Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (79 page)

"Look, down in the jungle. They've just appeared."

Hawkwood rubbed his swollen eyes and peered out into the noisy darkness below. Hard to see if he concentrated. Better to let his vision unfocus. There: a tiny blur of brightness far off in the night.

"Lights?"

"Yes, and they're not blasted glow-worms either."

"How far, do you think?" They were talking in whispers. The sentries were awake and alert, but Murad had woken no one else.

"Hard to say," the nobleman said. "Six or eight leagues, anyway. They must be above the trees. On the flank of one of these weird hills, perhaps."

"Above the trees, you say?"

"Keep your voice down. Yes, otherwise how could we see them? I noted no clearings within sight on the way down the ridge."

"What do we do?" Hawkwood asked.

"You get out your contraption and take a bearing on those lights. That is our route for tomorrow."

Hawkwood did as he was told, fumbling with bowl and water and needle in the firelight.

"North-west or thereabouts."

"Good. Now we have something to aim for. I was not happy at the thought of simply wandering into the interior until we struck that road."

"I don't suppose it's occurred to you that we were
meant
to see those lights, Murad?"

The nobleman's face twisted in a rictus-like smile. "Does it matter? Whatever dwells on this continent, we will have to confront it - or them - at some point. Better to do it sooner."

There was a strange light in Murad's eyes, an eagerness which was disquieting. Hawkwood felt as though he were on a rudderless ship with a lee shore foaming off the bow. That sensation of helplessness, of being manipulated by forces he could do nothing about.

"Go back to sleep," Murad told him in an undertone. "It is hours yet until the dawn. I will take your watch; there's no sleep left in me tonight."

He looked like a creature which no longer needed sleep anyway. He had always been sparely built, but now he appeared gaunt to the point of emaciation, a pale creature of sinew and bone held together by the will which blazed out of the too-bright eyes. The beginnings of fever? Hawkwood would bring it up with Bardolin tomorrow. With any luck, the bastard might even expire.

Hawkwood returned to his stony bed and shut his eyes to await his own sleep, that coveted oblivion.

T
HE SIGHTS OF
the night were not mentioned in the morning, and the party set off with rumbling stomachs. They had brought a little biscuit with them, but nothing else. If they were to live off the land, they would have to start doing so soon.

They left the crater-hill behind and plunged into dense forest once more, still descending. It was noon before the land levelled out, and the ground was boggy and wet with the runoff water from the ridge. Streams glittered everywhere, and the trees had put out great naked roots like buttresses from high on their trunks, so fantastical looking that it was hard to believe they had not been grafted on by some demented botanist. Masudi and Mensurado, slashing a path at the front, were sprayed with water when the creepers they sliced spouted like hoses.

They halted to rest, rubber-legged with fatigue and hunger. Bardolin and a few of the soldiers collected fruit from the surrounding branches, and the company sat down together to experiment. There was a buff-coloured circular fruit which when sliced open looked almost exactly like bread, and after a few cautious tastings the men wolfed it down, heedless of the old wizard's warnings. They found also a huge kind of pear, and curved green objects growing in clusters which Hawkwood had encountered before in the jungles of Macassar. He showed the men how to peel off the outer skin and eat the sweet yellow fruit within. But despite the bounty the soldiers craved meat, and several walked with slow-match lit, ready to shoulder arms and fire at any animal they might encounter.

Another afternoon downpour. This time they continued trudging through it, though they were almost blinded by the stinging rain. Men held their water bottles up as they marched to collect the liquid, but it was full of the detritus of the canopy above, alive with moving things, and they had to empty out what they had collected in disgust.

They were imperceptibly beginning to slip into the routine of the jungle. They had tied off their breech legs with strips of leather and cord to prevent the leeches climbing inside them, and they accepted the daily rain as a normal occurrence. They became more adept at picking their way through the dense vegetation, and learned to avoid the low-hanging branches from which snakes occasionally dropped down. They knew what to eat and what not to eat - to some extent - though those who had gorged themselves on fruit were soon dropping out of the column to perform their necessary functions with greater and greater frequency. And the incessant noise, the screechings and warblings and wailings of the forest denizens soon became a scarcely registered thing. Only when it stopped sometimes, inexplicably, would they pause without saying a word, and stand like men turned to stone in the midst of that vast, unnerving silence.

The second night they lit their fires with snatches of gunpowder, since they had no dry tinder remaining, and built beds of leaves and ferns to try and keep something between their tired bodies and the vermin of the forest floor. Then the soldiers sat cleaning equipment and drying their arquebuses whilst Masudi and Mihal collected fruit for the evening meal. There was little talk. The lights of the night before were common knowledge, but the soldiers did not seem too disturbed by what they might imply. Where there were lights there was civilization of a sort, and they seemed to think that it was theirs to claim by the sword if they had to. They had yet to strike upon any sign of civilization, such as the road they had glimpsed from the ridge, however.

Masudi's shout brought them to their feet, and they pelted off towards it, grabbing burning faggots from the campfires and hurriedly setting them to the slow-match. The jungle was a wheeling chiaroscuro of shadow and flame, looming blacknesses, whipping leaves. They splashed through a shallow stream. The torch taken by the two fruit hunters rippled faintly ahead.

"What is it? What happened?" Murad demanded.

Masudi's black face glistened with sweat, but he did not seem very afraid. Behind him Mihal stood with a shirtful of fruit.

"There, sir," the giant helmsman said, raising his hissing torch. "Look what we found."

The company peered into the flame-etched night. Something else there, bulkier even than the trees. They could see a snarling face, a muzzle zigzagged with fangs and two long ears arcing back from a great skull. It was half-bearded with creepers.

"A statue," Bardolin's voice said calmly.

"It made me shout, coming across it like that. I nearly dropped the torch. I'm sorry, sir," Masudi said to the quivering Murad.

"It's a werewolf," Hawkwood told them, staring at the monolith. The thing was fifteen feet tall and snarling as though it longed to be free of the creepers which bound it. The body was almost hidden in spade-shaped leaves. One taloned paw lay on the ground at its feet. The jungle was slowly working the hewn stone apart, breaking it down and absorbing it.

"A good likeness," Murad said with a forced jocularity that fooled no one.

Bardolin had lit the cold glow of a werelight, and was investigating the statue more closely, though most of the soldiers had hung back, their arquebuses pointed at the surrounding darkness as though they were expecting flesh-and-blood doppelgangers of the thing to leap into the torchlight.

A ripping of vegetation. The imp helped its master tear away the clinging leaves and stems.

"There's an inscription here I think I can read." The werelight sank down until it almost touched the wizard's lined forehead. "It's in Normannic, but an archaic dialect."

"
Normannic?"
Murad spat out the word incredulously. "What does it say?"

The mage rubbed moss away with his hand. Around them the jungle noise had died and the night was almost silent.

Be with us in this Change of Dark and Life

That we may see the heart of living man,

And know in hunger that which binds us all

To this wide world awaiting us again.

"Gibberish," Murad growled.

The mage straightened. "I know this from somewhere."

"You've read it before?" Hawkwood asked.

"No. But something similar, perhaps."

"We'll discuss the historical implications later. Back to camp, everyone," Murad ordered. "You sailors, bring what fruit you've gathered. It will suffice for tonight."

T
HERE WAS LITTLE
sleep for anyone that night, because the jungle remained as silent as a tomb for hours and the silence was more disquieting by far than any din of nocturnal bird or beast. The company built their fires despite the fact that the sweat was dripping off their very fingertips. They needed the light, the reassurance that their comrades were around them. The fires had a claustrophobic effect, however, making the towers of the trees press ever closer in on them, emphasizing the huge, restless jungle which pursued its own arcane business off in the darkness as it had for eons before them. They were mere nomadic parasites lost in the pelt of a creature which was as big as a turning world. That night they were not afraid of unknown beasts or strange natives, but of the land itself, for it seemed to pulse and murmur with a beating life of its own, alien, unknowable, and utterly indifferent to them.

T
HEY HAD ANOTHER
look at the statue when the sun rose. It seemed less impressive in daylight, more crudely sculpted than they had thought. Year by year, the jungle was comprehensively destroying it. They could only guess at its age.

Another day on the march. They followed the direction Hawkwood pointed out in the morning, keeping their route straight by checking and rechecking with the trail of blazed trees they left behind them. It was impossible to be sure, but Hawkwood reckoned that they had come some six leagues west of their first hill, the one Murad had named
Heyeran Spinero
. The soldiers quarrelled over this news, believing they had marched twice as far, but Hawkwood had averaged out his paces and even been generous in his reckoning. It seemed impossible that days of Herculean effort should have brought them such a small distance.

Murad alone seemed unconcerned, perhaps because he was counting on running into the natives of this country before they had trudged and hacked their way too many more miles.

Another hot night ensued, another pile of firewood to collect, another series of sweet, insubstantial fruits to wolf down in the light of the yellow flames. And then sleep. It came easy tonight, despite the heat and the marauding insects and the unknown things in the darkness.

B
ARDOLIN WOKE AT
some dead hour in the night to find that the fires had sunk into red glows and the sentries were asleep. The jungle was silent and still.

He listened to that vast quiet, the loudest sound the faint rush of his own heartbeat in his mouth. He had the strangest impression... that someone was calling him, someone he knew.

"Griella?" he whispered, the night air invading his head.

He got up, leaving his imp asleep and whimpering, and picked his way over the snoring forms of his comrades, oddly unalarmed.

Blackness like the inside of a wolf's throat surrounded and enfolded him. He walked on, his feet hardly touching the detritus of the forest floor, his eyes wide and unseeing. The jungle soared to tenebrous heights above him, the night stars invisible beyond the shrouding canopy of the trees. Leaves caressed his face, dripping warm water over him. Creepers slid across his body like hairy snakes, both rough and soft. He felt that he had sloughed away a thicker skin, and was left with each of his nerve endings naked and pulsing in the night, quivering to every waft of air and drop of water.

A deeper shadow before him, a shape blacker even than the witch-dark forest. In it two yellow lights burned and blinked in unison. Still, he was not afraid.

I'm dreaming
, he told himself, and the merciful thought kept terror at bay.

The lights moved, and he was conscious of a warmth that had nothing to do with the night air. His skin crawled as it approached him, a black sunlight.

The lights were eyes, bright saffron and slitted with black like those of a vast cat. It was standing before him. There was a noise, a low susurration like a continuous growl but in a lower key. He felt the sound with his new skin as much as heard it.

And felt the fur of the thing, as soft as crushed velvet. A sensual, wholly pleasurable sensation which made him want to bury his palms deep in its softness.

The world spun, and the breath had been knocked out of him. He was on the ground, on his back, and two huge paws were on his shoulders. He felt the prickle of whiskers, sharp as needles, the thing's breath on his face.

It sank down on him as though it meant to mould itself to his body. His hands felt the thickly muscled ribs under the fur and brushed a line of nipples along the taut belly. He thought it groaned, an almost human sound. He was conscious of the throbbing warmth in his crotch, the heat of the thing as it pressed against him there.