The Second Empire Read Free Page A

would inflict them upon another?
    Unwillingly, his mind was drawn back to that terrible place of sorcery and slaughter and emerald jungle. The Western Continent. They had sought to claim a new world there, and had ended up fleeing for their lives. He could remember every stifling, terror-ridden hour of it. In the wave-racked carcase of his once-proud ship, he had it thrust vivid and unforgettable into his mind’s eye once again.
    PART ONE RETURN OF THE MARINER
     
    ONE
    T HEY had stumbled a mile, perhaps two, from the ashladen air on the slopes of Undabane. Then they collapsed in on each other like a child’s house of playing cards, what remained of their spirit spent. Their chests seemed somehow too narrow to take in the thick humidity of the air around them. They lay sprawled in the twilit ooze of the jungle floor while half-glimpsed animals and birds hooted and shrieked in the trees above, the very land itself mocking their failure. Heaving for a breath, the sweat running down their faces and the insects a cloud before their eyes.
    It was Hawkwood who recovered first. He was not injured, unlike Murad, and his wits had not been addled, unlike Bardolin’s. He sat himself up in the stinking humus and the creeping parasitic life which infested it, and hid his face in his hands. For a moment he wished only to be dead and have done with it. Seventeen of them had left Fort Abeleius some twenty-four days before. Now he and his two companions were all that remained. This green world was too much for mortal men to bear, unless they were also some form of murderous travesty such as those which resided in the mountain. He shook his head at the memory of the slaughter there. Men skinned like rabbits, torn asunder, eviscerated, their innards churned through with the gold they had stolen. Masudi’s head lying dark and glistening in the roadway, the moonlight shining in his dead eyes.
    Hawkwood hauled himself to his feet. Bardolin had his head sunk between his knees and Murad lay on his back as still as a corpse, his awful wound laying bare the very bone of his skull.
    “Come. We have to get farther away. They’ll catch us else.”
    “They don’t want to catch us. Murad was right.” It was Bardolin. He did not raise his head, but his voice was clear, though thick with grief.
    “We don’t know that,” Hawkwood snapped.
    “
I
know that.”
    Murad opened his eyes. “What did I tell you, Captain? Birds of like feather.” He chuckled hideously. “What dupes we poor soldiers and mariners have been, ferrying a crowd of witches and warlocks to their masters. Precious Bardolin will not be touched—not him. They’re sending him back to his brethren with you as the ferryman. If anyone escaped, it was I. But then, to where have I escaped?”
    He sat up, the movement starting a dark ooze of blood along his wound. The flies were already black about it. “Ah yes, deliverance. The blest jungle. And we are only a few score leagues from the coast. Give it up, Hawkwood.” He sank back with a groan and closed his eyes.
    Hawkwood remained standing. “Maybe you’re right. Me, I have a ship still—or had—and I’m going to get off this God-cursed country and out to sea again. New Hebrion no less! If you’ve any shred of duty left under that mire of self-pity you’re wallowing in, Murad, then you’ll realise we have to get back home, if only to warn them. You’re a soldier and a nobleman. You still understand the concept of duty, do you not?”
    The bloodshot eyes snapped open again. “Don’t presume to lecture me, Captain. What are you but the sweeping of some Gabrionese gutter?”
    Hawkwood smiled. “I’m a lord of the gutter now, Murad, or had you forgotten? You ennobled me yourself, the same time you made yourself governor of all this—” He swept out his arms to take in the ancient trees, the raucous jungle about them. Bitter laughter curdled in his throat. “Now get off your noble arse. We have to find some water.