Monarchies Of God - Hawkwoods Voyage Part 35

"All right, then. You want some fresh air too?"

He left, reasoning that Bardolin would be all right for a moment or two, and climbed up to the quarterdeck. Mihal had the watch, a good, steady fellow who was also Hawkwood's countryman. Two soldiers, ostensibly on guard duty, leaned at the break of the deck smoking pipes and spitting over the ship's rail. Hawkwood scowled. Discipline had gone to the wall these past days.

Mihal stared at the imp momentarily and then recited: "Steady nor'-west, sir. Course due west under everything she can bear."

"Good. You might want to furl the courses in a gla.s.s or two. We don't want to run smack into the Western Continent in the middle of the night."

"Aye, sir."

"Where's the rest of the watch?"

"On the forecastle, mostly. I've two men on the tiller. She's steering easily enough."

"Very good, Mihal."

Hawkwood leaned on the windward rail gazing out at the night sea. It was as dark as the ink on his desk.

The sky was almost clear, and great bands of speckled stars were arching from horizon to horizon. Most he knew and had steered by for twenty years. They were old friends, the only familiar things on this unending ocean.

The imp made a noise, and he looked down into the waist to see a black-robed figure disappearing into the sterncastle. Ortelius, most likely. What would he want at this time of night?

"Wake me if the wind shifts," he told Mihal, and made his way back down the companionway.

The imp was whimpering and shifting around on his shoulder, clearly upset. He shushed it and then, stepping into the deeper dark of the sterncastle, he knew something was wrong.

A golden bar of lantern light was coming from the door to his cabin-but he had closed it after him.

He drew his dirk and pushed through the door quickly. Bardolin was still asleep in his chair but the sea cloak had fallen to the floor. The imp hopped from Hawkwood's shoulder to his master's, still chittering urgently.

The door was pushed shut behind Hawkwood.

He spun round and his mouth dropped with shock.

"Mateo!"

"Well met, Captain," the figure said with a ghastly smile.The ship's boy was filthy and b.l.o.o.d.y, his hair crawling with lice and his nails long and black. His eyes had a light in them that made the hair on the back of Hawkwood's neck stand up like wire.

"Mateo, we thought you were dead!"

"Aye, and so did I, Captain." The voice which had been on the verge of breaking before he disappeared was as deep and full as a man's. "And didn't you wish I was dead-the b.u.m-boy you were so ashamed of having used? Didn't you, Captain? But I wasn't and I'm back again, different but the same."

"What in the world are you talking about, Mateo?" Hawkwood asked. The boy was circling like a prowling cat. Now he was between Hawkwood and the sleeping mage. The imp was frozen, utterly petrified. It eyed Mateo as though he were a fiend incarnate. Then the horrible thought occurred to Hawkwood.

"It was you," he breathed. "You are the werewolf. You killed Pernicus and Billerand." His voice shook as he said it. He wondered how many would hear his shout, how much time he would have.

Mateo grinned, and Hawkwood could see the lengthening canines, the black flush of hair that was breaking out like a rash down the sides of his face.

"Wrong, Captain, it was not me. It was my new master, a man who appreciates me as you never did."

"Your-? Who is he?"

"A man high up in his society, and high up in other things too. He has promised me much and given me much already. But I am tired of rats and what he gave me of Billerand. I want a fresh kill. You, whom I loved and who discarded me like a spent horse. You, Richard."

"Bardolin!" Hawkwood screamed in the same instant as Mateo launched himself at him.

M URAD sat up to find Griella awake beside him, her eyes shining in the dark, something strange about her profile. Another dream?

"I thought I-"

She shook her head and nodded towards the door of the cabin. Standing hunched in the doorway was a vast, black shape, its ears as tall as horns and its eyes two burning yellow lights. Around its feet in a puddle of shadow were a set of black robes.

"My Lord Murad," the beast said, its long teeth gleaming. "Time for you to die."

In the same moment, Murad heard Hawkwood scream out Bardolin's name on the other side of the part.i.tion. There was a thump and crash. The beast c.o.c.ked its ma.s.sive head.

"He has much to learn," it said, seemingly amused.

Then it leapt.

T HE thing was on top of him, its fetid breath wreathing about his face. It was recognizable as Mateo, but the face was changing even as Hawkwood grappled with it, the nose broadening and pushing out into a snout. The eyes flared with saffron light and the heat of it made him choke.

It dipped its forming muzzle and bit deep.

Hawkwood shrieked in agony as the jaws met in his flesh. The dirk glanced off the thick fur that nowcovered the boy's body and slipped out of his nerveless hand. The pair of them rolled across the deck of the cabin, blood jetting from Hawkwood's mangled shoulder. They knocked against the table and it came down. Ink splattered them; the loose pages of the log flew about like pale birds and the table lantern crashed to the ground with a spatter of burning oil.

The heat, the awful heat. It was wholly beast-like now and it covered him like a choking carpet. He lay still, strength ebbing away with the thick ropes of blood that were pulsing out of his ripped veins.

"I love you, Richard," the werewolf said, its insane eyes glaring at him over its blood-soaked muzzle. The maw descended again.

Then it had thrown itself back off him, howling in agony and fury. The cabin was a thrashing, flickering chaos of shadows and flames. The wood of the deck and bulkhead were on fire, and the werewolf was wrenching a black spike out of its neck, still howling.

Bardolin stood there, the flames illuminating his face, filling the imp's eyes with light as it perched on his shoulder. Dimly Hawkwood was aware of other voices shouting in the ship, and a turmoil of snarling and violence on the other side of the bulkhead, Murad's voice raised in fear.

"Get you gone," Bardolin said quietly, almost conversationally, and he pointed one large hand at the writhing beast.

Blue fire left his fingers, crackled like lightning and sank into the black fur to disappear.

The werewolf shrieked. Its head snapped up and down. It retreated to where the flames were climbing the wall of the cabin and blue fire sparked out of its mouth. There was the smell of burning flesh.

Then the entire cabin wall disintegrated beside it.

Two huge black figures smashed clear through the bulkhead and fell on to the floor entangled in each other's arms. Hawkwood crawled feebly away from the flames and the thrashing beasts, slumping at the further wall. He watched the scene with utter amazement.

Murad was standing in the gap of the shattered part.i.tion wall with a long knife in his hand, whilst on the deck three werewolves fought and howled amid the rising flames. Hawkwood saw one detach itself from the melee, azure light spurting from its eyes and nostrils. It hurled itself at the stern windows and they gave way, gla.s.s, frame, planking and all. It flew out into the dark night beyond and splashed into the carrack's foaming wake. There was a flash of aquamarine, so bright it dimmed the fire on board ship, and then a concussion that shook the entire stern and sent the sea into an insane turmoil of explosions and geysers brilliantly lit from below.

The entire aft end of the cabin was a gaping, blazing hole with two firelit silhouettes battling there, their fur on fire and their eyes glaring the same colour as the flames. The violence of their battle made the entire ship quiver and the blackened planking screeched and groaned under their clawed feet whilst their howls hurt Hawkwood's ears.

The cabin door was flung open to reveal Ensign Sequero, behind him a crowd of soldiers with smoking arquebuses. He stared blankly at the h.e.l.lish scene for a second, then shouted a command. The soldiers levelled their weapons through the doorway.

"No!" Bardolin yelled.

A volley of shots, plumes of smoke and fire spurting from the weapons. Hawkwood saw fur lifted from the grappling beasts, blood erupting over the walls and deckhead.One of the werewolves broke free and came roaring towards the soldiers, its fur blazing and gore spurting from its wounds. It batted Sequero aside, wrenched an arquebus from a terrified soldier and clubbed another so brutally that the weapon's stock shattered. For a moment it seemed that it would succeed in getting away.

But then the second werewolf leapt on to its back. Hawkwood saw the thing's jaws sink deep into fur and flesh, then wrench free with a gobbet of bleeding meat between the teeth.

Someone hauled him out of the way. It was Murad. He dragged Hawkwood out of the cabin and into the companionway.

"Griella, it's Griella," he was saying. "She's one of them. She's a shifter too."

"The fire," Hawkwood croaked. "Put out the fire, or the ship is lost." But Murad had gone again.

There were more soldiers there, crowding the sterncastle, and then some sailors.

"Velasca!" Hawkwood managed to shout.

"Captain! What in the world-"

"The ship's afire. Leave the soldiers to their work and organize fire-fighting parties."

"Captain-your shoulder-"

"Do it, you insubordinate b.a.s.t.a.r.d, or I'll see you marooned!"

"Aye, sir." Velasca disappeared, chalk-faced.

Hawkwood heard Bardolin's voice raised in fury, telling the soldiers to hold fire. He struggled to his feet, his one working hand clutching the b.l.o.o.d.y mess of his shoulder. He could feel the ends of his collar-bone under his hands, and splinters of bone p.r.i.c.ked his palm like needles.

"Sweet Ramusio," he groaned.

He staggered back into the wreck of the stern cabin, pushing aside the arquebusiers. The place was thick with smoke and the reek of blood and powder. The flickering radiance of the fire played about the deck and bulkheads.

Hawkwood sank down on the storm sill, light-headed but as yet not in much pain. He could no longer remain on his feet.

Men shouting, a shower of water coming down past the gaping hole in the stern of the ship, the flames eating into the precious wood. His poor Osprey.

Bardolin and Murad standing like statues, the n.o.bleman's iron knife dangling from one hand. The imp had buried its little face in its master's neck.

And lying amid the flames two hulking, broken shapes with the blood bubbling in their wounds and swathes of bare, blistered flesh shining where the fur had been burnt off.

One werewolf had a paw clutched to its chest much as Hawkwood nursed his shoulder. The black lips drew back from the teeth in a parody of a smile.

"Your iron has done for me, after all," it sneered. "Who'd have thought it? The maid a fellow sufferer.Little lady, we could have talked, you and I."

The other beast was barely conscious. It growled feebly, the light in its eyes becoming fainter moment by moment.

More water cascaded down from above. They had rigged the hand-pumps and were frenziedly pumping seawater over the burning ship.

"You will never find the west," the werewolf said to Hawkwood, whose eyes were stinging and blurred with smoke and pain. To him the beast that had been Ortelius was nothing but a looming shadow backlit by sputtering flames and brightly lit cascades of seawater. "Better for you and yours that you do not.

There are things there best left alone by the men of Normannia. Turn your ship around if it remains afloat, Captain. I am only a messenger; there are others more powerful than I whose faces are set against you.

You cannot survive."

The werewolf hauled itself with startling speed to its feet. At the fore end of the cabin the crowd by the door watched transfixed as it hurled itself, laughing, from the shattered stern and disappeared into the sea beyond.

A volley of shots followed it down into the water, st.i.tching the sea with foam. It was gone.

"Griella," Murad groaned, and started forward into the fire.

Bardolin stopped him.

"Better to let her burn," he said with great gentleness. "She cannot live."

The men watched as the shape in the flames became smaller and paler. The ears shrank, the fur withered away and the eyes dulled. In seconds there was a naked girl lying there in the fire, her body ravaged with terrible wounds. She turned her head to them before the end, and Hawkwood thought she smiled. Then her body blackened, as though some preserving forces had suddenly failed, and the flames were licking around a charred corpse.

Murad's face was as bleak as a skull.

"She saved my life. She did that for me. She loved me, Bardolin."

"Get more water in here," Hawkwood said calmly, "or we'll lose the ship. Do you hear me there? Don't just stand around."

Murad shot him a look of pure hatred and stormed out past the staring soldiers.

"The ship. You must save the ship," Hawkwood insisted, but the fire and the bulkheads and the faces were retreating down a soundless tunnel away from him. He could not hold the scene in focus. Men were coming and going, and he was being lifted. He thought Bardolin's face was close to his, lips moving soundlessly. But his tunnel continued to lengthen. Finally it grew so long that it blotted out the light, and all the pictures faded. The faces and the mounting pain dimmed with growing distance. He held on as long as he could, until he could hear the pumps sluicing water all around him. His poor ship.

Then the shadows swooped in on his tired mind, and bore it off with them to some howling place of darkness.

TWENTY-FOUR "S HAHR Indun Johor," the vizier announced.

Aurungzeb the Golden waved a hand. "Send him in."

He kissed the nipple of the raven-haired Ramusian concubine one last time then threw a silk sheet over her naked limbs.

"You will remain," he said in her barbaric tongue, "but you will be a statue. Do you hear me?"

Heria nodded and bowed her head. He tugged the sheet up until she was entirely covered, then pulled his robe about him and sashed it tight. He thrust his plain-hilted dagger into the sash and when he looked up again Shahr Johor was there, kneeling with his eyes fixed floorwards.

"Up, up," he said impatiently, and gestured to a low stool while he himself took his place on a silk-upholstered divan by one wall.

They could hear the birds singing in the gardens beyond the seraglio, the bubble of water in the fountains.

This room was one of the most private in the entire palace, where Aurungzeb perused the most exquisite of his treasures-such as the girl cowering on the bed by the other wall, the sheet that cloaked her quivering as she breathed. The chamber was thick-walled, isolated from the labyrinth of the rest of the complex. One might scream to the depths of one's lungs within its confines and yet go unheard.

"Do you know why you are here?" the Sultan of Ostrabar and Aekir asked.

Shahr Johor was a young man with a fine black beard and eyes as dark as polished ebony.

"Yes, Majesty."