All the Plagues of Hell

by Eric Flint

  “The track leads through the farm. And then we take the right fork nearly a mile from there, and then, when we get to the Baridi farm, we take the track to the water. That’s a bit tricky…we have to cross a stream…”

  “How wide? And how deep?”

  The man threw up his hands. “There was a bridge, m’lord. Just a log over the water. I never got into the water. The ford’s fifty yards wide, maybe sixty. The water hits the stones there, spreads out. The other side will be hard going, swampy ground.”

  “If we get to the other side, that’ll be a good thing.”

  They rode to the farm. There they caught every person in the place asleep. They were tied up, while the scouts returned to the main road from Rivalta, with enough stakes to make something of an abatis at the junction. Francisco briefed his men.

  “The mist is getting thicker. We’re going to hit their midtail end and run.” He picked on three of the men. “You’re lucky. Or unlucky. You’re going to ride close to the village. When you hear us shooting, start fires. I want part of Soave di Mantovano burning. And then ride like hell back down this track, then back to the ford. If you’re lucky, you’ll be there before us, and if you’re unlucky, after. There are some of Captain Pelta’s infantry on the other side, so be sure you yell ‘Sforza’ or they might shoot you.”

  He turned in his saddle to face the main body of his troops. “The rest of us are going to cut a hole in the middle of their column in the mist, fire our horse pistols, and ride back along this track. Now, I’ll want the lieutenants and the two sergeants.”

  The plan was worked through hastily, and soon they were riding back, having made sure that those who might follow would hit a slowing blockade at the farmhouse.

  His stomach in that familiar before-combat knot, Francisco edged forward with his men in the wreathing mist. The moon broke through, showing a stark black-and-white tableau of men checking their priming, loosening blades in their sheaths, and patting their horses who, inevitably, were catching the nervous stress from the riders. Then the mist closed in again and a little later they could hear the sound of the Scaliger army moving past, not more than a hundred yards off.

  Francisco waited for the moment to tell the trumpeter to sound the call. And then, in the distance came the sound of massed harquebus fire. He tapped his trumpeter. “Sound it.”

  The man gave the bright sharp shrill call. “Sforza!” yelled Francisco, and the cry echoed from the better part of three hundred voices as they plunged forward. It was impossible to have everyone on the muddy track so they were in the field on either side—barely able to see ahead. The thirty men on the track reached the road first, and Francisco could hear the clash of steel, more yells of “Sforza!” and in the distance yet another volley from the harquebuses. Then the flankers started to reach the road. Those on the left scrambled across the ditch and fired back toward the tail end of the Scaliger column, and headed right to the lanterns the scouts had now put to mark the track, and those on the right did the opposite. In theory, at least, because the wings of Francisco’s attack had been well back and had further to go, they would not shoot each other.

  Of course in the chaos, screaming, shouting and gunfire, anything could happen. Francisco felt a burn across his shoulder. It could have been one of the panicked Scaligeri, or a latecomer from his own side. He managed to cling to his saddle as his horse suddenly jumped and scrambled over another horse. And there were the lanterns, and dizzy with the shock, he joined the other horsemen streaming down the track. He was glad to leave the process to the horse. It saw better and heard better in the dark than he did. He heard the grenades they had left at the entry to the track explode. The scout had been instructed to light the fuse when Francisco’s trumpeter sounded the second call. Francisco could not recall hearing it.

  The rest of the ride was something of a blur, which only became somewhat clearer as they hit the icy water of the Mincio ford. As an invasion route, it would have been a failure, as the water was deep enough to wet them from head to boots and force them to swim a little, and then struggle out and through a series of shallow lagoons and glutinous mud…but there were some of Pelta’s men, waiting.

  * * *

  It was some hours later, back at the camp outside Goito, when Francisco suffered the indignity of having to have his own wound treated, that he was finally able to get some idea of how well they had done. One of the two lieutenants who had been with him reported gleefully, “We only lost fifteen men in all. Well, men who have not returned. Twenty-two wounded, yourself included, Captain. Three more seriously than you, but mostly they are minor wounds. The Scaligeri did not succeed in crossing the Mincio. When Captain Pelta got the captives we sent them—he got more detail out of them, sent a tercio of harbquebus and pike forward along the road to meet them, and to conduct a slow retreat onto the bridge. It’s been a busy night. They tried to sortie out of Goito fortress when they heard the shooting. That didn’t end well for them. They got a ball from the cannon right in the middle of their mass, and then got blown up by the mine that Captain Pelta had us dig. I thought he was wasting the men’s time making them dig that tunnel. I thought it was heading for the fortress. I didn’t realize it was under the road out, and that Pelta had had the sappers fill it with explosives.”

  While what losses the Scaligeri had suffered on the other side of the river was not something they could know, it appeared that the men trapped in the fortress of Goito had had enough. They had used what little reserve they had in their attempted sortie. They asked for terms, later that day.

  And that night, six more of the troop that had taken part in Francisco’s raid made it back across the Mincio, bringing news of mayhem on the opposite bank. It appeared that the rear had been made up of troops from Padua, and when the Scaliger troops were attacked in the mist, the Scaliger commander concluded they had been betrayed by the allies behind him. The fight had been raging on for most of the next day apparently. The surviving Carraresi troops had fled back to Padua, and the men who had hidden in Scaliger territory had heard distant shooting, further east.

  Chapter 29

  The Duchy of Milan

  Francisco and an escort of a hundred men left the next day to take the valuable captives—nobility and gentry who had been part of the Scaliger army assembling in Goito—to Milan. For Carlo Sforza’s soldiery, they represented the potential of a handsome profit, as they would be ransomed when the conflict was over, unless Milan was overrun.

  Francisco was still moving a little gingerly after his wounding, but giving himself a professional assessment, there was no reason that he shouldn’t ride. He also wanted to get across to Pavia and see how Carlo was doing. At a guess, the Mincio border was quite secure for now, and young Captain Pelta seemed to have it all well in hand.

  Passing over the Naviglio Grande, Francisco had a twinge of guilt to add to the ache in his shoulder. He needed to send a message to Marco. He decided that, once the prisoners were safely bestowed, he’d go to see the bookseller and ask if he had a cantrip that sounded plausible enough. Valdosta, much deeper into researches of the magical, would probably laugh at it and at him, but that was what you got for attempting deceit.

  He found “Master Kazimierz” ensconced and comfortable in the large house at Val di Castellazzo, and his two servants rather bewildered by it all. A number of salons had been extensively shelved by workmen, and the men were now engaged in carrying in crates and bales. Emma was overseeing them with a rod of iron, no less effectively wielded because she couldn’t speak much of their language. Master Kazimierz was in fact out in the workshop with his bombardier, she informed him. Francisco was plainly an honored visitor by the low curtsey he got. She would have him called immediately.

  “Please to come in to the green salon, sit. There would be wine brought immediately.”

  “And how is your man?” he asked.

  “Muddling his brains with reading! As if a blow on the head was not enough!” She dimpled, her pride enormousl
y obvious. “He spends all day looking at the books. He showed me some of the words and what they mean. The master encourages him. Our master is too kind and too clever.”

  Kazimierz arrived a few minutes later, smelling strongly of burned powder. “Ah. Caviliero. An excellent man you have sent me. He’ll be the death of me yet. I am joking, Emma,” he said hastily to the woman bringing the wine and sweet almond biscotti.

  “She is very protective,” he explained in an amused tone to Francisco, after the young woman left. “I don’t know how I survived without them, for so many years.”

  “They haven’t been with you long?” asked Francisco.

  “No,” said Master Kazimierz. “A few months, although it does seem much longer. I picked them up on my travels.”

  “Oh. They behave like hereditary family retainers. Grown up in your service or something. Normally, the ones like that are old and wrinkled, loyal to the death and can tell you about Master so-and-so’s first steps, and every wonderful thing he’s done since—and will, if they are given half a chance.”

  Master Kazimierz snorted. “Not in this case.”

  “Well, she just told me that you were too kind and too clever,” said Francisco, smiling. “But actually I didn’t come to discuss your servants or the bombardier, although I am amused to hear your man is trying to read.”

  “I showed him a Chinese book of war contrivances with pictures in it, which fascinated the boy. You said to keep him from doing physical exertion for a while, and I wanted a device to launch something into the sky at night without making it obvious from whence it came. I had another book on mechanical contrivances—even a water mill, with which he was familiar. For some reason, the author had actually written it in Hungarian, not Latin or Greek or something sensible. I showed him the diagram of a trebuchet, asking about the practicalities of building such a device, at least on a small scale. The pictures were to him like some vastly addictive drug. He’s not a fool, just uneducated. I think it may be of value to me if he learns a little.”

  He leaned forward a little in his chair. “But what can I do for you, Caviliero? A discussion of Plato’s noble lies to advance Milan?”

  “I need a spell.”

  Kazimierz blinked, and Francisco continued. “You said you could write a plausible cantrip. I need something which will convince a genuine practitioner of the magical arts that I had been fooled.”

  “You intrigue me, Caviliero. What manner of cantrip do you desire? A charm to lure maidens to bed, or to strike one’s foes with bolts of lightning? And who is this practitioner of the arts? All too many of them are frauds…like me, of course.”

  “Oh, I think he’s genuine enough. He doesn’t exactly advertise the fact, but I know Marco Valdosta has had some instruction from Eneko Lopez, and he’s beyond any doubt a real master.”

  “You know Signor Marco Valdosta?” exclaimed Kazimierz, sounding more than a little surprised.

  “Quite well, yes. Do we share the acquaintance?” asked Francisco, prickling with alarm. Was this man a Venetian spy?

  Kazimierz shook his head. “No, but I have heard of him…he is a nobleman of Venice, I believe.”

  “And a physician.”

  “Aha! Now I make the connection. Forgive me, Caviliero. I was puzzled as to what you had to do with a student of Eneko Lopez. Lopez is an ecclesiastical magician”—he spread his left hand, as if bestowing a gift—“and, as you say, a genuine one. Not, alas, like me. I could not fool him for an instant.”

  “Yes, but it only needs to appear to have fooled me. I don’t expect Marco to be taken in. I, um, said something foolish, as I thought he was being used as a cat’s-paw by others. And now, without ruining the friendship, I need to look as if I was the one being made a fool of.”

  “A web of deceits, growing ever more tangled,” said Master Kazimierz.

  “Italian politics is like that.”

  “Oh, it’s not just Italian. And it can be far more than a friendship ruined. So: what manner of spell is this you require? I have a few books which purport to be grimoires. Who knows, some of the spells in them might even work.”

  * * *

  Count Kazimierz Mindaug thought on his feet. He had always been glib, quick to adapt and not easily caught off-guard or unbalanced. At least, once that had been true. He was finding life in the West difficult to adapt his thinking to, accustomed as he was to the patterns of monomania of Lithuania and Elizabeth Bartholdy and Emeric. This Francisco the physician had nearly knocked his feet out from under him with his casual reference to Marco Valdosta. And then to Eneko Lopez! The world was indeed a smaller and more interconnected place than most people realized. There were levels of fate and links in the other worlds that made these things more likely, but still he was amazed.

  He was still not sufficiently braced for Francisco’s next words. “Well, what I need is a spell to deal with Justinian’s Plague.”

  Ever since he had been asked about the snake, that had niggled at him, and he had wondered if it was going to resurface. He wanted no part of it, none at all, and he had coped with demons and ancient monsters. “There is no cure for the plague,” he said, his voice harsh. “Do not go there. People have tried to control it magically before, but instead it controls them.”

  Francisco wondered quite what had upset the old fellow. He was visibly disturbed by it all. “I was hoping merely for one of the supposed preventive spells. There are plenty of medical prophylaxis methods described, vinaigrettes, mixtures of vervain comfrey and rue, silver and arsenic worn at the throat—and there is no indication that any of them worked in the least.”

  “They did not. Neither did magic. Neither did…appeasement. I have read about it at length. It was a field of study I pursued many years ago.” He pulled himself together visibly. “I will take a few of the elements of the supposed preventive spells. The disease came to Constantinople out of Egypt, but appears to have ravaged many other countries to the east wherever men gathered together in towns or cities.”

  “It doesn’t have to work, Master Kazimierz. It just has to look like I might have believed it could.”

  Kazimierz shook his head as if to clear it. “Very well. If you will come with me to the testing field, I have some things to show you that I wish you to tell Protector Sforza about. Klaus should have the next rocket ready to fire by now. And I can show you the flying star that he and young Tamas have built. I shall take a piece of parchment with me and write down some doggerel for you to send.”

  So they walked together to the outbuildings off to the side, which were separated from the house by a row of Italian cypresses. The tall and narrow trees were planted together closely enough to obscure vision. Once they got past the trees and into the little courtyard formed by the outbuildings, they found the bombardier who had once been one of Francisco’s patients busily grinding powders.

  The sound of their footsteps drew his attention. “Captain Turner!” he exclaimed, coming to his feet. He bowed respectfully to Francisco before clasping his hand in the ruined remains of his own. “I cannot thank you enough!”

  “You are enjoying your work?” Francisco knew that, as a secondary task, the fellow was to report to Sforza’s spymaster. But he was a good craftsman and seemed to have loved his cannon.

  “I could not ask for better,” said the man gruffly, with genuine emotion. “I thought…I thought I’d be being bored out of my wits, using my pension to buy a tavern, and drinking away the anger at seeing all the fit bodies around me.” He looked at the vast workbench, which showed signs of various projects and which, although new, already had several burns. “It’s not that I wouldn’t give anything to be hale again but…”

  “It’s work that suits you.”

  The fellow nodded. “Ideas that I couldn’t have tried as an artilleryman. Things which will change the face of war, I think. Master Kazimierz has some unusual books. And he allows me to experiment.”

  “Within limits,” said Kazimierz. “We have a small fortificat
ion that I am sure mystifies the Protector’s spies. But I know we deal with dangerous things. Klaus, despite reasons to know otherwise, I sometimes think does not. Klaus, show him the flying star, while I write something for the caviliero.”

  The flying star proved to be nothing more than an oversized crossbow. It was nothing like the size of a ballista, but was a similar device, loaded with a windlass and aimed in a steep trajectory skyward. The arrow, however, was something very different. “The master wanted to give it a pair of wings to keep it aloft for as long as possible—but those tore off when I fired them, or stopped it going very far, and anyway, it didn’t stay aloft for long. But young Tamas had the bright idea of making it like a pine seed. So you’ve got the head there—and it’s bright enough in daylight and startling at night.”

  He put the arrow in place, wound the windlass down, lit the wick and fired the arrow upward. “Look up there.” He pointed, and Francisco could see first a puff of smoke, and then a slow-spinning star burning.

  “We’re working on the wing and the weight of the star—but it’s up to a minute and a half aloft now. Think, Captain. You’re sneaking a bunch of sappers or infantry close to a fort, safe and hidden in the dark. If they light torches on the walls, it blinds ’em to the dark, makes men on the wall easy targets, and doesn’t light much past maybe fifty paces. You’re safe…until someone fires one of those up in the air. That’d have half the men running home to hide behind their mothers’ skirts screaming witchcraft. We…Tamas and the master and I, were talking of different heads for the arrows—one that’ll explode and send down burning sparks to start fires, and one that’ll burst into a rain of flechettes. From high enough, those’ll go through armor. It’s like working with a lot of gunpowder flakes—one of us burning up an idea seems to set the others off. I know guns and black powder, and Tamas is a natural with mechanical contrivance and doesn’t know what can’t be done. And the master, well, he knows something about everything.”