Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (81 page)

They made better time after that. Hawkwood calculated they were travelling roughly north-north-west, and they were covering perhaps four leagues a day.

On the twelfth day Timo Ferenice was the second man to die.

A snake had sidled up to his ankle as he stood nodding on sentry duty and bit quickly and efficiently. He had died in convulsions, spraying foamy spittle and calling on God, Ramusio and his mother.

The following day they hit upon a road, or track rather. It was just wide enough for two men to walk abreast, a tunnel of beaten earth and close-packed stones seemingly well cared for, which led them farther to the north. They had bypassed the cluster of lights Murad had seen from the Spinero and were travelling almost parallel to the far-off coast.

All the while they travelled, Kersik strode along easily at the front of the column, frequently pausing to let the gasping men behind her catch up. The land rose almost imperceptibly, and Bardolin hazarded that they were nearing the southern slopes of the great conelike mountain they had sighted on the first day of their landfall.

Their pace should have quickened upon hitting the road, but it seemed to the members of the company that their strength was ebbing. Lack of sleep and poor food were taking their toll, as was the unrelenting heat. By the seventeenth day, the twenty-first out of Fort Abeleius, the soldiers were stumbling along in linen undershirts, their leather gambesons too rotten and mouldering to be of any further use. And medicinal leaves or no, two of them were so far gone in fever they had to be carried in crudely thrown-together litters by their exhausted comrades.

"I
BELIEVE
I have yet to see her sweat," Hawkwood said to Bardolin as they sat in camp that night. Kersik was off to one side, her legs folded under her, face serene.

Bardolin had been nodding off. He started awake and caressed the chittering imp. The little creature ate better than any of them, for it happily gorged itself on all manner of crawling things it found in the leaf litter. It was just back from foraging and was contentedly grinning in Bardolin's lap, its belly as taut as a drum.

"Even wizards sweat," the old mage said, irritated because he had been on the verge of precious sleep.

"I know. That is why it's so odd. She doesn't seem real, somehow."

Bardolin lay back with a sigh. "None of it seems real. The dreams I have at night seem more real than this waking life."

"Good dreams?"

"Strange ones, unlike any I have known before. And yet there is an element of familiarity to them too. I keep feeling that everything here I have come across splices together somehow - that if I could but step back from it I would see the pattern in the whole. That inscription on the statue we found - it reminds me of something I once knew. The girl: she is Dweomer-folk, certainly, but there is something unknown at work in her also, something I cannot decipher. It is like trying to read a once-known book in too dim a light."

"Maybe there will be a brighter light for you once we hit upon this city. Tomorrow, she says, we'll arrive there. I wish I could say I was looking forward to it, but the discoverer in me has lost some of his relish for our expedition."

"
He
has not," Bardolin said, and he waved a hand to where Murad was doing his nightly rounds of the campfires, checking on his men.

"He cannot keep it up much longer," Hawkwood said. "I don't believe he's had more than an hour's sleep a night since we left the coast."

Murad looked less like an officer administering to his men than a ghoul preying on the sick. His lank hair fell in black strings across his face and the flesh had been pared away from nose and cheekbones and temples. His scar now seemed an extravagant curl of tissue, like an extra thin-lipped mouth on the side of his face. Even his fingers were skeletal.

"We have been ashore scarcely a month," Hawkwood said quietly. "We have buried five shipmates in that time - maybe more back at the fort by now - and the rest of us are close to breaking down. Do you really believe this land can ever be fit for civilized men, Bardolin?"

The mage shut his eyes and turned away. "I'll tell you after tomorrow."

T
HAT NIGHT THE
dream came to Bardolin again.

But this time it was the woman Kersik who came to him in the night, nude, her skin a flawless bloom of honey. She was incandescently beautiful despite the two rows of nipples that lined her torso from pectoral to navel and the claws which curled at the tips of her fingers. Her eyes blazed like the sun behind leaves.

They made love on the yielding ground beyond the camp. This time Bardolin was atop her, grinding into her firm softness with the vigour of a young man. And all around the straining couple a masque of fantastic figures danced and capered madly, spindle-thin, cackling, with green slits for eyes and hornlike ears. Bardolin could feel their feet, light as leaves, dancing in the hollow of his back as he pushed into the woman below him.

But there was another presence there. He arched his head to see, despite the grip of her hand on the nape of his neck, a tall darkness towering above the frolics.

A shifter in wolf form.

N
ONE OF THEM
had slept well. Bardolin ached as though someone had been kicking him all night. The company dragged themselves erect, Sergeant Mensurado hauling men to their feet. Kersik looked on like an indulgent parent.

Murad appeared from the trees. He had shaved, the blood on his chin testimony to the effort it had cost him. His straggling hair had been tied back and he had changed into a clean shirt which was nonetheless dotted with mould. He looked almost fresh, despite the sunken glitter of his eyes.

"So we are to see this city of yours today," he said to Kersik.

The woman seemed amused at some private joke, as she often did. "Why yes, Lord Murad, if your comrades are fit to march."

"They're fit. They're Hebrian soldiers," Murad drawled, and he turned away from her with such languid contempt that Hawkwood actually found himself admiring him. The woman's smile took on a fixed quality for a second, and then became pure sunshine again.

They set off after a frugal meal of the inevitable fruit. It was weeks since any of them had tasted meat, and they were becoming nostalgic even at the thought of the ship's salt pork.

Another day of labour. Though they were tramping a passable road, they still had to take it in turns to carry the two delirious soldiers. Even Murad did his share.

There was more life in the jungle here, if that were possible.

Not the squeakings and scurryings of before, but the crash and thump of larger beasts moving off in the vegetation. Kersik appeared oblivious to them, but the company travelled with loaded weapons and drawn swords. They were aware of a subtle change in their surroundings. The trees were smaller, the canopy less dense. Almost the forest here looked like secondary growth, a reclaiming of land once cleared.

To reinforce this opinion they came across the remains of huge stone-built buildings half hidden at the sides of the narrow road. Bardolin wanted to pause and examine them, for they seemed to be liberally dotted with carved writing, but Kersik would not allow it. When he asked her about them she seemed even more reluctant to give out information than she had throughout the journey.

"They are
Undwa-Zantu
," she said at last, surrendering to Bardolin's badgering.

"What does that mean?" the mage asked.

"They are old, from the earlier time, the first peoples."

With that one sentence she let loose a torrent of questions from both Bardolin and Hawkwood, but would answer none of them.

"You will learn more when we get to the city," was all she would say.

T
HEY HAD REACHED
the foot of the mountain to the north of their anchorage. They could see it clearly, even through the canopy overhead. It reared up like a grey wall above the jungle, the forest struggling to maintain itself at its knees but gradually thinning and clearing all the same.

"How far do you think we have come?" Bardolin asked Hawkwood.

The mariner shrugged with one shoulder. He had taken bearings as often as he could - Kersik had been inordinately fascinated by the compass - and he'd had both Masudi and big Cortona pacing to check his own count, but in the day-to-day labour it was probable that major inaccuracies had crept in.

"We're walking almost due north now," he said. "Since we met the girl, I'd say we've come some sixty leagues, but we've changed course several times."

They were far back in the file. Kersik was twenty yards in front, Murad striding beside her like her consort. Bardolin lowered his voice. Her hearing was better than a beast's.

"She slips past questions like a snake. She knows everything, I'm sure of it - perhaps the whole history of this land, Captain. For it has a history, you can be sure of that. These ruins look as ancient as the crumbling Fimbrian watchtowers you can see up in the Hebros passes, and they are six centuries old and more."

"Maybe we'll find answers in this city she keeps talking about, though where it might be I'm sure I don't know. The way she talks it must be on the slope of this damned mountain; but how could one build a city on slopes so steep?"

"I don't know. It may be that if there is a city there somewhere we'll find more answers in it than we bargained for."

The file halted. Murad called for them at its head and the wizard and the mariner hurried past the line of soldiers.

The way was blocked by a trio of figures so fantastic that even Murad had momentarily lost his poise.

Two were inhumanly tall, eight feet perhaps. They were black-skinned, a black so dark that it made Masudi's skin appear yellowish. Their limbs were bare and they wore simple loincloths, but where their heads should have been were incredible masks. One was of a leopard-like creature, only heavier and more muscular. The other had the head of a great mandrill, with bright blue patches of ridged flesh on either side of the flaring nose.

But the masks were not masks. The leopard-head licked its teeth and the eyes moved. The mandrill sniffed the air, its nostrils quivering. In their human hands, the two creatures carried bronze-bladed spears twice the height of a man, wickedly barbed.

The third figure was tiny by comparison, shorter even than Hawkwood. He seemed entirely human and his skin, though deeply tanned, was as pale as a Ramusian's. He wore a shapeless bag of supple hide for a hat, and white linen robes which concealed his entire body except for small, broad-fingered hands. His face was pouchy and bejowled, eyes bright and black shining out of puffy sockets. Were it not for the strange garments, he might have passed for a well-to-do merchant of Abrusio with too many rich meals and too much good wine under his belt. His only ornament was a pendant of gold in the shape of a five-pointed star which enclosed a circle. It hung from his wattled neck on a gold chain whose links were as thick as a child's finger.

"Gosa," Kersik said, and she bowed. "I have brought the Oldworlders."

The leopard head growled deeply.

"Well done," the man in the linen robes said. "I thought I'd provide you with an escort into Undi. And my curiosity was consuming me. It's been a long time." His glance strayed to the members of the company who stood silent behind Kersik, even Murad at a loss for words.

"Greetings, brother," Gosa said to Bardolin.

The mage blinked, but did not reply. His imp uttered a single little yelp which sounded almost interrogative. The leopard head growled again.

Murad stepped forward, clearly angered by being left out of the exchanges. Immediately the mandrill head levelled his spear until it touched the noble's chest, stalling him.

A series of clicks. Sergeant Mensurado, Cortona and the other soldiers had their arquebuses in the shoulder, the serpentines cocked back, the muzzles pointed squarely at the exotic trio in the middle of the track. Powder-smoke eddied about the company. Gosa sniffed at it, and smiled to show yellow teeth, canines from which the gums had retreated.

"Ah, the very essence of the Old World," he said, not at all put out by the weapons pointed at his ample belly. "Put up your weapons, gentlemen; you will not need them here. Ilkwa - for shame - can't you see the man is merely trying to introduce himself?"

The tall spear swung back to the vertical. Murad nodded at Mensurado and the arquebuses were uncocked, though the men kept their slow-match lit.

"Murad of Galiapeno at your service," the nobleman said wryly.

"Gosa of Undi at yours," the plump, berobed man said, bowing slightly. "Will you follow me into our humble city, Lord Murad? There are refreshments waiting, and those who wish to can bathe."

Murad bowed in his turn. Gosa, Kersik and the two outlandish beast-men led off. The company fell in behind them, still hauling the two litters with the fever-ridden soldiers.

The world changed in a twinkling.

The jungle disappeared. One moment they were walking under the shadowed shelter of the forest, and the next it had vanished. Uninterrupted sunshine blinded them. The borderline between the riotous vegetation and barren emptiness was as clear-cut as if a giant razor had shaved the mountainside clean of all living things.