Tuscany

by Matthew Thayer

  Maria’s computer has a few pictures of Florence, or Firenze, whatever the town will be called. The best for our purposes was a woodcut from the Middle Ages. Every couple miles, I would find a tall pine that looked like it might poke above its neighbors, climb to the top and look around. On our third day following the river, I was swaying at the tiptop of a pine, holding onto a trunk no bigger around than my wrist, looking out over a countryside that matched the woodcut pretty much perfectly. Minus the villas, farmlands, city walls and nymphs blowing trumpets in the sky. Smoke from a bunch of fires rose in the distance.

  We scouted until Gray Beard found a spot on a hilltop where a landslide had taken a bite from the forest big enough to give us a clear look into the valley below. Keeping to the shadows, kneeling in crumbling yellow soil, we shucked off our packs and studied the view.

  “It must be Martinelli,” Maria said, comparing the view to the image on her computer. “Their camp is just uphill from where the Duomo will be.”

  Gray Beard was hot to run right down there and take the place by storm. It took some heated sign language for us to convince him to hold off. We needed a better idea of what was going on. He was quick to point out that trees and smoke were all we could see from so far away. I agreed.

  We covered less than a mile before the first dog patrol picked up our scent.

  The old man led us down into a creek bed that sluiced through a shallow ravine. Not much more than a ditch in some places, it dipped about 15 feet below ground level at its deepest. We slogged through its cold-running waters for a good 25 minutes as the barking, howling dogs drew closer and closer.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Martinelli: “Do you hear the dogs, Salvatore? The Americans are close. And they have brought the old man. How kind. Can you see them from up there? Flitting tree to tree like sneak thieves? The Saints will be engaging them soon. If Mojac’s boys hurt the woman, there will be Hell to pay. Sal, wake up, your friends are coming.”

  From the log of Paul Kaikane

  Recreation Specialist

  The patrol must have been within 50 yards when the old man began barking. His yips and howls really set the dogs off. Motioning us to quit the stream, he led us up the muddy bank opposite the pack.

  The dogs burst from the trees, trailing shouts and curses and empty leashes. They splashed through the stream and up the bank to circle Gray Beard in a happy, tail-wagging reunion. The mutts licked his face and barked for joy.

  The old man had no time for their nonsense. “Down,” he said as he dropped to a laying position at the top of the bank. We laid in the weeds, muddy dogs jumping all over us, as four Tattoo warriors cleared the trees. Their calls turned to angry threats as they tried to coax the dogs back across the stream.

  We waited for the men to slide down the slippery bank before rising to take aim with our spears. It should have been a slaughter, but those battle-hardened warriors sensed our trap before it was sprung. Four tattooed faces, upturned in momentary surprise, shouts, growls, spears cocked and cast. All in a split second.

  Overcompensating for the downward angle, my first spear took a blonde-haired giant through the thigh just as he released his flint-tipped shaft. Barely dodging his throw, I returned fire and missed high. With a savage cry, the bearded warrior charged across the stream. He was in mid-jump, a six-foot-long spear dragging from his leg, when my last throw caught him squarely in the ribcage. His leap turned into a tangled splash.

  Standing without a spear, realizing I had broken the old man’s first rule of spear fighting, I turned to see two Tattoo fighters dressed in furs and tall moccasins clear the bank to advance on Maria and Gray Beard. They were upstream about 60 yards. Maria had her war club out while the old man jabbed at the men with the sharp point of his last spear. Un-belting the meteorite club on the run, I saw one bad guy was armed with a stout club and the other a long-shafted spear. Around their necks were necklaces strung with human teeth, ears and fingers.

  The men circled wide, pinning my people against the stream bank. Gray Beard refused to allow them the high ground. My shouts caused them to stop and turn. The warrior with the spear peeled back to face me. His pal resumed the attack on Maria and the old man.

  My opponent stood waiting for me. He met my charge with a counterattack straight from The Team’s textbook. “Martinelli has been training these men,” I realized with a jolt as he connected with a glancing chop to my left shoulder. He tried to run me through with his follow-up and I just barely deflected the flint of his spear. I feinted for his face with my club and tried a sweeping attack for his legs. He had seen that one before. Skipping nimbly out of range, he lunged forward to nearly take my head off with a vicious swing of his oak shaft.

  Ducking the swing, I rolled twice and used the meteorite club’s handle to block the downward chop I knew would come. It did. As we disengaged and circled each other, I saw a growing frustration begin to show on his mud-smeared face. It was a look I had seen many times. My high school wrestling coaches had taught me to recognize it. A mistake was coming, I just had to be ready.

  It came, I thought, when he allowed me to grab his spear and pull him close. At the last moment, he let go of the shaft and slashed upward for my groin with a wicked ivory knife. Folding away from the thrust, I tumbled backwards over one of the yapping dogs. The warrior was on top of me in a flash, pinning one of my arms down as he lifted his knife for the killing stroke. Scissoring my legs around his waist, I caught his arm on the downward arc. The blade hovered over my right eye as we wrestled for control.

  Releasing my arm, he punched me a couple times, short lefts that bloodied my lips, but now I had two hands on that knife and was never gonna let go. His breaths started coming in gulps as the crushing power of my legs took their toll. Feeling his knife arm weaken, I used an aikido hold to twist the wrist until it snapped. With no breath left in his lungs, his scream was just a raspy groan. Standing, picking up the meteorite club from the mud at my feet, I spun to deliver a downward stroke that shattered his left arm and continued on to crush the bridge of his nose. A second blow, this one to the side of the head, finished the job.

  I turned to find the fight had carried far upstream. The warrior with the club had Gray Beard backed up against a tree. The old man appeared to be growing tired as he used thrusts and jabs to hold off the tenacious fighter. Maria lay motionless by the riverbank, surrounded by sniffing dogs. As I ran, she rose and shook her head to clear the cobwebs. Lifting the obsidian-headed club out of the leaves, she headed straight for the warrior.

  I wanted to shout, “Stop” or “Wait,” but didn’t dare. Maria ducked under a fallen tree, walked quietly on the outsides of her feet as Gray Beard had taught her. She rose on tiptoes to slam the ball of her club down onto the crown of the warrior’s skull. As he pitched forward, Gray Beard ran a spear through his gut.

  When I trotted up, Maria was wobbling so bad I had to grab her to keep her from falling over.

  “He knew my name,” she managed after a while. “He called me ‘Doo-art’.”

  “I’m glad you wore that helmet, babe.”

  “He only gave me a tap. I don’t think he was trying to kill me.”

  A keening cry for help echoed from the streambed. Quick as a cat, the old man skipped down the bank to hoist up a river rock. Ignoring pleas for mercy, he raised the mossy stone in both hands to once, twice bash the man’s skull.

  He moved carefully to make sure the others were dead. Once he was certain, he gathered up our spears. The dogs were back to their antics, nuzzling his legs and wagging their tails. He stooped to give each one a rub on their ears and a piece of dried ham from a fold somewhere inside his leather cape.

  “We must leave the dogs,” I said. “Can we tie them up?”

  “Where wolves will eat them?” Gray Beard’s look said he was in no mood to bargain. “They come with us. We’ll need these dogs to carry packs when we take the people home.”

  TRANSMISSION:

  Duarte: “It�
�s time to suit up, soldier.”

  Kaikane: “Do you really think this will work?”

  Duarte: “The computer says it will.”

  Kaikane: “How?”

  Duarte: “The files were frustratingly unspecific. There was an upload. I installed it in both of our suits. It should protect us.”

  Kaikane: “Couldn’t help noticing that you said, ‘should’ protect us, not ‘will’ protect us. You’re not very confident about this, are you?”

  Duarte: “Are we ever certain about anything in this life?”

  Kaikane: “I’m sure that I love you.”

  Duarte: “I love you too, hon.”

  From the log of Paul Kaikane

  Recreation Specialist

  The old man watched in silence as we tugged on our suits. I helped Maria get her arms down her sleeves and fingers into her gloves, then she gave me an assist. I always have trouble getting mine pulled up over my shoulders.

  Familiar vibrations and hums kicked on once my helmet was sealed in place. What Gray Beard was thinking as we tested the stealth settings, I’ll never know. He stood there quietly as we used our thoughts to scroll through invisible, glowing and solid black.

  It took more than an hour of trudging through the slop to reach a vantage point atop a low rise about 500 yards from the Italians’ hilltop camp. Along the way, we saw no people, patrols, or, any other signs of life. The area had been picked clean of game, from all the deer and horse, right down to rabbits, squirrels, frogs, turtles and grubs. Nothing moved in the fading light of the chill afternoon.

  Even the birds seemed to have packed up and left. The silence reminded me of the barren world we had left behind, though it sure was a lot wetter here. The lowlands were flooded, all marshland and swamp, dead birch trees drowned in brown soupy water. Maria said most of the land that will become the city of Florence is now underwater.

  Every ounce of my training told me to sit tight and observe for an hour or two, slowly work my way close to reconnoiter the area. The patient approach was not going to work with Gray Beard. Not unless we tied him down.

  “What’s that blinking light?” Maria asked.

  “I thought it was a fire. So much smoke up there, so many trees. Now I’m not sure.”

  “It hasn’t moved. I think it’s a jump suit.”

  We were trying to make out what was happening in the trees on the hill when a second dog patrol swept midway between us and camp. This one had six mutts and six warriors who never saw us. As they disappeared into the trees, the old man and his own pack of dogs broke into a lope straight uphill. Maria and I snap-locked our backpacks around the limb of an oak tree, picked up our weapons and took off after him. Once he was sure we weren’t trying to stop him, he slowed to the careful, ground-eating shuffle that lets him move through the forest quiet as a fox.

  We arrived in time for church. “Vespers,” is what Maria called it. Martinelli and his woman stood before a hungry-looking bunch of Cro-Magnons. There were about 50 men and women kneeling close to a ring of fires where a pair of horses turned on spits. Another 50 or so skinny souls knelt in the shadows. The entire bunch had their heads bent in prayer, hands pressed together in front of their faces like Buddhist monks. Martinelli chanted verses in Italian.

  Slipping into the lee of a stout boulder, we peeked over to see a glowing jumpsuit tied to a cross by the wrists and ankles. It wasn’t the ivory cross from Nice, but a wooden one like the ones I’d seen in pictures of Jesus being crucified–if Jesus wore a full suit and helmet and glowed.

  “Do you think that’s Sal?”

  “Kinda thin. One way to find out. Make sure the old man stays down.”

  Martinelli’s head snapped up as Maria keyed her radio.

  TRANSMISSION:

  Duarte: “Corporal Bolzano, do you read me? Corporal Bolzano?”

  Martinelli: “Dottoressa Duarte, you finally made it. I’ve been praying you would arrive soon. God assured me you would be here in time to help bury Salvatore, and, as always, He was correct.”

  Duarte: “Salvatore Bolzano, do you copy?”

  Martinelli: “We’ve been waiting a long time. Did you bring your boyfriend?”

  Duarte: “Corporal Bolzano, do you copy?”

  Martinelli: “I’m afraid you will need to address any questions you may have to me. Sal stopped talking days ago. Sang his silly arias until he lost his voice. He’s not well, you know.”

  Duarte: “Is that Corporal Bolzano on the cross?”

  Martinelli: “Yes, indeed.”

  Duarte: “Get him down. Immediately!”

  Martinelli: “I cannot do that, nor can I allow you to. Please don’t try. His fate is firmly in the hands of the Lord.”

  Duarte: “Martinelli, you idiot! Your God has no place in this world.”

  Martinelli: “With time, I will convince you otherwise.”

  Duarte: “Never!”

  Martinelli: “I must disagree. The Lord has been quite specific on that account. It may take a bit of persuasion, but you will join me. Together, we are going to build an empire to rival the Romans.”

  Duarte: “You are talking to God now?”

  Martinelli: “We are in near-constant contact, you might say he has an apartment in my brain.”

  Duarte: “You need help.”

  Martinelli: “I know. I need help spreading the Word. Please come out where I can see you, and bring Kaikane, I know he’s there with you. Behind the rock. I promise your safety. Is the old man with you too?”

  Duarte: “He died.”

  Martinelli: “Another lie. We saw you coming early this afternoon. Three heat signatures slinking through the forest. I sent a patrol out to greet you. I’m surprised you didn’t see them. They must have become lost. “

  Kaikane: “Lost is one way to put it.”

  Martinelli: “There you are, surfer man. I was beginning to wonder if you no longer enjoyed the power of speech. I hope you aren’t put off by God’s intentions for Dr. Duarte. I assure you, He has plans for you as well. Come out now, please, all three of you. We’re about to have dinner. You must join us. We’ll discuss our differences as adults do.”

  From the log of Paul Kaikane

  Recreation Specialist

  Maria took my hand in hers and gave it a squeeze. “Whatever happens, I’ll always love you,” she said. “Let’s pull back a few hundred yards, test my theory about the guns.”

  That’s what we did. Trying to keep out of sight, we scooted over to a ridgeline with a clear view of the campfires.

  “I see you moving down there,” Martinelli taunted over the com line as we ran across a clearing. “Where are you going?”

  Once we reached the ridge, Maria pulled me into a tight hug. “Turn your external speaker up to full volume, face toward the camp, let the old man stand behind you.”

  “We’ve gone over this a million times, Maria.”

  “I know.”

  “When we see the gun flash, we dive. Right?”

  “No, don’t move. You might dive into the bullet. We must have faith.”

  Maria gave the old man a pat on the arm to get him close up tight against my back as she focused a glow of light on his face. His tale started the usual way.

  “Listen, and I will tell you a story!”

  The voice boomed from my speakers so loudly I had to crank up the dampeners in my helmet to keep from going deaf. Maria had asked him to tell his story about the first man and woman on earth. The one about the Great Father and Mother who had litters of babies as numerous and often as field mice. Though I had heard the story before, he spoke so quickly I could barely follow the meaning.

  Through my visor, I could see Martinelli stomping through the ranks of his followers, pushing heads down, turning faces away from the voice and image of Gray Beard. Maria’s plan to transmit the old man’s likeness through my suit was working just fine. I watched Lorenzo pull a pistol from his suit and draw a bead directly on my chest. A brilliant flash of light was followed
by the longest half-second of my life. With an electric hiss, the bullet zipped overhead.

  The sergeant emptied both pistols as we marched arm-in-arm toward his camp, shielding the storyteller. His curses became more frantic over the com line. I only heard bits and pieces in the lulls when the old man paused to take a breath. By the time we reached the muddy perimeter of camp, Martinelli was bent over a reed mat reloading his revolvers. The wide-eyed natives followed the advance of the dead shaman in nervous silence.

  “Tattoo spear men!” Martinelli shouted. A rank of about 20 warriors stood, raised their spears and took aim. “Attack! Now!”

  I hooked Maria with an arm and spun her back into the old man with a takedown that sent the three of us sprawling. As we tumbled, an entire flight of spears filled the air above. So much for the peaceful overthrow. A rage overtook me. Pulling the meteorite club from my suit, I leaped to my feet, circled through the trees and charged the warriors from the side.

  Martinelli saw me and fired three quick shots. I braced for impact, but those bullets passed right on by. Tucking the pistols into his suit, he ducked behind a pair of ugly Tattoo warriors. Lines of red and black spiraled across their cheeks and foreheads, eyes were etched at their temples. Martinelli had his visor up and altered his suit to neutral beige so his men could see him. He looked plenty scared.

  “All Saints on me, double time!”

  The warriors beat me to him. They surrounded their boss with spears pointed outward into the dark. If they saw anything coming, it was just a strange club floating at high-speed. I unleashed nine months of frustration on their necks and heads and knees. Martinelli fell to the back of the ranks as my first mighty hack buried in the skull of the tallest man. Wedging my club free, I had the presence of mind to realize I didn’t need to swing so hard. I kept one eye on the cowering sergeant, ready for some dirty trick with a spear or knife as I harvested Tattoo warriors like stalks of bamboo.