All the Plagues of Hell

by Eric Flint

  Once he had an army back under his command, Sforza had marched them south through the Val Seriana, the valley formed by the small Serio River. They’d moved quickly, as Sforza’s armies always did, until they reached the Adda River, which they then followed toward its confluence with the Po due west of Cremona.

  Throughout, to Violetta’s surprise—and some unease—Carlo had stayed on the east bank of the two rivers. She would have expected him to follow the opposite bank, which would allow him to easily interdict an enemy force marching northwest toward Milan.

  When she’d asked him the reason, his explanation had been terse—and, she realized, opened a window into the man’s soul. Or at least, the military facet of that soul.

  “I trust my army more than Umberto or any of his officers will trust Parma’s. Don’t forget that if I’m not on the west bank to block a Parmese army marching on Milan, they’ll not be on this bank to block me from marching on Parma. My army will move at least half again—maybe twice as fast as the drunkard’s forces will. I’ll reach Parma long before he gets to Milan—which has better defenses to begin with, and by now will be under Francisco’s control. I can trust Turner to hold my capital long enough for me to take Parma, and once that stinking Umberto loses Parma he’ll lose his army, too. Most of it, anyway.”

  Violetta had glanced at her uncle to see if Cosimo shared that confidence, but the duke of Tuscany’s expression had revealed nothing. In all likelihood, she decided, Cosimo was simply declining to second-guess a man who was widely recognized as one of Europe’s most capable generals. Her uncle had many skills and talents—a great many; more than most rulers—but military tactics were not among them.

  Once they reached the confluence of the Serio and the Adda, Cosimo left the carriage in order to ride one of his horses. Despite her own fatigue, which was still too great to risk trying to stay in a saddle, Violetta soon came to envy him. The road that ran alongside the River Adda was crude—more of an ox cart path than anything that could properly be called a road. The rocks and tree trunks had been removed but no one had bothered to do the same for the many large roots that came to the surface. The carriage was jolted back and forth unpredictably, to make everything worse.

  After one particularly rough battering, Sforza had patted the seat next to him. Violetta had been sitting across from him the whole way since they left Venice.

  “Stop being proud, girl,” he said. “Put your head on my lap and brace your feet against the side of the carriage. That’ll cushion you a lot better—and I can keep you from being thrown onto the floor.”

  She considered the proposal for a moment—but not a long one. True, it was immodest, even perhaps improper. Despite their private discussions, she and Sforza were not formally betrothed. But Violetta had never cared that much for proper public opinion; better her reputation pick up a bruise or two than her whole body wind up black and blue.

  Her new posture was surprisingly relaxing, as well as more comfortable and safer. Within a few minutes, she was sound asleep.

  * * *

  She was awakened by the sound of cannon fire.

  “We’re here, girl. Welcome to your first battlefield,” said Carlo. There was a hint of humor in his voice. “Just hope it’s not your last.”

  Violetta sat up abruptly. “Oh, surely not!” she said. “This is so exciting!”

  * * *

  Her first impression was nothing much more than chaos and confusion in the distance. The carriage had come to rest atop a small knoll that gave a fairly good view of the confluence of the Adda and Po rivers, perhaps four hundred yards away. But while Violetta could see what was happening well enough, she had trouble making any sense of it.

  Fortunately, she had one of the world’s best let’s-make-sense-of-a-battlefield experts at her side.

  “My officers have done extremely well,” Carlo said with great satisfaction. “Just what I told them to do.” He pointed to the nearby river, which, here, was the Adda. “See how our troops have been forcing the Parmese down the bank? They’re using the spring and early summer muck along the river to tangle up the bastards. It’s hard to fight in those conditions. Instead of forming a solid bulwark behind you where you can make a stand, the river keeps betraying you.”

  As if to illustrate his point, Violetta saw a squad of Parmese soldiers slip into a pile by the riverbank, with several of them being forced into the water itself. They scrambled back onto land soon enough, but Violetta could just imagine how disheartening the experience must be—especially given that the rate of Milanese cannon fire being brought to bear on the soldiers half-trapped along the bank was almost astonishing. Violetta had known that Sforza was famous—notorious, among his enemies—for the superlative quality of his field artillery, but that knowledge had been abstract. This…

  Was anything but. Even at the distance she could see how terribly the cannonballs were careening through the Parmese ranks. A man was literally cut in half by one of those projectiles. She watched as the upper part of his body was sent pinwheeling through the sky, trailing and spewing about…

  Best not to dwell on that. Whether intentionally or not, Carlo distracted her at that moment, to her relief.

  “It’s just spring-summer muck,” he said, “mostly concentrated right by the river. So we’re still getting good grazing shots as long as the artillerymen do their job properly.”

  She saw that he was right. A “grazing shot” was a ball that struck the ground five to ten yards short of the enemy ranks. So long as the ground was solid, the ball would bounce rather than dig into the soil—and thus come smashing into the soldiers at roughly waist height. It was almost impossible to dodge from such shots, and a single ball could kill as many as a dozen soldiers.

  Again, abstract knowledge she’d had in her possession. What she hadn’t considered was, first, the sheer volume of noise produced by such cannon fire. It was hard to keep her mind concentrated instead of taking flight like a startled bird.

  And, second…she realized now that she’d never considered just how much blood was contained in a single human body, and what would be the effect on a battlefield of dozens—hundreds—of ruptured bodies. There seemed to be bright red paint everywhere she looked.

  Men screaming, too. Those sounds rose even above the cannon fire.

  “Are you all right?” Sforza asked. Turning her head, she saw that he was studying her intently. “A battlefield is difficult enough for even veterans to handle. You…”

  “I’m fine,” she said firmly. “A bit shaken, but…I can handle it. And if I’m to be the duchess of Milan, I had better be able to. No?”

  “Ah…Well, yes, that would be handy.” He gave her a quick, quite wolfish grin. Then he pointed further down the rivers—to the banks of the Po this time.

  “See that cluster of men?” he asked. “That’ll be Duke Umberto and what passes for his command cluster. Looking pretty ragged, aren’t they? By now, the bastards won’t be in much better shape than their sorry troops. A perfect target…”

  His gaze ranged across the landscape. “Don’t see them yet, though.”

  * * *

  Sforza couldn’t see Hakkonsen and his cavalrymen because Mongols—Icelanders, even more so, given the barren landscape of their island—were masters at using terrain to disguise their movements. The Po Valley was generally flat, but very few “flat” areas of the Earth really had no undulations at all. Erik and Bortai and their men had found a sunken road that was low enough, given its surrounding vegetation, to allow them to approach within two hundred yards of the Parmese forces without being spotted.

  Now, nestled out of sight in a small grove, Erik studied the enemy that was being hammered down the riverbank.

  “It won’t be long,” he said softly.

  Bortai’s expression was more skeptical. “The duke of Parma might be trying to rally his men—in which case he won’t show up until his troops have already overrun this position and we’ll have had to move.”

  E
rik’s smile was a very shallow thing. “We could make a bet on it, if you’d like. I’ll place three of my best horses down in a wild gamble that Duke Umberto is leading his men to the rear rather than rallying his rear guard. What say?”

  Bortai didn’t bother to dignify that proposal with a response.

  Arona, Duchy of Milan

  For once, the sight of Castello di Arona coming into view didn’t fill Lucia with disdain. Indeed, she was relieved to see it. If there was anywhere in the world she could restore her self-confidence and resolve, it was here. The buildings might be rundown, but what lurked in the cellars below was anything but that.

  Once she got out of the carriage and went inside—unusually, to her staff, making no criticism of any kind—she headed toward the entrance to the cellars, a gaggle of servants following in her wake.

  “I do not wish to be disturbed,” she said, making a dismissive motion with her hand. “Under no circumstances, is that understood?”

  Hastily bobbing heads indicated the staff’s full and complete comprehension of their mistress’s desire. Within seconds, none of the servants was still in sight.

  Lucia took down the heavy key to the cellars from its hiding place. In truth, it wasn’t much of a secret compartment. She’d never bothered to hide the key more thoroughly because the staff was frightened of those cellars and would hardly be likely to steal the key in order to explore them.

  And if they did, so what? A snake god would enjoy a little snack.

  * * *

  As ever, despite the many times she’d made this same journey, the descent into the cellars filled her with dread and unease. All the more so when she reached her destination and was terrified to see the huge face of the serpent looming out of the darkness. Even with the dim lighting produced by the lamp in her hand, the fury in that flat-headed visage was obvious.

  “They hurt me,” hissed the monster. Its jaws gaped wide, the fangs looking like so many swords. “It hurt.”

  If the creature blamed Lucia for that…

  More petrified than she’d ever been in her life, Lucia held completely still. She said nothing. What was there to say?

  To her relief, after perhaps half a minute Orkise pulled back its head. The jaws closed. “What do you want?”

  “To help you get your revenge,” Lucia said, thinking quickly. “It was outrageous, what they did!”

  A faint look of something like humor came to the serpent’s face. Something in the eyes, perhaps—the lips were hardly suited to expressions.

  “And what do you care about that?” it demanded derisively. The monster curled away and slid further into the cellars. “There’s nothing to do but wait,” Orkise said. “It’s still not warm enough out there.”

  “Wait?” She didn’t like the sound of that. Every day’s delay gave her enemies time to gather their strength. “How long?”

  “A week. Perhaps two. However long it takes. If I hadn’t been so cold, those cursed Knights never would have escaped. Not one of them.”

  Left bank of the Po River

  A few miles northwest of Cremona

  “Now,” said Erik.

  An instant later, the Mongol cavalrymen began swarming out of the grove of trees and the sunken road in which they’d been hiding. The terrain they now found themselves on was quite level—and, best of all, hadn’t been rained on for a couple of days. The ground was solid, firm, unobstructed by anything more substantial than grass and a few scattered shrubs—just the sort of footing that the Mongol horses preferred.

  They were small horses, though not ponies: a typical Mongolian horse weighed around six hundred pounds. They were not especially fast horses, either. Over a short distance, they could be outrun by many European mounts. But what the Mongolian horses lacked in size and speed, they made up for with extraordinary endurance. Horse racing was second only to wrestling as a Mongol sport, but the length of the races was far longer than Europeans were accustomed to—anywhere up to twenty miles. A Mongol horse could manage that distance without losing its wind, long after a European horse was too exhausted to continue.

  Relative speed mattered little at the moment, though. Erik hadn’t ordered the charge until Duke Umberto and his immediate cluster of officers and bodyguards were no more than one hundred and fifty yards away. It would take them about twenty seconds to get there—and once they’d gotten within fifty yards, they could start firing their bows.

  Twenty seconds is a long time for well-trained and alert soldiers to take good defensive positions against a cavalry attack. But Erik would have been willing to bet ten of his best horses that the group of men they were charging toward were neither alert to external threats—they’d be completely preoccupied with the quarrels and debates they were obviously embroiled in—nor well trained. “Well trained,” at least, in the sense of infantrymen who were accustomed to such maneuvers. Abstractly, the Parmese officers would know how to defend against a cavalry attack. But not more than a handful of them would have actually had to do so personally in years.

  In the event, Erik and Bortai and their Mongols had crossed half the distance before Umberto and his entourage began anything one could call a coordinated response. They only had ten seconds left—and only three or four before the arrows came slicing through their ranks.

  Not enough time. Not nearly enough time.

  * * *

  “Ha!” shouted Sforza, his fist clenched and raised above his head. “Ha! That drunken swine is a dead man!”

  Violetta had never seen any sort of cavalry charge in person, much less the exotic Mongolian version of the tactic. But even at the distance—this was all happening a good third of a mile away from their knoll—she could see that Carlo was probably right.

  * * *

  Soldiers accustomed to harquebuses and muskets tended to be derisive of bows and arrows. “Antique weapons.” But the truth was that at short range, bows in the hands of men who knew how to use them were deadly—and they had a much greater rate of fire than even the most skilled gun handler could manage. The real advantage of a gun over a bow on a battlefield was that it took years for a man to become truly proficient with a bow, where he could be trained to shoot a gun in only a few weeks.

  But these Mongols had been training for years; for their entire adult lifetime, in fact, since Mongol boys started learning mounted archery from a very young age.

  * * *

  By the time Erik and Bortai reached Umberto, half of the duke’s bodyguards and officers were either dead or badly wounded, and half of those who’d survived were galloping away in full retreat. The group that remained—perhaps a dozen men—were too confused and agitated to put up a coordinated defense. They were just milling around, waving their swords and shouting incoherently.

  Erik and Bortai ignored everyone but Umberto—who still hadn’t spotted them coming at him.

  Bortai drove her lance into the neck of the duke’s mount. The warhorse screamed, stumbled, and fell to the ground. It was Umberto’s turn to scream then. The duke favored a boot holster whose pistol grip rose just above his knee, which had been trapped between the falling horse and the weapon. The knee was broken so badly he would never have been able to walk well again.

  Not that it mattered. Erik was already on the ground, kneeling next to the duke. A quick smash with the head of his hatchet stunned Umberto. It took no more than a handful of seconds to sever the head. Then—

  Sforza hadn’t specified which hand he wanted. Probably he’d have preferred the right, but that had been trapped under the horse as well.

  The left would do. Erik was not sentimental about such things and he’d be surprised if a condottiere of Sforza’s stature and experience would be either.

  Standing up with a trophy in each hand, Erik saw that Bortai was already holding a sack open for them. As he dropped them in, glancing around, he saw that the little cavalry battle—skirmish, really—was already over. What few Parmese had survived were now also racing off.

  A nice day�
��s work, if he said so himself.

  Which he saw no reason not to. “A nice day’s work.”

  “Stop bragging,” said Bortai.

  * * *

  It took a bit of effort for Violetta and Duke Cosimo to persuade Sforza to forego a pursuit of the now hastily retreating Parmese army. The Milanese condottiere was like a tiger smelling blood. That retreat—it had hardly any leadership at all!—could be easily turned into a rout. And the slaughter that could be inflicted on a routed enemy was something no professional soldier wanted to relinquish, unless he knew for a certainty that he’d never have to face that enemy again.

  But Orkise was still lurking somewhere. With Umberto dead, there was no chance Parma wouldn’t sue for peace. Without Parma still in the war, the Imolan Viscount Lippi Pagano would also seek a settlement—just something face-saving—and not even Malatesta would be foolish enough to continue the conflict under those circumstances. “Lord of Rimini, Forli, Cesena, Pesaro, Marquis of Ravenna, and Protector of Romagna” was a splendid-sounding list of titles, but on his own, Malatesta would be no match for Sforza’s Milan, and even that arrogant bastard understood as much.

  “I’ll still take Cremona!” Sforza insisted. “I need a good estate for my maimed officer, and there’ll be several for him to choose from in Cremona.”

  Duke Cosimo made a little placating gesture with his hand. “Yes, of course. Cremona’s but a few miles away and the garrison won’t put up any resistance. By all means incorporate the city and its hinterland into the Duchy of Milan. Who’s going to resist? Umberto’s ghost?”

  Violetta said nothing. She was still preoccupied with digesting everything she’d seen that day. Many lessons had been there to learn.

  Perhaps the greatest lesson, she thought, was that an army was made up of men, not toy soldiers or stick figures seen at a distance. A great deal of the reason Sforza was such a formidable adversary was the way he trained his men and chose his officers. It wasn’t simply that the man was a superb tactician on a battlefield. He also, except possibly when he faced Ferrara, had the best army on the field. Officers and men he could count on to implement his brutal, ruthless tactics…and, most of all, press on, press on, press on. Carlo and his troops had never relented that day. Not once, that she’d been able to see.