The Second Empire (2 page)

From below his feet there came an animal howl which rivalled even the thundering bellow of the wind. Hawkwood flinched, and then stumbled forward to where another hatch led below to the bottom-most compartment of the ship, the bilge.

It was stinking down here. The
Osprey
’s ballast had not been changed in a long time and the tropical heat of the Western Continent seemed to have lent it a particularly foul stench. But it was not the ballast alone which stank. There was another smell down here. It reminded Hawkwood of the beasts’ enclosure in a travelling circus—that musk-like reek of a great animal. He paused, his heart hammering within his ribs, and then made himself walk forward, crouching low under the beams, the lantern swinging in a chaotic tumble of light and dark and sloshing liquid. The water was over his knees already.

Something ahead, moving in the liquid filth of the bilge. The rattle of metal clinking upon metal. It saw him and ceased its struggles. Two yellow eyes gleamed in the dark. Hawkwood halted a scant two yards from where it lay chained to the very keelson of the carrack.

The beast blinked, and then, terrible out of that animal muzzle, came recognizable speech.

“Captain. How good of you to come.”

Hawkwood’s mouth was as dry as salt. “Hello Bardolin,” he said.

“Come to make sure the beast is still in his lair?”

“Something like that.”

“Are we about to sink?”

“Not yet—not just yet, anyway.”

The great wolf bared its fangs in what might have been a grin. “Well, we must be thankful.”

“How much longer will you be like this?”

“I don’t know. I am beginning to control it. This morning—was it morning? One cannot tell down here—I stayed human for almost half a watch. Two hours.” A low growl came out of the beast’s mouth, something like a moan. “In the name of God, why do you not let Murad kill me?”

“Murad is mad. You are not, despite this—this thing that has happened to you. We were friends, Bardolin. You saved my life. When we get back to Hebrion I will take you to your master, Golophin. He will cure you.” Even to himself Hawkwood’s words felt hollow. He had repeated them too many times.

“I do not think so. There is no cure for the black change.”

“We’ll see,” Hawkwood said stubbornly. He noticed the lumps of salt meat which bobbed in the filthy water of the bilge. “Can’t you eat?”

“I crave fresher meat. The beast wants blood. There is nothing I can do about it.”

“Are you thirsty?”

“God, yes.”

“All right.” Hawkwood unslung the wineskin he had about his neck, tugged out the stopper, and hung the lantern on a hook in the hull. He half crawled forward, trying not to retch at the stench which rose up about him. The heat the animal gave off was unearthly, unnatural. He had to force himself close to it and when the head tilted up he tipped the neck of the wineskin against its maw and let it drink, a black tongue licking every drop of moisture away.

“Thank you, Hawkwood,” the wolf said. “Now let me try something.”

There was a shimmer in the air, and something happened that Hawkwood’s eyes could not quite follow. The black fur of the beast withered away and in seconds it was Bardolin the Mage who crouched there, naked and bearded, his body covered in saltwater sores.

“Good to have you back,” Hawkwood said with a weak smile.

“It feels worse this way. I am weaker. In the name of God, Hawkwood, get some iron down here. One nick, and I am at peace.”

“No.” The chains that held Bardolin fast were of bronze, forged from the metal of one of the ship’s falconets. They were roughly cast, and their edges had scored his flesh into bloody meat at the wrists and ankles, but every time he shifted in and out of beast form, the wounds healed somewhat. It was an interminable form of torture, Hawkwood knew, but there was no other way to secure the wolf when it returned.

“I’m sorry, Bardolin… Has he been back?”

“Yes. He appears in the night-watches and sits where you are now. He says I am his—I will be his right hand one day. And Hawkwood, I find myself listening to him, believing him.”

“Fight it. Don’t forget who you are. Don’t let the bastard win.”

“How much longer? How far is there to go?”

“Not so far now. Another week or ten days perhaps. Less if the wind backs. This is only a passing squall—it’ll soon blow itself out.”

“I don’t know if I can survive. It eats into my mind like a maggot… stay back, it comes again. Oh sweet Lord God—”

Bardolin screamed, and his body bucked and thrashed against the chains which held him down. His face seemed to explode outwards. The scream turned into an animal roar of rage and pain. As Hawkwood watched, horrified, his body bent and grew and cracked sickeningly. His skin sprouted fur and two horn-like ears thrust up from his skull. The wolf had returned. It howled in anguish and wrenched at its confining chains. Hawkwood backed away, shaken.

“Kill me—kill me and give me peace!” the wolf shrieked, and then the words dissolved into a manic bellowing. Hawkwood retrieved the storm-lantern and retreated through the muck of the bilge, leaving Bardolin alone to fight the battle for his soul in the darkness of the ship’s belly.

What God would allow the practise of such abominations upon the world he had made? What manner of man would inflict them upon another?

Unwillingly, his mind was drawn back to that terrible place of sorcery and slaughter and emerald jungle. The Western Continent. They had sought to claim a new world there, and had ended up fleeing for their lives. He could remember every stifling, terror-ridden hour of it. In the wave-racked carcase of his once-proud ship, he had it thrust vivid and unforgettable into his mind’s eye once again.

PART ONE RETURN OF THE MARINER

ONE

T HEY had stumbled a mile, perhaps two, from the ashladen air on the slopes of Undabane. Then they collapsed in on each other like a child’s house of playing cards, what remained of their spirit spent. Their chests seemed somehow too narrow to take in the thick humidity of the air around them. They lay sprawled in the twilit ooze of the jungle floor while half-glimpsed animals and birds hooted and shrieked in the trees above, the very land itself mocking their failure. Heaving for a breath, the sweat running down their faces and the insects a cloud before their eyes.

It was Hawkwood who recovered first. He was not injured, unlike Murad, and his wits had not been addled, unlike Bardolin’s. He sat himself up in the stinking humus and the creeping parasitic life which infested it, and hid his face in his hands. For a moment he wished only to be dead and have done with it. Seventeen of them had left Fort Abeleius some twenty-four days before. Now he and his two companions were all that remained. This green world was too much for mortal men to bear, unless they were also some form of murderous travesty such as those which resided in the mountain. He shook his head at the memory of the slaughter there. Men skinned like rabbits, torn asunder, eviscerated, their innards churned through with the gold they had stolen. Masudi’s head lying dark and glistening in the roadway, the moonlight shining in his dead eyes.

Hawkwood hauled himself to his feet. Bardolin had his head sunk between his knees and Murad lay on his back as still as a corpse, his awful wound laying bare the very bone of his skull.

“Come. We have to get farther away. They’ll catch us else.”

“They don’t want to catch us. Murad was right.” It was Bardolin. He did not raise his head, but his voice was clear, though thick with grief.

“We don’t know that,” Hawkwood snapped.

“
I
know that.”

Murad opened his eyes. “What did I tell you, Captain? Birds of like feather.” He chuckled hideously. “What dupes we poor soldiers and mariners have been, ferrying a crowd of witches and warlocks to their masters. Precious Bardolin will not be touched—not him. They’re sending him back to his brethren with you as the ferryman. If anyone escaped, it was I. But then, to where have I escaped?”

He sat up, the movement starting a dark ooze of blood along his wound. The flies were already black about it. “Ah yes, deliverance. The blest jungle. And we are only a few score leagues from the coast. Give it up, Hawkwood.” He sank back with a groan and closed his eyes.

Hawkwood remained standing. “Maybe you’re right. Me, I have a ship still—or had—and I’m going to get off this God-cursed country and out to sea again. New Hebrion no less! If you’ve any shred of duty left under that mire of self-pity you’re wallowing in, Murad, then you’ll realise we have to get back home, if only to warn them. You’re a soldier and a nobleman. You still understand the concept of duty, do you not?”

The bloodshot eyes snapped open again. “Don’t presume to lecture me, Captain. What are you but the sweeping of some Gabrionese gutter?”

Hawkwood smiled. “I’m a lord of the gutter now, Murad, or had you forgotten? You ennobled me yourself, the same time you made yourself governor of all this—” He swept out his arms to take in the ancient trees, the raucous jungle about them. Bitter laughter curdled in his throat. “Now get off your noble arse. We have to find some water. Bardolin, help me, and stop mooning around like the sky has just fallen in.”

Amazingly enough, they obeyed him.

T HEY camped that night some five miles from the mountain, by the banks of a stream. After Hawkwood had browbeaten Bardolin into gathering firewood and bedding, he sat by Murad and examined the nobleman’s wounds. They were all gashed and scratched to some degree, but Murad’s spectacular head injury was one of the ugliest Hawkwood had ever seen. The scalp had been ripped free of the skull and hung flapping by his left ear.

“I’ve a good sailmaker’s needle in my pouch, and some thread,” he told Murad. “It may not turn out too pretty, but I reckon I can get you battened down again. It’ll smart some, of course.”

“No doubt,” the nobleman drawled in something approaching his old manner. “Get on with it while there’s still light.”

“There are maggots in the flesh. I’ll clear them out first.”

“No! Let them be. I’ve seen men worse cut up than this whose flesh went rotten for the lack of a few good maggots. Sew them in there, Hawkwood. They’ll eat the dead meat.”

“God almighty, Murad!”

“Do it. Since you are determined that we are to survive, we may as well go through the motions. Where is that cursed wizard? Maybe he could make himself useful and magick up a bandage.”

Bardolin appeared out of the gloom, a bundle of firewood in his arms. “He killed my familiar,” he said. “The Dweomer in me is crippled. He killed my familiar, Hawkwood.”

“Who did?”

“Aruan. Their leader.” He dropped his burden as though it burnt. His eyes were as dead as dry slate. “I will have a look, though, if you like. I may be able to do something.”

“Stay away from me!” Murad shouted, shrinking from the mage. “You murderous dastard. If I were fit for it I’d break your skull. You were in league with them from the first.”

“Just see if you can get a fire going, Bardolin,” Hawkwood said wearily. “I’ll patch him up myself. Later, we must talk.”

The pop of the needle going through Murad’s skin and cartilage was loud enough to make Hawkwood wince, but the nobleman never uttered a sound under the brutal surgery, only quivered sometimes like a horse trying to rid itself of a bothersome fly. By the time the mariner was done the daylight was about to disappear, and Bardolin’s fire was a mote of yellow brightness on the black jungle floor. Hawkwood surveyed his handiwork critically.

“You’re no prettier than you were, that’s certain,” he said at last.

Murad flashed his death’s-head grin. The thread crawled along his temple like a line of marching ants, and under the skin the maggots could be seen squirming.

They drank water from the stream and lay on the brush that Bardolin had gathered to serve as beds while around them the darkness became absolute. The insects fed off them without respite, but they were too weary to care and their stomachs were closed. It was Hawkwood who pinched himself awake.

“Did they really let us go, you think? Or are they waiting for nightfall to spring on us?”

“They could have sprung on us fifty times before now,” Murad said quietly. “We have not exactly been swift, or careful in our flight. No, for what it’s worth, we’re away. Maybe they’re going to let the jungle finish the job. Maybe they could not bring themselves to kill a fellow sorcerer. Or there may be another reason we’re alive. Ask the wizard! He’s the one has been closeted with their leader.”

They both looked at Bardolin. “Well?” Hawkwood said at last. “We’ve a right to know, I think. Tell us, Bardolin. Tell us exactly what happened to you.”

The mage kept his eyes fixed on the fire. There was a long silence while his two companions stared steadily at him.

“I am not entirely sure myself,” he said at last. “The imp was brought to the top of the pyramid in the middle of the city by Gosa. He was a shape-shifter—”

“You surprise me,” Murad snorted.

“I met their leader, a man named Aruan. He said he had been high in the Thaumaturgists’ Guild of Garmidalan in Astarac a long time ago. In the time of the Pontiff Willardius.”

Murad frowned. “Willardius? Why, he’s been dead these four hundred years and more.”

“I know. This Aruan claims to be virtually immortal. It is something to do with the Dweomer of this land. There was a great and sophisticated civilisation here in the west at one time, but it was destroyed in a huge natural cataclysm. The mages here had powers hardly dreamt of back on the Old World. But there was another difference…”

“Well?” Murad demanded.

“I believe they were all shifters as well as mages. An entire society of them.”

“God’s blood,” Hawkwood breathed. “I thought that was not possible.”

“So did I. It is unheard of, and yet we have seen it ourselves.”

Murad was thoughtful. “You are quite sure, Bardolin?”

“I wish I were not, believe me. But there is another thing. According to this Aruan, there are hundreds of his agents already in Normannia, doing his bidding.”