A Plague of Swords

by Miles Cameron

  “More to war than cheese and ham, Sauce.” Tom tapped his sword hilt.

  Sauce grunted. “Really?” she asked. “Oh aye, I suppose there’s firewood an’ sleep, too.”

  Tom grunted.

  Sauce looked around. “We ha’ food for three months.”

  Bad Tom stopped chewing. “What?” he asked.

  “Whatever His Nibs is planning,” she said, “it ain’t quick.”

  Tom went back to chewing.

  Sauce led him along to the next barge. “What do you see?” she asked.

  “Barrels?” he asked. “Big ones.” He paused. “Ale?” he asked, wistfully.

  “Water,” she said.

  Bad Tom cut another slice of cheese and ate it. “Ach, weel,” he said. “Maybe he fancies good water. Maybe the Darkness poisons wells.”

  “Maybe pigs fly,” Sauce said.

  * * *

  Thursday, and the towers of Berona rose ahead of them as they marched east. The baggage train was two hundred sixty wagons, and there were as many again coming up a second river somewhere to the south and west of them.

  Michael, who commanded the vanguard, met the Count of Berona, Simone, and a party of his knights as soon as they came over the hills. Heralds exchanged trumpet blasts, and Michael dismounted and clasped the count’s hand.

  Simone was tall, handsome like a dark-haired angel in a magnificent red cote-armour over his brilliant steel armour. Behind him were a hundred lances, all bearing his badge of a ladder, in yellow, on red.

  “I am Ser Michael de Towbray, and...”

  Simone bowed in his saddle. “Ah, you are all famous men, you and Il Grand Tomaso and the others in the songs. Welcome to my small city. Ah, and La Dogesea.” He, in turn, dismounted and bowed to the Duchess of Venike, whose rangers were nowhere to be seen. He kissed her hand and she leaned down and kissed his lips. “Beautiful and deadly lady,” he said.

  She smiled at him. “Handsome and deadly man,” she said.

  “Zachariah, Military Count of the Imperial Seal, commanding the Vardariotes,” Michael said. Count Zac bowed in his saddle and saluted with his mace.

  Michael introduced his wife, and Sauce, and everyone else who was to hand. Count Simone’s manners were beautiful, and although he spoke little Alban, he remembered each name, and made compliments to each that the duchess translated.

  He told Bad Tom that he looked like Saint Michael.

  Tom Lachlan blushed.

  Michael had to restrain himself from laughing aloud, and Sauce looked elsewhere.

  They never reached Berona. Just west of the city, guides directed them over a narrow road between two steep hills. They came to a gate, and when the gate was opened and trumpets sounded, they rode down into a huge field where a dozen of Kaitlin’s outriders were already laying out streets for the camp.

  Sauce rode in before Michael was dismounted. She flirted a little with Count Simone, who seemed delighted with her, and then she reined in by Michael.

  “You know what the count just told me?” she asked. “This area is kept like this just for armies to camp. Look at the hills!”

  On every hilltop was a stone tower.

  “It can’t be surprised. It’s like a second fortress, outside the city. A very nasty nut to crack in a siege.” Sauce was staring at the nearest tower.

  Michael nodded.

  “And you don’t let the soldiers into your town.” Sauce shook her head. “These people make us look like amateurs,” she said.

  “Perhaps because they are the descendants of the legions,” Michael said. Even as he said it, he was imagining a place near Towbray Castle that would make just such a large, fortified camp, and another near Albinkirk, just south of the city.

  The Beronese had another thousand cavalry and almost three thousand infantry already encamped, and the northern field army of Venike was there as well, five hundred knights and almost a thousand of their marines, half armoured infantry with bows or crossbows and poleaxes. Camp chatter had informed Sauce that the Beronese and the Venikans had already fought twice that summer, against armies from the east; one of men, and one of the Wild, although they were clearly hesitant to speak of the creatures of the Wild to foreigners.

  Michael was just enjoying the sight of the Venikan marines doing drill when he saw a familiar red pavilion rising in the center of camp. He sent his squire, Alexander, to inquire, and the younger man was back in ten minutes.

  “My lord, there’s to be a meeting of all the commanders after complines,” he said.

  “With the captain?” Michael asked. “By which I mean the emperor?”

  Alexander bowed. “Yes, my lord.” He shrugged. “I saw only Master Nicodemus.”

  Michael nodded. “I’ll just make sure the Primus Pilus knows, as well,” he said.

  * * *

  Michael and Sauce went to mass together in the small church at the end of the valley. The priest seemed surprised at how many men and women came and sang. When mass was over, they walked back to find Bad Tom watching archers shoot. Half the camp seemed to be there, watching as a bogglin and a pair of irks shot against an Outwaller and Cully.

  “I’m of a mind to make sure them o’ Venike don’t kill our bug,” Tom said. “I dinna think they ha’ a high opinion o’ bugs.”

  But the shooting ended without incident, and the arrival of full darkness prevented any more shooting. One of the Venikan master archers presented himself to Cully, and there was talk of a challenge and a tun of wine. But the two didn’t have enough of a language in common despite a fair amount of goodwill.

  The darkness deepened. The red pavilion glowed like a lantern.

  “Don’t bother,” Kronmir’s voice came out of the darkness to Michael. “He’s not here yet.”

  Michael walked through the camp with Kaitlin by him and young Galahad in his arms. He checked his sentries and looked at the horse lines and then kicked a few tent pegs and finally walked along the fire lines, looking in pots while Kaitlin listened to the women.

  There was a long scream, like a predator high in the air taking prey.

  Beyond the horse lines, a string of fires sprang up, forming a box.

  There was a rush of wings and a sound like the wind before a storm, and then Michael saw a flash of red, green, and gold wing by firelight. He grinned. He couldn’t help himself.

  “Let’s go see,” he said to Kaitlin.

  “Galahad doesn’t need to be up any later,” Kaitlin said.

  Michael squeezed her hand. “He has a nurse,” he said.

  Kaitlin growled, but followed him. “A nurse isn’t a mother,” she said. “Or a father.”

  “I was raised by nurses,” Michael said.

  “And look at you,” Kaitlin said. “You had to marry someone with sense because you didn’t have any of your own.”

  Ariosto was being hurried under cover. The company had been warned not to talk, and most of them did anyway, but the captain’s steed was known to be a military secret.

  “He brought Blanche!” Kaitlin said.

  Blanche was, in fact, both cold and elated, having just flown for the first time, launching in the last sunlight from a bay in the lagoon far from prying eyes and then flying over a darkened plain with the mountains, the very high mountains, higher than anything in the Nova Terra, still sun kissed to the north and west. She was wearing a tight-fitting jacket of leather and fur and a hood of the same and contrived to look both beautiful and practical. She embraced Kaitlin, and then the duchess, and was borne away to meet her new servants, recruited locally.

  Michael was a little surprised to find that all the Etruscan men were on one knee.

  So he bent his knee. Sauce followed him. Tom glared.

  Gabriel came out of the covered pen where Ariosto was kept. He saw them—twenty of the best knights in the world—and he swept off his arming cap and bowed in their direction.

  “Gentlemen, and ladies,” he said. “No formality in camp, I pray you.”

  Everyone s
tood.

  Michael noted that the Etruscans took his rank very seriously, and that he needed to play along or feelings would be ruffled. Sauce had been as slow to kneel as he. Tom had never knelt.

  Michael made mental notes to discuss this in his morning orders group.

  Then they all walked to the red pavilion, where Toby had erected the great table that Count Simone had given him, a round table that seated thirty. And many had to stop to applaud the table, and its indications of equality. Count Simon gave a small speech in Archaic and welcomed the emperor.

  The emperor thanked him for the table and for his alliance and his chivalric virtue, and ended with a few lines from a romance.

  It was all very nicely managed, Michael thought.

  The Red Knight sat with the Duchess of Venike on his right and Count Simone on his left. Master Nicodemus, having returned from the cough to his usual role, bowed deeply. “It is His Imperial Majesty’s pleasure that all his commanders sit as they please,” he said.

  Thirty seats meant that there was one for the commander of the Venikan marines and one for the Beronese captain of infantry and one for Master Pye, who had come in person to command the Harndon Armourers’ Guild. Sauce sat between Tom Lachlan and Ser Michael, and Francis Atcourt sat by Count Zac and the emperor designate, Ser Giorgos Comnenos. Morgon Mortirmir sat by Master Kronmir and Magister Petrarcha. Kaitlin de Towbray sat between the empress and the duchess.

  Wine was served.

  Master Julius had his own table, and he was already writing, even as the emperor was already reading from a stack of messages provided by Kronmir while he sipped wine.

  “This is like old times,” Sauce said.

  “The wine’s better,” Tom said. “An’ I miss the little nun.” He grinned. “But I do like the round table.”

  “And the queen,” Sauce said. “I miss her.”

  Michael drummed his fingers on the table in impatience. “That was only ten weeks ago,” he said.

  Tom Lachlan sighed. “Aweel, lad. It seems like months and months.” He looked around. “An’ many absent friends, eh?”

  The three of them drank to all the ghosts they shared.

  It was a somber moment.

  And then Blanche laughed.

  Tomaso Lupi, who was serving wine to his count on one knee, was invited instead to a seat at the round table by Toby. One of Nicodemus’s servants served wine.

  The Red Knight rose to his feet, and silence fell. Just in that moment, Michael thought that it was interesting, and perhaps a measure of something, that men who had never met him fell silent. He was not an imposing figure, with his hair all windblown from flying and wearing a red wool coat that any merchant might have worn to market. He had his gold knight’s belt at his hips, but no other badge of rank.

  “Friends,” he began. He spoke in Archaic. The duchess translated fluently into Etruscan and Master Julius into Alban. He smiled. “Thanks to Count Simone, we have this beautiful table, which perfectly expresses my views on rank. We must be a single army with a single will. Not my will, but our will. Let no man or woman hesitate to speak at this table.”

  No one spoke.

  He took a deep breath. “Events are moving very quickly,” he said. “There is news, some good, some bad.”

  Michael could see how tired he was.

  Just for a moment, he thought of the captain, two years before. He’d aged. It wasn’t just maturity. Some of the rough edges had worn off, but some of the joy was gone, too. Did he still think that God didn’t give a fuck? Would he even say such a thing now?

  Michael shrugged to himself, because he was merely reflecting his own views on his friend.

  His friend, the emperor.

  “The Sieur Du Corse will not make a rendezvous with us near Arles,” Gabriel said. “He has had to retreat after two engagements with the enemy.” The emperor did not speak of Du Corse’s encounter with the taken host of the former royal army, led by the King of Galle, or how narrowly the routier had avoided disaster.

  “He is now west of Lutrece, covering the withdrawal of refugees. The greatest city of Galle is lost to the foe, but its population has been saved.” Gabriel paused to let the translations roll by.

  Michael unclenched his stomach muscles.

  “The paladins of Dar have landed a little east of Massalia,” Gabriel’s voice went on. He shaped a little ops between his hands and the table was illuminated from above by mage light, and a set of mountains grew out of the table. The Etruscans, far less used to open displays of magery, muttered, crossed themselves, or, like Count Simone, merely swore in delight.

  “They are roughly here,” Gabriel said. “We are roughly here,” he said, placing a red dot on Berona.

  “Arles is here,” he said, and placed a burning green light. “As of last night, Clarissa de Sartres was still in command of the citadel. On the one hand, they are desperate and hard-pressed.” He nodded. “On the other, they now have hope. For some days, the Necromancer told them that they were the last people in the world, and twice he has put...worms...into the castle.”

  The translations rolled on.

  At the word worms every face wrinkled in the same distaste. But everyone knew what the enemy was.

  To emphasize the point, and with the help of Magister Petrarcha, who now stood, he cast an illumination of a trio of the worms coming like a hideous hydra from the mouth of a captured enemy. The illumination was played from the duchess’s memory and the worms came very close indeed. Everyone flinched, except Tom Lachlan, who leaned closer and grinned.

  “Not so big,” he said.

  No one else spoke.

  “In the west,” Gabriel went on, “my brother has fought two battles outside N’gara and is now retreating to the east. N’gara is already besieged.” His great map expanded to include Alba and Morea. Harndon was lit orange. Dar as Salaam was lit green.

  A steady blue light burned to the north of the inland sea.

  “Ash has raised all the Wild of the west,” Gabriel said calmly.

  Michael’s back was rigid. “So what are we doing here?” he asked aloud.

  Gabriel met his eye. “Pissing on one fire at a time, the hottest first.” He looked around the table. “Gavin and Tapio are trading space for time. We know the timetable now.”

  “We could lose Alba while we save Arles,” Michael said.

  Gabriel shrugged. “We absolutely could,” he said.

  Michael sat down, abashed.

  Count Simone raised a hand. “Timetable?” he asked.

  Gabriel pointed at Mortirmir, who rose. “We are fighting a war on many fronts,” he said. “We have two, or perhaps three, main opponents. The dragon Ash, the being we call the Necromancer, and possibly a third force.” He shrugged. “And we must assume that Ash and the Necromancer will only quarrel among themselves when they have beaten us.”

  Mortirmir, interrupted by Petrarcha, outlined what they knew of the sides and the locations of the gates.

  Count Simone stood. “So, which is it?” he asked. “Which gate is the one they want?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “That’s just it, messire il conte. I cannot say. My gut says Arles or Lissen Carak, because the enemy has worked so hard to take those two. But...there are gates in many places. The ones we know are marked with lights. Harndon. Liviapolis. Rhum. Dar.” He shrugged. “Harmodius thinks there is, or was, one in the north of Alba. Destroyed with Castle Orley? Or maybe on Thorn’s Island? Under the sea?” He shrugged.

  “By the risen Lord,” Simone said. “This is very...complicated.”

  Kronmir rose to his feet. “On the subject of Rhum,” he said.

  The emperor nodded.

  “The Patriarch has suffered an unfortunate accident,” Kronmir said.

  Tom Lachlan laughed. “You mean he annoyed the loon,” he guffawed. “And Kronmir offed him?”

  Sauce slapped him. “Do ye always ha’ to say the first thing that comes into yer fool head?” she asked.

  Kronm
ir nodded. “The Patriarch may have been host to a worm,” he said. “Accounts of the moments after his death conflict.” He smiled benignly, like a priest giving a blessing. “The situation is being...stabilized.”

  “By professionals,” Tom said with a laugh.

  Even the emperor glared at him this time.

  He shrugged and tapped his sword hilt. “I say what I like,” he said.

  Michael smiled.

  Sauce smiled.

  Even Toby smiled.

  More wine made its rounds.

  “So,” the duchess said. “Now what?”

  The emperor laughed. “Now we see if the Odine can beat two organized armies who aren’t afraid of them,” he said. “Duchess, I am often accused of arrogance. But in terms of military strength, unless we’re surprised on the march, the Necromancer is no match for us.”

  Even the duchess was surprised.

  Sauce laughed. “That sounded like you,” she said. “I like it.”

  The emperor rose from his seat and walked around the table. “I think you expected a desperate battle speech. I’ll save it for when I’m desperate. Friends, this is our feint. The only questions before us are about how thoroughly we can deceive our enemy, and then, how many innocent peasants and taken former soldiers we have to kill to defeat him.”

  Sauce growled. “Feint?” she asked.

  Michael was grabbing the edge of the table.

  Blanche was smiling.

  Gabriel leaned forward and put his hands on the table. “I told you I was tired of reacting,” he said. “Always dancing to Ash’s tune.”

  The duchess frowned. “We are a feint?”

  Gabriel smiled. “I exaggerate for effect. We will relieve Arles and save Etrusca. That is not a feint.”

  “You guarantee this?” she asked.

  Gabriel smiled. “Nothing in war is sure,” he said. He looked at Mortirmir, of all people, and Mortirmir nodded. Smiles broke out around the table.

  Kronmir raised a finger.

  Gabriel glared, and Sauce laughed.

  “He hates to be interrupted in full blow-hard,” she said to Michael, who stifled a giggle.