A Plague of Swords

by Miles Cameron

  “And we’re two days behind,” Gabriel said.

  “We didn’t lose any time today!” Tom said defensively.

  “No, you were brilliant and the company was brilliant,” Gabriel said. He shook his head. “Sometimes I’m just the captain. Tell the boys and girls that they were...brilliant.”

  Tom grinned. “They were fine, eh?” he nodded. “Like the book.”

  “Like the book,” Gabriel agreed. “But it won’t be like that tomorrow.”

  Michael looked away.

  “The duke’s troops will know better tomorrow. They’ll have covering parties. They’ll hold every trench line.” He shrugged. “How many did today cost us?”

  “Phillipe de Beause,” Tom said.

  There was a moment’s silence. He had been one of the company’s finest jousters. “Six men at arms. A dozen archers...Hugh Course. Dook, for the love o’ God. I didna’ think the man could die.”

  “Christ on the cross,” muttered Kronmir.

  The emperor shook his head. “And that was a cheap victory won with speed and determination.” He frowned. “Five of those and we’ll lose the edge of good leaders that takes us up ridges. Sauce or Tom. Or me.” He shrugged. “I’m losing my love of this.”

  “Do you know the name of every soldier?” Giselle asked.

  The emperor looked surprised. “I try to,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Then when you lose them, you will be broken. Best to let them remain faceless.”

  He looked at her with distaste. “The way the duke let you remain faceless?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “I see your point,” she said. “But I am right, nonetheless.”

  * * *

  That night, they dug in. Toward morning, the pickets were attacked. The attackers had the worst of it and withdrew.

  In the morning, the army was slow starting. It couldn’t be helped; many had fought the day before. Muscles ached and wounds stiffened.

  Armour was painful even to strap on over tired muscles.

  “Stay with the river as long as we can,” the emperor said, and the army marched, late, but in good order. The Vardariotes had swept all the way up the valley, overrunning two more positions with the coloured flags all laid out for peasant diggers who never arrived. They swept north and west into the high ridges, taking terror with them. A trickle of prisoners came back, including the duke’s second son, Antonio, captured on the road, unaware that a battle had been fought.

  They made twenty miles, and dug in again.

  “Tell Payam we’ll be six days late,” the emperor told Kronmir that night. Master Nicodemus handed him a silver cup full of wine.

  He was so quiet that Blanche was afraid.

  “I hate to be late,” he said to her. The camp bed was like a little tent inside the pavilion, and gave them the illusion of privacy. “I’m sending you and Kaitlin back to Venike.”

  She lay there, silent.

  “We’re a day or two from the Darkness,” Gabriel said. “When we reach it...” He shrugged, wriggling in the bed. “I told you about Helewise and the Odine.”

  Blanche nodded, miserable. But silent. And with her jaw set.

  * * *

  The next morning, Count Zac was back to report that they faced a towering escarpment on the shores of a lake, fifteen miles farther west.

  “Ten thousand men,” Zac said. “I scared the piss into their breeches, but there they are.”

  “Lake Darda,” the duchess said.

  Kronmir wore what Sauce called his sour-milk look. He had a stack of flimsy parchments. Six birds had come in with the first light.

  “More bad news?” Gabriel asked.

  “Yes, Majesty,” Kronmir intoned.

  “Speak then,” Gabriel said. “Let’s get it over with.”

  Kronmir’s eyes went to his servant. “There has been a new election of a Patriarch of Rhum,” he said.

  “That’s speedy,” Father David allowed. As a follower of the Patriarch of Liviapolis, he didn’t pay too much heed to the politics of Rhum, but he had studied there. “These elections can go on for years.”

  “They have chosen Lucius di Bicci,” Kronmir said. “He was the old Patriarch’s legate for Etrusca. A warlord, not a churchman. They say he has five thousand lances to command and that he is marching already.”

  Gabriel pursed his lips. “Twenty days behind us, even if he could march the way we do,” he said.

  Giselle frowned. “He can threaten Venike, especially if he allies with Mitla and Genua,” she said.

  The emperor took a slow breath. “Twenty days from now we’ll be in a very different kind of war,” he said. “Can the Beronese and the Venikans stop them?”

  “You would abandon us?” the duchess demanded.

  Gabriel took another slow breath. “Giselle,” he said quietly, “what the legate and the Duke of Mitla do is nothing but a distraction.”

  “Not to the farmers on the borders. Not to our ships on the seas,” she said.

  The emperor looked out over the camp. It was a quiet summer evening, and a thousand tents stretched away up the beautiful valley. A gurgling stream fell down from the lake above them, and the late-evening sky was pink and blue, the whole forming a sort of tapestry of a military paradise.

  “If we stop to fight this legate, we might lose the war,” Gabriel said. “Trust me.”

  Giselle sighed but did not dissent.

  Gabriel turned to Kronmir. “Can we cut across the Darkness?” he asked.

  Kronmir shrugged. “I have no idea,” he said. “For one man on his guard”—he looked at Giselle—“and one woman, it was possible. For an army? I’m not even sure what form an attack would take.”

  Giselle shuddered.

  Michael tapped his teeth with his thumb, and so, in fact, did the emperor.

  He puffed out his cheeks. “We must try,” he said. “Or we lose the Ifriquy’ans. They are fighting every day.”

  Kronmir nodded. “And retreating,” he said. “They are farther from us today than they were yesterday.”

  “And Du Corse?” Gabriel asked.

  “Far to the north and west. West of Lutrece.” Kronmir shrugged.

  Gabriel sat back. “Well, I suppose it was always too complicated,” he said. “West, into the Darkness. That’s why we brought all the supplies, after all. Everyone knows the drill.”

  Michael shook his head. “That’s why we brought the supplies?” he asked pointedly.

  “Being emperor is not as much fun as I expected,” Gabriel said. He sighed. “No, I brought them for something else, but let’s take one horrifying decision at a time, shall we?”

  “We could just outflank this position,” Zac said. “And emerge from the darkness here, west of Mitla.”

  Gabriel tapped his teeth again. “Hmmm,” he said. “I hate to think what we’re about to learn. All pregnant women are to go back east to Berona. Today.”

  Blanche met his eye. “Are you still marching to the gamble you said?” she asked quietly.

  “Yes,” he said, without hesitation.

  “Then I will not go back,” she said.

  The two of them locked eyes.

  People looked away. Servants turned their heads, and Bad Tom, of all people, left the pavilion. The silence went on too long.

  “Very well,” the emperor said. His eyes made a loop of annoyance. “I rescind the order. Pregnant women are warned that they and their unborn babes may be at risk from this point onward.”

  Sauce lingered with the emperor’s chart when the others left, and she found herself looking at it with the duchess and the Count of Berona and Kaitlyn and Sukey.

  No one went back with the convoy of empty wagons.

  * * *

  The Red Knight flooded the plains along the Terno with his light cavalry, who pushed on recklessly all the way to the Vale of Darda on a ten-mile front, and they burned every village and hamlet they came to, leaving more destruction behind than an army of the Wild.

&nbs
p; But behind their screen of fire and brutality, the company turned west into the Darkness. Almost two hundred heavy wagons rolled west on two roads. Only those few soldiers dead to empathy failed to feel the frisson of fear as they crossed the river into the Darkness, and even in full sunlight, most of the soldiers shivered.

  Camping was worse, and worse yet for Kaitlin, as problems of supply were rendered dramatically more difficult by the emperor’s demand that no man or woman eat or drink anything in the Darkness that they had not provided themselves. But the Venikan proveditores were ready with lists, and food—clean, reliable food and water—flowed from the wagons into the hands of the soldiers. Mortirmir and Petrarcha set themselves to testing everything, and Gabriel joined them, reduced from mighty emperor to sorcerer’s apprentice by circumstance.

  By his order, no man or woman was to be alone. In fact, they moved in fives—even to latrines. Every soldier, every outrider, every page, every servant, every slattern, carried a weapon.

  The whole camp sprang to arms in the Darkness, and a Venikan marine was slain by one of his own. In error.

  The emperor went out into the dark with Harald Derkensun and Bad Tom and a trio of Nordikaans, and went from fire to fire. He began to learn the names of the Venikans and of the Beronese, and he took Tomaso Lupi with him as he walked through the cook area of the count’s foot soldiers. Lupi spoke the dialect well, having lived as a peasant for a year, and he introduced his father-in-law at one fire and the headman of his village at another.

  Relentlessly, Gabriel repeated his mantra: This had to be done, and they could do it.

  The second time he went out into the Darkness, he took Blanche and Kaitlin and Galahad and Ser Michael with him. The sound of women laughing was a better tonic than his words, and many a farm boy smiled to hear them and stiffened his spine, and everyone smiled at a baby.

  But despite all, in the morning, a young Venikan volunteer was found to have committed suicide, falling messily on his sword like one of the Archaics.

  Gabriel refused to let the army march. Instead, he rode back along the ranks with the duchess until he found the man’s captain.

  “Where were the four assigned with him?” Gabriel demanded.

  The captains shrugged. “Asleep?” he asked.

  “You are relieved,” the emperor snapped.

  Mortirmir looked at the body. But the boy had merely had enough: too much terror of the dark. Or of war, or of his captain.

  “Ye can’t hang the other four,” Tom Lachlan snapped at the emperor.

  “I can,” Gabriel said petulantly.

  “Nah, yer just acting like me. An’ no one’s hit ye. Leave it.” Lachlan leaned close. “Yer scarin’ folks.”

  “How could those four let a boy kill himself in a camp where everyone is supposed to be watching each other?” Gabriel spat. “If the will went for that boy, we’d have an outbreak right now.”

  “Aye,” Tom said. “Let it be a lesson to ye, the next time ye bite off more’n you can chew. But don’t blame they.” Tom looked at his captain, and there was no humour to him at all. “Blame yerself.”

  * * *

  They stopped marching early, after only twenty miles. The emperor ordered all the wagons circled, and then he personally ordered the three banda of the company to march off half a mile with the Nordikaans and the Scholae. He put out a handful of pickets, and then he climbed up on a big barrel and told them all to gather round. Almost two thousand men and women packed in.

  “Friends,” he said. “I’ve brought you to a bad place. But you know how to do this. Our allies don’t. So stop mocking them, and help. Tell them about all the monsters you’ve put down. Tell them that this isn’t half bad because there aren’t wyverns or barghasts.”

  “Or fuckin’ imps,” shouted Cully.

  “Or fucking imps. Tell them about facing Thorn. But by all that’s holy, friends, I need you to help them through this Darkness, because we have ten more days of it and I need them.”

  Most of them didn’t have any more Etruscan than it took to order wine or get a girl, some not even that much. But there were men like Angelo di Laternum and Ser Berengar and Master Julius and Father David who spoke the language well, and there were others like Oak Pew who understood the captain’s intention, and simply went and stirred a pot, or sharpened a sword, or helped with some firewood. Suddenly, the Nova Terrans were everywhere, in their groups of five.

  And Ser Gabriel and his knights and ladies were everywhere too, all evening.

  And in the morning, no one was dead.

  And they were all awake before the trumpet sounded.

  “Two more days,” the emperor said. “Or ten,” he muttered.

  And that afternoon, the light cavalry came up behind them, a cloud of dust visible by midmorning. By noon, they were moving on the hillsides either side of the road.

  In the late afternoon, after carefully testing a fast-flowing mountain river with water cold as ice, the proveditores began refilling the water barrels. Pages watered horses.

  Ser Michael had been awake all night the night before. As ordered. Now he rode along the column until he found the command group lying in an otherwise empty olive grove, and most of them sound asleep on the ground. Only the Nordikaans, who seemed made of metal, were awake.

  Michael lay down by the emperor and went to sleep.

  He awoke when Gabriel moved. The great man had one eye open.

  “I assume we’re moving through the night?” Michael asked.

  Gabriel nodded.

  “Christ,” Michael swore.

  * * *

  The sickle moon rose on a landscape empty of movement, except for insects and birds. It was too still, and the pickets and vedettes were constantly too alert.

  No one had slept much for several days.

  They moved fast, nonetheless. The road was good, and they’d been spared rain, and the wagons moved almost as fast as horses, rolling along the flat plain. Even when they began the long, slow climb onto the first ridge of the growing mass of the mountains that could no longer be ignored, the plodding heavy horses kept the pace, halting only to feed from bags and drink water before moving on with their wagons.

  For the cavalry, it was a hard night.

  For the armoured infantry, it was the stuff of nightmares, and as men’s fatigue grew, so did their fear and their perception of threat, so that the woods on either side of the road seemed full of menace. Crossbows were loosed into the woods on several occasions, the third leading to a lone Vardariote berating Master Pye’s Armourers’ Guild.

  But at dawn, they were in the foothills of the largest mountains any of them had ever seen. Above them, the road up the pass wound around like a snake. There was no cover at all. Smooth green meadow and loose rock rose, hummock after hummock, to an incredible height above them. A single waterfall fell in rainbow splendour, almost five thousand feet over their heads.

  Ser Gabriel rode to the head of the green banda. They were at the rear of the column, in reserve.

  Gabriel rode to Sauce, who was commanding them. She was sitting with Dan Favour and Long Paw.

  “I bet we’re not halting,” Sauce said. “Your Greatness.”

  Gabriel nodded. He pointed to the heights towering over them, the two incredible ridges that dwarfed the pass between them.

  “I need the Greens to seize the high ground,” he said.

  Sauce looked at Long Paw, who made a face.

  “You are out of your wits. My lord.” Sauce spat. “No offence. My mouth is dry.” She looked up, and she had to crane her neck. “Can’t make it up that in harness. An’ you said the Necromancer couldn’t hold these passes.”

  “I’m wrong all the time, as you are always the first to tell me,” Gabriel said. “There’s no one else I can ask. If you like, I’ll go myself.”

  Long Paw grunted. He looked up and flexed his hands, as if he were about to box or wrestle. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

  Sauce shook her head. “It’s two
miles,” she said, gazing almost straight up.

  “Think of it this way,” Gabriel said. “If you can do this, you can do anything.”

  “Where’s yon beastie? The one with wings?” Sauce asked.

  “I’m saving him for the hard part,” the Red Knight said.

  “Blessed Virgin,” Sauce said. “All right. Let’s get at it. Armour off, you lot.”

  * * *

  The army halted and slept where they sat. Soldiers started fires at the edge of the wood line and made tea, which boiled very easily. A meal was served, mostly hard bread and cheese and ham.

  At midmorning, in lowering cloud, the Scholae started up the road. A handful of Vardariotes rode ahead of them.

  About nones, a handful of Vardariotes came back led by Kaliax, their war-leader.

  “We’ve found them,” said Kaliax. “The taken. The not-dead.”

  The emperor sat up. “How many?” he asked.

  “A thousand. With spears, standing on the road, blocking it. There’s a bridge.” The steppe woman shrugged. “No one moves.” She made a face. “They are very young. I rode close.”

  “Here we go,” Gabriel said. He shook his head. “This will be as bad as they can make it.”

  * * *

  Three thousand feet above him, the Scholae began to shoot with their horn bows. Sixty or eighty mountain peasants were dead before they reacted in any way, and then they all leveled their spears in one motion. One of them, pushed by another, fell from the bridge, a hundred feet to the rocks below. The rest started forward.

  The Scholae butchered them with archery, trotting away a few paces down the steep pass. It was an exercise in horsemanship, and occasionally in discipline, and always, in volley control.

  It took only a few minutes.

  Count Zac waved his riding whip in irritation. “We are very good at this,” he said, as if in apology for the butchery.

  “We’re very good at killing peasants,” Gabriel said bitterly. “This is the war our adversary wants.” He smiled grimly. “Our adversaries. Very well. Let them see how fast we are.”

  * * *

  Shortly after nones, the army was up and marching, and the Scholae came to the second blocking force. They had built a low stone wall, waist high, across the middle of another arched bridge. The chasm under the bridge seemed bottomless.