Monarchies Of God - Hawkwoods Voyage Part 24

"Sweet Ramusio, his blessed Saints," Hawkwood breathed in the instant before the great wave struck the ship broadside-on.

The Osprey was still turning to port when the enormous shock ran clear through the hull. Hawkwood saw the wave break on the starboard side and then keep going, engulfing the entire waist with water, swirling up to the quarterdeck rail where he stood. One of the ship's boats was battered loose and went over the side, a man clinging to it and screaming soundlessly in that chaos of wind and water. He saw Billerand swept clear across the deck and smashed into the larboard rail like a leaf caught in a gale.

Other men clung to the guns with the water foaming about their heads, their legs swept out behind them.

But even as Hawkwood watched the wave caught one of the guns and tore it loose from the side, sending the ton of metal careering across the waist, devastation in its wake. The gun went over the larboard side, shattering the rail and tearing a hole in the ship's upper hull. Even above the roaring torrent of the water, Hawkwood thought he could hear the rending timbers shriek, as though the carrack were crying out in her maimed agony.

They were almost swamped. Hawkwood could feel the sluggishness of the carrack, as though she were doubly ballasted with water. The deck began to cant under his feet like the sloping roof of a house.

There was a tearing crack from above. An instant later the main topmast went by the board, the entire mast with its spars and yards and cordage coming crashing down on the larboard side. Blocks and tackle and fragments of shattered wood were hurled down round Hawkwood's ears. Something thudded into the side of his head and knocked him off his feet. He slid along the sloping deck and ended up in the leescuppers, entangled with rope. The falling mast had crashed through the sterncastle and was hanging over the side, dragging the carrack further over. He was dimly aware that he could hear horses screaming somewhere down in the belly of the ship, a wailing like a mult.i.tude in pain. He shook his head, blood pouring down across his eyes and temples, and reached for one of the axes which were stowed on the decks. He began to swing at the ma.s.s of broken wood and tangled cordage that was threatening to pull the ship over on to her side.

"Axemen here!" he shrieked. "Get this thing cut away or it'll take us all with it!"

Men were labouring up out of the foaming chaos of the waist with boarding axes in their hands. He saw Velasca there, but no sign of Billerand.

They began chopping at the fallen topmast like men possessed. The carrack rose on the breast of another gargantuan swell of water, tilting ever further. She would capsize with the next wave.

The topmast shifted as they hacked at it. Then there was a cracking and wrenching of wood, audible above the wind and the roaring waves and the sharp concussions of the biting axes. The ma.s.s of wreckage moved, tilted, and then slithered over the ship's side into the sea, taking a fiferail with it.

The carrack, freed of the unbalancing weight, began to right herself. The deck became momentarily horizontal again. Then it began to slant once more, but from fore to aft this time. She had turned. The ship was before the wind. Hawkwood looked aft over the taffrail and saw the next wave, like a looming mountain, rear up over the stern as if it meant to crush them out of existence. But the ship rose higher and higher as the bulk of water slid under the hull, lifting the carrack into the air. Then they were descending again-thank G.o.d for the high sterncastle to prevent them being p.o.o.ped-and the ship was behaving like a rational thing once more, riding the huge waves like a child's toy.

"Velasca!" Hawkwood called, wiping blood out of his eyes. "See to the foremast backstays. I think the topmast destroyed one. We don't want the foremast going as well." He glanced around. "Where's Billerand?"

"Took him below," one of the men said. "Had his shoulder broke."

"All right, then. Velasca, you are acting first mate. Phipio, second mate." Hawkwood looked at the battered wreckage, the shattered rails, the stump of the mainmast like an amputated limb. "The ship is badly hurt, lads. She'll swim, but only with our help. Phipio, get a party down below to check for leaks, and have men working on the pumps as soon as you can. Velasca, I want all other hands sending up extra stays. We can't get the topmasts down, not in this, so we'll have to try and strengthen the masts.

This is no pa.s.sing squall. We're in for a long run."

The crowd of men split up. Hawkwood left them to their work for the moment-Velasca was a competent seaman-clambered down the broken remnants of the ladders to the waist and entered the companionway to the aft part of the ship.

The heaving of the carrack threw him against one bulkhead and then another, and there was water swirling in the companionway, washing around his calves. He made his way to the tiller-house where six men were battling to bring the tiller under control as it fought their grip in the monstrous battering of the waves.

"What's our course, lads?" he shouted. Even here the wind was deafening, and there was also the creaking and groaning of the carrack's hull. The ship was moaning like a thing in pain, and there was the horse still neighing madly somewhere below and people wailing on the gundeck. But that was not his problem now."Sou'-sou'-west, sir, directly before the wind," one of the struggling helmsmen answered.

"Very well, keep her thus. I'll try and have you relieved at the turn of the watch, but you may be in for a long spell."

Masudi, the senior helmsman and an ex-corsair, gave a grin that was as brilliant as chalk in his dark face.

"Don't you worry about us, sir. You keep the old girl swimming and we'll keep her on course."

Hawkwood grinned back, suddenly cheered, then bent over the binnacle. The compa.s.s was housed in a gla.s.s case, and to one side within it a small oil lamp burned so the helmsmen might see the compa.s.s needle at all times of the day or night. It was one of Hawkwood's own inventions, and he had been inordinately proud of it. As he bent over the yellow-lit gla.s.s his blood fell upon it, becoming shining ruby like wine with candlelight behind it. He wiped the gla.s.s clean irritably. Sou'-sou'-west all right, and with this storm his dead-reckoning was shot to pieces. They were going to be far off course when this thing blew itself out, and if they wanted to get back on their old lat.i.tude they would have to beat for weeks into the teeth of the wind: an agonizing, snail's-pace labour.

He swore viciously and fluently under his breath, and then straightened. How was the Grace of G.o.d faring? Had Haukal been caught as unprepared as he? The caravel was a sound, weatherly little vessel, but he knew for a fact that it had never before encountered seas as high as these.

He waved to the helmsmen and left the tiller-house, lurching with the dip and rise of the ship. He slid down a ladder and then kept going forward until he was through into the gundeck. There he halted, looking up the long length of the ship.

The place was a shambles. The sailors had lashed the guns tight so they were crouched up against the gunports like great, chained beasts, and in between them a ma.s.s of humanity cowered and writhed in a foot of water that came surging up and down the deck with every dip of the carrack's bow. Hawkwood saw bodies floating face-down in the water, the pathetic rag-tag possessions of the pa.s.sengers drifting and abandoned. There was a collective wailing of women while men cursed. The lanterns had been put out, which was just as well. The deck resembled the dark, fevered nightmare of a visionary hermit, a picture of some subterranean h.e.l.l.

Someone staggered over to him and took his arm.

"Well, Captain, are we sinking yet?"

There was no panic in the voice, perhaps even a kind of irony. In the almost dark Hawkwood thought he could make out a roughly broken nose, short-cropped hair, the square carriage of a soldier.

"Are you Bardolin, the girl Griella's guardian?"

"Aye."

"Well, we've no fear of sinking, though it was touch and go for a moment or two there. This storm may last some time so you had best get the pa.s.sengers to make themselves as comfortable as they can."

The man Bardolin glanced back down the heaving length of the gundeck.

"How many hours do you think it will last?"

"Hours? More than that, it'll be. We're in for a blow of some days, if I'm any judge. I'll try and get the ship's cook to serve out some food as soon as we have things more settled. It'll be cold, mind. There willbe no galley fires lit whilst the storm lasts."

He could see the dismay, instantly mastered, on the older man's face.

"Do you need any help?" Bardolin asked.

Hawkwood smiled. "No, this is a job for mariners alone. You see to your own people. Calm them down and make them more comfortable. As I say, this storm will last a while."

"Have you seen Griella? Is she all right?" Bardolin demanded.

"She'll be with Lord Murad, I expect."

As soon as he had said the words Hawkwood wished he had not. Bardolin's face had become like stone, his eyes two shards of winking gla.s.s.

"Thank you, Captain. I'll see what I can do here."

"One more thing." Hawkwood laid a hand on Bardolin's arm as he turned away. "The weather-worker, Pernicus. We may need him in the days to come. How is he?"

"Prostrate with fear and seasickness, but otherwise he is hale."

"Good. Look after him for me."

"Our ship's chaplain will not be happy at the thought of a Dweomer-propelled vessel."

"You let me worry about the Raven," Hawkwood growled and, slapping Bardolin on the arm, he left the gundeck with real relief.

Deeper he went, into the bowels of the ship. The Osprey was a roomy vessel, despite her lower than usual sterncastle. Below the gundeck was the main hold, and below that again the bilge. The hold itself was divided up into large compartments. One for the cable tiers, where the anchor cables were coiled down, one for the water and provisions, a small cubbyhole that was the powder store and then the newly created compartment that housed the d.a.m.ned horses and other livestock.

There was water everywhere, dripping from the deckhead above, sloshing around his feet, trickling down the sides of the hull. Hawkwood found himself a ship's lantern and fought it alight after a few aggravating minutes of fumbling in the dark with damp tinder. Then he made his way deeper below.

Here it was possible to hear more clearly the sound of the hull itself. The wood of the carrack's timbers was creaking and groaning with every pitch of her beakhead, and the sound of the wind was muted. The horses had gone silent, which was a blessing of sorts. Hawkwood wondered if any of them had survived.

He found a working party of mariners sent down by Velasca to secure the cargo. There was four feet of water in the hold, and the men were labouring waist-deep among the jumbled casks and sacks and boxes, lashing down anything that had come loose in the carrack's wild battle with the monster waves.

"How much water is she making?" Hawkwood asked their leader, a master's mate named Mihal, Gabrionese like himself.

"Maybe a foot with every two turns of the gla.s.s, sir. Most of it came down from above with those green seas we shipped, but her timbers are strained, too, and there's some coming in at the seams."

"Show me."Mihal took him to the side of the hull, and there Hawkwood could see the timbers of the ship's side quivering and twisting. Every time the carrack moved with the waves, the timbers opened a little and more water forced itself in.

"We're not holed anywhere?"

"Not so far as I can see, sir. I've had men in the cable tiers and in the stockpens aft-a b.l.o.o.d.y mess down there, by the by. No, she's just taking the strain, is all, but I hope Velasca has strong men on the pumps."

"Report to him when you've finished here, Mihal. The pump crews and the helmsmen will need relieving soon."

"Aye, sir."

Hawkwood moved on, wading through the cold water. He struggled aft against the movement of the ship and pa.s.sed through the bulkhead hatch that separated the hold from the stockpens nearer the stern.

Lanterns here, the terrified bleating of a few sheep, straw and dung turning the water into a kind of soup.

Animal corpses were bobbing and drifting. Hawkwood approached the group of men who were working there in leather gambesons-soldiers, then, not members of his crew.

"Who's that?" a voice snapped.

"The Captain. Is that you, Sequero?"

"Hawkwood. Yes, it's me."

Hawkwood saw the pale ovals of faces in the lantern light, the shining flanks of a horse.

"How bad is it?"

Sequero splashed towards him. "What kind of ship's master are you, Hawkwood? No one was told to secure the horses, and then the ship went on its d.a.m.ned side. They never had a chance. Why could you not have warned my people?"

Sequero was standing before him, filthy and dripping. Something had laid open his forehead so that a flap of skin glistened there, but the blood had slowed to an ooze. The ensign's eyes were bright with fury.

"We had no time," Hawkwood said hotly. "As it was we almost lost the ship, and I've lost some of my men putting her to rights. We had no time to worry about your d.a.m.ned horses."

He thought for a second that Sequero was going to fly at him and tensed into a crouch, but then the ensign sagged, obviously worn out.

"I am no sailor. I cannot say whether you are in the right of it or not. Will the ship survive?"

"Probably. How many did you lose?"

"One of the stallions and another mare. They broke their legs when the ship went to one side."

"What about the other livestock?"

Sequero shrugged. It was not his concern."Well, get what stock have survived and secure them in their stalls. Lash them to the pens if you have to.

This could be a long blow." Hawkwood was beginning to feel like a parrot, repeating his litany to everyone he met.

Sequero nodded dully.

"What about the soldiers? How are they faring?"

"Drunk, most of them. Some of the older ones have been saving their wine rations. They thought they were going to die, and so decided to drown whilst drunk."

Hawkwood laughed. "I've heard of worse ideas. What of Lord Murad?"

"What of him? He's closeted with his peasant wh.o.r.e as usual."

A violent lurch of the ship pitched them both into the stinking water. They struggled out of it spitting and cursing.

"Are you sure this thing won't sink, Captain?" Sequero sneered.

But Hawkwood was already retracing his steps forward. Time to get back on deck and take up his proper place. He was blind down here.

I T had become a little lighter and the clouds seemed to have lifted above the level of the mastheads. The seas were just as mountainous though, great hills of water with troughs a quarter of a mile apart and crests as high as the carrack's topmasts. They were running before the wind now, and the waves were rising around the ship's stern, lifting her high into the air and then pa.s.sing under her, leaving her almost becalmed in their lee. There seemed to be little danger of her being p.o.o.ped, thanks to her construction, and would have to ride the storm out, letting it blow them where it willed.

Velasca had had hawsers sent up to the mastheads and there were men working in the tops, struggling to secure them. Others were double lashing the upper-deck guns and the two ship's boats that had survived, though the pa.s.sage of the run-away gun had smashed chunks out of both their sides. And to both larboard and starboard thick jets of white water were spewing out of the pumps as men bent up and down over them, trying to lighten the ship.

"Tiller there!" Hawkwood shouted down the hatch. "How's she steering?"

"Easier, sir," Masudi called back. "But the men are tiring."

"Mihal and his mess will be up to relieve you soon. Steady as she goes, Masudi."

"Aye, sir."

For hour after hour the carrack rode the vast waves and careered before the wind roughly south-west, away off their course and into seas unknown even to Tyrenius Cobrian. Despite the fact that the yards were bare, her speed was very great as she was shunted forward on the shining backs of the enormous breakers.

The watch changed. Exhausted seamen were relieved by others scarcely less exhausted, but the hands remained on deck for hour after hour, pumping, splicing, repairing or simply remaining in readiness for the next crisis.

It grew colder. When Hawkwood estimated that their storm-driven run had taken them some fortyleagues off course the balminess in the air vanished and the water took on a grey, chill aspect in the sunless dawn of the next day. All that day they continued to run before the wind, eating bread and raw salt pork when they could, feeling the salt in their clothing rasp their saturated skin and continuing the unending repairs.

After a second night and a second day they began to feel that they had never been warm or dry, and had never really known sleep before. They lost another man off one of the yards who had slackened his grip out of sheer weariness, and they threw overboard the bodies of three pa.s.sengers who had died of the injuries sustained in the first, savage squall. And they continued south-west across the t.i.tanic, illimitable Western Ocean, like a stick of wood adrift in a millrace with a knot of frenzied ants clinging to it. There was nothing else to do.

EIGHTEEN.

T HEY came with the dawn, as Martellus had said they would. Had it not been for the vigilance of the pickets they might have swarmed up to the very walls, so sudden was their onset; for the Merduks had elected to forgo a preliminary bombardment, preferring to gamble on achieving surprise. But the watching sentries set light to the signal rockets and flares, and suddenly the eastern barbican and the river were lit up with smoking red lights that described bright parabolas across the lightening sky and illuminated the bristling phalanxes of advancing troops below.

The garrison of the barbican rushed out to their stations. All along the walls, slow-match was lit and set to one side, men shouldered their arquebuses and powder and shot-carriers hurried up to the parapets with their vital loads.

The Merduk host, discovered, came on with a mighty roar, a rush of shouting and thumping feet that set the hair crawling on Corfe's head. Once again, he beheld the teeming ma.s.s of a Merduk army a.s.saulting walls, like a seaweed-thick tide lapping at a cliff face.

The sun was coming up. More powder rockets were launched, this time to help the gunners aim their culverins. The swarming mob of Merduks was perhaps two hundred yards from the walls when Andruw stabbed the slow-match into the touch-hole of the first cannon.

It jumped back with a roar and an exploding fog of smoke. At the signal, the other big guns of the fortress began to bark out also until the entire barbican was a ma.s.sive reeking smoke cloud stabbed through and through with red and yellow flame.

Corfe was able to see the result of the first few salvoes before the smoke hid the advancing hordes. The Torunnans were using delayed-fuse sh.e.l.ls that exploded in midair and scattered jagged metal in a deadly radius beneath them. He saw swathes of the enemy fall or be tossed into the air and ripped to pieces, like crops flattened by an invisible wind. Then they came on again, dressing their broken lines and screaming their hoa.r.s.e battlecries. There were hundreds of ladders in their midst, carried shoulder-high.