Hawkswood's Voyage

too, which the sailors called devil’s toadstools. This one had been twenty feet across, trailing tentacles half as long as the ship and glowing down in the dimmer water as it pulsed its obscure way through the depths.

The imp chirruped with excitement. It was peeking out of his robe, its eyes shining as it watched the water break under the keel and felt the swift breeze of the ship’s passage. It was growing steadily more restless at having to keep out of sight. The only time Bardolin set it free was in the night, when it hunted rats up and down the ship.

He had wondered about sending it into Murad’s cabin, to observe him and Griella, but the very thought had shamed him.

As though conjured up by his preoccupations, Griella appeared at his side. She leant on the rail beside him and scratched the ear of the imp, which gurgled with pleasure.

“We have our wind, then,” she said.

“So it would seem.”

“How long can Pernicus keep it going?”

“Some days. By then we should have picked up one of the prevailing winds beyond the area of the doldrums.”

“You’re beginning to sound like a sailor, Bardolin. You’ll be talking of decks and companionways and ports next . . . Why have you been avoiding me?”

“I have not,” Bardolin said, keeping his gaze anchored in the leaping waves.

“Are you jealous of the nobleman?”

The mage said nothing.

“I thought I told you: I sleep with him to protect us. His word is law, remember? I could not refuse.”

“I know that,” Bardolin said testily. “I am not your keeper in any case.”

“You are jealous.”

“I am afraid.”

“Of what? That he might make me his duchess? I think not.”

“It is common knowledge amongst the crew and the soldiers that he is . . . besotted with you. And I look at his face every day, and see the changes being wrought in it. What are you doing, Griella?”

She smiled. “I think I give him bad dreams.”

“You are playing with a hot coal. You will get burned.”

“I know what it is I do. I make him pay for his nobility.”

“Take care, child. If you are discovered for what you are, your life is forfeit—especially with that rabid priest on board. And even the Dweomer-folk have no love for shifters. You would be alone.”

“Alone, Bardolin? Would you not stand by me?”

The mage sighed heavily. “You know I would, though much good it would do us.”

“But you don’t like killing. How would you defend me?” she asked playfully.

“Enough, Griella. I am not in the mood for your games.” He paused, then, hating himself, asked: “Do you like going to his bed?”

She tossed her head. “Perhaps, sometimes. I am in a position of power, Bardolin, for the first time in my life. He loves me.” She laughed, and the imp grinned at her until the corners of its mouth reached its long ears.

“He will be viceroy of this colony we are to found in the west, and he loves me.”

“It sounds as though you do expect to be a duchess.”

“I will be something, not just a peasant girl with the black disease. I will be something more, duchess or no.”

“I spoke to the captain about you.”

“What?” She was aghast. “Why? What did you say?”

Bardolin’s voice grew savage. “At that time I thought you were not so willing to be bedded by this man. I asked the captain to intercede. He did, but he tells me that Murad would hear none of it.”

Griella giggled. “I have him in thrall, the poor man.”

“No good will come of it, girl. Leave it.”

“No. You are like a mother hen clucking over an egg, Bardolin. Leave off me.” There was a touch of violence in her voice. Bardolin turned and looked into her face.

It was almost four bells in the last dog-watch, and the sky was darkening. Already the lanterns at the stern and mastheads had been lit in the hope that the other ship would see them and the little fleet would be reunited. Griella’s face was a livid oval in the failing light and her tawny hair seemed sable-dark. But her eyes had a shine to them, a luminosity that Bardolin did not like.

“Dusk and dawn, they are the two hardest times, are they not?” he asked quietly. “Traditionally the time of the hunt. The longer we are at sea, Griella, the harder it will become to control. Do not let your tormenting of this man get out of hand, or the change will be upon you ere you know it.”

“I can control it,” she said, and her voice seemed deeper than it had been.

“Yes. But one time, in the last light of the day or in the dark hour before the dawn, it will get the better of you. The beast seeks always to be free, but you must not let it out, Griella.”

She turned her face away from him. Four bells rang out, and the watch changed, a crowd of sailors coming up yawning from below-decks, those on duty leaving their posts for the swaying hammocks below.

“I am not a child any more, Bardolin. I do not need your advice. I sought to help you.”

“Help yourself first,” he said.

“I will. I can make my own way.”

Without looking at him again she left the forecastle. He watched her small, upright figure traverse the waist— the sailors knew better than to molest her now—and enter the sterncastle where the officers’ cabins were.

Bardolin resumed his watching of the waters whilst the imp cheeped interrogatively from his breast. It was hungry, and wanted to be off on its nightly search for rats.

“Soon, my little comrade, soon,” he soothed it.

He leaned on the rail and watched the sun sink down slowly into the Western Ocean, a great saffron disc touched with a burning wrack of cloud. It gave the sea on the western horizon the aspect of just- spilled blood.

The carrack forged on willingly, propelled by the sorcerous wind. Her sails were pyramids of rose-tinted canvas in the last light of the sunset and the lanterns about her gleamed like earthbound stars. The ship was alone on the face of the waters; as far as any man might see, there was no other speck of life moving under the gleam of the rising moon.

TWENTY

O RMANN Dyke.

The tumbling thunder of the bombardment went on relentlessly, but they had grown used to it and no longer commented upon it.

“We are more or less blind to what goes on over the brow of the nearest hill,” Martellus told his assembled officers. “I have sent out three different scouting missions, but none has returned. The Merduks’ security is excellent. All we know therefore is what we see: a minimum of siegeworks, the deployment of the batteries to the front—”

“And a hive of activity to the rear,” old Isak finished.

“Just so. The eastern barbican has taken a pasting, and the gunnery battle is all but over. He will assault very soon.”

“How many guns do we have still firing across the river?” one man asked.

“Less than half a dozen, and those are the masked ones that Andruw has been saving for the end.”

“We cannot let the eastern side of the bridge go without a struggle,” one officer said.

“I agree.” Martellus looked round at his fellow Torunnans. The engineers have been working through the night. They have planted charges under the remaining supports. The Searil bridge can be blown in a matter of moments, but first I want to bloody their nose again. I want them to assault the barbican.”

“What’s left of it,” someone murmured.

Three days had passed since the first, headlong assault of the Merduk army. In those three days there had,