Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time (15 page)

The scream went on and its weird echo was lost in the storm of battle. And then, Argustier’s sword was sliding across the Cypriot’s throat and the scream was drowned in blood.

“Filthy creature,” the Frenchman grunted. Felluci looked away as the body sagged in its bonds. He tried to push aside the memory of the scream and concentrate on the battle swirling around him. Covered in the powder smoke that hung over the galley’s deck, he rested on his sword, waiting for the inevitable collision. Artillery was all well and good, but it always came down to sword-work in the end.

“They saw falling stars the other night,” Agostino said, looking at the dead Cypriot, his good eye narrowed to a slit. “Like clawmarks in the sky.”

“Who saw?”

“Them. The fishermen and the priests and the sailors. All of them,” Agostino said. He spat over the side. “Bad omen, that, no matter what the God-botherers say. On the coast, they say the fishermen make their offerings then. To the masters of the far deep and wide dark.”

“Who says?”

“Them.” Agostino fixed him with his good eye. “Cypriots. Maltese. All of them. You should toss it, sir. Get rid of it,” he said, gesturing to the bauble.

“I’ll have you know this will be paying your wages for the next year.”

Agostino grunted. “Mark my words, sir. It’s an omen.”

“‘Clawmarks in the sky,’” Felluci repeated, shaking his head. “Any other omens I should know about?”

“Crows,” the Sicilian said.

“Crows?”

“Crows,” Agostino repeated. “Ottomans scared them up when they set sail. Flock as deep and wide as Hell. Saw them myself.”

“Crows,” Felluci said again. “Stars and crows and deep fish following the sound of battle. As omens go, I admit those don’t sound auspicious.”

Agostino grunted and settled down to wait. Felluci watched him for a moment then turned back to the battle before his eyes could be lured back to the fisherman’s body. It wasn’t that he was squeamish. He had done his share of God’s cruel work on the Earth. It was simply the way the body hung, jerking in its final throes.

The fisherman jerked and twitched for all the world like a fish that had been caught in a net. He thought of what Agostino had said.
The masters of the far deep.

He’d had a classical education. He knew the names of the gods of antiquity, including those for whom the sea was their domain. The far deep, down where the light wouldn’t reach and the warmth couldn’t penetrate.

Felluci stared at the dark water and fancied, just for a moment, that he could see something staring back.

At dusk, the flagships met in the center of the maelstrom, trading hammer-blows with frenzied abandon. Similar collisions occurred up and down the battle line. Ships spun lazily, driven off-kilter by lucky shots, and bows connected with sterns, the crunch of wood meeting wood mingling with the snapping of hundreds of oars and the serpentine hiss of arrows, all echoing up into the darkening sky. Everything became a tangled mass of thrashing ships, individual vessels obscured by the smoke.

Aboard the
St. Elmo
, Argustier barked orders and men set to building barricades at the mast stations, making ready to face boarders. Those nearest the mast where the fisherman hung did their best to avoid even looking at the body. As one of the handful of knights aboard the galley, Felluci was free of such scut-work and able to concentrate on the approaching Ottoman flank. The ships were moving fast. Sleek Algerian galleys that cut the water like knives. He heard Agostino hiss and glanced at him.

“What?”

Agostino pointed wordlessly. Felluci looked and gave a groan. “Oh, bloody hell.” He knew Argustier had seen the same thing he had when he heard the other knight give a bellow of frustration.

The line was in disarray. Somewhere, someone had given the wrong order and now, what had once been a proper battle line was an absolute mess. The whole flank was collapsing in on itself as ships peeled away and headed in every direction, save the one the enemy occupied.

Felluci knew what was coming next. It was as inevitable as the dawn. He tensed as a storm of bullets and arrows fell on the
St. Elmo
like the first snow of winter, plucking men from their stations and washing the decks in blood. Felluci staggered as arrows plucked at his armor. A bullet spanged from his breastplate, leaving a dent and knocking the wind out of him. Leaning against the rail, he tried to catch his breath.

“They’re coming!” Agostino barked. He took aim with his arquebus and fired. A few yards away, a Turk was punched backwards and the Sicilian gave a snarl of triumph. Felluci rose back to his feet, sword in hand, just as the ships crashed together.

Janissaries and marines hurled themselves over the rails, eager to get to grips with the men wearing the crimson-and-white of Malta. Felluci gripped his blade in two hands and swung it in short, brutal arcs, chopping through flesh and bone with desperate abandon.

Again, he heard the scream, the fisherman’s cry, but knew it was just a dying man. There were so many screams and to become distracted by one was a guarantee of adding his own to the chorus.

He sent a head tumbling from a pair of shoulders and whirled as the deck beneath his feet trembled. The
St. Elmo
listed like a drunkard, its guts shorn through by a lucky shot. He could feel the shaped boards of the deck curl beneath his feet like flayed skin.

“Sir!”

Felluci turned back, just in time to block a halberd blow that would have split his head like a melon. He sheared through the haft of the weapon and spitted its wielder. Kicking the body free, he stumbled on the bloody deck as the ship gave a groan. Algerians in leopard skin and silvery mail pounced on him, trying to bring him down.

Agostino was there, firing his weapon again, then using the heavy stock of the arquebus to beat about him. Felluci kept his feet and soon, he and his man-servant were back to back, turning in a circle, surrounded by blades. He struck and struck again.

The air was thick with black smoke and Felluci could taste the tang of fire on the air. Somewhere, a powder magazine went up, taking a ship with it. Turkish war-cries split the air. The other ships that weren’t sinking were crowded with the soldiers of the enemy, who hacked and thrust at any living thing.

The flank of the fleet of the Holy League was gone. In an hour, it had been reduced to a memory. The battle itself wasn’t lost, but this side of it was.

“Damn it. We’re sunk,” Felluci said. The last of the Algerians was down, gasping out his life on the rough wood of the deck, but the galley was almost on its side. It was taking on water quickly and would soon sink. He could hear the cries of men flailing in the water beside the ship and the men trapped in the hold.

The thought chilled him. He’d been in sea battles before, and storms. He knew what happened to chained men when a ship rolled or sank. He’d seen the bloated bodies, floating trapped. It was no way for a man to die. Even a Turk.

His eyes found the fisherman’s corpse, still tied to the mast, head bobbing, bulging eyes staring at the water creeping over the deck.

Then the sounds again. A thudding against the wood. It had to be the water, didn’t it? Just the water lapping at the hull. The icon was cold against his hip, so cold it burned through his jerkin and mail.

Argustier rushed past, covered in blood, sword in hand. Beard bristling, he shouted oaths in his native tongue. Felluci grabbed his arm. “We’re sunk, Argustier! We need to get the crew overboard – get them to strike out for shore or one of the other ships!”

“We have no crew!” Argustier growled, slapping his hand away. “That last broadside scythed the useless bastards like wheat. It’s just us!”

“What about those in the hold? The slaves? We can at least give them a fighting chance!” Felluci snapped back.

“Do what you want,” Argustier said. “I’m for whatever ship I can reach. I –”

His head disappeared in a spray of blood and bone and gunpowder stink, most of which splattered across Felluci’s cuirass. Argustier’s body tumbled down into the hold. Felluci, pale-faced and trembling, stepped back. A Turkish ship loomed out of the darkness, guns firing. Arrows peppered the deck.

“The water, sir! Just like St. Elmo!” Agostino said, grabbing for his sleeve. Felluci shrugged him off with a sudden, berserk frenzy.

“You go, Agostino. I’m for below.”

“Sir?”

“The slaves, man. Isn’t Christian to leave them to drown, even if half of them are Turks.” Felluci descended into the hold without waiting for a reply.

He couldn’t leave them. Not like this. He was not a good man, but some touch of pity was blazing into being, now that the end was here. Maybe a few less lives on his tally would set the scales even.

In the darkness, men were howling for mercy. The lanterns, what few remained lit after the broadside that had cracked open the hull, showed a scene out of some poet’s dream of Hell. Dead men floated in pieces, still chained to the living. The ocean surged through the cavernous hole and more than half the surviving slaves were up to their necks in water.

The wood of the hull shuddered as something heavy crashed against it. A repetitive cycle of blows. Men shrank back as far as their chains would allow.

It was the water. Just the ocean. That was frightening enough. In his mind’s eye, he saw silvery shapes thrusting through the darkness, in pursuit of the galley.

Cursing, Felluci shoved the thought aside and waded towards those closest to drowning. He swung his sword, chopping through the chains with a grunt. Men began to swim. Someone began to scream. Felluci turned and saw a chained slave slip under the water, his knuckles white on the oar. He surfaced in a rush, his screams peeling out again, as he clung to the oar as if his life depended on it. The water boiled around him when he went down again.

“Jesus,” Felluci said as he watched the dark water go red. And then he heard it.

The scream.

The icon hanging from his belt felt heavy, suddenly. As if it carried the weight of a dead man with bulging eyes. The cold shot through him and he froze. Something silvery and sharp came out of the water, lamp-like eyes staring into his as claws scored the wood of the hull and it lunged with supple swiftness towards him.

Remembering that he still clutched his sword, he raised it, though only half-heartedly, as the deep-mud stench of whatever it was rolled over him.

Then came a different stink, and a yowl of gunfire, and whatever it was was gone, flipping back into the water like a fish released from a line.

“Sir?” Agostino said, clinging to the ladder into the hold. “Sir, are you –”

“Still breathing, yes.” Felluci whirled, panic lending him speed, and swung his blade down, chopping through more and more chains, conscious of the crawling water and the silvery glint that came with it. It was still out there, still swimming. What was it? What was it?

Maybe the Cypriot would have known. Or Agostino’s apocryphal fisherman. Men waged war on the surface of the sea without giving thought to what watched from below. What was it? Men grabbed at his arms, babbling prayers and plea. He shrugged them off.

“What was it?” he said, shouting. “Agostino! What was it?”

“I ….” Agostino shook his head and awkwardly tried to reload his arquebus. “I didn’t see it!”

“Damn your eyes; you did!” Felluci gestured with his sword. “Up! Up and swim, if you value your lives!” Agostino climbed quickly back up. The slaves crawled out of the hold after him.

Felluci turned as he heard the sound of something sharp digging into wood. Claws? His heart sped up. He wasn’t frightened. Not really. He didn’t know what it was and a man like Felluci could not be afraid of the unknown.

At least, that was what he told himself. It was getting harder and harder to hold to it as he stood in the rising water, amidst the floating dead, and tightened his grip on his notched sword.

The chains clinked. Something crept among the bodies of the drowned. It was just beneath the surface. Like moonlight, only, not a reflection.

He backed away, towards the ladder, sword extended. The fisherman’s bauble seemed to anchor him in place, making him move slowly. Then the smell again. Wet and clammy and foul.

It rose slowly this time, as if it had all the time in the world. Pale eyes fixed on him and followed his progress as he tried to back up the ladder. It was more fish than anything, lacking the smooth dichotomy evident in the woodcuts of tritons, mermen and monkfish. It was ape, frog, fish, squid, and all things far and deep. Webbed paws reached for him.

No. Not him.

Felluci’s hand slapped against the bauble and he spun, scrambling the rest of the way up. The thing screamed and followed, not bothering with the ladder, just digging its claws into the wood and hauling itself up.

On the deck, Felluci found himself face-to-face with a dozen Janissaries. One stepped forward, mustaches bristling as he leveled his arquebus and barked an order in Turkish.

Agostino lay nearby, face slack, dazed by a blow to the skull. Several of the slaves were dead, the others huddled behind the Turks, already enslaved again after only a few moments of freedom.

Felluci didn’t drop his sword. He didn’t dare. He turned and backed away, ignoring the Turks, as the great frog-shape of the thing heaved itself up out of the hold, dripping water. It screeched and the cry was answered from the water by a dozen eerily similar sounds. Arquebuses barked and foul smoke spread as a half-dozen bullets struck the creature and flung it down, oozing whatever passed for blood. It sprawled on the deck, long arms reaching towards the feet of the dead fisherman. It wheezed like a drowning fish.

Had it come for him? Or for its due? He recalled the way it had looked at the bauble he wore, then tensed, waiting for the bullet that would do the same to him. Instead, the ship rocked. Dark shapes clambered aboard, pale-moon eyes gleaming out of silvery skulls. The Turks turned, some trying to reload, others drawing their curved swords. Then the things were upon them in a rush, croaking and screeching.

Felluci wanted to laugh at the spectacle, but instead, he grabbed Agostino and hauled him out of the way, slicing his sword out at anything – man or beast – that got too close. Shouts of alarm came from the Turkish vessels pressing close as the men aboard got a look at what awaited them on the
St. Elmo
.