Historical Lovecraft: Tales of Horror Through Time

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  Sensible enough, Felluci supposed. He sheathed his sword with a flourish and bowed his head to Argustier. “Forgive me my presumption, Brother-Commander.”

  Argustier made a noise, but turned away, apparently satisfied. He looked at the fisherman. “Filthy pagan. Should burn him here; let the Moslems see what awaits them at the end of the day.”

  “Probably not worth setting our boat on fire,” Felluci said. Argustier turned back.

  “I see you set to looting early,” he said, smiling crookedly. Felluci started and looked down at the small golden ornament hanging from his sword-belt. It was an ugly thing: chunky but gold through and through.

  The Cypriot had been carrying a number of such trinkets. Primitive iconry, wrapped in burlap and hidden beneath his catch, wet with salt and covered in fish scales. The priest onboard, a phlegmatic Genoese who was more interested in drink than judgment, had shrugged when they were revealed, saying that the men of the Ionian Sea were heretics and pagans, and often threw things – foodstuffs, mostly – into the water to placate their heathen gods.

  Felluci had thought the bauble too valuable to feel the sea’s embrace and had, along with a dozen other sailors, swiped his share from the lot, pitiful as it was.

  The Greek hadn’t protested, beyond an initial panic. Either he wasn’t a man of strong faith, or he was easily resigned. Now, he stared at the water beyond the deck rails, his eyes following the movement of the waves.

  Felluci shuddered, though he couldn’t say why. Maybe it was the way the man looked to the sea, with a longing that wasn’t quite right. Like a saint approaching the pyre.

  “Well, when the battle starts, take him down to the rowing benches. We’ll need extra men before long,” Argustier said.

  “Of course.” Felluci looked at the fisherman and felt a stab of pity mingle with the disgust. He was a stupid brute, by his look, closer to the fish he caught in nature than the men around him. Pop-eyed and wide-mouthed, his skin had been turned rough by the sun and weather. If he survived the battle, he was destined for a life chained to an oar.

  Something about the man’s face, though, pulled at Felluci’s attention. Something familiar. On impulse, he looked down at the icon. He gave a grunt of realization.

  It was a bad likeness of anything living, but if it could be said to resemble anything, it was the fisherman. He blinked, wondering what to make of the unusual coincidence.

  As if aware of Felluci’s attentions, the Cypriot looked up, his dull eyes fastening on the stolen trinket. Felluci brushed it with his fingers and the man’s eyes lit up. He opened his mouth, displaying snaggle teeth. The expression reminded Felluci of a shark’s grin and he felt his blood curdle. He turned to Agostino. “Stay beside me. When the battle starts, I mean.”

  “Never fear, sir. I’ll guard your back.”

  “It’s not my back I’m worried about. Stand to my front, if you please. Be sure to absorb as many shots as you can. Any slacking and I’ll pitch you overboard.”

  “My master is kind.”

  “Yes. Any other knight would have swept your truculent head from your shoulders by now.” Felluci watched the Turkish fleet draw closer. He looked back at the fisherman. The Greek hung from his bonds, head bowed, apparently dozing, now. “Hnh,” Felluci grunted. “How anyone can sleep –”

  Agostino chuckled. “When you’re poor, you catch sleep where you can.”

  “Before a battle?”

  “He’s probably slept through storms.” Agostino looked over the side. “Speaking of which … the waters here are dark,” Agostino said. “Ever seen them so dark, sir?”

  Felluci glanced at the water. Silvery shapes cut through its dim reaches. Fish, he thought, scattering out of the path of the two fleets. Much like the men who sought to net them. It wasn’t as funny as it should have been. He shivered as the shapes darted to and fro, just out of easy sight. “No. But considering the noise we’re making, I have no doubt we’ve stirred up the ocean bottom something fierce.”

  “Or something fierce from the ocean bottom,” Agostino said. “I knew a fisherman once, who used to use a gong rather than a net. He used to sound it just over the deep water and things’d swim upwards to investigate. ‘Bigger the gong,’ he said, ‘bigger the catch.’”

  “If we lose the battle, maybe we can make our money selling the catch, then,” Felluci said, smiling. Agostino shook his head, but said nothing. “So, what happened to him?” Felluci said.

  “Caught something he couldn’t handle,” Agostino grunted. Before he could say more, the ocean heaved and screamed and the battle started, so swiftly that they almost missed it. The first Felluci knew of it was a series of bright flashes, as if someone were throwing jewelry into the sea. For a moment, Felluci was reminded of the baubles hidden on the Cypriot’s boat, wet and filthy. And then came the roar.

  It was as if some great titan had awoken, angered and in pain. A vast, sweeping bellow of sound, a sheer wall of noise that rocked Felluci to his core. Then came the shriek of splintering wood and the screams of dying men, as iron balls shredded the decks of the opposing fleets. Galleys burst asunder, as Felluci watched, literally exploding up into the air and dropping back into the water as huddled masses of wreckage.

  Black smoke coiled on the wind as the Venetian galleasses ranging ahead of the fleet raked the Turkish formation with a withering cannonade at one hundred and fifty yards. The warships were armoured so heavily that they rode low on the water and, with every belch of cannon fire, they rocked back a little.

  Felluci, overcome with a sudden nationalistic fervor, pounded the rail with his gauntlet, shouting “St. Mark! St. Mark!” The feeling passed soon enough, washed away by the sheer carnage being meted out.

  The sea was soon covered in bodies, yardarms, water casks, powder barrels, and jetsam of all kinds as ships clashed in a nightmare of smoke and fire. Cannons gave vent to pent-up fury as ships swung around each other in a mad dance.

  While the roar settled into a thunderous, omnipresent growl, Felluci steadied himself on the writhing deck and happened to glance towards the mast and the Cypriot. The Greek was awake now, mouth gaping in what might have been either a scream or a song.

  “What is that heathen shrieking about?” Argustier snapped, turning from the battle, his cloak flapping. “Someone quiet him!”

  “One more scream in this won’t make a difference,” Felluci said, though not loudly. No sense straining his voice, not when his brother-knight wasn’t actually listening. And, for his part, he didn’t want to get any closer to the fisherman than he had to.

  Something about that scream, about the way it seemed to ride the roar of the ocean and turn back in on itself, made Felluci’s spine quiver. It wasn’t a cry of fear, or anger. Not entirely, at least.

  “God almighty,” Agostino mumbled, visibly resisting the desire to fire his arquebus into the bound man. “He sounds like – ah ….”

  “What?” Felluci said, but Agostino simply hunched in on himself, shaking his head. The crew began to mutter among themselves. War-hardened men, yet the screams of a fisherman were setting their nerves at odds.

  The Cypriot continued to scream, tongue waggling behind his teeth like a fish trapped in a reef. He strained at his bonds and jerked back and forth, stomping his foot rhythmically on the deck. For a moment, just a moment, Felluci thought that he could hear an answering sound to the mad wail emerging from the fisherman’s throat.

  Almost as if something were knocking on the wooden hull of the galley in response. His fingers found the bauble. It felt so cold that it was almost warm. He could feel it through the stiff leather of his gauntlet. Like something that had been buried in the silt for so long that it had absorbed something of the chill of the ocean bottom. Felluci yanked his hand away, but couldn’t lose the chill. It climbed his arm and settled in his head.

  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 sc
ream 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.

&
nbsp; “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.