by Mary Gentle
She spoke so closely on the heels of Floria’s words that she eradicated them. De la Marche and Ternant began to look up with cautious enthusiasm.
“We hold out,” Ash said again. “Because the longer we can do it – the longer Dijon stands – then the weaker Gelimer looks. Day by day by day. He’s made us a public test of his strength. The weaker he looks, the more chance of Louis or Frederick breaking their treaties and attacking him without warning. The more chance of the Sultan deciding to invade, without warning. Once that happens – once it does turn into a three-cornered fight – then we’ve got options again. We can get you out of here. We can hide you.”
“Get you to a foreign court,” the Earl of Oxford put in.
Ash let go of Floria’s hands. She reached out and picked the horn cross from the woman’s breast, the antler chill under her fingers.
“If it comes to it,” she said softly, “and they kill you outside of Dijon, but they’re occupied with a full-on war, then the Burgundians can hold another Hunt. It doesn’t matter who’s Duke or Duchess, so long as somebody’s there. Someone who can stop the Faris.”
Ash could see on Olivier de la Marche’s face that he took it for a hard piece of military realism. Florian snorted.
“You always did have odd priorities! I want to stay alive. But you’re right, they could hunt,” she said, “and there would be someone to stop the Wild Machines.”
I would sooner have you alive.
It caught under her breastbone, a pain as sharp as sheered ribs. Ash stared at the woman – dishevelled, insouciant; not one word in five weeks of refusal to take on the appalling responsibility of the Duchy. And in five weeks I haven’t seen you drunk.
Ash said quietly, “We’ve got a chance. Other enemies for the Visigoths mean other allies for us. The Faris can die on a field of battle just as easily as Jack Peasant can. If the Visigoth army is defeated by someone else, we fight back, go south, destroy Carthage, destroy the machina rei militaris – destroy the Wild. Machines.”
“Blow them up!” Floria said. “If it takes all the powder in Christendom!”
“All we have to do, now, is hold Dijon.” Ash grinned at her; at them all. Cynicism, black humour, desperation, and excitement: all clear on her scarred face.
“Hold Dijon,” she repeated. “Just a little bit longer. Against Gelimer and all his legions. It’s a war of nerves. All we have to do is hold out long enough.”
III
A bare five days later, the legions of the King-Caliph marched up from the south to Dijon.
The torches and campfires of the Visigoth armies surrounded the city with an unbroken rim of flame. Ash, on the battlements of the company’s tower, peered out into a frost-bitter and utterly clear night. The moon, three days past the full, illuminated every bare yard of earth out to the enemy trenches and barricades, every tent-peak and eagle and standard in their camp—
Where they sleep, warm and fed. Or fed, anyway.
—and every patrolling guard squad.
She went down, snatching an hour’s sleep between briefings with her Burgundian command-group; was back up on the roof at false dawn.
Rickard came up, bringing her nettles brewed into small beer – Henri’s current substitute for wine - and sat with her, bundled into Robert Anselm’s great cloak, trying not to show how much his teeth chattered.
“Let ’em come, right, boss?”
Ash hauled her coney-fur-lined gown tighter over her mail. Hunger was a dull ache in her gut. “You got it. Let ’em make the worst mistake they’ve ever made.”
With dawn, a killing frost fell. A lone bell rang out for the hour of Terce.11
“There.” Rickard freed an arm from the thick woollen cloak to point.
Breath misted the air in front of her face. The skin of her face was numb. Ash peered off the tower into the clear, freezing light that fell from the east: let her gaze swing around over the Visigoth camp: the movement of men around the tents, turf huts, fire-pits, and trenches, until she saw where Rickard pointed.
“They’re early,” she commented. “My lord of Oxford underestimated them.”
Pray God that’s his only mistake.
Men were running, in the freezing morning; Visigoth serf-troops piling out of their barrack-tents, the sun glinting off the scale armour of the cataphracts, spear-points glinting; the harsh bellow of horns and clarions ringing out across the chill earth. She shaded her eyes from the fierce rising white sun, wondering if somewhere in that moving mass the Faris woke, walked, gave orders, sat alone.
Within a very few minutes the Visigoth troops were formed up in legionary squares, the eagles of the XIV Utica and VI Leptis Parva way beyond bow and cannon range of the walls of Dijon, all along the road. The wind brought distant horns. Ash watched as the road up from the south filled with men marching, black standards and eagles catching the light, and below the flags the helmets of hundreds of soldiers, and ahead of them all the ceremonial bronze-armoured war-chariot of the King-Caliph.
Ash nodded to herself, watching a banner with a silver portcullis on a black field come into sight. Carthage’s twilight walls pressured her memory. Her bowels churned uncomfortably.
“There you go, Rickard. That’s the King-Caliph’s household guard. And the Legio III Caralis … can’t see the other one…” Ash put her arm around the boy’s cloaked shoulder. “And that’s Gelimer’s personal banner, there – and there’s the Faris’s. Right. Now we wait, while the pot comes to the boil.”
Two hours later, Ash fell asleep sitting upright in the main hall.
One oak chest remained, tucked into the side of the big hearth against the wall. She sat on it, in full armour, hearing the Burgundian centeniers, each in turn; and then her own lance-leaders and their men. Willem Verhaecht and Thomas Rochester, Euen Huw and Henri Brant, Ludmilla Rostovnaya and Blanche and Baldina. Processing problems. Where exhaustion slowed her mind, instinct and experience took over.
She fell asleep leaning into the hearth corner, upright, in full armour, in the middle of a briefing. Dimly, she heard the plates of her harness scrape against stone; it was not enough to wake her. The banked fire glowed, giving warmth to one side of her face.
She was still aware, as from a long way away, of the laconic voices of exhausted men, dropping kit on their palliasses and slumping down; hoping for sleep to do away with hunger. And of Anselm’s voice bellowing up from the courtyard: holding close-quarter weapons drill. Some part of her still ran through Angelotti’s and Jussey’s calculations of remaining ammunition: bolts, arrows, arquebus- and cannon-balls.
Even held by the paralysis of sleep, some part of her still remained on guard.
She had a moment to realise It’s because I don’t want to dream. I don’t want to hear Godfrey, it’s too hard when I can’t talk to him. Because the Visigoths can ask the Stone Golem what I say. Because the Wild Machines will hear, even if they don’t speak… Then she fell into sleep as if down a dark well, and a heartbeat later hands were shaking her by the pauldrons and she moved a sleep-sticky mouth and looked up into the face of Robert Anselm.
“Wha—?”
“I said, you should have seen it!”
The line of sun from the arrow-slit windows lay much further across the floorboards. Ash blinked, said grittily, “Give me a report, Robert,” and reached out as Rickard handed her a costrel of water.
“We’ve had a parley come out from the rag-head camp.” Robert Anselm squatted down in front of the chest she sat on. “You should have seen it! Six fucking golem-messengers, each with a banner. A fucking dwarf drummer. And one poor sod with a white flag walking up to the north-west gate between them, praying our grunts weren’t trigger-happy, and shouting for a parley.”
“Who was it?”
“Mister Expendable,” Robert Anselm said, with a smile at once wolfish and sympathetic. “What did you think, girl, Gelimer himself? No way. They sent Agnes.”
Caught by surprise, Ash snickered. “Yeah, I can see Lamb w
etting himself with that one. Remind me to make that man an offer if the situation changes. Tell him if he hires on with Florian, I won’t give him all the shitty jobs! When was this? Why do they want a parley? What’s the result?”
“About an hour ago.” Robert Anselm’s hazel eyes gleamed, under arming cap, and sallet. “The result is, Doc Florian wants to go out and talk to them.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind!”
The Burgundian knights and nobles in Floria’s chamber glared at Ash; she ignored both them, and Olivier de la Marche’s covert, relieved look of approval.
“Someone has to tell her,” the Duchess’s deputy murmured.
“If you set one foot outside the walls, I don’t care if you’ve got Mehmet’s five hundred Turks up your arsehole, you are a dead woman. Don’t you understand me?”
Floria del Guiz held her crown between her hands, turning it, fingers stroking the contours of the carved white horn: She raised her eyes to Ash.
“Get a grip,” she advised.
“‘Get a grip’? You get a fucking grip!” Ash clenched her fists. “You listen to me, Florian. The Wild Machines have to kill you, and they know it. If Gelimer’s still taking the Stone Golem’s tactical advice, that’s what it’ll be telling him. If he isn’t, he still has to kill you – you’re Burgundy: if he kills you, the war in the north fizzles out, the rest of Christendom starts saying ‘yes, boss,’ again, and the Turks look for a peace treaty!”
In the background she was aware of de la Marche and the council nodding agreement; John de Vere exchanging a quiet comment with one of his brothers.
“You know what I’d do, if I were Gelimer,” Ash continued softly. “Once I had you in the open outside these walls, I’d open up with the guns and siege-machines and wipe you off the map. You and anybody else at the parley. I wouldn’t care if it meant wiping my own guys out too. Then I’d apologise to the Sultan for killing his Turks – an ‘unfortunate accident’. Because with you gone, and Europe solid, there’s a two-to-one chance Mehmet will decide it’s not the time for a war just yet. I’m telling you, you go out there and you’re dead. And then there’s nothing to stop the Wild Machines, nothing at all!”
The overcast sky glimmered pale grey through the glass. Shifting cloud disclosed a white disc of sun, no stronger than the full moon. Floria del Guiz continued to turn the horn crown between her strong, dirty fingers. Exhaustion marked her, as if two thumbs of candle-black had been smeared under her eyes.
“Now you listen,” she said. “I’ve spoken to this council, and to my lord Oxford, and now I’ll tell you. We have no food. We’ve got sickness: dysentery, maybe plague. We’ve got a city full of starving people. I’m going to hold a parley with the Visigoths. I’m going to negotiate their release.”
Ash jerked a thumb at the world beyond the window. “So they can starve out there with the other refugees?”
“I’m not a Duchess, I’m a doctor!” Floria snapped. “I didn’t ask for this crown but I’ve got it. So I have to do something. The hospices are full; the abbot of St Stephen’s was here in tears two hours ago. There aren’t enough priests to pray for the sick. I took an oath, Ash! First of all, do no harm. I’m going to get the civilians out of this siege before we have an epidemic.”
“I doubt it. Gelimer’s going to be happy enough if we die of disease.”
“Shit!” Floria swore, swung around and began to pace up and down the chamber, kicking the hem of her gown out of the way: a tall, dirty scarecrow of a woman, noticeably thinner now than when they had ridden in the wildwood. She scowled, gold brows lowering. “You’re right. Of course you’re right. Ash, there has to be some way we can do this. If there’s a parley, at least they’re not attacking us. It gains time. Therefore, we have to agree to it.”
“We might. You don’t. You hunted the hart, remember?”
Glancing around the chamber, Ash noted Richard Faversham among her own men; the English deacon’s face shrunken, under his black beard. His eyes burned. He was nodding.
Floria said, “But Gelimer specifies, if I’m not present, there’s to be no parley.”
John de Vere said, into the silence, “Hold a parley, madam, but make sure King-Caliph Gelimer himself is present at it as well as yourself. They then cannot use their siege-engines or guns.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. If I were him, I’d get there, then leg it, and let the artillery take care of it.” Ash slid her hand down to the scabbard of her sword, for comfort. “Florian’s right about one thing. We do need the delay. Once they start any serious assault, it’s going to show up how low we are on ammunition and men. Okay…”
Floria shrugged. “I’ll find a way to do this, Ash. Never mind the hart. Where can we hold a parley?”
“On a bridge?” John de Vere offered. “Are all the bridges down? That would be neutral territory.”
“No!” Olivier de la Marche growled, “No!”
“Madness, my lord!” Philippe Ternant cried. “We know what treachery bridges can bring. The late Duke’s grandfather, Duke John, was treacherously slain on a bridge during a truce, by the whoreson French.12 They cut off his right hand! It was most vile!”
“Ah.” De Vere’s pale brows went up. He said mildly, “Not a bridge, then.”
Ash converted a laugh into a cough. “Where, then? Not in the open. Even if Gelimer was there, it would still be too easy to load up one of their Greek Fire throwers, and get us before we could get back inside the city walls.”
A silence: in which the knots in the firewood cracked as the fire burned down. A cold draught breathed down through the chimney, despite the fire.
Robert Anselm laughed. Ash looked across at him.
“Spit it out. You got something?”
Anselm looked first at her, and then at de Vere; and rose to his feet. Standing, stubbled head gleaming, he said, “You want somewhere that isn’t in the open, boss, don’t you.”
Colonel Bajezet said something to the interpreter. Before the Voynik could translate, Robert Anselm was nodding.
“Yeah, your lads did that in the Morea a couple of times. Built a tiny fort out in no-man’s-land and had both sides meet inside. If anyone started a fight, everyone got killed.” Anselm hunched his shoulders. “Won’t work, Basi. They could still get us on the way there, or the way back.”
The Turk raised his hands. “Plan, what?”
“Meet ’em underground. In a sap.”
“In a—” Ash stopped. Robert Anselm looked her straight in the eye. He did not smell of wine, or the fermented rubbish Henri Brant’s cooks had concocted from pig-garbage. He stood with his head up.
Ash thought, Is that de Vere, his old Lancastrian boss? Or has he finally decided to get his finger out on my behalf? Either way, if he has, do I care?
Yes. I care. I’d rather he’d done it for me.
It’s me that’s putting other people’s lives in his hands.
“A sap,” she repeated. “You think we should meet the Visigoths in a tunnel.”
This time it was de Vere who laughed; and his brother Dickon with him. Viscount Beaumont said cheerfully, in English, “And I suppose we ask them to hold the negotiations until we have dug one, Master Anselm?”
Anselm put his hand back on his sword pommel. He glanced at Ash. She nodded.
“Gelimer wouldn’t risk artillery. Collapse a tunnel—” Anselm smacked his palm down: flat for illustration. “Everybody’s dead. Start a fight in one, and you got a bloodbath. Same thing. Everybody dies; no one can be sure they’d survive – that includes Gelimer. Take the Colonel’s Turks down with us, and I reckon that’d swing it.”
There was a buzz of discussion. Ash watched Robert Anselm, without speaking. He watched her, and not John de Vere. She slowly nodded.
“But not Florian. Me, de la Marche, anyone; not Florian. Or—” she brightened. “Not the first time. That’s what we tell Gelimer. It’s what, now, the twenty-third? We can spin this out for three or four days, past Christ’s Mass
. That’s more time; it’s all more time … if we make him think Florian will come out if we can get negotiations started…”
Florian interrupted her thinking aloud. “If it were you out there, you’d attack. To hurry the parley up.”
“Gelimer will do that anyway. We’re going to lose people.” Ash’s grim expression faded to amazement as she looked back at Anselm. “A sap. It won’t work, Roberto, we don’t have time to send a mine out from the walls.”
“Don’t need to. I know where there’s one of theirs, that we counter-mined. Under the White Tower. You remember, girl. It’s the one Angelotti’s lads cleared out with a bear.”
De la Marche looked aghast; the Earl of Oxford spluttered his watered wine back into his cup; Floria whooped. “You never told me this! A bear?”
“It was two or three days after the hunt.” Ash grimaced. “Before we would have thought of bear-steak. There was a bear left in Charles’s menagerie.”
Robert Anselm took it up. “Angelotti’s lads heard the Visigoths mining towards the wall. The rag-heads were tunnelling under the wall, propping it up with wood. They were going to set fire to the props and bring the city wall down when they collapsed. Angelotti’s engineers dug a counter-mine, and we opened it into their tunnel one day, and the following night, when they were in it, the gunners got the bear out of the menagerie.”
Ash frowned, trying to remember. “It wasn’t just a bear, was it…?”
“They got a couple of bee-hives out of the abbot’s gardens as well. They put the bear down into the tunnel,” Robert Anselm said, “and they dropped the bee-hives down after, and shut the end of the counter-mine up fucking quick.”
Floria’s face contorted, obviously visualising men, darkness, bees; an animal maddened by stings. “Christ!”
Her exclamation was drowned out by laughter from the men-at-arms.
“We did see ’em come up out of the other end pretty damn fast!” Anselm confessed. “And the bear. And the bees. They closed their end up, but they ain’t been down there since! We could open that up. Clear out the bodies.”