The taken wagon had told Kronmir a great deal. It told him that the Red Knight controlled access to the mountains to the north. He rode west, not north, into the hills.
Two days after the feast of Saint George, the Scholae went to two houses in the city. Both of them were empty, and the inn they had intended to raid was found to have burned to the ground. The inn staff had gone to stay with relatives.
The Duke rode through the Navy Yard gates with a handful of armoured men-at-arms led by Francis Atcourt. At his side rode an unarmoured man, who sat and watched the work of the yard with professional admiration – and some obvious discomfort.
The Duke dismounted and went into the main building, so old that it was built of the same red and yellow brick as the main walls of the city. ‘Look at everything,’ he said casually to the unarmoured man.
‘Who is he?’ asked the master shipwright, William Mortice of Harndon. He’d arrived two weeks before, overland.
The Duke smiled. ‘Master Mortice, he is none other than the Mighty and Puissand Lord Ernst Handalo of Venike.’ The Duke nodded.
‘He’ll burn my pretty sharks on their stocks!’ Mortice said, rising.
‘No, no. He’ll go home and tell his city to ally itself with us.’
Sparrow was still getting used to the Red Knight and to Liviapolis. ‘Us? Who is “us”? Alba? Nova Terra? The Empire?’
‘You and me and the new navy,’ the Duke said, swirling wine in his cup and adding something from a flask.
An hour later, in the biting wind on the sea wall, Handalo stood with his short cape whipping behind him. He had to shout to be heard. ‘You can’t sustain the expense!’ he roared. ‘Not without trade and a merchant fleet.’
‘I agree!’ roared the Duke.
‘And winter is here!’ shouted Handalo. ‘It would be insane to put to sea this late in the year.’
‘I agree!’ roared the Duke.
‘Then why don’t you just buy us off and stop this?’ Handalo said.
The Duke smiled. ‘Every archer in my company carries two bowstrings in a small waxed pouch. When they are inspected, the master archers check for them. Because once, I was caught unprespared by a loss of bowstrings.’
Handalo raised an eyebrow.
The Duke looked out over the sea. ‘I could make a mercantile agreement with you right here, messire. But in three years or less, it would be . . . inconvenieint for you. And you would abrogate it – or your successor would.’ He met the Etruscan’s eye. ‘I can defeat you militarily, but not for long. Am I correct?’
Handalo nodded. ‘You have a good head.’
‘Both bowstrings. I build a fleet and then I’ll offer a trade agreement, and you and the Genuans will have every reason to keep it.’ The Duke shrugged.
‘The princess is lucky to have you,’ the Venike captain said.
The Duke shook his head. ‘The Emperor is lucky to have me,’ he said.
Two weeks later, the first Morean galley built in the city in twenty years slipped down the ancient stone slipway and splashed stern first into the ocean, watched by the Etruscan squadron from across the strait. The next day the captured Etruscan galley was repaired, and by week’s end the new Imperial Navy had four hulls in the water.
There followed the first winter storm, a vicious display of nature’s power over water, when all work in the yard had to be halted and a small fortune in lumber, left uncovered, was blown into the sea and lost. The new Imperial ships uncrossed their yards and were stored in covered ship sheds – sheds built a thousand years before.
The Eturcans didn’t have thousand-year-old stone ship sheds, so they had to strip their ships, turn them over, and store them under temporary shelters for the winter. Morea got snow and ice despite its warmer clime and the warm current off the straits, and winter was brutal for galleys.
Two days after the storm, the Etruscans had all their ships stowed safely away. They could only watch in horror in the cold and watery sunlight, as the new Imperial squadron put to sea and cruised to the mouth of the gulf unopposed. The Imperial fleet returned from a day at sea with a trio of great Alban round ships. As there was no blockade, the Alban ships docked without danger, packed to the gunwales with wool, leather and other Alban wares, and a hundred grateful merchants met the Alban traders on the docks. Meanwhile the Imperial ships dashed across the straight under the command of the Megas Ducas, landed marines, and burned the whole Etruscan squadron in their sheds.
Before the fires were out, Ser Ernst Handalo led a deputation of the Merchanter League to the palace from which he had so recently been released. That afternoon, the Etruscans abandoned their alliance with Duke Andronicus and signed a peace with Princess Irene and her father, the Emperor, and a document demanding that ‘The traitorous usurper previously known as the Duke of Thrake’ immediately restore the Emperor to his throne. They paid an indemnity and their Podesta signed a set of articles guaranteeing their tax rate – a rate on which they made a sizeable initial payment. All of the Etruscan officers were released.
The Imperial Army continued to drill. Every day, more of the local stradiotes reported. And every day, a few more merchant ships appeared in the gulf – all from Alba. The round ships were at less risk in the late autumn than galleys. But someone was taking a risk nonetheless.
On the next Monday, the whole of the Imperial Army formed on the Field of Ares; almost a thousand of the company, almost five hundred Scholae, three hundred Nordikans, and as many Vardariotes with nearly a thousand Tagmatic infantry from the city and four hundred stradiotes cavalry from the countryside. Most of the army was clothed in white wool – fresh, new Alban wool, heavy as armour, the colour of snow. The new winter gowns were the products of feverish sewing by every tailor and sempter in Liviapolis.
Ser Gerald Random sat on a horse with the Red Knight and his staff and watched them. He shook his head in wonder. ‘You have your own army!’ he said.
‘You should know,’ the Red Knight said. ‘You’re paying them.’ He smiled. ‘And bringing the wool.’
Random laughed with all the knights. ‘You realise that if this doesn’t work, I’ll be broken – I have, in effect, risked the entirety of my fortune on you.’
The Red Knight looked over his army with satisfaction. ‘It looks like a good bet so far,’ he said. He looked around. ‘The Etruscan indemnity should have paid your bills.’
‘But she spent it elsewhere,’ Random said.
The Red Knight shrugged.
Random glared. ‘While you continue to spend money like a drunken sailor in a whorehouse.’
The Red Knight shrugged again. ‘You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy skill with weapons, bravery, and fine equipment.’ He scratched his beard. ‘They aren’t cheap.’ And he looked back at the merchant. ‘Anyway, you are made of money. Why will this break you?’
‘I agreed to manage the Queen’s tournament. That reminds me – here’s your official invitation. I’m to tell you to your face that you are required, as a knight and a gentleman, to open it and answer her. What happened to the others?’ Random was playing with his reins and trying to judge how much the lack of a foot was going to change his balance if he rode hard.
‘I ignored them.’ The Red Knight opened the scroll tube, unrolled the scroll, and a small working took place and flew off in the form of a tiny dove which hovered like a white hummingbird.
The Queen is gaining in skill, Harmodius said.
‘You’ve been knighted, and now you are in charge of the Royal Tournament?’ the Red Knight asked.
Gerald nodded. ‘Yes.’
‘And the cost is staggering?’ the Red Knight asked.
Random grimaced. ‘Yes.’
‘And you are fronting the money,’ the Red Knight continued.
Random shrugged. ‘She’s the Queen. The King knighted me.’ He grinned. ‘I love a good tournament,’ he added.