Get me back my speed!' he shrieked at the ship's master, a renegade Gabrionese who stood white-faced by the wheel. 'Shoot them! Catch them, sink them for the love of God!'

The master put the wheel about and the barquentine yawed in her turn, exposing her much heavier metal. 'Fire!' he shouted, and the gun crews collected their wits and sent off a ragged broadside.

But the Zantu were not the well-trained sailors of Hawk-wood's crew. Murad saw three of the balls strike home amidships, and a hail of wood splinters went flying as the Seahare's larboard rail was demolished, but most went high, slicing cables in the rigging but doing little serious damage.

Both ships had lost speed now, and both were turning back to starboard, into the wind. An arquebus ball zipped past Murad's ear and he ducked instinctively. Hawkwood had several sailors with small arms firing from his stern. There was a series of splashes in the xebec's wake; they were throw­ing their dead overboard. Murad beat his fist on the forecastle rail in his frustration and his homunculus jumped up and down on his shoulder, screeching.