“Take him out,” said the Emperor briefly. “He drew a weapon in the presence of his Emperor. Let him see a priest and hang him. Tell the Count of his county to recommend to me on the succession to Béziers. Send his men home.”
He reflected a moment longer. “They will be rebellious. Take ten of them, cut off left hand and right foot, tell them it is the Emperor's mercy. You, your grace,” he added to the bishop. “You provoked him. I fine you a year's income of your see. Till it is paid you have our permission to undergo the discipline which your hot blood needs. Ten strokes a day with a choirmaster's scourge. My chaplain will see to it.”
He stared across the table at the whitening face, the face which after a very brief interval decided not to provoke the Emperor a moment further. The baron vanished, on his way to the already loaded gibbets on the edge of the camp. The bishop backed out, bowing and wondering how rapidly he could possibly raise a thousand solidi in gold.
“What's that noise?” asked the Emperor.
Tasso the Lanzenbrüder looked carefully out across the lines of tents and pavilions.
“Agilulf,” he replied. “Come at last.”
The Emperor's face broke into its unexpected charming smile. “Agilulf! He took his time getting here. But that means a thousand men, good Germans with Lanzenorden officers to control them. We can pull out those rascals we have guarding the west face and put some reliable fellows in their place. And I dare say Agilulf can find a couple of dozen good men with ropes' ends to keep those lazy devils on the rocks working. Ha, they have had a nice holiday by the sea, they will be ready for some real work.”
Tasso nodded. The Emperor seemed to have cheered up, his moods Swung a good deal these days. If the idiots in the tent had watched him carefully they would have seen it was no time to provoke him. Now, there might be a chance.
“Those men, you told me to cut their hands and feet off,” he ventured. “Ten, did you say? Or five? Hands and feet, was it?”
The Emperor's smile vanished, he was across the tent before Tasso could blink or think of protecting himself. Not that he would have tried.
“I know what you're up to, Tasso,” he said, looking up from his little more than average height to the eyes of his strapping captain. “You think I'm getting too tough with these bastards. Well, I'm getting tough because things are getting tough. There is no room for failure any more. Not with the devil loose. Not with the devil loose.”
“Is the devil loose?” broke in another voice, the harsh and hostile one of Erkenbert the deacon, reporting to his master from the ground where he labored continually at perfecting his siege catapults. “When that happens we can expect signs and wonders in the sky.”
In the Caliph's camp too, the bodyguards were uneasy. Every dusk, as the army camped, the impaling-posts were set up, every night was made hideous by the shrieks of men who felt the spike driving up through their bowels, as they fought to keep their footing on the iron ring that held them from death. A brave man, it was said, could sink down and let the spike tear out his bowels and his liver from inside. It was a long way from rectum to heart, though: too long for any normal courage. The Caliph was in a black mood, perturbed by the continuous defeats to which the followers of the Prophet were little used. His navies burned, or fled, his armies were trampled underfoot, or hesitated, came on slowly and reluctantly as now. There would be more screams and deaths unless good news came soon. Maybe even among the bodyguards. As they spread out the leather carpet and poised their scimitars, they prayed for distraction.
The captain of the cavalry patrols approached, dust matting his clothes. A young man dragged behind him by the wrists, struggling to get to his feet and shrieking imprecations. The bodyguards eyed each other with relief, waved the cavalryman through. A sacrifice for this evening already. Perhaps it would ease the master's mood.
Mu'atiyah did not notice the Caliph's baleful stare as he recovered his footing and angrily straightened his torn clothes.
“You are the pupil of bin-Firnas,” he said slowly. “We sent you to escort and guide the ferengis of the North, the fleet with its strange machines that was to sink the red galleys of the Greeks. They did not sink the galleys, but fled, or so the survivors told me before they were led to execution. What story is it that you have to tell me?”
“Treachery,” hissed Mu'atiyah. “My story is of treachery.”
No word could better have suited the Caliph's mood. He settled back on his cushions as Mu'atiyah, fury chafed by days of silence and contempt at sea, days of idleness and imprisonment among the Jews, told his tale: the Northerners' abandonment of the Arab cause, their cowardly reluctance to close with the Greeks, their ignorant sporting with the secrets of the wise. Most of all, the betrayal of the Prophet and his servants by the treacherous Jews, protected against the Christians by the favor of the Caliph, repaying it only by making common cause with pork-eaters and wine-drinkers. Mu'atiyah's sincerity was patent. Unlike anyone the Caliph had heard speak for weeks, he gave not a thought to his own safety. His urge was only, so much was evident, to fall upon the enemies of the Shatt al-Islam and exterminate them. Again and again his words veered towards criticism of the Caliph: he had been too lenient, he had let his secret enemies gain courage from his forbearance. It was criticism the Caliph was prepared to hear. The words of an honest man.
“When did you last drink?” he said finally.
Mu'atiyah goggled, became aware through his rage of his own thirst. “Before noon,” he said huskily. “I rode through the heat of the day.”
The Caliph waved a hand. “Bring sherbet for this faithful one. And let others mark his zeal. When he has drunk, let his mouth be filled with gold and a dress of honor prepared. And now, send for my generals and my admirals and the keepers of my maps. Let all be prepared to turn our march against the Jews. First the Jews, then the Christians. The enemy within the gate and then the enemy without.”
Marking the Caliph's good humor, those who held prisoners to be brought in and condemned to lighten the master's mood silently withdrew them. They would do, after all, for another day.
Chapter Seventeen
The group on the deck of the Fafnisbane stared at Solomon with expressions ranging from doubt to horror. “Tell us again,” said Brand. “He wants us to dismantle the kite, take it and enough material for two more up into the hills, with a mile of rope, Tolman, and two more boys?”
Solomon bowed his head in agreement. “Such are the instructions of your master.”
The eyes shifted to Steffi, standing a pace behind with an air of deep embarrassment. He shuffled his feet, unable to meet the concentrated gaze of his superiors with more than one eye at once. “That's what he said,” he muttered in confirmation. “Enough for three kites and a guard, load 'em on mules, get it all up in the hills as fast as you can, only faster. That's what he said, right enough.”
There was no doubt about Steffi's loyalty, though there might be about his sense. At least these orders were not a trap. The eyes switched to each other, looked back in the end to Solomon.
“We don't doubt that's what he said,” offered Thorvin, “but things have happened here while he's been away. Things he doesn't know about.”
Solomon bowed again. “Well I know it. After all, my own master has given orders that all our outlying people, our traders and our farmers on the hillsides, are to come in to the city at once, for safety. We have known for weeks that the Emperor of the Romans is too close for comfort, though he seemed completely occupied with his army across the border. But now the Caliph is barely two days' march away—less for a fast rider. And the Arabs can move fast when they are so inclined, however slow the Caliph himself may be. We could have light cavalry at our gates in the morning. They may be in the hills already.”
“Light cavalry be buggered,” commented Hagbarth. “What frightened me was those red galleys. Just turned up, no warning. Like the Ragnarssons used to do. There we were, flying the kites off, half a dozen ships out there, and they c
ame out of the haze as if they'd planned it. Not even hurrying, just paddling along at twelve strokes a minute. Nearly cut us all off from the harbor just the same. If Tolman hadn't seen them first we could all have been fried.”
“If we hadn't had to wind Tolman in and recover him we could have got out to the open sea and let them go by,” grunted Brand, continuing a long argument.
“Either way. They came up to the harbor just after we got inside, had a look in, burned off a fishing boat that hadn't seen them—just deviltry that was, to show us they could do it, and kept on paddling north. But they aren't far away. Could be here before nightfall.”
“We think it would be wiser,” Thorvin concluded, speaking for all of them, “if the king returned here and made preparations for departure.”
Solomon spread his arms wide. “I have given you his instructions. He is—or so you say—your king. I do not debate with my prince once he has said his word. Perhaps you Northerners are different.”
A long silence. Brand broke it. “Will your prince let us leave the city?”
“He will let you leave the city. You are not under his protection. He will let me guide you. I am out of favor now. I spoke my mind concerning the release of the young Arab, and he is prepared to lose me. None of his other people may go.”
“All right,” said Brand. “We'll have to do it. Thorvin, hand over some silver to Solomon so he can buy the mules, Steffi, start getting the stuff together and work out how many mules you'll need. Pick the kite crews.”
“Will you come with us, lord?” asked Steffi.
“No. I'm not very good at fast moving, and something tells me you're going to come down that mountain a great deal faster than you went up. If you're lucky. I'm going to stay here and think about how to guard this harbor. Against anything, flame included.”
Miles further up the mountain, Shef was repeating an experiment, in his usual painstaking and skeptical way. He was familiar enough with the white residue that the head of the perfecti had shown him. So was anyone who had ever mucked out a cowshed or a pig-sty. A white earth, that condensed from the animals' urine, or so they said.
What Shef had not seen before was the crystalline form derived from it. “How had they come upon that?” he had asked. The answer made a kind of sense. In English conditions, where earth was wet most of the time and earth from an animal-shed even more so, lighting a fire on the white earth was unlikely ever to happen. Here, in the cold, dry air of the mountain winter, where beasts were often stalled indoors, it was a natural event. Once the mountaineers had realized that the white earth made a blaze, someone, somewhere had put that knowledge together with the knowledge of the Arabs, familiar already with al-kimi, al-kuhl, al-qili, and other strange concepts. Now they knew that water trickled over the white earth from the animal sheds, the wood-ash from the fires, and the lime crushed from limestone, could be boiled to give these crystals.
Sal Petri, they called it, the salt of Saint Peter. Or did they mean rock-salt? Shef neither knew nor cared. He had realized soon enough that the Peter-salt could not be the secret of the Greek fire. But it was interesting just the same, as were the other ingredients that the Children of God had shown him. New knowledge once again.
He had built a pile of kindling, a sequence of piles, and poured the crystals over each one. Then to each he had made a separate addition from the materials the graybeard perfectus Anselm had given him. In normal life, each one would have to be lit painstakingly from kindling and blown into life with the care that children learnt from their parents. Some people could light fires, some people couldn't, so ran the folk wisdom: the former group were bound for Hell, where the devil would commandeer them. But these fires were not normal.
Shef whirled the half-rotted stick a few times round his head to make the punk glow brightly, leant forward and tossed the fire-brand a few feet on to the first pile of twigs. A soft ‘whump,’ a bright glare, and the fire was collapsing immediately into fierce embers.
He took another stick, stepped sideways three paces, repeated the process. This time the ‘whump’ was followed by an instant livid green. “Copper filings for green,” he muttered to himself. “Now, what makes the yellow one?”
“We call it orpiment, the golden color,” said Anselm at his side, the graybeard leader of the perfecti. “Though the Greeks give it some other name. Much of this our men learned from Greek traders. That is what made us think that it might be the secret of the Greek fire. Though the Arabs make colored flames like this too, when they light fires to honor their leaders and their Prophet. They have much learning in what they call al-kimi. The lore of burnings and distillations.”
“It is not the Greek fire,” replied Shef absently, working his way down the line of piles, and muttering a color and a substance for each one. “There is nothing pretty about that.”
“But you will not go back on your word to help us?”
“I will not go back on my word to try. But you have set me a hard task.”
“Our men saw you flying strange machines. We thought you might swoop down on Puigpunyent like an eagle and carry off our relics through the air.”
Shef lobbed the last torch, noted the result, turned and grinned down at the smaller, older man.
“Maybe one day we will know how to do that. But to land on a mountain? Not the kindly sea? And fly away again without the lines and the crew and the wind to lift you? Carrying Othin knows what as well as the boy? No, that would take the skill of Wayland the smith of the gods.”
“So what will you do instead?”
“That will take a great deal of work from all of us. From you, and from my men, once they come. Show me again, draw the map in the dirt, where the Christians' camp is and how they have their guard posts.”
Anselm whistled shrilly, and the shepherd boy who had been playing on his flute of oaten straw rushed over.
The next day, with the sun already beginning to sink, Shef called the whole of his party together—heretics, Northerners, and the kite-gangs brought hastily up by Solomon—and went over once again all the pieces of his plan.
The thirty men and three boys were on a grassy ledge on the last mountain slope looking out over the plains, the rock of Puigpunyent clearly visible, even without the far-seers. In the strong sun anyone could see, also, that the plain down there was alive with men: parties of riders moving one way and another, flashes of sunlight on weapons and armor from every gap in the scrub. It had been an uneasy ride to reach this place, with repeated halts and diversions: Anselm had turned out every man he could to act as a screen of scouts and spies. They were in their own country and close to their most secret fastnesses. Even so, reports had come back every few minutes of Christian riders out in the night, forcing Shef and Anselm and their men to fade from the paths into the rocks or the thorn scrub, till another soft call or whistle would lead them on again. They were safe enough where they were, or so Anselm thought. The ledge could be reached by only two paths, and both were by now heavily guarded. Just the same, it would be bad to attract attention. As he peered out all afternoon over the landscape, Shef had been careful to keep well back, to lie deep in the shadow of a bush.
He spoke, first, to the men of his own party, the snatchers as he thought of them. There were only seven including himself. The shepherd lad, whom Shef had privately dubbed “Straw,” from his endless thin piping: he was to be the guide. Four young men chosen for their agility and speed: they were to be the carriers of the holy things. Richier, youngest of the perfecti. Shef had eyed him askance when Anselm had brought him forward. He was the man who had challenged Shef as he climbed out of the pit, and Shef had no high opinion of his presence of mind or even his courage. Nor was he even much of a lightweight like the others. Youngest of the perfecti he might be, but he was at least forty, an old man by the measure of the mountains or for that matter of the fens, not one who ranged the hills all day or eeled through the brush in pursuit of game. Yet Anselm had said it must be so. Only the perfecti knew the
way into their innermost sanctum. No, another could not be told how to find it. Apart from the breach of their strongest rules of secrecy, the way in was not something that could be described. Only shown. So a perfectus must go with the company, and Richier it would have to be.
Finally, Shef himself. Shef had seen Straw looking at him with much the same expression that he used when he looked at Richier, and he knew why. Among the lightly-built people of the hills, Shef stood out like Styrr among ordinary folk. He was head and shoulders taller than any other man in the company, Richier included. He outweighed Richier by fifty pounds and every other man or boy by seventy at least. Could he keep up when it came to speed? Could he creep undetected below the cover? Straw obviously thought not. Shef himself was more confident. It was not so many years since he and Hund had stalked the wild pigs together in the marsh, or snaked on their bellies to take fish from some thane's private pond. He had grown bigger and stronger since then, but little of the weight, he knew, was fat. If anyone could elude the scouts and sentries, he could.
He had no fear, indeed, of being seen and killed in the night. He had a good chance, and death, if it came, would come cleanly, not as it had come to Sumarrfugl.
What did set a weight in his bowels and a chill at his heart was the thought of capture. For capture meant facing the Emperor. Shef had seen him close, drunk with him, felt no fear even when he stood with Bruno's sword-point at his throat. Something told him now, though, that if they met again the genial side of his old comrade would be gone, replaced by the fanatic. He would not spare a heathen and a rival a second time.
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