Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (78 page)

He dipped his nub of a quill in the inkwell and began to write his log.

26th day of Endorion, ashore Fort Abeleius, year of the Saint 551 - though only a few sennights remain of the old year, and soon we will be into the Saint's days which denote the turning of the calendar.

The palisade was finished today, and we have begun the task of felling some of the huge trees which stand within its perimeter. Murad's plan is to lop them a little at a time and use them for construction and firewood. He will never uproot them; I think such trees must have roots running to the core of the earth.

The building work proceeds apace. We have a governor's residence - the only building with a floor, though it has an old topsail for its back wall. I dine there tonight. Civilization comes to the wilderness.

Hawkwood reread his entry. He was becoming loquacious now that he no longer had to write of winds and courses and sailing arrangements. His log was turning into a journal.

At last we have dry powder, though keeping it so in this climate has tried the wits of every soldier among us. It was Bardolin who suggested sealing the powder-horns with wax. He has become a little odd, our resident mage. Murad regards him as the leader of the colonists, the scientific problem-solver, but also as something of a fraud. Whether this last attitude of his is assumed or not I do not know. Since his peasant lover turned out to be a shifter, Murad has been different - at once less sure of himself and more autocratic. But then who among us was not changed by that weird voyage and its horrors?

I would that Billerand were here, or Julius Albak, my shipmates of old. Our company is the poorer without them, and I am not entirely happy with Velasca as first mate. His navigation leaves a lot to be desired.

"Captain?" a voice said beyond the sailcloth flap that served as Hawkwood's door.

"Come in, Bardolin."

The mage entered, stooping. He looked older, Hawkwood thought. His carriage had always been so upright, his face so battered and grizzled that he seemed made out of some enduring stone; but the years were beginning to tell on him now. His forehead shone with sweat, and like everyone else's his neck and arms were blotched with insect bites. The imp that rode on his shoulder seemed as sprightly as ever, though. It leapt on to the crate which Hawkwood used as a desk and he had gently to pry the inkwell out of its tiny hands.

"What cheer, comrade wizard?" Hawkwood asked the old mage.

Bardolin collapsed on the heap of leaves and seacloak which had been piled into a bed.

"I have been purifying water for the invalids among us. I am tired, Captain."

Hawkwood produced a rotund bottle from behind his crate and offered it. "Drink?"

They both had a gulp straight from the neck, and spluttered over the good brandy.

"That calms the bones," Bardolin said appreciatively, and nodded towards the open log. "Writing for posterity?"

"Yes. The habit of a master-mariner's lifetime, though I am in danger of becoming a chronicler." Hawkwood shut the heavily bound book and rewrapped it in its oilcloth. "Ready for tomorrow?"

Bardolin rubbed the shadows under his eyes. "I suppose... How does it feel to be a lord?"

"I still sweat, the mosquitoes still feed off me. It is not so different. "

Bardolin smiled. "What conceit we have, we men. We throw up a squalid camp like this and name it a colony. We distribute titles amongst ourselves, we lay claim to a country which has existed without us since time's dawn; we impose our rules upon things we are utterly ignorant of."

"It is how society is made," Hawkwood said.

"Yes. How did the Fimbrians feel, do you think, when they came together in their tribes nine centuries ago and made themselves into one people? Was there a shadow of their empire flickering about them, even then? History. Give it a hundred years and it will make heroes and villains out of every one of us - if it remembers us."

"The world rolls on. It is for us to make what we can of it."

The old mage stretched. "Of course. And tomorrow we will see a little more of it. Tomorrow the governor sets out to explore this place he has claimed."

"Would you rather be playing hide-and-seek with the Inceptines back in Abrusio?"

"Yes. Yes, I would. I am afraid, Captain, truly afraid. I am frightened of what we will find here in the west. But curious also. I would not stay behind tomorrow for all the world. It is man's insufferable curiosity which makes him set sail across unknown seas; it is a more potent force even than greed or ambition - you know that, I think, better than anyone."

"I'm as ambitious and greedy as the next man."

"But curiosity drove you here."

"That, and Murad's blackmail."

"Aha! Our noble governor again! He has brought us all into the tangle of his own machinations. We are flies trembling in his web. Well, even spiders have their predators. He is beginning to realize that, in spite of his bluster and arrogance."

"Do you hate him then?"

"I hate what he represents: the blind bigotry and pride of his caste. But he is not as bad as some; he is not stupid, nor does he wilfully ignore the truth, no matter what he says."

"You have too many new ideas, Bardolin, I too find it hard to accommodate some of them. Your hills which spout flames and ash - those I can believe. I have heard men talk of them before. But this
smell
of magic from the trees and soil; from the land itself. An earth which circles the sun. A moon bombarded by stones from beyond the sky... Everyone knows that our world is at the heart of God's creation, even the Merduks."

"That is the Church talking."

"I am no blind son of the Church, you know that."

"You are a product of its culture."

Hawkwood threw up his hands. Bardolin exasperated him, but he could not dislike the man. "Drink some more brandy, and stop trying to right the wrongs of society for a while."

Bardolin laughed, and complied.

T
HEY WERE TO
venture into the interior again in the morning, and Murad's dinner was both a social event and a planning conference. He had killed the last of the chickens, as if to prove to the world that he had no fears for the future, and one of the soldiers had shot a tiny deer, no bigger than a lamb, which was the centrepiece of the table. Bardolin examined its bones as if they were the stuff of an augury. Beside the meat courses there was the last of the dried fruit, nuts, pickled olives, and a tiny scrap of Hebrion sea cheese as hard as soap. They drank Candelarian which was as warm as blood in the humid night, and finished with Fimbrian brandy.

Hawkwood, Murad, Bardolin, Sequero and di Souza: the hierarchy of the colony. Murad's exclusive guestlist had antagonized half a dozen of the more prominent of the colonists, who felt they should have been drinking his brandy also.

The lucky few talked civilly enough amongst themselves, with the light of the precious ship's candles playing on their glistening faces. Sequero was mourning his horses; they were deteriorating fast in this foreign climate, and no fodder the men could find seemed to suit them. Not that a horse could bear a man anywhere in the jungle, Hawkwood thought; but from now on the nobility would walk like the meanest trooper. Perhaps that was what grieved the aristocratic young officer most.

Huge moths circled the candles, some as big as Hawkwood's hand, and fizzling around them were the tinier insects which were nevertheless the more irritating. Despite the attempts Murad had made to make the gathering a gracious affair, with a couple of the female colonists as maidservants, the men around the rough board table and mould-spattered linen tablecloth were none too clean and tidy. Leather rotted here with incredible swiftness, they had found, and many of the soldiers were already securing their armour with twisted lengths of creeper or ship's rope. Soon they would be a crowd of savages dressed in rags.

The colonists were experimenting with the fruits which hung in profusion from almost every tree, Bardolin told them. Some were very good, others smelled like corruption the minute they were opened. A few birds had been trapped with greenlime smeared on branches. There was food here for all, if only they could learn how to use it, prepare it, recognize it.

"Food for savages," Sequero sneered. "I for one would prefer to trust to the ship's salt pork and biscuit."

"The ship's stores will not last for ever," Hawkwood said. "And most of them will have to be reserved for the homeward voyage. I have men trying to extract salt from the shallower pools on the shore, but we must assume that we have no way of preserving food. The barrelled stores must be kept intact."

"I agree," Murad said unexpectedly. "This is our country and we must learn to use it. From tomorrow onwards, the exploring party will be living off the land. It would be absurd to try and carry our food with us."

Sequero held up a glass of the ruby Candelarian. "We will miss many things ere long, I suppose. It is the price we pay for being pioneers. Sir, how long do you expect to be gone?" He was to be in command of the colony while Murad was away.

"A month or five weeks, not more. I expect progress in my absence, Haptman. You can start clearing plots for those families with able-bodied men, and I want the coast surveyed up and down for several leagues and accurate charts made. Hawkwood's people will help you in that."

Sequero bowed slightly in his seat. He did not seem unduly burdened by his new responsibilities. Di Souza sat opposite him, his big red face expressionless. He was a noble only by adoption; he could not have hoped for Sequero's promotion. But he had hoped, all the same.

They lifted the sailcloth wall of Murad's residence to let air flow in and out. Around the fort the rude huts of the other colonists squatted, some of them lit by campfires, others illuminated by the bobbing globes of werelight kindled by those who knew some cantrimy. They were like outsized fireflies hovering fascinated in the darkness, an eldritch sight with the forest moths circling them. Little flapping planets in erratic orbits about miniature suns, Hawkwood thought, remembering Bardolin's beliefs.

"They say that Ramusio tramped every road and track in Normannia in his spreading of the faith," Bardolin said quietly. "But the Saint's foot never trod this earth. It is a dark continent we have discovered. I wonder if we shall ever bring any light to it save for fire and werelight."

"And gunfire," Murad added. "That we have brought also. Where faith does not sustain us, arquebuses will. And the determination of men."

"Let us hope it is enough," the old wizard said, and swallowed the last of the wine.

Twelve

T
HERE 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.