“I’ve a good sailmaker’s needle in my pouch, and some thread,” he told Murad. “It may not turn out too pretty, but I reckon I can get you battened down again. It’ll smart some, of course.”
“No doubt,” the nobleman drawled in something approaching his old manner. “Get on with it while there’s still light.”
“There are maggots in the flesh. I’ll clear them out first.”
“No! Let them be. I’ve seen men worse cut up than this whose flesh went rotten for the lack of a few good maggots. Sew them in there, Hawkwood. They’ll eat the dead meat.”
“God almighty, Murad!”
“Do it. Since you are determined that we are to survive, we may as well go through the motions. Where is that cursed wizard? Maybe he could make himself useful and magick up a bandage.”
Bardolin appeared out of the gloom, a bundle of firewood in his arms. “He killed my familiar,” he said. “The Dweomer in me is crippled. He killed my familiar, Hawkwood.”
“Who did?”
“Aruan. Their leader.” He dropped his burden as though it burnt. His eyes were as dead as dry slate. “I will have a look, though, if you like. I may be able to do something.”
“Stay away from me!” Murad shouted, shrinking from the mage. “You murderous dastard. If I were fit for it I’d break your skull. You were in league with them from the first.”
“Just see if you can get a fire going, Bardolin,” Hawkwood said wearily. “I’ll patch him up myself. Later, we must talk.”
The pop of the needle going through Murad’s skin and cartilage was loud enough to make Hawkwood wince, but the nobleman never uttered a sound under the brutal surgery, only quivered sometimes like a horse trying to rid itself of a bothersome fly. By the time the mariner was done the daylight was about to disappear, and Bardolin’s fire was a mote of yellow brightness on the black jungle floor. Hawkwood surveyed his handiwork critically.
“You’re no prettier than you were, that’s certain,” he said at last.
Murad flashed his death’s-head grin. The thread crawled along his temple like a line of marching ants, and under the skin the maggots could be seen squirming.
They drank water from the stream and lay on the brush that Bardolin had gathered to serve as beds while around them the darkness became absolute. The insects fed off them without respite, but they were too weary to care and their stomachs were closed. It was Hawkwood who pinched himself awake.
“Did they really let us go, you think? Or are they waiting for nightfall to spring on us?”
“They could have sprung on us fifty times before now,” Murad said quietly. “We have not exactly been swift, or careful in our flight. No, for what it’s worth, we’re away. Maybe they’re going to let the jungle finish the job. Maybe they could not bring themselves to kill a fellow sorcerer. Or there may be another reason we’re alive. Ask the wizard! He’s the one has been closeted with their leader.”
They both looked at Bardolin. “Well?” Hawkwood said at last. “We’ve a right to know, I think. Tell us, Bardolin. Tell us exactly what happened to you.”
The mage kept his eyes fixed on the fire. There was a long silence while his two companions stared steadily at him.
“I am not entirely sure myself,” he said at last. “The imp was brought to the top of the pyramid in the middle of the city by Gosa. He was a shape-shifter—”
“You surprise me,” Murad snorted.
“I met their leader, a man named Aruan. He said he had been high in the Thaumaturgists’ Guild of Garmidalan in Astarac a long time ago. In the time of the Pontiff Willardius.”
Murad frowned. “Willardius? Why, he’s been dead these four hundred years and more.”
“I know. This Aruan claims to be virtually immortal. It is something to do with the Dweomer of this land. There was a great and sophisticated civilisation here in the west at one time, but it was destroyed in a huge natural cataclysm. The mages here had powers hardly dreamt of back on the Old World. But there was another difference…”
“Well?” Murad demanded.
“I believe they were all shifters as well as mages. An entire society of them.”
“God’s blood,” Hawkwood breathed. “I thought that was not possible.”
“So did I. It is unheard of, and yet we have seen it ourselves.”
Murad was thoughtful. “You are quite sure, Bardolin?”
“I wish I were not, believe me. But there is another thing. According to this Aruan, there are hundreds of his agents already in Normannia, doing his bidding.”
“The gold,” Hawkwood rasped. “Normannic crowns. There was enough of it back there to bribe a king, to hire an army.”
“So he has ambitions, this shifter-wizard of yours,” Murad sneered. “And how exactly do you fit into them, Bardolin?”
“I don’t know, Murad. The Blest Saint help me, I don’t know.”
“One thing I do know,” he went on. “They are not content to remain here, these shifter-mages. They are going to return to Normannia. Everything I was told confirms it. I believe Aruan intends to make himself a power in the world. In fact he has already begun.”
“If he can make a werewolf of an Inceptine then his words are not idle,” Hawkwood muttered, remembering their outwards voyage and Ortelius, who had spread such terror throughout the ship.
“A race of were-mages,” Murad said. “A man who claims to be centuries old. A network of shifters spread across Normannia spending his gold, running his errands. I would say you were crazed, had I not seen the things I have on this continent. The place is a veritable hell on earth. Hawkwood is right. We must get back to the ship, return to Hebrion, and inform the King. The Old World must be warned. We will root out these monsters from our midst, and then return here with a fleet and an army and wipe them from the face of the earth. They are not so formidable—a taste of iron and they fall dead. We will see what five thousand Hebrian arquebusiers can do here, by God.”
For once, Hawkwood found himself wholly in agreement with the gaunt nobleman. Bardolin seemed troubled, however.
“What’s wrong now?” he asked the wizard. “You don’t approve of this Aruan’s ambitions, do you?”
“Of course not. But it was a purge of the Dweomer-folk which drove him and his kind here in the first place. I know what Murad’s proposal will lead to, Hawkwood. A vast, continent-wide purge of my people such as has never been seen before. They will be slaughtered in their thousands, the innocent along with the guilty. We will drive all of Normannia’s mages into Aruan’s arms. That is exactly what he wants. And his agents will not be so easy to uncover at any rate. They could be anyone—even the nobility. We will persecute the innocent while the guilty bide their time.”
“The plain soldiers of the world will take their chances,” Murad retorted. “There is no place on this earth for your kind any more, Bardolin. They are an abomination. Their end has been coming for a long time. This is only hastening the inevitable.”
“You are right there at least,” the wizard murmured.
“Whose side are you on?” Hawkwood asked the mage. Bardolin looked angry.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“I mean that Murad is right. There is a time coming, Bardolin, when it will be your Dweomer-folk ranged against the ordinary people of the world, and you will have to either abet their destruction or stand with them against us. That is what I mean.”
“It will not—it must not—come to that!” the mage protested.
Hawkwood was about to go on when Murad halted him with a curt gesture.
“Enough. Look around you. The odds are that we will never have to worry about such things, and we’ll leave our bones to fester here in the jungle. Wizard, I’ll offer you a truce. We three must help each other if any of us is
