by Ken Hood
Here the visitors were required to stand for a considerable time, long enough to make them feel less important than the roaming bluebottles. Eventually a herald hurried in and ordered them to kneel for the entrance of His Splendor General Neguder, military aide to the Illustrious Prince Sartaq, Swift Sword of the Khan, High Warrior of the Golden Horde, and so on. Later a trumpet brayed outside. Still later, it brayed again. And in due course the great man did waddle in with a train of attendants almost as splendidly arrayed as himself. The visitors, having been properly instructed, pressed their faces to the floor and squinted out of the corners of their eyes.
He was elderly, tall for a Tartar, and wide for a man of any race. Even flowing silks could not disguise the bulge of that belly. He took the throne with obvious relief, leaned back, and probably closed his eyes — it was impossible to be certain, because his eyes were tiny slits in the blubber of his face. His followers took the chairs arrayed to right and left of him. The visitors were left where they were, noses on an evil-smelling carpet reeking of generations of boots.
The herald said something inaudible, probably in Tartar.
The general then delivered a speech. Officially he delivered a speech. In practice one of his aged flunkies read it for him, remaining seated while doing so. Its meaning, if it ever had any, was gutted by the man's gruesome accent and skinned by Toby's inadequate command of Italian, but the shreds of meat remaining seemed to consist mainly of a review of great victories won by the Golden Horde in ancient times and the lessons to be learned from them. The tactics mentioned were rarely suitable for Italian terrain. There was no mention of firearms. There was no hint that the Khanate was prepared to support resistance in Italy with a strike at Nevil from the east, across Hungary.
The speech lasted about two hours. Toby wondered if a first snore would be a capital offense, or if he might be allowed a second. Not that the meeting was not educational. Nay, it was most exceeding instructive! Ever since Nevil's rampage began, the Khan's loyal subjects in Europe had been appealing to him for assistance. The lack of response had been a mystery much discussed, but it was a mystery no longer, not to Toby. These men were imposters. The once-invincible Golden Horde, whose ancestors had conquered all the world from Spain to Cathay, was a legend now. It had no more substance than a bubble on a stream.
In their time the Khans had ruled well, imposing peace on a very quarrelsome continent — more or less peace, and at a price, for the suzerains had been tax collectors before they were anything else. They had always managed to pocket a lionish share of whatever they gathered, but much of the gold had flowed east to Sarois.
With that insight came another. If the Khanate was only a mirage, then why was Toby Longdirk crouched on a rug being bored to distraction? Answer: Because power worked on men's minds, and the Khan's almost illusory power was still enough to make the Florentines serve his son's will. If Toby stood up now and tried to walk out, Florence would bring him to heel. He would be beheaded at best. So even the last reflections of glory could dazzle. These mummified incompetents were still in charge, and their orders would be obeyed until it was too late. All Toby's carefully nurtured plans would crumble to dust, and Nevil would take Italy without working up a sweat.
Hearing a faint moan to his left, he unobtrusively turned his head. The old Chevalier was beside him, his face twisted in agony.
"Trouble, signore?" Toby murmured.
"Cramps!" came the whispered response.
"Be grateful that they keep you awake."
The old scoundrel just scowled, a man without humor.
At last, thank good spirits, the speech ended. Now, perhaps, the mercenaries would be presented to the acclaimed General Neguder and could ask a few penetrating questions about his strategy and intentions. Alas, not so. A herald shook the noble warrior awake. He rose and shuffled out, followed by all his entourage. The audience was over.
The visitors scrambled to their feet and jigged up and down to restore circulation. Don Ramon — to Toby's delight — was deep purple with fury.
"What of Prince Sartaq, senor? Is he any more, um, impressive?"
The don gnashed some teeth. "His Highness is a worthy scion of his exalted forebears."
Splendid! They were going to need all of those they could get.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Khan's son was an entertaining novelty at first, but his stallion interests quickly alarmed all mothers and husbands of young Florentine women. A week of Sartaq was enough to start them whispering that it must be time for the illustrious prince to go on and visit Milan. He must see Venice. Why not Padua? Verona was especially lovely in the spring. Anywhere. The city of flowers fidgeted, but the Magnificent tightened his grip and the complaints remained no more than complaints.
Rumors — never in short supply in Italy — were excessively, superfluently abundant and contradictory. Everyone anyone had ever heard of was going to be appointed suzerain, but the prince had decided to lead the armies of Italy in person, that he was going to flee the peninsula long before there was any chance of the Fiend arriving and catching him there. Also, Nevil's armies were massing to cross Mount Cenis Pass, Brenner Pass, and Simplon Pass, and to enter Italy by the coast road through Savoy. Choose the truth you preferred.
Toby Longdirk, the supposed defender of the city, was no wiser than anyone else. His petitions were ignored, his plans frustrated. He was shut out of the inner councils, if there were any, and the don now seemed less certain of what was being planned, if anything was. If Lucrezia was his source, she might not be as well informed as he had thought. Although he normally bragged openly of his conquests, he was almost discreet in his talk of the duchessa. She must be dangerous indeed if she frightened him.
Toby had a formidable lady of his own to handle. One rather typical afternoon was made worse by a stormy interview with Countess Maud, alias Blanche, Queen Mother of England.
* * *
By noon the air was stifling. He could find little compensation in the knowledge that the trellis vines would provide better shade later in the spring. Later in the spring he might be far away or even dead. He would be ready to break off and take a siesta if he could only convince himself that he had done any good at all so far.
He had wasted more than an hour repeating a familiar argument with Alberto Calvalcante, master of gunnery in the Company. Calvalcante had conceded that transporting guns in carts was an untidy and inefficient business. Yes, the noble constable's idea of building a permanent but transportable mount so that a cannon or bombard could be hauled to the battlefield and be ready to fire in minutes instead of hours or days, was an appealing notion. But, he insisted mulishly, such a carriage would fly apart at the first shot unless it was built of enormous balks of timber, so it would require as many oxen to haul it as all the carts it replaced. The recoil would drive it back into its own lines. The wheels would fall off. On muddy roads — and most roads were muddy most of the time — it would sink right out of sight. Toby had managed to answer all the objections except one, which was that a gun had to be aimed. That was achieved now by building a trough for it to lie in pointing at the target, which was almost invariably a city under siege. This fancy carriage of his, the gunner said, would require a mechanism to change the elevation of the barrel, and Maestro Calvalcante would never believe that such a contraption could be built strong enough not to fly apart after a couple of shots.
Toby was baffled but not convinced. In the last twenty years or so, armorers had perfected ways of casting bronze cannons far stronger than the old ones built from iron strips, and yet the military had found no better way of moving them around. Doubtless Nevil would bring many guns with him and use them to batter down city walls. Florence was a big target and stayed where it was. The attackers would not be so obliging.
After Calvalcante came Marshal Diaz, to present half a dozen minor condottieri who had signed up to enjoy the Florentine gold and serve under the celebrated comandante Longdirk. All of them were foreign r
efugees except one, a crusty peasant farmer from Romagna who led two lances composed entirely of his own sons, aged sixteen to twenty-three. Diaz swore they were as tough a gang of warriors as he had ever met, and Toby promised to come and meet them all in the next day or two. He refrained from asking how many mothers they shared.
Even Diaz, that stolid, imperturbable Catalan, was becoming frayed and harassed these days. The Company had expanded past the seven thousand mark, with no end in sight. There were too few large bands left to enlist as associates, and the small ones had to be included under the don's banner; it was the lesser of the two administrative evils. In theory, Toby could now field more than seventeen hundred helmets for Florence, half of them in the Don Ramon Company itself, but theories never won wars. Men did, good men. D'Amboise, Simonetta, and della Sizeranne had all accepted his invitation and were marching north with their troops. When they arrived, he would have to warn them that he was out of favor in Florence. He was certain that none of them would choose to serve under the don.
As Antonio and his recruits departed, Chancellor Campbell arrived with Brother Bartolo and Sorghaghtani — plus, of course, Chabi, who swirled down from the sky and flattered Toby by choosing his shoulder to perch on. She gave the back of his doublet a token of her affection, too. These were the Company's Intelligence Arm, but their subdued manner as they settled round the table told him that they had no significant news to report.
"Well?" Toby demanded. "It is almost April. The roads are dry in the north. The passes are open. Which way is he coming?"
Hamish grimaced, making his narrow features seem almost wolfish. "I don't know! As of five days ago, there was still utter, absolute, outright nothing. I'm sorry, Toby. Demons, I'm sorry! I'm doing everything I can!"
"You expect me to shoot you? If you don't know, you don't know."
Hamish had posted agents at the mouth of every Alpine pass to talk with travelers. Doubtless they reported what they had learned as promptly as they could, but all of them were stationed at least five days away from Florence and some even farther. The first word to arrive might be a report that Nevil's army was already entering Italy.
Hamish sighed. "You want a guess, I'll give you a guess. It's going to be the Brenner again."
"Well, we know that country. Why the Brenner?"
"Because traders are going north and almost none are coming south. Either there's a dragon eating them in there, or Nevil's shut off the north end of the pass. And the only reason to do that is to hide an army."
"Or weather," Bartolo remarked gently. The friar's face was still as round as a full moon, but it had lost much of its old jollity. "Bad roads in Austria, floods on the Danube. And the Tyroleans may not be cooperating." Tyrol had been horribly mauled by Schweitzer. The survivors could not stop another army, but they could tear up the road and throw down bridges.
"So what have you learned?" Hamish demanded grumpily. "Tell me where Nevil's mustering, and I'll tell you what passes he'll come by. What about the Swiss?"
The fat man spread his fat hands in a sort of shrug. "My correspondents north of the Alps report no massing of troops. Either Nevil has decided to wait until later in the year, or he is masking his movements with gramarye."
Toby looked to the inscrutable shaman. He wondered how the girl — he had concluded that she was little more than a child — how she managed not to cook inside that monstrous heap of cloth. Every day she rearranged the beads and lace and replaced some of the dangling vegetation. She moved panels of cloth around, too. It was a strange way to change one's clothes, but she was the strangest person he had ever met.
"Well, Sorghaghtani? Can the Fiend hide a whole army?"
"How many demons does he have? Is there anything you cannot do if you have enough demons?"
"Are you telling me I have to plan on fighting an invisible army?"
"Even if he can hide from the friar's clerks, how can he hide from spirits, Little One? Can he hide from Chabi, who sees all?"
"Do you keep watch on the passes?"
"You think an owl can fly so far?"
He was adjusting to her maddening speech, in that it now annoyed him only about half the time. This was one of the times, but she obviously meant that the Alps were beyond her range.
"Maestro Fischart once spoke of putting a demon watch on the passes."
"Who will give me the demons?" she snapped. "Even if he did leave a casket full of them in the adytum, what are their names, mm? Who will tell me that?"
Toby shook his head. However skilled Sorghaghtani was, she could not compare with the baron for raw power. She was now very popular with the men, because she would accept no fees for healing and could cure the Spanish Pox just by playing her drum. Tutelaries assigned severe penances for the pox. Her evening consultations always drew long lineups outside the adytum.
"And the Swiss?" Hamish asked again.
This time the friar's shrug was even larger, a huge heaving of meat. "Like the Tyroleans, they will harass the Fiend as much as they can but cannot hope to deny him passage."
Toby growled in frustration. "Will they join in the battles, though? Will they even come to the conclave?"
This time Brother Bartolo just shrugged.
* * *
The prince had belatedly given permission for the conclave to proceed, beginning on the first of April. Arrangements were Arnaud Villars's responsibility, and before Toby had read a third of the papers Hamish and Bartolo had left for him, in stormed Arnaud in a typical frenzy, tearing his beard. It was amazing how that furry jungle survived his continual tantrums.
"Money!" he roared. The dieci were already behind in payments. That was to be expected. Veteran mercenaries were surprised when their pay wasn't in arrears.
"Prices!" he howled. Horses were going for more than five hundred florins. The cost of wheat, of barley, of wine…
"The conclave!" he screamed. The darughachi had invited every knight and archer and man-at-arms in all Italy. The villa would not hold them, there was no place to feed them, and the Company was expected to pay for everything…
Toby listened sympathetically because being a scratching post was part of his job. The big Gascon was merely venting his frustration on a target he could not damage instead of taking out his feelings on his subordinates. The last time this happened had been two days ago, and then Toby had assured his treasurer of his continuing support and confidence and reliance. This time, for a change, he waited until the fires had died down a little and then laughed. Arnaud fell silent and began turning purple.
"Pardon me, old friend! I've seen you worked up too often. Oftentimes I've talked you out of strangling people — haven't I?"
"Certainly not! Well, maybe. Once or twice."
"More than that. You always tell me that the world is about to end, and you always solve the problems on your own. Always! Now, what are you going to do this time?"
Glowering, Arnaud began to list the measures he was planning to take, such as moving tents to Cafaggiolo for sleeping quarters. He had hardly begun when—
"Ah, there you are, Constable Longdirk!" The countess swished into the courtyard in a haze of russet-and-purple silk.
The men exchanged fraught glances, then rose and bowed low.
"I need a word with you, Sir Tobias — alone?" That aloneness would not exclude Lisa, of course, who had come scowling along at her mother's heel in a yellowy green robe and was illuminating the courtyard like a goddess.
Realizing that he was gawking at her, Toby swung his attention back to her awesome mother. "Pray speak freely, my lady. Treasurer Villars understands no English."
He registered his folly as soon as the words were out, for the countess had had dealings with Arnaud, and he, being a Gascon, spoke better English than Toby did. Fortunately, he never did so from choice, and the countess's failure to react showed that he must have forced her to converse in French. She dismissed him from consideration.
"Constable…" She did not presume to sit, so everyo
ne remained standing, but she was displaying an uncharacteristic lack of confidence. "Constable, tell me how you expect… how you see events unfolding in the next few months."
"Months? I cannot see months, my lady. I expect the Fiend's armies to invade Italy within two or three weeks. Armies loyal to the Khan will oppose him and, hopefully, will deal with Nevil as we dealt with his flunky Schweitzer."
The lady was not pleased. She squeezed her lips together. "Under whose leadership?"
Her daughter was not pleased either. So they had learned just how bad relations now were between Toby and his employer, the republic of Florence, but why was Lisa not smirking her royal smirk at his downfall?
"That is for Prince Sartaq to determine, ma'am."
Blanche hesitated, as if about to ask him what his chances were, but then she changed her mind. "Victory is by no means certain, is it?"
"No, my lady. Nor is it impossible." What was she up to and why didn't she get on with it?
"I fear for my daughter's safety in the event of a defeat, Constable."
Ah! "And your own, ma'am, of course."
She sighed the sort of sigh that would have felled a royal court in her youth. "I am little concerned with my own fate, Sir Tobias. After so many years of flight, one wearies of the chase. But Lisa still has many years of life to look forward to, and I do not wish to leave her at risk. In the light of what you have said, I believe that we should withdraw to the island of Malta until the danger is past and you have won your great victory."
"Probably a wise decision under the circumstances," Toby murmured politely. What the lady was not saying — or had not said yet, at least — was that she was now penniless and had run out of friends to prevail upon. That would come.
She acknowledged his concession with a nod. "Then would you be so kind, Constable, as to have your staff make the necessary arrangements?" She indicated Arnaud with a fluttery gesture. "I plan on leaving as soon as possible."
Doubtless. So did all the thousands of panic-stricken refugees already packed into every port in the peninsula. Ships were rarer than sea monsters.
