Hawkwood s Voyage: Book One of The Monarchies of God

by Paul Kearney

  Corfe was level with the scuffle. He could either step off to one side and continue on his way or walk right through the middle of them. He stopped, hesitating, furious with himself for even caring.

  There was a squawk of anguish from the old man as the chain broke free. The men laughed, one holding it aloft like a trophy.

  “You accursed priests,” he said, and kicked the old man in the ribs. “Your sort always have gold about you, even if all around is ruin and wreckage.”

  “Cut his saintly throat, Pardal,” one of the men said. “He should have stayed to burn in his precious holy city.”

  The man named Pardal bent with a steel glitter in his fist. The old man groaned helplessly.

  “That’s enough, lads,” Corfe heard himself say, for all the world as though he were back in barracks breaking up a brawl.

  The men paused. Their victim blinked withered eyelids on bleeding holes. One side of his face was as black as a Merduk’s with the mud.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Just a traveller, like yourselves. Has not there been enough murder done these past days, without you adding to it? Leave the old crow alone. You have what you want.”

  The men peered at him, curious and wary.

  “What are you, a Knight Militant?” one asked.

  “Nay,” another said. “See his sabre? That’s the weapon of Mogen’s men. He’s a Torunnan.”

  The man called Pardal straightened. “The Torunnans died with Mogen or with Lejer. He’s got that pig-sticker off a corpse.”

  “What else do you think he’s got?” another asked greedily. The men growled and moved into a line confronting Corfe. Six of them.

  Corfe drew out the heavy sabre in one fluid movement.

  “Who’ll be first to test whether I be one of Mogen’s men or no?” he asked. The sabre danced in his hand. He loosened his feet in the gripping muck.

  The men stared at him doubtfully, then one said: “What’s that in your pouch, fellow?”

  Corfe tapped his bulging belt pouch, smiling, and said truthfully: “Half a turnip.”

  “Throw it over here, and maybe we won’t cut off your prick.”

  “Come and get it, you long streak of yellow shit.”

  The six paused, greed and fear fighting a curious battle on their countenances.

  Then: “Take him!” one of them bellowed, and they were lurching towards Corfe with their weapons upraised.

  He moved aside. They bunched on him, which was what he had hoped for. A jab of the sabre point made one throw himself backwards, to slip and tumble in the slithery mud. As he brought the blade back Corfe smashed the heavy basket hilt into another of their faces. The short spike on the hilt ripped up the man’s nostril with a spray of dark blood, and he turned aside with a cry.

  Corfe whirled—too slowly. A cudgel caught him just above the ear, grazing his skull and tearing the skin and hair. He hardly felt the blow, but ducked low and swung at the man’s knee, feeling the crunch of bone and cartilage up his forearm as the keen blade destroyed the joint.

  He tore the sabre free and the man fell, tripping up another. Corfe swung at the nape of the tripped man’s neck, saw the flesh slice apart and again felt the familiar jar as the sabre broke through the bone.

  No more of them came at him. He stood with the sword held at the ready position, hardly panting. His head was ringing and he could feel the burning swell of the blow that had landed there, but he felt as light as thistledown. There was laughter fluttering in his throat like some manic, trapped bird.

  One man lay dead, his head attached to his body only by the clammy gleam of the windpipe. Another was sitting holding his mangled knee, groaning. A third had both hands clutched to the hole in his face. The other three looked at Corfe darkly.

  “The bastard is a Torunnan after all,” one said with disgust. “Aren’t you?” he asked Corfe.

  Corfe nodded.

  “We’ll leave you to your Raven then, Torunnan. May you have joy of each other.”

  They helped up the crippled man and stumbled off into the curtain of the rain, joining the other anonymous shapes who were staggering westwards. The dead man’s blood darkened the mud, rain-stippled. Corfe felt strangely let down. With a flash of insight he realized he had been hoping to die and leave his own corpse on the churned ground. The knowledge sapped his strength. His shoulders sagged, and he sheathed the sabre without cleaning it. There was only himself again, and the rain and the mud and the shadows passing by.

  Someone else was stumbling towards him: a robed shape bent over as if burdened with pain. It was a young monk, his tonsure a white circle in the gloom. He splashed to his knees beside the old, eyeless man who lay forgotten on the ground.

  “Master,” he sobbed. “Master, they have killed you.” There was a black bar of blood striping the young monk’s face. Corfe joined him, kneeling in the mud like a penitent.

  The terrible face on the ground twitched. The mouth moved, and Corfe heard the old man say in a whisper of escaping breath:

  “God has forsaken us. We are alone in a darkening land. Sweet Saint, forgive us.”

  The monk cradled his master’s head in his lap, weeping. Corfe stared at the pair dull-eyed, still somewhat blasted at finding himself yet living. But there was something here at least—something for him to do.

  “Come,” he said, tugging at the monk’s arm. “We’ll find us some shelter, a space out of the rain. I have food I’m willing to share.”

  The young man stared at him. His face was swollen grotesquely on one side and Corfe thought there were bones broken there.

  “Who are you, that has saved my master’s life?” he asked. “What blessed angel sent you to watch over us?”

  “I’m just a soldier,” Corfe told him irritably. “A deserter fleeing west like the rest of the world. No angel sent me.” The young man’s piety soured his humour further. He had seen too many horrors lately to give it credence.

  “Well, soldier,” the monk said with absurd formality, “we are in your debt. I am Ribeiro, a novice of the Antillian Order.” He paused, almost as if he were weighing something up in his mind. Then he looked down at the wreck of a man whose savaged head was pillowed on his knees. “And this is His Holiness the High Pontiff of the Five Monarchies, Macrobius the Third.”

  T HE rain had stopped with the rising of the moon, and it looked as though the night sky would clear. Already Corfe could see the long curve of Coranada’s scythe twinkling around the North Star.

  He threw another piece of wood on the fire, relishing the heat. His back was sodden and cold, but his face was aglow. The saturated leather of his boots was steaming and beginning to split, what with the heat and the rough usage. Mud was dropping in hard scales from his drying garments.

  He shook his head testily. The blood pooled in his ear had dried to a black crust, affecting his hearing. He would see about that when dawn came.

  He was huddled under an ox-waggon, burning the spokes of its shattered wheels for fuel. Ribeiro was asleep but the old man—Macrobius—was awake. It was somehow awful to see him blink like that, the eyelids sunken and wrinkled over the pits which had once housed his sight. Corfe could see now that he wore the black habit of the Inceptines, and that once the garment had been rich and full. It was a mosaic of mud and blood and broken threads now, and the old man shivered within it despite the warmth of the flames.

  “You do not believe us,” the old priest said. “You do not believe that I am who I say I am.”

  Corfe stabbed a stick into the fire’s glowing heart and said nothing.

  “It is true, though. I am—or was—Macrobius, head of the Ramusian Faith, guardian of the Holy City of Aekir.”

  “John Mogen was its guardian, and the men who died there with him,” Corfe said roughly.

  “And were you, my son, one of Mogen’s men?”

  It was eerie, having a conversation with an eyeless man. Corfe’s glare went unheeded.

  “I heard those brigands talk.
They called you a Torunnan. Were you one of the garrison?”

  “You talk too much, old man.”

  For a second the man’s face changed; the saintly look fled and something like a snarl passed over it. That too faded, though, and the old man laughed ruefully.

  “I ask your pardon, soldier. I am not much used to blunt speech, even yet. It must be that God is chastising me for my pride. ‘The Proud shall be humbled, and the Meek shall be raised above them.’ ”

  “There aren’t many meek folk abroad tonight,” Corfe retorted. “It surprises me that the pair of you got so far without getting your holy throats slit.” As he spoke, he saw again the place where the old man’s eyes had been and cursed himself for his clumsiness.

  “I’m sorry,” he grated. “We have all suffered.”

  Macrobius’ fingers touched the ragged pits in his face gingerly. “ ‘And those who do not see me, though they have eyes, yet they will be blind,’ ” he whispered. He bent his head, and Corfe thought he would have wept had he been able.

  “The Merduks found me cowering in a storeroom in the palace. They gouged out my sight with glass from the windows. They would have slain me, but the building was in flames and they were in haste. They thought me just another priest, and left me for dead as they had left a thousand others. It was Ribeiro who found me.” Macrobius laughed again, the sound more like the croak of a crow. “Even he did not know at first who I was. Perhaps that is my fate now, to become someone else. To atone for what I did and did not do.”

  Corfe stared closely at him. He had seen the High Pontiff before, conducting the ritual blessings of the troops and sometimes at High Table when he had been commanding the guard for the night, but it had been at a distance. There was only the vague impression of a grey-haired head, a thin face. How much we need the eyes, he thought, to truly know someone, to give them an identity.

  It was true that Mogen had purportedly made the High Pontiff a prisoner in his own palace to keep him from fleeing the city—the Knights Militant in the garrison had almost created an internal war when they had heard—but surely it was impossible that this wreck, this decrepit flotsam of war, was the religious leader of the entire western world?

  No. Impossible.

  Corfe poked the blackened turnip out of the fire and nudged the old man beside him, who seemed lost in some interior wilderness.

  “Here. Eat.”

  “Thank you, my son, but I cannot. My stomach is closed. Another penance, perhaps.” He bent over the young monk who was sleeping to one side and shook his shoulder gently.

  Ribeiro woke with a start, his eyes brimming with nightmares. His mouth opened and for an instant Corfe thought he would scream, but then he seemed to shiver and, scrubbing at one eye with a grubby knuckle, he sat up. His face was a dark purple bruise, and the cheekbone on one side had swollen out to close the eye and stretch the skin to a shiny drum tightness.

  “The soldier has food here, Ribeiro. Eat and keep up your strength,” Macrobius said.

  The young monk smiled. “I cannot, Master. I cannot chew. There is nothing left of my teeth but shards. But I am not so hungry anyway. You must have sustenance—you are the important one.”

  Corfe stared towards the starlit heaven, stifling his exasperation. The smell of the charred turnip brought the water running round his tongue. He wondered what ridiculous impulse had made him risk his life to save these two pious fools.

  But he knew the answer to that. It was the darkest impulse of all.

  He almost laughed. A soldier, a monk and a blind lunatic who believed himself Pontiff sitting under an ox-cart arguing over who should eat a burnt turnip, whilst behind them burned the greatest city in the world. It might have been a comedy written by one of the playwrights of Aekir, a sketch to keep the mob happy when bread was scarce.

  But then he thought of his wife, his sweet Heria, and the thin, bitter humour ran cold. He sat and stared into the flames of the fire as though they were the conflagration that blazed at the heart of his very soul.

  I T took an hour of soaking in the big copper bath for Hawkwood to lose the stink and filth of the catacombs, even with the perfumes he had poured into the water.

  He could see them in his mind’s eye: the low arched ceilings of rounded brick, the torches in the hands of the jailers guttering blue with the stench and the lack of air. And the countless figures lying as still as corpses in row on row with heavy irons at their wrists and ankles. A white face would flash as one looked up, but the rest remained prone, or sitting with their backs to the streaming damp of the walls. Hundreds of men and women and even children sprawled together. There was blood here and there where they had fought amongst themselves, and a woman keened softly because of some violation. Hawkwood had been in sties where the pigs were fifty times better looked after. But these, of course, were dead meat already. They were destined for the pyre.

  “Radisson!” he had called out. “Radisson of Ibnir! It is the Captain, Hawkwood, come to free you!”

  Someone reared up, snarling, and one of the turnkeys beat him down savagely, his arm with its club descending again and again until the man lay still, a broken place shining in his skull. The other prisoners stirred restlessly. There were more faces turned to Hawkwood, ovals of white flesh in the gloom with holes for eyes.

  “Lasso! Lasso of Calidar! Stand up, damn you!” An unwise order. Though Hawkwood was short himself, he had to crouch under the low vaulted ceiling. The turnkeys seemed permanently bent, as though warped by their ghastly labour.

  “I am here for the crew of the Grace of God. Where are you, shipmates? I am to take you out of here!”

  “Take me, take me!” a woman screamed. “Take my child, sir, for pity’s sake!”

  “Take me!” another shouted. And suddenly there was a cacophony of shouting and screaming that seemed to echo and re-echo off the walls, pounding Hawkwood’s brain.

  “Take me, Captain! Take me! Save me from the flames in the name of God!”

  H E poured more water over himself and relaxed in the rose-scented steam. He did not like the perfumes Estrella used. They were too sickly for his tastes, but today he had poured vial after vial of them into the water to wash away the stink.

  He had his men—most of them, at any rate. One had died, beaten to death by his fellow prisoners for the blackness of his face, but the rest were back on board ship, no doubt being scrubbed down in seawater by Billerand, the new first mate, if Billerand had time for such niceties in the chaos of outfitting for the voyage.

  The voyage. He had not yet told his wife that he was leaving again within two sennights. He knew only too well the scene that would provoke.

  The door to the bathing chamber swung open and his wife walked in, averting her eyes from Hawkwood’s nakedness. She carried clean clothes and woollen towels in her arms, and bent to set them down on the bench that lined one wall.

  She was wearing brocade, even in the heat. Her tiny fingers were covered with rings, like so many gilded knuckles, and the steam in the air made the tong-curled frizz of her hair wilt.

  “I burned the other things, Ricardo,” she said. “They were fit for nothing, not even the street beggars . . . There is cold ale waiting in the dining chamber, and some sweetmeats.”

  Hawkwood stood up, wiping the water out of his eyes. The air in the room seemed scarcely cooler than the liquid in the tub. Estrella’s eyes rested on his nakedness for a second and then darted away. She coloured and reached for a towel for him, her eyes still averted. He smiled sourly as he took it from her. His wife and he only saw each other nude when in the bed chamber, and even then she insisted on there being no light. He knew her body only by moonlight and starlight, and by the touch of his hard-palmed hands. It was thin and spare, like a boy’s, with tiny, dark-nippled breasts and a thick fleece of hair down in her secret part. Absurdly, she reminded Hawkwood of Mateo, the ship’s boy who had shared his bunk a few times on that last long voyage to the Kardian Sea. He wondered what his wife would make o
f that comparison, and his smile soured further.

  He stepped out of the bath, wrapping the towel about himself. Ricardo. Like Galliardo, she had always used the Hebrionese rendering of his name instead of his native version. It irked him to hear it, though he had heard it ten thousand times before.

  Estrella had been a good marriage. She was a scion of one of the lesser noble houses of Hebrion, the Calochins. His father had arranged the match, terrible old Johann Hawkwood who had wanted a toe in the door in Abrusio, even in his day the fastest-growing port in the west. Johann had convinced the Calochins that the Hawkwood family was a noble Gabrionese house when in fact it was nothing of the sort. Johann had been given a set of arms by Duke Simeon of Gabrion for his services at the battle of Azbakir. Before that he had been merely a first mate on board a Gabrionese dispatch-runner with no pedigree, no lineage, no money, but a vast store of ambition.

  He would be pleased if he could see me, Hawkwood thought wryly, consorting with the emissaries of kings and with a Royal victualling warrant in my pouch.

  Hawkwood dressed, his wife leaving the room before the towel fell from his waist. His hair and beard dripped water but the arid air would soon put paid to that. He padded barefoot into the high-ceilinged room that was at the centre of his house. Louvred windows far above his head let in slats of light that blazed on the flagged floor. When his bare foot rested on one of the sun-warmed stones he felt the pain and the heat of it. Abrusio without the trade wind was like a desert without an oasis.

  High-backed chairs, as stiffly upright as his wife’s slender backbone, a long table of dark wood, various hangings as limp as dead flowers against the whitewashed plaster of the walls—they seemed unfamiliar to him because he had had no part in choosing them—and the balcony with its wooden screens, closed now, dimming the light in the room. The place is like a church, Hawkwood thought, or a nunnery.

  He stepped to the balcony screens and wrenched them aside, letting in the golden glare and heat and dust and noise of the city. The balcony faced west, so he could see the bay and the Inner and the Outer Roads, as the two approaches to the harbour were called; the quays, the wharves, the seaward defence towers and the watch beacons on the massive mole of the harbour wall. He noted half a dozen vessels standing out to sea, their sails flaccid as empty sacks, their crews hauling them in with longboats. He listened to the clatter of wheels on cobbles, the shouts of hawkers and laughter from a nearby tavern.