A Plague of Swords

by Miles Cameron

  “Yes?” the emperor asked in haughty annoyance.

  “The Duke of Mitla,” Kronmir said. He shrugged.

  Gabriel tubbed his beard in annoyance. “I was told...”

  Kronmir shrugged. “There are food riots in Mitla,” he said apologetically. “An effort has been made.”

  “I was given to understand that the duke was not infected,” the emperor said with a wave of his imperial hand. As if dismissing the darkness and the Necromancer.

  Kronmir rose to his feet. “Your Grace, one of the reasons I so enjoy working with you is that you do not insist on being told what you want to believe.” The intelligencer raised an eyebrow.

  The Red Knight deflated. “Damn,” he said, and sat on his chair.

  Kronmir spread his hands. “We have a saying, Your Grace, in my work: Never ascribe to hidden conspiracy or the dark supernatural what can be explained by ignorance, greed, and lust.” He shrugged. “The Duke of Mitla is using the situation to further his own ambitions. He has enticed the pro-patriarchal city of Fiernce as an ally.” He shrugged. “Mitla was scheming with Galle before this began. To the Duke of Mitla, nothing has changed.”

  Bad Tom laughed. “By the balls of Saint Peter! Do ye mean that there’s a purely human bastard who’s going to help the Necromancer for purely human reasons?” He looked at the Red Knight and thumped the table. “A fight.”

  Kronmir remained standing. “A not inconsiderable enemy,” he said. “He will not offer battle. He will build earthworks and fill them with soldiers and demand an enormous payment in land and money to pass.”

  The duchess put her head in her hands. “I should have foreseen this,” she said. “He is ever our foe.”

  Kronmir looked at her with something like disappointment. “Were you not planning to use our expedition to seize Mitla’s northern marches for your state?” he asked. He shrugged. “Or so I’m told.”

  The duchess glared at him.

  Kronmir shrugged.

  Michael thought, from her look, that she might stick her tongue out at Kronmir, but she kept her composure and said, “The Duke of Mitla is, if nothing else, an experienced player at this game. He will seek to frustrate us simply because he can.”

  Gabriel looked around the table. “Well, that’s my pretty timetable wrecked,” he said. “So much for God-like invincibility.”

  The duchess shook her head. “But you can fight the Darkness?” she asked. “And what of the great flying thing that tracked us?”

  The emperor looked at her, and then at Kronmir. “The company excels at killing wyverns,” he said. “I assume we can take a giant carrion bird.”

  Kronmir raised an eyebrow. “It’s very big. As big as...”

  “A war galley,” the emperor said.

  “It could be a dragon,” Morgon Mortirmir said.

  Men looked at each other, except Tom Lachlan, who laughed.

  “Now we’re talkin’,” he said.

  The emperor and his magister were looking at each other. If they were talking in the aethereal, none of the others could tell. Blanche wrinkled her nose.

  Gabriel shook his head.

  “Regardless of the Darkness and the giant carrion monster and the Duke of Mitla, Your Grace, unless the skies fall or all the human magisters are dead wrong, we hold the balance of terror here. Not the Necromancer. He’s been used as a stalking horse by Ash, who assumed that if we moved to rescue Arles, he’d have a free hand in Alba.”

  “And the armies?” Sauce asked.

  “I’m showing the Necromancer what he expects to see,” Gabriel answered. “A half-arsed counterattack. With armies.” His grin might have been described as feral. “I just showed Ash’s spies, and the Necromancer’s spies a wedding.”

  “Aren’t we doing that, though?” Michael asked. “Wait. What?”

  “Oh yes,” Gabriel said.

  Michael looked at Sauce and shook his head. “Do you understand?”

  Tom Lachlan laughed. “Tar’s tits, laddie. I understand, and I’m not the witty one.”

  The duchess laughed. “I think you are quite mad. I would like to be infected by your madness.”

  Gabriel snapped his fingers and the map returned. “We will go this way, over the Cenis Pass,” he said. “Payam and the paladins go this way, along the coast road.” Coloured arrows flowed like snakes. “I expect there will be some fighting, and I’m sorry to say we must be ruthless. Our foe needs to know that we’ve made the choice to kill every one of his slaves.”

  All the Etruscans nodded.

  Sauce looked uneasy, and so did Michael and Blanche.

  “The imperial troops will cover the army, mostly because they will not be fighting their friends and neighbors and brothers,” the emperor said. “If we have to turn and face the Duke of Mitla or anyone else, we’ll use the Etruscan troops backed by some hermetical talent, and we’ll try to defeat them before they all join together. Either way, we’ll focus the will so ably scouted by Master Kronmir and the duchess on us.”

  Michael nodded. He could see it.

  “And then, somewhere here, the enemy will be forced to concentrate his slaves,” Gabriel said. “If we can get past Mitla.”

  “He can hold the passes forever,” Simone said.

  “Not even a single week,” the emperor said. “Hordes of taken slaves don’t have wagons and foragers. The whole only acts where the will is.” He shook his head. “There’s no food in the passes. The food is in the plains of Arles.” He looked at Kronmir. “I didn’t think of Mitla.”

  Simone nodded. “Your logic is attractive,” he said. “I confess to having wondered why the Genuans made it over the passes to Arles. Now I understand.” He made a face. “So. We cross the passes, and the enemy concentrates all his forces. If we can defeat the Duke of Mitla.”

  Where the high mountains gave way to the upper pastures of Arles and the streams began to swell into the rivers, the emperor made a mark in ops. “Yes.”

  “And then?” the duchess asked.

  “And then we roll some very crooked dice,” Gabriel said.

  “You make it sound easy,” Count Simone said. “When to us, it is the Darkness.”

  Gabriel came and stood by the count. “Please,” he said. “There are many things that can, and will, go wrong.” He shrugged. “It is war. But fighting the Necromancer is not the hard part. Harmodius and our ally, the Wyrm of Ercch, and the magister Al Rashidi have given us the weapons to fight the Necromancer.”

  Many cups were raised.

  “But...” asked Sauce. “But then how do we get back to Alba?”

  Gabriel smiled. Right at her.

  “That’s the hard part,” he said. “First, let’s plan for the Duke of Mitla.”

  * * *

  They moved east at first light, a long column tipped with steel, and they had boats on the river and a second column on the south bank. Dan Favour led the green banda in a wide sweep on the north side of the river, and his patrols found the Mitlese first, near Astua. A thousand peasants were digging earthworks.

  The emperor came in person and sat on Ataelus in the shade of a huge oak tree, watching them dig. They had a superb natural position, a long ridge with two high ends that dominated both the valley and the river.

  “Maybe two hundred men-at-arms behind them. Zac says there’s dust on the road behind.” Favour pulled off his helmet and used a linen towel to wipe away the sweat and dust.

  “Sure could use that griffon of yours,” muttered Sauce.

  Gabriel shook his head. “Ariosto is being saved for a special occasion,” he said. “Mortirmir is using the imperial messenger birds as conduits. I gather that you Etruscans frown on the use of the hermetical in war?”

  The duchess was in head-to-toe green. She shrugged. “With the exception of myself and Master Petrarcha and a dozen others I could name, there aren’t enough practitioners to use in a war. It is Nova Terra that makes the hermeticists.”

  Gabriel looked out over the heat-rippled pla
in at the ridge. “I predict that will change in the next generation,” he said. He frowned. “This is going to be bloody.”

  Bad Tom grinned. “Send me in,” he said.

  “Go,” the emperor said. “Take the ridge.”

  * * *

  The men and women of the green banda had prepared many times for a fight like this, but they’d never had one.

  They rode to the base of the ridge, and some went north, into the woods there. Most, however, dismounted at the base of the ridge and slipped into the broken ground at the base.

  And began to loft arrows.

  A dozen peasants died. They were noncombatants, merely diggers of earth, and they were shocked at the attack. And they ran.

  The greens, in a long skirmish line, in pairs of archers with ten paces between them, went up the hill. Even as they climbed, they moved to the flanks of the hill and used any cover they could find. The peasants had just been clearing the brush to make the fields of view perfect, and they’d left a few trees and bushes, and the greens tended to vanish into them. Women with crossbows lay prone.

  They moved steadily forward.

  By the time they reached the top of the ridge, they were in three widely separated groups.

  The Mitlese men-at-arms didn’t try to hold the half-built earthworks or the palisade, but lowered their lances and charged.

  Bad Tom sat on his great black charger at the base of the ridge, at the head of the whole red banda. His visor was open, and he watched the greens clear the hill with a simple smile on his face.

  “Straight up the hill,” he said to the men-at-arms of the red banda. “We clear the whole ridge.”

  Those were his only orders.

  They didn’t dismount, despite the steepness of the ridge, and the reds spread out a little into a more open order, but the line kept coming. High above them, the greens were now fighting in three ragged clumps.

  The Mitlese commander committed his reserve straight from the road behind the ridge. His first battle of two hundred lances made no headway against the skulking archers, lost many horses in the attempt, and then was ridden to ruin by a massive attack of men-at-arms who had the effrontery to ride up the front of the ridge. The commander was annoyed by the waste and threw in his second division.

  It was the first time Gabriel had ever watched a battle. It was not a big battle, but the men and women who died in it were going to be just as dead as men and women in any other fight. He hated watching.

  Gabriel spent the first part of the action writhing. His stomach muscles climbed the ridge with the greens and then with the reds. He feared to lose Sauce, and he feared to lose Daniel Favour, and he feared to lose Tom, and he feared to lose Smoke. And any of them.

  “I’m a poor excuse for a soldier king,” he muttered.

  Almost without being aware of it, he was riding closer and closer to the ridge, and the casa followed him, and the Duchess of Venike.

  Zac’s Vardariotes trotted up. The count saluted his emperor with a flourish of his little mace. “Fight well, little brothers!” he called. “Caesar is watching!”

  The Vardariotes gave a great shout and rode on, sabers flashing and red coats shining in the brilliant Etruscan sun.

  They, too, rode straight up the front of the ridge. And vanished into the dust at the top.

  * * *

  At the top, Sauce opened her visor, cursed Tom Lachlan, and spat dust. She took a canteen from her squire and drained it.

  All along her front, men and women in green surcoats opened helmets and tried to breathe. And drank water.

  The reds crashed into the enemy and swept them away down the ridge in a swirling cavalry fight.

  Sauce turned, handing the canteen to her new page, Romney. “Drink some, lad,” she said. “Where the hell is Favour?”

  Her curse was rewarded by a sparkle of sun on steel from the wooded valley to her right. She nodded.

  “Right! Horse holders!” she shouted.

  * * *

  The captain of the Mitlese came forward with a white square of linen on his lance. They were all the way at the east end of the ridge, and Dan Favour’s troop of the green banda was visible behind the captain.

  He came forward with a dozen men-at-arms. They were big men.

  Tom Lachlan went forward with Michael. Behind him, the company archers were already stripping the dead.

  “We have come to offer terms,” the big, dark-haired captain said.

  Tom shook his head. “No. Lay down your arms. Or fight. No terms. No parleys.”

  The Mitlese captain shrugged. “Fuck you,” he said, and charged.

  His lance caught Bad Tom in the center of his breastplate. Tom went down over the back of his saddle and left Ser Michael alone with a dozen enemy men-at-arms.

  Michael was openmouthed at the enemy’s stupidity, but he drew his long sword and snapped it up from the left side of his saddle, straight from the draw into the oncoming lance, brushing the enemy weapon by like a whisper of mortality and then the full weight of his back cut. His sword couldn’t bite though his enemy’s helm, but the force of the blow unhorsed the man.

  Michael was hit twice, parried another blow, and was through them.

  In front of him, the Mitlese men-at-arms—or rather, the survivors of the last hour—were forming for a charge, but Michael guessed they were as surprised by their captain’s treachery as he was. And behind them, Favour’s greens dismounted and restrung their bows.

  Unseen in the dust behind Ser Michael, Canny and Robin Hasty exchanged a look—and loosed.

  “What the fuck is they thinkin’?” Skinch muttered. “Crazy fucks.”

  He feathered a warhorse fifty paces away. The Mitlese didn’t have horse barding. They hadn’t faced longbows before.

  Bad Tom got to his feet.

  “Someone’s for it,” Canny said, with a nod. “Cease!”

  * * *

  “The redoubt on the river would like to surrender,” said the herald. He swallowed. He was scared.

  Tom Lachlan’s dagger was red, and so was the armoured fist that held it. He hadn’t allowed the Mitlese sell-sword captain a chance to be ransomed. And he was still kneeling on the dead man’s chest.

  The whole troop of men-at-arms had been killed. The greens and the reds had shot into them until the last man fell, and the knights had finished the survivors. No quarter was offered, and no ransoms taken.

  “No quarter,” Tom Lachlan said.

  Ser Michael was still mounted, and not in a combat rage. “Tom,” he said, and tapped the big Hillman chief with his war hammer. Hard. “Tom!”

  Lachlan rose to his feet.

  Thankfully for everyone, including the herald, the emperor came over the top of the ridge with his household. Then came forward at a fast trot, even as the Vardariotes were passing through the greens.

  The emperor was in his gilded armour, with a red velvet surcoat atop it. He had a sword by his side, but the only weapon in his hand was a baton of white wood. He waved it at Tom and then reined in. Around him, the Nordikaans also reined in, and Harald Derkensun barked an order in his own tongue and they all dismounted together, pulling their axes off their saddle bows.

  The emperor’s eye swept over the lines of corpses.

  Michael locked his visor up. “Your Grace,” he said. “Their captain attacked under a flag of truce.”

  Gabriel grimaced. “What?”

  The Duchess of Venike leaned over and looked down at the corpse Tom had been straddling. “Castigliore,” she said. “The Duke of Mitla’s favourite thug.” She smiled at Tom. “You grow on me,” she said.

  Bad Tom got heavily to his feet but managed a very passable courtly bow. His battle rage faded, leaving him with a very red face.

  The herald fell on his knees. “I beg quarter, great lord!” he said, in passable Archaic.

  “Granted,” the emperor snapped, and rode on. “Zac! Go!” he roared.

  The Vardariote officer waved his mace, and the Vardariotes
burst forward onto the open road west.

  Lachlan put his arm around the waist of the terrified herald. “Sorry, laddie. The de’il was in me.” He scratched under his jaw and a patch of dried blood came away from his beard. “O’ course the fort can surrender.”

  An hour later, the barges rowed by the earthworks of a fort that might have blocked the river when completed, by means of the fire of two heavy trebuchets.

  The wagon train rolled along the base of the long ridge, unmolested. It had never stopped rolling.

  The Scholae swept by in the rear guard, eating dust and cursing the emperor. Ser Giorgos cantered his fine Ifriquy’an mare up the flank of the ridge to convey the feelings of his regiment to the great man in person. He saluted, and the emperor nodded. He was looking west, along the line of the Terno River. The mountains were already visible to the west and north, a long line like the teeth of a monster of the Wild.

  “I ate a great deal of dust today, for a man who is the heir to the empire,” Comnenos said.

  Sauce had her harness off and one of her arms was being bandaged. Behind her, Ser Danved was naked to the waist and having something stitched. He looked calm. He swore a great deal.

  Sauce grinned evilly at Ser Giorgos. “Bet eating dust beats fighting,” she said. “Fuck! Ow!”

  “Your turn tomorrow,” Gabriel said. “Ahead I see a long, funnel-shaped valley where the duke can do this to us every day until he runs out of sell-swords.”

  Michael nodded. “That’s what I see,” he said. “It’s like Gilson’s Hole, except we’re on the other side, and we’re the ones in a hurry.”

  Gabriel dismounted from Ataelus. He hadn’t fought anyone. He leaned in and talked to his horse for a few moments.

  Then he took the reins of Srayanka, his riding horse, a steppe mare. She was big and powerful, and yet appeared a pony next to Ataelus.

  Bad Tom was lying in the grass, oblivious of any form of court etiquette. “What I see,” he said in agreement.

  Gabriel went and sat next to Tom, and Michael came up, and Kronmir, who dismounted, and Mortirmir, and the duchess. They had a view for ten miles up the valley.

  “The Ifriquy’ans fought yesterday,” Kronmir said. “It was just a brush, but Payam says that the will is turning on him.”