Lest Darkness Fall and Related Stories

by L. Sprague de Camp;Frederik Pohl;David Drake;S. M. Stirling;Alexei

  As he spoke, another explosion echoed over the city. Padway nodded, looking like an ancient and highly intelligent owl.

  “Doubtless you’re right, Captain. Do you think the Equinoctal Way will be clear?”

  Tharasamund made a visible effort. “It’s as good a chance as any, my lord,” he said. “It’s broad—rioters generally stick to the old town. And it’s the best way to get to the garrison barracks quickly.”

  Broad and open to light, air and artillery, Padway thought—a joke about the way Napoleon III had rebuilt Paris, and part of his own thoughts over the years planning the expansion of Florence.

  “Let’s go that way,” he said. “Hengist, head us out.”

  “I never wanted to have adventures,” Padway grumbled. “Even when I was a young man. Certainly not now.”

  Jorith looked at him and gave a smile; not a very convincing one, but he acknowledged the effort.

  “This is an adventure?” she said. “I’ve always wanted adventures—but this just feels like I was walking along the street and stepped into a sewer full of big rats.”

  “That’s what adventures are like,” Padway said, wincing slightly as the coach lurched slowly over something that went crunch under the wheel and trying not to think of what—formerly who—it was, “while you’re having them. They sound much better in retrospect.”

  The young guardsman—Tharasamund Hrothegisson, Padway forced himself to remember—chuckled harshly.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, in extremely good Latin with only the faintest tinge of a Gothic accent, then added: “Your pardon, my lord.”

  Jorith looked at him oddly, while Padway nodded. He might not have been a fighting man himself, but he’d met a fair sample over the years, and this was one who’d seen the elephant. For a moment youth and age shared a knowledge incommunicable to anyone unacquainted with that particular animal. Then a memory tickled at Padway’s mind; he’d always had a rook’s habit of stashing away bits and pieces, valuable for an archaeologist and invaluable for a politician.

  “Hrothegisson…not a relation of Thiudegiskel?”

  The young man stiffened. Officially, there had been an amnesty—but nobody had forgotten that Thiudegiskel son of Thiudahad had tried to get elected King of the Goths and Italians instead of Urias I, Padway’s candidate; or that he’d gone over to the Byzantines during the invasion that followed and nearly wrecked the nascent Empire of the West.

  “My mother was the daughter of his mother’s sister,” he said stiffly. “My lord.”

  That didn’t make him an Amaling, but…

  “Ancient history, young fellow. Like me,” he added with a wry grin. “What are you doing, by the way?”

  The young Goth had gotten up and was examining the fastenings of the rubberized-canvas hood that covered the carriage.

  “I thought I’d peel this back a bit at the front, my lord—”

  “You can call me Boss or Quaestor or even sir, if you must,” Padway said. He still wasn’t entirely comfortable being my-lorded.

  “—sir. I’d be of some use, if I could see out.”

  “Not all the way?”

  “Oh, that would never do,” Tharasamund said. “You’re far too noticeable…sir.”

  Tharasamund finished looking at the fastenings, made a few economical slashes with his dagger, and peeled the soft material back from its struts, just enough to give him a good view. Warm air flowed in. “Uh-oh,” he said.

  I know what uh-oh means, Padway thought. It means the perfume’s in the soup…or the shit’s hit the fan.

  “Give me a hand,” he snapped.

  Something in his voice made the two youngsters obey without argument. Grumbling at his own stiffness and with a hand under each arm, he knelt up on the front seat and looked past the driver and guard.

  “Uh-oh,” he said.

  “It’s in the soup, right enough, excellent boss,” Tharasamund said.

  One advantage of Florence’s hilly build and grid-network streets was that you could see a long way from a slight rise. The view ahead showed more fires, more wreckage…and a very large, very loud mob about half a mile away, milling and shouting and throwing things. Beyond that was a double line of horsemen, fifty or sixty strong. As they watched, there was a bright flash of metal, as the troopers all clapped hand to hilt and drew their spathae in a single coordinated movement to the word of command. A deep shout followed, and the horses began to move forward, faster and faster....

  “Oh, that was a bad idea. That was a very bad idea,” Tharasamund muttered.

  Sensible young man, Padway thought.

  A big man on a big horse waving a sword and coming towards you was an awesome spectacle; scores of them looked unstoppable. Armies had broken and run from the sheer fear from the sight, including one memorable occasion when Padway had been in command, trying to make a mob of Italian peasant recruits hold a pike line against charging Byzantine heavy cavalry.

  The problem was…

  The horsemen struck. Sure enough, the front of the mob surged away in panic, trying to turn and run. The problem was that there were thousands of people behind them, and they couldn’t run. There wasn’t room. The swords swung down, lethal arcs that ended in slashed-open heads and shoulders, but the horses were slowing as they moved into the thick mass of rioters. Horses were all conscripts, with an absolute and instinctive fear of running into things, falling, and risking their vulnerable legs.

  A line of brave men with spears could stop any cavalry ever foaled. A mass of people too big to run away could do the same, in a messy fashion, by sheer inertia.

  Padway shifted slightly, keeping his body between Jorith and the results, and noticed that Tharasamund did the same. People stopped running as the horses slowed; they turned, started to throw things, yelled, waved their arms. The cavalry horses were bolder than most of their breed, but they backed, snorting and rolling their eyes; a few turned in tight circles, caught between their riders’ hands on the reins and an inborn need to run away from danger. The rain of bits of stone and iron and wood grew thicker; a soldier was pulled out of the saddle....

  And at the rear of the mob, a purposeful-looking group was turning towards the carriage halted at the top of the hill.

  “Guards cavalry,” Tharasamund said tightly. They never did know anything but how to die well. Though I grant they do know how to do that.

  He looked at Padway, back at the white, frightened, determined face of the girl, then at the mob. “Obviously, there are agitators at work,” he said, “not just hungry rioters sparked off by a football game.”

  Padway nodded. The Saxon chief of his guardsmen bent down from the saddle and pointed to a narrow alleyway.

  “That way, I think,” he growled. “Liuderis, Marco, get that cart and set it up.”

  The coachman turned the horses’ heads into the narrow, odorous gloom of the alley. The guardsmen grabbed a discarded vendor’s pushcart, dumped out its load of vegetables in a torrent of green, and pulled it into the alleyway after the carriage before upending it. Most of them crouched behind it, drawing their pistols.

  “We’ll hold them here,” Hengist said grimly. “Excellent boss, you and this gentleman—” he nodded to Tharasamund “—and the young mistress get going.”

  Gray eyes met blue, and Tharasamund nodded sharply. Padway seemed about to protest, and the Saxon grinned.

  “Sorry, excellent boss, that’s not an order you can give me. My oath’s to keep you safe—obedience takes second place.”

  Hengist slapped the rump of the rear horse in the carriage team, leaping back to let the carriage lurch by in the narrow way. Tharasamund lifted a hand in salute, then used it to steady Padway; the Quaestor sat down heavily, sighing. Jorith helped him down, and braced him as they lurched across cobbles and then out into rutted dirt.

  Think, Tharasamund, the soldier told himself. They weren’t out into the country yet, and wouldn’t be for half an hour, but the buildings were very new, some still under constructi
on. No people were about; with a holiday and then a riot there wouldn’t be, and this area had few residences, being mostly workshops.

  He looked back; nothing to see, but then came a snarling brabble of voices, and a crackle of pistol fire. By Christ and His mother that’s a brave man, he thought. And true to his oath. Saxons may not be civilized but they’re stubborn enough.

  Jorith looked behind them as well. “Is that—” she said, and swallowed.

  Tharasamund nodded. “Yes, lady. They can hold them quite a while, in that narrow way. Not many rioters will have firearms, and there can’t be many agents of the Greek emperor. Just enough.”

  She shivered. “It sounds…different, in the epics. Last stands.”

  Padway mumbled something in a language Tharasamund didn’t recognize, though a couple of the words had a haunting pseudo-familiarity, sounding like oaths. For a moment he thought the old man was dazed, and then he spoke sharply—loud enough for the coachman to hear.

  “If any of you get out of this, and I don’t, take a message to the king and Council: this means Justinian thinks he’s ready for a showdown. I should have—never mind.”

  There was a mutter of assent. The Quaestor is a brave man too, in his way, Tharasamund acknowledged. He’s thinking of the Kingdom’s welfare. And, from the way his eyes darted her way, his granddaughter’s.

  An idea blossomed. “Sir, I have an idea. Some of those men who turned our way were mounted, and they’ve identified this coach. What we need to do is to get you to a place of safety for a few hours, until the city’s brought back to order. Do you see that half-built whatever-it-is on the hill up ahead? We can…”

  “This doesn’t look much like what I’d anticipated,” the archbishop said, peering at the wide screen.

  Maximus snorted. He wasn’t an expert, but he had scanned the briefing. This was the beginning of the Wars of Reunification; what did the cleric expect, a festival with wreaths and flowers and incense?

  The pilot’s long nose twitched. There would be incense down there, all right, of a type he’d seen on previous expeditions. Things burning; people too, possibly. That sort of thing happened, if you went this far back. For a long time to come, too.

  “There!” he said aloud, and everyone crowded up behind him; he ran a hand through a light-field to make sure nobody tripped a control by mistake. “There, that’s him!”

  The screen leapt, magnification increasing as the computer obeyed his intent—that was a virtue of the more modern types; they did what you wanted them to do, not just what you told them.

  A carriage drawn by four matched black horses galloped out of an alley and turned westward, swaying as the coachman stood on his seat and lashed them with a whip. The overhead cover had been partly cut away; Maximus froze a portion of the screen to show the face of an old man. The computer helpfully listed the probability of this being the man they were after. It was as near unity as no matter. This was also the earliest era when photographs of famous men were available, and enough had survived into modern times to be digitized.

  Somebody made a half-disgusted sound. “He’s so…so ugly,” one said. The archbishop made a reproving sound. Maximus nodded, agreeing for once. It wasn’t the man’s fault that regeneration therapy wouldn’t be invented for another two hundred years, or perfected for three. One thing time travel taught you was how fortunate you were to be born in the tenth century a.d.

  “And he’s stopping!” the historian cried. “I wonder why?”

  Maximus hid another snort, and swung the viewpoint. “At a guess, most learned one, because those cutthroats are after him, and he’s planning on hiding before they get here.”

  “Are you sure this is a good idea, Captain?” Padway said.

  The young Goth shrugged. “No, sir,” he said, helping the older man down from the carriage. “But they ought to follow the coach. It’s much more visible.”

  Padway wheezed a chuckle as they hurried into the unfinished building, around the heaps of sand and bricks and timber; it was always nice to meet a man who didn’t promise more than he could deliver. The carriage spurred off, making a great show of haste but not moving as fast as it might. He made two mental notes: one to see that the coachman got something, if he made it out of this, and another to put in a good word for Captain Tharasamund. He’d had a lot of experience judging men, and there were never enough good ones around.

  The first floor of the building was an echoing vastness smelling of raw brick and new cement, with a concrete slab floor, thin brick walls, and cast-iron pillars holding it all up. A lot of timber was piled about, and a rough staircase led to the second story. Tharasamund and Princess Jorith half-lifted Padway up the stairs and propped him against a pile of sacks of lime mortar; then the Gothic soldier ran to a window, standing beside it and peering out through boards nailed over the unfinished casement.

  “Oh, Sathanas take it,” he said.

  “They didn’t follow the coach?” Padway asked.

  “Most of them did. Two mounted men are turning in here, and a crowd of what look like ruffians after them. My apologies, sir,” he finished, with bitter self-reproach.

  “You took a chance. I agreed. If you bet, you lose sometimes.”

  Tharasamund saw Padway’s eyes flick to Jorith’s face and then away. His own lips compressed. Damned if I’ll let a mob get their hands on a royal princess, he thought. But by all the saints, what can I do about it?

  Fighting was the only thing that came to mind. Tharasamund had a healthy opinion of his own abilities in that line, but fighting off what looked like fifty or sixty men wasn’t in the realm of the possible, even with a narrow approach and slum scum on the other side.

  “Do what you can, then,” he said to himself, looking around.

  He had six shots in his revolver, and three reloads in his belt pouches....

  He heard voices below and set himself. One of the men he’d seen riding came into view, urging his followers on, a short muscular-looking fellow in respectable but drab riding clothes, with a neatly trimmed black beard. The Goth let the long barrel of his revolver drop over his left forearm, squeezed....

  Crack. The man toppled backward, screaming, and then screaming that his leg was broken—screaming in Greek. An educated man’s dialect, but a native speaker’s, as well. There were such folk in the Western Empire—parts of southern Italy and much of Sicily spoke Greek as their first language—but he would have bet his father’s lands against a spavined mule that the man had been born not far from Constantinople.

  Tharasamund dodged back as someone emptied a pistol at him; probably the other Greek. Whoever he was, the shooter started exhorting his men to attack; “Gothic heretics” and “two hundred gold crowns for their heads—each” seemed to be about equal inducements. It took a while, and he thought he knew the reason when he heard hasty sawing and hammering sounds.

  “They’re building a mantlet,” he said grimly. At the confusion in the young woman’s eyes, he went on: “A wooden shield, the sort they used to use in sieges. Wouldn’t do them much good against a rifle, but a few layers of thick planks will turn a pistol ball.”

  Jorith raised her head. “I know I can rely on you, Captain,” she said quietly. Tharasamund winced; he knew what she relied on him to do, and he didn’t like it.

  Well, that’s irrelevant, he thought. You’ll do it anyway, and make it quick.

  Then her eyes went wide. “What’s that you’re leaning against, Grandfather?” she asked.

  “Mortar,” Padway said, raising a curious white brow.

  “Lime,” the girl said. “In the old days, during sieges, didn’t—”

  “They threw quicklime on men climbing siege ladders,” Tharasamund half-whooped, with a strangled shout to keep the rioters and foreign agents below in the dark.

  Padway moved himself aside, grinning slightly. Tharasamund moved towards the pile of sacks; Jorith halted him with an upraised hand.

  “Wait,” she said, and whipped off a gauzy silk
scarf. “Those gauntlets will protect your hands, but your face—”

  He bowed his head, and she fastened the thin cloth across his face like a mask; with the fabric close to his eyes, he could see out of it well enough. Then he worked, dragging the rough burlap sacks over towards the stairwell, carefully avoiding exposing his body to sight from below.

  “Let’s see,” he muttered. “I’ll stack them up here”—he made a pyramid of four, carefully weakening the lacing that held each sack closed at the top—“at the back of the stairwell, so they’ll be above and behind anyone coming up the stairs. My lady Jorith? I’m afraid I’ll need you to push.”

  He tried to keep his voice light, but there was a grave knowledge in the way she nodded.

  “You up there!” a voice called. “Send us the old man, lay down your weapons, and we’ll let you go!”

  “And we can believe as much of that as we want to,” Tharasamund called back. “No, thank you. Here’s our deal: if you run now, before the troops come, I won’t shoot you in the back.”

  “You’ll be dead before then, you whipworthy barbarian!” the voice snarled. “You and your drab and the sorcerer too! Take them!”

  The stairs were steep; Tharasamund had to go down on his belly to reach the upper one without exposing more than his eyes and gun hand. The mantlet—it was a door, with layers of planks nailed across it—came staggering upward. The hale Greek stood behind, firing over his men’s heads to keep the Goth’s down; he was half-concealed behind an iron pillar, and had his weapon braced against it.

  Tharasamund swallowed against a dry throat and ignored him, ducking up to shoot at the feet of the men carrying the wooden bracer instead. Most of the shots missed. The targets were small and moving, and he had to snap-shoot in an instant, with no careful aiming. At last one hit, and the mantlet wavered and stalled as a man fell backward squalling and clutching at a splintered ankle.