Courses, topsails and bonnets.
Six weeks out of Abrusio harbour, by my estimate over eight hundred leagues west of North Cape in the Hebrionese, on the approximate latitude of Gabrion, which we will follow until we find land in the west.
In the forenoon watch Lord Murad had three soldiers strappadoed from the main yardarm for insubordination. As I write they are being attended on the gundeck by Brother Ortelius and some of the oldwives aboard. Strange bedfellows.
Hawkwood looked over the entry, frowning, then shrugged as he sat and dipped his quill in the inkwell again.
In the five days since First Mate Billerand and Ship’s Boy Mateo were lost there have been no further deaths on board, though the mood of the ship’s company has not improved. I have had words with Acting First Mate Velasca; it seems he is not happy with our course and the voyage as a whole. I told him that I expect to sight land within three weeks, which seemed to improve his temper and that of the crew. The soldiers, however, are growing more restless by the day, and despite the efforts of Murad’s junior officers, they refuse to man their posts down in the hold. There is something down there, they say, and they will only guard working parties hauling up provisions.
Billerand is sorely missed.
Hawkwood rubbed his tired eyes as the flickering table lantern played over the pages of his log. On the desk by the lantern Bardolin’s imp squatted cross-legged and watched the scrawling quill with fascination. The little creature was covered with ink; it seemed to love daubing itself with it.
On a chair by the door of the cabin his master slumped, asleep. The mage had an iron spike loosely gripped in one hand and his head had fallen forward on to his chest. He was snoring softly.
They had taken Bardolin’s advice to heart. None of them remained alone any more, especially at night.
If Hawkwood paused to listen, he could hear the creak and groan of the ship’s timbers, the rush and hiss of the sea as the carrack’s bow went up and down, the voices of men on the deck above his head. And from the other side of the thin bulkhead, dark moans and thumps from Murad’s cabin. He was not alone either. He had the girl in there with him, Griella.
It was late. Hawkwood felt he had neglected the log; he felt he should pad out the bald entries more fully, leave something for posterity perhaps. The thought made him smile wryly. Perhaps some fisherman might find it one day, grasped in his skeletal hand.
He looked again at the last sentence he had written, and his face fell.
Billerand is sorely missed.
Aye. He had not truly realized how much he had depended on the bald, mustachioed ex-soldier. He and Julius Albak had been the two indomitable pillars aboard ship. Good shipmates, fine friends.
Now they were both gone, Julius at the hands of the Inceptines—they had killed him, no matter that it was a marine’s arquebus which had stopped his heart—and Billerand under the muzzle of a werewolf. Hawkwood felt strangely alone. On him rested the entire responsibility for the expedition, especially if the Grace of God had foundered, which he was beginning to believe had happened. He and he alone could point the Osprey’s beakhead in the right direction.
The knowledge weighed on him sorely. He had told Velasca that three weeks would see landfall, but that had been a mere sop to the man’s fear. Hawkwood had no idea how long they had to go before the fabled Western Continent would loom up out of the horizon.
He heard the ship’s bell struck twice. Two bells in the middle watch, an hour past midnight. He would take a last sniff of air up on deck, check the trim of the sails and then retire to his bunk.
He placed a sea cloak over the gently snoring Bardolin and went to the door. The imp chirruped wheedlingly at him and he turned.
“What is it, little one?”
With a bound, it launched itself off the desktop and landed on his shoulder. It nuzzled his ear, and he laughed.
“All right, then. You want some fresh air too?”
He left, reasoning that Bardolin would be all right for a moment or two, and climbed up to the quarterdeck. Mihal had the watch, a good, steady fellow who was also Hawkwood’s countryman. Two soldiers, ostensibly on guard duty, leaned at the break of the deck smoking pipes and spitting over the ship’s rail. Hawkwood scowled. Discipline had gone to the wall these past days.
Mihal stared at the imp momentarily and then recited:
“Steady nor’-west, sir. Course due west under everything she can bear.”
“Good. You might want to furl the courses in a glass or two. We don’t want to run smack into the Western Continent in the middle of the night.”
“Aye, sir.”
“Where’s the rest of the watch?”
“On the forecastle, mostly. I’ve two men on the tiller. She’s steering easily enough.”
“Very good, Mihal.”
Hawkwood leaned on the windward rail gazing out at the night sea. It was as dark as the ink on his desk. The sky was almost clear, and great bands of speckled stars were arching from horizon to horizon. Most he knew and had steered by for twenty years. They were old friends, the only familiar things on this unending ocean.
The imp made a noise, and he looked down into the waist to see a black-robed figure disappearing into the sterncastle. Ortelius, most likely. What would he want at this time of night?
“Wake me if the wind shifts,” he told Mihal, and made his way back down the companionway.
The imp was whimpering and shifting around on his shoulder, clearly upset. He shushed it and then, stepping into the deeper dark of the sterncastle, he knew something was wrong.
A golden bar of lantern light was coming from the door to his cabin—but he had closed it after him.
He drew his dirk and pushed through the door quickly. Bardolin was still asleep in his chair but the sea cloak had fallen to the floor. The imp hopped from Hawkwood’s shoulder to his master’s, still chittering urgently.
The door was pushed shut behind Hawkwood.
He spun round and his mouth dropped with shock.
“Mateo!”
“Well met, Captain,” the figure said with a ghastly smile.
The ship’s boy was filthy and bloody, his hair crawling with lice and his nails long and black. His eyes had a light in them that made the hair on the back of Hawkwood’s neck stand up like wire.
“Mateo, we thought you were dead!”
“Aye, and so did I, Captain.” The voice which had been on the verge of breaking before he disappeared was as deep and full as a man’s. “And didn’t you wish I was dead—the bum-boy you were so ashamed of having used? Didn’t you, Captain? But I wasn’t and I’m back again, different but the same.”
“What in the world are you talking about, Mateo?” Hawkwood asked. The boy was circling like a prowling cat. Now he was between Hawkwood and the sleeping mage. The imp was frozen, utterly petrified. It eyed Mateo as though he were a fiend incarnate. Then the horrible thought occurred to Hawkwood.
“It was you,” he breathed. “You are the werewolf. You killed Pernicus and Billerand.” His voice shook as he said it. He wondered how many would hear his shout, how much time he would have.
Mateo grinned, and Hawkwood could see the lengthening canines, the black flush of hair that was breaking out like a rash down the sides of his face.
“Wrong, Captain, it was not me. It was my new master, a man who appreciates me as you never did.”
“Your—? Who is he?”
“A man high up in his society, and high up in other things too. He has promised me much and given me much already. But I am tired of rats and what he gave me of Billerand. I want a fresh kill. You, whom I loved and who discarded me like a spent horse. You, Richard.”
“Bardolin!” Hawkwood screamed in the same instant as Mateo launched himself at him.
M URAD sat up to find Griella awake beside him, her eyes shining in the dark, something strange about her profile. Another dream?
“I thought I—”
She shook her head and nodded towards the door of the cabin. Standing hunched in the doorway was a vast, black shape, its ears as tall as horns and its eyes two burning yellow lights. Around its feet in a puddle of shadow were a set of black robes.