The Bird King(78)

“Make your peace with God,” called Gwennec, sounding almost merry. A volley of noise cut through the roar of the surf: a dozen arquebuses, two dozen, half a hundred perhaps, fired at the cog from both sides. Shattered wood flew up from prow and railing and hull, sending a rain of splinters down on their heads. Fatima flinched, sheltering beneath the tiller.

“We’re still too slow.” Gwennec leaned over an uninjured portion of the railing to assess the damage. His hair was damp with salt spray and curled across his brow, making him look younger, almost like a boy. “If we don’t get out of range of their guns, they’ll put a hole in the hull and sink us right here. We’ve got to lose something.”

“Not the horse!” shouted Hassan, who was standing with the poor animal’s face pressed into the front of his robe.

“Then throw yourself overboard, you bony heathen! Christ Jesus!” Gwennec was gone again, shimmying up the mast until he reached the very top, where the boom of the mainsail met the mast and made a cross.

Fatima went cold. “What are you doing?” she called, convinced he was about to martyr himself. Gwennec didn’t answer. Beside him, the Castilian flag flew stiff and proud, yard after yard of expensively dyed canvas and rampant lions pulling at the rope that secured it. Gwennec reached out and loosed one knot, then another. With a roar, he flung the colors away. The lessening of the drag against the mainsail was slight, but sufficient: the cog slipped between the two larger ships like a well-oiled bolt.

“Reload!” Fatima could hear someone overhead shouting in Castilian. “Reload!”

“They timed that last volley all wrong,” said Gwennec gleefully. “They’ll pay for it now. We’ll be well past them by the time they’ve reloaded those great clanking things.”

A canyon of interlocking pine planks enclosed them. The hulls of the two carracks sat many feet higher in the water than the little cog, and loomed overhead, echoing with the thwarted cries of soldiers. The sound of rushing water quieted. A bluish gloom fell over the deck of the smaller ship as the shadows of the carracks enveloped it.

“They’ll crush us,” came Hassan’s voice, sounding thin and metallic.

“They won’t,” said Gwennec from his perch in the rigging. “They can’t turn fast enough. Just wait.”

Fatima waited. One lonely arquebus discharged from overhead, then another, but they were too late: as Fatima turned, she saw the railing of the stern castle clear the larger ships, releasing the little cog from their long shadows and into open water. Gwennec, invisible behind the mainsail, gave a wild yelp, and even the gelding seemed to understand its good fortune, for it threw up its shaggy head and whinnied.

A flutter of red caught Fatima’s eye. The Castilian flag was still aloft in the air behind them, as if it had run after the cog to say farewell. As she watched, the wind folded it upon itself and cast it into the sea. The flag puckered, sinking under its own weight, until finally it was gone, and there was only water, green and wild, spilling toward the edge of the earth.





Chapter 17


“We can’t feed it, blev’ruz. Surely even someone as daft as you can see that. The thing’ll need pounds and pounds of—”

“There are carrots and apples in one of those barrels down below. We can spare some for the poor beast. We’ve got lemons and so forth for ourselves, when it comes to that.”

“Lovely. Lovely! Do you have any idea how much a horse eats? And shits? We’ll all starve together, the three of us and this damned nag as well. Who’s to say you get to decide, anyhow? It was Fa’s ring that bought the supplies.”

“Hush, you’ll wake her.”

Fatima inhaled sharply and opened her eyes. Overhead, she saw the swaying ribs of the hull as they curved up to meet the deck. The sunlight that gilded the bottom of the stairs across the floor from her bunk was richly tinted. Sitting up, she was rewarded by a surge of nausea. The Middle Sea, so placid where it touched the eastward shores of Spain, had grown rougher as they approached the Strait. She felt, or thought she felt, the ship gather its strength, preparing itself for hostile, unknown water.

Fatima put her feet on the pitch-stained floor and shook her head to clear it. Hooves pawed at the deck overhead. Bracing herself against the ribs of the hull, Fatima made her way toward the stairs and up into what remained of the sunlight.

“There, see?” Hassan, his hair stiff with sweat and sea mist, stroked the gelding’s dun-colored nose to soothe it. “You did wake her.”

“You should have woken me hours ago,” said Fatima, yawning. The sea came into focus around her: it had turned a milky green, thick with the sediment of rivers. Land reached out to encircle them on both sides. To her left, in the far distance, Fatima could see a range of blue-green mountains beneath a veil of cloud; to her right, much closer, an uneven row of arid cliffs, bone-white and barren of vegetation. Only the way forward was open. The Strait of Jebel Tareq led into the setting sun, between the parted hands of Europe and Africa. At its narrowest point, a mountain crowned with lights rose straight out of the sea, its appearance so solid and abrupt that it seemed conscious of itself, like a sentry lifting his lamp over the threshold of the world.

“What is that?” murmured Fatima.

“Jebel Tareq himself,” said Hassan, coming to stand beside her. The gelding followed him anxiously. “Gibraltar, as the Christians call him.”