Kronos Heraclius dufiarchen dindrienfiardu - alfiov drichen dinenfiar drifiar - kwayulka (Year of Heraclius Six hundred and thirty-nine - day three hundred and fifty-seven - morning)

Outside the tavern he found Emeric Dundas and four other men waiting for him. He had been careful to raise the hood on his tunic so that none should recognise him.

'We six are to clear the route to the coast as best we can,' Emeric Dundas told them. 'Before we leave the city, I will tell you all each other's names so that we all know each other. I am Emeric Dundas. This is Wiksa, this is Esbit, this is Osario, this is Kenteris, and this is Reyniksen. If any of you know or dislike any of the others for whatever reason, keep it to yourselves for the time being. You have all been handpicked for your reputations, and whilst I acknowledge there may be dissent amongst you because you do not like each other, simply remember that we are here to do a specific job, and any trouble between you will be dealt with summarily, and by me. Am I understood in this?'

There was grumbling assent between the five men. They marched through the city to the gates, where Emeric Dundas presented his authority to the guards and they were allowed through. Still dominating the dawn sky was the largest of the two moons of Heraklion, and the landscape that stretched away to the south before them was frozen into a blue-white frost. The snow lay two feet deep in places, and there was nothing to define the track except the occasional hedgerow and fence as they passed by the garrison and the first of the abandoned villages. Each man had been issued with a shovel and a pick. As they marched, the sun displaced the larger moon, and as the latter sank below the horizon, the smaller, redder moon became visible. Further to the south, over the tops of the hills, there was evidence of a build-up of dark clouds, and they wondered aloud if it could be another storm bringing fresh falls of snow, or if the temperature had upturned, and these were rain clouds. In the event it turned out that the temperature had climbed with the advent of the morning sun, for by midsun the snows were receding rapidly, discharging into the streams at the side of the track, and by mid aftersun the dark clouds arrived, with torrential rains.

By nightfall they had cleared the remaining snow from the track through the foothills using the crude shovels, little more than long sticks with flat pieces of wood nailed to them, and they made camp under a large overhang of rock which protected them from the rainfall and allowed them to light a fire.

'We will make good progress tomorrow,' Emeric Dundas said. 'The snows will be gone when we move off, and we can get straight down to the coast and to the business of repairing the boats.'

'I guess the militia will be setting out at dawn,' Osario said. He, like the other four mercenaries, was shorter than Cormac and Emeric Dundas, but heavily-built, well-muscled. Each carried a short curved sword and several throwing knives. Osario sat polishing his sword while the others made their preparations for sleeping.

'Osario, you can take first watch since you show no signs of tiredness,' Emeric Dundas said cheerfully.

'Suits me,' the other replied, but he seemed not to take his eyes off Cormac as he lay down on his back and positioned himself so that his feet were under the narrowest part of the overhang. If they were surprised during the night, by silthen or veghtan, he did not wish to sit up suddenly and bang his head on the rock. In any case, he needed to stay alert, and spent the first part of the night with his eyes half open. There was the occasional howling through the storm, not of the wind, but from veghtan, he was certain. As the larger moon reached its zenith, covering most of the visible sky, its reddish-grey surface clearly and distinctly cratered, Osario handed over the watch to him as Emeric Dundas had directed, and he sat up, bringing his knees up to his chin and resting his arms on them.

He gazed up at the great Herakian moon, wondering, as all men wondered, if it was a lifeless world, or if they might have neighbours on it or even if, as some had suggested, the legendary Heraclius, the founding white man who had come to Heraklion from the skies, had in reality made the comparatively short distance from the larger moon, or indeed the smaller moon, as yet obscured by its giant companion.

He had read of the legend of Heraclius in the great library in Perpanis. Every great civilised city on Heraklion houses a 'great library' of some sort wherein the written legends and histories of its peoples are kept. Since the language of Heraklion is common to all peoples and provinces, the contents of these great libraries tends to be extremely similar, and so the legend of the arrival on Heraklion by "the man from the skies", Heraclius, is common knowledge. Within each continent of Heraklion, however, the legend assumes different proportions. The vast mainland continent, of which Barbessel, Pekeesh, Erzindjian and the other more southerly provinces form a major part, the legend was that Heraclius, after being killed in battle with another white man, left the world of Heraklion in the charge of his appointed deputies, the Controllers. Latterly, with the defeat of Vitellius by Marcellus on Korphyria, the island to the extreme east of the mainland, the Controllers had been disfranchised, their myth exposed as a fraud by unscrupulous men wishing to take advantage of the ancient legends to further their own purposes. In Vitellius' case, the ambition had been extreme, to rule the entirety of Heraklion, but in this he had been thwarted by Marcellus of Barbessel.

On the western sub-continent of Zindora the belief in the Controllers flourished, and here Vitellius and his followers, the men from Koriss, had taken control of every province and every city, the great desert city of Horta, the province of the shiftas falling within the last few moons. From Pekeesh northwards to the permafrost and the polar regions, the beliefs were transparently different, and far more primitive, more spiritual, and to the extreme east, in Ancyros, where the holy city of Prakussara stands, the beliefs are different again, centering on the moon God Khamen.

It was this last culture that held the belief that Heraclius had come from the larger moon in a chariot of fire, landing in Prakussara and claiming Heraklion for his own world, and from his loins had sprung the seeds of modern civilisation.

He turned to see Esbit rising from his bed roll and coming to join him at the edge of the overhang.

'At least the snow has all gone.'

Cormac nodded non-committally.

'It will make our job easier.'

'You know the boats we have to prepare?'

'I do not remember seeing war boats when I returned from Walfen.'

'Perhaps you came in at the wrong part of the coast?'

'That is most likely.'

'They are enormous.'

'The boats?'

Esbit nodded.

'They have only been used once, when Vitellius first crossed from Koriss into the mainland. He continued into the interior, and then word came that he had died at the fighting in Pekeesh between the Warikeewa and the Erzindjiani. The warriors came back, then, and left the boats up on the shore, tethered to the trees. They are enormous. We will be hard put to get them seaworthy in time for when the militia arrive from Mercat.'

'Perhaps Connacht should have sent us on ahead earlier than this,' Cormac observed.

'This was not his original plan. That was to go through the pass and over the causeway.'

'Causeway?'

'It is only accessible at low tide. Not many people know about it. They say that Connacht discovered it while he was still but a lad. When those bastards blocked the pass, there was nothing else for it but to go through the hills.'

'I did not know of the existence of such a causeway.'

Esbit nodded thoughtfully.

'How could you?'

Cormac shrugged his shoulders. Esbit crawled back under the rock to his bed roll and was soon asleep again. Cormac wondered why he had come to question him during his watch, and when he glanced back, he noticed that Emeric Dundas was raised up on one elbow, staring at him. Cormac ignored him and turned his attention to the night sky, and the continuous barrage of rain clouds that passed rapidly overhead before the moon. Later in the night Emeric Dundas sent Wiksa to relieve him and he crawled gratefully into his fur bed roll and closed his eyes. But there was something troubling him, and he failed to sleep, preferring to remain awake while the others around him slept soundly through the storm. By dawn the rain clouds had dispersed and they made their meal and broke camp in better spirits, with a bright yellow sky and the smaller Herakian moon bright from the brilliance of the morning sun.

They made their way swiftly through the foothills and down through heathlands to the coast, where there was an extensive wood giving onto a gentle slope of shingle and sand. They rounded a corner as they emerged from the woods, and there were the boats, four of them, and Esbit had been right, they were enormous, larger than any boat in Cormac's experience. His eyes widened in awe of the structures, though outwardly he gave no sign of any emotion. Each boat was in the region of fifty paces long, their hulls almost flat, with sides rising to a depth of about three paces along the length, four paces at either end. There was provision for a single mast, itself of the order of thirty paces high, and along each of the sides there were round holes through which he supposed oars would be positioned. It was evident that the boats had been tossed about during the recent storms, for there was extensive damage both to the hulls and to the masts, two of which were broken in two. There was, however, a plentiful supply of timber laying stacked at the edge of the wood, it having been planed and finished in readiness for the repairs. And beside the stacked wood stood a small wooden hut which contained tools, hammers, saws, pegs and ropes.

'We will repair one craft at a time,' Emeric Dundas said. 'That way, if the militia make good time through the foothills, one will be ready for them when they arrive, if not two. Come on, lads, let's to it!'

They dumped their gear and brought the tools from the hut. Cormac and Kenteris were detailed to find a tree tall and straight enough from which they could fashion the first of the new masts, and this they found right at the edge of the wood where the shingle was piled high from the recent storms. Cormac took an axe and began to cut into the base of the tree while Kenteris started to remove some of the lower branches. After a short time, the tree began to sway. Cormac put his boot to it and pushed, yelling to Kenteris to get out of the way as the it came crashing to the ground, scattering shingle and sand all around. While the others made repairs to the hull of the first craft, Kenteris and Cormac removed all of the branches from the felled tree and began to peel off the bark using their knives. Pretty soon they had furnished a marvellously straight and smooth mast, which needed only to be cut to the correct size. To do this they removed the two pieces of the broken mast and disengaged the sail from it, then laid it alongside their tree to measure it, and sawed off the surplus wood. All that remained was to coat the new mast in a preservative, and again they found supplies of a black tarry substance in wooden tube in the hut, and applied it using brushes made from soft wood covered in leather and fixed to small axe handles. By midsun the first mast was ready and they began to look for a second suitable tree, venturing further into the wood. At first they thought their search was going to be fruitless, and that they might have to find some way of mending the second broken structure, but at length they came upon a group of taller trees and selected one that was straight and true, and tall enough for the purpose. Again Cormac bent his back to the job of slicing through the trunk, but this time Kenteris was able simply to stand and watch for the lowest branches were well out of his reach. This did not worry Cormac, for he knew that he was better equipped for the task, and that the other man would help as soon as the tree was stretched out on the ground.

Shielding his eyes from the sun, Cormac swung the axe again and again, remarking to himself how satisfying it was as a weapon, and the tree began to creak and groan in the breeze, and then fell to the ground, shaking the immediate vicinity. Then he was startled by a cry from Kenteris, and turned to see him on the ground, wrestling with the enormous body of a veghta, its jaws fastened around his forearm, its claws already boring deep furrows in his chest and belly. Cormac rushed to aid the man, swinging the axe high above his head, but his first blow glanced off the beast's shaggy head as it rolled over, tearing the flesh from Kenteris' arm. He raised the axe again but the veghta's powerful jaws were already snapping at Kenteris' throat, and although Cormac's second blow connected with the beast's skull, its fangs were embedded and with the man's blood seeping into its maw, its blood lust was rising. It was not to be easily deprived of its meal. Cormac shouted to Emeric Dundas and the others, alerting them to the fact that he and Kenteris were under attack, but the breeze was in the wrong direction, and no-one heard him. He wrenched the blade from the veghta's skull and lifted it skyward again, but now the veghta, satisfied that its first victim was dead, turned its attention to him, fixing its red eyes on his and advancing on him before he could strike. Cormac felt the veghta's canines sink into the flesh of his upper thigh, and cried out with the pain, then toppled backwards into the sandy earth. He raised the axe high above his head and brought it down into the hard cranium of the crazed beast, but again it had its concentration fixed on the fact that its jaws were fastened on something, and it did not let go immediately. Cormac raised his left leg and kicked out, feeling the crunch of bone beneath his booted foot, and looked down to see that he had dislodged the veghta's right eye. Blood and pus oozed from the wound, and he thought the grip on his thigh had loosened slightly. He took out his sword and plunged it up to the hilt into the beast's brain, twisting the blade savagely until the jaws relaxed and the veghta collapsed, dying. At last Cormac was able to prize open its jaws and extricate his thigh, but when he tried to stand up the leg gave way and he sank back to the earth, exhausted. Looking at the veghta he was amazed to see that it was equally as long as Kenteris, the man it had killed, with a thick black pelt, long hind legs and shorter front legs. Its head was bigger than a man's, and the canines were a good foot long, each of them, though the tip of one had broken off and was still lodged in Cormac's thigh.

Still shouting to his comrades to come to his assistance, he took hold of the tooth, which was about as long as his own middle finger, and tested it to see how far it had penetrated the muscle of his thigh, and was dismayed to find that there was still about the length of his thumb embedded.