The dawn had just broken, but already her bare wrists and ankles were sheened with sweat. Her riding skirt hung still in the stagnant air. In spite of the heat, she regretted not wearing her armor. This close to the city, she felt naked, unguarded. This day would be humiliating enough.
It was the commune that was surrendering, not her, and yet she had lost. She had not gotten inside the city’s walls. She had not claimed Siena for her own.
She had failed to rewrite the terms of her war. She was still as she had started.
Her courser fought with his reins, tucking his head back and forth. He had stood at bay in lines like this before, always before a battle. He expected a fight at any moment. His agitation only increased as the Sienese approached. Fia could not even cuff him for fear that he would take that as a signal to charge.
She knew how he felt.
The delegation was not the most impressive she’d seen. Some of the Sienese wore armor, but no one at the front. The lead man was dressed as unwarlike a nobleman as she had ever seen. His hood and draped mantle matched his red beard, but his tunic was striped gold and orange. His pointed violet shoes must have taken special assistance to mount.
She nudged her mount forward. One hand was on her commander’s baton, and the other on her sword. The delegation’s leader met her gaze, but then looked among the rest of the assembled officers. “Which of you is Temur Antonov?”
Fia just resisted the impulse to snarl. “Captain Antonov declined to join you today.” Antonov had surprised Fia by for once taking the initiative. He had offered to lead the army now pivoting against John Hawkwood and his Company of Saint George.
Hawkwood was finally coming. A day ago, her pioneers had clashed with his. He was moving on the Sienese countryside, burning and pillaging just like her. He was moving steadily now, and toward her.
The Sienese man’s nose curled. He looked her up and down, and she could not tell whether his disgust stemmed from the fact that she led the Cult of Saint Renatus or that she was a woman. This time, she let the snarl through. She had spent her whole life surmounting naked slights like these.
The company’s terms had been agreed on days ago and signed the night before. This was only to be a final signing, a ritual wax seal on her and the Sienese’s mutual humiliation. Those of the company who remained here were a facade, a show of strength to discourage last minute betrayal. The bulk of her company, and all those companies who remained with her, had turned about and gone to meet Hawkwood.
The Sienese were to deliver hundreds of horses, all that remained within the city, as well as wine, dried fruit, mules, bolts of canvas, timber, salt, over a hundred moggias of grain, crossbow bolts and arrows, and box upon box of gold florins. All supplies and booty that, under any other circumstances, Fia would have been thrilled to have. The Sienese were now paying them too, to hold off the Company of Saint George. The Sienese were terrified of John Hawkwood and his grudge against their commune. They had nothing left to pay Hawkwood when he too came for them.
It was midday by the time the treasure trains departed Siena’s gates. Fia stayed long enough to see the first few carts unloaded, and then left Szarvasi Janos in charge of delivering the loot to her company’s treasure train. No doubt Janos would contrive to slip some of the most valuable loot to himself. On another day, she might have cared.
She had miles yet to go. She should have traveled with escorts, but she did not announce her departure, and no one immediately ventured to follow. All of them but her had choreographed roles. The company had hacked their way through the surrounding forests, left trails for carts, but such hasty work couldn’t make clean footing. Her horse picked its way around ruts and dips.
Her inner voice had not spoken since it confessed to trying to make her a martyr. Now that she was alone, her inner voice decided it had a lot to say.
What did you imagine you wanted?
The question nearly stopped her. “Aren’t you within me? Don’t you know?”
I ask because I wonder if you know.
Fia did not care how she looked to anyone who might see her talking to herself. “I want the march to end,” she said. “I’m tired of it.” By seizing Siena, she might have changed who she was – changed what the company was. “I don’t want any soldier to have to be the tools of foreign powers. All of us have deserve better than the lot we received.”
You want respect, it said. You want to be greater. You’re ashamed of who you were. What is it you think you could have built in Siena? Can you build anything?
“I built an army.”
In the same sense that an arsonist “builds” a fire.
It was mocking her. She ought not answer. She felt blackness crawling around the edge of her mind. Earlier in her career, that was how she’d fallen so far she had almost not come back. It was trying to undermine her.
She tightened her hand around the hilt of her sword, though she did not know what she would do with it. “You know just enough to make a fool of me.”
The march will end soon, it said.
It was not the friend it had pretended to be, and it no longer cared that she knew. Dread swelled in her stomach. She did not know what she was going to do now. All of her plans had hinged upon Siena. It was hard to imagine her future now.
She smelled her camp’s smoke before she saw the first of her men. Wherever her company went, smoke followed. Fortune did not often give her a chance to see her army at the ready. Even at reduced strength, it was impressive. Clumps of men clung to the horizon like moss to a trunk. The bright colors of her pavilion stood out easily enough. It was the only tent up now. It was a symbol of the company.
The men had arrayed ahead a line of carts: the carroccios. They were more important than the banners. They carried barrels of water, and served as rallying points. For men exhausted by heat, by exertion, they were infusions of life. The company’s comet-and-spear banners flew far above each cart. A company that lost its carroccios was as good as lost.
But Fia wagered she knew something more important to Hawkwood.
As impressive as her army looked, it could have been better. Since Blazovic, two more captains had deserted Fia’s service. They had taken with them a total of eight hundred men. At the outset of the siege of Siena, her scouts and spies had finally gotten through to report on Hawkwood’s strength. They said she and Hawkwood had approximately equal numbers. Now she estimated that she had about two-thirds his numbers, and that was discounting any recruiting he’d done along his travels.
Listen to me, her inner voice said. This will not end the way you want it to.
Six men in armor stood outside her pavilion. This near to battle, the company could not take the chance that one of Hawkwood’s spies would also take the opportunity to be an assassin. She shouldn’t have traveled alone. She could not muster the energy to care.
She was sure Hawkwood had riddled her camp with spies. She had been unable to accomplish the same. The papal forces were hostile to the cult of Saint Renatus. His inner circle were all foreigners, loyal Englishmen.
Antonov was in conference with their remaining captains. They stopped speaking when Fia entered the pavilion, but only briefly. Antonov wore his pendant of Saint Renatus, the silver sword etched over the comet. She’d had it fashioned for him when she’d had the money to do so. It had been some time since she’d seen it on him.
Fia had ordered Caterina to the pavilion to ready her war horses. The horses stood ready, but there was no sign of Caterina. No doubt one of the new guards had chased her off. Not all of the other companies’ men knew Fia had a girl as a page.
Fia entered the deliberations as though she’d always been there. In spirit, she had. She’d set the broad course of the battle the day before. There were always new reports, new complications. Antonov had managed well enough in her absence.
She had expected Hawkwood to come down the Via Francigena. He had – to begin with. But he had been up and down it many times before, and remembered the landsca
pe well. Two days ago, he had diverted into the pastures and scattered forests northwest of Siena. Much farther in that direction and he would have run into the Apennines, but he’d left himself plenty of ground between road and mountain. He had chosen the route that would give him the maximum amount of wide open space. He was relying on the brute strength of his forces rather than any clever trick of geography.
No surprise there. Arrogant Englishmen always held themselves to be better riders than their Italian counterparts. No land was completely neutral, though. Antonov had scouted in person. He outlined the copses of trees that could hide men, and steep-banked creeks he expected would become killing funnels. He’d already placed crossbowmen, archers, and pikemen to protect them. Fia’s input amounted to little more than tinkering. His plans seemed deceptively effortless, as all elegance did.
After the others had departed, Fia said, “I thought you were finished with war.”
“This doesn’t mean I’m not,” he said.
She held his gaze. There had to be more to him than that. There was always more to it.
He said, “The company is in the balance. It’s the only thing I have.”
She said, “And we have enemies in the unusual position of being able to destroy it.” To spare him from leaving the accusation unspoken, she added, “Because of me.”
“Yes,” he said, and sounded almost relieved that he could. Like he’d held the words pent in his throat all this time.
She had asked him this before, but now was a far better time: “Do you believe what I told you? About Saint Renatus?”
“If not the man’s life, then in the lessons. Inferior men manage the world, own its properties. We deserve better than the degradation of working for them.” He could not have tolerated doing as Hawkwood had, aligning himself so closely with the papacy or a commune or kingdom. “If you are asking if I would take back the support I gave you, that answer is no. But there is a limit to the number of times I can suffer being reborn. Every battle I’ve fought changed me. A man can only bear being holy for so long. I want to rest, and not pick up my sword again.”
“For a man like you, that might as well mean lie down and die.”
“Even that would be better at some point.”
“I’ll do you the favor of pretending I didn’t hear that.”
“I was not always a soldier. I had a family and prospects.”
“Those are just memories. They’re not your life. You’ve been remade dozens of times since them. You can’t go back home even if you travel there.”
“I did what I wanted. What about you, Fia? Word of Saint Renatus has swept Italy. It’s traveled farther and faster than I would have dreamed. Every week, we hear about converts in Hungary, in Greece, in Croatia, in Syria and the Holy Land.”
“If only they were here now.”
“Just because they haven’t flocked to the company, that doesn’t mean you haven’t accomplished what you wanted.” He waited for her to speak, and, when she didn’t, said the obvious: “But that hasn’t been enough for you, either.”
“No.” Just as terse as he’d been.
“Why not?”
“If we had taken Siena, we would be fighting a different kind of battle. We would have an advantage over Hawkwood and anyone else the papacy sent to scatter us.” Then she and the company could rule rather than rob, and spread the veneration of Saint Renatus through a thousand new means. Siena would have just been the start.
“Was that what you would have said fifteen years ago?”
It wasn’t. Only there was a hollowness now that she’d done what she’d set out to do. That’s where this drive to take Siena, to go east, to change the world, had come from. That was why her inner voice was leading her elsewhere, she realized. It had seen all that she had done, and was ready for her to consummate her work with martyrdom.
She was not yet ready to be reborn in that way.
He told her, “We might be alive tomorrow, and we might even have the company left to us. Consider what you would like to do with the both of them. And if wouldn’t be better to leave – like I am.”
She did not have the time to think. As Antonov spoke, more of their men pushed past the entrance flaps, breathless with reports of the enemy’s advance.
The best view of the battlefield was offset to the east, atop the rising slopes that bound the course of the Via Francigena. Fia, Antonov, and a handful of her corporals rode up in the morning’s blazing heat. Her palfrey struggled under the unaccustomed weight of her armor. It was a riding horse, not a war horse, but she wanted her coursers fresh for later. She had neglected only her helmet, her gauntlets, and her iron boots. Sweat soaked into her armor’s padding, slicked the scars on her bare hands.
Caterina rode her pony beside them. Fia hadn’t seen when she’d caught up. She bore a small but livid bruise on her right cheekbone. She looked away when Fia glanced at her. Fia could not watch Caterina every moment of her life. But Caterina wore her foot-and-a-half sword prominently angled at her hip.
Gray-bearded clouds shadowed the eastern sky. Fia tasted rain on the wind, but that wind did not blow very hard. The rain would not arrive in time to spoil the initial clash of arms.
The valley twisted into the haze of the horizon. From this height, the Via Francigena was just a white streak. When the pope had lived in Rome, pilgrims and all their attendant trade traveled the Via Francigena. Now that the papacy had relocated to Avignon, the pope sent only soldiers, arsonists, ravagers. Men like her. It was easy to conceptualize the valley as a churning intestine, and the road as a worm within. This near to battle, Fia could not escape thinking in terms of blood and bowels.
Fia’s eyesight was not good enough to find individual banners. Antonov pointed out each opposing commander’s regiment. All of the enemy’s bannermen and carroccios flew the crimson and gold stars of the papacy, with their commanders’ colors beneath. Hawkwood’s company was difficult to find. His subordinates flew their own colors, as if in self-parody of Englishmen’s pride and preening.
Antonov pointed to a line of infantry behind a rapidly-forming cavalry screen. “Cocco seems to have the largest detachment. It must be fifteen hundred men.” Cocco was William Gold, one of Hawkwood’s lieutenants – so named because he had started his career as an army cook. Fia had always thought that, but for the broader distances between them, she might find good converts among the enemy. They, too, respected ability over birth.
Fia’s heart jumped ahead a beat when he pointed out Cardinal Robert of Geneva’s red banner. Once again, she was too aware of her deficit of spies. “Back so soon after Faenza and Cesena?” she asked. Given his reputation, the blame for any atrocities Hawkwood’s army committed would fall immediately on him.
“He wants to be pope,” Antonov murmured. Explanation enough. While the papacy lived in Avignon, it still had ambitions in Italy, territories to reclaim, lords to cow.
Other officers pointed to Robert’s regiment, laughing. She heard the edge underneath. Her men had all killed just as readily as Cardinal Robert, if not on the same scale. Yet their outrage was not feigned. The axis of morality was just one more way that men, even bloodthirsty men, used to hold themselves above one another. There were few limits in war, but it was easy to imagine that those other men had crossed, and that you had not, made them evil, and you just pragmatic.
“I’ll lead the charge against Bloody Robert,” Fia said. “Who’d like to join?” She waited out the chorus of volunteers, and selected the only man who hadn’t joined. He was the only one she could count on not to go charging off after his own glory.
As always, Antonov could have countermanded her. Instead, he said, “Robert seems to be expecting attention. He’s in a position he could pull back to be recessed of center.”
“If he’s expecting it, he won’t think anything awry,” Fia said.
The first claps of thunder lashed the horizon before Fia reached the bulk of the company. They were from no lightning.
Kno
ts of smoke rose from the company’s lines. As Hawkwood’s lines approached, the men at Fia’s vanguard had parted to reveal the squat, bell-shaped cannon concealed behind them. A third and then a fourth report echoed off the ridges.
Fia allowed herself a moment of satisfaction. The “free lease” of artillery and contracts for crews had been a non-negotiable clause of Siena’s surrender. She had insisted.
The stone shot had not made any impact on Hawkwood’s line, but their advance faltered. Men fell out of marching order. Hawkwood’s English veterans would hold, but his French, German, and papal recruits had likely never heard such a noise.
Constantin Laskaris held the center line. She dismounted by him. Caterina did likewise, and immediately bolted to find Fia’s courser.
Laskaris had not been sleeping well. He never did before battle. The shadows under his eyes were like the sockets of a skull. But his voice was steady. “Their skirmishers keep coming close, but they hold just out of crossbow range. They’re making a point of taunting us. They’re yelling that they have a stake ready to fire for you.”
Given the number of Frenchmen in Hawkwood’s army, it would have been impolitic for Hawkwood’s men to mention Jeanne d’Arc by name. But the example was clear enough. Englishmen had killed her, too.
Fia said, “They’re trying to tempt me into attacking. I’ll let them think they’ve done it. But no officer is to charge past me under pain of losing their share of Sienese booty.” For condottieri, as compelling a threat as death. “Pikemen and crossbowmen to the front. Cavalry stay behind.” The cavalrymen were the richest among the company, and therefore the ones she least trusted to follow humiliating orders. The experienced rank-and-file, however, thought of lives over glory.
One of the Company of the Star’s most potent tactics against untested soldiers was to provoke an attack, feign retreat, and then surround and annihilate the pursuers. Now Hawkwood was trying the same on her. It was insulting. Somehow Hawkwood and Cardinal Robert seemed to have gotten the idea that she was unseasoned.
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