Ships from the West Read Free Page A

the fearsome drop sheepishly, but one remained in place, a broad-shouldered youth with pale blue eyes and hair black as a raven’s feather. His mount was a handsome grey gelding which stood prick-eared and attentive between his knees.
    ‘Bevan, where would I be without you? I suppose Mother told you to follow us.’
    ‘She did, small wonder. Now get away from the edge, Bleyn. Make an old man happy.’
    Bleyn smiled and backed the grey from the brink of the sea cliff one yard, two. Then he dismounted in a motion as easy as the flow of water, patted the neck of the sweating horse and slapped dust from his riding leathers. On foot he was shorter than one would have guessed, with a powerfully built torso set square on a pair of stout legs. The physique of a longshoreman topped by the incongruously fine-boned face of an aristocrat.
    ‘We came to see if we could catch a glimpse of the fleet,’ he said, somewhat contrite.
    ‘Then look to the headland there - Grios Point. They’ll be coming into view any time now, with this breeze. They weighed anchor in the middle of the night.’
    The other riders dismounted also, hobbled their horses and unhooked wineskins from their saddles.
    ‘What’s it all about anyway, Bevan?’ one of them asked. ‘Stuck out here in the provinces, we’re always the last to know.’
    ‘It’s a huge pirate fleet, I hear’ another said. ‘Up from the Macassars looking for blood and plunder.’
    ‘I don’t know about pirates,’ Bevan said slowly, ‘but I do know that your father, Bleyn, had to call up all the retainers on the estate and tear off to Abrusio with them in tow. It’s a general levy, and we haven’t seen one of those in … oh sixteen, seventeen years now.’
    ‘He’s not my father,’ Bleyn said quickly, his fine-boned face flushing dark.
    Bevan looked at him. ‘Now listen—’
    ‘There they are!’ one of the others shouted excitedly. ‘Just coming round the point.’
    They all stared, silent now. The cicadas clicked endlessly in the heat around them, but there was a breeze off the barren mountains at their backs.
    Around the rocky headland, over a league away. Coming into view was what resembled a flock of far-off birds perched on the waves. It was the brightness of the sails which was striking at first - the heavy swell partially hid their hulls. Tall men-of-war with the scarlet pennants of Hebrion snapping from their mainmasts. Twelve, fifteen, twenty great ships in line of battle, smashing aside the waves and forging out to sea with the wind on their starboard beam and their sails bright as a swan’s wing.
    ‘It’s the entire western fleet,’ Bevan murmured. ‘What in the world … ?’
    He turned to Bleyn, who was shading his eyes with one hand and peering intently seawards.
    ‘They’re beautiful,’ the young man said, awed. ‘They truly are.’
    ‘Ten thousand men you’re looking at there, lad. The greatest navy in the world. Your— Lord Murad will be aboard, and no doubt half the Galiapeno retainers, puking their guts out I’ll be bound.’
    ‘Lucky bastards,’ Bleyn breathed. ‘And here we are like a bunch of widows at a ball, watching them go.’
    ‘What is it all for? Is it a war we haven’t heard of?’ one of the others asked, perplexed.
    ‘Damned if I know,’ Bevan rasped. ‘It’s something big, to draw out the entire fleet like that.’
    ‘Maybe it’s the Himerians and the Knights Militant, come invading at last,’ one of the younger ones squeaked.
    ‘They’d come through the Hebros passes, fool. They’ve no ships worth speaking of.’
    ‘The Sea-Merduks then.’
    ‘We’ve been at peace with them these forty years or more.’
    ‘Well there’s something out there. You don’t send a fleet out to sea for the fun of it.’
    ‘Mother will know,’ Bleyn said abruptly. He turned and remounted the tall grey in one fluid movement. ‘I’m going home. Bevan, you stay with this lot. You’ll slow me down.’ The gelding pranced like