The Heretic Kings (22 page)

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.

A deeper shadow before him, a shape blacker even than the witch-dark forest. In it two yellow lights burned and blinked in unison. Still, he was not afraid.

I’m dreaming
, he told himself, and the merciful thought kept terror at bay.

The lights moved, and he was conscious of a warmth that had nothing to do with the night air. His skin crawled as it approached him, a black sunlight.

The lights were eyes, bright saffron and slitted with black like those of a vast cat. It was standing before him. There was a noise, a low susurration like a continuous growl but in a lower key. He felt the sound with his new skin as much as heard it.

And felt the fur of the thing, as soft as crushed velvet. A sensual, wholly pleasurable sensation which made him want to bury his palms deep in its softness.

The world spun, and the breath had been knocked out of him. He was on the ground, on his back, and two huge paws were on his shoulders. He felt the prickle of whiskers, sharp as needles, the thing’s breath on his face.

It sank down on him as though it meant to mould itself to his body. His hands felt the thickly muscled ribs under the fur and brushed a line of nipples along the taut belly. He thought it groaned, an almost human sound. He was conscious of the throbbing warmth in his crotch, the heat of the thing as it pressed against him there.

And then it had reared up. A scratch of pain somewhere around his hipbone which made him cry out; his breeches were ripped off and it had plunged itself down on him, taking him inside.

A feverish heat and liquid grip of muscle. It pushed his buttocks into the moist humus, its head thrown back and the red mouth open so that he could see the long glint of fangs. He grabbed fistfuls of its fur as his climax came, and thought he screamed.

It was down on him again for a moment, and he could feel the teeth pressed against his neck. Then the crushing weight and heat were raised off him. He found himself sunk deep into the muck of the jungle floor, utterly spent.

He felt a kiss—a human kiss of laughing lips on his own. Then he knew he was alone again, back with his ageing body, the razor-awareness of everything gone. He wept like a struck child.

A ND woke up. Dawn had come, and the camp was stirring awake. The sour reek of old smoke hung heavy in the air.

Hawkwood handed him a waterbottle, looking ten years older in the grey morning, moss in his tawny beard.

“Another day, Bardolin. You look like you’ve had a hard night.”

Bardolin swallowed a gulp of water. His mouth soaked it up and remained as dry as gunpowder. He swallowed more.

“Such a dream I had,” he said. “Such a dream.”

There were black hairs sweat-glued to his palms. He stared at them in curiosity, wondering where they could have come from.

T HE company broke camp in morose silence, the men moving slowly in the gathering heat. They shook out into their accustomed file, some gnawing fruit, others pulling up their breeches, their faces drawn by the chaos of their bowels. More and more of them were succumbing to the inadequacies of their strange diet. The surrounds of the camp stank of ordure. Hollow-eyed, they started off on the day’s journey.

On the afternoon of this, the fourth day, the rain came down with its weary regularity, and they plodded on under it like cattle oblivious to the drover’s stick. Masudi and Cortona, one of the strongest soldiers, were at the front chopping a path blindly with one hand shielding their eyes as though from too-brilliant sunlight. Behind them the rest of the soldiers staggered onwards, their once-bright armour now coral coloured in places, green in others. Their rotting boots sank deep into the leaf litter and muck and they were sometimes obliged to bend over and pull their feet free of the sucking mud with their hands.

Then the two point-men stopped. The heavy vegetation had given way like a breached wall and there was a clearing in front of them, the far side of it misted by the pouring rain.

“Sir!” Cortona shouted above the downpour, and Murad was shoving everyone out of the way to get to the head of the file.

A figure was sitting in the middle of the clearing, cross-legged and head bowed in the wet. As far as they could tell, it was a woman, her dark hair bound up, dressed in leather with bare arms and legs. She did not look up at the gaping explorers, nor did she acknowledge their presence in any way, but they knew she was aware of them. And there were odd flickerings of movement along the edge of the clearing behind her.

The company stood like men stunned, water pouring down their faces and into their open mouths unheeded. At last Murad drew his rapier, ignoring Bardolin’s urgent hiss.

The woman in the clearing looked up, but at the sky above, not at them. For an instant her eyes seemed blank and white in the rain, lacking iris or pupil. Then the rain stopped as swiftly as it always did in this country. Their job done, the clouds began to break up and the sun to filter down.

The woman smiled, as though it were all her handiwork and she was proud of it. Then she looked straight at the crowd of men who stood opposite, swords drawn, arquebuses levelled.

She smiled again, this time showing white, sharp teeth like those of a cat. Her eyes were very dark, her face pointed and delicate. She rose from her sitting position in one sinuous movement that made the breath catch in the throat of every man who watched her. A bare midriff, lines of muscle on either side of the navel. Unshod feet, slender limbs the colour of honey.

“I am Kersik,” she said in Normannic that had a slight burr to it, an old-fashioned slowness. “Greetings and welcome.”

Murad recovered more quickly than any of them, and, aristocratic to his fingertips, he bowed with a flourish of the winking rapier.

“Lord Murad of Galiapeno at your service, lady.” Hawkwood noted wryly that he did not introduce himself as his excellency the governor.

But the woman Kersik looked past him to where Bardolin stood with the imp perched, bedraggled and dripping, on his shoulder.

“And you, brother,” she said. “You are doubly welcome. It is a long time since a Master of Disciplines came to our shores.”

Bardolin merely nodded stiffly. For a moment they stared into each other’s eyes, the battered old wizard and the slim young woman. Bardolin frowned, and she smiled as though in answer, eyes dancing.

There was a pause. The soldiers were drinking the woman in, but she seemed unperturbed by their hungry regard.

“You are bound for the city, I take it,” she said lightly.

Murad and Hawkwood shared a glance, and the scarred nobleman bowed again. “Yes, lady, we are. But we are sadly puzzled as to how to get there.”

“I thought as much. I will take you, then. It’s a journey of many days.”

“You have our thanks.”

“Your men have been eating too much of the wrong kinds of fruit, Lord Murad of Galiapeno,” Kersik said. “They have the air of the flux about them.”

“We are unaccustomed as yet to your country and its ways, lady.”

“Of course you are. Put your men into camp here in the clearing. I’ll fetch them something to calm their stomachs. If they start the journey to Undi in this condition they might not finish it.”

“
Undi
. Is that the name of your city?” Hawkwood asked. “What language might it be in?”

“In an old, forgotten language, Captain,” the woman said. “This is an old continent. Man has been here a long time.”

“And from whence did you come? I wonder,” Hawkwood muttered, unsettled by being called “Captain.” How had she known?

Kersik glanced at him sharply. She had heard his whispered comment.

“I’ll return ere nightfall,” she said then. And disappeared.

The men blinked. They had seen a tan blur across the clearing, nothing more.

“A witch, by Ramusio’s beard,” Murad growled.

“Not a witch,” Bardolin told him. “A mage. The Dweomer is thick about her. And something else as well.” He rubbed his face as though trying to scrub the weariness from it.

“Sorcery, always sorcery,” Murad said bitterly. “Maybe she has gone to collect a few cohorts of her fellow warlocks. Well, I wonder what they’ll make of Hebrian steel.”