Chapter 4

 

Although the official remit of the Press Gang was strictly limited to pulling seamen off the streets and into service during times of war, in practice their latitude was somewhat greater. The Admiralty was tacitly sympathetic to their definition of ‘seamen’ as covering any and all men (i.e. males of five foot or above, or very nearly, with even the vaguest hint of facial hair) who would conceivably be able to perform some shipboard function, however menial, and who were unable to cough up a hefty bribe on the spot. Dion, the son of a farm labourer, had been unable to resort to the latter option. A slight lad of seventeen, after brief, instinctive struggles, he had been wise enough to give his captors no undue trouble, which might possibly have spared him a few kicks. Nevertheless, after a fast cart ride over some very bad roads, hog-tied and with a sack bound to his head, he had aches and pains enough.

        Following this little excursion, his information was somewhat patchy. He had recognised the naval dockyard at Koryton, having been to the town’s market on rare occasions, but could not have named the frigate upon which, with various oaths and threats, he was marched, his hands still tied. To the uncritical eye, the Clandestine was very much like any other ARN capital ship: in the region of three hundred feet long, with a huge and rather grotesque figurehead in the shape of a dragon’s head, labyrinthine webs of rigging enclosing both sides, heavy artillery pieces conspicuously ranged along the deck, and various leering veterans to welcome the new ‘recruits’ aboard, there was little to mark it out as the flagship of the Western Fleet. That discovery would follow later, for all that he cared about it. At the time, all further discoveries were effectively forestalled by his being manhandled into a wide pit in the quarter-deck, upon which a heavy wooden grating was lowered.

        Several more impressed recruits had occupied the low compartment; all bound like Dion and presenting an equally wretched aspect to the world. In the gloom and confinement, it had been impossible to be precise as to how many, but most of those he had seen were certainly of no greater age than he himself. That notwithstanding, no conversation was attempted, everyone present having been absorbed in their own little universes of melancholy and morbid reflections. The next distinct event he recalled was the sound of heated conversation from above, and straining his neck he had made out the two disputants, standing beside the grating. One had been a tall, fair-haired, aquiline man, and a high-ranking command officer to judge from his long-skirted and heavily decorated uniform coat. The second, Dion could have hardly failed to recognise. News of a royal succession, and particularly one fraught with rumours and controversies, would not escape even the most distant of the provinces. His first sight of Her Acting Royal Highness in the flesh, however, had not proven as overwhelming as imagination had suggested, and though drawn up to her full, respectable, albeit unimpressive five-and-a-half feet, the sight of that slender, masked figure gazing up into the steady, contemptuous expression of her towering inferior officer (who was standing much closer to her than respect properly demanded), could hardly inspire one with a religious faith in the monarchy.

        “Did you fail to understand me, My Lord Corin,” the lady had asked, shivering in her fury, although the keen and cutting breeze probably played its part, “when I proclaimed that there should be no more press gangs?”

        “No, Your Highness,” the officer had answered, with unrestrained disdain, “but did I not also understand that you proposed that this fleet should be fully mobilised by the end of the month? Now, if you had said ‘by the Crack of Doom,’ it is possible that I could have met both your requirements. As matters stood, I have compromised for the best, seeing as how your excellent little schemes to raise wages and abolish discipline have not, I regret, brought in those floods of volunteers you were doubtless anticipating.”

        “You equate flogging men to death, or forcing them to walk between sword-points, with discipline? Of course you do. I forget, My Lord, you are a barbarian of the old school. Nevertheless,” and here a note of doubt had infected her resolve, “if we are so badly undermanned–”

        “Which we certainly are. May I assume you are willing to relax your principles on this point, Your Highness.”

        “Admiral,” she had answered, with fresh decision and repressed hatred. “Most of these are working boys, I would think, snatched by your thugs from the farms hereabouts. That could be a terrible blow to their families, in lost labour.”

        “Their ‘families’ will have to make do, then! We are on the verge of a campaign, upon which the security of our entire kingdom is balanced, and the small concerns of a few ‘families’ can hardly be said to signify!”

        “It will be a small enough matter to compensate them, My Lord.”

        “Compensate them? We pay a bounty to willing volunteers! Now you want me to pay it to impressed slackers, do you? And then, pray, how many volunteers to you hope to get, if they can fix the same price by draft-dodging?”

        “No, admiral. Compensate their families, as I was suggesting. Even you must acknowledge the reason in that.”

        “Oh, certainly. And where’s the money to come from?”

        “I would have thought that our tax revenues were expressly designed for such a purpose.”

        “To give handouts to shiftless peasants? That’s interesting, because I always imagined they were to promote the strength and glory of our kingdom.”

        “And you do not suppose that is better served by a high morale in our navy than by, for example, all the stupid and extravagant frivolities which I have been extremely busy in striking from the palace expenses? Which reminds me to tell you, Lord Corin, that the state parade and masque which some maniac had scheduled for the end of the month, at such a horrendous cost that I shan’t trouble your mind with it, has been cancelled. That alone should save more than enough.” The officer, Dion recalled, had vacillated between silent expressions of shock and rage, before settling for a calm, but threatening undertone:

        “How long do you think you’ll last, Your Highness?”

        “Do not let that concern you, My Lord. Just remember that I am your regent, and while that is the case I shall not have my commands ignored.”

        “And then again, let us just suppose that I was disinclined to put this little set of edicts into effect. What exactly would you do? Oh wait, don’t tell me: you’d go blabbing, if I may use the expression, to that traitor Lycon, would you not?”

        “Well, I would certainly let him know that you had described him so libellously, bearing in mind that he has offered an open challenge to anyone who dares to raise those slanders again. How is your swordsmanship, My Lord?”

        The officer, following a thoughtful pause, had replied bitterly:

        “If it will put an end to your objections, Your Highness, I am prepared to satisfy this whim of yours.”

        “I’m so glad. And give those boys some food, and let them out on the deck, for mercy’s sake. I should think your marines are tough enough to contain a few half-starved youths. And if they’re not, you can let them out in little groups.”

        And then she had left the officer to his thoughts, which he was not slow to express in such mutterings as ‘little slut’ and ‘do for her,’ among others. Nevertheless, she must have left a delegate of some description around the place, as her orders were actually carried out with reasonable faithfulness, much to Dion’s surprise. Much later, when opportunities for conversation finally arose, the new recruits had been warm in their praise of the Regent Gloriana, and Dion had added his voice to theirs. His thoughts, however, had chiefly dwelt upon the subject of the officer, whom he suspected that momentary humiliations aside, was nevertheless going to have a far more significant impact upon his life for some time to follow.

 

Nor had he been wrong, but the random violence and drudgery of the first few days were, in his case, somewhat abated: the sudden creation of the skirmisher fleet had led to large numbers of seasoned men – both seamen and marines – being drafted into the iron-clads as oarsmen, chain-gunners and shock troops, leaving an abundance of shipboard vacancies that needed to be filled, quite frankly, any old how. Being a trooper in the marines was hardly what you might call a cushy number, but at least it meant exchanging his wretched slops for a warm uniform, and not being periodically lashed by the boatswain’s mates. It was probably the repeating carbine that put them off, as much as anything, although he drew no other comfort from having been issued with that particular item, knowing full well that his personal safety had been the last consideration in the decision.

 

By the time of the Battle of Rowan Head, he had found himself transferred to one of the largest ships in the skirmisher fleet: the twin-gunned Lamia IV, under the command of Lieutenant Dorus, if command if could be called. The truth be told, and although he was fully aware that the lieutenant had gleaned high honours for his chain-gun work during the battle, his recollection of the young officer’s frenzied, haphazard performance (punctuated with regular calls from the armourer, along the lines of “Only crank it once a second, sir, or the bearings’ll never take it! I’m tellin’ you!”), not to mention his pale, hyperventilating aspect in the aftermath, could hardly instil one with much confidence in that department. On the other hand, even if more by luck than judgement (especially in regard to the chain-gun’s bearings, which survived after all), the minor massacre in Dorus’s section of the beach-head did at least mean that Dion and his fellow shock troops faced the most token of token resistances upon landing. At any rate, he knew when and when not to be grateful.

 

The time to be ungrateful soon approached, but a few unexpected favours lay in its path. Being stationed at the beach-head while the rest of the forces pressed on into the mountains, and to further battle, was certainly not to be sneezed at, and nor, indeed, was his slight ascension to the post of the lieutenant’s batman, which genuinely was a cushy number. Why Dorus should have fixed upon him, he had no idea, since he had not made his gratitude for survival so evident as to perform his duties with any unusual eagerness. Had he known to what end this preferment would lead him, he would certainly have made an effort to perform them with as much impertinence and incompetence as he could muster. By the time he had realised the nature of the mission for which the lieutenant had ‘volunteered’ him, he was already bound for the New World and out of swimming distance of Rowan Head, never mind his native island, and even the most flagrant insubordination could not have helped his case.

 

Association was a strange business. Surrounded by thickets of unfamiliar plants and trees, and the decayed, titanic hulks of equally uncanny buildings – palaces and pyramids with freakishly-carved statues and reliefs – gazing down into a sunken or buried structure through the trapdoor which he and his comrades in misfortune had uncovered, his thoughts flew back to the coast, climbed aboard that sea-borne hovel known to the ARN as the brig Vanquish, gratefully disembarked at Rowan Head, crossed the channel to Albinor in the Clandestine, then stopped to gaze down into that similarly-shaped hole in which he had been cast upon his first day of service, like a corpse into a plague pit. He could be forgiven for such a morbid comparison, as the inhabitants of the pit that he now regarded had clearly been badly in want of the attentions of a Lady Gloriana, or even those of a Lord Corin, come to that. Granted, that his ideas for running a ‘tight ship’ involved copious use of rope whips, leg irons, and the occasional near-drowning, but to the best of Dion’s knowledge, the admiral had never yet stooped to smashing open the skulls of even fairly serious offenders.

        A heavy sub-tropical rain battered upon Dion’s dragon-embossed steel helmet, as he stared in open-mouthed, loathing fascination at the morbid collection. Corporal Cædmon, a seasoned and heavily weathered marine, came stooping back into the light, having completed a cursory search of the subterranean chamber, kicking a few loose skulls in his progress. Acknowledging Dion with a shake of the head and a roll of the eyes, he turned his attention to the lieutenant, who was busy paying the ancient ruins the rapt, if unhistorical attention of a natural romantic. His mutterings on the various subjects of legendary wars, fallen civilisations, the myth-cycles of the daemons, and the gods of the Dark Age (leading Dion anew to fresh contemplation of the grotesque hybrid figures in the reliefs, and doing nothing for his morale) were brought to an unceremonious close by Cædmon’s report:

        “Nothing much down here, sir, apart from our bodiless friends, and a few hundred gallons or thereabouts of mud. Don’t lead to nowhere, neither. I reckon it was just some old grave. You want we should pull that slab back?”

        “It hardly matters,” replied Dorus, with irritation. “Do you imagine their families will complain? This place has been deserted for a thousand years or more, trooper, although I dread to think what may have happened here.”

        “Well, I ain’t no historian, sir, but would I be wide off the mark in suggesting one of your major sort of battles with a fair spot of axe-play thrown in?”

        “And all of these buildings? Why were they left intact?”

        “Your guess, sir.” Dorus mused, and gave up.

        “Let’s move on,” he declared, drawing himself up from his position of reverie. “Cædmon – you fetch Marchus and meet us over by the road. Come, Dion.” Checking the loading of his repeating carbine – another of Gloriana’s crude but functional designs, amounting to a sawn-off fire-lock musket with a lever-driven loading mechanism and magazine bolted onto the breech – Dion followed the lieutenant through the spectral-grey ruins and through the alien forest, to where his fellow greenhorn, Trooper Kurtis, was keeping watch over the road. Running east to west, about ten feet wide, and with barely an intruding weed to be seen, it was clearly a product of recent engineering, and Dion was reserving judgement as to whether this was to be welcomed or lamented. Kurtis’s report, however, held the promise of further knowledge:

        “Definitely someone coming, sir,” he declared, handing the spy-glass over to Dorus. “’Bout half a mile away east, the road turns off to the south, but you can see it swings back again further on. Must be skirting round something. Some filthy swamp, I’ll warrant. But that’s where they’ve gone to, anyway.”

        “Where?” asked Dorus. “Round the bend or in the swamp?”

        “Bend, sir. Fair few of ‘em. Thirty at least, I’d reckon.”

        “Armed?”

        “Couldn’t really say, sir.”

        “We’ll wait, I think. I want to see them, anyway. We’ll have to fall in with someone sooner or later, so we may as well have our pick.”

        Within a couple of minutes, soon after Cædmon and Trooper Marchus had joined the wayside party, a group of figures did indeed walk into view from the southern bend in the road. The troopers, crouched in the overgrown ditch, in their dull green stuff uniforms, could observe them at their leisure and relative safety. It was a large company on foot, mainly composed of young-looking men, although their pale brown skin, their long, straight-cut dark hair, and their strong, statuesque features were all too alien for Dion to make any accurate judgements. Most were very lightly clad in loose white garments, but a few were more elaborately dressed. One, in particular, who was being borne on a four-man litter, was clearly a nobleman or an appalling fop of some description, judging from his gaudy but obviously rich attire, which involved copious quantities of coloured feathers and semiprecious stones. There were a few, mainly in close proximity to the litter, who wore complete, close-fitting suits which were entirely decked out in coloured feathers, and completed this bizarre effect with painted wooden helmets in the general shape of eagles’ heads. They were probably not fops, however, to guess from their hide shields and the mace-like weapons slung at their belts, or at all events, it would probably not be a very wise thing to be calling them, had any of the troopers spoken the native language. Most of the underdressed part of the retinue were laden with goods: baskets of various unidentifiable foodstuffs, earthenware pots and pitchers, bales of cloth, and a few cages of small animals, primarily livestock birds.

        “Merchants, or very confident thieves,” declared Dorus, closely observing them through the spy-glass. “You know, I have to say, in spite of all I’ve ever heard from My Lord Corin on the subject of the New World and its inhabitants – and I must be fair, since he is the only survivor of the Glaucon Expedition, after all – but these really do not look like ‘savages’ or ‘cannibals’ of any description.” Dion’s thoughts instantly roved to the heap of cloven skulls in the pit, but he left them unspoken. “Well, now’s as good a time as any. Check your carbines and follow me, men. Don’t shoot unless you have to, mind. Don’t even look more threatening than you have to. With any luck, they’ll never have seen a gun in their lives.” With these final words, Dorus heaved himself out of the ditch and strode out into the centre of the road, his arms held out in a pacific gesture which was hopefully not compromised by the carbine in his right hand. Be that as it may, his mud-streaked, helmeted figure could hardly have presented a benign image to the retinue, and realising this, he removed his helmet and uncovered what would have passed, throughout the realms of Albinor, for as handsome an aspect as ever a patrician wore. Dion was no great fan of it, as it resembled to his mind the perfect image of Lord Corin as he might have looked about twenty years ago, but even he thought the reaction of the merchants a little extreme. Some dropped their goods and bolted, whereas the feather-suited warriors, at a word of command from the dandified chap in the litter, grasped their weapons (which, as Dion now saw, bore wicked-looking edges of shiny black blades), hoisted their shields, and advanced with no evidence of friendly purpose towards the lieutenant and his men, who had gathered behind him in a line across the road. A few more gestures and words were hazarded by Dorus, to no avail, and perhaps to his credit, thought Dion, if not to his prudence, the order to fire was only given as the foremost of the warriors was drawing his sword-mace-affair back to strike the first blow.

        Each of the troopers had killed his man: the leathery shields and cloth body-armour had been as useless as silk at point-blank range. Dion tugged the lever on his carbine, dumping a fresh cartridge of shot into the breech, but he quickly saw that this would prove unnecessary. The remaining warriors, and indeed most of the bearers, had fled back along the road or into the jungle, leaving only the dandy in the litter, which had been unceremoniously jettisoned, leaving its passenger stunned and forlorn. Handing his carbine to the corporal, Dorus advanced upon the litter, resuming his conciliatory airs. Much good they did, to judge from the merchant’s panic-stricken face, and his fumbling efforts to wield one of the abandoned weapons.

        “No good, I fear,” muttered Dorus, and turned back to his men. “Who’s got the beads? I think this is the time. Trooper Marchus? In your pack, are they?” The green glass beads were, indeed, in a large pouch in the trooper’s knapsack. Dorus took a generous handful of them, doubtless surmising that – except in the event of some mass national stupidity – he would not get many chances to use them, and returned to the merchant, who was presently crouched in the wreckage of the litter, in what might have passed for a foetal stance, saving the ineffective grasp he maintained on his weapon. Just to be on the safe side, Dorus twitched this out of his hand, and as he bolted upright in freshly energised terror, his gaze met the lieutenant’s glittering handful. After a short period of uncertainty, punctuated by inviting gestures from Dorus, he tentatively – but evidently with some excitement – accepted the beads, stowing them away in a hefty leather wallet at his belt.

        Seizing the moment, Dorus called back to the troopers: “The map! Get me the map! And the sample! Quickly now! And more beads, too. May as well make the most of them.” These items were discovered in Dion’s pack, and he promptly handed them over to his commander. Dorus unfolded the map, which covered a wide area of the central New World – far beyond what the Glaucon Expedition, or any other of Albinor had ever charted – and showed it to the merchant. The initial reaction was, unpromisingly enough, pure bemusement, but some form of recognition gradually dawned, and the merchant eventually retrieved a vellum scroll from the debris of his effects. Having unrolled this, he glanced at its designs – of a stylised, but clearly geographical nature – compared them to the features on the larger map, and recognition was replaced by sheer amazement.

        With a satisfied smile, Dorus took the sample – a small, bluish-grey lump of metal – showed it to the merchant, who was again bemused, gestured with it towards both of the maps, pointed at the maps, making random sweeps with his finger across the length and breadth of the country, pointed at the rock, pointed again at the maps, struck numerous ‘questioning’ expressions, and at length communicated his desire, facilitating the process with another handful of beads. The merchant (having pocketed the beads) produced a stick of charcoal from one of his belt-pouches, and after musing over his own map and cross-referencing with Dorus’s, he etched a cross on the latter, pointed at the sample, then pointed at the cross. Clear enough. For good measure, however, the lieutenant exchanged another little heap of trinkets for the merchant’s map, which was handed over in the best of good spirits. Dion was given all these items, returning the rock and their original map to safe storage. The vellum map was somewhat rudimentary, covering only the major local features, which were colourfully depicted along with an assortment of glyphs and figures, all too reminiscent of the misshapen hybrid monstrosities that had arrested Dion’s notice in the temple reliefs. Nevertheless, it was of a larger scale than their own map, easier to use for purely local reference, and much less likely to disintegrate in the infernal rain.          Thanks were impossible, but Dorus parted from his new acquaintance with the best bows and grimaces of gratitude he could possibly affect. With him and Dion at the head, the troopers set out westward along the road, the merchant’s stare following them until the bend of the road through the ancient forest hid them from sight.