Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (52 page)

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.

Twenty-Four

"S
HAHR
I
NDUN
J
OHOR,
" 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."

"Good. What think you of your new appointment?"

"I shall try to fulfil your wishes and ambitions to the best extent of my abilities, Majesty. I am yours to command."

"That's right," the Sultan grunted emphatically. "Your predecessor, the esteemed Shahr Baraz, is unfortunately rendered infirm due to the weight of his years. A magnificent soldier, but I am told his faculties are not what they once were - hence our failure before this absurd Ramusian fortress. You will carry on where Baraz left off. You will take Ormann Dyke, but first you will reorganize the army. My sources report that it is somewhat demoralized. Winter is coming on, the Thurian passes are closed and your only supply line is the Ostian river. When you reach the dyke you will put the army into winter quarters, and attack again once the weather has improved. In the meantime the accursed Ramusians will have to contend with coastal raids from our new allies, the Sultanates of Nalbeni and Danrimir. They will be prevented from reinforcing the dyke, and you will storm it when the winter snows abate."

"Then I am not to attack at once, Majesty?"

"No. As I said, the army is in need of some... reorganization. This present campaign is over. You will see that communications between the camps and the supply depots in Aekir are improved. Baraz was building a road, I believe; one of the last of his more coherent plans. Everything must be made ready so that in the spring the army is ready to move again. The dyke will be crushed and you will march on Torunn. A fresh levy will be made available to you then. Have you any questions?"

Shahr Johor, new supreme commander of the Merduk armies of Ostrabar, hesitated a moment and then said:

"One question, Majesty. Why was I selected for this particular honour? Shahr Baraz's second-in-command Mughal is surely better qualified."

Aurungzeb's florid face darkened. His fingers toyed with the hilt of his dagger.

"Mughal has a certain absurd attachment to Shahr Baraz. It would not do to leave him in command. He is being transferred elsewhere, as are most of the previous staff officers. I want a new beginning. We have been shackled by the old
Hraib
for too long; the world is entering a new age, when such outdated codes are a hindrance rather than a help. You are young and you have studied the new modes of warfare. I want you to apply your knowledge to the coming campaigns. There is a shipment of forty thousand arquebuses travelling down the Ostian River even as we speak. You will equip the best troops with them, and train them in the tactics that the Torunnans have used against us in the past. We will no longer face firearms with steel and muscle and raw courage. War has become a scientific thing. You will be the first general of my people to wage it according to the new rules."

Shahr Johor flung himself to the floor.

"You honour me too much, my Sultan. My life is yours. I will send you the spoils of all the Ramusian kingdoms. The west shall be brought into the fold of the True Faith, if Ahrimuz wills it."

"He wills it," Aurungzeb said sharply. "And so do I. Do not forget that." He waved a hand. "You may go."

Shahr Johor backed away, bowing as he went. Aurungzeb stood motionless long after he had gone, then: "Sit up!" he said abruptly.

Heria straightened, the silk sliding like water from her shoulders.

"Raise your head."

She did so, staring at a point on the ornate ceiling.

Aurungzeb sidled over to her. He was as silent as a cat in his movements, despite being a big man on the edge of corpulence. His eyes drank her in. One brown ring-encrusted hand slid along her torso. She remained as motionless as marble, a lovely statue sculpted by some genius.

"I shall give you a name," the Sultan breathed. "You must have a name. I know. I shall call you Ahara. It is the old name for the wind that every year sweeps westward across the steppes of Kambaksk and Kurasan. My people followed that wind, and with them went the Faith. Ahara. Say it."

She stared at him dumbly. He cursed and began speaking in the halting Normannic that was the common language of the western kingdoms.

"Your name is Ahara. Say it."

"
Ahara
."

He grinned hugely, his teeth a white gleam in his beard.

"I will have you taught our tongue, Ahara. I want to hear you speak it to me on our wedding night."

Still her eyes revealed nothing. He laughed.

"I talk to myself, do I not? You Ramusians... You will have to be consecrated into the Prophet's worship, of course. And you are too thin, the marks of the journey are upon you yet. I will feed you up, put flesh on those bones of yours. You will bear me fine sons in the time to come, and they will spend so much time killing each other that their sire will be left in peace in his old age." He pulled the sheet up around her. "Wife number twenty-six, you will be. I should have had more, but I am an abstemious man."

He flung an arm out towards the doorway. "Go," he said in Normannic.

She scampered from the chamber, the silk billowing from her shoulders like a pair of wings. Her feet could be heard pattering on the marble and porphyry of the floors beyond. Aurungzeb smiled into the empty room. He was in a good mood. He had found himself a superb new wife - he would marry her, despite the inevitable objections. She was too rare a jewel to keep as a mere concubine.

And he had rid himself of that relic from the past, Shahr Baraz. The orders had gone out by special courier, a picked squad of the palace guard journeying with them to carry them out. Soon the old man's head would be carted towards Orkhan in a jar, pickled in vinegar. He had been a faithful servant, a superb soldier, but now that Aekir had fallen and the impossible had been achieved, he was no longer needed. And besides, he was growing dangerously insubordinate. Shahr Johor was different. He was forward-looking for one thing, and after the example of Baraz he would know better than to disobey his Sultan.

Aurungzeb lay back on the rumpled, sex-smelling bed.

A pity they would not take the dyke in the same campaigning season as they had taken Aekir. That would have been a feat indeed. But it was of no great import that they would have to wait out the winter. It would give him a chance to cement the new alliances with Nalbeni and Danrimir.

The Ramusians, he knew, mostly thought of the Seven Sultanates as one Merduk power-bloc, but the reality was different. There were rivalries and intrigues, even minor wars between this sultanate and that. Danrimir was virtually an Ostrabarian client state, so closely tied to Orkhan had she become in the last months, but Nalbeni was a different matter.

The oldest of the Merduk countries, Nalbeni had been founded before even the Fimbrian Hegemony had fallen. It was primarily a sea power and its capital, Nalben, was supposed to be the largest port in the world, save perhaps for Abrusio of Hebrion in the west. It did not trust this upstart state from the north of the Kardian Sea, so naturally had allied with it to keep a closer eye on its progress. It was a good way of insinuating Nalbenic diplomats into Aurungzeb's court. Diplomats with flapping ears and heavy purses. But such was the way of the world. Ostrabar needed Nalbeni to keep up the pressure on Torunna from a different direction, so that when Shahr Johor moved against the dyke in the spring he would not find it manned by all the armies of Torunna.