by Paul Kearney
“Are we still travelling to Abrusio, sire?”
“Of course. Where else?”
“I—I had thought—” She collected herself, squaring her shoulders like a woman determined to face bad news. “Are you to be married, sire?”
Abeleyn rubbed his eyes with one hand. “One day I hope to be, yes.”
“To the sister of King Mark of Astarac?”
“More rumours?”
“It was the talk of Vol Ephrir when we left.”
Abeleyn stared at her. “That rumour happens to be true, yes.”
She dropped her eyes. There were also rumours that the lady Jemilla had had a low-born lover ere Abeleyn had taken her into his bed. She was not sure if the King had heard them.
“Then what of . . . what of the child I bear?” she asked pitifully.
Abeleyn knew his mistress to be one of the most calculating and accomplished women of his court, the widow of one of his father’s best generals; but with his death, she was unrelated to any of the great families of Hebrion. That was one reason why he had allowed himself to be seduced by her: she was alone in this world, and did not belong to any of the power blocs which wrangled in the shadow of the Hebrian throne. She rose or fell on Abeleyn’s whim. He could call in Orsini and have her run through here and now, and no one would raise a hand to defend her.
“The child will be looked after,” he said. “If it happens to be a boy, and shows promise, then the lad will never lack for anything, I swear to you.”
Her eyes were fixed on his, black stabs of colour in her ivory-pale face. Her hand alighted upon his knee.
“Thank you, sire. I have never been blessed with a child before. I hope only that he will grow up to serve you.”
“Or she,” Abeleyn added.
“It is a boy.” She smiled, the first genuine smile Abeleyn had seen from her since leaving Hebrion. “He feels like a boy. I see him curled in my womb with his fists clenched, growing.”
Abeleyn did not reply. He stared into the fire again, remembering the flame and wreck of the battle lately fought. A skirmish, he had called it, honestly enough. There was worse awaiting them in Abrusio. The Knights Militant would not vacate the city without a fight, and no doubt the personal retainers of the Sequeros and Carreras would stand shoulder to shoulder with them. But he would win, in the end. He had the army and the fleet at his back.
Jemilla’s hand slid slowly upwards from the King’s knee, bringing him out of his reverie. It began to stroke him intimately.
“I thought in your condition . . .” he began.
She smiled. “There are many things a man and a woman can do together, your majesty, even in my condition, and I have not taught you a tithe of them yet.”
It was this quality in her that both pricked his pride and fascinated him. She was older, experienced, the tutor of his bed. But he was too weary. He lifted her hand away gently.
“There are things to do, lady. I do not have the time, even if the inclination is there.”
Her eyes flared for a second: another thing about her which aroused him; she was unaccustomed to not getting her own way—even with a king, it seemed. It took an effort of will for Abeleyn to stand up. Her hand caressed his ankle, the fish-white skin which had not been wholly dry for days.
“Later, perhaps,” she said.
“Perhaps. There will not be much time for it in the days to come, however.”
He hauled on the clammy boots and kissed her.
She turned her cheek aside so his lips met her mouth. Then her tongue was questing like a warm snake over his teeth. She drew away with an arch smile. Abeleyn stumbled out of the hut into the firelit darkness beyond, feeling that once again she had somehow had the last word.
SEVEN
T HE barricades had gone up overnight.
When the deacon led his demi-troop out on their regular patrol of the city in the blue murk of the dawn, they found that the streets were occupied. Carts had been overturned, sacks and crates from the docks piled up and roped together. Even the narrowest of alleys had its obstacle, manned by citizens who had lit braziers against the cold and were standing round them rubbing their hands and chatting good-naturedly. Every street, roadway, avenue and alley which led down into the western half of the Lower City of Abrusio had been blocked off. The place had been sealed as tight as the neck of a stoppered bottle.
The deacon of the Knights Militant and his nine serving brethren sat their heavy horses and watched the Abrusian citizens and their makeshift fortifications with a mixture of anger and uncertainty. True, over the past weeks the Lower City had been an unfriendly place and any Knight who ventured down there was liable to have a chamber pot emptied over his head from an upper window. The Presbyter, Quirion, had ordered his men to stay away from the region whilst the delicate negotiations went on with the Abrusio garrison commanders. But this, this was different. This was open rebellion against the powers which had been ordained by the High Pontiff to rule the city.
The quiet horses with their heavy loads of steel and flesh stood their ground on the cobbles of the street, breathing out spumes of steam into the cold dawn air. It was a narrow place, the closely packed timber-framed houses of this part of the city leaning together overhead so that it seemed their terracotta tiles almost met to form an arch over the thoroughfare below. The citizens behind the barricade left their braziers to stare at the Knights. They were of both sexes, old and young. They carried makeshift weapons fashioned from agricultural implements, or simply hefted the tools of their trades: hammers and picks, scythes, pitchforks, butcher’s cleavers. A weaponry as diverse as the colourful citizenry of Abrusio.
The shape of the city was like a horseshoe, within which was the trefoil outline of a cloverleaf. The horseshoe represented the confining outer walls, curving round to end on the northern and southern shores of the Southern Gulf, or the Gulf of Hebrion as it was sometimes called. The cloverleaf represented the three harbours within the walls. The northernmost blade of the leaf was the Inner Roads which extended into the heart of the city, the wharves and docks lapping at the very foot of Abrusio Hill. To left and right of it, and not so far inland, were the Outer Roads, two later-built harbours which had been improved by the addition of man-made moles. The western Inner Roads housed the shipyards and dry docks of the Hebrian navy and were frowned over by the bulk of Admiral’s Tower. On a promontory to their north, another ageing fortress stood. This was the Arsenal, the barracks and magazines of Abrusio’s garrison. Both fleet and army were therefore quartered in the western arm of the Lower City, and it was this area which had been blocked off by the barricades of the citizens.
But the earnest young deacon was not deliberating on that as he sat his horse in the early morning and wondered what to do. He knew only that a group of rabble had seen fit to deny passage to a demi-troop of the Knights Militant, the secular defenders of the Church on earth. It was an insult to the authority of the Pontiff himself.
“Out swords!” he ordered his men. They obeyed at once. Their lances had been left in their billets as they were inconveniently long to carry when traversing the narrow, packed streets of Lower Abrusio.
“Charge!”
The ten horsemen burst into a trot, then worked into a canter, the shoes of their mounts striking sparks off the cobbles. Two abreast, they thundered down the narrow street like avenging angels, if angels might be so laden with iron and mounted on steaming, wide-nostrilled warhorses.
The citizens stared at the approaching apocalypse for one moment, and then scattered. The barricades were deserted as people took to their heels, fleeing down the street or shouldering in the closed doors of houses on either side.
The deacon’s mount struck the piled oddments which blocked the street and reared up, armour, rider and all, then scrambled over the barricade, tearing half of it down as it did so. The other Knights followed suit. The street became full of the din of nickering animals and the clang of steel. The up-ended cart fell back on to its wheels
with a crash. They were through, urging their gasping mounts into a trot again, screaming “Ramusio!” at the top of their purpling lungs.
They clattered onwards. People were trying to dodge the heavy swords and the hooves of the destriers. The deacon clipped one fellow on the back of the head and took a chunk out of the base of his skull. When he went down, the horses trampled him into a steaming pulp.
Others too slow to hide or get away were smashed off their feet and suffered the same fate. There were no side alleyways, no way out. Several men and women were hacked as they thumped closed doors frantically with their fists, seeking sanctuary in the adjoining houses. The horses reared as they were trained to do, splintering bone and rending flesh with their iron-shod forehooves. The street became a charnel house.
But it opened out. The streams of survivors scattered as the street became one arm of a three-way junction. There was a little square there.
The deacon was hoarse from yelling the Knights’ battlecry, grinning as he swung and hacked at the fleeing mob. Sweat dripped off his nose and slicked his young body inside his armour. This was sport indeed.
But there was something in the air. An odd smell. He paused in his slaughter, puzzled. His men gathered about him panting, the gore dripping from their swords in viscous ribbons. The clattering chaos of a few moments before stilled.
Powder-smoke.
The end of the street had emptied of people. Standing there now were two ranks of Hebrian soldiers with streams of smoke eddying from the lighted match in their arquebuses.
Still the deacon did not fully understand. He kicked his mouth forward, meaning to have a word with these fellows. They were in the way.
An officer at the end of the front rank lifted his sword. A pale winter sun was rising over the rooftops of the houses. It caught the steel of his rapier and turned it into a blaze.
“Ready your pieces!”
The arquebusiers cocked back the wheel-locks which held the glowing match.
“Front rank, kneel!”
The front rank did so.
“Wait!” the deacon shouted angrily. What did these men think they were doing? Behind him, his brother Knights looked on in alarm. One or two began kicking their tired horses into life.
“Front rank, give fire!”
“No!” the deacon yelled.
An eruption of flame and smoke, a furious rolling crackle. The deacon was blasted off his horse. His men staggered in the saddle. Horses were screaming as the balls ripped through their iron armour and into their flesh. The massive animals tumbled to the ground, crushing their riders beneath them. A fog of smoke toiled in the air, filling the breadth of the street.
In the powder-smoke, the surviving Knights heard the officer’s voice again.
“Rear rank, present your pieces.”
The surviving Knights turned as one to the enemy and savagely urged their terrified horses into a canter. Shrieking like fiends they charged down the street into the smoke, determined to avenge their fallen brethren.
They were met by a second storm of gunfire.
All of them went down. The momentum of the two lead riders carried them into the ranks of the arquebusiers, and the horses collapsed through the formation scattering the Hebrian soldiers like skittles. One of the Knights was flung clear, clanging across the cobbles. As he struggled to his feet in the heavy armour that the Knights wore, two Hebrian soldiers flipped him on his back again, as though he were a monstrous beetle. They stood on his wrists, pinioning him, then ripped off his casque and cut his throat.
A final shot as a moaning horse was put out of its pain. From the doors of the houses the people emerged. A ragged cheer went up as they saw the riddled corpses which littered the roadway, though some went to their knees in the clotted gore, cradling the head of a butchered friend or relative. The keening cries of women replaced the cheering.
The citizens of Abrusio rebuilt their barricades whilst the Hebrian soldiers methodically reloaded their weapons and resumed their hidden stations once more.
“I don’t believe it!” Presbyter Quirion said. Abrusio stretched out mist-shrouded and sun-gilded in the morning light. He blinked as the sound of arquebus fire came again, echoing over the packed rooftops to the monastery-tower wherein he stood.
“So far three of our patrols have been ambushed,” the Knight-Abbot said. “Skirmishing goes on even as we speak. Our casualties have been serious. We are cavalry, without firearms. We are not equipped to fight street battles with foes who possess arquebuses.”
“And you are sure it is the Hebrian soldiery who are involved, not civilians with guns?”
“Yes, your excellency. All our brothers report the same thing: when they try to force the barricades, they are met with disciplined gunnery. It has to be the garrison troops; there can be no other explanation.”
Quirion’s eyes were two blue fires.
“Recall our brethren. There is no profit in them throwing themselves under the guns of rebels and heretics.”
“Yes, your excellency.”
“And have all officers above the rank of deacon assemble in the speechhall at noon. I’ll address them myself.”
“At once, your excellency.” The Knight-Abbot made the Sign of the Saint on his armoured breast and left.
“What does this mean?” the Presbyter asked.
“Would you like me to find out for you?” Sastro di Carrera said, one hand fiddling with the ruby set in his earlobe.
Quirion turned to face his companion squarely. They were the only occupants of the high-ceilinged room.
“No.”
“You don’t like me, your excellency. Why is that?”
“You are a man without much faith, Lord Carrera. You care only for your own advantage.”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Sastro asked smiling.
“Not everyone. Not my brothers . . . Do you know anything about these developments then?”
Sastro yawned, stretching out his long arms. “I can deduce as well or better than the next man. My bet is that Rovero and Mercado have somehow had a communication from our ex-King Abeleyn. They have come down on his side at last—another reason why they postponed the viewing of the Pontifical bull scheduled yesterday. The army and the fleet will hold the Lower City against us until Abeleyn arrives in person, then go over on to the offensive. It is also my guess that your Knights were not meant to be slain; they pressed too hard. Obviously the general and the admiral meant this to look like a popular uprising, but they had to use national troops to defend their perimeter when your brethren tested it.”
“Then we know where we stand,” Quirion snarled. His face looked as though invisible strings had pulled chin and forehead towards each other; fury had clenched it as it might a fist. “They will be excommunicated,” he went on. “I will see them burn. But first we must crush this uprising.”
“That may not be so easy.”
“What of your friend Freiss?” And when Sastro seemed genuinely surprised, Quirion’s bass gravelled out a harsh laugh. “You think I did not know of your meetings with him? I will not let you play a private game in this city, my Lord Carrera. You will pull alongside the rest of us, or you will not be a player at all.”
Sastro regained his composure, shrugging. His hand toyed now with the gleaming, scented point of his beard. He needed to toy with his features constantly, it seemed to Quirion. An irritating habit. The man was probably a pederast; he smelled like a sultan’s harem. But he was the most effective of the nobles, and a necessary ally.
“Very well,” Sastro said casually. “My friend Freiss, as you put it, says he has won over several hundred men of the garrison, men who cannot stomach heresy and who expect to be rewarded for their loyalty once the Church has assumed full control of Abrusio.”
“Where are they?”
“In barracks. Mercado has his suspicions and has segregated them from the other tercios. He is probably having them watched also.”
“Then they are of little use to us
.”
“They could stage a diversion while your brethren assault these absurd barricades.”
“My brethren are not equipped for street fighting, as you have already heard. No, there must be another way.”
Sastro regarded the ornate plasterwork of the ceiling with some interest. “There are, of course, my personal retainers . . .”
“How many?”
“I could muster maybe eight hundred if I called out some of the lesser client houses as well.”
“Their arms?”
“Arquebuses and sword-and-buckler men. No pikes, but then pikes are no better at street fighting than cavalry.”
“That would be ideal. They could cover an assault by my brethren. How long would it take to muster them?”
“A few days.”
The two men looked at each other like a pair of prize-fighters weighing up each other’s strengths and weaknesses in the ring.
“You realize I would be risking my house, my followers, ultimately my fortune,” Sastro drawled.
“The Hebrian treasury is in the possession of the council. You would be amply compensated,” Quirion growled.
“That is not what I was thinking of,” Sastro said. “No, money is not my main concern. It is just that my men like to fight for the betterment of their lord’s situation as well as their own.”
“They would be defending the True Faith of the Ramusian kingdoms. Is that not reward enough?”
“It should be, I know, my dear Presbyter. But not all men are as . . . single-minded, you might say, as your brethren.”
“What do you want, Lord Carrera?” Quirion asked, though he thought he already knew.
“You are looking through the archives, are you not, trying to establish who should take the throne now that the Hibrusid line is finished?”
“I have Inceptine archivists working on it, yes.”
“You will find, I think, that Astolvo di Sequero is the most eligible candidate. But he is an old man. He does not want the kingship with all that it entails. He will refuse it.”
“Are you so sure?”
“Oh, yes. And his sons are flighty, vicious young things. Hardly Royal material. You will need the next king of Hebrion to be a mature man, a man of abilities, a man who is happy to work hand in gauntlet with the holy Church. Otherwise the other noble houses might get restless, mutinous even, at the idea of one of Astolvo’s brats ruling.”
