Hawkwood and the Kings: The Collected Monarchies of God (Volume One) (63 page)

Corfe looked up at the figures on the dais. Macrobius stood stock still for several moments, whilst the smile on the Queen Dowager's face grew ever thinner. Finally, he raised his hand in the well-known gesture, and everyone in the hall bowed their heads.

Except for the flint-eyed guards facing Corfe.

The blessing took a matter of seconds, and then attendants in scarlet doublets helped the Pontiff off the dais by a door at the rear of the thrones. Lofantyr and Odelia resumed their seats, and the room seemed to relax. Talk blossomed, punctuated by the clink of glasses. From the galleries floated the soft sounds of lutes and mandolins. A woman's alto began singing a song of the Levangore, about tall ships and lost islands or some other romantic rubbish.

A tray-bearing attendant offered Corfe wine, but he shook his head. The air was thick with perfume; it seemed to rise from the white throats of the ladies like incense. Everyone was talking with unusual animation; obviously Macrobius's appearance had ramifications beyond Corfe's guessing.

"What am I to do?" he asked the chamberlain harshly. A red anger was building in him, and he was not sure as to its source.

The chamberlain gazed at him as though surprised to see he was still there. He was a tall man, but thin as a reed. Corfe could have snapped him in two over his knee.

"Drink some wine, talk to the ladies. Enjoy a taste of civilization, soldier."

"I am 'Colonel,' to you."

The chamberlain blinked, then smiled with no trace of humour.

He looked Corfe in the eye, an unflinching stare which seemed to be memorizing his features. Then he turned away and became lost in the mingling crowd. Corfe swore under his breath.

"Did you dress especially for the audience, or are you always so trim?" a woman's voice asked.

Corfe turned to find a foursome at his elbow. Two young men in dandified versions of Torunnan military dress, and two ladies on their arms. The men seemed a curious mixture of condescension and wariness; the women were merely amused.

"We travelled in haste," the remnants of politeness made Corfe say.

"I think it made for a very touching scene." The other woman giggled. "The ageing Pontiff in the garb of a beggar and his travelworn bodyguard, neither sure as to who should lean on whom."

"Or who was leading whom," the first woman added, and the four of them laughed together.

"But it is a relief to know our king is no longer a heretic," the first woman went on. "I imagine the nobles of the kingdom are thanking God while we speak." This also produced a tinkle of laughter.

"We forget our manners," one of the men said. He bowed. "I am Ensign Ebro of His Majesty's guard, and this is Ensign Callan. Our fair companions are the ladies Moriale and Brienne of the court."

"Colonel Corfe Cear-Inaf," Corfe grated. "You may call me 'sir.'"

Something in his tone cut short the mirth. The two young officers snapped to attention. "I beg pardon, sir," Callan said. "We meant no offence. It is just that, within the court, one becomes rather informal."

"I am not of the court," Corfe told him coldly.

A sixth person joined the group, an older man with the sabres of a colonel on his cuirass and a huge moustache which fell past his chin. His scalp was as bald as a cannonball and he carried a staff officer's baton under one arm.

"Fresh from Ormann Dyke, eh?" he barked in a voice better suited to a parade ground than a palace. "Rather stiff up there at times, was it not? Let's hear of it, man. Don't be shy. About time these palace heroes heard news of a real war."

"Colonel Menin, also of the palace," Ebro said, jerking his head towards the newcomer.

It seemed suddenly that there was a crowd of faces about Corfe, a horde of expectant eyes awaiting entertainment. The sweat was soaking his armpits, and he was absurdly conscious of the mud on his clothing, the dints and scrapes on his armour. The very toes of his boots were dark with old blood where he had splashed in it during the height of the fighting.

"And you were at Aekir, too, it seems," Menin went on. "How is that? I thought that none of Mogen's men survived. Rather odd, wouldn't you say?"

They waited. Corfe could almost feel their gazes crawl up and down his face.

"Excuse me," he said, and he turned away, leaving them. He elbowed his way through the crowd feeling their stares shift, astonished, to his back, and then he left the hall.

Kitchens, startled attendants with laden trays. A courtier who tried to redirect him and was brushed aside. And then the fresh air of an early evening, and the blue dark of a star-spattered twilit sky. Corfe found himself on one of the bewildering series of long balconies which circled the central towers of the palace. He could hear the clatter of the kitchens behind him, the humming din of a multitude. Below him all of Torunn fanned out in a carpet of lights to the north. To the east the unbroken darkness of the Kardian Sea. Somewhere far to the north Ormann Dyke with its weary garrison, and beyond that the sprawling winter camps of the enemy.

The starlit world seemed vast and cold and somehow alien. The only home that Corfe had ever truly known was a blackened shell lost in that darkness. Utterly gone. Strangely enough, the only person he thought he might have spoken to of it was Macrobius. He, too, knew something of loss and shame.

"Sweet Lord," Corfe whispered, and the hot tears scalded his throat and seared his eyes though he would not let them fall. "Sweet Lord, I wish I had died in Aekir."

The music started up again from within. Tabors and flutes joined the mandolins to produce a lively military march, one for soldiers to swing their arms to.

Corfe bent his head to the cold iron of the balcony rail, and squeezed shut his burning eyes on the memories.

Four

T
HE FIRST SHOT
sent the seabirds of the gulf wailing in distracted circles about the ships and puffed up a plume of spray barely a cable from the larboard bow.

"Good practice," Dietl, the carrack's master, admitted grudgingly, "but then we are broadside-on to them, as plump a target as you could wish, and the galleasses of the corsairs carry nothing but chasers. No broadside guns, see, because of the oars. They'll close and board soon, I shouldn't wonder."

"We can't outrun them then?" Abeleyn asked. He was a competent enough sailor, as Hebrion's king should be, but this was Dietl's ship and the master knew her like no one else ever could.

"No, sire. With those oars of theirs, they effectively have the weather gauge of us. They can close any time they wish, even into the wind if they have to. And as for those pig-slow
nefs
your men are in, a one-armed man in a rowboat could overtake them. No, it's a fight they're looking for, and that's what they're going to get." Dietl's earlier diffidence to the King on his quarterdeck seemed to have evaporated with the proximity of action. He spoke now as one professional to another.

All along the decks of the carrack the guns had been run out and their crews were stationed about them holding sponges, wads, wormers and lint-stocks - the paraphernalia of artillery, whether land or naval. The thin crew of the merchant carrack that Abeleyn had hired in Candelaria was supplemented by the soldiers of his retinue, most of them well used to gunnery of one sort or another. The deck had been strewn with sand so the men would not slip in their own blood once the action began, and the coiled slow-match was burning away happily to itself in the tub beside every gun. Already the more responsible of the gun captains were sighting down the barrels of the metal monsters, eyeing the slender profiles of the approaching vessels. Six sleek galleasses with lateen sails as full and white as the wings of a flock of swans.

The carrack was heavily armed, one of the reasons why Abeleyn had hired her. On the main deck were a dozen demiculverins, bronze guns whose slim barrels were eleven feet long and which fired a nine-pound shot. On the poop deck were six sakers, five-pounders with nine-foot barrels, and ranged about the forecastle and up in the tops were a series of falconets, two-pounder swivel guns which were to be used against enemy boarders.

The sluggish
nefs
a mile behind on the choppy sea were less well armed, but they carried the bulk of Abeleyn's men: over a hundred and fifty trained Hebrian soldiers in each. It would take a stubborn enemy to board them with any hope of success. Abeleyn knew that a galleass might have a crew of three hundred, but they were not of the same calibre as his men. And besides, he knew that he was the prize the enemy vessels were after. The corsairs were out king-hunting this bright morning in the Fimbrian Gulf, that was certain. He would have given a lot to know who had hired them.

Another shot ploughed into the sea just short of the carrack, and then another. Then one clipped the waves like a stone sent skimming by a boy at play and crashed into the side of the ship with a rending of timbers. Dietl went purple. He turned to Abeleyn.

"By your leave, sire, I believe it's time we heated up the guns."

Abeleyn grinned. "By all means, Captain."

Dietl leaned over the quarterdeck rail. "Fire as they bear!" he shouted.

The culverins leaped back on their carriages with explosions of smoke and flame erupting from their muzzles. The main-deck almost disappeared in a tower of smoke, but the northerly sent it forward over the forecastle. The crews were already reloading, not waiting to see the fall of shot. Some of the more experienced gunners clambered over the side of the ship to gauge their aim. Abeleyn stared eastwards. The six galleasses appeared unhurt by the broadside. Even as he watched, little globes of smoke appeared on their bows as the chasers fired again. A moment later came the retorts, and the high whine of shot cutting the air overhead. The King saw holes appear in the maincourse and foretopsail. A few fragments of rigging fell to the deck.

"They have us bracketed," Dietl said grimly. "There's hot work approaching, sire."

Abeleyn's reply was cut off by the roar of the carrack's second broadside. He glimpsed a storm of pulverized water about the enemy vessels and the flap of white canvas gone mad as the topmast of one galleass went by the board and crashed over her bow. The carrack's crew cheered hoarsely, but did not pause in their reloading for an instant.

From the maintop the lookout yelled down: "Deck there! The northerly squadron is veering off. They're going after the
nefs
!"

Abeleyn bounded to the taffrail. Sure enough, the farther squadron of vessels was turning into the wind. They already had their sails in. Under oar power alone, they changed course to west-north-west on an intercept course with the two
nefs
. At the same time, the remaining three galleasses seemed to put on a spurt of speed and their oars dipped and rose at a fantastic rate. All three of their bows were pointed at the carrack.

Another broadside. The galleasses were half a mile off the larboard bow and closing rapidly. Abeleyn saw an oarbank burst to pieces as some of the carrack's shots went home. The injured galleass at once went before the wind. There were men struggling like ants on the lateen yards, trying to brace them round.

The whine of shot again, some of it going home. The fight seemed to intensify within minutes. The crew of the carrack laboured at the guns like acolytes serving the needs of brutal gods. Broadside after broadside stabbed out from the hull of the great ship until it seemed that the noise and flame and sour smoke were intrinsic to some alien atmosphere, an unholy storm which they had blundered blindly into. The deck shook and canted below Abeleyn's feet as the guns leapt inboard and then were loaded and run out again. The regular broadsides disintegrated as the crews found their own rhythms, and the battle became one unending tempest of light and tumult as the vessels of the corsairs closed in to arquebus range and, closer still, to pistol range.

But then a series of enemy rounds struck home in quick succession. There were crashes and screams from the waist of the carrack and in the smoking chaos Abeleyn saw the monster shape of one of the culverins upended and hurled away from the ship's side. It tumbled across the deck and the entire ship shuddered. There was a shriek of overburdened wood, and then a portion of the deck gave way and the metal beast plunged out of sight, dragging several screaming men with it. The deck was a shattered wreck that glistened with blood and was littered with fragments of wood and hemp. But still the gun crews hauled their charges into position and stabbed the glowing match into the touch-holes. A continuous thunder, ear-aching, a hellish flickering light. Some fool had discharged his culverin without hauling it tight up to the bulwark, and the detonation of the gun had set the shrouds on fire. Teams of firefighters were instantly at work hauling up wooden tubs of seawater to douse the flames.

The ship's carpenter staggered to the quarterdeck.

"How does she swim, Burian?" Dietl asked out of a powder-grimed face.

"We've plugged two holes below the waterline and we've secured that rogue gun, but we've four feet in the well and it's gaining on us. There must be a leak in the hold that I can't get at. I need men, Captain, to shift the cargo and come at it, otherwise she'll go down in half a watch."

Dietl nodded. "You shall have them. Take half the crews from the poop guns - but work fast, Burian; we'll need those men back on deck soon enough. I'm thinking they're closing to try and board."