The Heretic Kings

TWELVE

There was a mist in the morning which hung no higher than a man’s waist. It seemed to have seeped out of the very ground, and to those moving about the fort it was as if they were wading through a monochrome sea.

The expedition set off soon after dawn, Murad in the lead with Sergeant Mensurado at his side, followed by Hawkwood, Bardolin and two of the Osprey’s crew, the huge black helmsman Masudi and master’s mate Mihal, a Gabrionese like Hawkwood himself. After them came twelve Hebrian soldiers in half-armour bearing arquebuses and swords, their helmets slung at their hips and clanking as they walked. The expedition sounded like a pedlar’s caravan, Hawkwood thought irritably. He and Bardolin had tried to persuade Murad to leave the heavy body armour behind, but the lean nobleman had refused point-blank. So the sweating soldiers had an extra fifty pounds on their backs.

The remaining score or so of the demi-tercio turned out to see them off, along with most of the colonists. They fired a volley in salute which sent the birds screaming and flapping for miles around and made Bardolin roll his eyes. Then Fort Abeleius was left behind, and the company was alone with the jungle.

They took a bearing with Hawkwood’s bowl-compass, and set off as close as they could to due west. One of the soldiers was detailed to blaze a tree every hundred yards or so, though their path would have been easy to retrace since it looked like the blundering tunnel a stubborn bull might have made in the vegetation.

Slow going, the unceasing noise of hacking cutlasses, men gasping for breath, cursing the rabid undergrowth.

The day spun round, and they sheltered in the lee of the trees as the customary afternoon tempest battered down, making their surroundings into a dripping, sodden, steaming bathhouse. Then they crashed onwards again, nursing their dry gunpowder as though it were gold dust.

They found the rocky flank of the hill they had climbed on their first day, and at Murad’s insistence they climbed it again with an agony of effort. Once at the top they paused to feel the freer air and have a look at a wider world. They divided into pairs and divested each other of the fat leeches which crept up their legs and down the back of their necks, then they started to parallel the contours of the hollow hill, following the line of the ridge round to the north-east, coming up almost to due north. It was a farther hike, but faster since they had no jungle to hack through.

Night came as they were finally on the descent, and they made a rough camp amid the rocks of the ridge, piling up stones into platforms to sleep upon. The mist came down to sour their tongues and bead the rocks, and the soldiers bickered over the lighting of the campfires until Mensurado silenced them. They stood watch three at a time, and it was about the middle of the graveyard watch when Hawkwood was roughly shaken awake by Murad.

“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.

The 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 run-off 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 doppel-gangers 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.”

There 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.

They 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.

Bardolin 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.

And then it had reared up. A scratch of pain somewhere around his hipbone which made him cry out; his breeches were ripped off and it had plunged itself down on him, taking him inside.

A feverish heat and liquid grip of muscle. It pushed his buttocks into the moist humus, its head thrown back and the red mouth open so that he could see the long glint of fangs. He grabbed fistfuls of its fur as his climax came, and thought he screamed.

It was down on him again for a moment, and he could feel the teeth pressed against his neck. Then the crushing weight and heat were raised off him. He found himself sunk deep into the muck of the jungle floor, utterly spent.

He felt a kiss-a human kiss of laughing lips on his own. Then he knew he was alone again, back with his ageing body, the razor-awareness of everything gone. He wept like a struck child.

And woke up. Dawn had come, and the camp was stirring awake. The sour reek of old smoke hung heavy in the air.

Hawkwood handed him a waterbottle, looking ten years older in the grey morning, moss in his tawny beard.

“Another day, Bardolin. You look like you’ve had a hard night.”

Bardolin swallowed a gulp of water. His mouth soaked it up and remained as dry as gunpowder. He swallowed more.

“Such a dream I had,” he said. “Such a dream.”

There were black hairs sweat-glued to his palms. He stared at them in curiosity, wondering where they could have come from.

The company broke camp in morose silence, the men moving slowly in the gathering heat. They shook out into their accustomed file, some gnawing fruit, others pulling up their breeches, their faces drawn by the chaos of their bowels. More and more of them were succumbing to the inadequacies of their strange diet. The surrounds of the camp stank of ordure. Hollow-eyed, they started off on the day’s journey.

On the afternoon of this, the fourth day, the rain came down with its weary regularity, and they plodded on under it like cattle oblivious to the drover’s stick. Masudi and Cortona, one of the strongest soldiers, were at the front chopping a path blindly with one hand shielding their eyes as though from too-brilliant sunlight. Behind them the rest of the soldiers staggered onwards, their once-bright armour now coral coloured in places, green in others. Their rotting boots sank deep into the leaf litter and muck and they were sometimes obliged to bend over and pull their feet free of the sucking mud with their hands.

Then the two point-men stopped. The heavy vegetation had given way like a breached wall and there was a clearing in front of them, the far side of it misted by the pouring rain.

“Sir!” Cortona shouted above the downpour, and Murad was shoving everyone out of the way to get to the head of the file.

A figure was sitting in the middle of the clearing, cross-legged and head bowed in the wet. As far as they could tell, it was a woman, her dark hair bound up, dressed in leather with bare arms and legs. She did not look up at the gaping explorers, nor did she acknowledge their presence in any way, but they knew she was aware of them. And there were odd flickerings of movement along the edge of the clearing behind her.

The company stood like men stunned, water pouring down their faces and into their open mouths unheeded. At last Murad drew his rapier, ignoring Bardolin’s urgent hiss.

The woman in the clearing looked up, but at the sky above, not at them. For an instant her eyes seemed blank and white in the rain, lacking iris or pupil. Then the rain stopped as swiftly as it always did in this country. Their job done, the clouds began to break up and the sun to filter down.

The woman smiled, as though it were all her handiwork and she was proud of it. Then she looked straight at the crowd of men who stood opposite, swords drawn, arquebuses levelled.

She smiled again, this time showing white, sharp teeth like those of a cat. Her eyes were very dark, her face pointed and delicate. She rose from her sitting position in one sinuous movement that made the breath catch in the throat of every man who watched her. A bare midriff, lines of muscle on either side of the navel. Unshod feet, slender limbs the colour of honey.

“I am Kersik,” she said in Normannic that had a slight burr to it, an old-fashioned slowness. “Greetings and welcome.”

Murad recovered more quickly than any of them, and, aristocratic to his fingertips, he bowed with a flourish of the winking rapier.

“Lord Murad of Galiapeno at your service, lady.” Hawkwood noted wryly that he did not introduce himself as his excellency the governor.

But the woman Kersik looked past him to where Bardolin stood with the imp perched, bedraggled and dripping, on his shoulder.

“And you, brother,” she said. “You are doubly welcome. It is a long time since a Master of Disciplines came to our shores.”

Bardolin merely nodded stiffly. For a moment they stared into each other’s eyes, the battered old wizard and the slim young woman. Bardolin frowned, and she smiled as though in answer, eyes dancing.

There was a pause. The soldiers were drinking the woman in, but she seemed unperturbed by their hungry regard.

“You are bound for the city, I take it,” she said lightly.

Murad and Hawkwood shared a glance, and the scarred nobleman bowed again. “Yes, lady, we are. But we are sadly puzzled as to how to get there.”

“I thought as much. I will take you, then. It’s a journey of many days.”

“You have our thanks.”

“Your men have been eating too much of the wrong kinds of fruit, Lord Murad of Galiapeno,” Kersik said. “They have the air of the flux about them.”

“We are unaccustomed as yet to your country and its ways, lady.”

“Of course you are. Put your men into camp here in the clearing. I’ll fetch them something to calm their stomachs. If they start the journey to Undi in this condition they might not finish it.”

“Undi. Is that the name of your city?” Hawkwood asked. “What language might it be in?”

“In an old, forgotten language, Captain,” the woman said. “This is an old continent. Man has been here a long time.”

“And from whence did you come? I wonder,” Hawkwood muttered, unsettled by being called “Captain.” How had she known?

Kersik glanced at him sharply. She had heard his whispered comment.

“I’ll return ere nightfall,” she said then. And disappeared.

The men blinked. They had seen a tan blur across the clearing, nothing more.

“A witch, by Ramusio’s beard,” Murad growled.

“Not a witch,” Bardolin told him. “A mage. The Dweomer is thick about her. And something else as well.” He rubbed his face as though trying to scrub the weariness from it.

“Sorcery, always sorcery,” Murad said bitterly. “Maybe she has gone to collect a few cohorts of her fellow warlocks. Well, I wonder what they’ll make of Hebrian steel.”

“Steel will do you no good here, Murad,” Bardolin said.

“Maybe. But we have iron bullets for the arquebuses. That may give them pause for thought. Sergeant Mensurado!”

“Sir.”

“We’ll make camp, do as we’re told. But I want the slow-match lit, and every weapon loaded. I want the men ready to repel any attack.”

“Yes, sir.”

A S the light died and the night swooped in once more, the company gathered about three campfires, each big enough to roast an ox over. The soldiers stood watch with powder-smoke from the glowing match eddying about their cuirasses, stamping their feet and whistling to keep awake, or slapping at the incessant probing of the insects.

“Will she come back, do you think?” Hawkwood asked, grimacing as he kneaded his bad shoulder.

Murad shrugged. “Why not ask our resident expert in all things occult?” He nodded at Bardolin.

The mage seemed on the verge of sleep, his imp lying wide-eyed and watchful in his lap. His head jerked, and the silver stubble on his chin glistened in the firelight.

“She’ll be back. And she’ll take us to this city of hers. They want us there, Murad. If they didn’t, we’d be dead by now.”

“I thought they’d prefer us sunk somewhere in the Western Ocean,” Hawkwood said. “Like the caravel’s crew.”

“They did, yes. But now that we’re here, I believe they are interested in us.” Or in me, the thought came, alarming and unwelcome.

“And just who are they, Mage?” Murad demanded. “You speak as though you knew.”

“They are Dweomer-folk of some kind, obviously. Descendants of previous voyagers, perhaps. Or indigenous peoples maybe. But I doubt that, for they speak Normannic. Something has happened here in the west. It has been going on for centuries whilst we’ve been fighting our wars and spreading our faith oblivious to it. Something different. I’m not sure what, not yet.”

“You’re as vague as a fake seer, Bardolin,” said Murad in disgust.

“You want answers; I cannot give them to you. You will have to wait. I’ve a feeling we’ll know more than we ever wanted to before this thing is done.”

They settled into an uncomfortable silence, the three of them. The fires cracked and spat like angry felines, and the jungle raved deliriously to itself, a wall of dark and sound.

“What bright fires,” a voice said. “One might almost think you folk were afraid of the dark.”

Their heads snapped up, and the woman Kersik was standing before them. She carried a small hide bag which stank like rancid sap. The tiny hairs on her thighs were golden in the firelight. As her mouth smiled its corners arced up almost to her ears and her eyes were two light-filled slits.

Murad sprang to his feet and she stepped back, becoming human again. Mensurado was berating the sentries for having let her slip past them unseen.

“You do not need men to keep watch in the night,” she said. “Not now I am here.” She dumped the hide bag on the ground. “That is for those among you whose guts are churning. Eat a few of the leaves. They’ll calm them.”

“What are you, a forest apothecary?” Murad asked.

She regarded him, her head on one side. “I like this one. He has spirit.” And while Murad considered this: “Best you should sleep. We will walk a long way tomorrow.”

T HEY set sentries, though she laughed at them for doing so. She sat cross-legged off at the edge of the firelight as she had been sitting when first they had seen her. Men made the Sign of the Saint when they thought she was not looking. They ate their meagre supper of gleaned fruit, not one of them trusting her enough to try the bag of leaves she had brought. Then they lay down on the wet ground with sword and arquebus close to hand.

Bardolin’s imp could not settle. It would nestle against him in its accustomed sleeping position and then shift uneasily again and squirm out from beside him to take in the camp and the sleeping figures, the watchful sentries.

It nudged him awake some time before the dawn and in the half-sleeping state between unconsciousness and wakefulness he could have sworn that the camp was surrounded by a crowd of figures which stood motionless in the trees. But when he sat up, scraping at his gummed eyelids, they were gone and the Kersik woman was sitting cross-legged, not a particle of weariness in her appearance.

Murad sat with his back to a tree opposite, an arquebus in his hands with its slow-match burnt down almost to the wheel. His eyes were feverish with fatigue. He had watched her all night it seemed. The woman rose and stretched, the muscles rippling under her golden skin.

“Well rested for the travel ahead?” she asked.

The nobleman looked at her through sunken eyes.

“I’m ready for anything,” he said.