Monarchies Of God - Hawkwoods Voyage Part 38

TWENTY-FIVE.

T HE north-easter stayed with them, as steady and as welcome as the Hebrian trade. Hawkwood could feel the constant thrumming of its power on the ship as though it were acting on the marrow of his very bones. The Osprey was alive, afloat, running before the wind. His mind relaxed and wandered off to that other place once more.

H E was a boy again, at sea for the first time on the clumsy caravel which had been the first Hawkwood-owned ship. His father was there, shouting obscenities at the straining seamen, and the white spray was coming aboard in packets as the vessel ran before the wind on the peridot-green swells of the Levangore. If he looked aft he could see the pale, dust-coloured coast of Gabrion with the darker rises of forests among the inland hills; and to larboard were the first islands of the Malacar Archipelago, floating like insubstantial ghosts in the haze of heat that had settled on the horizon.

Up and down, up and down the bow of the caravel went, the green waves like shimmering walls looming up and retreating again, the gulls screeching and calling and dropping guano over the deck, the rigging straining and creaking in time to the working timbers of the ship, and the blessed wind they had harnessed bellying out the booming and flapping sails.

This, he had thought, is the sea. And he had never questioned his right to be on it; rather he had welcomed his craft as a man would his wife.H AWKWOOD could not move. He was drenched in sweat and as immobile as a marble caryatid.

There was an unfamiliar smell in his nostrils. Burning.

A vast shudder as the ships came together, their hulls crunching and colliding.

"Fire!" Hawkwood yelled, and along the deck the men whipped the smoking slow-match across the touch-holes of the guns. Like a rippling thunder they exploded in sequence, leaping back on their carriages like startled bulls. There was an enormous noise, unlike any other. Louder than a storm-surf striking a rocky sh.o.r.e or a tempest in the heights of the Hebros. The whole starboard side of the ship disappeared in smoke and fire. Only men's screams and the shrieking of the blasted timbers carried above the roar.

The corsairs fired their own broadside, the muzzles of their culverins touching the very side of the carrack. They elevated the muzzles so the shot plunged upwards through the deck. The air exploded, became full of jagged shards of wood which ripped men apart, flung them clear across the deck or tossed them overboard like gutted fish. Hawkwood clambered on to the starboard quarterdeck rail and raised the heavy cutla.s.s above his head. "Now, lads, at them. Boarding parties away!"

And then he leapt on to the crowded slaughterhouse of the enemy ship.

"R ICHARD!' she cried as he pushed into her, expending himself, driving her backbone into the stuffed softness of the bed. The sweat dripped off his face to land on her collar-bone and trickled between her b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Jemilla grinned fiercely up at him, her body answering his, struggling against him. The sweat was a slick glue between them so their skins sucked and slid as they moved together and apart, like a ship breasting a heavy swell, the keel burying itself in each wave.

B UT the heat. His body was on fire, lying in a pool of liquid metal, every movement a torment, every pore oozing his life's fluid. The heat squeezed the water out of him until he was as dry and withered as the salted fish they had barrelled in the hold. If he moved he would crackle and creak and break apart into fragments as fine and desiccated as ash.

"Richard."

He opened his eyes.

Bardolin smiled. "So you have returned from your voyaging at last."

The ship moved about him, a lulling presence. He sensed that the wind was fine and steady on the quarter, a fresh breeze pushing them ever westwards. In the almost-quiet he heard the ship's bell struck three times, and the noise was incredibly comforting, like hearing the sound of a familiar voice.

He turned his face to one side and immediately the pain began, a molten glow that was centred deep in his right shoulder. He groaned involuntarily.

"Easy." The mage's strong fingers steadied his head, grasping his chin.

"The fire," he croaked.

"We got it under control. The ship is safe, Captain, and we are making good progress."

"Help me sit up."

"No. You-""Help me up!"

The pain came and went in sobbing waves, but he blinked and ground his teeth until it was a bearable presence, something he could live with.

Their surroundings were unfamiliar to him. A small cabin, with a culverin squatting against one wall.

"Where is this?"

"The gundeck. The carpenter rigged up some part.i.tions for you. You needed the peace."

So. He recognized it now, but it was strangely silent, as though the deck were almost deserted. He could hear many feet thumping above his head, and voices murmuring.

"The fire. The stern cabin-"

"More or less patched up. Chips has been working like a man possessed. We have no new gla.s.s for the stern windows though, so they must be shuttered most of the time."

"The log. Bardolin, did the log survive?"

The mage looked grim. "No. It went in the fire, as did most of your charts and the old rutter."

"Griella?"

"She is at peace. I was wrong ever to bring her on this voyage, and yet she saved our lives, I think.

Murad's, anyway. It is hard to know. A hard thing to have done."

"She loved him." It could have been question or statement.

"In her own way, yes. But no good would have come of it. They would have destroyed each other in the end and it is better, perhaps, that it has come about this way." The mage's arm, unexpectedly strong, steadied Hawkwood as he swayed. "Be careful, Captain. We don't want anything springing its seams again."

"Ortelius," Hawkwood was saying, ignoring him. "I can't believe it."

"Yes, who would have? An Inceptine cleric also a werewolf! That raises many questions, Captain, both for us on board ship and for the great and the good back home. I have this feeling that we have overlooked something, in our pride and our wisdom. There is something deep down in our society which we had not thought to find. Something abominable."

"Mateo, ere he changed, said his master was high in a society. I don't think he meant the one we know."

"We may find some answers in the west, I suppose. I do not see this as a voyage of discovery any longer, Captain, or an attempt at colonization. It is more of an armed reconnaissance. Murad concurs."

"The west. You think-?"

"That it is inhabited? Yes, but by what manner of men or beasts or both I know not."

Hawkwood swung his legs off the hanging cot. He could manage the pain now. It came and went like a tide. His right arm was strapped tightly to the side of his chest, unbalancing him.

"How bad is this?""The thing bit your collar-bone clean through, and mangled the ends of the bone. I have been cleaning the wound, removing the splinters. A couple of the oldwives have sat with me and kept wound-sickness at bay. It smells sweet enough and I think we have brought it off, but you will have a terrible scar and a lump, and your right arm will never be as strong again."

But I'm alive, Hawkwood thought. That is something. And my ship is afloat; that is something more.

He was wearing only a clout of linen about his loins and his legs seemed oddly pale to him, the feet a long distance away. He stared at them absently, and then a jet of fear thrilled him.

"Bardolin, the beast bit me. Does that mean I have its disease? Will I change?"

"The black disease is not contagious in the way people think. It is not carried in a bite."

"But Ortelius made a werewolf of Mateo."

"Yes. That intrigues me, I must admit. Fear not, Captain, whatever arcane and b.l.o.o.d.y initiation turned the ship's boy into a shifter was not practised on you. Men do not catch lycanthropy from a bite, no matter what the superst.i.tions say. Gregory confirms it, and my old master, Golophin, believed it also.

There is something more at work which we cannot yet understand."

Relieved somewhat, Hawkwood relaxed. "Why did he do it? Why did he do that to poor Mateo?"

"My guess is he needed help. He had seen how determined we were to continue west and was set on wiping out the three of us-you, Murad and I. To do that swiftly and in one swoop, he would need a fellow conspirator. He may also have been . . . lonely. Who knows? I cannot lay claim to any great insights into the souls of shifters, for all that I knew Griella better than most. There is a mystery in them that has to do with the relationship between the man-or the woman-and the beast." He halted and smiled wryly. "My apologies. I had not intended to confront you with a treatise."

"You knew-you knew what she was before ever she came aboard."

"I knew, may G.o.d forgive me. I was a little in love with her also, you see. I thought I could control her. I even had wild ideas of curing her. But that is done with. I will have it on my conscience."

"It's all right. It's over with anyway-for the best, maybe. Tell me, how long has it been since the fire and the rest? How long have I been on my back?"

"Eight days."

"Eight days! Sweet Saints in heaven! Help me to my feet, Bardolin. I must talk to Velasca. I must check our course."

Bardolin pushed him gently but inexorably back on to the cot.

"Velasca, it seems, knows how to sail due west, and the wind has been as steady as you please. I will send him down to you if you desire, but you are not going anywhere. Not for a while yet."

Hawkwood sank on to the blankets once more. His head was spinning.

"Very well. Send him down at once, and get someone to help me dress, will you? And send Chips, too. I want to talk to him about the repairs."

"All right, Captain. I'll get them down as soon as I may."Bardolin left him, frowning.

Eight days. They might be within a sennight of reaching land, if Velasca had kept to his course. They were going to do it. Hawkwood could feel it in his mangled bones. He could feel the land, bulking somewhere on some unconscious horizon illuminated only by a mariner's intuition. It was there, and they were closing on it with every hour the carrack ploughed on before the kindly wind.

M URAD stood at the break of the quarterdeck with his officers on either side, his stance adjusting itself automatically to the roll of the ship. His long lank hair was flying free and he was dressed in his black riding leathers. His rapier hung scabbarded by his side. Though his face was white as chalk, the scar that furrowed one hollow cheek seemed to have been kindled by the wind into a blazing carmine and his eyes were as dark as sloes.

The waist was packed with people, the gangways lined with watching soldiers. Nearly all the ship's company were present for punishment.

"Carry on, Sequero," Murad said tonelessly.

Sequero stepped forward to the rail. "Sergeant Mensurado, bring the man forward."

There was a boil of activity in the waist. Mensurado and two other soldiers thrust through the throng with a fourth man whose hands were tied behind his back.

"Read the charges, Ensign."

Sequero called out in a clear voice so the a.s.sembled company could hear: "Gabriello Habrar, you are charged that on the eleventh day of Endorion in the year of the Saint five hundred and fifty-one, you did in the forecastle of the carrack Gabrian Osprey utter remarks detrimental to the morale and determination of a crown-sponsored expedition and thus did revile and denigrate the authority of our commander and his lord, our sovereign King, Abeleyn of Hebrion and Imerdon."

Sequero paused and glanced at Murad. The lean n.o.bleman nodded curtly.

"You are therefore sentenced to the strappado. Sergeant Mensurado, carry on. Drummer."

A harsh, dry drumming began as one of the soldiers started to ply the goatskin of his instrument. A sailor perched on the main yardarm let down a rope which Mensurado and his comrades fastened to the wrists of the accused man. The other end of the rope was thrown to the soldiers on the gangway.

Murad lifted a hand.

The bound man was hauled into the air by the wrists, his hands at a horrible angle up his back and his shoulder-blades protruding grotesquely. He screamed in agony, but the rasping drumroll smothered the sound. Then he dangled, kicking and twisting. After a few minutes the screaming stopped and he swayed on the end of the rope like a sack of meat, his eyes bulging, blood trickling from his bitten tongue.

"Cut him down," Murad ordered, and turned away from the sight to a contemplation of the carrack's wake. Sequero and di Souza went to him.

"I will have discipline," Murad said coldly. "You, gentlemen, have not been doing your job. The men are muttering and mutinous. I will have that out of them if I have to flog and strappado every last one of the dastards. Is that clear?"Di Souza mumbled an agreement. Sequero did not speak, but his eyes were blazing.

"Have you something you wish to say, Ensign?" Murad demanded, turning on his aristocratic subordinate.

"Only that if you strappado every man in the tercio we'll have d.a.m.ned few fit to shoulder an arquebus when finally we hit land," Sequero said, not one whit intimidated by the snake-blank eyes of his superior officer.

Murad stared at him for a long moment, and the ensign blenched but stood his ground. Finally a smile twisted the older man's face.

"I would sooner have a maimed man who is loyal than a fit one who is not," he said quietly. "It would seem, Sequero, that you are developing some regard for your fellow men, sc.u.m from the bottom of the heap though they might be. Perhaps this voyage is teaching you the compa.s.sion of a commoner or a Mendicant Friar. If at any stage your burgeoning sympathy for the common soldiery interferes with your duty and your loyalty to your superior and your king, you will, I am sure, be the first to let me know."

Sequero said nothing, but he looked at his senior officer with open hatred. Murad smiled again, that dead, cold smile which was worse than an angry glare.

"You may go, both of you. See to Habrar, di Souza. Get one of these witches on board to have a look at him. Sequero, we will have small-arms practice this evening after the meal."

They both saluted, then turned on their heels and left the quarterdeck. The crowd in the waist was already dispersing, many black looks being thrown at the n.o.bleman who lounged at the carrack's taffrail.

Murad did not care. He knew that his vision of a colony in the west governed by himself was a pipe-dream, morning mist to be burned away by the sun. Talking to Bardolin, he had found himself agreeing with the mage that there must be something in the west, something Ortelius had been charged to keep them from discovering. But by whom had he been charged? Either the shape-shifting cleric had been sent on his mission by a Ramusian monarch, which was unlikely-none of the western kings would willingly use both an Inceptine and a werewolf as an agent-or he was working for someone already in the west. Murad's undiscovered continent had already been claimed.

But by whom?

Werewolves. Shifters. Mages. He was sick to death of the lot of them. They made him shudder. And the memory of his dreams-what he had thought were dreams-still caused him to lie open-eyed and sweating in the night. He had shared a bed with the beast, had felt its heat and the baleful regard of its eyes.

He remembered Griella's body taut as cord under him, the tawny smoothness of her skin. And he turned his face to the carrack's wake once more so that none of the sc.u.m below might see the burning brightness that flooded his expressionless black eyes.

T HE carrack was regularly running off sixty leagues a day, the north-easter propelling her along at a smooth seven knots. Four hundred and eighty leagues, perhaps, since Hawkwood had been confined to his bunk. They had travelled the distance from the southern Calmaric deserts to the far frozen north of Yazdegard; the extent of the known world. And still it seemed there was no sign of an end to the ocean.

The fire on board had caught the mizzen course and burned away the mizzen backstays and a fair portion of the shrouds. If a squall had hit them then they would have lost the mast, but the sea had been kind tothem. The flames had been doused with Dweomer-pumped seawater, some of the sorcerers on board lifting hundred-gallon packets of the stuff out of the waves and dumping it over the mizzen, the quarterdeck and the stern. Whilst Hawkwood had been unconscious the repairs had gone on apace, and the carrack was whole again with only a few black charred scars to mark how close to disaster she had come. But as the carpenter informed Hawkwood that afternoon, they had used up the last of their timber stores to put right the damage and could now do no more. If the ship was damaged again they would have nothing to repair her with. They had no spare cordage or cable, either. It would be knotting and splicing until they made landfall.

Velasca made his report also. He had kept a tolerably legible log in the days he had conned the ship alone, but he was obviously relieved to have his captain conscious and clear-headed. He knew little of the nuances of navigation, being just about able to take a cross-staff reading and keep the ship on a compa.s.s bearing. As soon as he was able, Hawkwood was up on deck, taking sightings from the Pole Star and checking his deadreckoning over and over. He had a man in the forechains day and night with the deep-sea lead, sounding for the bottom, and he shortened sail at night despite the protests of Murad, who wanted them to tear along under every sc.r.a.p of canvas the carrack possessed. He could not convince the n.o.bleman of his own conviction that they were nearing land at last. It was a mariner's guess, something in the smell of the air, perhaps, or the appearance of the ocean, but Hawkwood was sure that the Western Continent was not far away.

O N the twentieth day of Endorion, nine days after Hawkwood had woken to find Bardolin leaning over him, the leadsman in the forechains raised his voice into a strangled shout that made every man and woman on board look up. For days he had been chanting monotonously: "No bottom. No bottom here with this line." But now he yelled excitedly: "Eighty fathoms! Eighty fathoms with this line!"

Hawkwood and Murad were on the quarterdeck, Hawkwood bending over the table they had brought up from below, writing laboriously and painfully with his left hand into his new log.

"Seventy-five! Seventy-five fathoms!" the leadsman called. And the ship was swept with a buzz of excited talk. The companionways thundered as pa.s.sengers and soldiers clambered out on deck to see what was going on.

"Seventy fathoms! White sand and seash.e.l.ls in the lead!"

"Keep sounding!" Hawkwood bellowed forward. "All hands! All hands to shorten sail!"

Eight bells in the last dog-watch had just been struck and the watch had changed, but the whole ship's crew came scampering out into the waist and forecastle.

"Velasca!" Hawkwood roared over the soft thudding of feet and the rising babble. Topsails alone! Keep her braced round there!"