by Eric Flint
Arona, Duchy of Milan
Lucia made her return to Castello di Arona in fine style, accompanied by three hundred of her new civil guard. She liked the new uniforms. They were remarkably fashionable, which would draw recruits. The designer had been good at interpreting her wishes.
The castello looked even smaller and dowdier now. Imagine having been doomed to live out her life there! It was largely shut up, too, and as she had not sent word ahead, the caretaker and his family were badly prepared. His surviving family would pass the word around to prevent that from happening again.
Somehow, stepping over his dead body made going down into the cellars, alone, much easier. She’d told her guards not to allow anyone in there, and she had the castello to herself…
Herself and the serpent, Orkise.
Down in the inky blackness, it spoke before she did.
“You have come to turn me loose, at last. My appetite is whetted; I hunger. I must feed.” Sibilant as ever, the serpent’s voice seemed stronger, and more terrible now. It was followed by the echoing sound of many scurrying feet, and the occasional chitter.
“Rats…” She liked them possibly less than snakes.
“Yessss. My legions, and their legions on them, and their legions within them. Death to our foes and food to me.”
“So long as they stay a long way from me. I want you to destroy a town. It holds out under siege.”
“Most towns are alike to me. The names change. How would I know which one?”
She hadn’t thought of that. “Terdona…you must know where Terdona is!” She would have to do something about that. What was the use of a weapon that could not find its target? Perhaps some stone from there…
“Ah, yessss. That I may. It was once called Derthona and stood to defend the crossroads between Genoa and Placentia on the right bank of the Scrivia. I ravaged it before, when I was in strength and new. The river was in flood and carried the corpses to the Po. Yessss. I remember it well. It will have the honor of being my first great sacrifice. Go, my legions, go. I will emerge and destroy.”
And the distant rustle and chitter had become a mighty flood of rat sounds in the darkness.
Lucia fled the rats, her belly wobbling as she ran.
Venice
Marco had agonized over this course for some time. But as the Lion, he had little choice. He had gone to the new prison, to a cell where he had set wards and, to the best of his power, traps for anyone or thing that tried to escape.
The mirror had the spells written on it, in tiny script along the margin. They were enough of an “address” for the Lion of Etruria, looking into the mirror and calling on his will. A cool mist boiled from the mirror face, which cleared to reveal the face of a white-haired and heavily moustached man, looking very startled and extremely wary.
“My old master would have given anything for this opportunity,” said the man. “It is very dangerous, Signor Valdosta. You need better warding, despite your strength.”
Marco knew that. He also knew that there were few people who could teach him such magic. Eneko Lopez had set him on the path, and made him practice. He had, and had taken those skills as far as he could without further teaching. “You sent me Carlo Sforza, and some cryptic writings.”
“Yes. There is more information, but it is scattered in many books, and distorted. I had hoped that that would be sufficient.”
“Sufficient for me to recognize the enemy. Not sufficient for me to identify the cure.”
“It’s a kenning, an alternate meaning to the words. At that time, the reference would have been obvious. The thread is the thread of life, and the rose garden is what lies beyond, tended by a guardian of the dead. It is literally a place of souls, growing, tended. Possibly a place of passage, where the bloom of those who die before they have had a chance to flower in life can do so. A belief to shelter those whose beloved daughter, or brother, or parent was taken too soon, the promise they had unfulfilled, so it could not be weighed in the afterlife. Belief gives substance, as we know. The small rose garden exists—or did—but it is beyond my reach.”
“Also possibly beyond mine. And yes, I can see that the lives Orkise cut off as the plague might be considered that, and bloom there.”
“Orkise moves. I detected it today. I prepare to move myself and my retainers, and place ourselves at your mercy.” The white-haired, sharp-faced man smiled—or at least that was what his eyes and cheeks suggested. “They are what you would term good people. I would ask that you deal fairly with them, and in exchange I will give you what help I can against Orkise.”
“I cannot guarantee what the Doge will do.”
“Then we will stay away as long as possible, until we are certain we either can do so no longer, or until you need us badly. Do you have any more questions for me? This is dangerous for both of us, especially me.”
“No. Goodbye.” Marco severed the magical connection.
The mirror was left to lie on the cell floor.
Chapter 41
The border of the Duchy of Milan
Francisco Turner turned his anxiety into hard riding and hard work. The days after his return had been a crisscrossing of Milanese territory. Summer had arrived, although the heat was still not intense, and the countryside was now green and lush. But Francisco barely noticed, he was so concentrated on the tasks at hand.
All those who saw him, bar a small handful of senior officers who knew otherwise, thought that he was the eyes and ears and, indeed, the mouth of the commander, and that he was carrying his instructions and carrying reports back to the master’s sickbed in Cantu. Francisco wished that it were true. He always had to give reports of Carlo’s progress and was frequently castigated for leaving his bedside. If only they knew how much he wanted news himself, and how little he’d wanted to leave!
Still, it was working. The inevitable reaction to the news, and the new heart it had put into the enemies of Milan, had not let them progress much. Pelta had beaten off an attempt on Peschiera del Garda, and instead crossed the river himself and held territory as far as Valeggio sul Mincio.
Of the two sieges, the one at Borgo San Donnino had been broken, but the enemy had not managed to advance from there, and they’d taken the fortress at Fogliani in lieu. Terdona, waiting on help from Genoa or the duke of Parma, had had the relief force resoundingly beaten off. Francisco rode there to investigate how things stood now.
Borghetti had been wounded in the attempted relief, but Francisco was relieved to see that the injury was not too serious. “I hope you’re sending us more men,” said the young lieutenant, his arm in a sling and his back perched against the wall of a still-intact farmhouse. From there, they had a good view of the besieged town. “Terdona is ready to fall. They’re getting desperate in there. By the noises, people are dying. There’s been a fair bit of wailing and crying going on. We’ve been able to hear it for four days now.”
“Let’s get a bit closer and have a look at the walls. Carlo likes a full report on the state of the defenses,” said Francisco. “It’s a bit early for them to be starving and desperate, surely?”
A soldier helped Borghetti come to his feet. “They might have had an outbreak of disease or something,” said the lieutenant.
Francisco felt something in his stomach go cold. He didn’t want to believe this. But not wanting something never stopped things from happening.
“Let’s get a bit closer,” was all he said.
There were entrenchments and earthworks, manned by Sforza’s troops, in harquebus range. From these the ramparts of the city were clearly to be seen—battered but largely intact. Francisco knew why: Sforza had been using the town as bait, making its relief bleed the foes, for little gain. He’d planned to take Borgo San Donnino in their normal style, and that, too, had not worked out. Well, his strategy was in tatters, but they couldn’t let the enemies know that, and perhaps they should smash into this little town instead.
Something arced over the battlements and landed
on the open sward between the lines. It was a body, limbs and face puffy and swollen. The fall had burst the cotte open, and as it lay sprawled, the white chest was exposed to the besiegers.
“They’re so desperate they’re throwing their dead at us,” said the lieutenant.
Francisco knew already, even before he stared intently at the corpse, what he would see there. And he did, just as it had been described in the text. He could see the purple bubo next to the armpit just down from the breast.
“Has anyone gone anywhere near those bodies?” he demanded, his voice harsh.
“Not yet. I was going to get some of the men to drag them into a pit tonight under cover of the darkness. They don’t shoot much in the dark.”
“They won’t shoot much at all at anyone now,” said Francisco grimly. He looked around to make sure they were not overheard. “Nine out of ten are dead or will be soon. There’s a deadly disease loose in that town, and we need to make sure that it stays there. They’ll sue for surrender soon. We grant no quarter. We accept no surrender. Shoot any living thing that comes out of there, anything at all. And I want that sward and those bodies burned to a crisp ash. Now, to the disposition of your men. The people in there won’t be able to fight much. I want your most injured, but those still able to shoot, for the inner cordon. They’re to stay here for six weeks, and if they contain it…every one of them will be a rich man. But for that time, not a man is to leave. We will form a second perimeter to defend the town from relief and to shoot any man who tries to leave until that quarantine is lifted.”
He looked at the horrified lieutenant. “We have to do it,” he said quietly. “This must stop here. It must.”
Lieutenant Borghetti nodded. “Those purple marks. It is the Plague of Justinian, isn’t it?”
Still, a millennium later, they remembered the horror. Stories passed down, generation to generation. There was no point in lying now. No point in anything except stopping it. “Yes.”
“Then I will take charge of the inner perimeter. I know the men to pick and who to put on the outer ring that will shoot us down if we try to leave.”
Francisco looked at the young man, a younger son of minor gentry, a boy who had joined Sforza because there were few other options for younger sons, and because the Wolf had a reputation for derring-do and victory. Not the sort of young cub you expected to suddenly turn into a lion. “By the authority vested in me by our commander, you are now Captain Borghetti. If we get out of this alive, and contain the disease here, I’ll see to it that Carlo honors that.”
“If that happens, I might get around to being glad I am a captain,” said Borghetti wryly.
Chapter 42
Venice
The lights on the mastheads had been sighted from the Lido lagoon barrier islands at dusk. The fleet was nearly home. Marco greeted the news with great relief. There were several reasons for that, not all to do with the joy of having his sister-in-law, of whom he was enormously fond and respected a great deal, in the house. His Katerina loved Maria dearly, and Alessia was a delight. But it had been a long time.
And then there was the still-present desire of a lot of Venice’s people to go to war with Milan. Others might want the fleet home for that; Marco wanted it home to stop that. His brother Benito wielded a great deal of influence with the people.
Then there were the issues of the possible disease and dealing with it.
Finally, there was the fact that a day of research—after consulting as many experts as he could—had left Marco convinced that Mindaug had been correct. Laurin’s rose garden was indeed some kind of kenning for a borderland of the dead, and one you could just see but never reach. The dawn light over the mountains of Tyrol was supposed to provide a glimpse of it. He wanted to ask Maria about Aidoneus and for help of some kind, but she had heard the news about the ships, too, and like most of the city, the excitement was not making her easy to talk to. And that one was a turn and walk away from you issue, it seemed. He’d explained about the rose garden, and had tried four times now to ask her if there was any way she could ask Aidoneus about it. But just mention of that name brought his sister-in-law’s shutters down.
So he’d have to ask Benito to ask her—or hope she’d be easier to talk to in a day or two. He thought his patients had that day or two, for both had stabilized. There was some tissue necrosis around the bite on Sforza, but at least Marco knew how to deal with that effectively now.
And also, well, he just wanted his brother back. Benito had been all Marco had, back in tough times. That sort of bond endured.
He was not surprised that while the ships had yet to cross the shifting sandbars around the Lido islands into the shallower waters of the lagoon—a process which few captains would undertake in the dark—his brother showed up, just before midnight.
Benito tapped on his window, three stories up in the Casa Montescue, hanging like a bat from a beam, grinning from ear to ear.
Marco opened the window and Benito dropped in. “I wasn’t too sure which was Maria’s window. Besides, she’d probably shoot a window-tapper first and ask questions later.”
“She’s asleep. Alessia was very lively today.”
“Well, I’ll wake Maria in a minute or two, and I am glad to hear my daughter is keeping you all busy. I’ve only got a few hours and I’ll need to get back to the fleet for the triumphal return. We nearly didn’t have a fleet after that storm. Now my official excuse for getting a galetta to risk the bar in the dark is that I wanted to check things out and make sure all was well in Venice so at least if we sailed into a hornet’s nest, Enrico and I were prepared. Anything I should know?”
“A lot—but most of it will take more than a few minutes. We have the possibility of war, and worse, the possibility of a terrible disease—the plague—in Milanese territory.”
“Has Sforza gone mad? I thought he’d had enough of fighting Venice.”
“Carlo Sforza is in my infirmary in the Doge’s palace, in a coma caused by a magical snakebite.”
Benito whistled softly. “Phew. No wonder we were wanted home. Will he recover?”
“I don’t know. I’ve managed to stabilize him—both of them—but I’ve still got no cure. Maria might be the only person who can help, but right now the subject is off limits. Without the petals from the rose garden of Laurin, I doubt it.”
“What?”
“Ask Maria. They’re something that don’t really exist in this world, as they are in some place on the border of death. I asked her if she could speak to Aidoneus about it and got the total stonewall. It is all that can save him, and possibly us, from disease and war.”
Benito pulled a wry face. “I see life is as simple as ever. How is my daughter, besides lively?”
“Very well indeed. Noisy, permanently active, loving. A darling, but quite a handful, Benito. And you’ll be an uncle soon, too, by the way.”
Benito hugged his brother and slapped his back. “Now there is a job I feel right up to! I can’t wait to tell your child about all the things you did as a child that you would like to pretend you never did. Now take me to my wife. I’ve got a boat to get back to well before dawn.”
So Marco led him to the right doorway.
* * *
Maria had been having difficulty sleeping, despite the fact that Alessia had had her on the run all day. The ships were due in tomorrow. She longed for Benito.
She’d just slipped off into a sleep full of complicated dreams when Benito arrived…which was probably simpler than the awkwardness of meeting him at the quay surrounded by thousands of people. Then she might not have sat up and into his arms, and hugged him quite so desperately, which was the best way of telling him the really important thing she had to say: “Oh, Benito, I’ve missed you so badly.”
“Now, love, you’ll get over it soon. Be back to throwing plates at my head in no time,” he said, stroking her shoulders. “And I’m sorry Marco and Kat have been so horrid to you.”
“Of course they haven’
t. Your brother got all the good parts and you got all trouble-making and…oh, Benito. I love you.”
“I love you, too, Maria. And very I’m pleased to be home.”
“I don’t think Venice is my home anymore,” she sighed.
“Home is where you and my daughter are, dear. Anyway, my grandfather wants us to go to Ferrara.”
“Ferrara? Why?”
“Why not? It’s his city and he approves of my wife. Besides, he wants me to be his heir.”
“I’m…not your wife.”
“Well, as you said, things have changed, so maybe you could become that now. What has happened there?”
“It wasn’t working. I have arranged things differently. I told Aidoneus that it had to change. That he had to have a full-time wife. And that it couldn’t be me.”
He was silent for a while. Then he said in quite a different tone: “I am not sure I understand this. There was an agreement between the three of us.”
She was about to say that it had nothing to do with him, when she realized that it did. “I have arranged for him to have a full-time bride. That is all. Someone from Venice who can worship him properly.”
“And he was happy with this?” Benito asked.
“It is not his choice. I decided. He’s a good man—well, male god—and deserves more.”
Benito sighed. “I’m not following this at all. I didn’t know it was about choosing. I thought it was a bargain that had to be honored.”
Maria swallowed. “I thought you’d be pleased!”
“I am. But you’re a canaler. So, by upbringing, am I. That’s not how we make our bargains.”
“It wasn’t good for him!”
“Did he agree with you?”