Viper's Blood

by David Gilman

  ‘These are strange times we live in, Thomas,’ said Killbere as the men urged on their horses. ‘A man as rich as Croesus buys a child-bride from a French king for his son and strikes a bargain with his enemy to kill his brother’s bastard. And our lives are saved by a woman we thought to be a witch.’ He rode on a moment longer and glanced at Blackstone. ‘I’ll pay for a mass to be said for her. Providing we live long enough.’

  *

  Bernabò Visconti still lay unconscious despite the antidote being administered. The court physicians confirmed their belief that he would live and that by the following day they expected him to be conscious. He was a bull of a man. Perhaps, they thought, even to be well enough to attend the wedding ceremony.

  Antonio Lorenz stood in the bedchamber and looked at his father, who was breathing slowly and deeply. He had not been told of the court physician’s prognosis; instead Galeazzo stood in the dimly lit bedchamber with him, as if they were attending a dying man.

  ‘It is not known whether he will survive the night,’ Galeazzo lied. ‘So you must ride out and kill Blackstone for the sake of our future. I was obliged to release him in an attempt to save your father.’

  ‘Blackstone has a hundred men and archers south of the city,’ said Antonio.

  ‘No, they are out on the road to Florence. Blackstone cannot reach them in time. He is vulnerable now and you need to strike him.’ Galeazzo put an arm around his shoulder and lowered his voice. ‘Antonio, we must face the prospect that your father, my beloved brother, this great Lord of Milan, may be dead by morning. And if that is the case, then you must take his place.’

  Antonio stepped back in shock at the suggestion that he would be granted such power in the city. ‘You would give that to me?’ he asked.

  ‘I have already drawn up the document and the moment Bernabò dies then you will be honoured with his title and will control half the city as did he. His wealth must be divided between his wife and his legitimate children, but once you are in power then you will receive the taxes and the income. I am not being over-generous, Antonio; I need someone I can trust to govern. But we must rid ourselves of Blackstone once and for all. He will not rest until the day he sends an assassin in the night to kill you in your bed. Seize the moment, and ambush him. I know what road he takes. He has a dozen wounded men with him.’

  ‘Then I shall do as you ask. I’ll take my father’s cavalry.’

  Galeazzo hesitated. It was not part of his plan to have Antonio use the professional troops drawn from noble families who were loyal only to Bernabò. ‘My brother has brigands outside the walls. Use them. We’ll pay them well. Take two hundred with you, Antonio: you must be protected at all costs. The English are not the only scourge who ride beyond our walls. And when the English King hears that one of his favourite knights has fallen then the brigands will be blamed, not us. It is time for you to step forward from the shadows, Antonio.’

  ‘Yes,’ the young man said, his ambition expressed with little more than a sigh. ‘And if my father lives?’

  ‘Then you will be honoured by both of us for having killed Thomas Blackstone and ridding us of his threat.’

  ‘I know where my father’s men are. I’ll leave tonight,’ said Antonio. ‘I’ll bring Blackstone’s head back on a pole.’

  Galeazzo watched the young man’s eyes peer into the half-light of the flickering candles at his father lying motionless. He licked his lips in anticipation. Galeazzo knew he would have to seal the room and post a strong guard to protect his brother because he sensed that Antonio Lorenz had already crowned himself Lord of Milan and his father’s death was almost a formality.

  *

  As the night wore on servants came and went past the armed guards at Bernabò Visconti’s bedchamber. As each approached to bathe their master’s brow with wet cloths, a guard would stand next to him. Nothing was to pass the Lord of Milan’s lips, not even the droplets from a wrung cloth. If any such attempt was made the soldiers had orders from Galeazzo to immediately kill the servant. And when the servant’s duties were done, the doors were closed and Bernabò Visconti was left alone, caged in in his own private hell.

  He was being dragged through the fires of the underworld. His body burned and his throat felt as though he had swallowed hot cinders. The stench of sulphur stung his nostrils and tears welled from his eyes. He choked and tried to turn his back to the screams of those consumed by the flames. An insistent voice beckoned him, shouting his name, demanding he awake. Breaking through the dream he opened his eyes. His head was thick as if from drink, his chest tight like a man drowning. He gulped air. Sometime in the night the screams became howls. Shadows soared like demons. Bernabò Visconti lunged from the bed, fell, gained his feet and stumbled for the terrace where a wall of cold air brought him half to his senses. Men were shouting and those howls of terror became louder. The clear night sky was a cauldron of flames. Bernabò pressed himself against the parapet, gulping the air, unable to grasp why smoke scratched the back of his throat. He shook his head and thought himself still in a dream as he gazed at the yard below where Blackstone’s man had been thrown to the dogs. The kennels were ablaze. The pitiful sound of fifty or more of his beloved hunting dogs being burnt alive pushed a serrated blade into his chest.

  He bellowed to the men below who were fighting a losing battle against the fire. They were pushed back as the flames seared across the yard. The wooden gates that secured the dogs were burning and some of the injured animals ran terrified through the flames, their coats ablaze, to die a terrible death as they tried to breach the iron gates. They writhed and howled as the fire consumed them. Bernabò Visconti clung to the parapet and vomited. His life’s pleasures – violence, deception, stealing, intoxication and sex – were as nothing in that barren moment of witnessing their agonizing deaths.

  From the high terrace he would not have seen the big man with his hair tied back moving quickly through the street’s deep shadows. Beneath his cloak the jupon’s blazon declared that those who bore it would remain Défiant à la mort.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX

  Blackstone and his men had watched the distant fire glow in the night sky. The muted cries from behind the city walls soon fell silent and as the fire diminished the night’s fog drew its veil over the city. They attended to each other’s wounds and took satisfaction in believing that Meulon had inflicted misery on Bernabò Visconti. If luck was on their side they would add more grief to him the following day.

  They broke camp as the grey dawn light touched the clinging mist that blanketed the flat plain. Like ghost riders they rode at walking pace through the damp air that speckled their cloaks and beards. As the sun rose higher in the sky and burned away the eerie covering a distant village church bell told them it was the third hour in the day. Now that they could see the road ahead they spurred their horses on. Antonio Lorenz had not laid an ambush as they thought he might. For someone who knew the lie of the land the misty dawn would have been the ideal time to attack. Perhaps, Blackstone thought, Antonio Lorenz was a lazy fighter, confident that he could destroy these few who had dared to challenge the Visconti, or it was as Galeazzo had promised and the assassin’s master would be delivered to them.

  It was early autumn and the small copse of trees they passed had already started to turn. In a few weeks winter would strike hard and the killing season would end. In the past it had made no difference to the English condottieri. Blackstone and his men had fought year round: it was what gave them the advantage over their enemies. But there was no denying that winter fighting and burying men in the frozen earth was a thankless task. Better to die and be put in the ground when summer blessed the land. But autumn’s gentle escape to the year’s end would still allow them to inter their dead because a part of Blackstone knew the day would not end without a fight.

  He reined in the bastard horse. For a moment it fought the bit, but Blackstone tightened the reins and steadied it. ‘Over there,’ he said, pointing to a treeline that scuffed the h
orizon. Smoke curled from the houses of a nearby village.

  ‘Two miles, then,’ said John Jacob.

  ‘Three more like,’ said Blackstone, gauging the distance. ‘And we can’t see what’s in those trees until we get there.’

  ‘And that’s where we are to wait?’ said Killbere.

  ‘That’s where I’m going to kill him,’ said Blackstone, and gave the impatient horse its head.

  *

  Men ploughed the fields planting winter wheat. The farmers were five hundred yards distant and barely raised their heads from their labours as they whipped their yoked oxen. Nothing seemed untoward. Blackstone realized that if he and his men were obliged to retreat across the open fields the torn ground would make heavy going. Their horses would be slowed and anyone in pursuit or loosing crossbow bolts would have them at their mercy. Did Galeazzo know that such a race for safety would be across ploughed fields? Had the cunning Lord of Milan placed Blackstone in the perfect place to be ambushed?

  Blackstone drew the men to a halt a hundred paces from the treeline. All his instincts told him that men waited in the darkness of the forest. The horses’ ears pricked and their muscles quivered as they too sensed other horses and riders. Blackstone and his men drew their swords and turned their backs to the stubbled cornfields that lay between them and the distant city. Their ragged line would be little defence should the woodland explode with a cavalry charge. If that happened it meant that Antonio Lorenz wanted the personal satisfaction of slaying Blackstone. He prayed that if this was an ambush then they would not bring him down with crossbow bolts before he killed the assassin’s master. If his life was to have one final act it was to be the death of Antonio Lorenz.

  The bastard horse whinnied, wanting its rider to ease the reins so that it could surge forward. Blackstone’s skin crawled and he gripped Wolf Sword tightly. ‘Be ready,’ he told the men.

  There was a rustling of undergrowth as the woodland darkness shimmered.

  ‘We’ll ride at them, Thomas. Take the fight into the trees. We’ll stand a better chance,’ said Killbere.

  Blackstone was about to heel the horse when a black-cloaked figure stepped into the open, and a moment later Henry stood next to the Tau knight.

  *

  Milan’s church bells peeled, as trumpets’ and drums’ cacophony reverberated around the city walls. Peacock-rich banners and flags curled in the morning breeze as the aroma of cooked meats and sweetbreads wafted through the air. Every edible fowl and beast had been prepared for the wedding feast. Swan, heron, goose, duck and songbirds, salted tongues, beef and eel pasties, lampreys, suckling pig, pullets, vegetables and beans. Spit-roasted oxen, boar and fat trout would soon grace the two long linen-covered tables, one for men, the other for women. The high table would seat the family and honoured guests. Course after course would satiate the guests until they were served cheeses and fruit.

  Galeazzo Visconti gazed with affection across his city’s skyline from his palace in the west of the city. The joyous pealing and fanfares of exultation proclaimed the Visconti’s wealth and success. This day of October would be an historic one marking a new chapter in the fortunes of the Visconti family. They would be the talk of Europe. Milan was already renowned for its wealth and prosperity but this new era, beginning this very day, meant the house of Visconti would rise to the level of royalty. His diplomacy had paid off and the recent unpleasant situation with his brother and Blackstone would soon be resolved. Bernabò had survived the night, and the fire in the east of the city that had consumed part of the kennels and killed his brother’s hunting dogs had been extinguished without loss of human life or damage to surrounding buildings. Bernabò had taken to his bed to drink himself back into a stupor until the agony of the night was subdued. But today was not about Bernabò; it was about Galeazzo’s son and the future of the family. It would be the day when the Visconti flaunted their wealth so that ambassadors and guests would return to their countries and speak of the incredible fortune and power of the Visconti.

  He patiently allowed his servant to fuss his lord’s velvet and brocade tunic, richly studded with pearls and precious stones. Galeazzo would outshine the bride herself with his lace ruffs, gold and silver fringes and bejewelled belt. His hairdresser eased the weight of his hair into its net and settled it neatly onto his ermine-trimmed robe’s collar, the brocaded viper’s crest prominent on the scarlet and gold robe. His thoughts led his fingers to touch its depiction of the viper swallowing a child.

  And so it was, he told himself. The house of Visconti had consumed friend and foe alike.

  It was a good day for men to die.

  *

  By contrast to the finery being displayed in the city, Blackstone’s men faced the open plain looking ragged and unkempt. They too could hear the distant sound of celebration. It mocked their pain and meagre food supply. Their bodies still ached from their wounds but they waited, mounted and ready, as the line of horsemen appeared from the wall of ground fog that extended across the plain a mile away. Antonio Lorenz had brought enough men to be certain that nothing went wrong.

  The farmers felt the earth rumble as the approaching horsemen spurred on their horses. It gave them time to whip their oxen from the fields.

  ‘Wait until they reach the ploughed ground,’ Blackstone said, taking an extra turn of the reins in his left hand. He would not carry his shield: the wound in his arm was already weeping. He gripped the bastard horse with his legs, readying it to use its massive strength to surge forward. His leg wound protested but he ignored it. His horse snorted and ducked its head, yanking him forward in the saddle, but his own strength kept the beast in check.

  The steady drumbeat thud of the attacking horses shuddered through the ground. At five hundred paces they saw that one man sat astride his horse in the middle of the line. Even from that distance they could see he wore the finest armour. Its shaped angles glinted in the sunlight; the war horse’s chest muscles glistened. The men who rode with Antonio Lorenz were dressed no differently from Blackstone’s. They wore jupons over mail, pieces of armour in strategic places on arm, shoulder and thigh. Open-faced bascinets exposed snarling faces.

  At three hundred paces they began to shout – their blood was up and in their minds they had already spent the generous bounty promised by Lorenz – but then their horses’ iron-shod hooves dug into the turned earth and the heavy soil slowed their charge. It made little difference to the brigands, who simply spurred the horses’ flanks and raised their threatening voices further.

  Blackstone lifted Wolf Sword and at his signal Will Longdon and Jack Halfpenny, with their archers, stepped clear of the forest and rammed their sheaves of arrows into the dirt in front of them. Those brigands who had seen how lethal English bowmen were yanked their reins, kicking their horses away. It made little difference. Killbere grinned as he heard Will Longdon call out his command: ‘NOCK! DRAW! LOOSE!’ followed by the whispering flight of the yard-long arrows.

  ‘You’re dead men, you whoresons!’ Killbere laughed and spurred his horse.

  The arrow storm fell in a perfect arc and the thud of bodkin heads punching bone and flesh turned the brigands’ elation at imminent success into screams of terror. Horses foundered. Men fell into the ploughed dirt, some trapped beneath their mounts, others already struck through from the bone-shattering power of the arrows. Those who managed to clamber to their feet turned and ran. It was too late to halt the headlong advance of the surviving horses and Blackstone saw the look of horror on Lorenz’s face. Despite their wounds Blackstone’s front line urged on their own horses and, as the archers loosed a second flight, his men-at-arms who had been held in the forest steered their horses though the archers’ ranks. Fra Foresti and Henry stood back in silent awe as the surprise attack struck the horsemen. Galeazzo Visconti had played the double cross with the ease of a magician casting a spell. Ride to Blackstone’s men on the road to Florence, ready them, and I will deliver Antonio Lorenz into Blackstone’s hands, he had inst
ructed the Tau knight when he had been summoned to his palace. In one fell swoop the Lord of Milan had weakened his brother’s influence and sacrificed his bastard son. No blame would fall on Galeazzo. The Tau knight could imagine the cunning man’s explanation to Bernabò. How could he have stopped the headstrong and violent Antonio from going after the Englishman, determined to avenge what he thought to be his father’s death?

  The archers ran after the men-at-arms, ready to use their knives to despatch the fallen brigands. Foresti glanced down at Henry. Was the boy horrified by the slaughter? Henry Blackstone, mouth open, stared, mesmerized by the clash of horsemen as his father sought out Antonio Lorenz in the mêlée.

  Blackstone swung Wolf Sword in great sweeping arcs, the power of his blows breaking a routier’s arm. He gave the bastard horse its head which it used like a swinging war hammer. It bit and snorted and like the great stallion it was used its strength to barge into the opposing horses. Skinners were falling beneath his men’s sword and axe blows. Perinne smashed down with his mace onto a brigand’s helm. It caved in and then blood spurted down the dying man’s face from a crushed skull. Killbere had forged through the attackers’ ranks and leaned this way and that, cutting down the retreating men on foot.

  Blackstone saw Renfred strike out at Lorenz but the Italian swordsman’s skills were superior to that of the German. Renfred’s helm took a huge blow and that saved his life as he fell unconscious into the mud. When Renfred tumbled from his horse a gap opened around Lorenz. Blackstone snatched the bastard horse’s reins and, pressing his injured leg into its flank, kicked it around with the other.