Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

  Renard looked up, smiling, weighing that surprise, delighted that his move had caught the younger man off balance.

  ‘For once, Jesuit information is inferior to mine. Siena is no Troy. Siena … is about to fall.’

  ONE

  SIENA

  ‘Fugger? Are you there?’

  Jean Rombaud had barely spoken, yet the words bounced loudly off the earth walls, echoing down the narrow, twisting passages. He had lost his way at the last crossroads, blind as a worm, his yew stick thrust out before, fingers scraping on damp mud one of his only functioning senses. That, and the way the air got staler to his tongue as he moved deeper into the labyrinth. This was not his world and he cursed again the necessity for time spent within it. Cursed silently, for any words, he now understood, were dangerous.

  He walked into flesh and cried out, but a hand from the darkness pressed over his mouth. No, not a hand, for no fingers splayed across his face. A stump. He had found the man he sought.

  The stump moved away and a moment later a faint trace of light peeped from a gated lantern. In the depth of that blackness, it was like looking suddenly into the sun.

  Squinting, he mouthed a word: ‘Fugger.’

  The Fugger planted his lips next to Jean’s ear. ‘Rombaud. What brings you to my realm?’

  The head turned away and Jean placed his own mouth to the other’s ear. ‘You know, Fugger. You sent word. Is it time?’

  Instead of replying, the Fugger gestured with the lamp, raising it to a narrow earth shelf beside him. On it, sat a drum, a child’s toy. Scattered on its surface were pebbles. As Jean watched, they vibrated across the tight skin. Something was making them move. He pressed his ear to the earth wall, heard the faintest of scratchings, like mice scrabbling behind wood panels.

  Jean turned back to the Fugger, lifted his eyebrows at the wall, mouthed, ‘How long?’

  The man’s one hand opened and closed three times.

  Jean leaned in. ‘Let us go back. I’ll send them down.’

  ‘I stay.’

  ‘Fugger—’

  ‘I stay. I know what’s best for my beauty.’ He patted the walls, smiling.

  Jean shook his head. He had known the Fugger for nearly two decades, most of it above ground. And sometimes he forgot that when they first met, the German had lived in a cave beneath a gibbet for seven years. The man was right; no one knew a subterranean world better.

  Giving him a warning look that clearly said ‘get out when your work is done’, Jean groped his way back, eventually emerging into the shocking brightness of a torch before a door. He rapped upon it with his knuckles, a staccato beat of three, two, three more. Bolts slid back, the door opened on an earth chamber. The next door admitted him to a chamber of stone, steps rising before him. He was out of the Fugger’s dark realm, under the bastion itself now. Back within the walls of Siena.

  He passed through the entrance to the countermine gallery and through the archway before him. There, gathered in the lower casemate of the Porta San Viene, leaning on its guns, spread out around its curving walls, were twenty men and one woman.

  It was his wife’s eyes he sought. He nodded. Beck held the look for a moment, then looked away. She always looked away first, these days.

  Haakon was next, as usual. His oldest comrade straddled a gun carriage, his huge legs resting either side on its wheels. Like Jean, Haakon had lost everything when the forces of Florence, backed by the Emperor’s armies, invaded the terrritory of their old rivals, the Republic of Siena. Their farms and vineyards and the Comet Inn, their home, were among the first to be pillaged and nearly destroyed. Only if Siena won this war would they get their land back.

  Yet, unlike Jean, who had seen enough bloodshed for three lifetimes, Haakon did not fight only for a cause. The Norse ex-mercenary fought mainly, as always, for the pure pleasure of it.

  ‘Well?’ As he rose eagerly from the gun, a shadow rose behind him, leaner, a little taller, with as thick a beard, and eyes just as blue. Erik, Haakon’s son, clutched the first of his twin scimitars in one hand, the whetstone in his other. Before a fight, he would go through the same ritual, sharpening each of them in turn, alternating, long beyond the perfect edge was obtained. Only when the actual moment of battle came would they be sheathed in the double harness on his back. Jean remembered well the young man’s inspiration, the janissary Januc and his pure mastery of the weapon. Though he had died before the lad was born, the tales of Januc’s valour had inspired Erik. Jean had never been able to decide who was the more deft with the curving blade.

  ‘It is time. The Fugger says fifteen minutes, at most.’

  Eric swept his shining scimitars into their sheaths, while Haakon raised his short axe and rested it in his shoulders. It was better for close work than the giant battle axe that stood now in the corner of the room. Haakon, despite his size, had become the master of fighting in close spaces.

  As the men around him strapped on weapons, donned helm and breastplate, Haakon strode over to the Frenchman. ‘Ah, Rombaud, what I would give to have you fighting beside me now.’

  Jean put a false smile on his face into accustomed grooves. ‘And I, my friend. It’s been too long.’

  ‘The wound? It still pains you?’

  The look of pure concern on his friend’s face almost made Jean look down in shame. His expression held, however, fingers rubbing where the sniper’s bullet had passed through his side.

  ‘It does. Jesus willing, it will not be much longer.’

  ‘Ask Thor.’ The pagan Norseman was smiling again. ‘He’s more likely to grant such a warrior request.’

  He moved away among his men, cajoling, encouraging. Jean dropped his hand away from the scar under the doublet, from the wound only he knew had fully healed.

  It was not completely true. His daughter, his darling, named for a queen, his Anne, she knew, because she had had the healing of him. And Beck suspected. But his wife, would put her suspicions down to the other anger she felt toward him.

  She crossed to him and they stood side by side, watching the preparations. Glancing at her, he wondered at the years that had gone. Nineteen since he’d first seen her, disguised as a boy, fought her on that hillside outside Toulon. There was no trace of boy now, only a woman of middle years, grey throughout her thinning hair, lines on her face.

  And he knew how he must look to her. No longer a warrior in his prime. No longer a hero. Far from it.

  ‘Do you go with them, Jean?’ Her voice, when it came, was flat, neutral.

  ‘I do not.’

  ‘Then I will see you above.’

  She moved away, collecting her spanish musket before heading up the stairs. She had long since put away her preferred weapon, the slingshot, the power no longer in the arm. But she was as accurate with lead as she ever had been with stone, and had a greater range, her thirst for a target undiminished.

  He wanted to say something, anything, but no words came. Then Haakon was before him, his men assembled, Erik at his right side, adjusting the sheaths of his scimitars. Jean leaned in, his words for the Norseman alone.

  ‘It’s simple, Hawk. Get in among the Florentines, drive them back, place these’ – he gestured at the five kegs of gunpowder, which were being rolled out from the sealed magazine – ‘where the Fugger tells you to. Then get out.’

  ‘But Rombaud, can you not smell?’ Haakon raised his nose into the air, sniffed extravagantly. ‘They are roasting chickens in the trenches over there. We could all do with a late supper.’

  Jean made his voice harsh. ‘No risks, do your job, get out. You’ve heard my command, Norseman. Obey it!’

  Haakon smiled, unoffended. ‘You’ve become old, my friend. I remember a time with you and me and some chickens …’

  ‘Obey me.’ Jean had not meant to be so abrupt, but the memory his friend would share was connected to others. None from that time gave him pleasure now.

  He turned, taking the stairs to follow Beck. Behind him, Haakon was organizi
ng his troop, commands interspersed with encouragement. Jean knew he should have made a speech, sent his men out to die this night for the glory of Siena, for liberty, for honour. Words that would turn to dirt in his mouth.

  He climbed to the top casemate, where men with musket and arquebus crowded the embrasures. He did not pick one up. Being in command he didn’t have to. No one would see him fumble powder to the floor.

  In the corner, Beck did not even look for him, though he could tell by the angle of her head that she knew he was there. Positioning himself where he could barely see, sheltered by the thick buttresses of the bastion, he tried to calm his breathing while he waited for the attack to begin.

  It was Erik who remembered Haakon’s latest carving, just as they were about to descend the stair that would lead them underground and outside the walls of Siena.

  ‘Father? Are you not taking this?’

  The boy handed him a log. It was the length of one of Haakon’s arms, twice as thick, bound in coils of thick rope. It had been reamed out, from one end protruded a ball of hay, while at the other, a piece of cloth poked from a hole.

  ‘Ah!’ Haakon put his axe into its sheath and hefted his new toy with delight. ‘A thing of beauty, do you not think, my son? Even the name delights: tromba di fuoco!’

  ‘A temporary beauty. It only fires the once, doesn’t it?’

  ‘It is born, lives brightly for an instant, then dies? The best kind of beauty, to my mind.’ Haakon squinted down the rough barrel, wondering if he could cram in any more loose metal. Then he thought about the effect of his words. ‘But you are not a gun, boy. Remember to take no chances down there.’

  The reply was all innocence. ‘But, of course not, Father. I will cower with you in the rear, as always.’

  Cuffing his son across the head to hide his smile, Haakon pushed him down the stair. Before he followed, he glanced up, through the open back of the upper casemate. Beck was on one side of the emplacement, Jean on the other, both turned away.

  ‘Ah, Rombaud.’ There was something between them, something wrong with his friends, some hurt Jean could never discuss and Haakon could never ask about. He’d tried, and it was like a gaol door slammed shut behind the Frenchman’s eyes. The door had been in place for a while now, from before the siege. At first Haakon thought it dated from when the Florentines had come, the destruction of their homes. Later, he realized he could barely remember a time when the hurt was not there. Certainly not since Gianni, their son, had disappeared.

  ‘Rombaud.’ Shaking his head, Haakon started down the stairs. He missed having his comrade by his side, missed seeing the Frenchman’s square-headed executioner’s sword swinging death to their enemies. Even if Jean was a general now, Haakon would have given anything to see that blade descend once again.

  His men waited for him in the narrow chamber by the well shaft. They were the usual mix, half of them Sienese patriots, half mercenaries. The latter were mainly French, for France, as always, sided with those who fought the Emperor. The rest were Scots. The patriots had the spirit, the trained warriors the skill. It was a good balance on the whole.

  With Erik a shadow on his shoulder, he descended into the pit, feeling the familiar surge of battle joy. Too much of this siege had been spent watching from walls, dodging snipers’ bullets, building and reinforcing walls dented by cannon. Not enough sorties, too much idle time thinking about empty stomachs. Happy now, Haakon made the sign of Thor’s hammer and led his troop down into the darkness.

  Haakon smelt the Fugger before he touched him, the German’s life underground, digging, listening for the enemy’s stealthy approach, giving him the distinctive tang of some earth-burrowing creature. The gated lantern’s fragile light revealed more of the mole, a dirt-encrusted face, a shaved head plastered with mud, cobweb and timber dust.

  The light passed over the drum, the pebbles on its surface bouncing hard. The Fugger whispered, ‘Five, at the most!’ Haakon nodded, then moved three paces back. Squatting, he placed a forked stick into the ground before him and rested the open end of the tromba onto it, embedding the other end in a rapidly scraped-up pile of earth. Blowing on the cord that hung from his belt produced the desired glow. With a sigh, he lowered himself onto the ground to wait.

  The Fugger stopped by Erik, squeezing him on the arm. ‘And how fares my daughter?’

  He sensed, rather than saw, the young man’s blush, smiled that this fiercest of warriors could so easily be embarrassed with thoughts of love. The Fugger was happy, for Erik was a good boy, if wild, and his love was clear and true. Spending his life as he did in these dark places, it was a comfort to know that his jewel, his Maria, the last light in his life, was so loved and looked after.

  ‘She is well. She hopes to see you soon and safe.’

  ‘After this night’s work, I think.’ Moving past, seeking the gunpowder, he whispered back, ‘She hopes to see you safe all the more, young man. Remember that.’

  Quiet came again, along with the impenetrable dark. Breathing was shallow, the air close, and if a man had to move, to unstiffen a joint or limb, he did so carefully, causing his harness to barely shift. The only regular sound was the faintest pat pat pat of the pebbles on the drum’s taut skin. At first it was like the tapping of bees trapped behind leaded glass, then slowly it built, multiplied, until the packed earth beneath them, the rough walls, the shoring timbers, all began to vibrate with the rhythmic blows being struck barely a hand’s span away. Twenty pairs of ears strained for the moment that sound would change, when a tip of metal would poke through and two pockets of fetid air would rush to meet and mingle. For at that moment, the tapping would end and men would begin to die.

  It changed. A pickaxe point hit one of the stones the Fugger had embedded in the wall’s surface. The ping, a harsh cry in a world of near silence, was lost in the roar that followed. The Fugger had gouged faultlines over his earthen barrier and along them the wall imploded.

  Hush, then a harsh whisper, a single, Spanish phrase, terror, prayer.

  ‘Mother of God!’

  On his knees, Haakon’s fingers circled the hole bored in the top of the tromba, the other hand bringing the glowing cord down. The searing of the gunpowder in its rough pan lit his face, illuminated, for the briefest of instances, the separate tunnels now made one. Naked to the waist, two men held pickaxes, the one buried before him where his blow and the collapse of the wall had taken it, the other man’s raised high to strike. Behind them, the flash fell on faces lined with shock, glinted on the weapons slowly rising as if to ward off some invisible blow. Only these swords, these short spears and shovels moved, as if they alone had life, the humans holding them frozen in some fresco of fear.

  That was the instant the powder took to reach the chamber in the tromba and then the subterranean world exploded in sound and flame and searing metal. There were torches the enemy side of the gap, thrust into embrasures in the walls and they showed men who were there and then were not, and the roar of it deafened those on both sides, those who were not already dead or dying. Thus their cries sounded faint to those that lived – though the bellow from directly behind Haakon was strong enough to reach his consciousness:

  ‘A Haakonsson! A Haakonsson!’

  Leaping over his father, lying prone where the exploding tromba had thrown him, Erik’s cry preceded him down the tunnel, just ahead of his one drawn scimitar.

  ‘Erik!’ Haakon struggled onto his knees, then up. Shaking his head, still ringing from the explosion, he pulled his battle-axe from its sheath and bellowed, ‘For Siena! Hoch Hoch!’

  Then he chased after his son.

  The Fugger, buffeted aside by the rush of men, called out, ‘Haakon! Not too far. I will blow it soon.’

  But the backs disappeared down the tunnel, the sound of battle joined further down his only reply. Pointing at the men with the powder kegs, he gestured for them to follow, and moved up into the enemy mine.

  Erik had cleared the fallen bodies like a horse going over h
edges, and it was a good twenty paces before he found someone to oppose his sword. A muzzle flashed before him, a lead ball zinged past his ear. Imagining where there was one there would be more, Erik crouched and ran crab-wise along one wall. Two more bullets testified to his caution before he was among the three shooters, their weapons raised to block, vainly, the scimitar’s slicing arcs.

  The torches were further spaced here, and Erik barely saw the shovel. There was not room for a full swing, but the blow caught him flat across the head with enough force to send him crashing into the wall, white spots whirling before his eyes. Through them he sensed rather than saw, the shovel pulled back, the edge of it now turned toward his face. His scimitar was pinned under him, and he could only throw up a fragile hand to defend himself.

  Oh well, he thought, the Fugger manages well enough with only one!

  The shovel hovered, then there was a crash, and it fell straight down, as its shaft splintered under the impact of an axe. A body sailed backwards into the shadows.

  ‘Who’s the leader here? Hmm? I can’t hear you!’

  His father’s furious face was thrust an inch from his own, a massive hand coming in to grab an ear and shake the head like a rattle.

  ‘Ow! You are, Father. You are!’

  His son’s ear felt sticky and, pulling his hand away, Haakon saw the blood. Anger turned to concern. ‘Are you all right? Let me see the wound!’

  Erik thrust his father’s fussing hands aside. ‘A side blow. Nothing.’ Watching his comrades run past them, shouting their war cries, he grinned, said, ‘I thought you said you were the leader here.’

  A smile, half-anger, half-joy. Haakon grasped Erik by the collar and hauled him to his feet.

  ‘Stay behind me!’ He cuffed his son across the head in a blow nearly as powerful as the shovel’s had been, and strode off down the tunnel.

  ‘Anything you say, Father.’ Erik retrieved his fallen weapon, his head ringing; after a moment’s thought, he drew its twin out from behind his back. The tunnel was gradually widening as it made for the enemy trench and there would soon be room enough for two.