Hawkwood's Voyage

favour.”

“The damn thing isn’t caught yet,” Hawkwood said quietly. “Worry about obligations after we have its head on a pike.”

“Well said, Captain,” Murad agreed. “And here”—he threw the rutter into Hawkwood’s lap—“peruse that at your leisure. It may be of use.”

“I doubt it. We are far off our course, Murad. The rutter is no longer any use to me. From now on, unless we regain our former latitude—which is well-nigh impossible without a Dweomer wind—we are sailing uncharted seas. From what you have told me, it seems that the Faulcon never came this far south. My intent now is to set a course due west, parallel to our old one. There is no point in trying to beat up towards our former latitude.”

“What if we miss the Western Continent altogether and sail to the south of it?” Murad asked.

“If it is even half the size of Normannia it will be there on this latitude. In any case, to try and sail back north would be almost suicidal, as I told you before we enlisted Pernicus’ services.”

Murad shrugged. “It is all one to me, so long as we sight land in the end and are in a fit state to walk ashore.”

“Let me worry about that. Your concern is this beast that haunts the ship.”

B Y the end of the morning watch the guns had been run back in and the rumour had circulated round the ship like a fast-spreading pestilence: Pernicus had been murdered by a stowaway spy, and the murderer lurked aboard, unknown. The carrack began to take on some of the aspects of a besieged fortress, with soldiers everywhere asking people their business, the crew armed and the ship’s officers barking orders left and right. The patched-up boats were swung out from the yardarms and crews of sailors began hauling the carrack westwards, out of the doldrums; a killing labour in the stock-still heat of the day.

In the midst of the militant uneasiness the last of the storm’s damage was rectified and the ship began to look more like her old self, with new timber about the sterncastle and waist and new cable sent up to the tops. But the sails remained flaccid and empty, and the surface of the sea was as obstinately flat as the surface of a green mirror, whilst the sun glared down out of a cloudless sky.

It was in the foretop that Bardolin and Griella finally found the peace to speak without being overheard. They sat in the low-walled platform with the bulk of the topmast at their backs and a spider tracery of rigging all about them.

Still red-faced from clambering up the shrouds in this heat, Bardolin released the imp. With a squeak of pleasure it darted around the top, gazing down at the deck far below and peering out at the haze-dim horizon.

“You’ve heard, I suppose?” Bardolin asked curtly.

“About Pernicus? Yes. Why would anyone have done such a thing? He was a harmless enough little man.” Griella was dressed in her habitual breeches and a thin linen shirt that Bardolin suspected was a cast-off of Murad’s. Fragments of lace clung to its neck and she had rolled the voluminous sleeves up to her elbows, exposing brown forearms with tiny golden hairs freckling them.

“He was killed by a shifter, Griella,” the mage said in a flinthard voice.

The pale eyes widened until he could see the strange yellow-golden circle around the pupils. “Bardolin! Are you sure?”

“I have seen shifters kill before, remember.”

She stared at him. Her mouth opened. Finally she said:

“But you don’t think—you do! You think it was me!”

“Not you, but the beast that inhabits you.”

The eyes flared; the yellow grew in them until they were scarcely human any longer. “We are the same, the beast and I, and I tell you that it was not I who slew Pernicus.”

“Are you expecting me to believe there are two shifters on board this ship?”

“There must be, or else you are mistaken. Maybe someone killed him in such a way as to make it look as though it was done by a beast.”

“I am not a fool, Griella. I warned you about this many times. Now it has happened.”

“I did not do it! Please, Bardolin, you must believe me!”

The glow in the eyes had retreated and there was only the light of the pitiless sun setting the tears in them afire. She was a small girl again, tugging at his knee. The imp looked on, aghast.

“Why should I?” Bardolin said harshly, though he longed to take her in his arms, to say that he did, to make it all right.

“Is there nothing I can do to convince you?”

“What could you do, Griella?”

“I could let you see into my mind, the way you did before when I was about to change into the beast and you stopped me. You saw into me then, Bardolin. You can do it again.”

“I—”

He was not so sure of himself now. He had thought to extract a confession from her, but he had not considered beyond that. He knew he would never have turned her over to Murad—there would have been some bargain made, some deal done. But now he no longer knew what to do.

Because he did believe her.

“Let me see your eyes, Griella. Look at me.”

She tilted up her head obediently. The sun was behind him and his shadow fell upon her. He looked deep, deep into the sea-change of the eyes, and the top, the mast, the ship and the vast ocean disappeared.

A heartbeat, huge and regular. But as he listened the rhythm changed. It became erratic, slipping out of time. It took him a moment to realize that he was listening to two hearts beating not quite in tune with each other.

Pictures and images flickering like a shower of varicoloured leaves. He saw himself there, but shied away from that. He saw the ragged brown peaks of the Hebros Mountains that must have been her home. He saw swift, red-tinted images of wanton slaughter flitting past.

Too far back. He had gone too deep with his impatience. He must pull out a little.

The other heartbeat grew louder, drowning out the first. He thought he could feel the heat of the beast and the prickle of its harsh fur against his skin.

There! A ship upon a limitless ocean, and in the dark hours aboard a vision of white limbs intertwined, linen sheets in crumples of light and dark. An ecstatic, lean face he knew to be Murad’s hovering over him in the night.

The beast again, very close this time. He felt its anger, its hunger. The unrelenting rage it felt at being confined.

Except it was not. It was free and lying beside the naked man in the swaying cot, the stout supporting ropes creaking under the weight. It wanted to kill, to rip the night apart with scarlet carnage. But did not. It lay beside the sleeping, nightmare-ridden nobleman and watched over him in the night.

It wanted to kill, but could not. There was something that prevented it, something the beast could not understand but could not disregard.

Nothing else. A few spangled images. Himself, the imp, the terrible glory of the storm. Nothing more. No memory of murder, not on the ship, not since Abrusio. She had told the truth.

Bardolin lingered a moment, peering round the tangled interstices of Griella’s mind, noting the linkages here and there between the wolf and the woman, the areas where they were pulling apart, where control was weakest. He withdrew with a sense both of relief and of mourning. She did love Murad, in some perverse manner that even the beast could recognize. And in loving him, she was doing some violence to herself that Bardolin could not quite fathom.

She loved himself, old Bardolin, also—but not in the same way, not at all. He scourged himself for the unexpectedly acute sense of grief at the discovery.

The sun was beating down on them. Griella’s eyes were glassy. He tapped her lightly on the cheek and she blinked, smiled.

“Well?”

“You told the truth,” he said heavily.