Ships From the West by Paul Kearney

Author:Paul Kearney [Kearney, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780575074002
Amazon: 0575074000
Publisher: Bill
Published: 0101-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

Twelve

In squares and at street corners the people gathered in subdued crowds while those who could read relayed the content of the daily bulletins to their fellow citizens.

This day were executed Hilario, Duke of Imerdon, Lord Queris of Hebriera, and Lady Marian of Fulk, they having been found guilty of conspiring against the Presbyter of Hebrion, Lord Orkh. May Almighty God have mercy on their souls.

A reward of five hundred silver crowns is offered for information leading to the arrest and apprehension of the following ...

And here a long list of names followed, which those reading the bulletin intoned in stentorian voices, watching always to see if any of the Knights Militant, or worse an Inceptine, were near.

No one knew how or where the executions took place, and the names of the dead all belonged to the nobility of Hebrion. Thus while the common folk might feel anger, even outrage, at this unseen slaughter of their betters, they were largely unaffected by it. And besides, there was a new nobility to get used to.

Thus the life of Abrusio, which had shuddered to a trembling halt for days after the first landings, slowly began to return to something approaching normality. Market stalls were cautiously opening again, and taverns began to fill up in the evenings as folk became less afraid to walk the streets at night. There was no curfew, no martial law, just the daily bulletins, their wording unchanged but for the names they listed. Even the soldiers of the garrison had been merely told to stack arms and return to barracks. There was talk of a treaty having been signed, a peaceful annexation, and certainly the new rulers of Hebrion were busy men. They had taken up residence not in the palace but in the old Inceptine abbey, as befitted a group of churchmen, and from the abbey the couriers rode in unending streams, while in the harbour every Royal vessel remaining had received a boarding party of Himerians and was frantically readying to put to sea.

It was not so bad, on the whole, and people looked back to the hysteria which had followed the rumours of the fleet's destruction with a kind of abashed wonder. They forget, or chose not to remember, the storm which had smote the city, the thunderheads which had hidden the sun and darkened the face of the waters at noon, and the sea lightnings which had capered madly, striking people in the streets, setting light to houses. Only the deluge which had followed had stopped the city from burning a second time. The black clouds had burst overhead and people had scurried for cover as the rain came down in rods, flattening the waves which the west wind had reared up, turning the steep streets in the Upper City into tawny rivers.

There were those who said that in the heart of the lightnings and the hammering rain the sky had not been empty. Things had been circling below the lowering clouds. Monstrous things which were not birds.

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