Hawkmoon: The Jewel in the Skull Read online

  Its metal spines shook in fury, its metal teeth clashed in its head, and its metal talons ripped and rended armor and flesh.

  "The beast will take care of them," Hawkmoon said. "Look—our horses." About three hundred yards away stood the two bewildered steeds. Hawkmoon and Oladahn ran for them and were soon mounted, riding away from the site of Soryandum and the carnage that the mechanical beast was making of D'Averc's boars.

  Now, with the strange gift of the wraithfolk wrapped carefully and placed in Hawkmoon's saddlebag, the two adventurers continued their journey to the coast.

  The coarse turf was easier on the horses hooves, and they made rapid progress over the hills until they came at last to the wide valley where the Euphrates flowed.

  By the banks of the broad river they made their camp and debated how best to cross, for the water was fastflowing at this stretch, and according to Hawkmoon's map, they would have to journey several miles south before they came to a likely fording place.

  Hawkmoon stared across the water as the setting sun stained it the color of blood. A long, almost silent sigh escaped him, and Oladahn looked up curiously from where he was laying the fire.

  "What troubles you, Duke Dorian? One would have thought you in good spirits after our escape."

  "It is the future that troubles me, Oladahn. If D'Averc was right and Count Brass lies wounded, with von Villach dead and the Kamarg under power

  ful siege, then I fear we shall return to find nothing but the ashes and mud Baron Meliadus once promised he would make of the Kamarg."

  "Let us wait until we get there," Oladahn said with attempted cheerfulness, "for it is likely that D'Averc only sought to make you gloomy. Almost certainly your Kamarg still stands. From all you have told me of the great defenses and the mighty valor of the province, I do not doubt that they still hold against the Dark Empire. You will see...."

  "But will I?" Hawkmoon's gaze dropped to the darkening ground. "Will I, Oladahn? D'Averc was almost certainly right when he spoke of Granbretan's other conquests. If Sicilia is theirs, then so must be parts of Italia and Espanyia. Don't you see what that means?"

  "Outside of the Bulgar mountains, my geography is weak," Oladahn said embarrassedly.

  "It means that all routes to the Kamarg—by both land and sea—are blocked by the Dark Empire's hordes. Even if we reach the sea and find a ship, what chance will we have of passing unharmed through the Sicilian channel? The waters there must be thick with Dark Empire ships."

  "But do we have to travel that way? What about the route you used to reach the East?"

  Hawkmoon frowned. "Much of that territory I flew across, and it would take twice the time to go back that way. Also Granbretan has already made extra gains there."

  "But the territories under their control could be circumnavigated," Oladahn said. "At least on land we should stand some chance, while on sea, from what you say, no chance at all"

  "Aye," said Hawkmoon thoughtfully. "But it would mean crossing Turkia—a journey of several weeks. But then, perhaps, we could use the Black Sea, which, I hear, is fairly free of Dark Empire ships still."

  He consulted the map. "Aye—the Black Sea across to Romania—but then it would become increasingly dangerous as we neared France, for the Dark Empire's forces are everywhere thereabouts. Still, you are right—we would have a better chance by that route; might even slay a couple of Granbretanians and use their masks as disguises. One disadvantage that they have is that their faces cannot be recognized as those of friend or foe. If it were not for the secret languages of the various orders, we could travel safely enough if tricked out in beast masks and armor."

  "Then we change our route," Oladahn said.

  "Yes. We go north in the morning."

  For a number of long days they followed the Euphrates north, crossing the borders between Syria and Turkia and coming at length to the quiet white town of Birachek, where the Euphrates became the Firat River.

  In Birachek a wary innkeeper, suspecting them as servants of the Dark Empire, told them at first that there were no rooms, but then Hawkmoon pointed to the black jewel in his forehead and said, "My name Dorian, last Duke of Koln, sworn enemy of Granbretan," and the innkeeper, even in this remote town, had heard of him and let them in.

  Later that night they sat in the public room of the inn, drinking sweet wine and talking to the members of a trading caravan that had arrived in Birachek shortly before them.

  The traders were swarthy men with blueblack hair and beards that gleamed with oil. They were dressed in leather shirts and brightly colored divided kilts of wool; over these clothes they wore woven cloaks, also of wool, in geometric designs of purple, red, and yellow. These cloaks, they told the travelers, showed that they were the men of Yenahan, merchant of Ankara. At their waists were curved sabers with richly decorated hilts and engraved blades, worn unscabbarded. These traders were as used to fighting as they were to bartering.

  Their leader, Saleem, hawknosed and with piercing blue eyes, leaned forward over the table to speak slowly to the Duke of Koln and Oladahn.

  "You have heard that emissaries of the Dark Empire pay court to the Calif of Istanbul and pay that thriftless monarch to let them station a large force of bullmasked warriors within the city walls?"

  Hawkmoon shook his head. "I have little news of the world. But I believe you. It is the way of Granbretan to take with gold rather than take with force.

  Only if gold is no longer of use will they produce their weapons and armies."

  Saleem nodded. "As I thought. You would not, then, think Turkia safe from the Western wolves?"

  "Not any part of the world, even Amarehk, is safe from their ambition. They dream of conquering lands that might not even exist, save in fables. They plan to take Asiacommunista, though they must find it first.

  Arabia and the East are mere camping grounds for their armies."

  "But could they have such power?" Saleem asked, astonished.

  "They have the power," Hawkmoon said with confidence. "They have a madness, too, which makes them savage, cunning—and inventive. I have seen Londra, capital of Granbretan, and its vast architecture is that of brilliant nightmares made solid. I have seen the KingEmperor himself, in his throne globe of milky fluid—a wizened immortal with the golden voice of a youth. I have seen the laboratories of the sorcererscientists—innumerable caverns of bizarre machines, many whose functions have yet to be rediscovered by the Granbretanians themselves. And I have talked with their nobles, learned of their ambitions, know them to be more insane than anything you or any other normal man could imagine. They are without humanity, have little feeling for each other and none at all for those they regard as lower species—that is, all those not of Granbretan. They crucify men, women, children, and animals to decorate and mark the roads to and from their conquests. . . ."

  Saleem leaned back with a wave of his hand. "Ah, come now, Duke Dorian, you exaggerate. ..."

  Hawkmoon said forcefully, glaring into Saleem's eyes, "I tell you this, trader of Turkia—I cannot exaggerate the evil of Granbretan!"

  Saleem frowned then and shuddered. "I—I believe you," he said. "But I wish that I could not. For how can the little nation of Turkia withstand such might and cruelty?"

  Hawkmoon sighed. "I can offer no solution. I would say that you should band together, do not let them weaken you with gold and gradual encroachment in your lands—but I would waste my rhetoric if I tried, for men are greedy and will not see the truth for the gleam of coin. Resist them, I would say, with honor and honest courage, with wisdom and with idealism.

  Yet those who resist them are vanquished and tortured, see their wives raped and torn apart before their eyes, their children become playthings of warriors and heaped on fires lit to burn whole cities. But if you do not resist, if you escape death in battle, then the same could still happen to you, or you and yours become cringing things, less than human, willing to perform any indignity, any act of evil, to save your skins. I spoke of honesty—an
d honesty forbids me to encourage you with brave talk of noble battle and warriors' deaths. I seek to destroy them—I am their declared enemy—but I have great allies and considerable luck, and even I feel that I cannot forever escape their vengeance, though I have done so several times. I can only advise those who would save something to resist the minions of King Huon—use cunning. Use cunning, my friend. It is the only weapon we have against the Dark Empire."

  "Pretend to serve them, you mean?" Saleem said thoughtfully.

  "I did so. I am alive now and comparatively free..."

  "I will remember your words, westerner."

  "Remember them all" Hawkmoon warned him.

  "For the hardest compromise to make is when you decide to appear to compromise. Often the deception becomes the reality long before you realize it."

  Saleem fingered his beard. "I understand you." He glanced about the room. The flickering shadows of the torches seemed to take on a sudden menace. "How long, I wonder, will it be? ... So much of Europe is already theirs."

  "Have you heard anything of the province called the Kamarg?" asked Hawkmoon.

  "The Kamarg. A land of horned werebeasts, is it not, and halfhuman monsters with mighty powers, who have somehow managed to stand against the Dark Empire. They are led by a metal giant, the Brass Count..."

  Hawkmoon smiled. "You have heard much that is legend. Count Brass is flesh and blood, and there are few monsters in the Kamarg. The only horned beasts are the bulls of the marshlands and the horses, too.

  And have they still resisted the Dark Empire? Heard you of how Count Brass fares, or his lieutenant von Villach—or Count Brass's daughter, Yisselda?"

  "I heard Count Brass dead and his lieutenant, too.

  But of a girl I heard nothing—and as far as I know the Kamarg still stands."

  Hawkmoon rubbed at the black jewel. "Your information is not certain enough. I cannot believe that if Count Brass is dead the Kamarg still stands. If Count Brass goes down, so does the province."

  "Well, I speak only of rumors surrounding other rumors," Saleem said. "We traders are sure of local gossip, but most of what we hear of the West is vague and obscure. You come from the Kamarg, do you not?"

  "It is my adopted home," Hawkmoon agreed. "If it still exists."

  Oladahn put his hand on Hawkmoon's shoulder.

  "Do not be depressed, Duke Dorian. You said yourself that Trader Saleem's information is barely credible. Wait until we are nearer our goal before you lose hope."

  Hawkmoon made an effort to rid himself of the mood, calling for more wine and plates of broiled pieces of mutton and hot unleavened bread. And although he was able to appear more cheerful, his mind was not at rest for fear that all those he loved were indeed dead and the wild beauty of the Kamarg marshlands now turned to a burning waste.

  Chapter Six - MAD GOD'S SHIP

  TRAVELING WITH SALEEM and his traders to Ankara and thence to the port of Zonguldak on the Black Sea, Hawkmoon and Oladahn were able, with the help of papers supplied by Saleem's master, to get passage on board the Smiling Girl, the only ship ready to take them with it to Simferopol on the coast of a land called Crimia. Smiling Girl was not a pretty vessel, and neither did she seem happy. Captain and crew were filthy, and the decks below stank of a thousand different kinds of rot. Yet they were forced to pay heavily for the privilege of passage on the tub, and their quarters were little less noxious than the bilges over which they were positioned. Captain Mouso, with his long, greasy mustachios and shifty eyes, did not inspire their confidence, and neither did the bottle of strong wine that seemed permanently in the mate's hairy paw.

  Philosophically, Hawkmoon decided that at least the ship would hardly be worth a pirate's attention—and, for the same reason, a Dark Empire ship's attention—and went aboard with Oladahn shortly before she sailed.

  Smiling Girl lumbered away from the quayside on the earlymorning ride. As her patched sails caught the wind, every timber in her groaned and creaked; she turned sluggishly north northeast under a darkening sky that was full of rain. The morning was cool and gray, with a peculiar muted quality to it that dampened sounds and made seeing an effort.

  Huddled in his cloak, Hawkmoon stood in the fo'c'sle and watched as Zonguldak disappeared behind them.

  Rain had begun to fall in heavy drops by the time the port was out of sight and Oladahn came up from below to move along the heaving deck toward Hawkmoon.

  "I've cleaned up our quarters as best I can, Duke Dorian, though we'll not be free of the smell from the rest of the ship—and there's little, I'd guess, that would scare away such fat rats as I saw."

  "We'll bear it," Hawkmoon said stoically. "We've borne worse, and the voyage is only for two days." He glanced at the mate, who was reeling out of the wheelhouse. "Though I'd be happier if I thought the ship's officers and crew were a trifle more capable." He smiled. "If the mate drinks any more and the captain lies snoring much longer, we may find ourselves with a command!"

  Rather than go below, the two men stood together in the rain, looking to the north and wondering what might befall them on their long journey to the Kamarg.

  The miserable ship sailed on through the miserable day, tossed on the rough sea, blown by a treacherous wind that ever threatened to become a storm but always stopped just short. The captain stumbled onto the bridge from time to time, to shout at his men, to curse them and beat them into the rigging to reef that sail or loose another. To Hawkmoon and Oladahn, Captain Mouso's orders seemed entirely arbitrary.

  Toward evening, Hawkmoon went to join the Captain on the bridge. Mouso looked up at him with a shifty expression.

  "Good evening, sir," he said, sniffing and wiping his long nose with his sleeve. "I hope the voyage's to your satisfaction."

  "Reasonably, thank you. What time have we made—good or bad?"

  "Good enough, sir," replied the skipper, turning so that he did not have to look at Hawkmoon directly.

  "Good enough. Shall I have the galley prepare you some supper?"

  Hawkmoon nodded. "Aye."

  The mate appeared from below the bridge, singing softly to himself and evidently blind drunk.

  Now a sudden squall hit the ship side on, and the ship wallowed over alarmingly. Hawkmoon clung to the rail, feeling that at any moment it would crumble away in his hand. Captain Mouso seemed oblivious of any danger, and the mate was flat on his face, bottle falling from his hand as his body slid nearer and nearer to the side.

  "Better help him," Hawkmoon said.

  Captain Mouso laughed. "He's all right—he's got a drunkard's luck."

  But now the mate's body was against the starboard rail, his head and one shoulder already through.

  Hawkmoon leaped down the companionway to grab the man and haul him back to safety as the ship heaved again, this time in the other direction, and salt waves washed the deck.

  Hawkmoon looked down at the man he had rescued. The mate lay on his back, eyes closed, lips moving in the words of the song he'd been singing.

  Hawkmoon laughed, shaking his head, calling up to the skipper, "You're right—he has a drunkard's luck."

  Then, as he turned his head to port, he thought he saw something in the water. The light was fading fast, but he was sure he had seen a vessel of some kind not too far away.

  "Captain—do you see anything yonder?" he yelled, going to the rail and peering into the mass of heaving water.

  "Looks like a raft of some kind," Mouso called back.

  Hawkmoon was soon able too see the thing more closely as a wave swept it nearer. It was a raft, with three men clinging to it.

  "Shipwrecked by the look of 'em," Mouso called casually. "Poor bastards." He shrugged, his shoulders.

  "Ah, well, not our affairs ..."

  "Captain, we must save them," Hawkmoon said.

  "We'll never do it in this light. Besides, we're wasting time. I'm carrying no cargo save yourself on this trip and have to be in Simferopol on time to pick up my cargo before someone else does.
"

  "We must save them," Hawkmoon said firmly. "Oladhan—a rope."

  The Bulgar beastman found a coil of rope in the wheelhouse and came hurrying down with it. The raft was still in sight, its burden flat on their faces, clinging to it for dear life. Sometimes it vanished in a great trough of water, reappearing after several seconds, a fair distance from the boat. The gap between them was widening all the time, and Hawkmoon knew that there was very little time before the raft would be too far away for them to reach it. Lashing one end of the rope to the rail and looping the other about his waist, he stripped off cloak and sword and dived into the foaming ocean.

  At once, Hawkmoon realized the danger he was in.

  The great waves were almost impossible to swim against, and there was every chance of his being dashed against the side of the ship, stunned, and drowned.

  But he struggled on through the water, fighting to keep it out of his mouth and eyes as he searched about for the raft.

  There it was! And now its occupants had seen the ship and were standing up, waving and shouting. They had not seen Hawkmoon swimming toward them.

  As he swam, Hawkmoon caught glimpses of the men from time to time, but he could not distinguish them clearly. Two now seemed to be struggling, while the third seemed to be sitting upright watching them.

  "Hold on!" Hawkmoon called above the crash of the sea and the moan of the wind. Exerting all his strength, he swam even harder and was soon nearly upon the raft as it was tossed on a wild chaos of black and white water.

  Then Hawkmoon caught the edge of the raft and saw that indeed two of the men were fighting in earnest. He saw, too, that they wore the snouted masks of the Order of the Boar. The men were warriors of Granbretan.

  For an instant Hawkmoon debated leaving them to their fate. But if he did that, he reasoned, he would be no better than they. He must do his best to save them, then decide what to do with them.

  He called up to the fighting pair, but they did not seem to hear him. They grunted and cursed in their struggle, and Hawkmoon wondered if they had not been demented by their ordeal.