“And why not?”
“Because to do so would wreck this army from top to bottom, and I will not permit that.”
“Eyes of the Prophet! Will you defy me?”
“Yes, Majesty.”
“Consider yourself my Khedive no longer, then. As the Lord of Victories rules in Paradise, I have suffered your ancient insolence for the last time! Hand over your command to Mughal. He can expect orders from me in writing—and a new Khedive!”
“And I, Majesty?”
“You? Consider yourself under arrest, Shahr Baraz. You will await the arrival of my officers from Orkhan.”
“Is that all?”
“By the Lord of Battles, yes—that is all!”
“Fare thee well then, Majesty,” Shahr Baraz said calmly. He stood, lifted the cage with its monstrous occupant, and then dashed it to the ground. The homunculus screamed, and in its scream Shahr Baraz heard the agony of Orkh, its sorcerous master. Smiling grimly, he stamped his booted foot on the structure, crunching metal and bone in a morass of ichor and foul-stinking flesh. Then he clapped his hands for his attendants.
“Take this abomination away and burn it,” he said, and they flinched from the fire in his eyes.
I T was a scream that brought Murad bolt upright in his hanging cot. He remained stock-still, listening. Nothing but the creak of the ship’s timbers, the lap of the water against the hull, the tiny thumps and slaps that were part of being at sea. Nothing.
A dream. He relaxed, lying down again. The girl had disappeared as she always did, and she had left him with a hideous dream—as she always did. The same dream. He preferred to put it out of his mind.
But could not. She was a witch, that was clear—otherwise she would not be a passenger aboard this ship. Maybe she was the man Bardolin’s apprentice. He was a wizard of sorts. No doubt she was putting a black spell on him, perhaps ensnaring him with some kind of love magic.
But he doubted it. Their love-making was too real, too solid and genuine to be the product of any spell. It was almost as though she had been dry tinder waiting for a spark. She came to life in his arms, and their coupling was like a nightly battle, a duel for mastery. He had her mastered, he was sure of that. Smiling up at the deckhead he relived the satisfaction of plunging into her and feeling her body heave up in answer. She was a delightful little animal. He would find a position for her when the colony was established, keep her by him. He could never marry her—the idea was absurd enough to make him chuckle aloud—but he would see her decently provided for.
He must keep her. He needed her. He craved that nightly battle, and wondered sometimes if any other woman would interest him again.
Why did she always leave just before the dawn? And that old man—what was she to him? Not a lover, surely.
His mouth tightened and he clenched his fists on the coverlet.
She is mine, he thought. I will allow her to have no others.
But the dreams: they came every night, and every night they were the same. That suffocating heat, the weight and prickling fur of the beast on top of him. Those eyes regarding him with unblinking malevolence. What could it mean?
He was always tired these days, always weary. He had been a fool to put down the Inceptine like that—the man would have to die now. He was too powerful an enemy. Abeleyn would see the necessity of it.
He rubbed the dark orbits of his eyes, feeling as though he could never entirely grind the tiredness out of them. He wanted her here, warm and writhing in his arms. For a second the intensity of that desire unnerved him.
He sat up again. There was something strange about the ship, something he had to consider for a moment before realizing. Then it struck him.
The carrack was no longer moving.
He leapt from the hanging cot so that it swung and banged against the bulkhead, pulled on his clothes hurriedly and grabbed the rapier with its baldric. As he reached the door, it was knocked on loudly. He yanked it open to find the ship’s boy, Mateo, standing there with a white face.
“Captain Hawkwood’s compliments, sir, and he asks would you join him in the hold? There is something you ought to see.”
“What is it? Why have we stopped moving?”
“He said to . . . You have to see, sir.” The boy looked as though he was about to be sick.
“Lead on then, damn you. It had better be important.”
T HE whole ship was astir, the passengers milling on the gundeck and soldiers posted at every hatch and companionway with their slow-match lit and swords drawn. In their journey into the bowels of the carrack Murad ran into a prowling Sergeant Mensurado.
“Sergeant, by whose orders are these sentries posted?”
“Ensign Sequero, sir. He’s down in the hold. We’ve orders to let none but the ship’s officers pass.”
Murad was about to ask him what had happened, but that would reflect poorly on his own grasp of the situation. He merely nodded and said, “Carry on, then,” and followed Mateo down the dark hatches towards the hold.
Some water washing about among the high stacks of casks and crates and sacks. Rats skipping underfoot. It was pitch black but for the small hand lantern Mateo carried, but as they came through one of the compartment bulkheads Murad saw another clot of light flickering ahead and men gathered in a knot within its radiance.
“Lord Murad,” Hawkwood said, straightening from a crouch. Sequero was there, and di Souza, and the injured first mate, Billerand, his arm strapped to his side and his face puffed with pain.
They drew back, and he saw the shape lying in the water, the dark gleam of blood and viscera, the limbs contorted beyond life.
“Who is it?”
“Pernicus. Billerand found him half a glass ago.”
“I was mooching around,” the mustachioed first mate said, “checking the cargo. It’s all I’m up to these days.”
Murad knelt and examined the corpse. Pernicus’ eyes were wide open, the mouth agape in a last scream.
Had he heard it? Or had that been part of his dream?
The man’s neck had been almost entirely bitten through; Murad could see the clammy tube of the windpipe, the ragged ends of arteries, a white-shard of vertebra.
Lower down the intestines had spilled out like a coil of greasy rope. There were chunks missing from the body. The marks of teeth were plain to see.
“Sweet Ramusio!” Murad whispered. “What did this?”
“A beast of some kind,” Hawkwood said firmly. “Something came down here in the middle watch—one of the crew thought he glimpsed it. Pernicus liked to work his magic from the hold because it was more peaceful than the gundeck or the waist. It came down here after him.”
“Did the man say what it was like?” Murad asked.
“Big and black. That’s all he could say. He thought he had imagined it. There is nothing like that aboard the ship.”
Murad mastered his confusion and straightened up out of the foul water.
“Is it still aboard, do you think?”
“I don’t know. I want a thorough search of the ship. If whatever did this is on board, we’ll find it and kill it.”
