“W HAT can he be at?” Murad demanded, pacing back and forth. The room was lit only by a few tiny earthenware lamps they had found among the platters and dishes, but the burning match of the soldiers glowed in tiny points and the place was heavy with the reek of the powder-smoke. Bardolin lay with his eyes open, unseeing, as immobile as the tomb carving of a nobleman on his sarcophagus.
“Two foot of match we’ve burnt, sir,” Mensurado said. “That’s half an hour. Not so long.”
“When I want your opinion, Sergeant, I’ll be sure to ask you for it,” Murad said icily. Mensurado’s eyes went as flat as flint.
“Yes, sir.”
“It’s dark out,” Hawkwood said. “It could be he’s waiting for the right moment. There are probably guards and it’s only an imp, after all.”
“Sorcerers! Imps!” Murad spat. “I’ve had a belly-full of the lot of them. Brother Mage indeed! For all we know he could be in league with his fellow necromancers, plotting to turn us over to them.”
“For God’s sake, Murad,” Hawkwood said wearily.
But the nobleman wasn’t listening. “We’ve waited long enough. Either the mage has betrayed us or his familiar has met with some mishap. We must get out of here unaided, by ourselves. Sergeant Mensurado—”
“Sir.”
“—I want that door down. Two men to carry our slumbering wizard—Hawkwood, your seamen will do. We’ll want as many arquebuses ready as possible.”
“What about Gerrera, sir?” one of the soldiers spoke up, pointing to their fever-struck comrade who lay on his litter on the floor, his face an ivory mask of sweat and bone-taut skin.
“All right. Two more of you take him. Hawkwood, lend a hand there. That leaves us with seven arquebuses free. It’ll have to do. Sergeant, the door.”
Mensurado and Cortona, the biggest men in the company except perhaps for Masudi, squared up to the hardwood double doors as if they were an opponent in a fight ring. The two men looked at each other, nodded sombrely and then charged, leading with their right shoulders.
They rebounded like balls bounced off a wall, paused a second, and then charged again.
The doors creaked and cracked. A white splinter line appeared near the hinges of one.
Three more times they charged, changing shoulders each time, and on the fifth attempt the doors sagged and broke, the beam which had closed them smashed in two, their bronze hinges half dragged out of the wall.
The company hesitated a moment as the echo of the crash died away. Cortona and Mensurado were breathing heavily, rubbing their bruised shoulders. Finally Hawkwood raised one of the earthenware lamps and peered out into the gloom of the foyer beyond, in which they had met the old man Faku and his helpers. The place was deserted, the door to the street closed. The night seemed eerily silent after the jungle noise they were used to.
“There’s no one here, it seems,” he told Murad. He lifted the lamp this way and that. There was a stone staircase at the back of the big room. The running water of the pools had stopped except for an occasional drip. Shadows wheeled and flitted everywhere like restless ghosts.
“Now what?”
“We’ll search the other rooms,” Murad said. “Mensurado, see to it. It may be that the imp is lost somewhere upstairs or nearby. And that Kersik woman may still be around.”
Mensurado led a trio of soldiers upstairs.
“I don’t like it,” Hawkwood said. “Why leave us unguarded? They must have guessed we were capable of breaking down the door.”
“They are magicians and sorcerers, every one,” Murad said. “Who knows how their minds work?”
They heard the boots of Mensurado and his comrades clumping above their heads, then snatches of talk, and finally a cry, not of fear, more of surprise.
Hawkwood and Murad glanced at one another. There was a flurry of voices above, the thumping of feet and heavy things scraping across the floor.
Mensurado came running down the stairs. “Sir—take a look at this.” He was holding a handful of coins.
Normannic gold crowns. On one side was a depiction of the spires of burnt Carcasson, on the other a crude, stylized map of the continent. Bank-minted money belonging to no kingdom in particular, but used in the great transactions between kings and governments. Coins such as this bribed princes, bought mercenaries, forged cannons.
“There are chests and chests of the damned stuff up there, sir,” Mensurado was saying. “A king’s ransom, the hoard of a dozen lifetimes.”
Murad bit into one of the coins. “Real, by God. There’s chests of the stuff you say, Sergeant?”
“Hundredweights, sir. I’ve never seen anything like it. The treasury of a kingdom could not hold more.”
Murad threw aside the coin; it fell with a sweet kiss of metal on stone. “Everyone upstairs. Leave Gerrera and the mage here for the moment. I want every pouch and pocket filled. You shall each have your share, never fear.”
He and Mensurado had a glitter in their eyes that Hawkwood had not seen before. As they left the room Hawkwood bent down beside the motionless Bardolin and shook him.
“Bardolin, for God’s sake wake up. Where are you?”
No answer. The old mage’s eyes remained wide open, his face as immobile as that of a corpse.
It sounded as though cascades of coins were being poured over the floor upstairs. Sharp blows as someone attacked a chest, splintering wood. Hawkwood felt no urge to join in the greedy festival. He loved gold as much as the next man, but there was a time and a place for it. As Mihal left his side to chance his luck upstairs, Hawkwood curtly ordered him back. Both Mihal and Masudi looked at him imploringly, but he shook his head.
“You’ll see, lads. Nothing good will come of this gold. Me, I’ll be happy to get out of here with my skin intact. That’s riches enough.”
Masudi grinned ruefully. “You can’t run with your pockets full of gold, I’ll warrant.”
“Nor eat it, neither,” Mihal added, resigned.
The soldiers began staggering downstairs, pockets bulging. They had even stuffed coins down the front of their shirts, giving themselves rattling paunches. Four of them were bearing two wooden chests between them. Murad descended last, holding up a lamp and seeming a little dazed.
“We’ll come back,” he was saying in a low voice. “We’ll come back with a dozen tercios one day.”
“I’d rather we had the tercios now,” Hawkwood rasped. “If you want to leave this place, we’d best be going at once. There’s no telling when that Gosa and his creatures will be back.”
“I am not unaware of the need for urgency, Captain,” Murad snapped. “What we carry away with us here could outfit an entire flotilla of ships, and can you imagine the backing I could call on when it became known that the Western Continent was stuffed with gold? We could bring an army here, and extirpate these monsters and sorcerers from the land for good.”
“It’s gold, yes, but minted in the form of Normannic crowns, Murad,” Hawkwood said. “Did you think of that? What are they using it for, if not to spend in the Old World? We know nothing about what is going on in this land, or how it affects the Ramusian states at home.”
“We’ll find out another time,” the nobleman said. “For now, all I want is to get clear of this place. Mensurado, the door. You men, pick up Gerrera.”
Lumbering, rattling and clinking, the soldiers gathered themselves and prepared to leave.
But the door opened before Mensurado got to it. A black-skinned figure dressed in white stood there. The old man, Faku. His mouth opened.
A shot, amazingly loud in the confined space. Faku was hurled back out of the doorway.
“One less sorcerer,” Mensurado snarled, and reloaded his arquebus with practised speed.