Demon wind greeted pallid daylight with hell howl fury. It
was no true daylight, although somewhere above the clouds
of seething black the sun had heaved itself once more into
the heavens. It was only the devil's own twilight, slashed
with body-smashing sheets of rain and spray, the rolling
concussion of thunder, the bellow of wind, and the endless
keen of rigging, all punctuated by the sodden percussion
of torn canvas flailing to destruction.
Sir George Wincaster, Third Baron of Wickworth, clung to a
stay, feeling it quiver and groan with strain while he
kept to his feet by raw, hopeless force of will alone. The
lifeline the vessel's captain had lashed about him when
the hideous gale first burst upon them yesterday morning
had ringed his chest in bruises, salt sores stung his
lips, and rain and spray had soaked into his very marrow.
He felt as if heavy horse had charged over him and back
again, and despair was a leaden fist about his heart. He
had been too ignorant to understand the captain's terror
when first the weather broke, for he was a soldier, not a
sailor. Now he understood only too well, and he watched
almost numbly as the battered cog, creaking and groaning
in every frame and stringer, corkscrewed down yet another
mountainous, slate-gray wave, streaked with seething bands
of spray and foam, and buried its round-cheeked prow deep.
Water roared the length of the hull, poison-green and icy
as death, plucking and jerking at his limbs and groping
after every man on the staggering ship's deck. The hungry
sheet of destruction smashed over Sir George, battering
the breath from him in yet another agonized grunt, and
then it was past and he threw his head up, gasping and
hacking on the water which had forced itself into his
nostrils and eyes.
The cog fought her way once more up out of the abyss,
wallowing as the water cascaded off her deck through
buckled rails. Broken cordage blew out, bar-straight and
deadly as flails on the howling torrent of wind, and he
heard the hull crying out in torment. Sir George was a
landsman, yet even he felt the ship's heavier motion, knew
the men-and women-laboring frantically at the pumps and
bailing with buckets, bowls, even bare hands, were losing
ground steadily.
The vessel was doomed. All the ships of his expedition
were doomed... and there was nothing he could do about it.
The unexpected summer gale had caught them at the worst
possible moment, just as they were rounding the Scilly
Isles on their way from Lancaster to Normandy. There had
been no warning, no time to seek shelter, only the
desperate hope that they might somehow ride out the
storm's violence on the open sea.
And that hope had failed.
Sir George had seen only one ship actually die. He was
uncertain which, but he thought it had been Earl
Cathwall's flagship. He hoped he was wrong. It was
unlikely any of them would survive, but Lord Cathwall was
more than the commander of the expedition. He was also Sir
George's father-in-law, and they held one another in deep
and affectionate respect. And perhaps Sir George was
wrong. The dying ship had been almost close enough to hear
the shrieks of its doomed company even through the storm's
demented howl as it was pounded into the depths, but the
darkness and storm fury, broken only by the glare of
forked lighting, had made exact identification impossible.
Yet even though it was the only ship he had seen
destroyed, he was grimly certain there had been others.
Indeed, he could see only one other vessel still fighting
its hopeless battle, and he ground his teeth as yet
another heavy sea crashed over his own cog. The impact
staggered the ship, and a fresh chorus of screams and
prayers came faintly from the men and women and children
packed below its streaming deck. His wife Matilda and
their son Edward were in that dark, noisome hellhole of
crowded terror and vomit, of gear come adrift and washing
seawater, and terror choked him as he thought of them once
again. He tried to find the words of prayer, the way to
plead with God to save his wife and his son. He did not
beg for himself. It wasn't his way, and his was the
responsibility for bringing them to this in the first
place. If God wanted his life in exchange for those so
much dearer to him, it was a price he would pay without a
whimper.
Yet he knew it was a bargain he would not be permitted. He
and Matilda and Edward would meet their ends together,
crushed by the soulless malice and uncaring brutality of
sea and wind, and deep within him bitter protest
reproached the God who had decreed that they should.
The cog shuddered and twitched, heaving in the torment of
over-strained timbers and rigging, and Sir George looked
up as the ship's mate shouted something. He couldn't make
out the words, but he knew it was a question, and he shook
himself like a sodden dog, struggling to make his mind
function. For all his ignorance of the sea, he had found
himself doomed to command of the ship when a falling spar
killed the captain. In fact, he'd done little more than
agree with the mate's suggestions, lending his authority
to the support of a man who might-might!-know enough to
keep them alive a few hours more. But the mate had needed
that support, needed someone else to assume the ultimate
responsibility, and that was Sir George's job. To assume
responsibility. No, to acknowledge the responsibility
which was already his. And so he made himself look as if
he were carefully considering whatever it was the mate
wanted to do this time, then nodded vigorously.
The mate nodded back, then bellowed orders at his
exhausted, battered handful of surviving sailors. Wind
howl and sea thunder thrashed the words into meaningless
fragments so far as Sir George could tell, but two or
three men began clawing their way across the deck to
perform whatever task the mate had decreed, and Sir George
turned his face back to the sea's tortured millrace. It
didn't really matter what the mate did, he thought. At
worst, a mistake would cost them a few hours of life they
might otherwise have clung to; at best, a brilliant
maneuver might buy them an hour or two they might not
otherwise have had. In the end, the result would be the
same.
He'd had such hopes, made so many plans. A hard man, Sir
George Wincaster, and a determined one. A peer of the
realm, a young man who had caught his monarch's favor at
Dupplin and the siege of Berwick at the age of twenty-two,
who'd been made a knight by Edward III's own hand the next
year on the field of Halidon Hill. A man who'd served with
distinction at the Battle of Sluys eight years later-
although, he thought with an edge of mordant humor even
now, if I'd learned a bit more then of ships, I might have
been wise enough to stay home this time!-and slogged
through the bitterly disappointing French campaign of
1340. And a man who had returned with a fortune from Henry
of Denby's campaign in Gascony five years later.
And a bloody lot of good it's done me in the end, he
thought bitterly, remembering his gleaming plans. At
thirty-five, he was at the height of his prowess, a hard
bitten, professional master of the soldier's trade. A
knight, yes, but the grandson of a commoner who had won
both knighthood and barony the hard way and himself a man
who knew the reality of war, not the minstrels' tales of
romance and chivalry. A man who fought to win... and
understood the enormous changes England and her lethal
longbows were about to introduce into the continental
princes' understanding of the art of war.
And one who knew there were fortunes to be made, lands and
power to be won, in the service of his King against Philip
of France. Despite the disappointments of 1340, last year
had proved Edward III his grandfather's grandson, a
welcome relief after the weakness and self indulgence of
his father. Longshanks would have approved of the King,
Sir George thought now. He started slow, but now that
Denby's shown the way and he's chosen to beard Philip
alone, the lions of England will make the French howl!
Perhaps they would, and certainly Edward's claim to the
throne of France was better than Philip VI's, but Sir
George Wincaster would not win the additional renown, or
the added wealth and power he had planned to pass to his
son, at his King's side. Not now. For he and all the
troops under his command would find another fate, and no
one would ever know where and when they actually perished.
* * *
The corpse light of storm-wracked afternoon slid towards
evening, and Sir George realized dully that they had
somehow survived another day.
He was too exhausted even to feel surprised... and though
he tried to feel grateful, at least, a part of him was
anything but. Another night of horror and fear, exhaustion
and desperate struggle, loomed, and even as he gathered
himself to face it, that traitor part wanted only for it
to end. For it to be over.
To rest.
But there would be rest enough soon enough, he reminded
himself. An eternity of it, if he was fortunate enough to
avoid Hell. He hoped he would be, but he was also a
realist-and a soldier. And Heaven knew that even the best
of soldiers would face an arduous stay in Purgatory, while
the worst...
He brushed the thought aside, not without the wistful wish
that he and Father Timothy might have argued it out one
more time, and made himself peer about. The second ship
was still with them, farther away as darkness gathered,
but still fighting its way across the heaving gray waste,
and he could actually see a third vessel beyond it. There
might even be one or two more beyond the range of his
sight, but-
Sir George's stumbling, exhaustion-sodden thoughts jerked
to a stop, and his hand tightened like a claw on the stay.
A cracked voice screamed something, barely audible over
the roar of wind and sea yet touched with a fresh and
different terror, and Sir George clamped his jaws against
a bellow of matching fear as the shape burst abruptly and
impossibly through the savage backdrop of cloud and rain.
He couldn't grasp it, at first. Couldn't wrap his mind
about it or find any point of reference by which to
measure or evaluate it. It was too huge, too alien... too
impossible. It could not exist, not in a world of mortals,
yet it loomed above them, motionless, shrugging aside the
fury of the gale as if it were but the gentlest of
zephyrs. Gleaming like polished bronze, flickering with
the reflected glare of lightning, a mile and more in
length, a thing of subtle curves and gleaming flanks
caparisoned in jewel-like lights of red and white and
amber.
He stared at it, too amazed and astonished to think, the
terror of the storm, even his fear for his wife and son,
banished by sheer, disbelieving shock as that vast shape
hung against the seething cloud and rain.
And then it began to move. Not quickly, but with
contemptuous ease, laughing at the gale's baffled wrath.
It drifted over the more distant of the cogs he'd seen
earlier, and more light appeared as portions of its skin
shifted and changed.
No, they're not "changing," Sir George thought numbly.
They're opening. And those lights are coming from inside
whatever it is. Those are doors, doors to chambers filled
with light and-
His thoughts stuttered and halted yet again as more shapes
appeared, far smaller this time, but with that same
unnatural stillness as the storm howled about them. Some
were cross shaped, with the grace of a gliding gull or
albatross, while others were squat cones or even spheres,
but all were of the same bronze hue as the huger shape
which had spawned them.
They spread out, surrounding the half-foundered cog, and
then-
"Sweet Jesu!"
Sir George turned his head, too shocked by the lies of his
own eyes to wonder how Father Timothy had suddenly
appeared there. The snowy-haired Dominican was a big man,
with the powerful shoulders of the archer he'd been before
he heard God's call decades before, and Sir George
released his death grip on the stay to fasten fingers of
iron on his confessor's arm.
"In the name of God, Timothy! What is that thing?!"
"I don't know," the priest replied honestly. "But-"
His voice chopped off abruptly, and he released his own
clutch on the cog's rail to cross himself urgently. Nor
did Sir George blame him.
"Holy Mary, Mother of God," the baron whispered, releasing
Father Timothy and crossing himself more slowly, almost
absently, as an unearthly glare of light leapt out from
the shapes which had encircled the other ship. Leapt out,
touched the heaving vessel, embraced it...
... and lifted it bodily from the boiling sea.
Someone aboard Sir George's own vessel was gibbering,
gobbling out fragments of prayer punctuated by curses of
horrified denial, but the baron himself stood silent,
unable to tear his eyes from the impossible sight. He saw
streams of water gushing from the ship, draining straight
down from its half-flooded hold as if in a dead calm, only
to be whipped to flying spray by the fury of the wind as
they neared the sea below. Yet the shapes enfolded the cog
in their brilliance, raising it effortlessly towards the
far vaster shape which had birthed them, and he winced as
someone aboard that rising vessel, no doubt maddened by
terror, hurled himself bodily over the rail. Another body
followed, and a third.
"Fools!" Father Timothy bellowed. "Dolts! Imbeciles! God
Himself has offered them life, and they-!"
The priest broke off, pounding the rail with a huge,
gnarly fist.
The first plunging body struck the water and vanished
without a trace, but not the second or third. Additional
shafts of light speared out, touched each falling form,
and arrested its deadly fall. The light lifted them once
more, along with the cog, bearing them towards those
brilliantly lit portals, and Sir George swallowed again. A
mile, he had estimated that shape's length, but he'd been
wrong. It was longer than that. Much longer, for the cog's
hull finally gave him something against which to measure
it, and the cog was less than a child's toy beside the
vast, gleaming immensity that rode like a mountain peak of
bronze amidst the black-bellied clouds of the gale's fury.
"Were they fools?" He didn't realize he'd spoken-certainly
not that he'd spoken loudly enough for Father Timothy to
hear through the crash of the sea and the wind-shriek, but
the priest turned to him once more and raised an eyebrow.
Even here and now, the expression brought back memories of
the days when Father Timothy had been Sir George's tutor
as he was now Edward's, but this was no time to be
thinking of that.
"Were they fools?" Sir George repeated, shouting against
the storm's noise. "Are you so certain that that...
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