Ships from the West

Five

The sound came first, a noise like the massed thudding of a thousand heartbeats. The ship's company roused itself from the exhausted torpor into which it had fallen and stood on deck staring fearfully into the fog. Their officers were no wiser. King Abeleyn stood on the poop in a golden swirling soup gilded by the huge stern lanterns of the Pontifidad. Along the gangways of the waist marines were replenishing their slow-match, which had burned down to stubs, and all about the forecastle, waist and quarterdeck the gun crews wiped their faces, spat on their hands and exchanged wordless looks. The beating noise was all around, and growing louder as they stood. Dawn would come in an hour, but something else was coming first.

Admiral Rovero had ordered the swivel-men to remain in the tops, though up there they were on self-contained little islands adrift in an impenetrable grey sea. There was confused shouting from above now, within the fog, and the sudden, shattering bark of the wicked little swivel-guns firing in a formless barrage. Pieces of rope and shards of timber fell to the deck, shot off the yards.

'It's begun,' Abeleyn said.

'Serjeant Miro!' Rovero bellowed. 'Take a section up the shrouds and see what's going on there.' And in a lower tone: 'You, master-at-arms, go get Captain Hawkwood.'

The firing intensified. Miro and his men abandoned their arquebuses and took to the shrouds, disappearing into the fog. All along the packed decks of the ship the crew looked upwards in fearful wonder as the fog began to spin in wild eddies and the shouting turned to screaming. A warm rain began to fall on their faces and a wordless cry went up from the decks as they realised it was raining blood. Then one, two, three – half a dozen bodies were falling down out of the fog, smashing off spars, bouncing from ropes, and thumping in scarlet ruin amid their shipmates below, or splashing over shy;board into the black sea. The volleyed gunfire sputtered out into a staccato confusion of single shots. Men on the spar decks ducked and dodged as even more dreadful debris rained down from the invisible tops: limbs, entrails, heads, warm spatters of blood. And all the while over the gunfire and the wails of the dying, that drumbeat murmur overhead.

Ashen-faced and panting, Hawkwood joined Abeleyn and Mark on the poop.

'What in hell's going on?'

No one answered him. The firing from the tops had all but died, but the shrieking went on, and now men were appearing out of the fog overhead, pouring down the rigging, sliding down backstays so swiftly as to burn the flesh from their hands. It was Abeleyn who first snapped out of the dreamlike paralysis that seemed to have seized all the men on deck.

'Marines there, fire a volley into the tops. Ensign Gerrolvo, get a grip of your men, for God's sake! All hands, all hands prepare for boarding! Sergeant-at-arms, issue cutlasses.'

The spell was broken. Given orders to carry out that made sense of the nightmare, the men responded with alacrity. A ragged salvo of arquebus fire was directed towards the swirl shy;ing mists into which the masts disappeared ten feet above everyone's heads, and the rest of the mariners raced to the arms barrels to seize close-combat weapons, since it was clear the great guns were useless against whatever was attacking the ship.

On the poop beside Abeleyn, Hawkwood drew his own cutlass and fought the sickening panic that was rising up his throat like a cloud. Almost he mentioned Bardolin's visitation to the Hebrian King, but then bit back his words. You're all dead men. It was probably too late now anyway.

Admiral Rovero was in the waist, thrusting men to their stations, kicking aside the mutilated corpses which littered the deck. He grasped one mad-eyed marine whose arm looked as though it had been chewed short at the wrist. The man stood grasping his stump and watching the arteries spurt as if they belonged to someone else.

'Miro, you got up to the maintop, didn't you? What in the name of God is happening up there?'

'Demons,' Miro said wildly. 'Yellow-eyed fiends. They have wings, Admiral. There's no one left alive up there.'

The man was in deep shock. Rovero shook him angrily, baffled. 'Get below to the sickbay. You there – Grode – help him down the hatch. Stand to your weapons, you whoresons. Remember who you are!'

All around them in the wall of mist it was possible to see the red darting flashes of small-arms fire, and seconds later to hear the muted crackle of distant volleys through a far surf of shouting. The other ships of the fleet were enduring a similar assault.

A knot of bodyguards, Hebrian and Astaran, joined Abe-leyn, Mark and Hawkwood at the taffrail with drawn swords. They were in half-armour with open helms, glaring about in bewildered determination. Something swooped out of the fog above them, was lit up saffron as it wheeled into the light of the stern lanterns, and smashed full-tilt into their ranks. The men were sent sprawling like skittles. One was knocked over the ship's rail and splashed into the sea below without a sound. His armour would sink him like a stone. Hawkwood, in the midst of the tumbling, chaotic flailing of arms and legs and impotently swinging blades, glimpsed a winged shape, featherless as a snake – wickedly swiping claws, a long bald tail like that of a monstrous rat – and then it was gone again, the fog spinning circles in the draughts stirred by its wing-beats.

All the length of the ship, men were fighting off this attack from above. Scores, hundreds of the creatures, were diving down out of the fog, raking mariners and marines to shreds with their wicked talons, and then disappearing again. The masters-at-arms were manning the quarterdeck swivels and indiscriminately blasting the air with wicked showers of metal. Ropes and lines sliced apart by shrapnel came hissing down on the struggling men below; falling blocks and tackle cracking open skulls and adding to the mayhem. Hawkwood saw what must have been the main topgallant yard – thirty feet of stout wood frapped with iron – come searing down like a comet trailing all its attendant rigging and tackle. It speared through the deck and disappeared below, dragging with it two gunners who had been caught up with its lines. The splintered wood of the deck tore their bodies to pieces as they were yanked through it.

'They're breaking up the ship from the masts down,' he cried. 'We must get men back into the tops or they'll cripple her.'

He ran forward towards the quarterdeck ladder. Behind him, the two Kings were helping their heavily armoured bodyguards to their feet. Another one of the winged creatures swept low and Hawkwood swiped at it with his iron cutlass, hacking off one of the great talons. It crashed full into the taffrail in a stinking flap of beating bone and leathery wings. The six-foot stern lantern above it shuddered at the impact, tottered, and then fell to the deck in an explosion of flame, burning oil spraying everywhere. King Mark of Astarac was engulfed and transformed into a blazing torch, the body shy;guards beside him likewise drenched, roasting inside their armour. Some threw themselves overboard. The King tried to bat out the flames but they rushed hungrily up his body, blackening his skin, withering his hair away, melting his clothes. Dazed, and on fire himself, Hawkwood saw Astarac's monarch rip the flesh from his own face in his agony. Abeleyn was trying to smother the blaze with his cloak, but it caught too. One of the Hebrian bodyguards pulled his King away and lay on his body, smiting the flames which had caught in his sleeves and hair. Hawkwood rolled across the deck and beat to death the burning droplets on his own clothing. 'Fire party!' he shouted. 'Fire party aft!' The skin peeled off the back of his hands in perfect sheets and he stared at them, transfixed.

The stern of the ship was ablaze, the fire igniting the pitch in the deck seams and catching in the tarred rigging of the mizzen backstays. When the heat reached the second stern lantern, it exploded, spraying fiery oil as far as the quarter shy;deck. As the inferno took hold, it touched off the poop culverins and they detonated one after another, rearing back on their burning carriages. The spare powder charges stored beside them went up with a sound like a series of thunderous broadsides and blew huge jagged holes in the superstructure of the Pontifidad, the massive timbers that formed the skeleton and ribs of the ship tossed like twigs into the air along with fragments of burning men. The ship groaned like a maimed beast and there was a great tearing crack as the mizzen gave way and toppled over, tearing free the shrouds and stays and crashing into ruin down the ship's larboard side. The vessel began to list.

Hawkwood had been blasted clear of the burning poop by the powder explosions. They had rendered him deaf, and thus the scene aboard was a surreal, soundless nightmare; a dream which seemed to be happening to someone else. He picked himself up out of a tangle of broken timber and piled cordage. All around him, men were fighting the fire with pitiful chains of buckets, or slashing and shooting at the swooping shadows overhead, or dragging their wounded comrades clear of the flames. There was utter confusion, but it had not yet bled into panic. That was something.

The King. Where was he?

Rovero, one side of his face a burnt bubbled ruin, had grabbed his arm and was shouting something, but Hawk shy;wood could not make it out. He ducked as another one of the winged monstrosities dived low, and felt the wrench as Rovero was lifted free of the deck. He seized the admiral's hand, but toppled backwards as it came free. Rovero's decapi shy;tated torso tumbled like a rag across the deck. Hawkwood stared in horror.

Men were lifted struggling into the air and dropped with torn throats. A sergeant of marines was grappling fifteen feet off the deck, digging his fingers into his attacker's eyes while the bald wings flapped furiously about him. Sailors caught the hanging tails of their tormentors and dragged them down whilst their comrades hacked them to pieces. But there were hundreds of the beasts. They fastened like flies on the dead and the living alike, wreaking carnage with no thought of their own preservation.

Hawkwood experienced no fear, just a dazed series of decisions in his mind. He grabbed a steel marlin spike from a fife-rail and stabbed with all his strength one of the winged creatures that was perched on the shattered deck, feeding off a shrieking marine. The beast reared backwards on top of him, the wings beating in a paroxysm of agony. He crawled out from under and knelt upon it, pinning the wings. A human face spat up at him, but the eyes were yellow as a cat's and its fangs were as long as his fingers. Disgust and rage over shy;mastered him. He punched the face with his raw fists until his knuckles cracked and broke, and the beast's glaring eyes were burst from their sockets.

A silent explosion staggered him – he felt the blast of hot air scorching his skin. He lurched to his feet. Some sounds were coming back, all overlaid with a shrill hissing that filled his head. The ship's wheel was on fire, and the binnacle. The chain of buckets had disappeared. There was no sign of King Abeleyn and his bodyguards – no order left now on board. Men were fighting their own private battles for survival and wielding anything that came to hand to beat off the enemy. No time to reload arquebuses; the marines were swinging them like clubs. Over the formless storm in his ears Hawkwood heard some shouting in despair, and saw them pointing. He turned.

Crawling over the ship's rails were hordes of the beetle-like warriors which had gone down in the caravel. Their pincers made short work of the boarding netting and their spiked feet propelled them over the side with preternatural speed. Hawkwood peered over the ship's rail and saw that a mass of smallcraft was clustered there, and grapnels were being tossed aboard by the score. The Pontifidad gave a lurch to star shy;board which sent him sliding across the packed deck. A squirming mass of humanity went with him, men sliding off their feet and rolling in the remains of their shipmates. One sailor was pitched from the main hatch square on to a baulk of broken timber that transfixed him. He writhed there in astonishment, grasping the bloody stave that now protruded from his belly, wound round with blue innards.

Crowds of the beetle-warriors swarmed across the Pontifidad like cockroaches crawling over some vast putrefying carcass. There was no escape for the survivors of the ship's company still on deck. They stampeded for the hatches. Hawkwood found himself in the midst of a crowd that bore him along towards the quarterdeck companionway. He fell to his knees, buffeted by the frenzied sailors, but elbowed a space and laboured upright. His numbed mind followed him down the companionway with the others, and at the foot of the companionway he paused, looking about him.

Battle lanterns still burning in the tween decks, though they hung at an angle with the list of the ship. It was suffocatingly hot, and the smoke smarted his eyes, racked coughs out of his heaving chest. He opened the door which led to the officers' quarters aft, and was met by a hungry rush of flame that tightened the skin of his face and shrivelled his eyebrows. Nothing could live there. He slammed shut the smoking door, and headed forward with no thought in his mind except to escape the flames below and the carnage above.

He passed clots of wounded men who had dragged them shy;selves down here to die, and slipped in their blood as the ship listed further. They must have holed her below the waterline somehow. Then the space between decks opened out into the middle gun deck. Hawkwood found himself in a dark night shy;mare lit by battle lanterns, crowded with panicked figures who were setting off the great guns in a disorderly broadside. They had something to fire at now, but their elevation was too high; the shot was passing over the hulls of the enemy craft grappled alongside. Hawkwood screamed at them to depress their pieces, and when they stared at him blankly he seized a handspike himself and wedged the nearest culverin up with a quoin so that the muzzle tilted downwards. It was loaded, and he stabbed the lighted match into the touch-hole with a savage joy. The gun jumped back with a roar, and beyond the port he glimpsed a spout of broken timbers.

But up through the gunport there squeezed now a glinting mass of the enemy, their pincers splintering wood. Hawk shy;wood clubbed them back with the handspike, but they were squirming in through every port on the deck. Men left the guns and began fighting hand-to-hand, crouched under the low deckbeams. It looked like a battle fought far below the earth, in the subterranean chamber of a steaming mine.

Part of the deck about the main hatch above their heads collapsed in a cataclysm of burning timber. It came down on the gun crews like a wooden avalanche. With it fell a mass of the glinting enemy. The beetle-warriors rolled like balls, righted themselves, and began laying about with hardly a pause. The awful pincers lopped off men's limbs and the black armour was impenetrable save at the joints. The gun crews fell back. Hawkwood tried to rally them but his voice was lost in the tumult. Stooping under the deck beams, he struggled forward again. Another hatch leading downwards. He follow shy;ed it, borne along by a terrified mob of gunners with the same end in mind.

The orlop. They were below the waterline now, close to the hold.

‘ will die down here, Hawkwood thought. When a ship's crew was forced below the guns, she was finished.

There was water sloshing about his ankles. Somehow the enemy had holed the ship, attacking from the sea as well as the air. The Ponlifidad was dying, and when she gave up the struggle against the pitiless waves she would take hundreds of trapped men with her. The pride of Hebrion, she had been. Hard to grasp that such a vessel could be destroyed, and not by gunfire or storm, but by – by what?

His hands were agony to him now. Hawkwood staggered out of the way of the crowd coming down the hatch and fell to his side. The salt water scalded his burns. He crawled behind one of the great wooden knees of the ship that supported the deck beams, and there halted. The water was rising fast.

The ship shook with a dull boom and the men below wailed helplessly, realising that their doom was not far off. There was a deafening creaking roar, and then part of the very hull gave way. It burst inwards admitting an explosion of spray. Hawk shy;wood thought he saw a massive black snout in the midst of it for a second.

The water rose at an incredible rate, thundering jn through a breach some eight feet wide. Men were clawing their way back up the hatches they had so lately fought to get down. The ship lurched further to starboard with a moan of overstressed timbers. Hawkwood slid towards the breach and was envel shy;oped in foam. He went under, sucked into a storm of swirling seawater. Fighting to see, he found broken timbers under his nose, and beyond them, darkness. He clutched them with his skinless hands and fought against the push of the water, levering himself over them. Splinters raked his belly, his thighs. Then he was spinning freely in open water, a chaotic turbulence which was sucking him down. He struck out in the opposite direction, knowing that the ship was going down and trying to bring him to the depths with it. Something struck him on the forehead and he lost ground. His lungs felt like two cinder-filled bags about to explode. His torso con shy;vulsed with the need to suck in air, water, anything, but he fought against it, kicking upwards. His sight turned red. He bared his teeth, tasted blood in his mouth, but kept struggling.

At last his head burst clear of the water for a second. He exhaled and gulped a cupful of air, then was sucked under again.

Harder this time, the fight against the undertow. His arms and legs slowed. He looked up and saw light above him, but it was too far. His limbs stopped. He drifted slowly downwards, but still would not give up, would not breathe in though his body screamed for him to do so.

Damn you. Damn you!

Something became entangled with his legs. It caught there and spun him around, then began to tug him upwards again. A dark blob against the light, leather straps wrapped around his ankles. He was floating towards the surface feet first. He looked down past his wriggling fingers, down into the depths, and saw there a sight he would never forget.

Scores of men, dozens of other faces turned up to the light, some calm and otherworldly, others still fighting the sea like himself. They were suspended in the clear water below, trapped and dying. And behind them, the awesome dark bulk of the Pontifidad sliding towards the seabed like some tired submarine titan going to her rest. Broken, mastless, but still with one or two lights twinkling. She turned over and the last lights went out. Her black hulk slid soundlessly down into the deeper blackness beyond.

Hawkwood was still rising. He broke the surface and shouted the dead poison from his lungs. He flapped his weary legs free of the thing that had saved him, and found it was a leather-strapped wineskin, half full of air. Grasping it in his arms, he sobbed in great gouts of the cold air knowing only that he was alive, he had escaped. His ship was gone, and her crew had ridden her into the depths, but her captain remained. He felt a moment of overpowering shame.

Wind on his face. The mist was clearing, and the sun was riding up the morning sky. In the east it set light to a wrack of distant cloud and turned it into a tumbled melee of gold and scarlet and palest aquamarine. Hawkwood raised his head. There was a slight swell, and when it lifted him on its crest he saw he was surrounded by a horrible wreckage of bodies and parts of bodies, broken spars, limp cordage. To the west a bank of fog still lay stubbornly upon the water, but it was thinning moment by moment. Through it the ships of the enemy could be seen as a forested crowd of masts, and the early sunlight sparkled off milling hosts of armoured figures on their decks. Larger hulks, low in the water and bearing only the ragged stumps of their lower yards, drifted every shy;where in and out of the fog, some burning, others appearing wholly lifeless and inert. And in the brilliant blue vault of the sky above, a flock of the winged creatures was wheeling in a great spiral. Hawkwood watched as it descended, and lit upon a sinking galleon. Faint over the water came a series of shots.

Ships everywhere, looming like islands out of the mist. Hebrian galleons built to his own designs, Astaran carracks, Merduk xebecs, Gabrionese caravels. But all of them were dismasted, ablaze and sinking. The waves were thick with flotsam, the wreckage of the greatest naval armament that history had ever seen. In the space of an hour it had been annihilated.

The Pontifidad had been at the forefront of the fleet, the tip of the arrow, and hence it had gone down some distance from the main body of ships. Hawkwood realised that he was drifting eastwards with the breeze, away from the lingering fog banks and the terrible tangled mass of broken hulks to windward. Where they burned the water was still relatively calm; the weather-working spell was fading last at its core. But here, scarcely half a sea-mile away, the wind was picking up. Hawkwood studied the sky and watched the clouds grow and darken in the west, heralding a storm. They were leaving nothing to chance, it seemed.

Had anyone else escaped from the flagship? Again, the choking sense of shame. Seven hundred men and two kings. Lord God.

But he could not give up. He could not will himself to die. It was the same stubbornness that had kept him going all those years ago in the west. Without conscious volition he found himself scanning the pitching waves for something, anything, that might enable him to hold on to life a few hours longer.

Half a cable away a mass of wood rose and fell slowly on the swell. Deadeyes and the rags of shrouds clung to it still. Hawkwood realised it was what was left of the maintop. He struck out for it, leaving his wineskin, and for half a despair shy;ing hour fought the steeping waves with what was left of his strength. When he reached it he had not the strength to pull himself atop it, and so hung there, shivering and listless, his hands become rigid claws which no longer obeyed him. Above his head the clouds thickened, and on the wind he heard the screaming of gulls as they settled down to feast on the bounty of disaster, but he shut his eyes and hung on, no longer caring why.

Agony in his hands. He tried to cry out as they were con shy;stricted in a merciless grip, their blisters bursting, the charred skin flaying off. He was hauled out of the water, and fell with a thump to the sodden wood of the maintop wreckage. He lay there, awash, and a scream died in his salt-crusted mouth. 'It's all right, Richard. I have you.'

He opened his eyes and saw only a shadow limned black against the sky.