Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (56 page)

"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 damned few fit to shoulder an arquebus when finally we hit land," Sequero said, not one whit intimidated by the snakeblank 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, scum from the bottom of the heap though they might be. Perhaps this voyage is teaching you the compassion 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 nobleman 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 shapeshifting 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 scum 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 to them. 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 clearheaded. He knew little of the nuances of navigation, being just about able to take a cross-staff reading and keep the ship on a compass bearing. As soon as he was able, Hawkwood was up on deck, taking sightings from the Pole Star and checking his dead reckoning 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 scrap of canvas the carrack possessed. He could not convince the nobleman 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.

I
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 passengers and soldiers clambered out on deck to see what was going on.

"Seventy fathoms! White sand and seashells 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!"

"Is it land?" Murad was asking, his eyes glittering. "Is that it? I can see nothing."

Hawkwood ignored him and peered up at the foretop where the lookout was stationed.

"In the foretop there! What do you see?" There was a pause.

"Nothing but haze out to six or seven leagues, sir."

"Keep a good eye out, then."

"What is happening?" Murad demanded, his face puce with anger.

"We are on a shelving shore, Lord Murad," Hawkwood said calmly. "The sea is shallowing."

"Does that mean we are approaching landfall?"

"Possibly, yes."

"How far away is it?" Murad scanned the horizon as though he fully expected the Western Continent to pop up over it at that very second.

"I have no way of knowing, but we're shortening sail so we don't run full-tilt on to any reefs."

"Saints in heaven!" Murad said hoarsely. "It's really out there, isn't it?"

Hawkwood allowed himself to grin. "Yes, Murad, it really is."

O
N INTO THE
evening the carrack ran smoothly with the wind on her quarter and most of the ship's company on deck, their faces turned towards the west. When the first stars came out in the towering blue-black vault of the night sky the passengers retired below to eat, but Hawkwood kept both watches on deck, chewing salt pork and ship's biscuit. And the leadsman continued his chant from the forechains:

"Sixty fathoms. Sixty fathoms with this line."

There was a different quality to the air. The sailors could feel it. There was something more humid and cloying about it that was entirely at odds with the usual keen nature of the open sea, and Hawkwood thought he could smell something now; that growing smell like a breath of a summer garden. It was not far away.

"White foam! White foam dead ahead two cables!" the lookout screamed.

Hawkwood bent to call down the tiller-hatch. "Tiller there! Larboard by two points. West-south-west."

"Aye, sir."

The carrack moved smoothly round, the wind coming right aft now. The crew rushed to the braces to trim the yards. Hawkwood saw the white flicker and rush of foam breaking on black rocks off on the starboard side.

"Leadsman! What's our depth?"

There was a splash, a long waiting minute, then the leadsman declared, "Forty fathoms, sir, and white sand!"

"Take in topsails!" Hawkwood shouted.

The crew raced up the shrouds, bent over the topsail yards and began folding in the pale expanses of canvas. The ship lost speed.

"Why are we slowing down, Captain?" It was Murad, coming up the quarterdeck ladder almost at a run.

"Breakers ahead!" the lookout shrieked. "Starboard and larboard. Three cables from the bow!"

"God almighty!" Hawkwood exclaimed, startled. "Let go anchor!"

A seaman knocked loose the heavy sea anchor from the bows with the blow of a mallet. There was an enormous splash that lit up the black sea and the ship lost way, coming gradually to a full stop. She began to yaw as the wind pushed her stern around.

"Get a bower anchor out from the stern, Velasca," Hawkwood told his first mate. "And pray it holds in this ground."

He could see them himself - a broken line of white water barely visible off in the night - and there was a new sound, the distant roar of surf. Hawkwood found he was trembling, his shoulder a scarlet flame of pain and the sweat sour and slick about him. But for the vigilance of the lookout, the ship would still be sailing towards the distant rocks.

"Is that it?" Murad asked in a breath, gazing out at the white foam which sliced open the darkness.

"Maybe. It might be a reef. We can't take any chances. I've dropped anchor. I don't like the ground, but there's no way I'm going any further in at night. We'll have to wait for daylight."

They both listened, watched. Hard to imagine what might be out there in the night; what manner of country lay beyond the humid darkness and the line of treacherous breakers.

"Stern anchor out and holding, sir," Velasca reported.

"Very good. Send down the larboard watch, and have the starboards haul the boats out over the side. They need a wetting, or they'll leak like sieves in the morning."

"Aye, sir."

Hawkwood stared out into the darkness, feeling the ship roll and pitch beneath his feet like a tethered animal bucking the halter. The heat of the night seemed more intense now, and he thought he saw the tiny bodies of insects flickering about the stern lantern. Not an isolated reef, then, but something ~ more substantial. It was hard to believe after all this time that their destination was most likely out there in the darkness, under their lee.

He wondered what Haukal would have made of it, and for a moment pondered the disappearance of his other ship, the graceful little caravel and the good seamen who had manned her. Were they sailing still, on some distant latitude? Or were the fishes gnawing at their bones? He might never know.

Murad had gone. Hawkwood could hear the nobleman shouting orders down in the waist, calling for his officers and sergeants. He must have everything polished and shining; they would be claiming a new world for their king in the morning.

T
HAT LAST NIGHT,
Hawkwood, Murad and Bardolin shared a bottle of Candelarian wine in the stern cabin, the shutters open to let in some air. A moth flew in the glassless windows and flapped about the table lantern like a thing entranced, and they, equally entranced, watched it avidly until it ventured too close to the flame and fell to the table, blackened. They let it lie there like some sort of mocking talisman, a promise of things to come, perhaps. And they toasted the voyage and whatever the morning might bring in the good wine, saving the last drops for a libation to be poured into the sea in a ritual far older than any vision of Ramusio's. They drank to those whose souls had been lost in their passage of the ocean and to whatever future might appear to them out of the sunrise.

In the morning the sun came up out of a belt of molten cloud, like the product of some vast furnace housed below the eastern horizon. Every member of the ship's company was on deck dressed in their best; Hawkwood was even wearing a sword. They could hear clearly the thunder of breaking surf, feel the damp, heavy air of the land. There were birds perched in the rigging, little dun sparrow-like creatures that twittered and sang with the rising of the sun. It was a sound that had the crew staring and smiling with wonder. Birdsong - something from a former life.

There was a mist, honeyed by the sunrise. The lookout in the foretop was the first man to be clear of it, and he yelled out to the depth of his lungs:

"Land ho! Abaft the starboard beam there - hills and trees. Great God!"

There was a spasm of cheering which Murad and his officers silenced. The mist thinned moment by moment.

And there it was. A green country of thick vegetation solidifying out of the veils of morning. Mountains rearing up into a clear sky, and the gathering sunrise gilding it.