Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (46 page)

Why did she always leave just before the dawn? And that old man - what was she to him? Not a lover, surely.

His mouth tightened and he clenched his fists on the coverlet.

She is mine,
he thought.
I will allow her to have no others. I
must
keep her
.

But the dreams: they came every night, and every night they were the same. That suffocating heat, the weight and prickling fur of the beast on top of him. Those eyes regarding him with unblinking malevolence. What could it mean?

He was always tired these days, always weary. He had been a fool to put down the Inceptine like that - the man would have to die now. He was too powerful an enemy. Abeleyn would see the necessity of it.

He rubbed the dark orbits of his eyes, feeling as though he could never entirely grind the tiredness out of them. He wanted her here, warm and writhing in his arms. For a second the intensity of that desire unnerved him.

He sat up again. There was something strange about the ship, something he had to consider for a moment before realizing. Then it struck him.

The carrack was no longer moving.

He leapt from the hanging cot so that it swung and banged against the bulkhead, pulled on his clothes hurriedly and grabbed the rapier with its baldric. As he reached the door, it was knocked on loudly. He yanked it open to find the ship's boy, Mateo, standing there with a white face.

"Captain Hawkwood's compliments, sir, and he asks would you join him in the hold? There is something you ought to see."

"What is it? Why have we stopped moving?"

"He said to... You have to see, sir." The boy looked as though he was about to be sick.

"Lead on then, damn you. It had better be important."

T
HE WHOLE SHIP
was astir, the passengers milling on the gundeck and soldiers posted at every hatch and companionway with their slow-match lit and swords drawn. In their journey into the bowels of the carrack Murad ran into a prowling Sergeant Mensurado.

"Sergeant, by whose orders are these sentries posted?"

"Ensign Sequero, sir. He's down in the hold. We've orders to let none but the ship's officers pass."

Murad was about to ask him what had happened, but that would reflect poorly on his own grasp of the situation. He merely nodded and said, "Carry on, then," and followed Mateo down the dark hatches towards the hold.

Some water washing about among the high stacks of casks and crates and sacks. Rats skipping underfoot. It was pitch black but for the small hand lantern Mateo carried, but as they came through one of the compartment bulkheads Murad saw another clot of light flickering ahead and men gathered in a knot within its radiance.

"Lord Murad," Hawkwood said, straightening from a crouch. Sequero was there, and di Souza, and the injured first mate, Billerand, his arm strapped to his side and his face puffed with pain.

They drew back, and he saw the shape lying in the water, the dark gleam of blood and viscera, the limbs contorted beyond life.

"Who is it?"

"Pernicus. Billerand found him half a glass ago."

"I was mooching around," the mustachioed first mate said, "checking the cargo. It's all I'm up to these days."

Murad knelt and examined the corpse. Pernicus's eyes were wide open, the mouth agape in a last scream.

Had he heard it? Or had that been part of his dream?

The man's neck had been almost entirely bitten through; Murad could see the clammy tube of the windpipe, the ragged ends of arteries, a white-shard of vertebra.

Lower down the intestines had spilled out like a coil of greasy rope. There were chunks missing from the body. The marks of teeth were plain to see.

"Sweet Ramusio!" Murad whispered. "What did this?"

"A beast of some kind," Hawkwood said firmly. "Something came down here in the middle watch - one of the crew thought he glimpsed it. Pernicus liked to work his magic from the hold because it was more peaceful than the gundeck or the waist. It came down here after him."

"Did the man say what it was like?" Murad asked.

"Big and black. That's all he could say. He thought he had imagined it. There is nothing like that aboard the ship."

A dream or nightmare of a great, black-furred weight atop him.
Could it have been real?

Murad mastered his confusion and straightened up out of the foul water.

"Is it still aboard, do you think?"

"I don't know. I want a thorough search of the ship. If whatever did this is on board, we'll find it and kill it."

Murad remembered the log of the
Cartigellan Faulcon
. It could not be. The same thing could not be happening again. Such things were not possible.

"I have sent for the mage, Bardolin. He may be able to enlighten us," Hawkwood added.

"Do the passengers know what has happened?"

"They know Pernicus is dead. I could not stop that from leaking out, what with the loss of the wind, and all. But they don't know the manner of his death."

"Keep it that way. We don't want a panic on board."

The four of them stood round the corpse in silence for a moment. It occurred to all of them in the same instant that the beast could be here with them now, lurking among the shadows. Di Souza was shifting uneasily, his drawn sword winking in the lantern light.

"Someone's coming," he said. Another globe of light was approaching and two men were clambering over the cargo towards them.

'That's far enough, Masudi!" Hawkwood called. "Go back. Bardolin, you come forward alone."

The mage splashed towards him, and they could make out Masudi's lantern growing smaller as he returned the way he had come.

"Well, gentlemen," Bardolin began, and bent to the corpse much as Murad had done.

"Well, Mage?" Murad asked coolly, having regained his poise.

Bardolin's face was as pale as Mateo's had been. "When did this happen?"

"Sometime before the dawn, we think," Billerand told him gruffly. "I found him here, as he lies."

"What did it?" Murad demanded.

The mage turned the limbs, examining the lacerated flesh with an intensity that was disturbing to the more squeamish among them. Sequero looked away.

"How were the horses last night?" Bardolin asked.

Sequero frowned. "A bit restless. They took a long time to quieten down."

"They smelled it," the mage said. He got to his feet with a low groan.

"Smelled what?" Murad demanded impatiently. "What did this, Bardolin? What manner of beast? It was not a man, that's plain."

Bardolin seemed reluctant to speak. He was staring at the mangled corpse with his face as grim as a gravestone.

"It was not a man, and yet it was. It was both, and neither."

"What gibberish is this?"

"It was a werewolf, Lord Murad. There is a shapeshifter aboard this ship."

"Saint's preserve us!" di Souza said into the shocked silence.

"Are you sure?" Hawkwood asked.

"Yes, Captain. I have seen such wounds before." Bardolin seemed downcast and strangely bitter, Murad thought. And not as shocked as he ought to be.

"So it is not just an animal," Hawkwood was saying. "It changes back and forth. It could be anyone, anyone of the ship's company."

"Yes, Captain."

"What are we to do?" di Souza asked plaintively. No one answered him.

"Speak to us, Mage," Murad grated. "What can we do to find the beast and kill it?"

"There is nothing you can do, Lord Murad."

"What do you mean?"

"It will be wearing its human face again now. We will simply have to be watchful, to wait for it to strike again."

"What kind of plan is that?" Sequero snapped. "Are we cattle, to wait for the slaughter?"

"Yes, Lord Sequero, we are. That is exactly what we are to this thing."

"Is there no way of telling who is the werewolf?" Billerand asked.

"Not that I know of. We will simply have to be vigilant, and there are certain precautions we can take also."

"Meanwhile we are becalmed once more," Hawkwood said.

"Pernicus's wind died with him. The ship is in the doldrums again."

They stood in silence, looking down at the wreck of the weather-worker.

"I do not think this a chance murder," Bardolin said eventually. "Pernicus was singled out for slaughter. Whatever other motives this thing has, it does not want this expedition to reach the west."

"It is rational then, even when in beast form?" Hawkwood asked, startled.

"Oh, yes. Werewolves retain the identity of their human form. It is just that their... impulses are naked, uncontrollable."

"Bardolin, Captain, I wish to confer with you both in my cabin," Murad said abruptly. "Ensigns, between you you will dispose of Pernicus's body. Make sure no one else sees it. The man was murdered, that is all the rest of the folk aboard need to know. Sequero, keep the guards posted on every hatch leading down into the hold. It may still be down here."

"Have you any iron balls for the arquebuses?" Bardolin asked.

"No, we use lead. Why?"

"Iron and silver are what harm it most. Even the steel of your sword will do but little damage. Best get some iron bullets moulded as fast as you can."

"I'll get the ship's smith on to it," Billerand said.

They left Sequero and di Souza to their grisly work and made their way back up through the ship.

"Are you sure you should be out of your hammock?" Hawkwood asked Billerand. The first mate was groaning and puffing as he progressed up the companionways.

"It'll take more than a few cracked bones to keep me from my duty, Captain. And besides, I have a feeling that soon we'll be needing all the ship's officers we can get."

"Aye. See the gunner, Billerand. I want every man issued with a weapon. Arquebuses, boarding axes, cutlasses, anything. If anyone gets overly curious, spin them a tale of pirates."

Billerand grinned ferociously under his shaggy moustache.

"And won't they wish it were true!"

"You'd best beat to quarters as well, to complete the picture. If we can make everyone think the danger we face is external, human, then there's less chance of a panic."

"Let slip that there's some kind of spy on board," Bardolin put in, "and that is who murdered Pernicus."

Murad laughed sourly. "There
is
a spy on board."

H
AWKWOOD,
B
ARDOLIN AND
Murad assembled in the nobleman's cabin, whilst behind them the ship went into an uproar. The decks were filled with thunder as the guns were run out, the sailors issued with arms and the passengers shepherded into spare corners. It would be easy for Murad's officers to quietly splash Pernicus's body over the side in the turmoil.

"Have a seat, gentlemen," Murad said sombrely, gesturing to the cot and the stool that were spare. The heat was beginning to build up belowdecks now that the wind had dropped, and their faces were shining with sweat. But Murad did not open the stern windows.

"The noise will cover our conversation," he said, jerking a thumb at the din beyond the cabin. "Just as well."

He opened a desk drawer and brought out an oilskin-wrapped package. It was rectangular, the covering much worn. He unwrapped it and revealed a thick, battered book.

"The rutter," Hawkwood breathed.

"Yes. I have deemed it time to reveal its contents to you, Captain, and to you, Bardolin, since I feel you probably have an expertise in these matters."

"I don't understand," the mage said. The imp squirmed in his robe, but went unnoticed.

"We are not the first expedition to search for the Western Continent. There was one - in fact there were two - who went before us, and both ended in disaster; the second because the ship had a werewolf on board."

There was a pause. The racket and clamour of the carrack went on heedlessly outside.

"I was never informed of this," Hawkwood said coldly.

"I did not think it necessary, but I do now with things the way they are. It would seem that western expeditions have a way of coming to grief that is similar."

"Explain, please," Bardolin said. Sweat was trickling down his temples and dripping off his battered nose.

Briefly, Murad informed them both of the fate of the
Cartigellan Faulcon
, over a century before. He also told them of the references in the rutter to an even earlier voyage west, one undertaken by a group of mages fleeing persecution in the Ramusian kingdoms.

"The information is fragmentary, and obscure, but I have tried to glean what I can from it," he said. "What disturbs me are the similarities between the three voyages. Werewolves, Dweomer-folk. Murders on board ship."

"And ultimate disaster," Hawkwood added. "We should turn back for Abrusio, get the boats out and tow the ship's head into a wind. That Inceptine is right: this voyage is cursed."