Demon Knight

by Dave Duncan

  Toby stepped forward, clear of the crowd. “Your Highness, we know that the traitor is mustering armies and moving them south. We assume, and must assume, that he plans to bring them over the Alps, but we do not yet know which pass or passes he will choose. Roughly, he can come by the Brenner Pass, which will lead him through Trent and Verona and pose an immediate threat to Venice.” Let the spies test their memories on this—there was nothing in it that Nevil did not know already. “He may come by one of the central passes, such as the St. Gotthard, but the established route uses boats to traverse Lake Como and is not practicable for a great army. The western passes—”

  “I have seen the maps, Constable. I asked what you would do.”

  Sweat! This was either his chance to win the post he craved or some horrible trap, and the fact that he had been given no warning made the trap explanation the more likely. He knew exactly what he would do if he were comandante. He was not going to reveal it here. He bowed again. “I crave Your Highness’s pardon. In brief, I would prepare to relieve either Milan or Venice. The Fiend must protect his supply lines, or we can starve his army by wasting the country around him. He dare not leave Milan and Venice as threats in his rear. He might risk bypassing one of them, but never both. He must lay siege to one or the other, and that will be our chance to bring him to battle.”

  The prince rubbed his wispy mustache with a knuckle. “I did not ask for a lecture on the traitor’s problems, messer. I asked for answers to mine. What will you do now—today and days following—if I reappoint you comandante?”

  “Your Highness, the Fiend undoubtedly has spies in this hall.”

  “You refuse to answer my question?”

  Sweat, sweat, sweat! “Signore … I would order the states to put their armies on twenty-four hours’ notice to march. I would provision a rallying point at a suitable location.” It would be at Piacenza, of course, north of the Apennines. All roads led to Piacenza, and Nevil must cross the Po there.

  The hall was very quiet.

  “You would do no more than that?” the boy demanded incredulously. “How long will it take King Fredrico’s troops to march from Naples to this camp you have prepared for them, ‘north of the Apennines?’”

  “About a month, Your Highness.”

  “So you will allow the Fiend a clear month to lay waste my father’s dominions! To loot and ravage unhindered. You hope that Milan or Venice can hold out against a siege for a month before you even muster your army to come to their aid?”

  Of course not! It would take Nevil longer to bring his full strength over the Alps, so the other armies could be there to meet him. Meanwhile—

  “We have heard you, messer,” the prince said, silencing him with a wave of his fingers. “We have listened to youth. Now let us hear what age and experience can tell us. Monseigneur D’Anjou ?”

  Toby fell back a few steps and almost knocked over whoever was behind him, conscious of a chilling certainty that this charade had been planned in advance down to the last detail. In his darkest moments, he had feared that the haggard old French aristocrat now hobbling forward might be appointed suzerain. Making him comandante would be even worse.

  D’Anjou had not been taken by surprise. He bowed low and spoke in French, but flatly, as if by rote. “Most Exalted Highness, there are only four or five passes by which the traitor Nevil can reasonably enter Italy. Another three or four are possible but unlikely. If you honor me with supreme command of our glorious Khan’s armies in Italy, then of course I shall at once prepare to contest those passes. Why should we let him in without a fight?—to loot and ravage unhindered, as you so aptly put it a moment ago. I should also move all cavalry available to the plains of the Po, so that we may use their mobility to concentrate them against the Invader when he comes. I should order the Neapolitan and Roman forces to begin advancing north at once.” The Chevalier bowed again. Then he flashed a predatory smile across at Toby, who had managed to catch only the gist of the speech.

  He had made out enough to know that it was rubbish. When Nevil came, his army would be huge. He would bring it over several passes at the same time, so to contest its passage would be a criminal waste of men, serving no real purpose. To put all the Khan’s forces in the field now, before there was even a threat, would produce problems in provisioning so bad that the plains of the Po might be looted and ravaged by their own defenders before the war even reached them. And the talk of cavalry just meant that D’Anjou had no faith in, or understanding of, infantry. He still thought a charge of mounted knights could settle anything.

  The prince smiled approvingly—better an incompetent aristocrat, rightful King of France, than a peasant bastard from the barbarian ends of the world, however lucky the kid might have been last year.

  “Chevalier, you are a man of courage and vision.” He raised his head to scan the spectators. “Know you all that by virtue of the power invested in me by my beloved and puissant father, His Illustrious Majesty Ozberg Khan, I hereby appoint and name Louis, Duke of Anjou, supreme commander of all military forces in our father’s dominions in Italy and charge him to take all necessary measures to repel the traitor Nevil. We likewise order all the said forces to obey his commands and all states and powers and dominions to cooperate with him in every way.”

  A moment’s silence was followed by a ragged cheer.

  The prince seated himself on the throne. The Chevalier advanced and knelt, obviously to perform the ceremony of obeisance. Toby’s stomach churned. Disregarding all rules of protocol and courtesy to princes, he spun around and shoved his way through the crowd, heading for the door.

  Since joining the Don Ramon Company, D’Anjou had never lost a battle. In the eleven years before that, he had never won one.

  34

  In the field where the Company’s mounts were picketed, Hamish was already saddling up Eachan, intent on heading back to Florence to locate Lisa. Toby fetched Smeòrach and joined him. He received a quizzical glance.

  “Running away? Not like you.”

  Toby hauled on Smeòrach’s girth a little harder than necessary. “Nothing more for me to do here.”

  “Stand still, lummox!” That remark was addressed to Eachan. “How can Sartaq expect D’Anjou to defend anything more valuable than a wheelbarrow?”

  “Possibly because he’s a degenerate, pampered, royal moron.”

  About to mount, Hamish paused and frowned as he did when he had a juicy puzzle to gnaw on. “Even so, there’s something wrong, you know? D’Anjou ’s only qualification for anything is his royal blood. Militarily he’s laughable. Logically, he should have been appointed suzerain and told to leave the fighting to you. That would have worked. There’s something going on I can’t see.”

  Toby snorted. “It’s called stupidity. It’s the national pastime.”

  “No. It’s as if … You don’t suppose Sartaq’s actually working for the Fiend, do you?”

  The thought was tempting. “It would explain a lot, wouldn’t it? But they whipped him into the sanctuary smartly when he arrived. The spirit would have blown a bugle if he was a traitor. Now let’s get out of here before our esteemed captain-general finds me.”

  The don would be incensed that his deputy had been insulted, appalled at the thought of serving under a commander so incompetent, and yet hopelessly trapped by his loyalty to the Khan and his conviction that aristocrats were invariably superior beings. Conflicts enough to unhinge the sanest of men would drive him into a gibbering frenzy. Let somebody else handle him this time.

  “Do you feel,” Hamish asked, as they rode off along the road, “that this conclave has achieved anything at all?”

  Toby thought for a moment. There had to be some use in anything. “Yes. I think future historians will use it to date the fall of Italy.”

  They spoke very little. Hamish was calm but understandably bitter at the cruel blow fate had dealt him. Toby had only clammy comfort to offer. He mentioned the bereavements he had known—Granny Nan, Jeanne, fri
ends in the Company—and of how all wounds must heal in time. But that was sometime, this was now.

  “You always knew it could not be,” he said. “You never expected to share her throne in Greenwich Palace. Could you have endured watching her washing clothes in the burn?”

  Hamish gave him a sour look. “Do you think she wouldn’t wash shirts for me, or I wouldn’t dig fields for her? If the Don Ramon Company ever pays me what it owes me, I’ll have enough to buy a farm, and farmers can afford servants. Or I could go back to Barcelona and work for Josep Brasi. He offered me as much to wield a pen as you pay me to risk my hide. I should have put Lisa on a horse and ridden off into the night. I should have taken her where the Fiend would never find us.”

  After a long silence, Toby said, “Yes, you probably should have.”

  He wondered what he would have done, had he been in Hamish’s place. Had he been like other men.

  They did not turn aside to Fiesole, but went on to Florence and the Marradi Palace. Even Hamish, who had made a point of befriending all the Magnificent’s gatekeepers, could not gain admission that evening. He learned only that two golden-haired foreign ladies had arrived the day before and were staying on as guests. It was encouraging that their identity had not yet become public knowledge, but this could not be long delayed after Marradi’s display of temper at Cafaggiolo.

  They rode back to the villa to break the bad news and reassure Diaz that he had made the correct decision when he surrendered Lisa and her mother to the Magnificent. Then there was nothing else to do except clean up and eat and go on with the rest of their lives.

  35

  “We call this the portrait gallery,” Lucrezia said. “At the far end you will find some very imaginative impressions of what my forebears wished their fore-bears had looked like. At this end the art is more pleasing and probably more plausible. This one, for instance—Orpheus calming the waves. By Ruffolo.”

  Lisa said, “Charming.”

  “You prefer Apollo driving his chariot?”

  “Bizarre.”

  The duchess eyed her guest thoughtfully, as might a hangman or taxidermist. “How about this one, Sisyphus rolling the boulder?”

  “It is quite realistic.” After an entire day in the Marradi palace, Lisa had not been tamed yet. She had a lot of fight left in her, although it was not likely to do her much good.

  “The naked man or just the boulder?”

  “Boulders are dull; they don’t do anything. The man reminds me somewhat of High Constable Longdirk.”

  However well the courtesies were being observed, Lisa was a prisoner and the little smiling duchess her jailer. The Marradi Palace was a treasure-house of gorgeous things, but it was also a trap, a web shining in sunshine, and Lucrezia was the spider, the smiling spider. All of Lisa’s struggles merely amused her. The one exception was Longdirk. He was the one topic that could cut through the woman’s insufferable smugness. Any reference to the condottiere riled Lucrezia excessively. The man did have some uses, therefore, if he could bring a flush to Lucrezia’s cheek and a flash to her eye.

  As now. “I think you are indulging in wishful thinking, monna!”

  Lisa attempted what she hoped was a cryptic, wouldn’t-you-like-to-know smile. “About the calves, I mean. Have you never noticed those great bulges in Toby’s hose? When he walks they run like rabbits up and down—”

  “Come and sit here, Lisa.” Mother had noticed the battle in progress. She was huddled on one of the gold-silk sofas as if she were freezing to death, although the gallery was hot and stuffy. She had aged twenty years since leaving Fiesole the previous day. Having spent her adult life staying one jump ahead of the hounds, she was convinced—as she had explained to Lisa fifty times in the night—that as soon as the two of them were identified in public the Fiend would catch them. Now it was about to happen.

  Lisa ignored her. She turned her back on the Sisyphus anatomy lesson. “And what happens now, Your Grace?”

  “Do please call me Lucrezia, Your Majesty.”

  Lisa smiled and waited.

  Lucrezia smiled right back at her. “Now? Now we have a private little dinner party, just six of us. Tomorrow or the day after, there will be a banquet so the signory can welcome Queen Elizabeth of England and Queen Mother Blanche to fair Florence.” Queen Mother Blanche moaned in the background, but the duchess ignored her. “You must excuse my brother for keeping you waiting like this. They only just got back from Cafaggiolo.”

  So the conclave was over. Longdirk would have returned to Fiesole and learned that his guests had been abducted—or rather that his prisoners had been stolen, because Lisa had no doubts that she had been just as much a prisoner in the villa as she was here. A prison with Hamish in it had much more appeal, though. Could even Longdirk do anything against the Magnificent? Did he want to? Had the goods been stolen or sold?

  “Do tell me what happened at Cafaggiolo. I know that Constable Longdirk held few hopes of the conclave.”

  Lucrezia’s smile had triumph all through it like the gold thread in her gown. “Then he would not have been surprised. Disappointed, yes, of course. The prince has appointed a comandante in capo, and it is not Longdirk.”

  Hamish had made no secret of the fact that Toby had wanted that tide, but evidently he had not bought it with Lisa, which was encouraging. “I do hope Florence does not feel slighted. And who is the new champion?”

  “You will meet him shortly.”

  “Oh. And who else?” Lisa realized she might be facing a long evening.

  Lucrezia’s smile confirmed that supposition. “Just the prince. You can ask him yourself why he did not choose your lover to be comandante.”

  “My who?”

  Another catlike smile. “So it was wishful thinking!”

  “If there is any wishful thinking, it is more on his part than mine.” Lisa would not admit that she and Longdirk detested each other, snarling like cats every time their paths crossed. But she was in retreat now, like an outclassed fencer, and Lucrezia’s rapier was flashing, drawing blood with every stroke—

  “Then he will not be further disappointed when he learns of your betrothal?”

  Squeak! “My what?”

  “Dear child, what do you expect? The royal houses of Europe have been decimated and must be rebuilt. You have a lifetime’s work ahead of you.”

  “You make me sound like a broodmare!” Lisa very nearly stamped her foot.

  The duchess shrugged. “Call it what you will, I am sure the darughachi will want to br— will have plans for your early marriage. You can ask him that, too.”

  “I have no dowry!”

  “You bring all England as your dowry, child.” Oh, how Lucrezia was enjoying herself! Now it was Lisa who was outrankled.

  “Not very easy to collect.”

  “An interesting challenge. You are prime marriage material. The greatest houses in Europe would accept such a bride, even in normal times. Now, if necessary, you can be used to confer royalty on some man of lesser rank.”

  The footmen stationed outside the door opened it and bowed in the Magnificent, who in turn bowed to Lisa and then her mother.

  “Your Majesties, my house continues to be honored by your presence. I trust that your comfort lacks nothing?”

  Insignificant, unimpressive, he was yet a dangerously clever, foxy man. Lisa did not trust him even as far as she trusted Longdirk, which was no distance, but she had to admit that Marradi was charming, with manners sweet as honey. And Lucrezia was enemy enough for now.

  “I feel I have been invited to stay in Olympus, Your Magnificence! Everyone has been most kind.” Lisa heard her mother babble something similar.

  He frowned and turned to his sister. “Is madonna Elizabeth dressed as becomes her rank? Could you not have—”

  “We tried!” Lucrezia said. “She chose the style and fabric herself. Her coiffure, also. I offered to lend her pearls and jewels. She prefers to dress like this.” Like a clerk’s daughter, said the smi
le.

  Her brother shrugged. “Then we honor your decision, monna. In truth, the lily needs no gilding.”

  That was very annoying of him, because Lisa had been trying to establish some independence by insisting on the simplest possible dress. Now he had turned her defiance into a virtue. Before she could comment, the door opened again. She braced herself for new battles.

  Two men. The young one with the slanty eyes, squidgy nose, and stringy mustache must be the prince. Any son of the Khan took precedence over her and would do so even if she had been crowned queen in the sanctuary at Westrninster. She sank into a full curtsey.

  “Elizabeth! By the spirits, rise, rise!” Sartaq stretched out both hands to her. “Messer Marradi was raving so about your beauty that my thought was he was exaggerating. Reticent he was.”

  She rose and returned his smile as well as she could. “Your Highness is most gracious.” Not exactly. He was shorter than she was. He had bad teeth and those slit eyes—even Longdirk’s battlement features were better-looking. She also knew he already had two wives, and if he decided to add her to his collection, then no one in all Europe could stop him. Smile!

  She expected him to release her and turn to receive Mother, who was waiting to be told to rise—it was a grim sign that she now ranked behind her own daughter. But the prince let go only Lisa’s left hand and turned the other way, to the third man.

  The third man was the ancient Chevalier D’Anjou , and suddenly she knew he was the new comandante. Hamish never had a good word to say about him. His nose had been shattered so often that he had almost no nose left. He stood as if his back hurt and held his head cocked sideways as he leered at her with a mouth that had lost most of its teeth. He had a grizzled beard, damp near his mouth. He made even Sartaq seem handsome.

  The prince laughed. “Duchessa? Advise me. Your western etiquette for me makes a puzzle. Do I present the Queen of England to the King of France or the other way?”