Damiano

by R. A. MacAvoy

  The North Road was a steady climb, slick as wellstone. Some of the heavy steeds at the rear of the line, especially those without shoes, had trouble. Damiano noticed with dull amusement that Aloisio’s ass was doing very well under the new conditions and was climbing toward the front of the company.

  Damiano turned to Belloc, who had ridden silently on his gray gelding since breaking camp. “I learned to play the lute from an angel,” he said. “An archangel, to be exact. No one can see him but me—and Macchiata.” Belloc turned on him a slow, suspicious eye.

  “Doesn’t that sound silly, Signor Belloc? Until yesterday, it seemed quite natural to me. My lessons were, perhaps, the most important things in the world. As important as the quest of alchemy. Now...”

  He turned his head in a circle, peering around with eyes that could not fathom distance or endure the sun. Belloc stared at him with a sort of stolid, masculine pity. “Now it seems very irrelevant. Both the angel and the lute. And alchemy as well.

  “It was spending the night in the dead body of a cow. That puts a different perspective on things. It makes one see life as it really is, in all its misery. Or possibly it only makes one sick.”

  “Sickness plays tricks on the mind,” rumbled Belloc in reply, not sure whether by sickness Damiano meant seeing angels or not caring to see them. “I told you you should have stayed back at the pasture.”

  “Eh? Why? We’re not going back there, you know. If we find no one on the road all the way to Aosta, there’ll be nothing to do but stay in the city. Most of us, anyway. If we catch up with Pardo’s soldiers, then either they will kill us, or we will kill them, or we will all kill each other. If it is we who survive, then we’d better keep going—for Pardo’s men have many friends, and Partestrada has none. Unless the Green Count comes to avenge us. In the, spring, of course.”

  Damiano’s eyes shone dry like polished stone. His skin was white. Belloc shook his head. “When did you eat last, boy?”

  Damiano shrugged without interest.

  Paolo Denezzi, who was riding a few feet in front of the two, as though he were a commander and the others his lieutenants, peered back over his shoulder. After a weighty silence, he spoke. “We will go to Aosta,” he conceded. “Those with friends or family there may stay. Or those with money to buy. The rest I will lead to Donnaz, where we will prepare our own vengeance.”

  Damiano felt a challenge rise up in him. When had these plans been adopted? When he had shown up at the camp no such idea had existed in the men’s minds, and he’d heard no talk since....

  But then for many hours he had not been listening. And could he provide any better destination? Denezzi at least had the good of the city in mind.

  Besides, Damiano did not believe events would pass so smoothly. A troop of hardened cavalry did not disappear into the hills forever.

  Belloc cleared his throat. “You have property in the town of Donnaz, Signor Denezzi?”

  Denezzi nodded, distrustful. “What of it?”

  “I was wondering where you would put our homeless neighbors.”

  “They will pay me back,” stated Denezzi. His thin mouth was dour, and his moustache bristled.

  Suddenly Damiano could stand it no more: the interminable, straggling march, the presence of Denezzi, even Belloc’s taciturn kindness. He called Macchiata, ordering her to stay by the blacksmith until he returned, then he kicked his mount forward.

  “Where are you going, Delstrego?” demanded Denezzi, rising in his saddle.

  “Ahead,” answered the witch.

  The dark man opened his mouth as though to forbid him. He remained that way for a moment, uncharacteristically indecisive. Finally he said, “If you break my horse’s leg, boy, I will break your head.”

  Damiano smiled thinly. “You’re not even four years older than I am, Paolo. And as for breaking my head...” He swiveled front again, and the black horse sprang forward as though whipped.

  Alone was much better. His head was clear, with that peculiar ringing lightness that comes with fasting. The horse climbed energetically, in a dumb effort to leave its rider behind. Damiano felt some pity for the beast, but not much. Pity was deserved all around and could be spread much too thin.

  His tall staff passed under his belt and lay against the horse’s flank like a sword. Damiano secured it with his right hand, so it would not slap with every iron-shod step.

  In a short time he left the clatter and creak of the citizens behind. Up here the road wound the shoulders of a peak like epaulets and crossed two great chasms, one on a bridge of rough wood, and the other on a splendid stone arch twelve hundred years old.

  The North Road was deceptive, folding back upon itself, taking whatever path or purchase it could, so that Damiano once found himself staring across a sheer drop no wider than a snowball’s throw, at a length of snowy road he was not to touch for half-an-hour’s climb.

  Sound was deceptive too, for now he heard the speech of men again, together with the blow and whinny of horses. He looked below, but could see no sign of the ascending company. He turned a corner and looked ahead.

  It was the troops of General Pardo, displayed against the smeared white cliffs like chessmen. They rode in order, two abreast. There were fifty of them, and behind them lumbered five ungainly wagons. Damiano stared wide-eyed at the wagons.

  Four were heavy laden, covered in waxed linen, pulled by four oxen apiece. The last wagon was open, and packed with... women. Damiano blinked and clutched at his staff. He was sure they were women, wrapped in shawls and blankets, mostly black. But these were not all the women of Partestrada, by no means. There could not be more than twenty in that sad, paintless farm cart. What was this? Was Carla among these? He did not know whether to hope she was or to pray she was not.

  Damiano heard a stentorian cry. As he watched, so he was being watched.

  Though he sat in hailing distance of Pardo’s cavalry, a large loop of road lay between them. A single soldier broke from the head of the line and drove his mount back against the direction of their march, between the third wide wagon and the empty edge of the road. The beast was frightened; its legs splayed stiffly against the slick road, and it backed against the wood of the wagon, its brown eyes rolling at the sheer drop.

  The horseman peered over at a figure gorgeously dressed in scarlet and gold, its hair in wild black curls that obscured half its face. It rode a fine horse as a herd boy will ride a cow: bareback, sitting the withers, legs bent and feet gripping the beast’s ribs. Unaccountably, the soldier’s neck prickled.

  Damiano perceived less about the soldier because he could not see as well.

  “You!” shouted the soldier. “You are to come here!”

  Damiano barked a laugh. “Why?” he replied in more normal tones. “Very soon you will all be over here.”

  The horseman scowled. “What? I don’t hear you. Don’t you hear me, man? Come here!”

  Damiano didn’t want to shout. He didn’t want to talk to the fellow at all. He turned his horse’s head and started back down the road, not daring to canter him on the bend.

  Another cry split the air, sharp and shrill: a woman’s cry. Damiano twisted from the waist to peer behind him, and at that moment something hit him on the breastbone, with a blow no harder than that of a hard snowball, well thrown.

  His shock sent the black gelding skidding into a gallop that quickly put a wall of granite between Damiano and Pardo’s men. Damiano let the horse run while he blinked down at the shaft of the arrow protruding from his clothing. Then with one hand he reined in the horse, while the other very calmly worried the arrowhead from the wood and leather cover of the works of Petrarch. Further examination found that the arrow had penetrated quite half of the vellum pages and left a clean incision through an entire packet of letters written in an unknown, Germanic tongue.

  “If I live,” he murmured to the wind on his face, “this will be something to talk about.”

  When Paolo Denezzi spied his black horse hurtling d
own the North Road toward him, bearing its light burden clinging about its neck, he cursed foully. But before he could gather his breath to release his roar of anger, Damiano had slid from the horse’s back.

  “Off your mounts,” he cried to the company. “Every man on his own two feet and forward with me.”

  “No such thing!” bellowed Denezzi. Men paused, one foot in the stirrup, as authority flew confused. Denezzi, however, sprang down to confront the witch.

  “What is this, Owl-Eyes?” Without thinking he grabbed for the chain of Damiano’s mantle. The silver head of the staff flashed across his knuckles, and he drew back a bleeding hand. “Don’t touch that,” snapped Damiano. “If they’ll obey you, then help me save their lives. Get the horses away from them.”

  Denezzi’s face was wine purple. He sucked his damaged fingers. “Why? What’s coming—the soldiers you prophesied?”

  “Yes, and either they will kill us all or terror will. Off your horses to save your lives,” he repeated, shouting at the top of his lungs.

  “Asses too?” drawled the tanner Aloisio, but as he spoke he lifted his weight on his toes and allowed his little beast to walk out from under him. Ten men laughed, but fifty dismounted. Belloc got down from his gray.

  “They are not twenty minutes behind me,” announced Damiano. “They can’t move fast, because they are leading wagons—ox wagons, Belloc, and one of them was once yours.”

  “Catarina?” gasped the blacksmith, but Damiano raised his hand. “There are a few citizens with them, but I couldn’t pick them out at the distance.

  “Listen, my friends. I am going up there...” and he pointed along the sloppy road whence he’d come. “To conceal myself, if I can. When the soldiers ride by, I will... surprise them. Be ready to take back our wagons. And be ready to run.” He turned and in half a minute had vanished from sight.

  “Do we do as he says?” asked Aloisio, standing behind Denezzi with the halter of his ass in his hand. “I’m afraid young Signor Delstrego is a little bit... disturbed.”

  “I will, anyway,” responded Belloc. “I can’t speak for any other man.”

  Denezzi suffered no such limitation. “We will. If these ghostly soldiers of his really exist... well, he seems to have a plan. If not, I swear I will bury that foppish simpleton by the side of the road.” He strode forward, dropping the reins of his horse, trusting someone would mind the beast. Aloisio wordlessly did so.

  Damiano huddled behind a hummock made from the roots of a tree and the few hundred years’ worth of soil it had collected. He waited to hear the jingle of the cavalry harness. Behind him the ground dropped abruptly away, farther than he could focus on.

  He felt Macchiata beside him, worming her way into the scant cover. “Macchiata, no!” he hissed. “Get out of here. Don’t be near me!”

  “Don’t be near you?” she repeated in accents tragic. “Don’t be near you, Master? How can you say that? I have already been parted from you for hours today, and we were never to be parted while we both live; you said so...”

  Damiano was unmoved. He crouched close to the earth, his eyes fixed on the upper road. “Yes, little dear, and if you don’t get out of here and down the road very fast, one of us will not live much longer. GO!”

  Macchiata went.

  The men of Partestrada were assembled a few hundred feet to Damiano’s left, in a spot visible from behind the trunk of the pine, but concealed from the upper slope of the road. They milled about, swords and cleavers dragging. They did not resemble soldiers, but at least their horses were nowhere in sight.

  Damiano saw the head of the column, with his swart uniform and dull brass, at the same time he heard the ring of shod hooves on ice. The captain was the same who had spied Damiano and ordered him to stop. Damiano peered behind him, to see which of the men carried bows.

  The captain passed before Damiano’s earthy concealment. He led fifty men: twenty swordsmen, twenty spear, five archers, and five more to mind the booty. They passed so near Damiano he might have swung his staff and brained one.

  Instead he stood up, filled with grave excitement and a thrill of dread. The nearest soldier leaped back in superstitious fear, to see Damiano appear as though he’d floated up the sheer cliff.

  Damiano took his staff in both hands. Its ebony length filled his mind, and he allowed his dark, invisible power to flow into the wood. With perverse satisfaction he let free the deadly refrain that had stifled in him since the cow went down.

  “Come!” The terrible call rang against rock, out of hearing, impossible to ignore. “Come! Come and be slaughtered!” it shrieked.

  Every horse pitched in blind hysteria, and every man clapped his hands to his ears.

  The screams of the beasts were one with his, as Damiano made them believe in death. Men, who already believed, fell from their saddles and lay in the mire.

  In front of the women’s wagon the oxen were thrashing, kicking the air uselessly. One of the bullocks gored his yoke-mate’s face, and the bellows of the wounded animal punctuated the cacophony. The women themselves were screaming. Damiano opened his eyes in time to see a horse leap blindly over the edge.

  It was all wreckage. No rider controlled his horse; few sat mounted. As he watched, the oxen of the front goods wagon broke the wooden brake lever and plunged from behind the company, careening forward, trampling men and horses alike. Tall, brightly painted wheels left tracks shining red.

  The men of Partestrada stood plastered to the inner cliff wall; Damiano could scarcely see them. The ox wagon swung wide at the bend. The outside wheel spun in emptiness, then the wagon tipped. Frenzied bellows rose into shrieks that grew thin and keen, as though the beasts were singing on their way to the ground.

  Damiano contemplated the destruction. Men crawled on hands and knees, like horses, their swords abandoned. A chestnut gelding lay flat on the ground before him, crying like a man. A few soldiers had risen and stood propped against the face of rock. One held a bow. With clumsy, clattering movements the archer raised it, pointing it at Damiano.

  Without haste, indeed without enthusiasm, Damiano propped his staff between the archer and himself. It drew the arrow, as Damiano had meant it should. The limber feathered shaft broke in pieces.

  But the archer had not acted alone. A man staggered forward, leaning, his head lowered, as though he breasted the wind. It was the troops’ captain once more. His belt still carried a sword, and as he approached the heart of his terror he unsheathed it and stood upright.

  “So,” thought Damiano, looking into the face of the man before him, seeing the gray metal unveiled.

  He knew nothing of fighting, with swords or without. Even had he the strength to run, there was nowhere to go except to follow the oxen. And as it was his strength was used up, along with all his caring.

  “So,” said Damiano to himself, and he waited for what would happen.

  What happened was that the captain swung his sword back over one shoulder, aiming for a decapitating blow, and then Belloc’s great hammer came down on the man’s head. Beneath the helmet of leather and iron, the captain’s skull splintered. Damiano looked away, to encounter Belloc’s square head and ashen face. The blacksmith’s lips were gray with horror, but he was not looking at the bloody ruin he had created. He was staring at Damiano. Then Damiano watched the death of Pardo’s captain with his strange sight. Light flickered green and golden over the still form, like rags soaked in oil and burnt.

  Then the fire departed and the man was gone.

  Gone. Escaped. Not here in this ruined shape at all. Damiano blinked at this; it was death and yet not what he had thought he knew. It was cold and terrifying, like a night of no stars, but it was not the mindful death he had known, despair in rotting flesh. It was not what set him screaming. Damiano’s hideous call was cut off sharp.

  Belloc took a deep, shuddering breath. “Boy,” he gasped, “are you Satan himself? Or how is it you have not burst, doing this?”

  Damiano heard the voice, bu
t not the words. His ears were ringing with silence. His gaze slid wearily from Belloc’s face to his black, brain-spattered hammer.

  “Ah! The hammer. Yes, Belloc. That was very fitting.” He smiled at Belloc, or he tried to.

  The citizens of Partestrada scrambled heavily up the road, their rude weapons in their red-fingered hands. They fell upon the dazed soldiers like men threshing wheat. Damiano walked toward the two remaining ox wagons, where one beast hung dead in the traces. He did not look back at the carnage.

  The women were still in the middle wagon: they had been tied there. Damiano looked at faces he knew.

  Old Signora Anuzzi was there, stuffed in a corner like a black sack. And Lidie Polsetti, and Vera Polsetti, and little Françoise. And Signora Mellio, the widow who looked after Father Antonio. And Bernice Roberto. They were all crying at once, faces striped with tears and noses slimy. Damiano could hardly blame them; he had worked this misery himself, and though he was not tied, he felt much the same as they. Still, he could get no sense of them.

  He hauled himself up and into the wagon, groaning with effort. As he lay on the wooden boards, his eyes closed, he heard the only voice that could have pleased him.

  “Dami! Damiano, are you wounded? Were you hit by the arrow up above? Dami, speak to me?” He looked up into Carla Denezzi’s frozen, wind-chapped and fear-whitened face.

  “O Bella! Bellissima!,” he whispered, and he smiled at her as though the two were alone.

  Wonderingly, the blond girl extended her bound wrists. She touched his breast awkwardly, where the arrow had left its neat cut: a slice no longer than the last joint of a finger. He took her hand in his, grimacing at the ropes. An instant later, every binding in the wagon took life, and like snakes, wriggled free. The wagon tongue dropped to the road and a dozen women shrieked at sudden freedom and missing laces.

  “Damiano!” hissed Carla, who either wore no lacings or did not care about them. “I prayed I would see you again, but I had little hope. How did you get through? I think the Devil himself has flown over us. Could you feel him?”