Blood Ties

by C. C. Humphreys

  By the time the Norsemen caught up with their troops they were dealing with the first real sign of resistance, in the wide entrance cavern, the steps to the enemy trench directly ahead of them. Two of his men had fallen, wounded, to pistol shots, the rest were being held at bay by six mercenaries with room to swing their halberds. It was a stand-off, but Haakon could not leave these six to follow and harry them back down the tunnel, not with his wounded to evacuate. Not with the tunnel to blow.

  ‘No chance of surrendering, I suppose,’ he called, in German, across the wall of pike.

  ‘Fuck your mother,’ a heavily bearded Switzer called back. ‘Like I’m going to fuck your wife when we get into your rat’s nest of a city.’

  His fellows laughed, added further insults. Then, above their jeering, a sharp sound rang out, as two curved blades ran off each other’s perfectly sharp edges.

  ‘I don’t like it when people threaten my late mother,’ said Erik. ‘Or my sainted grandmother, for that matter, God rest both their souls.’

  Haakon turned, though he knew it was a waste of his time, even as he raised his battle axe to take part in what was inevitably to follow.

  He was halfway round, the words coming to his lips, when the flash of two scimitars flew past.

  ‘God’s blood! Erik!’ The words were weary, yet not so the battle cry as he hurled himself after his son: ‘Siena! Hoch, Hoch!’

  Erik’s attack had separated the Swiss into a four and a two and since his son had already killed one opponent and was now engaged with the second, Haakon ducked under the halberds of the larger group, dropped to his knees, and swung the axe low and level to the ground. The first Switzer managed to jump it, the second caught it in his calf with a yell of agony, falling backwards into his two comrades. Haakon’s own men were among them in three heartbeats and it lasted barely three heartbeats more.

  Haakon looked up to see an Erik drenched in blood, his face a mask of it, the eyes white and wild from within that mask. And, as he looked, he saw his son suddenly raise his nose into the air.

  ‘Father! Do you smell that? Roasting chickens!’ And with a crazed yelp, Erik burst up the stairs into the enemy’s trenches.

  Haakon had seen the young man’s eyes, knew that Erik was looking out through a veil, a reddened mist that had nothing to do with the blood that covered him. Well, maybe a little, for the battle madness always tasted of iron. Words would not draw the veil; nothing could except death or victory. He could only hope, as he gathered his men to follow his son into the heart of their enemy, that the mist would descend once again for him too.

  Beck had felt Jean enter the upper casemate, felt his gaze upon her, knew where he’d gone without the benefit of her eyes. She had always had a sense for him, known exactly where he was at home – in his vineyards, hunting game in their forests, tending the olive groves – but the sense had been there long before that happy time, from their very first meeting nineteen years before. She’d known where he was every day within besieged Siena, but what had been a blessing had now become a curse. She didn’t want to think of him all the time. She didn’t want to think of him at all.

  There was no one she could tell about this. Not him, for Rombaud had never been a man to talk of feelings. Not their Anne, named after the Queen for whose cause Jean had nearly died, that name the first link in a chain that bound father and daughter so closely there was room for no one else. And not her son, her Gianni. Not any more. The man she sensed and couldn’t look at had seen to that when he had driven their son away.

  Beck rested the musket in the groove hollowed out in the wool sack that lay before her on the parapet, checked the glowing cord, her gunpowder flask, the lead balls in her pocket. There was still a time when she would not think of her husband – in the violence to come. Yet if Jean’s plan went right, she would not get even that relief, for the brief fight would only happen underground. She half-hoped it would go wrong.

  Leaning forward, she looked through the embrasure. The Florentine trench opposite, down the slope and about a hundred paces ahead was quiet, save for the odd voice raised in false normality. She knew that under the sheltering gabions filled with sand, the fascines and wicker screens, many men were crouching silently, waiting to pour into the tunnel should the opportunity arise, if their miners had stumbled upon the countermine they knew must lie ahead, which they hoped would be lightly defended. With luck, some of this enemy would soon become targets. She shifted the stock, pressing it into her shoulder, squinting down the barrel.

  It had been less than ten minutes since Haakon had led his troop underground when the quiet world opposite began to fill with noise. It started with a very muffled pop as if someone far away had dropped a glass vessel. Then came the first of many cries, bat squeaks of fear and pain to begin, hoarse, whispered commands replaced by shouts as all need for stealth disappeared with the first casualties staggering out into the enemy emplacement. On the far side of the casemate, Beck heard Jean issuing commands on a half-breath, willing the men below to do as they had been bidden.

  ‘Now, Haakon, lead them back. Fugger, get ready to blow it.’

  Then the noise from the enemy trench multiplied by ten, as if someone had just thrown open a window on a riot. Careless of the target she made, Beck raised her head in time to see a wicker screen hurled into the air, struck by some flailing weapon or body on the other side. It fell flat to the earth and in the gap she saw two blades rise as one. They were curved and as they fell she heard the shout that always went with them.

  ‘A Haakonsson! A Haakonsson!’

  She span away, sought her husband, thinking nothing of it now. For violence had arrived to take away her pain.

  ‘Jean! They are in the enemy trench. I saw Erik!’

  ‘Damn! Damn them!’ Jean had not looked, had no need to. He knew that war cry as well as she did.

  ‘They will need help.’

  She was moving toward him now and the last thing he needed was to see her. He pushed himself away from the wall and ran for the door. Stumbling down the stairs, cursing Haakon silently and continuously, Jean forced his legs and stick to carry him down to the lowest gun position and on to the well mouth. Looking down into the hole, he hesitated, but there was nothing for it. Ordering three arquebusiers to precede him with torches, taking a deep breath, he followed them into the pit. The light gave him no comfort, it was still a dank and dismal place, but he found his way swiftly to the main shaft, passed the Fugger’s former listening post where the drum lay holed and broken and found the man himself further down, shovel in his one hand, burying gunpowder kegs against the timbers of a junction.

  ‘Haakon is in their trenches.’

  ‘What?’ The Fugger paused in his digging, wiping a sleeve across his muddied face.

  ‘The fool! I told him, ordered him …’ Jean broke off, as his voice cracked. This would do him no good. With another deep breath, he said, ‘How long, Fugger?’

  ‘A few minutes only.’

  ‘Blow it as soon as you can. We can’t risk the Florentines coming through. Siena could fall.’

  ‘And Haakon?’

  Jean turned and spat. ‘We’ll have to find him another way home.’

  The Fugger had finished packing the earth tight around the large kegs. He picked up a smaller one, tucked it under his handless arm, flicked open the plughole. A trickle of powder issued forth.

  ‘Take the torches away, Jean. Put them all out. We don’t want this to go before we are ready.’

  ‘But how can you see to set the trail?’

  The Fugger smiled. ‘This is my realm. How much do you think I saw in the gibbet midden?’

  ‘Take no chances. These men will wait with their guns, to cover you.’

  With that, Jean turned and ran for the bastion, pulling torches from the walls as he went, snuffing them in the earth. He had to know what was happening in the trenches opposite.

  ‘Damn, damn those Norsemen. I’ll kill them if the Florentines don’t.’
>
  The Florentines were trying. So were the Spanish, the Swiss and a mixed bag of Germans.

  At first they had thought the young man bursting from the earth was another of theirs, fleeing the fighting below. Three men had died thinking that, and three more were trying not to as they matched rapier, pike or shovel – anything with an edge – to the whirling scimitars. Then there was a battle axe there as well, another tall and blond-bearded man wielding it, then more swords borne by more of their enemy. Fearing that these were not the last, watching comrades die swiftly, the Florentines and their mercenaries fled the emplacement.

  Erik saw the backs of his enemies vanish around the earthwork corner and made to follow. But a hand the size of a platter seized him by the neck, halting him where he stood, halting the flow of breath.

  ‘Urk!’ he managed to say, before Haakon had swung him around, toes trailing on the ground, red face thrust to red face.

  ‘Enough, boy!’ the elder Norseman bellowed. ‘Would you take on the whole world?’

  He threw his son backwards, where Erik flopped against the trench wall. There, desperate now for air, he inhaled deeply, and caught the first whiff of something glorious. Turning his head to the right, he looked at fat running down the glistening, crispy skin of a bird. It was thrust onto a spit, along with six of its fellows. In the fire pit behind, another dozen sat dripping into the coals.

  ‘Father. Food!’

  Haakon’s mouth instantly flooded with saliva. Plunging his fingers into the nearest chicken, ripping hot flesh from its body, he crammed a handful into his mouth, careless of the heat. His eyes rolled up with pleasure and for a moment everything faded – the red, battle madness, the scent of blood, the fear for his boy. He was back in the courtyard of the Comet Inn with a dozen capons before him and he was going to eat them all!

  A pistol shot brought him back. It was fired, hurriedly, at the edge of the trench by a Florentine officer who stepped around and stepped back as fast. He had seen what he was looking for, Haakon knew. It would be but a moment before he ordered others in.

  ‘Erik! Take three men, hold that gap. Do not go through it!’

  He looked back at the entrance to the mine. He had come too far, the Fugger would be preparing even now to blow it. It was what he would do, because the city itself could fall if the open tunnel remained. They had not fought for fifteen months to allow that to happen, not to wait for a few foolhardy comrades to return.

  He peered over the parapet where Erik’s initial attack had ripped the wicker screens away. Across a hundred paces of sloping ground, striped with the light of a waning moon within the clouds, loomed the walls of Siena. There, at the base of the bastion of the Porta San Viene, set into the wall, was a little door.

  Angry with him though he was bound to be, surely if he went across and knocked, Jean would let his old friend in? Especially if he brought him some supper?

  Raising his voice above the clash of scimitar on sword, Haakon yelled, ‘Grab the chickens. We’re going over.’

  The war council, of necessity, was brief, even though they had now been joined by the overall commander of Siena, the French General, Blaise de Monluc. He’d been drawn, as ever, to the sound of the guns. Of a height with Jean, of an age, he had twice as many scars on his face. One sharp blue eye squinted over the battlements, the other a painted ‘O’ on an eyepatch.

  ‘It is your command, Rombaud. Your bastion. We can help to keep their heads down, if you like.’ He gestured behind him at his thirty men, some with muskets, a few with the heavier moschetti that were moved around the walls as the need arose.

  Briefly, Jean wondered at being deferred to by the veteran general, before his mind swept over the options before him. But in that moment of hesitation, Beck spoke from the shadows by the wall.

  ‘There can be no question. We must do it. We must do it now.’

  To those of De Monluc’s French officers who did not know her, the woman’s voice seemed an affront, out of place in this business of men. The Sienese, who had seen her fight, knew differently.

  Jean glanced into the gloom. ‘And how many more will we lose, if we try to rescue these?’

  She stepped from the shadow then, moved toward him. ‘You heard what I said. There is no question. I am going out for our friends.’

  She was right about the lack of question, but not in the sense she meant. Her words had put Jean in an impossible position. He could now give just the one answer, could only speak the words they all wished to hear.

  ‘Unbar the sally port. My lord, if you will direct your men in their firing.’

  ‘With pleasure, Rombaud. But half my men will come with you. I only wish I could.’ Drawing his plumed hat from his head, Blaise de Monluc swept it to the floor. ‘For France. For Siena. And for the beauty of your lady!’

  Under the cheers, the men scrambled for positions. Jean caught up with Beck, turned her sharply to him.

  ‘You should not have shamed me into that.’

  ‘The old Jean would have needed no shaming.’

  ‘I command here, Beck. I have to think of my men. I have to think if we can win.’

  ‘And I have to think only of Haakon, the man who held the bridge at Pont St Just, twenty years ago, so you could fulfill your vow to Anne Boleyn. Have you forgotten him? And his son? Is he another son you have forgotten, Jean Rombaud?’

  She saw the hurt, the way the words cut him, wanted them instantly back; but it was too late, and the hurt she saw was replaced by fury.

  ‘But you do not go to fight, Beck. That is my order. I will be obeyed in that. And I’ll have you put in chains if I have to.’

  They stood, squared off to each other, glaring. Finally, without taking her eyes from his, she began to move past him, to the stairs.

  ‘I will take my musket and I will watch for my friends. And we will speak further of this moment. Believe me.’ Halting on the bottom step, she added, ‘Do you go?’

  At last, he looked away, somehow kept his voice flat. ‘I do not. Cannot. I am not yet recovered. And I command.’

  He heard her say, softly, ‘Of course you do.’ When he looked again he saw only her back, moving swiftly up the stairs.

  He took a step, called, ‘Beck’, but she was gone. He turned away to issue his commands.

  His force consisted of barely eighty men and he was lucky to have that many, the weakening defenders spread thinly around the walls of the city. He would keep De Monluc’s heavily armoured French pikemen as a reserve, use his rag-bag of Sienese militia leavened with his few experienced Scottish mercenaries. They would grumble, in their impenetrable tongue, at the risk of this mission, for they hadn’t been paid since the last blockade runners had broken through to Siena five months before. But they would fight, if only for their comrades out there with Haakon. They were a clannish bunch, bound by blood and strange tattoos.

  He had barely marshalled them before the sally port, the last bolt shot, when the bloodied head of a Sienese burst up from below ground, an ear half off, screaming, ‘They are in the tunnel! Christ, brothers, the enemy are at the door!’

  If the Florentines were back in the tunnel, then where the hell was Haakon?

  Cautiously raising his head above the parapet, Jean got his answer – as ten figures rose from the trench opposite and a Norse voice screamed, ‘Siena!’.

  The enemy were in the tunnels, but they were not quite at the door. The Fugger knew, because he was, along with the three arquebusiers, their weapons still undischarged. He was laying the last of the gunpowder trail that ran into the darkness ahead in a channel he’d cut only the previous night. The last twenty paces of it, by necessity, was rough hewn in the recent, scrambling minutes, being on the Florentine side of the mine.

  In his battle rage, it was unlikely that Haakon had remembered to close the enemy doors. It might not matter. There might still be sufficient blast, if they shut their own doors. If he had calculated the charge right.

  Poised over the gunpowder channel, t
he Fugger raised the glowing cord in one hand. And just as he did, three Florentines ran around the corner.

  There were six flashes, from arquebus and pistol, and the explosion in that tight space blew out one of the Fugger’s ears, knocking him sideways. Smoke blocked out what little light the one lantern gave; yet from where he fell, stunned though he was, he looked still for the glowing taper’s end, the one he had to thrust into the gunpowder channel before him.

  There was no taper. Bringing his hand close to his face he realized there was no third and little finger to pinch the taper between, just blood and shattered bone. A lead ball had carried them away.

  The three men next to him were dying or dead. The Florentines ahead had disappeared but they, or some of their fellows, were still down the tunnel, rallying for an attack.

  There was no time. Something had to be done, before pain made him incapable. Beside him, a pistol poked from a dead man’s bandolier. It was a flintlock and he closed his remaining fingers around the stock. Primed, it needed only the flick of the thumb to turn its wheel, a spark would leap into the pan, ignite the gunpowder, fire the ball. They misfired five times out of ten, the Fugger had heard.

  Blessing even half a chance, with half a hand, he lowered the gun over the channel of powder and, as the voices up ahead grew closer, flicked the wheel.

  Just as the clouds parted and moonlight lanced across the ground, Haakon’s men stormed out of the trenches. A dozen paces gained before an explosion of musketry from whence they’d fled and, despite the way they dodged, four were struck down immediately, one rising to stagger on alone, two of the figures, golden hair silvered in the light, stopping to aid their stricken comrades. Five more paces, and Beck felt she could get a clear shot over their heads so she fired, just ahead of the volley from De Monluc’s guard. The musket balls, the heavier moschetti, tore lead into the gabions, the wicker screens of the enemy ripped away as if by an unseen hand.

  It was what the enemy awaited, for even if De Monluc’s reserved volley took some of them out, at least a hundred men still chose to leap the parapets and give chase. Their quarry had gained half the distance to the walls, but though some men raced further, nearer to safety, the stragglers were left behind and the gap closed rapidly. It would be but a moment and they would be overwhelmed.