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To the members of the Compagnia della Rosa nella Sole
From whom I learn, every day and every event
This book is dedicated
Prologue
Spring—Southern Galle
This is absurd,” the King of Galle said. He looked at his military councilors, who gathered their horses around him.
To the south, the direction in which the Royal Army of Galle was crawling, stretched several miles of armoured men and horses, baggage wagons, pack mules, donkeys, carts full of tents and cookpots and food and wine. They were strung out along a road built in the ancient past and expected, in the present, to support the occasional convoy of merchants into the mountains and a trickle of pilgrims visiting those religious sites still in the hands of man.
They were moving through an empty landscape. Villages were deserted as far abroad as the foragers rode; sheep pens were empty, no cattle lowed, and there was almost nothing for the army to steal, which was making it hungry and surly.
“Nonetheless,” Ablemont said. He paused, waiting until the king’s temper passed and he had his master’s full attention. “Nonetheless, Your Grace, we will have to retreat. In three days we will have no food.”
The king shrugged. “Then let us retreat in two days. I find all this shameful.” He glanced at Ser Tancred Guisarme, the royal constable. “I told you where I needed to go. Was it too much for you, planning to feed my army?”
The high constable had endured several weeks of marching with the king, and he turned a little redder than the spring sun had burned his unarmoured face, but he was outwardly calm. “Your Grace,” he began.
Ablemont raised an eyebrow. “We have kept Your Grace informed as to the...hmm...difficulties. Of the deserted countryside.” He fingered his beard. In the fastness of his mind, Ablemont was not wasting words on his king. He was instead considering how very much he wanted to retreat out of this countryside empty of life, and begin again, with spies and carefully tended scouts. And some contact with his brother in Arles. If there was anyone still alive in Arles. His total ignorance of their foe was the most terrifying aspect of their whole situation.
“I have sworn to relieve Arles,” the king said. His voice held a hint of gloating. After all, the Count of Arles begging aid from his king put the stamp of legitimacy on the usurpations of the last generation. And would reverse the contretemps of a year ago, when the king’s unsubtle attempt to seize Arles had been frustrated by an unknown foreign sell-sword.
Arles, once an independent kingdom, had been recently annexed to the crown of Galle. Only last fall, the rumours had begun that creatures of the Wild were loose in the mountains of Arles.
The Lord of Ablemont had been born in those mountains. Indeed, his brother was Count of Arles and ruled the rump of the kingdom that their grandfather had ruined and their father had nearly forfeited. He looked at the foothills around them, the deep folds in the earth, the heavy dark forests. Ahead, to the south, the true mountains rose, and there would still be snow in the deep woods and on the mountaintops.
He shivered, despite the miniver that lined his hood and his magnificent white surcoat. The city of Arles—one of the oldest settlements of mankind in the Antica Terra, with a fortress that towered even above the mountains, a fortress that the hill people said had been built not by men, but by God. Or gods. Depending on your point of view and the nearness of a priest of Rhum.
His brother, who hated the king; whose daughter Clarissa had been attacked by the king in one of his predatory moods; who desired nothing more than the restitution of sovereignty that history had denied him—his brother had begged the King of Galle to rescue him from the attacks of the Wild. And yet, despite the fact that the army was a mere two or three days’ travel from the great fortress city, they had received no word, no messenger.
Only the silence of the woods, and the empty villages.
All this in the passage of a few heartbeats.
“If we wait two days to retreat, we will lose horses to starvation while we move back to our supplies,” Ablemont said. He did not say, and our retreat will be a shambles, a rout, without our ever seeing a single foe.
The king pursed his lips. “I won’t have it,” he said. “Make camp here and send for food.”
Ablemont opened his mouth to protest, and instead caught the constable’s eye—a decision made in a single heartbeat. It was difficult to resist the king’s will at the best of times, and harder still when he was in a temper. Court etiquette defined how even a favourite could and could not speak to his king, and Ablemont’s position, however secure, was achieved by managing the king, not by confronting him. And besides—as Ablemont scanned the hills around them—this was a good location, with a shallow stream covering their front, and three high hills on which to locate their camp.
Ablemont’s thoughts went immediately to the problem of supply. Every ton of food would have to be moved on this spiderweb-like road net, and he needed to move quickly to have food brought from Austergne, to the north.
“I will put my pavilion here,” the king said. “See to it.” He waved a gloved hand and rode down toward the stream, and his household knights—the largest, best-trained knights in Galle, and thus the world—followed him.
“See to it!” Guisarme spat. “Ventre Saint Gris!”
Ablemont didn’t allow a flicker of feeling to cross his face. “Will you site the camp while I arrange for some provisions to reach us?” Ablemont asked.
Guisarme shrugged. “I miss Du Corse. I miss all that experience. He knows everything about war. And camps. Why did the king exile him?”
Ablemont was already writing on a wax tablet.
Guisarme gave orders to two of his own household knights, who cantered off toward the column of wagons behind them. He waved to the king’s standard-bearer, Ser Geofroi. The knight, who had perhaps the highest repute of any knight in the kingdom, bowed courteously from his saddle.
“Here, good knight,” the constable said, and Ser Geofroi bowed again, rode over, and planted the iron ferrule of the great standard deep in the ground with a single thrust. The wind caught the magnificent standard of blue and gold and blew it out straight. Men cheered.
Ser Geofroi dismounted, gave his horse to his page, and stood, fully armoured, by the standard. He drew his great sword, placed the point fastidiously between his armoured feet, and stood like a steel statue by the great flag.
Ablemont, whose mind worked on several problems at once, finished his third set of orders and looked up to find the royal baggage wagons parked in an orderly row behind Ser Geofroi and half a hundred royal servants beginning to lay out the kitchens, the pavilions, and the horse lines for the household.
Guisarme had just dismissed Vasili, master of the king’s works, with a bow of thanks; Steilker, the North Etruscan master of crossbows, was less enthusiastic, but eventually agreed, and he dismounted, handed his horse to a page, and began to issue orders to his own mercenary infantrymen.
The Etruscans treated war as a science and not an art; they had precise ways to approach every problem. They’d come to Galle when the Duke of Mitla’s daughter, the Queen of Flowers, married the King of Galle. De Ribeaumont and most of the old nobles detested them, but Guisarme found them very useful. Du Corse had sworn by them, before his “exile.”
“He failed the king,” Ablemont said.
“What?” Guisarme asked.
“You asked me, half an hour back, why the king exiled the Sieur Du Corse. I would answer, he failed the king. And he is not in exile. He is on a vital mission for His Grace.”
Guisarme smiled knowingly. “Oh, the Alba adventure,” he said. He was old enough to know what he knew, and what he didn’t; an old warrior who could neither read nor write, he was canny enough to have survived three kings of Galle and a great deal of war. “He failed in one of the king’s ridiculous schemes, you mean,” Guisarme said. “So now he’s been sent on another. I wasn’t born yesterday, Ablemont. I know the king tried to seize Arles, and failed. He tried to seize Dar, too, as I remember, allied with the Necromancer.”
Ablemont frowned. “That is untrue. Ser Hartmut...”
Ser Tancred laughed, his point made.
Ablemont nodded, his mind already elsewhere. Another man might have winced to be reminded how he had directly helped his king plot the downfall of his own brother, but Ablemont didn’t work that way. He enjoyed the exercise of power, and he saw means and ends with a clarity that frightened lesser men. Arles had no need of independence. The King of Galle was ideally situated to unite all of the Antica Terra; with the Duke of Mitla astride all Etrusca and the King of Galle sovereign in the north, their heir—for Mitla had no sons—would be king of all. Emperor in fact, and eventually in name.
Ablemont took a deep breath. His busy thoughts raced around his head—timetables, supply lines, stocks of food. Even as he thought, the royal army halted and began to make camp, and even Ablemont’s mind of wheels and gears knew a little jolt of joy. The power of the King of Galle was most clearly expressed by the speed with which his army marched up and built their camp. Knights, the kingdom’s mailed fist, did not dig, but the others, archers and spearmen and peasant levies and servants, did. A dozen engineers under the master of crossbowmen—all Etruscans—dismounted with mallets and stakes and white linen tape and began to pace off distances, and behind them, men with spades and picks and shovels came to turn the tape lines into ditches and palisades. Men went up the hillsides looking for trees, axes and saws in hand. Horses were picketed and fed.
Ablemont’s first messages, sent to the high officers of the army, arrived, and every one of the Lords of the Host, the feudal officers who commanded contingents under the king, was ordered to put his men and horses at half rations. There was grumbling, but it was muted.
Toward sunset, as Steilker handed in his “suggestions” for guard positions and watches, one of his Etruscan officers came to the edge of the circle of men gathered around Ablemont. He had an older man with him, dressed in a plain mail shirt and thigh-high boots and wearing a plain arming sword with a hooked blade.
“You have almost a third of the army standing watch,” Ablemont said.
Steilker nodded. “I haf to assume ve are in the very face of the enemy.” He looked around. “Although zo var I haf seen nuthink.”
Ablemont looked at his secretary. “All of my couriers are away?”
“They rode an hour ago or more,” the secretary replied. “My lord.”
He saw the Etruscan officer at the edge of the circle, took in his pallor, his posture, and beckoned. The man bowed.
“My lord, we have found...” He paused. He was clearly shaken.
“Out with it!” Ablemont said impatiently.
The Etruscan shook his head. “You should see for yourself, my lord,” he said.
“Far?” Ablemont snapped.
“Half a league,” the crossbowman said. “My lord.”
Ablemont set his face. “Tell me first.”
“Corpses,” the Etruscan said. He took a breath of air. “Quite a few.”
Ablemont took a breath. “Peasants?” he asked. It was almost a relief.
“My lord should see for himself,” the crossbow officer said. He glanced at his mate, the older man.
The older one spat something in Etruscan.
“Where is De Ribeaumont?” Ablemont asked. The marshal was, after the king, the most important man in the army.
“With the king,” a squire said.
“Playing cards,” murmured a voice.
Ablemont made a disgusted sound. “Very well. Fetch me a horse. A riding horse,” he said. Ablemont wanted a bath and a cup of hot wine and he wanted everyone to do their fucking jobs starting with the king. And De Ribeaumont. He and the aged Guisarme were usually adversaries in the War Council. Twenty days in the field and the old man looked like a better ally every day.
“Ser Tancred?” he asked.
Guisarme shrugged. “Oh, very well. Show me some corpses. I’m sure I’ll sleep better.”
They followed the Etruscan officer through the last light, across a hillside already denuded of trees, covered in tents, and resounding with the din of ten thousand men snoring. There was no reason for soldiers to linger awake; the food, such as it was, was cooked, and most of the fires were already out.
It was growing colder every minute.
Ablemont followed the Etruscan up the hill with a pair of his own squires, both young men of good family in Arles, and Guisarme and his squires behind. They rode up and up the hill, which was quite high, symmetrical, with a round summit crowned by an ancient dry-stone wall.
“Master Vasili ordered some peasants to clear the summit and build a citadel there,” the Etruscan said as they halted and picketed their horses.
Ablemont could see why. The hill was central to their position and high enough to command quite a view. He looked south for a long time, and imagined...was he imagining it? That he could see the lights of Arles. If Arles still held. He passed a hand over his eyes and tried to imagine what the hell was happening.
Something moved at the very edge of his vision—a darkness against the darkness, away to the east. He stumbled in shock. Whatever he had seen was flying, but it must have been huge.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing.
The crossbowman officer paused. “A cloud, my lord? I don’t see anything. Too dark.”
“What is your name, sir?” Ablemont said.
“Sopra Di Bracchio,” the man replied. “My lord. This way.”
Ablemont spoke enough Etruscan to know a nom de guerre when he heard one. Some penniless exile from one of the great cities—probably Mitla itself. Ablemont was, in the main, in favour of penniless exiles. They were loyal and their motivations were simple, until and unless they attempted restorations.
“Bastardi,” Di Bracchio spat. “I left men on guard, and they are gone.”
Cold moonlight soaked the round hilltop, and the old stone wall looked like rotting teeth in green-grey gums. Ablemont was shaken by whatever had moved in the corner of his eye. It had been far away, and large, and very black. Or that was the impression he’d received in the fraction of a heartbeat.
Guisarme was still in full harness, and when he dismounted, he drew his sword. When his squires made to dismount, he shook his head. “I’m old, and I’ve seen a lot of dead bodies,” he said with a smile. “You are young. Keep your sweet dreams a little longer.”
To Ablemont, he said, “I mislike this. It feels foul. I mislike the missing sentries.”
Ablemont wanted to deride the old man’s fears, but he could not. “When we reach the camp,” Ablemont said, “please locate your missing sentries and send me an explanation.” He drew his own sword.
“Stay and watch the horses,” he told his own young men.
De Braccio nodded. “This way, my lords,” he said.
They walked up to the circle and the cold seemed to deepen. And there was a smell—of
old earth, of roots and trees and...something cold and metallic. And fresh. And dead.
The stone walls were higher than they appeared. Di Bracchio grunted and led the way to the right, toward a dark depression that was revealed as an entrance.
“So glad we waited for darkness,” Ablemont said. “Show me the carrion.”
But the words no sooner passed his mouth than he saw them—dozens of corpses. The entrance of the old hill fort had blocked his view, but the inside of the ruin was packed with dead men like the inside of a barrel of salt fish.
“So many men,” he said. “There must be...hundreds.”
“They ain’t men,” said the old crossbowman at his side. “Di Bracchio’s afraid o’ the church, but I ain’t. Look at yon.”
Ablemont frowned in distaste. “You brought me all the way here to see a charnel house?” he asked. His gorge was rising and the smell was terrible. And wrong.
“Oh God,” Guisarme said. He knelt by one and his whole body shook. “God,” he said again. “Christ and all the saints. Blessed Saint Denis be with us.” He was moving quickly.
Ablemont made himself move. “What are you talking about?” he asked. He put the corner of his cloak across his nose. The smell was like an assault. A few of the dead men had odd, long, ribbonlike worms coming out of their eyes, like a disgusting mimicry of tears. But the worms were as dead as the men.
“None so blind as those who will not see,” the older man said. “By Saint Maurice, my lord. Look at them.”
Something in Ablemont’s mind snapped, and he saw. They were not men at all.
They were irks.
* * *
The night seemed to last forever. Ablemont slept badly, and the second time he awoke he’d been in the grip of a nightmare. He rose, pulled on boots and a heavy gown, and walked out of his pavilion, scattering sleepy servants and buckling on an arming sword. He walked along the whole front of the camp, and found every post awake, and most of them equally terrified, although he saw many different methods of controlling fear, from loud, fast talk to angry displays of bravado.
The Plague of Swords Page 1
