The Heretic Kings: Book Two of The Monarchies of God

by Paul Kearney

  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 camp-fires, 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 for the forest moths were 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.

  “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.

  T HE 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.”

  T HERE 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.

  T HEY 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.

  B ARDOLIN 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.