Hawkwood's Voyage

“What in the world are you talking about, Mateo?” Hawkwood asked. The boy was circling like a prowling cat. Now he was between Hawkwood and the sleeping mage. The imp was frozen, utterly petrified. It eyed Mateo as though he were a fiend incarnate. Then the horrible thought occurred to Hawkwood.

“It was you,” he breathed. “You are the werewolf. You killed Pernicus and Billerand.” His voice shook as he said it. He wondered how many would hear his shout, how much time he would have.

Mateo grinned, and Hawkwood could see the lengthening canines, the black flush of hair that was breaking out like a rash down the sides of his face.

“Wrong, Captain, it was not me. It was my new master, a man who appreciates me as you never did.”

“Your—? Who is he?”

“A man high up in his society, and high up in other things too. He has promised me much and given me much already. But I am tired of rats and what he gave me of Billerand. I want a fresh kill. You, whom I loved and who discarded me like a spent horse. You, Richard.”

“Bardolin!” Hawkwood screamed in the same instant as Mateo launched himself at him.

M URAD sat up to find Griella awake beside him, her eyes shining in the dark, something strange about her profile. Another dream?

“I thought I—”

She shook her head and nodded towards the door of the cabin. Standing hunched in the doorway was a vast, black shape, its ears as tall as horns and its eyes two burning yellow lights. Around its feet in a puddle of shadow were a set of black robes.

“My Lord Murad,” the beast said, its long teeth gleaming. “Time for you to die.”

In the same moment, Murad heard Hawkwood scream out Bardolin’s name on the other side of the partition. There was a thump and crash. The beast cocked its massive head.

“He has much to learn,” it said, seemingly amused.

Then it leapt.

T HE thing was on top of him, its fetid breath wreathing about his face. It was recognizable as Mateo, but the face was changing even as Hawkwood grappled with it, the nose broadening and pushing out into a snout. The eyes flared with saffron light and the heat of it made him choke.

It dipped its forming muzzle and bit deep.

Hawkwood shrieked in agony as the jaws met in his flesh. The dirk glanced off the thick fur that now covered the boy’s body and slipped out of his nerveless hand. The pair of them rolled across the deck of the cabin, blood jetting from Hawkwood’s mangled shoulder. They knocked against the table and it came down. Ink splattered them; the loose pages of the log flew about like pale birds and the table lantern crashed to the ground with a spatter of burning oil.

The heat, the awful heat. It was wholly beast-like now and it covered him like a choking carpet. He lay still, strength ebbing away with the thick ropes of blood that were pulsing out of his ripped veins.

“I love you, Richard,” the werewolf said, its insane eyes glaring at him over its blood-soaked muzzle. The maw descended again.

Then it had thrown itself back off him, howling in agony and fury. The cabin was a thrashing, flickering chaos of shadows and flames. The wood of the deck and bulkhead were on fire, and the werewolf was wrenching a black spike out of its neck, still howling.

Bardolin stood there, the flames illuminating his face, filling the imp’s eyes with light as it perched on his shoulder. Dimly Hawkwood was aware of other voices shouting in the ship, and a turmoil of snarling and violence on the other side of the bulkhead, Murad’s voice raised in fear.

“Get you gone,” Bardolin said quietly, almost conversationally, and he pointed one large hand at the writhing beast.

Blue fire left his fingers, crackled like lightning and sank into the black fur to disappear.

The werewolf shrieked. Its head snapped up and down. It retreated to where the flames were climbing the wall of the cabin and blue fire sparked out of its mouth. There was the smell of burning flesh.

Then the entire cabin wall disintegrated beside it.

Two huge black figures smashed clear through the bulkhead and fell on to the floor entangled in each other’s arms. Hawkwood crawled feebly away from the flames and the thrashing beasts, slumping at the further wall. He watched the scene with utter amazement.

Murad was standing in the gap of the shattered partition wall with a long knife in his hand, whilst on the deck three werewolves fought and howled amid the rising flames. Hawkwood saw one detach itself from the melee, azure light spurting from its eyes and nostrils. It hurled itself at the stern windows and they gave way, glass, frame, planking and all. It flew out into the dark night beyond and splashed into the carrack’s foaming wake. There was a flash of aquamarine, so bright it dimmed the fire on board ship, and then a concussion that shook the entire stern and sent the sea into an insane turmoil of explosions and geysers brilliantly lit from below.

The entire aft end of the cabin was a gaping, blazing hole with two firelit silhouettes battling there, their fur on fire and their eyes glaring the same colour as the flames. The violence of their battle made the entire ship quiver and the blackened planking screeched and groaned under their clawed feet whilst their howls hurt Hawkwood’s ears.

The cabin door was flung open to reveal Ensign Sequero, behind him a crowd of soldiers with smoking arquebuses. He stared blankly at the hellish scene for a second, then shouted a command. The soldiers levelled their weapons through the doorway.

“No!” Bardolin yelled.

A volley of shots, plumes of smoke and fire spurting from the weapons. Hawkwood saw fur lifted from the grappling beasts, blood erupting over the walls and deckhead.

One of the werewolves broke free and came roaring towards the soldiers, its fur blazing and gore spurting from its wounds. It batted Sequero aside, wrenched an arquebus from a terrified soldier and clubbed another so brutally that the weapon’s stock shattered. For a moment it seemed that it would succeed in getting away.

But then the second werewolf leapt on to its back. Hawkwood saw the thing’s jaws sink deep into fur and flesh, then wrench free with a gobbet of bleeding meat between the teeth.

Someone hauled him out of the way. It was Murad. He dragged Hawkwood out of the cabin and into the companionway.

“Griella, it’s Griella,” he was saying. “She’s one of them. She’s a shifter too.”

“The fire,” Hawkwood croaked. “Put out the fire, or the ship is lost.” But Murad had gone again.

There were more soldiers there, crowding the sterncastle, and then some sailors.

“Velasca!” Hawkwood managed to shout.

“Captain! What in the world—”

“The ship’s afire. Leave the soldiers to their work and organize fire-fighting parties.”

“Captain—your shoulder—”

“Do it, you insubordinate bastard, or I’ll see you marooned!”

“Aye, sir.” Velasca disappeared, chalk-faced.

Hawkwood heard Bardolin’s voice raised in fury, telling the soldiers to hold fire. He struggled to his feet, his one working hand clutching the bloody mess of his shoulder. He could feel the ends of his collar-bone under his hands, and splinters of bone pricked his palm like needles.

“Sweet Ramusio,” he groaned.

He staggered back into the wreck of the stern cabin, pushing aside the arquebusiers. The place was thick with smoke and the reek of blood and powder. The flickering radiance of the fire played about the deck and bulkheads.

Hawkwood sank down on the storm sill, light-headed but as yet not in much pain. He could no longer remain on his feet.

Men shouting, a shower of water coming down past the gaping hole in the stern of the ship, the flames eating into the precious wood. His poor Osprey.

Bardolin and Murad standing like statues, the nobleman’s iron knife dangling from one hand.