by Dave Duncan
“What’s happening?” Toby demanded. He had no time for recrimination or even thanks. The nightmares he would enjoy later, when he had leisure. And he could see what was happening. Alfredo’s initial attack had been repulsed. Now his Venetians were being driven back toward Fiesole by sheer weight of numbers. He had dismounted his cavalry, making the knights fight on foot, two men to a lance. Nevil had done the same, but he had three times the numbers, and his advantage in standard infantry might be even more than that. The speed with which his forces here had rallied from their surprise suggested that Nevil himself was in charge of this sector.
“We’re holding him in demons,” Fischart shouted. “But we need more helmets.” Lightning flashed overhead, thunder boomed painfully close.
“I’ll see what I can do.” In the end, all battles came down to the basics of steel and flesh.
“Wait! You need a guard.” The hexer turned to his remaining supporters and shouted orders.
Toby did not wait. They could catch him. He urged Orphan forward, feeling the calming enchantment lift at his order. But he dipped only briefly through the Unplace, emerging alongside Alfredo, where he sat his horse with half a dozen officers and mounted squires around him. They were surveying the battle, and the faces showing under their raised visors were grim.
Toby gave them a big smile. “Stiletto! Are you enjoying this fine morning?”
Alfredo’s return grin was strained. “It’s good exercise! You want to bring some friends to join the party? We can make room for more.”
“I’ll round some up. How long can you hang on here?”
If the Venetian captain-general shrugged, his steel breastplate hid the gesture. “An hour at most. Fifteen minutes would be healthier.”
“Don’t go away!” Toby vanished.
Now the Unplace was populated. He rode within an escort. There seemed to be at least a score of them, but they were shadowy and indistinct, mostly mounted knights with their visors down, riding in silence on either side of him. Some of them—or perhaps all of them some of the time—had other shapes: centaurs with lion heads, dragon monsters with wings above their backs, even giant scorpions. He paid no attention. He had seen demons before, and what they looked like was immaterial. All that mattered was that they were conjured to defend him.
He crossed the river to join up with the Neapolitan forces, and there he found himself in a full cavalry charge, riding alongside Jules Desjardins, the captain-general. That was no place for a man without a lance and a complete suit of steel mail, but he had a few seconds before the thundering line met its approaching counterpart. He bellowed over the din.
“Captain-General! It’s me, Longdirk.”
The steel-clad figure showed no reaction, but that was hardly surprising. His hands were fully occupied with lance and reins. He could not move his helm, and he had very little lateral vision inside it. His opinion of Toby’s timing for a chat was best left to the imagination.
“We need to reinforce Alfredo,” Toby yelled. “I’m going to take Gioberti.” The two lines of cavalry were closing fast. He had to leave or die.
He left.
Egano Gioberti was Desjardins’s deputy. Busily regrouping two battles of infantry, preparing for a second assault, he looked up in astonishment as Orphan emerged from empty air beside him and shuddered to a halt. Toby barked orders: The Fiend’s bridge was still standing, and if Gioberti could seize that, then he could start moving troops over the river to relieve the Venetians. He might not get very many across, and they might be slaughtered when he did, but he would at least distract the Fiend and relieve pressure on Alfredo. Gioberti was an experienced condottiere. He understood at once and began shouting orders of his own.
Florence was out of danger because its own army had taken the summit of San Miniato hill. Now the don was expertly supervising the hunting down and butchery of survivors and at the same time redirecting the guns to fire at the Fiend’s forces. They were at the extreme limit of range, but a few balls bouncing along into their backs ought to distract them a little, enough to make Desjardins’s work easier.
Master of Gunnery Calvalcante was there, too, chortling over the newfangled cannons. Nobody needed Toby’s help. He left them all to it.
That left Bruno Villars and the Romans. The fight in the southwest was almost over, and Villars had enhanced even his reputation. Perhaps if he were a more pleasant person, he would not be so demons-take-it good at fighting. He had driven the Fiend’s forces into the angle between the river and the city wall and was slaughtering them. Revolted by the sight, although it was what he had ordered, Toby went on without stopping.
Ercole Abonio again …
A score of the Milanese knights were standing around, or sitting on the ground, recovering from their exertions while squires fussed around them, tending them and their horses. One or two were being tended by medics. The old collaterale had removed his helmet and was seated on a low stone wall. His face was still flushed from the heat inside his armor; he had a wineskin in his hands. There was blood all over his surcoat, and his thinning salt-and-pepper hair was streaked by sweat, but he grinned when he saw who had arrived.
Toby leaned down from the saddle. “Can you spare a mouthful?”
“Only if you’re sure you’ve earned it.” He passed over the wineskin. A boyish squire came running with another.
“That isn’t your blood, is it?”
“Isn’t even human, I’m afraid. Horse.”
Toby took a drink and surveyed the field. The makeshift bridge was a smoking ruin, but since the Allies were obviously winning on both banks on this downstream side, that was not overly serious. Now he could appreciate why Ercole had stationed his infantry on the left. Having broken the opposition with his archers and cavalry, he had deployed the foot soldiers to close off any possible retreat to the hills. Like Villars, he had pinned the Fiend’s forces between the river and the city wall. He just had not reached the butchery part yet, and there was a lot of arquebus firing going on.
“How is the struggle going elsewhere, comandante?” asked a sweat-soaked face from inside a helm, a young knight Toby did not know.
“Very well on the left bank. Upstream, the Venetians are in serious trouble. Ercole? Can you—”
The old warrior brightened. “Certainly! Luigi, Giovanni—help me up. We can leave the infantry to clean up here, Tobias. If I take the cavalry around, will that be enough?”
Toby almost laughed aloud with relief. “You’d probably be enough all by yourself, you old scoundrel. Yes! By all means. But be as quick as you can.”
Ercole opened his mouth and pealed like a thunderstorm over the noise of battle: “Fresh horses! Drummer, sound the Prepare to Advance!”
Toby went off to tell Alfredo that relief was on its way.
The Fiend’s Brenner Pass army was pressing Alfredo hard when Abonio brought the Milanese knights around the city to attack on its left. Shortly after that, Gioberti fell on its rear. The Venetians took new heart and counterattacked. Even so, the fighting continued to rage under the howling demonic storm clouds. It seemed incredible that men could continue to fight for so long without dropping dead of exhaustion. Toby lost all track of time. More than once he found himself in the lines, fighting alongside Tyroleans, then mercenaries wearing Neapolitan insignia, finally Venetians. Later he discovered blood on his sword and had very little memory of how it got there. (The legends that grew up later had him fighting in a hundred places all over the battlefield, rallying defeated troops with rousing speeches, leading charges, slaying famous warriors in single combat, but the truth had to be much less that that.) Three times he was attacked by demons, but each time his demonic bodyguards drove off the assault.
The end came suddenly, when a fiery apparition in the shape of a phoenix swirled up from the knoll where Nevil’s standard flew and sped away to the north. Everywhere Allied troops raised a mighty cheer, knowing that the Fiend himself had quit the field with his attendant demons. Then Maestr
o Fischart and his assistants were able to break the enemy forces’ spiritual bindings. Their resistance collapsed at once; they threw down their weapons and fell on their knees.
“No Quarter” was the order of the day, and most of the officers made efforts to enforce it. They failed. With few exceptions, Italian rank and file flatly refused to slaughter their defeated opponents. This minor mutiny had begun even before Nevil departed, and it spread rapidly over the entire battlefield, in a strange and spontaneous demonstration of mercy. If the invaders groveled convincingly and were willing to swear loyalty to Toby Longdirk, then their lives were spared. No one knew where that second condition came from, but possibly it was simply the most obvious way to dispose of the problem. No right-thinking Italian wanted his city to undertake the expense of maintaining a defeated army, but equally he did not want any of its neighbors to own it either, so he decided to give it to that young foreigner everyone seemed to trust. Let the comandante take it far away.
By the end of the day, the nightmare Toby had foreseen had come true, and almost seventy thousand of Nevil’s troops were still alive. What he had not foreseen was that they had all sworn allegiance to him. They were all going to want to eat.
53
The continual booms and rattling of gunfire were apparently mere celebration. All the bells of Florence had been ringing for hours, while bonfires blazed in the night, and drunken mobs teemed through the streets. Even within the Marradi Palace, the few servants still around were unsteady on their feet and inclined to leer at their betters in ways that would not normally be tolerated. No family members were in evidence. Sartaq had advised Lisa and her mother to remain in their room and keep the door locked. Whether he was doing the same, they did not know, but he at least had a bodyguard and a couple of tame shamans around to look after him. The Fiend’s defeat, in other words, was turning out to be little less frightening than his success might have been. It was after midnight when Lisa, supperless but exhausted, decided she might as well go to bed. Before she could say so, a thunderous knocking on the door almost sent her mother back into hysterics.
Lisa bent to shout through the keyhole. “Who’s there?”
A blurred male voice said something about a lettera.
Even she could understand that word. “Um, sotto il porta!”
Not understanding her Italian, he just pushed the letter under the door and went away. It was brief, written in a poor hand.
Sir Toby will wate upon thir
Magesttys within ye our.
He must have written it himself.
Blanche, reading over her shoulder, uttered a squeak like a pierced cat. “He’s coming to get you!”
“Nonsense, Mother. I’m too young for …” Her voice wavered into silence. “Oh, Mother!”
The two of them fell into each other’s arms.
To the victor belongs the loot. King Longdirk the First.
The summons did not come for at least two hours, far beyond the limit of time even two royal ladies could spend making each other ready for an important audience. The street racket remained as raucous as ever, but when the tap on the door came, it was more courteous than before.
“Who’s there?”
“Colin McPhail, Your Majesty.”
Ah! Half of Lisa shuddered in horror at the realization that Longdirk really had come for her, and the other half acknowledged that she knew Colin McPhail and he was a decent young man. She unlocked the door.
McPhail had a Marradi flunky with him as a guide, but also half a dozen pikemen, which seemed an excessive bodyguard for a journey downstairs in a palace. Perhaps he knew more than she did. By the time they reached the top of the staircase, Lisa was grateful for their support, or at least for the lanterns they carried. The great mansion was dark and deserted, even the street noises barely penetrating its walls. Statuary loomed like guardian spirits, the pictures were mysterious splodges—although she noted that the ones she liked best by daylight were still the most interesting in near darkness. She wondered if Pietro’s wraith haunted his ancestral home, and quickly decided that he had not been evil, and the tutelary would cherish his soul. Lucrezia was another matter altogether. Where had she gone?
The hall was a cube of black emptiness whose lower surface was sprinkled with a few candle flames like fallen stars. At least a score of men were standing in the middle, but the buzz of conversation ceased as she approached. She recognized Guilo Marradi, and Sartaq, and Longdirk by his size, but almost no one else. Most of the men were soldiers—all swords, boots, armored jerkins, steel helmets.
Sartaq stepped forward. She curtseyed.
“Rise, Cousin,” he croaked in his harsh accent, “and Aunt, too. I am happy to tell you that comandante Longdirk has just been reporting how he destroyed the Fiend’s army, as instructed. Hence I have the pleasure to assure you that your royal persons are no longer in peril. Italy is saved.”
Lisa curtseyed to him again, not to Longdirk. “That is indeed wonderful news, Your Highness. Sir Tobias is large, but I assume he had some assistance?”
“Indeed he had. Allow me to present: first comandante Longdirk, the hero of the day. You know Captain-General Don Ramon …”
As each man in turn stepped forward and bowed, she noticed that the two shamans were standing in the gloom at the edge of the group, but so also was Maestro Fischart, who was supposed to have died in Siena. So Longdirk’s gramarye probably outweighed Sartaq’s, and the prince was certainly outmatched in sheer muscle and steel if all these mercenaries were on Longdirk’s side.
Then she saw Hamish in the background and forgot everything else. He was standing behind a small table that bore a gold candlestick, so his face was lit from below, making his expression eerie and hard to discern, but he was certainly staring very hard at her, and she was hard put not to stare back instead of going through the necessary absurdities of acknowledging the soldiers’ bows. Oh, Hamish, don’t just stand there! Take me away from all this madness. Drag me onto your horse and ride for the hills.
When the stupid rigmarole was ended, she was left standing between Sartaq and her mother and could no longer deny to herself that she would not be here if she were not the subject of the meeting. Marriage? Couldn’t it wait until tomorrow? Even in the dancing, uncertain candlelight she could tell that everyone there was exhausted. Longdirk looked the worst, as if he were close to unconscious on his feet. Servants were doing something at the far end of the hall, laying out a meal, perhaps.
“So what exactly is your proposal, comandante?” Sartaq said. “Start at the beginning again, for we are all very tired. Start, in fact, by explaining why the matter cannot wait a few days and must be discussed in the middle of the night.”
The big man squared his shoulders with a visible effort, as if he carried an ox on them. “Logistics, Your Highness. We have sixty thousand prisoners or more outside the city and Allied armies three times that size, Tuscany will be eaten to the roots if we wait. Nevil must not be given time to raise another army. We must start moving out right away.”
“Orders,” said a quiet voice from the wings. A few heads turned to scowl at Hamish, who was the prompter.
“Yes, orders,” Longdirk mumbled. “Orders. Someone has to be able to give the necessary orders, and I have fulfilled the mandate …” His voice tailed away.
“Two hundred thousand bodies,” Sartaq said. “You need a few days to bury those… But carry on.”
Longdirk seemed to sway. He turned his head. “Chancellor?”
Hamish spoke from where he stood. “These noble knights, Your Highness, your officers, petition you to appoint comandante Longdirk to the post of suzerain, replacing the deeply lamented Pietro Marradi.” Hamish paused. Lisa thought he drew a deep breath. “Subject to your gracious consent to this appointment and to confirm his status, he humbly petitions the hand in marriage of your ward, Elizabeth, lawful born Queen of England and diverse other realms.”
She managed not to shudder too visibly, but shudder she
did. So Longdirk wanted her as a trophy of war, did he? And England, too. Not a bad prize for a ditch-born Highland bastard. He was having a good day.
Sartaq let the silence lengthen. Clearly this delegation was by way of being a mutiny. The Khan’s armies were encamped all around Florence and their leaders had just given him an ultimatum. He was hunting for a way out. Lisa did not think he was going to find one.
“And you expect me to make this decision now, on the spot?”
“There is a movement afoot …” said a younger man. “It would not be seemly, but the danger is… The men are already hailing him as suzerain, Your Highness.”
Pause. Then another man remarked to no one in particular, “And the liberated troops have all sworn allegiance to him personally.”
This time the pause was ominous. One of the other mercenaries spoke up, a man almost as big as Longdirk, although older.
“Would it not be an appropriate and generous gesture to complete a day so magnificent, Your Highness?”
“I think this is tomorrow already, messer Abonio,” Sartaq grumbled. “And we like to decide for ourselves when to demonstrate our generosity.” Lisa thought he might turn his head and ask her what she thought of the match, but he didn’t. Nobody cared what she thought of the match, nobody except Hamish, and he was a field mouse in a pride of lions. “If I approve this appointment, comandante, I presume you will make the usual obeisance and pledge loyalty to the Khan?”
Longdirk blinked as if his eyes would not stay open. “Is there an option? I thought obeisance was obligatory.”
“So it is,” Sartaq said thoughtfully. “And you will do homage for the realm of England?”
“Chancellor?”
This time Hamish left the table he was guarding and walked closer to the center. “Your Highness, English common law permits an heiress to do homage for her estate, as Queen Elizabeth already has, to Your Grace in your personification as the darughachi of His Majesty Ozberg Khan. The proposed marriage contract specifies that she will appoint her husband King Consort but will retain in her person and sole right all honors of England, Wales, Ireland, et cetera. As dowry, she brings to her husband merely a quitclaim of any rights professed by her forebears to the throne of Scotland, plus a grant of certain lands within the Duchy of Lancaster providing an income of—”