by Mary Gentle
“A Stone Golem…” she said slowly. “Lamb, hearing Our Lord’s saints is one thing; hearing a machine—”
“It’s probably just the rumour-mill,” Lamb snapped. “Half of what they say they have in North Africa, they don’t have; just manuscripts and some great-grandfather’s memories. This woman is new, and a commander of armies. There will of course be ridiculous stories. There always are.”
Something about his rapid speech made her glance at Agnus: the Lamb was undoubtedly on edge. She caught the gaze of Robert Anselm, Geraint ab Morgan, Angelotti; all her officers in readiness for this, which might be a negotiation, and might be an ambush, and must in any case be endured long enough to find out. She looked down for Godfrey Maximillian’s palfrey. The priest was staring at the approaching torches.
“Pray for us,” she ordered.
The bearded man gripped his cross, his lips moving.
More torches bloomed, lower, carried by men on foot. Ash heard a superstitious oath from Robert Anselm. The torch-carriers were clay and brass figures of men, golems bearing streaming pitch-torches whose light flowed over their featureless red and ochre skins.
“Nice,” she admitted. “If I were her, and had something that disconcerting, I’d use it too.”
The Visigoth horses came on, between two lines of golems. Little high-stepping horses, with desert blood in them, and gilded leather tack that lay across their necks and their rumps; each bit and ring and stirrup flashing in the torchlight. They brought a smell of spicy horse dung, perceptibly different from that of the thick-necked European war-horses. Godluc stirred. Ash gripped his rein. Some of those are mares, she thought; and I’ve never been convinced Godluc realises he’s been cut. The darting shadows bothered Godfrey’s palfrey; she indicated a bowman should get down and hold the bridle, so that Godfrey could continue uninterrupted prayer.
Behind the Visigoth riders came the standard-bearer, with a black flag and an eagle on a pole. His horse was armoured, and Ash smiled to herself at that, having carried the standard in a number of battles and come to understand what her voices meant by the term fire magnet. An armoured poet rode beside him, singing something too colloquial for her to understand, but she remembered the custom from Tunis: cantadors, for morale.
“What a racket. I wonder if they’re trying to impress us?” Ash sat in the tall saddle, her legs almost straight in the stirrups, centre of gravity at hips or just below: a different feeling to walking in armour. She shifted imperceptibly, keeping Godluc still. The Visigoth horses jangled as they came to a halt. Lances and shields, swords and light crossbows… She studied men wearing mail hauberks over padded armour, with white surcoats and open-face helmets. They leaned from their saddles towards each other, talking openly, some of them pointing at the European mercenary knights.
“No,” Ash said cheerfully, picking one and letting her voice carry, “we don’t, as it happens. Besides, you don’t get goats in these mountains. Male or female.”
A spurt of laughter, cursing, and alarm followed her speech. Geraint ab Morgan slapped his armoured thigh. A better-armed Visigoth rider under the black pennant-and-eagle standard spoke to men either side, then urged a chestnut mare forward.
Not to be outdone, Ash signalled. Euen Huw blew three clear notes on the trumpet he unwillingly carried. Ash rode forward in a clatter of horse barding, six officers with her – Anselm, Geraint, and Joscelyn van Mander in gleaming Milanese full plate; Angelotti in a Milanese breastplate and fluted, intricate Gothic leg harness; Godfrey (still praying, eyes shut) in his best monastic robe, and Floria del Guiz in someone’s borrowed brigandine and archer’s sallet, looking nothing like a woman, and, sadly, nothing much like a soldier either, Ash had to admit.
“I’m Ash,” she said into the silence after the trumpet. “Agnus Dei tells me you’re interested in a contract with us.”
Ash could not make out the Visigoth leader’s face under her helmet in the moving shadows.
The woman wore steel helmet and greaves, banded sabatons visible in her stirrups. Torchlight flowed richly over her crimson velvet-covered body armour: a coat-of-plates with a hundred big flower-shaped rivet-heads gleaming gold. Mail was visible under it, at her thigh. A standing plate collar must be a gorget of some sort, Ash surmised; and she noted a trilobed gilded sword-hilt, sword and dagger scabbards with gold chapes, sword-belt with heavy gold decoration; and the blue-black and white chequer of a cloak lined with vair.10 Ash had the price of each totted up in seconds and was impressed despite herself. She could not help the spasm of pure pleasure she felt at seeing another woman commanding armed troops; especially one foreign enough not to be a competitor.
“You would fight Burgundians.” The woman’s voice, penetrating, spoke German with a Carthaginian accent. It argued that she wanted to be understood by those of Ash’s entourage who did not speak Carthaginian.
“Fight Burgundians? Not for choice. They’re hard bastards.” Ash shrugged. “I don’t risk my company for no good reason.”
“You are ‘Ash’. The jund.”11 The armoured chestnut mare moved forward, coming into the light of Ash’s torches. The woman wore a helmet with a nasal bar, and a mail aventail hanging from its edges. A black scarf swathed her shoulders and lower face. There is little detail visible in helmet-framed eyes, which was all Ash could see, but enough to make her suddenly realise She’s young! My God. She’s no older than me!
It explained something of Lamb’s edginess: a malicious desire to see these two female freaks, as he undoubtedly considered them, meet each other. Ash out of pure perversity immediately warmed to the Visigoth commander.
“Faris,” Ash said. “General. Make me an offer. I’ve tended to fight on the side of the Burgundians when chance offered, but we can handle them if necessary.”
“You have my ally here.”
“He’s my husband. I think that gives me prior claim.”
“Your siege must be lifted. As part of the contract.”
“Whoa. Too fast. I always consult with my men.” Ash put up a hand. Something bothered her about the Visigoth general’s voice. She would have edged Godluc closer, but the torchlight flickered on the points of arrows, easily nocked, in some cases lying across Visigoth riders’ laps; and some of her own men very definitely had lances in their hands rather than socketed at the saddle. Weapons have their own life, their own tension; she could have said, with complete accuracy, how many Visigoth riders were looking at her and judging distance. She could feel the invisible connection.
Purely from a desire to gain a minute or two to think, Ash found herself asking the question most on her mind. “Faris – when will we see the sun again?”
“When we choose.” The woman’s young voice sounded calm.
It also sounded, to Ash, like a lie; having told enough lies in public in her own time. So you don’t know either? The Caliph back in Carthage doesn’t tell his general everything? The yellow light of torches grew to a glare, the clay walkers making a half-circle to either side of their general. Fine-linked mail armour glinted.
“What are you offering?”
“Sixty thousand ducats. Contracted for the duration of this war.”
Sixty thou—
As plain as if it were her inner voice, she could hear Robert Anselm think, If the bitch has money to burn, don’t argue with her!
Ash gave herself a second or two to consider by reaching up and unbuckling her sallet, and taking the helmet off; this also being a sign to her men to stand down – or at any rate, not to do anything rash unless aggressive intent became very clear on the Visigoth side.
Lamb stripped a gauntlet off and bit at his fingers.
Ash pushed her bound silver hair (sweaty from its confinement as her helmet lining) out of her face, and glanced at the Visigoth general. After a long hesitation the young woman reached up and took off her mail-hung helmet, and pulled off her veil.
One of the Visigoth riders swore, violently. His mount lifted both front feet off the earth, and can
noned into the man beside him. A strident roar of voices made Ash grab at Godluc’s reins, left-handed. Godfrey Maximillian opened his eyes and she saw him look directly ahead.
“Jesus Christ!” Godfrey exclaimed.
The young Visigoth Faris sat her horse in torchlight. She moved her scarlet-armoured body, encouraging the chestnut mare forward a pace, and stared. Shifting shadows and light gleamed from the waterfall of her silver hair.
Her brows were dark, sweeping, definite; her eyes a dark brilliance; but it was the mouth that gave it to Ash: Ash thought, I have seen that mouth in a mirror, every time there has been a mirror to hand; and took in the same length of arm and leg, solid small hips, strong shoulders, even – which she had not seen – the same way of sitting a saddle.
She brought her gaze back to the Visigoth woman’s face.
No scars.
If there had been scars, she would have fallen off her horse and gone facedown on the earth, praying to the Christ, praying against madness and demons and whatever inhabitant of the Pit this might be. But the woman’s cheeks were flawless and unmarked.
The Visigoth woman general wore no expression at all now, her features frozen, stone.
In the same second that armed men in both the European and Visigoth groups crowded their horses closer, Ash realised, So that’s what I look like without scars.
No scars.
In everything other than that – we are twins.
III
The Faris held up one arm and said something too sharp and quick for Ash to understand.
“I’ll send my qa’id to you with a contract!” the Visigoth general added. An urging movement of her body sent the chestnut Barb round on the spot, haunches bunched, then galloping away. And the rest of them with her, instantly. Drums, eagle, dwarfs, poets and armed thugs, all clattering down the dark slope towards the Visigoth camp.
“Back to town.” Ash heard her own voice sharp and hoarse, in the silence. Thinking, how many of them saw – perhaps a few men, close to me – thirty heartbeats to see a face in darkness – but word will soon get around, turn to rumour— “Back to the town!”
For the next five days she was never at any moment speaking to fewer than two people at a time, and sometimes it was three.
Godfrey brought her the Visigoths’ contract for the company, its meticulous Latin checked for her to sign. She signed; midway through remonstrating with Gustav and his foot knights for attempting a last raid on Guizburg castle, and that itself midway between counting remounts and sacks of oatmeal with Henri Brant, listening to complaints from hand-gunners about lack of powder, and hearing from Florian – Floria! – how wounds did or did not mend. By the first midnight, she had visited each lance of men at their own billets, agreeing the contract.
“We move at night,” Ash announced. In part because at night some light existed – the moon waning into its last quarter still gave more light than the day did. In part because her men did not like riding under an unnatural daytime black sky; were safer, in her opinion, sleeping by day, no matter how difficult that might be. Shifting a camp of eighty lances and a baggage train each day is bad enough by daylight.
She was never, not for one heartbeat, alone.
She wrapped herself in impenetrable authority. There could be no questions asked. There were none. To herself, she seemed asleep, or sleepwalking at best.
She woke, paradoxically, five days later, out of sheer weariness.
Ash jolted out of a doze and found herself leaning her forehead against the neck of her mare. Conscious that her hand, gripping a horse brush, moved in small circles, decreasing now. Conscious that she had just spoken – but said what?
She raised her head and looked at Rickard. The boy looked frazzled.
Lady butted her with a plush nose, whuffing. Ash straightened. She ran her free hand across the warm, sleek flank, pressed out by the foal within. The mare whickered, gently, and pushed up against Ash with her golden shoulder. The rushes underfoot smelled pleasantly of horse dung.
Ash glanced down. She wore her high riding boots, the tops pointed into her doublet skirt to keep them up. They were covered with mud and horse dung to the knee.
“The glorious life of a mercenary. If I’d wanted to spend my life knee-deep in shit, I could have been a peasant on a farm. At least you don’t have to move a farm fifteen miles every cock-crow. Why am I ass-deep in crap?”
“Don’t know, boss.” It was the kind of rhetorical remark that some would have taken as an invitation to wit; Rickard only looked inarticulate. But pleased, too. This was obviously not what she had been talking about before.
Encouraged, Rickard said, “She’ll drop in around fifteen days.”
Her body was bruised, warm, weary. Pierced iron lanterns shone yellow light on to the moving walls of the canvas stall, and the hay jutting from Lady’s manger. Pleasant and restful, in these early hours.
But if I leave, I won’t see dawn breaking. Only darkness.
Ash heard the voices of men-at-arms outside, talking, and the whine of dogs; she had not come through camp without an escort, then. My absence of mind doesn’t go that far. She felt it as a real absence, as if someone had gone travelling and had only now returned.
“Fifteen days,” she repeated. The handsome boy watched her. His shirt bunched up out of the gap between points at shoulder and lower back, and his face was thinning down, losing child-fat, changing to man. Ash gave him a reassuring smile. “Good. Listen, Rickard, when you’ve taught Bertrand to be cup-bearer and page, I’ll ask Roberto to take you on as squire. It’s past time you trained.”
He said nothing, but his face illumined, like a page from a manuscript.
After physical exertion, the body relaxes. Ash became aware of her loosened muscles; of the warmth from her demi-gown, made like a doublet with a fuller skirt and with the puffed sleeves sewn in, that was buttoned over her brigandine; of her sleepiness, that did nothing to take the edge off desire. She had an intense, sudden tactile memory: the line of Fernando del Guiz’s flank from shoulder to hip, skin hot under her fingertips, and the thrust of his erect member.
“Shit!”
Rickard startled. He ventured, “Master Angelotti wants to talk to you.”
Ash’s hand went to Lady’s neck automatically as the mare nuzzled at her. Touch calmed her. “Where is he?”
“Outside.”
“Right. Yes, I’ll see him now. Tell everyone else I’m unavailable for the next hour.”
Five days unconscious of travelling between sloping walls of bald rock, patched in the moonlight with white snow. Unconscious of the road. Cold scrub and heather and alpine weeds, and the clink of stones trickling off cliffs to either side. Moonlight on lakes, far below winding roads and scree. Now, if there was sunlight, she would be looking down into the distance, seeing unfenced green meadows and small castles on hilltops.
Moonlight showed her nothing of the surrounding country as she left the horse lines. From the camp, she could see no distance at all.
“Boss.” Antonio Angelotti turned from speaking to her guards. He wore a voluminous red woollen cloak, which he should not need in August, over his brigandine and leg armour. What crackled under his boots as he walked to her was not the dry rushes, but hoar frost.
The inner and outer circles of the company’s wagons bristled with guns, behind pavises big as church doors. Bonfires burned within the central camp, where men slept in their bed-rolls, and burned also beyond the perimeter, by her order, to give sight of the country beyond, and to prevent their being silhouetted against flame for any passing bowman or hand-gunner. She could tell where the huge Visigoth camp was, a mile away, by flaring bonfires; and by men distantly singing, in drink or in battle ardour, it was not clear which.
“Let’s go.” She walked with Antonio Angelotti as far as the massed cannon, and the hand-gunners encamped around their fires, without speaking of more than organisational matters. When the startlingly beautiful man stood aside for her to go into his
small tent, she knew her silence was about to end.
“Rickard, see if you can find Father Godfrey, and F-Florian. Send them to me here.” She ducked through the small pavilion’s flap and entered. Her eyes adjusted to the shadows. She seated herself on a wooden chest, bound with straps and iron, that contained enough powder to blow her and the hand-gunners outside to the Pit. “What have you got to say privately?”
Angelotti eased himself into leaning against the edge of his trestle table, without clipping the top edge of the cuisses that armoured his thighs. A sheaf of paper, covered with calculations, fell to the rush-strewn earth. He was incapable, Ash thought, of looking less than graceful in any situation; but he was not incapable of seeming embarrassed.
“So I’m a bastard from North Africa, instead of a bastard from Flanders or England or Burgundy,” she said gently. “Does it really matter to you?”
He shrugged lithely. “That depends on which noble family our Faris comes from, and whether they find you embarrassing. No. In any case, you’re a bastard for a family to be proud of. What’s the matter?”
“Pr—!” Ash wheezed. Her chest burned. She slid down the side of the chest and sat, spraddle-legged, in the rushes, laughing so hard that she couldn’t breathe. The plates of her brigandine creaked with the movement of her ribs. “Oh, Angel! Nothing. ‘Proud’. Such a compliment! You – no, nothing.”
She wiped the back of her glove under her eyes. A push with powerful legs hitched her back up on to the wooden chest. “Master gunner, you know a lot about the Visigoths.”
“North Africa is where I learned my mathematics.” Angelotti was, it became apparent, studying her face. He did not look as though he knew he was doing it.
“How long were you over there?”
Oval lids lowered over his eyes. Angelotti had the face of a Byzantine icon, in this light of candles and shadows; with youth on it like the white film on the surface of a plum.
