Burdens of the Dead

by Mercedes Lackey

  The drunk was vague as to when, but it had been recently. “I thought she was going to open the gateway to hell for me. What do you want to find her for, mister? Now, you got the price of a drink about you?”

  Antimo gave him some coppers, enough for the sort of wine he was drinking. So why did he want to find her? And just who was she?

  Antimo knew magic existed. He knew that there were forces above and beyond the natural. He had just spent his life avoiding thinking about them. Part of his mind knew already what he was dealing with, he just wasn’t quite ready to actually acknowledge what it was. So he went on looking for a mundane and prosaic answer to the conundrum that was the tall woman and her red-eared dogs in the night-time city.

  * * *

  Hekate watched. She watched the happenings of the city. She watched some of the wider world, now, more aware of it than she had been in millennia.

  She, naturally, saw her believers. They were few, it was true, but the old strength began to flow in her. She saw Antimo searching for her. So: he had come back.

  The disturbing thing for the goddess of the crossroads was that he did not seek her as a devotee. He searched for her as man might for a woman.

  She was Hekate. Goddess of the Crossroads, Opener of Gateways, Lady of the Night, Mistress of the Hunt, She who watched over birthing of children. She was the guardian of passages, whether it was of children as they passed from one world into this one, or as the one who opened the way below as mortals passed again through the gates between life and death.

  She had also once been a woman. She had loved as a woman—and she had been a woman hurt and betrayed by her lover. He had taken their children as hostages, killed one and destroyed her gate.

  He’d never wanted anything but conquest, she now understood. She would not go down that road again.

  But she watched Antimo Bartelozzi. Now that she was regaining some of her old power, that was not hard.

  If she’d watched the Earth-Shaker like that, instead of like a besotted fool, she would have know how false he was to her, and to Amphitre. And what he did to Caeneus.

  Her dogs, however, wanted to talk to Antimo. She was a goddess, and a goddess forgets her dignity and what is due her at her peril.

  Eventually, he followed the fitting forms. A libation spilled out at the crossroads. She could hardly not answer that. But he did not ask for guidance, as her dogs rubbed up against him and he petted them. Instead, he looked directly into her eyes and spoke, earnestly, as if to an equal, not a goddess.

  “I had almost given up on finding you. Hekate, you must get out of here.”

  She stiffened. No one told her that she must do anything. She was a goddess! Who was this mortal man to order her about as if she was some mortal wench with no sense of her own safety, or her own power?

  “I think not.”

  His face showed his distress, and his words came in tones of entreaty. “They’re already attacking women because they look ‘foreign.’ And when the city falls, they’ll attack them because they look Greek. You have to leave. I can arrange it.”

  “I need no protection.”

  “Soon you won’t be able to leave,” he said, pleading, even desperate.

  “I go where and when I will. If I choose to leave, none will hinder my passing.”

  And to prove her point, she drew the cloak of night around her, and called her dogs and walked away.

  * * *

  Antimo Bartelozzi looked around in the darkness for a while; wondering, not for the first time, what had got into him and why he should care about her—and just who, exactly, he was dealing with. Eventually he gave up and began preparing for his move to Pera. He hoped that he had not wasted too much time here in Constantinople. He didn’t want to be inside the city when the fleet got here.

  He found a ferryman to row him over the Golden Horn in the morning. “They say that Callipolis has fallen!” said the oarsman. “You’re lucky to get me. I’m taking my boat upriver and going visit my cousin Thanni later this week.”

  Antimo made no comment. That was best. But he wondered if the man had a week. Enrico Dell’este took his method of battle from working iron. Strike fast and repeatedly while the metal is yet hot. Constantinople was going to be a dangerous place again today. There was going to be more trouble for the remaining Latins. They’d been rounding them up again yesterday, and not even money was saving them.

  He still worried about Hekate, even if logic said that she had refused every attempt he made to help, and that she plainly wielded some very powerful magic.

  By afternoon he was quietly making his way north, away from Pera and heading for a village some five miles away.

  He could see the Prince’s island from here, and a column of smoke rising. The metal was hot. The blows would fall.

  Chapter 32

  Constantinople

  The galliots and horse transports sailed past the slowly forming-up fleet, heading on toward the mouth of the Bosphorus. Another group was heading southwest to make and hold a landing there.

  “Right. Have we all got this clear?”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather ride?” said Captain Terrano, grinning. It was the time for nervous jokes. None of this group of veterans had any delusions about Benito choosing to ride anything. It was afternoon already, with the lowering sun casting long shadows on the water.

  “Do you want to swim that badly?” growled Benito. “Otherwise you can help with the palisade sections. Or I’ll make you carry hay.”

  That was a dire threat. The hay bales were oil-soaked and stank.

  They were out of effective cannon-range when they made the landing. That did not stop the cannon on the walls of Pera-fortress from being fired. They could hear the distant boom, and whistle of the stone balls and see the billows of smoke—at least until a far louder boom echoed across the water from the lead great galley in the Venetian fleet. The Genovese and Aragonese fired their ship-cannon too, ineffectually and without anything like the sort of vast flash and smoke that came from the Venetian galley.

  By the time the fifth great galley fired its 48 pound bombard, a fifth of Constantinople’s citizenry were standing on the walls. Benito could hear their jeering from a couple of miles off. And with each shot, that had absolutely no effect but to wreath the vessels in smoke and provide a noisy show of pyrotechnics, their mocking got louder. Even on the walls of Pera, and of the Galatea tower, there was limited attention paid to a possible landing to the north. To the southwest, the same was happening, but with Aragonese Knights and Genovese Marines.

  At the beach, which had been so carefully sounded by Antimo in the guise of fishing off a local dingy, the vessels swung sharply for the shore, the rowers giving their all. The horse transports—basically little more than flat barges with oarsmen—led, and struck the sand.

  “Charge!”

  The horse transports allowed the handful of knights and light cavalry to sortie through the shallows and up onto the beach. The Byzantine knights who had been riding along keeping watch on the vessels were still trying to get down to the beach, when the weight of the charge got to them.

  For once the battle plan did not go horribly wrong. Byzantine cavalry was no match for the heavier Italian knights. They sounded their horns calling for support. Which of course came sortie-ing out of Pera. A troop of Dacian mercenaries—light cavalry, but outnumbering the Venetian horsemen.

  In the meanwhile, out in the bay before the walls of Constantinople, the pyrotechnic display had now turned and was sailing south.

  The specialists Benito had hired had done their work well. When the traveling firework maker from far off Hind had found his way to Corfu, Benito had thought that there might be war-purpose in his flashy rockets. Unfortunately they were very inaccurate.

  But a delight to watch.

  The marines waited behind the hastily set up pre-built sections of palisade pushed onto the beach, not watching the light and smoke show from the Venetian fleet. As the sortie ch
ased the knights and their light cavalry outriders back toward the palisade, they lit the hay bales and used the small trebuchet to toss them about the area. It was smoky and chaotic looking. The knights reached the palisade gate, which was opened. In they charged, and straight back into the water and onto their transports. The Dacian mercenaries and the few remaining Byzantines charged the half closed gate…which opened.

  There was lots of smoke and dust and shots fired.

  * * *

  From his observation post on the hill Antimo could see dust and smoke. And then galliots and horse transports pulling away from the shore, and the palisade burning as the mounted troops retreated from it.

  Out in the bay, the light-show continued.

  The Dacians had obviously taken some captives. They had hauled a cart from the palisade, and they were herding prisoners onto it, and heading back, cheering and blackened, toward the gates of Pera.

  * * *

  Lying in the cart, bumping along with the two small cannon and the other “loot,” Benito wondered if maybe they should have saved a little hay. Or if maybe he should learn to ride properly. Force of circumstances had made him better at it. But Marco had merely to take a few lessons to ride like a gentleman born. Benito still looked like a peasant on a stolen pony. He wouldn’t fool anyone.

  Dacians were not popular. The eastern postern gate opened for them all the same, but all the duty officer wanted to know was where Captain Nelbaskortious and his cuirassiers were.

  “They took off after some of the Venetian knights who didn’t make it back to their boats,” answered the leader of the Dacians, in heavily accented Greek.

  “Well, get back to your barracks. You have prisoners?”

  “Our prisoners. Our slaves. No officers. Half dead anyway.”The leader of the Dacians had a fierce look on his face.

  The duty officer wasn’t looking for a fight. “They’ll be wanted for questioning,” he said placatingly.

  “We drink first. Then I send to Commander Haberdegiou.”

  “I can have some of my men take them.”

  “Nu! Our captives. Our honor.”

  The duty officer sighed. He’d swear he’d never seen this particular hairy barbarian before. “Go on. See you have them at the Galatea tower in the next hour.”

  The tired-looking grimy mercenaries got little further notice for their efforts, which was just how they wanted it. They proceeded to ride on toward their supposed barracks.

  At least as far as the first corner.

  There they turned a sharp right and headed toward the inner wall and the Galatea tower.

  The guard commander on the inner gate was a mere sergeant and mercenary too. Half the Byzantine force were mercenaries, Slavs and Bulgars, Armenians and tribesmen from Asia minor. Byzantium offered citizens the chance to pay someone to serve for them.

  The problem with that system is that while mercenaries don’t mind being paid to serve, they’re not at all keen on being paid to die. And if someone were willing to pay them more…

  A cavalry captain for instance could earn twenty thousand ducats by changing sides. It was the common practice to hire a captain and his company, and not to recruit individual mercenaries. So if a captain changed sides, he took his men with him.

  “Where are you going?” demanded the sergeant

  “Orders from fool captain on the gate,” said Captain Terraso, peering out from under the rim of his Dacian helmet. The original owner of the helmet was now at sea on a Venetian galley. “Take the prisoners to Commander Haberdegiou.”

  “Not all of you!” said the guard sergeant.

  “All!” insisted Terraso. “All need honor. We beat up Venetians!”

  “Where are you from? You don’t sound like a Dacian.”

  Which might not have been a clever thing to say as a number of the mercenaries had edged closer and were now surrounding him and his four men. He died without getting an answer. One of the others did scream, briefly.

  The new gate guard of the inner gate was a lot more numerous. Still, subduing them didn’t take long at all. The survivors were left in the care of tmen who’d been slightly wounded in the fight. The rest of Benito’s marines headed onward and upward toward the Galatea tower.

  The tower was at the highest and the strongest point of Pera on the wall away from the sea. It was intended to be a crucial defensive point against any land-based attack, and a deterrent and a point of fire to prevent a repeat of the Rus attack of 870 on Byzantium where they’d avoided the great chain by portage.

  It had an outer gate. A well-guarded double outer gate with two gate towers and a second inner gate.

  The tower also had a back entrance, with a somewhat less effective door and a portcullis, giving access to the citadel.

  They didn’t try to take that en masse—although the two cannon were ready, back in the shadows, as was the charge. Instead, Benito and three of his best knife-men were led up to the door by a mere half dozen “Dacian” mercenaries.

  “Venetian captives for Commander Haberdegiou!” sung out Terraso, proudly.

  The Byzantine guard looked out of his peephole at the small, scruffy group standing in the flare of the brand at the door. “I’ll send someone to see if the Tourmarches Haberdegiou will see you.” His snotty tone suggested they should have washed and polished their armor first.

  None-the-less, the door was opened shortly, by a squad of far smarter looking foot-soldiers ready to accompany them. Their sergeant decided that he wanted to spit in Benito’s face.

  Matters got very ugly, briefly.

  Fortunately, the screams were a long way below the battlements where the commander and most of his officers were enjoying the show out in the bay. The very loud and spectacular show.

  The rest of the “Dacians” filed hastily, but without any unseemly running into the tower, and then closed the door and dropped the portcullis.

  * * *

  Out in absolute darkness on the crowded vessels the cream of Ferrara and Aragon’s knights and a lot of anxious seamen edged their way toward the beach that the Venetians had “retreated” from earlier. There were a good hundred men on the beach already, and they had been hard at work, constructing leading bonfires. But they hadn’t lit them.

  Everything had to wait on cannon fire from inside Pera.

  The nervous wait nearly ended badly. The clatter of riders brought weapons to the ready. “It’s us, you fools,” said someone in Frankish. “The Valdosta says to light the fires. We didn’t even have to use the cannons. We hold the gates and the access to the walls.”

  Soon troops were pouring onto the beach, heading for Pera in a solid, dark mass, with the duke of Ferrara at their head.

  Unopposed, the column marched in through the military sally port of the Galatea tower. Benito had had his men strip off their Byzantine gear by then. They hadn’t needed the cannon. There were nearly two thousand invaders inside the city of Pera before more fighting even occurred. And that was with a badly outnumbered patrol, intended to keep the peace in a military citadel, not deal with an invasion.

  Falkenberg had once told Benito that more castles fell by treachery than siege, and Benito had never forgotten it. And anyway, it had been the first thing his grandfather had suggested.

  * * *

  The morning saw a very surprised Constantinople wake to the sight of the flags of Genoa, Venice and Aragon flying over their fortress, and the chain no longer protecting the far less well-built city wall along the Golden Horn.

  But their surprise was less than that of the Megas Droungarios, the Grand Admiral of the Byzantine central fleet, as the Venetians and Genovese vessels attacked his fleet. The Greek admiral has thought his ships safely at anchor in the Golden Horn, protected by the great chain and the cannon on the walls of Constantinople and the citadel of Pera.

  The great bombards they’d laughed at yesterday were being set up today on the horse transports behind wicker gabions filled with earth. Horse transports were, after all, litt
le more than big barges, quite large and stable enough to sustain the effects of being firing platforms, and anchored in shallow water, where, if they sank, they could be hauled out, to continue to fulfil their true purpose—blasting holes in the smaller walls facing onto the Golden Horn.

  And that too was merely one of the plans the Old Fox, Venice, and Benito had engineered.

  PART V

  January, 1541 A.D.

  Chapter 33

  Vilna

  The roving eye of Chernobog slid across the strange landscapes of other planes of existence, whose geography bore but tenuous links to that of the world where Jagiellon was on the throne of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Great distances became small and some small distances, great.

  She was watching him. No longer weeping—and not so weak. An old goddess, just as he was an old daemon. She drew on worship for power. He drew on other things, not least the life-force of his host. He slipped past and upward into his host-spy, one of the beardless ones of Constantinople’s civic administration.

  What he discovered did not please him at all.

  Cannon fire did not worry Chernobog. The sound of it, and the smoke, were quite pleasing to him.

  But it had no place here and now. It did not fit in with his plans, not with the fleet he was building icebound in the Dnieper, and the Golden Horde not coming south in a conquering wave, but fighting a civil war. A civil war that in winter consisted of sitting in their gers.

  He walked the eunuch, jerkily, toward the windows of the palace of Mangana. His eyes saw precisely what he should not see, over to the north of the city of all places—The Lion of St. Mark, and other emblems, flying above the fortress to the north.

  The fleet he had not expected here until, at the earliest, spring-time. He knew just what the Lion of St. Mark had deployed against him. He could no more believe this was mere human work any more than he could accept that the Lion was willing to be confined to the ancient marshes of Eturia.

  He was interrupted in his staring through inadequate human eyes by a tall dark-haired woman, accompanied by two red-eared dogs. She clutched the old bone harpoon, and raised it.