Ships from the West (32 page)

‘More speed!’ Murad screamed. ‘You there, give us another two knots and we’ll have them before breakfast!’

The hooded Inceptine to whom he spoke did not answer, but he seemed to hunch over within his robe, and the tone of the vibration which filled the ship rose by an octave. The
Revenant
dipped deeply and water came flooding in the chaser gunports, green and cold. The masts creaked and complained and the backstays were wringing taut, but nothing gave away. The weather-worker was not moving the ship, but the water within which it travelled, and spreading out all around the ship’s hull was a violent turbulence of broken, foaming spray which was at odds with the natural swell of the sea about them. The ship trembled and shook as though it were being rattled in the grip of some undersea giant, and several of the crew were knocked off their feet, but Murad stood on the wave-swept forecastle gripping one of the foremast shrouds, and the light in his eyes grew to a yellow fire. They drew nearer to their prey. Now only a cable and a half - three hundred yards - separated the tip of the barquentine’s bowsprit and the
Seahare’s
taffrail. In half a glass they would be abreast. Murad raised his voice. ‘AH hands, prepare for boarding!’, and an homunculus wheeled out of the rigging and settled on his shoulder. About him on the forecastle clustered a great mob of the Zantu, now clad again in their black horn armour and clicking their pincers impatiently. The armour began as a natural construct of horn and leather, but when a man donned it, he became somehow part of it, and it augmented his strength as well as protecting his flesh. The Zantu were fearsome warriors in their own right, but when wearing their black harness they were well-nigh invincible.

‘Remember!’ Murad yelled. ‘The captain is to be taken alive, and the woman’s body I must see with my own eyes. The rest are yours.’

The Zantu had fasted for days in preparation of this hour, and from the depths of their shining masks their eyes glittered with hunger and anticipation.

Murad could actually recognise Hawkwood now. He stood at the stern of his ship with an oddly familiar dark-haired boy beside him, and shouted orders that were lost in the wind and the foaming tumult of the waves. The
Seahare
suddenly yawed hard a port so that she revealed her full broadside, such as it was. Six gun-ports gaping, and then the side of the ship disappeared in a bank of smoke, and a heartbeat later came the roar of the retorts. Murad felt the wind of one shot pass his head, and it staggered him. The rest smashed down the full length of the
Revenant,
leaving chaos in their wake. Blocks and fragments of rigging were hurled through the air and the close-packed boarding party was blasted to pieces, so that the scuppers ran with blood and fragments of men were blown as far aft as the quarterdeck.

The humming tremble of the ship’s hull ceased, and looking aft Murad saw that one cannonball had cut his weather-working Inceptine in two. The
Revenant
lost speed and the foaming water about her began to settle into a more rational wake.

‘Get me back my speed!’ he shrieked at the ship’s master, a renegade Gabrionese who stood white-faced by the wheel. ‘Shoot them! Catch them, sink them for the love of God!’

The master put the wheel about and the barquentine yawed in her turn, exposing her much heavier metal. ‘Fire!’ he shouted, and the gun crews collected their wits and sent off a ragged broadside.

But the Zantu were not the well-trained sailors of Hawk-wood’s crew. Murad saw three of the balls strike home amidships, and a hail of wood splinters went flying as the
Seahare’s
larboard rail was demolished, but most went high, slicing cables in the rigging but doing little serious damage.

Both ships had lost speed now, and both were turning back to starboard, into the wind. An arquebus ball zipped past Murad’s ear and he ducked instinctively. Hawkwood had several sailors with small arms firing from his stern. There was a series of splashes in the xebec’s wake; they were throwing their dead overboard. Murad beat his fist on the forecastle rail in his frustration and his homunculus jumped up and down on his shoulder, screeching.

‘More sail!’ he shouted to the master. ‘If they escape then your life is forfeit, master mariner.’

The crew raced up the shrouds and began piling on every scrap of canvas the barquentine possessed. Staysails and jibs were flashed out and the
Revenant
began to accelerate through the water at something approaching her previous rate. The xebec still had not sent up a new mizzen course, and they were gaining again. Murad ignored the arquebus balls that whined and snicked about him, and helped the depleted chaser crews run out their guns once more. They fired on the rise and this time the shots smashed square into the
Seahare’s
stern, sending timbers flying through the air and tossing one of the arquebusiers into the sea. Murad laughed again, and called for more men to come forward.

Another party of Zantu joined him by the chasers. Aboard the
Seahare
a party of men were busy on the quarterdeck and the odd ball came hissing overhead from their arquebusiers. Barely fifty yards separated the two ships now. Murad could see Hawkwood clearly; he was manning the ship’s wheel himself, watching the barquentine as it came up hand over fist. That dark boy was helping him, and to one side of them was Isolla herself. She was aiming an arquebus. Murad, startled, saw the smoke spurt from its muzzle, and something thumped the side of his head. He went down and the homunculus squawked harshly. Labouring back to his feet he realised he was deaf on one side, and when he put up a hand it came away wet. Isolla had shot off half his ear.

Furious, he opened his mouth, but at that moment the
Seahare
made a sharp turn to port, going directly before the wind. As she turned her guns went off in measured sequence, and the
Revenant
was raked again, the cannonballs passing the full length of the ship.

Her sails shivered, then banged taut, and she fell away before the wind. Looking aft, Murad saw that the ship’s wheel had been splintered into pieces and the master lay dead beside it along with the helmsman. The decks were slimy and slick with blood and everywhere fragments of jagged wood and scraps of flesh lay piled amid sliced cables and shattered blocks. Murad dashed aft to the companionway and shouted at the Zantu who staggered there, dazed and bewildered. ‘Get below to the tiller and steer her from there! You others, get back to your guns and commence firing!’

He climbed to the quarterdeck, slipping in blood and cursing, his hand held to the ragged meat where his ear had been. The two vessels were sailing directly before the wind now, on parallel courses less than a cable’s length apart. They were pointed at the long inlet which housed the Torunnan port of Rone; Hawkwood was making a run for shore.

Both ships began firing again, broadside to broadside. The

Revenant
had heavier guns and more of them, but the
Sealwre’s
were better served, and more accurate. She was slower in the water, though, and her pumps were sending thick jets of water out to port. Murad must have holed her below the waterline.

The lean nobleman’s spirits rose. His crew had taken severe casualties, but there were still enough of them to board the enemy. He shouted down the hatch to the tiller deck below: ‘Hard a starboard!’

The
Revenant
made the turn sluggishly, but managed two points into the wind until her beakhead pointed square at the xebec’s larboard forechains. The gap closed frighteningly quickly, and before Murad could even shout a warning the ships had collided with a massive jolt that knocked everyone aboard them both from their feet. The
Revenant’s
bowsprit splintered with a sickening crash and tore loose to rake down the xebec’s side, only to be halted again by the mainchains. There it stuck in a fearsome snarl of broken wood and cordage and iron trapping, and the two ships continued before the wind hopelessly entangled, both out of command.

Murad recovered his wits and his feet quickly, and drew his rapier. ‘Boarders away!’ he shrieked, and ran down the length of his ship to where the wreckage of the bow joined her to the enemy xebec. Two dozen unarmoured Zantu gunners followed him clutching boarding axes and cutlasses and roaring like beasts. They crossed the perilous bridge of wrecked spars with the sea foaming below them and charged down on to the waist of the xebec. The
Seahare
was low in the water now; they had indeed breached her hull with their gunfire, and she was sinking under them.

Three or four gunshots met the invaders, and one of Murad’s followers was blown off the side to plunge into the sea. Then Hawkwood was there -
Haivkivood, at last
- with a cutlass in one hand and a pistol in the other, and the two were glaring naked hate at one another while all about them their ship’s companies engaged in a savage hand-to-hand fight in the waist and along the gangways of the
Seahare.

Hawkwood’s pistol misfired, a flash in the pan and no more. Murad laughed and closed with him, darting in the flicker of the rapier whilst his homunculus went for the mariner’s eyes.

The pair were in the midst of a murderous mob of fighting men, but they might have been alone in the world for all the notice they took. Hawkwood drew his dirk and stabbed at the flapping homunculus even while clashing Murad’s blade aside. The little creature screamed and fastened itself on the back of his neck, biting, reaching round for his eyes with its needle claws, flapping its wings. Murad lunged forward, still laughing, and the tip of the rapier pierced the mariner’s thigh a full three inches. He twisted the blade as he withdrew and Hawkwood fell to one knee. The homunculus had clawed out one of his eyes, but he dropped the dirk and seized the little beast in his fist. He clenched his fingers about it and popped its tiny ribs, then threw it dying at Murad.

Murad batted it aside. It was not a familiar, merely a messenger, and thus no loss to him. He sprang forward again, a great joy rising in him, and drew back his sword for the kill.

But he was buffeted by the melee which raged about them, and thrown off-balance. Cursing, he reached forward again but something struck him in the side, a blunt blow that knocked the breath out of him. He hissed in pain. A woman stood over Hawkwood -
it was Isolla.
Her face was scarred by fire but he knew her at once, though she wore a seaman’s jacket over her skirts. Her face was white and resolute, fearless. She fired the arquebus at point-blank range.

And missed. In the push and shove of the scrum the barrel was knocked aside. The muzzle blast scorched Murad’s hair and half blinded him. He grabbed the barrel with his free hand and stabbed at her with his rapier. His blade caught her below the collar bone and sank deep, deep through her heart. She crumpled and slid off the bloody steel to lie on top of Hawkwood. Murad grinned and raised the rapier to finish the job.

But there was a sudden, savage blow to the side of his neck. It numbed his left arm and made him stumble in astonishment and pain. His lemon yellow eyes flickered as the Dweomer which bound his burned limbs together faltered. He turned, and the rapier slipped from his nerveless fingers.

Bleyn stood there, his own stepson. And in his hand Hawkwood’s dirk, bloody to the hilt. The boy’s face was livid and glaring, though his cheeks were running with tears. Murad reached out his good hand towards him, utterly baffled.
‘What
—
?’
he began.

But Bleyn darted forward and punched the dirk into his chest. It stuck there, grating through his breastbone, and Murad sank to his knees.

‘How … ?’

Hawkwood was staring at him, his remaining eye glittering, Isolla’s body cradled in his arms. The inhuman light in Murad’s own eyes winked out, and for a few seconds his old dark gaze met Hawkwood’s maimed stare in startled disbelief. ‘I didn’t know—’

Hawkwood simply gazed on him, without hatred or anger, and watched the life flit from Murad’s face. The nobleman’s chin sank on his breast and he toppled over on to the bloody deck, mere burnt carrion. Around him his followers saw their leader’s death and faltered, and were beaten back into the sea.

They abandoned the
Seahare
and tossed flaming torches up on to the decks of the
Revenant
as they took to the boats. In the gathering dusk the waves were full of dark faces and others were diving off the sides of the barquentine and swimming out to them. They shot them in the water or hacked their hands from the sides of the boats as they tried to climb on board. Finally they drew clear, their wake lit by the blazing ship behind them, and landed the ship’s boats on the shelving shore east of Rone, and stood a while with the surf beating about their knees and watched the
Revenant
burning against the evening sky. At last the fire reached the powder room, and the barquentine vanished in a bright explosion that echoed and re-echoed in a sharp, brief thunder about the hills of the inlet. For a long while afterwards the wreckage tumbled and splashed down in the quiet waters of the bay, and the evening darkened into night upon the waters.

Richard Hawkwood had fulfilled his mission and had brought Hebrion’s Queen to Torunna, and they buried her on a hilltop overlooking the sea and set a cairn of stones upon her grave.

Twenty

The couriers arrived in Torunn in the red light of dawn, their mounts near foundering, streaked with foam and slathered with mud. The men slid from their saddles in the courtyard of the palace and then half staggered, half ran to the great doors. The gate guards there took their dispatches and after a quick, urgent word, ran pelting to the Bladehall.

Formio, Regent of Torunna, stood before the blazing hearth therein and behind him on the massive mantel there was a lighter space where once the Answerer had hung. But it was gone to war in the hands of the King, and who knew if it would ever hang there again? The Fimbrian was rubbing his hands together absently at the fire and when the guards burst in with the dispatch cases he did not seem much surprised. He looked at the seals, nodded grimly, and spoke to the panting soldiers who had brought them.