Hawkwood's voyage

TWENTY-THREE

They found Billerand halfway through the middle watch, down in the cable tiers in the fore part of the hold. He had gone below to check on the eight-inch cables that served the anchors. The boy Mateo had been with him; of his body there was no trace. The soldiers said they had heard nothing.

A file of arquebusiers fired a volley as what remained of his corpse was slipped over the side in recognition of the soldier he had once been, then they went back to their posts, in fours now instead of pairs, and with lanterns burning throughout the hold to try and keep the shadows at bay.

Hawkwood and Murad spent what was left of the night drinking good brandy in the nobleman’s quarters and racking their tired brains for something to do, some course of action that would help. Hawkwood even suggested asking Ortelius for aid, but Murad vetoed him. Bad enough that the priest seemed to be winning more and more influence among the soldiers and the sailors, but for the ship’s officers to go running to him for help was intolerable.

Bardolin joined them, bad news written all over his face.

“Ortelius is addressing a meeting of sorts on the gundeck,” he told them.

“The gundeck!” Murad exclaimed.

“Yes. It would seem he has made it his mission to win over the poor lost souls of the Dweomer-folk to his way of thinking. There are many of the soldiers there, and some of the mariners too.”

“I’ll get Sequero to break up their little party,” Murad said, beginning to rise from his chair.

“No, Lord Murad, I beg you do not. It can only do harm. Most of your men are still at their posts, and the majority of your sailors, Captain, but I noticed one of your ship’s officers, Velasca. He was there with the rest.”

“Velasca?” Hawkwood exploded. “The mutinous dog!”

“It would seem,” Murad drawled, “that our subordinates are evolving minds of their own. Have some brandy, Mage. And take that thing out of the front of your robe for the Saint’s sake. I have seen familiars before.”

Bardolin released the imp. It hopped on to the table and sniffed at the neck of the brandy decanter, then grinned as Murad chucked it gently under the chin.

“Good luck, an imp aboard ship,” Hawkwood said quietly.

“Yes,” Bardolin said. “I remember Billerand telling me once, back in Abrusio.”

There was a heavy silence. Hawkwood downed his brandy as though it were water. “What have you found out?” he asked the wizard at last, eyes watering from the strong spirit.

“I have been doing some reading. On werewolves. My collection of thaumaturgical works is pitifully inadequate-my home was ransacked ere we left Hebrion-and I have had to be discreet in enquiring as to whether any of the other passengers have similar works in their possession, you understand. But according to what meagre researches I have been able to carry out, shifters do not like confinement of two kinds. Gregory of Touron reckons that the longer the man who is the shifter retains his human form, the more violent the actions of the beast once he transforms. Hence if shifters do not intend to run entirely amok once in animal form, they must change back and forth regularly, even if the beast form only lies motionless. It is like lancing a boil. The pus must be let out occasionally. The beast must breathe.”

“What’s the other form of confinement?” Murad asked impatiently.

“That is simple. Any prolonged period of incarceration in close quarters, such as a house, a cave-”

“Or a ship,” Hawkwood interrupted.

“Just so, Captain.”

“Brilliant,” Murad said caustically, flourishing his glass. “What good do these priceless nuggets do us, old man?”

“They tell us that this shifter is suffering on two counts. First because he is in the confined space of a ship, and second because he cannot change back and forth with the frequency he might desire. And so the pressure builds up, and the frustration.”

“You’re hoping he will make a mistake, lose control,” Hawkwood said.

“Yes. He has been very careful so far. He has murdered our weather-worker and left us becalmed, thinking perhaps that will be enough. But the wind has struck up again and still the ship is pointed west, so he strikes again-at a ship’s officer this time. He is starting to sow the seeds of panic.”

“They know it was a shifter that killed Pernicus,” Murad said, his eyes two slits in his white-skinned face. “It’s hard to say who are the most terrified, the soldiers or the passengers.”

“He hopes to ignite a mutiny, perhaps,” Hawkwood said thoughtfully.

“Yes. There is one other thing Gregory tells us, however. It is that the shifter who has recently killed is not sated-quite the reverse, in fact. Often he finds he must kill again and again, especially when he is in these confined conditions I have mentioned. He loses more control with every murder until in the end the rational part of him recedes and the mindless beast gains control.”

“Which perhaps is what happened to the shifter aboard the Faulcon,” Hawkwood put in.

“Yes, I am afraid so.”

“The Faulcon did not carry a complement of Hebrian soldiers, nor arquebuses with iron bullets,” Murad said stoutly. “No, this thing is becoming afraid, is my guess. If the wizard is correct then the shifter is beginning to succumb to his more bestial impulses. It may work to our advantage.”

“And in the meantime we await another death?” Hawkwood asked.

“Yes, Captain, I think we do,” Bardolin said.

“I don’t think much of your strategy, Mage. It is like that of the sheep as the wolf closes in.”

“I can think of nothing else.”

“There is no mark, no sign by which the beasts can be recognized in human form?”

“Some old wives say there is something odd about the eyes. They are often strange-looking, not quite human.”

“That’s not much to go on.”

“It is all I have.”

“Where will he strike next, do you think?” Murad asked.

“I think it will be at what he perceives to be the centre of resistance and the source of authority. I think that next he will strike at one of those sitting about this table.”

Murad and Hawkwood stared blankly at one another. Finally the scarred nobleman managed a strangled laugh.

“You have a sure way of ruining good brandy, Mage. It might be vinegar in my mouth.”

“Be prepared,” Bardolin insisted. “Do not let yourselves be found alone at any time, and always carry a weapon that will bite its black flesh.”

The carrack sailed on with its twin cargoes of fear and discontent. Velasca, Hawkwood noted, was slow to obey orders and seemed perpetually ill at ease, even when the splendid north-easter continued steadily, breezing in over the starboard quarter and propelling the ship along at a good six knots. Two leagues run off with every two turns of the glass, one hundred and forty-four sea miles with every full day of sailing. And west, always due west. The carrack’s beakhead bisected the sinking disc of every flaming sunset as though it meant to sail into its very heart. Hawkwood loved his ship more than ever then, as she responded to his attentions, his cajolings, his lashing on of sail after sail. She seemed unaffected by the feelings on board, and leapt over the waves like a willing horse scenting home in the air ahead.

2nd day of Endorion, year of the Saint 551.

Wind north-east, fresh and steady. Course due west. Speed six knots with the breeze on the starboard quarter.

Courses, topsails and bonnets.

Six weeks out of Abrusio harbour, by my estimate over eight hundred leagues west of North Cape in the Hebrionese, on the approximate latitude of Gabrion, which we will follow until we find land in the west.

In the forenoon watch Lord Murad had three soldiers strappadoed from the main yardarm for insubordination. As I write they are being attended on the gundeck by Brother Ortelius and some of the oldwives aboard. Strange bedfellows.

Hawkwood looked over the entry, frowning, then shrugged as he sat and dipped his quill in the inkwell again.

In the five days since First Mate Billerand and Ship’s Boy Mateo were lost there have been no further deaths on board, though the mood of the ship’s company has not improved. I have had words with Acting First Mate Velasca; it seems he is not happy with our course and the voyage as a whole. I told him that I expect to sight land within three weeks, which seemed to improve his temper and that of the crew. The soldiers, however, are growing more restless by the day, and despite the efforts of Murad’s junior officers, they refuse to man their posts down in the hold. There is something down there, they say, and they will only guard working parties hauling up provisions.

Billerand is sorely missed.

Hawkwood rubbed his tired eyes as the flickering table lantern played over the pages of his log. On the desk by the lantern Bardolin’s imp squatted cross-legged and watched the scrawling quill with fascination. The little creature was covered with ink; it seemed to love daubing itself with it.

On a chair by the door of the cabin his master slumped, asleep. The mage had an iron spike loosely gripped in one hand and his head had fallen forward on to his chest. He was snoring softly.

They had taken Bardolin’s advice to heart. None of them remained alone any more, especially at night.

If Hawkwood paused to listen, he could hear the creak and groan of the ship’s timbers, the rush and hiss of the sea as the carrack’s bow went up and down, the voices of men on the deck above his head. And from the other side of the thin bulkhead, dark moans and thumps from Murad’s cabin. He was not alone either. He had the girl in there with him, Griella.

It was late. Hawkwood felt he had neglected the log; he felt he should pad out the bald entries more fully, leave something for posterity perhaps. The thought made him smile wryly. Perhaps some fisherman might find it one day, grasped in his skeletal hand.

He looked again at the last sentence he had written, and his face fell.

Billerand is sorely missed.

Aye. He had not truly realized how much he had depended on the bald, mustachioed ex-soldier. He and Julius Albak had been the two indomitable pillars aboard ship. Good shipmates, fine friends.

Now they were both gone, Julius at the hands of the Inceptines-they had killed him, no matter that it was a marine’s arquebus which had stopped his heart-and Billerand under the muzzle of a werewolf. Hawkwood felt strangely alone. On him rested the entire responsibility for the expedition, especially if the Grace of God had foundered, which he was beginning to believe had happened. He and he alone could point the Osprey’s beakhead in the right direction.

The knowledge weighed on him sorely. He had told Velasca that three weeks would see landfall, but that had been a mere sop to the man’s fear. Hawkwood had no idea how long they had to go before the fabled Western Continent would loom up out of the horizon.

He heard the ship’s bell struck twice. Two bells in the middle watch, an hour past midnight. He would take a last sniff of air up on deck, check the trim of the sails and then retire to his bunk.

He placed a sea cloak over the gently snoring Bardolin and went to the door. The imp chirruped wheedlingly at him and he turned.

“What is it, little one?”

With a bound, it launched itself off the desktop and landed on his shoulder. It nuzzled his ear, and he laughed.

“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 glass 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 bloody, 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 bum-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.

Murad 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 partition. There was a thump and crash. The beast cocked its massive 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 now covered 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 partition 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, glass, 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 hellish 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 bastard, 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 bloody mess of his shoulder. He could feel the ends of his collar-bone under his hands, and splinters of bone pricked 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 nobleman’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, stitching 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.