by Mary Gentle
She saw a dun palfrey approaching in Alderic’s wake. The rider, whose feet appeared to almost touch the ground either side, put back his hood.
“Godfrey,” Ash acknowledged.
“Boss.”
“Leofric get to hear about who’s putting the screws on my husband, then?”
She edged the mare a step sideways away from Fernando del Guiz, who was roaring furiously at the ’arif Alderic.
“I was talking to the ’arif when the order came up.”
“I don’t suppose you brought a pair of bolt-cutters? I might just about get away with it, right now.”
“The ’arifs men searched me. For that, and for weapons.”
“Damn… I hoped there was going to be a fight. I might have got out of here.” Ash rubbed her palms across her face and brought them away hot and wet with sweat. She huddled her cloak around herself, to keep her shaking hands out of Godfrey’s sight. Clouds coming up from the south began to blot out the sky.
Overwhelmingly, as if it was her body that thought, a physical desire overcame her for blue sky, for the gold-hot burning eye of the sun, for dry grass and bees and barley buried in red poppies; for meadowlark song, and cows lowing; for rivers glittering thick with fish; for the sun’s warmth on her naked skin, and daylight in her eyes; an ache so hard that she groaned, aloud, and let her hood fall back and tears stream from her eyes in the bitter cold south wind, staring beyond the sharp walls of the pyramids for the slightest break in the darkness.
“Ash?” Godfrey touched her arm.
“Pray for a miracle.” Ash smiled crookedly. “Just a tiny miracle. Pray for the Stone Golem to break down. Pray for these chains to rust. What’s a miracle, to Him?”
Godfrey smiled, reluctantly, gazing up at her from the palfrey’s back. “Heathen. But I do pray – for grace, for freedom, for you.”
Ash tucked Godfrey Maximillian’s hand under her arm and squeezed it. She let go quickly. Her body still shook with reaction. “I’m no heathen. I’m praying right now. To Saint Jude.”8 She couldn’t manage to sound humorous as she picked up her reins. “Godfrey… I don’t want to go back and die in the dark.”
He shot a glance at the surrounding horsemen. Ash regarded Theudibert’s squad, now so close that only what appeared to be an odd, comradely compassion made his men pretend not to be overhearing her conversation.
“God will receive you, or there is no justice in heaven,” Godfrey protested. “Ash—”
Something cold stung her scarred cheek. Ash raised her head. Outside the circle of the torches, everything was black; the stars obliterated by cloud. A whirl of white specks shot across the ancient paving, among the legs of cavalry mounts moving quickly into their escort array around herself, and around Gelimer’s men.
“Snow?” she said.
In yellow torchlight, wet flakes showed white. Like a dropping veil snow came suddenly and thickly down on the south wind, building up swiftly on the sides of the nearest pyramid, plastering white lines along the edges of bricks, delineating unseen irregularities.
“Close up!” The ’arif Alderic’s hoarse shout.
“No more yapping, priest.” Nazir Theudibert pushed his grey mare in between Godfrey and Ash. Ash’s mare dropped her head down, presenting a winter-coated furry flank to the wind. White ice plastered the leather tack, the folds of Ash’s cloak.
“Move it!” Theudibert grunted.
“Snow. In the middle of a fucking desert, snow?” She transferred her reins to one hand, jabbing a bare cold finger at the nazir’s face. “You know what this is, don’t you? Don’t you? It’s the Rabbi’s Curse, come home at last.”
Judging by Theudibert’s bony, red-cheeked face, she had hit a superstitious nerve. A brief hope flared in her. The nazir coughed, and spat a gob between their horses.
“Fuck off,” he said.
Ash pulled her hood forward. The lining of marten fur tickled her frozen cheek. What did you expect him to say?
The troop of horse moved off, riding back in the direction of Carthage; torches and armour glinting in the snow. She kneed the brown mare to a weary walk. He said just what I’d say. Except that I know there is a curse.
Aptly, as if he could read her thoughts, Theudibert growled under his breath, “Fucking ’arif’s all the curse I fucking need!”
“Well, I’ll tell you something.” Ash let her mouth run, feeling the pull of steel chains at her neck and ankles, looking furiously around for a gap between riders, for help, for anything. “I’ll tell you. Your amir Leofric breeds slaves – I reckon someone out there is breeding sergeants. ‘Arifs. ’Cause they’re all the fucking same!”
Theudibert looked at her coldly. Two of the soldiers laughed and smothered it; both of them men who had been in the cell with her, threatening rape. Ash rode on between them.
If I could kill this horse, they’d have to take me out of the chains. However briefly. But I’d need a weapon for that, and I don’t have a weapon. If I could lame her, get free—
She let her gaze travel ahead, looking for holes in the paving.
—then I’d be on foot, in the desert, in a blizzard, with sixty men trying to find me. Well, hey, it’s not such a bad deal. Not when you consider the alternative.
Not when you consider that, if they have to cut the chains to get me off this beast, there’ll probably be six of them with swords at my throat every minute while they’re doing it. That’s what I’d do. That’s the trouble. They’re as smart as me.
I just have to hope that someone will make a mistake.
Ash let her awareness spread out, taking in the whole troop. Alderic’s heavy cavalry platoon around her, one squad behind, one to either side; and Alderic ahead, riding with Gelimer and Fernando del Guiz, Gelimer’s troops out in front – where he can see them, Ash approved – and Godfrey’s palfrey plodding, head down, in the shelter of Alderic’s scraggy mount.
I do not, ever, give up. No matter what.
Driving snow plastered her cloak against her back, and the back of her skull; freezing wind seeping through the wool. Outside the circle of torchlight, a whirling white desolation screamed, the wind rising. She saw Alderic order a scout9 forward.
We came, what, two miles? Three? It isn’t possible to get lost three miles from a city!
Yes it is…
A mail-covered arm reached across in front of her. Nazir Theudibert yanked the mare’s reins out of her hands, and wound them around his wrist. His squad closed in, Gaiseric’s cob nipping at the mare’s rump; all of them riding within touching distance. Snow began to lie on the paved ground. She let Theudibert yank the mare into movement, clasping the furry body with her knees, keeping her weight level and her knees still.
Just a broken paving stone, a rabbit hole, anything… Feeling the recalcitrant weight and solidity of the mare’s barrel-body, that might come crashing down on her leg if they fell. I’ll take the risk!
The mare plodded exhaustedly on. The stink of sweating men and hot horses faded from Ash’s nostrils, obliterated by the cold. White flakes lay, eating up the flat ground, piling up against a plinth. She looked up into the star-crowned face of a stone queen, snow whitening the gargantuan granite beast-body. The sphinx’s smile blurred under clinging ice.
“Where is Carthage?”
It was the merest whisper, into the fur lining of her hood. The nazir glared suspiciously at her, then turned aside to speak with one of his men. A low-voiced dispute broke out between them.
In her head, words sounded:
‘Carthage is upon the northern coast of the continent of Africa, forty leagues to the west of—’
“Where is Carthage from where I am!”
No voice sounded in her head.
The mare slowed, plodding through drifting snow. Ash peered out of her hood. Theudibert’s men rode, hunched, muttering. Their tracks were churning up a hand’s-deep fall of snow now, that clung in bobbles to the hairy hocks of the horses. One white mare whickered, tossing up her head.
“This isn’t the way we rode in, nazir!”
“Well, it’s the way we’re riding out. Do I have to shut your fucking mouth for you, Barbas?”
Ash thought, What does it matter, now, if Leofric learns I’m asking the Stone Golem questions? If they get me back inside Carthage, I’m dead.
“Forty men and twenty men and fifteen men, all cavalry, possibly all three groups hostile to each other,” she breathed, mist dampening the fur around her mouth and freezing immediately to ice. She found she was shivering, for all her wool gown and cloak. Her bare feet were numb blocks of flesh, and all sensation had gone from her hands. “One person, unarmed, mounted; escape and evasion, how?”
‘You should provoke a fight between two forces and escape in the confusion.’
“I’m chained! The third force isn’t mine! How?”
‘No appropriate tactic known.’
Ash bit at her cold, numb lower lip.
“You might as well pray, I suppose,” a light tenor voice called. Fernando del Guiz rode in from her right, pressing the roan gelding between Alderic’s troopers without a thought. Perhaps for that reason, they admitted him. His green and gold banner whipped in the blizzard, momentarily blocking out torch-light. Ash looked up at his snow-plastered helmet and cloak.
“Is that necessary?” Fernando added, indicating the mare’s reins with one gloved hand.
“Sir.” Theudibert’s tone was a gruff, less-urbane copy of his ’arifs. He kept her reins knotted firmly in his right hand, riding knee to knee with Ash. “Yes, sir.”
Trying to read Fernando’s expression, Ash could make out nothing. Over his shoulder, through driving snow, she saw the lord-amir Gelimer and his son Witiza riding back down the column towards them.
“When I pray, I want an answer.” She spoke lightly, as if it were a joke. Snow melted, chill on her lips.
“I’m sorry!” Fernando leaned over, close enough that his breath was damp and warm on her cheek. The male smell of him jolted her heart. He hissed, “I’m caught between the two of them, I can’t help you!”
She held in her mind the expectation of a voice. “You’ve got, what, fifteen men with lances? Could you get me out of here?”
The familiar voice in her head said, ‘Two larger units will unite to defeat third: tactic unsuccessful,’ as Fernando del Guiz laughed, slapped the nearest Visigoth soldier on the back, and said, unconvincingly jovially, “What wouldn’t you give for a wife like that?”
The young soldier, Gaiseric, said something quickly in Gothic which Ash could see Fernando didn’t understand.
“I’m worth more than ‘one sick goat’, trooper!” she remarked, in Carthaginian. The trooper snuffled a laugh. Ash gave him a quick grin. It’s worth making them think of me as a commander, if it slows their reaction time by even a split-second—
“Del Guiz!” The lord-amir Gelimer closed distance through the wind and snow.
“Del Guiz, I am riding back to the city. Ask me for no further help.” His sharp, gauntleted gesture took in the blizzard, Alderic’s horsemen, the del Guiz squires shuddering with cold and riding with the hooded owls sheltered under their cloaks, his own son’s blue-white face. “I hold you implicated in this! I should have made a better judgement of you – a man who would marry this, this—!”
He pointed at Ash. She gripped a fold of her cloak and shook snow off herself; wiped the snow from her eyelashes. The brown mare whuffed, too tired to pull away from the nazir’s grip on her reins. Ash sniffed back a runny nose, staring up at Gelimer; at this richly robed and armoured man, white snow lodging in the braiding of his beard.
“Well, fuck you too,” she said, almost cheerful, if only because of the appalled expression on Fernando del Guiz’s face. “You’re not the first person to act like I’m an abomination, my Lord-Amir. If I were you, I’d be worrying about worse problems than me.”
“You!” Gelimer waved a finger at her. “You and your master Leofric! Theodoric was misguided enough to listen to him. Yes, it is essential that Europe be eradicated, but not—” He stopped, wiping a blast of snow out of his face. “Not with a slave-general! Not with a useless war-machine. These things fail, and then where are we?”
Ash made great show of looking around her, at Theudibert hunched over his saddle, at the troopers pretending not to listen to the overwrought amir as they rode knee to knee in a tight little group, at Alderic ahead supervising Gelimer’s men.
She raised her head to the high, white, whirling air, and the snow-covered immense statues, and the blanket of snow smoothing out the desert in the sputtering light of the wet pitch-torches.
“Why is it winter here?” she demanded. “Look at this. My mare has her winter coat and it’s only September. Why is it so damn cold, Gelimer? Why? Why is it cold?”
She felt as if she slammed, face-first, into a stone wall.
Her expectation of a voice in her head was flooded – no other word for it – with a stunning, fierce, complete silence.
The lord-amir shouted something in return.
Ash didn’t hear it.
“What?” she said, aloud, bewildered.
“I said, this curse began with Leofric’s slave-general going on crusade, it will probably stop when she dies. All the more reason to put a stop to his activities. Del Guiz!” Gelimer shifted his attention. “You could serve me yet. I can forgive!”
He spurred his mount. The gelding arched its back, took a kick in the flank, and cantered forward, iron shoes skidding on the snow-covered flagstones. The lord-amir called out. Gelimer’s men spurred forward, away from Alderic’s troop, on into the dark blizzard ahead. The ’arif let them go.
Fernando groaned. “I thought he’d given up on me.”
Ash paid him no attention. Her breath steamed around her face. Even her knees, where she clasped the mare’s flanks, were numb with the cold; and snow gathered in the folds of her cloak. The iron chain from her collar burned, where it touched her skin under her clothes.
Appalled, she whispered delicately, “Forty men and fifteen men, armed cavalry, escape and evasion, how?”
“What?” Fernando sat down in the saddle from peering after Gelimer.
“Forty men and fifteen men, armed cavalry, escape and evasion, how?”
No voice sounded in her mind. She let herself will the effort of active listening, making a way in through defences, demanding an answer from the silence within.
A cold slap of ice-flakes on her face snapped her attention outwards.
Am I not … hearing? That’s it. That’s it. It isn’t as if I’m stopped, blocked… There is no voice here. Only silence.
Beside her, on his palfrey, Godfrey spoke cheeringly over what was plainly her indistinguishable mumble. “These amirs are crazy, child! You know that Gelimer was a rival with Leofric for the King-Caliph’s money, for the crusade? To raise troops? And now they’re both trying to get themselves elected king—”
“What is the secret breeding?” Snow burned Ash’s face. She muttered insistently: “What is the secret birth?”
No voice. No answer.
The potential there, but utterly, utterly silent.
“Where’s my fucking voice?”
“What do you mean?” Fernando pressed his gelding close in and reached out to pull back her hood. “Ash? What are you talking about?”
Theudibert reached across in front of her, over the mare’s saddle, to push the fair-haired European knight away. Ash lunged, almost automatically, reaching across the nazir’s mailed back, grabbing for his knife where its scabbard hung on his right hip, with the intention of slashing through the mare’s reins.
A soldier shouted a warning.
Something fast and black came down between her and the nazir, a lance-shaft. She jerked away.
“Shit!”
Ash grabbed for the saddle.
She knew she hadn’t made it, was falling off the mare. Something caught her arm a numbing blow. She cried out. Her heel jerked back. The furry mare
jinked to the right. She grabbed for the saddle and her numb bare fingers slid across leather, fear flooding her gut as she slipped, falling, falling forwards and down towards snow-covered stone.
Her stomach swooped. Her head banged sharply against something that gave – the mare’s foreleg. Every muscle cringed, taut, against impact. Waiting for an iron-shod hoof to kick back into her face. Waiting to hit stone pavement.
The fall stopped.
Ash hung, upside-down.
A hoof clopped on stone, close by her ear. Something banged her jaw, very softly. She thrashed her head in the enveloping cloak and kirtle and shift falling down over her ears, and found herself staring at pale-tipped brown horse-hair.
The underside of the muzzle of the brown mare.
The horse stood, all four feet planted, knees locked, her head hanging exhaustedly down to the ground in front of Ash’s face.
Above her, there was a noise. A man laughing.
Dazed, Ash made out that she was hanging with both her hands and feet above her. Her cloak and skirts fell down over her head.
“Shit!”
She hung upside-down, the chain between her ankles now taut across the mare’s saddle, and her whole body suspended under the mare’s belly. Some confusion of garments and chain and collar had both her hands pulled up tight into one stirrup and trapped.
Her cloak and gown fell back over her head and shoulders, baring her legs to the blizzard.
Ash giggled.
The mare placidly nosed back at her wool-shrouded head. Folds of wet cloth slid down, across her face, and uncovered her again, drooping to sweep the snow-covered stone.
“Nazir!” a voice she recognised as Alderic’s bawled hoarsely, through the blizzard.
“Arif?”
“Get her back on that horse!”
“Yes, ’Arif.”
“Ah – wuff!” Ash choked, tried to muffle it, and a wet laugh burst out from between her lips. She snuffled. In front of her, upside-down to her view, the legs of horses milled about, male voices shouting in confusion. Her chest began to ache as she laughed harder, not able to stop, her convulsing body driving out all her breath, tears streaming out of the corners of her eyes and down into her cropped hair.
