Half a glass ago I was on deck, watching the fires of the men on the shore burning in the night, and something came up out of the main hatch, something monstrous. It padded across the deck whilst I remained on the quarterdeck above, and then it slipped over the rail and into the sea with never a splash to mark its passing. I saw it once, the dark head of it breasting the swell as it struck out for shore, and then it was gone. I sit here now and know that whatever unholy thing it was that took ship with us is gone. It is ashore, among the men on the beaches-whilst they sleep on under the trees, believing themselves safe. May God forgive me, I cannot leave the ship. I must sit and wait, and watch for the return of my men and whatever stories of horror they may bring with them. I would to God that we had a priest with us in this God-forsaken land, if only to give the last blessing which our frail souls crave before the final closing of death’s curtain.
There were pages missing from the log, ripped out. Some of them Murad had removed himself, lest the King see them in his brief perusal of the volume; but others had been removed long before. Murad found himself staring at one page which seemed to have been spattered with thick, black ink. It was blood, old blood, and it had soaked through several pages, gluing them irrevocably together.
He sat back, trying to clear his head of the mouldy parchment smell, breathing in instead the dry heat of Hebrion in late summer.
Tyrenius’ passengers-who had they been? And had they remained there in the west, or had they taken ship back with him to the Kingdoms of God? Whatever they had done, not one had survived to tell his story; all that was left of it was housed in the fragments of the document that was now before Murad.
It had to be a shifter, the same that had jumped from the ship on its return to Hebrion; but its behaviour tallied with nothing that Murad knew about the beasts. And why had it taken ship with the Faulcon in the first place? Had it signed on as a crew member in human form, or had it stowed away as a beast? The former was far more likely.
Murad flipped back to the rutter, turning page after page with a frown until he found what he was looking for. There.
Sailing directions for the western route as per the rutter of the Godspeed, bound out of Abrusio in the year of the Saint 109, Pinarro Albayero Master. Given to me by Tobias of Garmidalan, Duke of East Astarac, this 14th day of Miderialon 421 on the understanding that the rutter be destroyed after the relevant parts are copied. Witnessed by Ahern Abbas, Mage to the Court of King Essequibos of Astarac.
That reference to an earlier voyage was not unique; there were others throughout the rutter. It seemed that high-ranking men from both Hebrion and Astarac had sailed into the west three centuries before the Faulcon’s ill-fated voyage. Tyrenius had been able to draw from their experience in his own journey, which meant they must have sent a ship back at some point. If so, what had happened to them, out in the west? There was no reference to finding them or their descendants in the Faulcon’s log. If they had not come back in the returning ship then they must have died there and left nothing but their bones for posterity.
It was hard to be sure, though. So much of Tyrenius’ log had been removed. There were cryptic references to the earlier expedition, talk of sorcery and madness; a fever that struck down men and destroyed their reason. Darker still were veiled references to theurgical experiments carried out by the members of the first expedition-experiments that had gone badly awry.
What it added up to, Murad thought, was that there had been two previous expeditions to the west, the first sponsored by what seemed to be a group of high-born mages, the second by the government-or at least some of the nobility-of Astarac. Both had ended in disaster; but had the first disaster somehow contributed to the second?
Murad stared moodily into the candlelit depths of his wine. Here he was, again sailing into the west, again with a crowd of sorcerers on board. But the earlier voyages had not had Hebrian soldiery as part of their complement. Or Murad of Galiapeno, he added to himself.
He looked again over the part of Tyrenius’ log that detailed the anchorage he called Essequibo Bay. From the description, the Western Continent seemed rich, heavily vegetated, and uninhabited.
He flipped the pages. More of the crew had died in Essequibo Bay, and the expedition into the interior had been abandoned. They had reprovisioned and sailed away leaving nothing behind.
Nothing at all, for the beast had been back on board ship by the time they had weighed anchor. Two weeks out to sea, and the first disappearances had begun. The return voyage had been a nightmare. A dwindling ship’s company, contrary winds, and terror down in the hold.
The last pages of the log were missing. There was no word of how Tyrenius had met his end, or how he had managed to pilot his ship to the very coasts he had left six months before. The writing was hard to decipher. It shook and scratched as though written in haste or terrible apprehension. Murad was surprised to find that he pitied long-dead Tyrenius and his haunted crew. They had found hell within the wooden walls of a ship, and had carried it with them across half the world and back again.
There was a knock on the door and he started, spilling his wine. He cursed and snapped: “Who is it?”
“Renaldo, my lord, come with your supper.”
“Enter.”
His servant eased the door open and entered bearing a wooden tray. He cleared a space on the large table and began to set out a place. Murad put away the log and rutter and sat down before a plate of sliced roast boar and wild mushrooms, fresh-baked bread and olives, and a chunk of gleaming goat’s cheese.
“Will that be all, sir?” Renaldo asked.
Murad was still screwing up his eyes against the flood of light that the open door admitted. He was surprised to see it, for he had thought it later in the day. But he liked to eat early; it gave him a chance to ride up to the city afterwards if he felt in need of amusement.
“Yes. You are dismissed.”
The servant left, and Murad paused a moment in his tearing of the fragrant bread. They were sailing in eight days. There was time enough to call off the voyage.
He shook his head incredulously, wondering what had prompted that thought. This was the chance he had been waiting for all his life, the chance to carve out a principality for himself. He could not throw it away.
As he ate, though, not tasting the food, he could see in his mind’s eyes the picture of a deserted ship sailing across an endless ocean with a dead man’s hand on the tiller. And the eyes of a beast burning as bright as candles in the depths of its hold.
ELEVEN
It had been a busy time, but now the worst was over. Hawkwood’s two ships had been towed out of their berths by sweating harbourmen and were anchored in the Inner Roads, yards crossed and the last of the water completed. They were ready for sea, and rose and fell slowly on the swell that the trade wind had brushed up in the bay. Even this small distance from the land, it was cooler. There was no dust hanging in the throat out here, only the tang of the ocean and the shipboard smells that to Richard Hawkwood had always been the aroma of home.