Nothing in Murad’s eyes. No shared comradeship, no sense of achievement, nothing. He turned away without another word and walked off the ship. The Osprey was so low in the water that one no longer had much of a climb down from the ship’s rail to the wharf. Murad continued walking, a grotesque, tatterdemalion figure which drew a battery of stares from the crowd that was gathering. None of them dared accost him, though, despite their consuming curiosity. The last Hawkwood saw of him he was negotiating the burnt expanse of what had been the Lower City, his face set towards the heights whereon Hebrion’s Royal palace loomed up out of the dawn haze.

Done with him at last, Hawkwood thought, and thanked God for it—for a whole host of things.

“Is that the Gabrian Osprey? Is that really her?” someone shouted out from the buzzing throng on the wharf.

“Aye, it’s her. Come home from the edge of the world.”

“Ricardo! Ricardo Hawkwood! Glory be to God!”

A short, dark man in rich but soiled garments of blue and yellow pushed through the crowd. He wore the chain of a port captain. “Richard! Ha, ha, ha! I don’t believe it. Back from a watery grave.”

Hawkwood climbed over the ship’s rail, and staggered as the unmoving stone of the wharf met his feet. It seemed to be gently rising and falling under him.

“Galliardo,” he said with a smile, and the short man clasped his hand and shook it as though he meant to wring it off. There were tears in his eyes.

“I had a mass said for you these six months past. Oh God, Richard, what has happened to you?”

The press of bodies about Hawkwood was almost unbearable. Half the dock workers in the area seemed to have gathered about the Osprey to look and wonder and hear her storey. Hawkwood blinked away his joy at landfall and tried to make himself think.

“Did you find it, Richard?” Galliardo was babbling. “Is there indeed a continent out in the west?”

“Yes, yes there is, and it can rot there as far as I’m concerned. Listen, Galliardo, she’s about to sink at her moorings. Every seam in her has sprung. I need men to man her pumps and caulkers to stop her holes, and I need them now.”

“You shall have them. There’s not a mariner or carpenter in the city would not give his arm to have the privilege of working on her.”

“And there’s another thing.” Hawkwood lowered his voice. “I have a… a cargo I need offloaded with some discretion. It has to go to the Upper City, to the palace.”

Galliardo’s eyes were shining with cupidity. “Ah, Richard, I knew it. You’ve made your fortune out there in the west. A million in gold, I’ll bet it is.”

“No, no—nothing like that. It’s a…a rare beast, brought back for the King’s entertainment.”

“And worth a fortune, I’ll wager.”

Hawkwood gave up. “Yes, Galliardo. It’s priceless.”

Then the port captain’s face grew sombre. “You don’t know what happened here in Abrusio. You haven’t heard, have you?”

“No,” Hawkwood said wearily. “Listen, you can tell me over a flagon of beer.”

Galliardo laid a hand on his arm. “Richard, I have to tell you. Your wife Estrella, she is dead.”

That brought him up short. Slender, carping little Estrella. He’d hardly thought about her in half a year.

“How?” he asked. No grief there, only a kind of puzzled pity.

“In the fires, when they torched the Lower City. During the war. They say fifty thousand died at that time. It was hell on earth.”

“No,” Hawkwood said. “I have seen hell on earth, and it is not here. Now get me a gang of caulkers, Galliardo, before the Osprey settles where she lies.”

“I’ll have them here in half a glass, don’t worry. Listen, join me in the Dolphin as soon as you can. I keep a back room there, since the house went.”

“Yours too? Lord, Galliardo, has no-one any good news for me?”

“Precious little, my friend. But tidings of your return will be a tonic for the whole port. Now come—let me buy you that beer.”

“I must fetch my log and rutter first.”

Hawkwood reboarded the carrack and made his way along the familiar companionway to the stern cabin. Bardolin sprawled there, a filthy mass of sores and scars, his eyes dull gleams in a tangle of beard and hair. Blood crusted his chains, and he stank like a cage in a zoo.

“Home at last, eh Captain?” he whispered.

“I’ll be back soon, Bardolin, with some helpers. We’ll get you to Golophin by tonight. He lodges in the palace, doesn’t he?”

Bardolin stirred. “No, don’t take me to the palace. Golophin has a tower in the foothills. It’s where he carries out his researches. That’s where you must take me. I know the way; it’s where I served most of my apprenticeship.”

“If you say so.”

“Thank you, Captain, for everything. At one time all I wished for was death. I have had time to think. I begin to see now that there may be some value in living after all.”

“That’s the spirit. Hang on here, Bardolin. I’ll be back soon.”

Hawkwood tentatively laid a hand on the chained man’s shoulder, then left.

“You have a worthy friend there, Bardolin,” Griella said. She materialised before him like a ghost.

“Yes. He is a good man, Richard Hawkwood.”

“And he was right. It is worth going on. Life is worth living.”

“I know. I can see that.”

“And the disease you live with—it is not an affliction, either. Do you see that?”

Bardolin lifted his head and stared at her. “I believe I do, Griella. Perhaps your master has a point.”

“You are my master now, Bardolin,” she said, and kissed him on his cracked lips.

M URAD’S town house had survived the war intact but for a few shot-holes in the thick masonry of the walls. When the heavy door was finally opened under his furious knocking the gatekeeper took one look at him and slammed it shut in his face. Murad broke into a paroxysm of rage, hammering on the door and screaming at the top of his lungs. At last the postern door opened to one side, and two stout kitchen lads came out cracking their knuckles. “No beggars, and no madmen allowed at this house. Listen you—”

Murad left them both groaning and semi-conscious in the street and strode through the open postern, pushing aside sundry servants and bellowing for his steward. The kitchen staff scattered like a flock of geese before a fox, the women yelling that there was a maniac loose in the house. When the steward finally arrived, a cleaver in his hand, Murad pinioned him and stared into his eyes. “Do you know me, Glarus of Garmidalan? Your father is a gamekeeper on my estates. Your mother was my father’s housekeeper for twenty years.”

“Holy God,” Glarus faltered. And he fell to his knees. “Forgive me, lord. We thought you were long dead. And you have… you have changed so—”

Murad’s febrile strength seemed to gutter out. He sagged against the heavy kitchen table, releasing the man. The cleaver clanged to the floor. “I am home now. Run me a bath, and have my valet sent to me. And that wench there”—he pointed to a cowering girl with flour on her hands—“have her sent at once to the master bed-room. I want wine and bread and cheese and roasted chicken. And apples. And I want them there within half a glass. And a message sent to the palace, requesting an audience. Do you hear me?”

“Half a glass?” Glarus asked timidly. Murad laughed.

“I am become a naval creature after all. Ten minutes will do, Glarus. God’s blood, it is good to be home!”

T WO hours later, he was admiring himself in the full-length mirror of the master bed-room, and the weeping kitchen maid was being led away with a blanket about her shoulders. His beard and hair had been neatly trimmed and he wore a doublet of black velvet edged with silver lace. It hung on him like a sack, and he had to don breeches instead of hose, for his legs were too thin to be revealed without ridicule. He supposed he would put weight on, eventually. He was hungry, but the food he had eaten had made him sick.