Ash: A Secret History

by Mary Gentle

  What she hears, she has heard a version of when she reached into the machina rei militaris, to prove her value for Leofric. Now she reaches through the tactical computer, past it, to a perception of vast static edifices of stone – unmoving, with no hands to manipulate the world, only thoughts, and a voice—

  “It was you. Not the Visigoths! You, that the Rabbi cursed!”

  ‘LITTLE SOUL, LITTLE SOUL…’

  The voice whispers, amused multiplicity, in her head:

  ‘IT IS NO CURSE, WE MANIPULATE OUR OWN EVOLUTION BY MANIPULATING THE ENERGIES OF THE SPIRIT WORLD. FOR THIS, WE DRAW OUR POWER FROM THE NEAREST AND GREATEST SOURCE IN THE HEAVENS – THE SUN.’

  Above her head, the day-sky gleams black.

  ‘WE HAVE DONE THIS SINCE WE BECAME CONSCIOUS, FIVE THOUSAND YEARS AGO. THEN, FOR THE RABBI’S GOLEM, MORE POWER WAS NEEDED, AND SO, ABOVE CARTHAGE, THE SUN APPEARED TO BE BLOTTED OUT. IT IS ONLY HIDDEN IN THE PARTS OF IT THAT YOU PERCEIVE – THE “LIGHT” BY WHICH YOU SENSE THE WORLD. HEAT STILL PENETRATES. HENCE, YOUR CROPS HAVE FAILED, BUT NO ICE CREEPS DOWN ACROSS THIS LAND. TWO HUNDRED YEARS AGO THIS BECAME A LAND OF TWILIGHT: THE NIGHT STARS VISIBLE ALL THROUGH THE DAYTIME, THE SUN INVISIBLE. A RABBI‘S CURSE!’

  Something that might be demon-laughter.

  The vision of their existence grows in Ash’s head, claustrophobic and black. A few tiny sparks in the endless darkness, like the sparks that flow up from a camp fire. Silence except for their machine souls speaking together. And then, after aeons greater than she can conceive, a new voice out of the darkness…

  The whisper continued, ‘we had not thought of you little souls … around us, a warlike human culture grew up. they took darkness for granted. there could be no agriculture, so they were driven to expand their empire into fertile, sunlit lands … so useful for us, for our long-term goals!

  ‘IT WAS NOT YET ENOUGH, HIDING OUR VOICES IN TACTICAL DATA, MANIPULATING HUMANS THROUGH THE MACHINA REI MILITARIS, WE HAD THE FATHERS OF LEOFRIC BEGIN A BREEDING PROGRAMME.

  ‘WE FAILED WITH ILDICO, CONTINUED WITH HER CHILDREN. WE HAVE WAITED TWO HUNDRED TURNS OF THE SUN TO BREED A WONDER-WORKER WITH WHOM WE COULD SPEAK, TALK, COMMAND—’

  Ash completed: “The Faris! The general.”

  ‘GUNDOBAD’S CHILD, HOWEVER DISTANT, GUNDOBAD, WHOM YOU CALL A VISIGOTH “SAINT”; WHOSE RELICS WE USED.’

  “He’s not a saint, to you. Is he? Not holy.”

  ‘LESS A SAINT AND MORE OF A MIRACLE-WORKER.’ The voices are multiple and amused again, ‘ONE OF THOSE VERY, VERY FEW SOULS, LIKE YOUR GREEN CHRIST, WHO HAVE THE POWER TO INDIVIDUALLY ALTER REALITY, AND THUS DO “MIRACLES”.’

  “Blasphemy!” Ash says, and her hand would go to her sword, to cross herself, to fight for the Lord on the Tree, if she could move, could break free of this endless moment.

  ‘NECESSITY, WE CAN TOUCH NOTHING, CHANGE NOTHING, WE ARE VOICES IN THE NIGHT, ONLY. PERCEIVING THE HEAT OF YOUR LITTLE SOULS. VOICES TO PERSUADE, CORRUPT, INSPIRE, DELUDE, ENTICE … OVER CENTURIES … UNTIL NOW—

  ‘NOW: AND THIS SPRING SOLSTICE, WHEN THE SUN WENT DARK ACROSS THE EARTH, WHEN WE DREW ON MORE POWER THAN WE EVER HAVE IN TEN THOUSAND YEARS!’

  “The invasion, the crusade—!”

  ‘FELIX CULPA, LITTLE SOUL, A HAPPY ACCIDENT OF TIMING, ONLY, FOR OUR UNKNOWING SERVANTS. WE, THROUGH LEOFRIC, THROUGH THE MACHINA REI MILITARIS, BEGAN THIS WAR; BUT MEN SHALL FIGHT IT FOR US. UNDER OUR COMMAND, YOU SHALL LAY WASTE TO EVERYTHING BETWEEN US AND THE NORTH. BUT THE DARK OF THE SUN – AH! WITH THAT, WE TESTED OUR ABILITY TO DRAW MORE POWER THAN WE EVER HAVE BEFORE. AND SUCCEEDED.’

  Clear in Ash’s memory: the terror of the sun going out, and the world shrouded under a blank, black, graveyard sky. She says – or has said – or will say:

  “This is bad war. This is…” Pain, memory; in the frozen moment of knowledge falling into her mind: “These are the Last Days.”

  ‘YES. FOR YOU, YES.’

  “Tell me why!”

  ‘WE HAVE BEEN BREEDING FOR ANOTHER MIRACLE-WORKER, AS GUNDOBAD AND ILDICO WERE. A CHANGER OF REALITY, A WORKER OF WONDERS. ONE THAT IS UNDER OUR CONTROL. NOW WE HAVE HER! OUR GENERAL, OUR FARIS, OUR MIRACLE-MAKER!—’

  “Why?”

  ‘—AND WHEN WE USE HER, IT WILL NOT MATTER IF SHE IS WILLING OR NOT. EARLY ON, WE BRED OUT ANY ABILITY TO CHOOSE. SHE CANNOT CHOOSE. WHEN SHE IS MADE READY, WHEN IT HAPPENS, IT WILL NEED THE SAME POWER THAT OBLITERATES THE SUN, TO TRIGGER OUR CHANGING OF REALITY.’

  Triumph: ragged, bitter, many-voiced, chorused:

  ‘WE HAVE BRED THE FARIS, TO MAKE A DARK MIRACLE – AS GUNDOBAD MADE ONE, WIPING OUT THE LAND HERE AND LEAVING A DESOLATION. WE SHALL USE HER, OUR GENERAL, OUR FARIS, OUR MIRACLE-MAKER – TO MAKE BURGUNDY AS IF IT HAS NEVER BEEN!’

  Burgundy, always Burgundy, nothing but fucking Burgundy—

  “WHY?” Ash bawled, in her head, and outside it. “Why Burgundy? Revenge? But Gundobad wasn’t a man of Burgundy! And why not do it now? Why do you need an invasion? You didn’t need a war, if you can change the world! I thought Leofric was – you were – breeding for someone who could win a war by hearing the tactical computer at a distance—”

  Their response is instant, intimate, unguarded: ‘BUT WE BRED, ALSO, FOR THAT, FOR THE VOICE OF THE GOLEM—’

  As if it wrenched roots out of her soul, the voices pulled back. She felt a snap! almost physical.

  ‘WHAT HAS SHE DRAWN FROM US?’

  ‘HOW CAN SHE COMPEL—?’

  ‘—DRAW UPON KNOWLEDGE—?’

  ‘—DRAW IT FROM US, WITHOUT OUR WILL—?’

  They thought I couldn’t do this! – Deafened, in her soul – That it could only happen when they permitted it!

  ‘—DANGER!’

  Floria’s acerbic tones said, “I don’t care if you sling the stupid bitch into a dung-cart! She should never have been allowed to fight, in her condition! Put her on one of the hurdles; on the wagon! Quickly!”

  The black sky swooped over Ash’s head. Jagged ends of osier stuck into her thighs.

  “Who hit her?”

  “No one hit her, Euen; she went down like a mined wall!”

  “Shit!”

  Somewhere there is a crowd of men, hands grasping the sides of swaying wagons; the bitter din of swords and bills striking other weapons, armour, men’s flesh.

  The horse-drawn wagon rumbled under her. She reached out, touching armoured fingers to the walls that rose up beside her. She felt vibration, a shivering in the air: and the voice in her head drowned every sensation out with finality:

  ‘YOU WILL COME TO US.’

  ‘YOU WILL COME.’

  “Fuck you,” Ash said clearly and aloud. “I don’t have time for this now!”

  She struggled upright, the edges of her knee cops cutting into her shins, and her backplate jabbing into her neck and spine. Thomas Morgan, trotting beside the moving cart with her Lion banner, reached out to give her a hand off.

  Euen Huw fell in beside them. “Boss, Geraint says shall we light torches?”

  “No!”

  “Boss says no fucking way!” Euen called forward; and as he spoke, Floria elbowed her way in past the Welshman, her eyes concerned, but her voice businesslike.

  “You should ride!”

  “We have to keep going—”

  And in mid-sentence Ash stops.

  She turns – her body turns itself – and begins to walk.

  South.

  Nothing voluntary about it. For a moment she is dazzled by the way her body moves without her volition: smooth muscles and tendons sliding, flesh and blood turning, walking straight towards the south, towards the towering flat planes of the pyramids, towards the silver light of the Wild Machines.

  ‘YOU WILL COME.’

  ‘WE WILL EXAMINE YOU.’

  ‘DISCOVER YOU.’

  ‘WHAT YOU ARE—’

  She speaks – and is silent.

  Nothing can move her mouth, her throat; her voice is silenced within her. Her legs move invol
untarily, carrying her forward; and she shudders inside her flesh, overtaken as one is by vomiting: the body in charge, the body doing what it will do—

  —what it is being forced to do.

  ‘COME.’

  Not a call, but an order, an instruction; and she panics, inside her head, carried without her will, bruised and aching but striding off into the darkness. No way to break it.

  “Boss?” Euen Huw called. “Morgan, grab her!”

  Hands grab her steel-covered body: Floria del Guiz. Ash’s body knows that it can take the woman down; tenses to slam a mail gauntlet across Floria’s eyes.

  “Back!”

  The voice is Welsh and two hard impacts take her across the backplate, men bearing her down to the earth, the shafts of two bills pinning her to the broken Carthaginian paving; so that she can’t use her armour as a weapon, can’t get her hand to her sword, can’t move at all.

  “You want to be careful with her, surgeon,” Euen Huw’s voice says, in pedantic instruction. “She’s used to killing people, see.”

  He adds, up over his shoulder, kneeling all his weight down on the bill’s eight-foot shaft. “It’s combat stress; I seen it before, lots. She’ll be fine. We might have to carry her back to the ships. Thomas, will you shift your Gower ass so that I can see the girl?” Euen Huw’s brilliant black eyes stare down at her. “Boss? You okay?”

  Her voice will not obey her. Now she chokes, almost unable to breathe, as if her body is forgetting how. She still feels her legs move, like a dying animal kicking; legs that are trying to get up and walk her south, to where the ground trembles at the feet of great pyramids: where the Wild Machines glow under the black sky that they have made.

  “Carry her,” Floria del Guiz’s voice snaps, “and take that bloody sword away from her!”

  Nothing, nothing now but confusion; her body struggling as they lift her, entirely out of her control. She thrashes in their arms as the men run, striking out across the desert, constellations their landmarks.

  Her head hangs down, the steel helmet banging against a low outcrop, stunning her, and she bites her tongue, the thin taste of blood in her mouth. Upside down in her vision, the silhouettes of the Wild Machines dominate all of the south, rising up over the men who trot, weapons shouldered, into darkness.

  And – a fraction of her mind is her own.

  She could strike killing blows, but she doesn’t. She could use what she knows, chop mail gauntlets at vulnerable elbow and knee joints, bludgeon for faces; but she does none of these things.

  They don’t know how, her mind guesses, and they can’t make me.

  But they can make me walk away from my men, make me come to them—

  Prisoner in flesh, she strains. Her mind burns like a flame, a fierce will that does not submit, no matter what her limbs are trying to do.

  Abruptly she is back in the cell in House Leofric, blood streaming down her thighs: isolated, agonised, alone.

  I will not—

  And is also somewhere else: somewhere she does not know, now; where she is held, her body powerless, by great force; where violation is ripped into her, and she cannot act, cannot move, cannot prevent—

  I will never—!

  Time loses itself in fever.

  The thunder in her mind is weaker.

  Ash lifts her head.

  She is carried between two men, anonymous in steel helmets; the stars are further advanced across the dome of the sky, it will be past Matins now, almost Lauds.

  A violent trembling shook her body, all her limbs jerking spastically.

  “Put her down!”

  The two men, whose faces she knows in torchlight – torchlight? – lay her down on round pebbles and rock. A sound reaches her ears. The sea. A cold wind blows across her face. The sea.

  “Hey, boss.” Euen Huw reached out cautiously and shook her armoured shoulder. “You flipped out there for a bit.”

  Thomas Morgan said plaintively, “Are you going to hit me again, boss?”

  “I didn’t hit you. If I’d hit you, you’d know about it!”

  Morgan grinned, propping the battered pole of the banner against his shoulder, and reached up and took his open-face sallet off. Sweat slicked his long red hair down flat against his skull, ears and neck. He freed a hand from a gauntlet and wiped his cheeks. “Shit, boss! We made it out.”

  Somewhere over towards the middle of two hundred men, Richard Faversham’s loud and tuneless voice sings the mass for Lauds, and for deliverance. This would be the hours before dawn, if it were not the Eternal Twilight. A few lanterns gleam, one or two per lance, Ash guesses; and shifts up on her elbows, bruised, drained, sore, exhausted.

  “We waiting for those galleys Angelotti was telling me about?”

  Euen Huw jerked a thumb at a rose-coloured glow, further down the beach. “Beacon, boss. They better turn up soon, fucking gondolier-pilots; my boys will have their guts for point-ribbons if they don’t.”

  Storms, currents, enemy ships: all possible. Ash sat up. “They’ll be here. And if they’re not, well … we’ll just go back and ask the King-Caliph very nicely if we can borrow one of his. Won’t we, boys?”

  The two Welshmen chuckled.

  A voice a little way off lisped, “Victuals.”

  “Wat!” She climbed to her feet, aching. Someone had stripped her back and breast and leg armour: presumably the man who owned it, and she felt both lighter and unprotected. “Wat Rodway! Over here!”

  “Meat,” the cook said tersely, holding out a steaming strip.

  “You reckon?” Ash took it, crammed it in her mouth as her stomach groaned with hunger, and passed two more handfuls on to Huw and Morgan. Saliva filled her mouth. She chewed raggedly, swallowed, licked her fingers, and exclaimed, “Wat, where’d you get my old boots from!”

  “Best beef,” Rodway lisped, his tone aggrieved.

  Euen Huw, under his breath, said, “It was, before you cooked it.”

  Ash spluttered into a giggle. “Where’s Oxford?”

  “Here, madam.”

  He still wore his full harness, and did not look as if he had taken his armour off since Carthage. Ground-in dirt made the lines around his eyes plainly visible.

  “Are you well?”

  “I have things I must tell you.” She saw her officers in de Vere’s wake and beckoned them up; and Floria joined the group, out of the darkness, carrying a lantern that showed her dirty, pale about the eyes, and with a fierce frown.

  “Are you losing your mind?” Floria said without preliminary.

  Both Angelotti and Geraint looked shocked.

  Ash gestures them around her with the familiar movement, so that they squat, the lantern showing them each other’s faces, in a circle on the wave-beaten beach ten miles west of Carthage.

  The voices in her mind are – not fainter, but less powerful. As winter sunlight is no less light than the summer sun, but is thinner, weaker, without the same heavy fire and warmth. So the whispers in her mind nag at her, but do not force her body out of her own control.

  “Too much to tell you … but I will. First, I have orders, and a suggestion,” Ash said. “I plan now to go back to Dijon. To Robert Anselm, and the rest of the company. Most of my men will come with me, my lord Oxford – if only because they’re dead if they stay in North Africa. We may have desertions once we’re back in the north, but I think I can get most of them to Dijon.”

  She hesitated, her eyes screwed up, as if against remembered light.

  “The sun’s still shining in Burgundy. Dear God, I want to see daylight!”

  “And then what?” de Vere said. “What will you have us do, madam?”

  “I can’t command you. I wish I could.” Ash smiled, very slightly, at the English Earl’s expression. “We are facing an enemy behind the enemy, my lord.”

  De Vere knelt, listening gravely.

  She said, “We are facing something that doesn’t care what happens, so long as Burgundy is taken – I don’t think they care
about the Visigoth Empire at all.”

  The Earl of Oxford continued to regard her, with a contained deliberation.

  “You hold an ancient title,” Ash said, “and whether in exile or not, you are one of the foremost soldiers of the age. My lord Oxford, I go back to Dijon, but you should not. You should go elsewhere.”

  Over protests, John de Vere said, “Explain, madam.”

  “Something demonic is our enemy…” And, when his expression changed, and he crossed himself, Ash leaned forward and said, “If you’ll listen to me, this is what you should do. Christendom is subject, now. The Visigoth Empire either has treaties, or it has conquered, almost everything except Burgundy – and England, but England is in little danger.”

  “You think not?”

  Ash took a breath. “There is an enemy behind the enemy… The Stone Golem processes military problems, it tells Leofric and through him the King-Caliph how they should attack – and for the last twenty years it’s said attack Christendom. But what speaks through the Stone Golem, that doesn’t care about Christendom. Just Burgundy.”

  John de Vere repeated, “An enemy behind our enemy.”

  “Who wants Burgundy, not England; it’s all Burgundy. The Visigoths will take every other city, and then they’ll take Dijon, and the Faris will lay the countryside waste – I don’t know why the Wild Machines hate Burgundy, but they do.” The echo of voices shivering her spine. “They do…”

  Oxford said briskly, “And you think that one mercenary company, reunited in Dijon, will prevent this?”

  “Stranger things have happened in war, but I don’t much care about the destruction of Burgundy.” Ash caught Floria’s eyes fixed on her. She ignored the woman’s gaze. “I plan to go to Dijon – and then break out, take ship for England, be four hundred miles away, and see what happens to the crusade when the Burgundian Dukes are defeated and dead. The further away I am, the better…”

  Voices in her mind: faint still.

  “…But if they don’t stop at Burgundy, my lord of Oxford, then I can think of only one thing that might stop the conquest.”