by Mary Gentle
“There’s still a government in Carthage,” Floria pointed out. “That army out there haven’t surrendered!”
“Never argue with morale,” Ash murmured… “No – never argue with high morale.”
“Why am I surrounded by idiots?” Florian remarked, rhetorically.
“Dottore, you should consider that thought very carefully.” Angelotti chuckled, where he sat between Geraint and Euen Huw. “As the rosbifs have it, ‘like calls to like’!”
The heat of the hall began at last to penetrate. Ash put her hands up and slid her hood back, stripped her gauntlets and helmet off, and looked up to find Robert Anselm and a whole lot of the garrison troops staring at her, suddenly silent.
She became aware again of her roughly cropped short hair. Aware that the river-fall of shining glory is gone, that she is only a leggy, dirty, strong woman with her hair cropped as close as a slave’s, shorter than most of the men’s. That the one in armour and glory, now, is the Faris.
“At least now you can tell me and the Visigoth bitch apart,” she remarked dryly, into the silence.
Robert Anselm said, “We always could. You’re the ugly one.”
There was a split second of belly-chilling silence, in which the men around her worked out firstly that only Anselm could have said it, and secondly that his brutal grin was being answered by one of Ash’s own.
“Hey,” she said. “I had to get scars before I could frighten children.”
Anselm’s grin widened. “Some of us do it with natural talent.”
“Yeah.” She threw a gauntlet at him: he snagged it out of the air. “Robert, I don’t know if you frighten the enemy, but you scare the shit out of me…”
There was a glow in the room, nothing material, that came from the garrison’s appreciation of the banter; came with their realisation that Anselm would not challenge her for the company; came with her arrival beyond hope out of the unknown sunless south. Ash basked in it, for a moment. She took a look around, at the lances eating together, deep in exchange of stories, catching up on old quarrels and gossip.
Okay, she thought. No time like the present.
“You guys better listen up.” She raised her voice, addressing the room generally. “Because I’m going to tell you why you’ll be better off without me.”
It got their attention, as she thought it might. Talk died down. Men and women looked at their lance-mates, and moved closer, to be able to hear. A baggage-cart child said something which made her friend giggle. Ash let the hall become silent.
“Your lance-leaders and officers will bring you up to speed on this,” she said. “You guys hold a company meeting, while I’m at this siege-council. The main thing you need to know is, I saw the Faris last night—”
“And got out again?” one of Mowlett’s archers surprised himself into saying out loud. Ash grinned at the man.
“And got out again. Hell, she even gave me an escort, so I wouldn’t get lost on the way…”
“What does she want?” Geraint ab Morgan demanded; drowned out by other questions.
“What do you mean, better off without you?” Robert Anselm demanded bluntly over the hubbub. “The company needs you in command!”
There was a murmur, expressions of agreement on most of the faces she could see; and that startled her, slightly. They’ve done without me for three months. I know damn well some of them will be thinking exactly that, right now. Won’t they?
“Okay.” Ash moved forward, to be seen by them all. “Do we stay in Dijon, do we look for a contract in Burgundy? If not, if there are any supplies left here, we might manage a forced march east.”
But not if the Burgundians know we’re going to ransack the place and go … and they must at least be thinking that’s a possibility.
“We might negotiate a way out past the rag-heads. We might give them the city.” A quick, weighing glance: have any of them developed a loyalty for what they’ve been defending? “Okay. Over the next few hours, I want you guys thinking about this. There’s a chance the Visigoths might let you guys march out anyway; it would weaken the defence here. But this is what you should bear in mind – as far as the Faris and House Leofric are concerned, they want me. Me, personally. Not you guys, not the Lion. Me.”
Euen Huw said something in Thomas Rochester’s ear that she did not catch. The two Tydder boys, at the back, seemed to be explaining something in confused excitement to garrison lance-mates. Blanche and Baldina, mother and daughter faces all but identical now under dyed yellow hair, looked identically bemused.
“Why’d they want you?” Baldina shouted.
“Okay, we’ll take it from the top.” Ash brushed crumbs off the front of her demi-gown. “If it’s been long enough since you came through the sally-port for rumours to get out among the citizens, then it’s more than long enough for rumours to get round the company, I know that!”
She raised her voice, over the noise: “These are facts. The old King-Caliph Theodoric died. They’ve got a new one – he’s crap, but they’ve got one. That’s King-Caliph Gelimer. The city of Carthage was flattened by an earthquake. But, sadly, as far as I can tell from the Faris’s camp, Gelimer survived, and there’s still a functioning government.”
Euen Huw, in deep Welsh gloom, remarked, “Oh shit,” and then narrowed his black eyes in surprise as half the company burst out laughing.
One of the younger garrison crossbowmen thumped his fist on the floor. “Get us a contract with the attackers, boss! That’s safer. Fight with the Visigoths.”
A woman beside him, in archer’s gear, muttered in English: “I heard rumours they’d pay us twice as much as they’re paying Cola de Monforte if we go over. One of van Mander’s lads got word back to me last week.”
Before Ash could comment, one of the sergeants leaned over the woman’s shoulder: a hatchet-faced Italian, Giovanni Petro.
“Sure they might sign us up for twice the money,” he rasped, “and who do you think would get to walk up and mine the walls? Or bring a siege tower up to the gate? Or go through the first breach? There’s a lot of shit jobs in a siege, and we’d get them all. We’d never live to collect.”
Pieter Tyrrell said flatly, “I don’t want a contract, after Basle. Not after they broke the condotta.”
There were many heads nodding in agreement. A babble of suggestions, contradictions, and complaints broke out. Ash let it go on for a minute or so, then raised her hands for quiet.
“Whether you could sign up with them and survive it or not – and you’re tough motherfuckers, I still think it’s your best chance – the Visigoths want me,” she repeated. “That’s why they sent a snatch-squad in at Auxonne. That’s why the scientist-magus Leofric tried to take me apart in Carthage. And I do mean ‘take me apart’ – maybe he’s been learning from our surgeon!”
She took the opportunity of the unsubtle joke to check on Floria. The woman raised her wine jug, acknowledging the subdued rumble. Ash saw no hint in her expression of any loyalty to the country of her birth. Fuck knows it was hard enough for her last time we were here – but she can’t start drinking again because of that.
“Why don’t they want you alive, boss?” Jean Bertran, one of the armourers, yelled from the back. She lifted a hand, acknowledging him; soot-blackened, unchanged in her absence. He shouted across, “Two’s better than one, right? And you hear their old machine too!”
Another man-at-arms who had stayed with the garrison stood, hauling up his drooping hose. “Yeah, boss, if you’re another Faris, and you hear the Stone Golem too, why won’t she employ us? Fuck, the rag-heads would flatten everybody, then!”
Ash, head tilted slightly sideways, eyed the footman. “You know, next time I’m going to have feudal levies, not bloody mercenaries, then I can just tell them what to do without all these fucking questions. Listen up, dickheads! I’ll say it again. House Leofric and the King-Caliph don’t give a fart in a thunderstorm about the company of the Lion. If you guys decide to get out of here – m
aybe go look for the Turk, maybe go north – then you’ll get no more trouble than you ever do. If I’m with you, we’re the prize target. Without me, you can leave Dijon.”
“We can take ’em! Fuck the rag-heads!” Simon Tydder yelled, to general approval.
“How about a bit less morale and a bit more intelligence?” Ash’s hands dropped to her side. “Now fucking listen. This isn’t war. No – shut up! Right. This isn’t human war.”
The hall hushed.
“There are other powers in the world besides men. God gives His miracles to those who believe in Him. And the devil gives power to his own.”
Into an almost total silence, Ash went on:
“Those of you who were with me at Carthage saw it. The Visigoths won’t admit it, but their empire is founded on demons. We’ve seen them. Stone demons, stone engines, wild machines in the desert. They put the sun out, not the amirs.”
Now the silence became total. The better part of three hundred men and women of the baggage train; forty lances of fighting men who will pass this word on to those of the Lion Azure out on guard duty or elsewhere; the children and the mastiffs – all still, and watching her face.
“They’re spreading this darkness. Not the Visigoths – it’s the Wild Machines who tell the King-Caliph and his Faris what to do. They speak to her through the Stone Golem. I hear them. She hears them. She knows the Stone Golem’s possessed by demons. And she’s scared!”
Richard Faversham got to his feet. “These Wild Machines killed Father Maximillian!”
“No, that was an earthquake,” Floria called out.
“Doctor; priest!”
A sudden, private shudder threatens to demolish this public argument: Godfrey! she thinks; aware of sweat cold now against her skin.
“Later. Now listen up! I know you guys don’t give a shit about demons. You’d scare the ass off demons, anyway!”
A cheer.
“But the demons—” Ash put her fists on her hips. “—the demons are only after me. Maybe the demons want another Faris. But if they do—” A shrug. “It isn’t to lead their army! As far as they’re concerned, I’m a loose cannon. I’m a Faris they don’t control. So House Leofric wants me dead, the King-Caliph wants me dead, the demon Wild Machines want me dead.” Her mouth moved into a grin, lopsided with private emotion. “I don’t kill so easy. You know that.”
“Fucking right, boss!”
“But they won’t sign a condotta with me. I’m giving you guys – advice, let’s say. Take Robert Anselm as your commander. Sell Dijon to the Goths. Break out and head for Dalmatia. Take Visigoth money, rob this city of supplies if you have to, and head for the Turks.”
It is cold advice, standing here in this beleaguered city which has held out for three long, bitter months. Advice that the machina rei militaris might have given her, if she could have asked it.
“The Sultan isn’t going to see the Visigoth Empire take over Christendom without doing something about it. You could get a condotta with him—”
Over the great confusion of noise, shouting, men springing to their feet, sergeants trying to restore order, Robert Anselm got to his feet.
“I won’t take the command! You’re our commander!”
“Never mind the fucking heroics!” Ash shouted, roughly. “Never mind the fucking company flag and loyalty. Think about this. Do you really want a captain who the Visigoths and their demons are determined to kill? Because if you do, we’re stuck in here!”
“Screw the fucking rag-heads!” Euen Huw, also on his feet, punched the air with his fist.
Ludmilla Rostovnaya yelled, “Nah, we want to fight with you, boss!”
A wall of sound hit Ash: it was a second before she realised it was agreement.
“Ash wins battles!” Pieter Tyrrell shouted.
“Ash gets us out of the shit!” bellowed Geraint ab Morgan. “Got us back from fucking Carthage, didn’t you, boss?”
“This isn’t your fight! ” She paced, nearing the window embrasure. The weak sunlight of a clouded day touched her, showing clearly a woman in stained and muddy brigandine and hose, a dagger at her belt, her face white with exhaustion. Nothing about her that is fire except her eyes.
Trying to guess at the mood of the meeting, the necessity of reducing four or five hundred interior lives, complicated souls, to names on a muster-roll and a gestalt mood: this bewilders her, sometimes. She stared around at faces. Those she would have automatically picked out before to be trouble-makers and authority-grabbers – Geraint ab Morgan, Wat Rodway – did not avoid her eye. Both men, and others like them, watched her with a raw loyalty that frightened her.
Part of it’s that no one wants to be boss right now, and have to take these decisions. They’re afraid they might lose if I’m not in charge – and that’s not reason: war doesn’t depend much on rational thought.
But that’s still only part of it.
“For Christ’s sake,” Ash said, voice rough. “You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
“A fortunate commander is worth much,” Antonio Angelotti remarked, as if it were a proverb.
Ludmilla Rostovnaya stood up, facing Ash.
“Look, boss,” the raw-featured Rus woman said reasonably. “We don’t give a fuck whose fight it is. I never fought for any lord or country. I keep my eye on my lance-mates’ backs, and they watch mine. You’re a fucking awkward boss sometimes, but you get us through. You got us out of Basle. And Carthage. You’ll get us out of here. So we’ll stick with you.” A dazzling, gap-toothed smile towards the shaven-headed soldier beside Ash: “No offence, Captain Anselm!”
“None taken,” Anselm rumbled, confidently amused.
Jolted, Ash demanded, “What do you mean, ‘awkward’?”
“You spend half your time playing up to the local nobs.” Ludmilla shrugged. “Like with German Emperor Frederick? All this social climbing shit? I was embarrassed, boss. But we kicked ass at Neuss anyway.”
Thomas Rochester unexpectedly said, “And I’ve covered more miles as your escort than I ever did in the entire Yorkist war! Can’t you ever stay in one place on the fucking battlefield, boss?”
“Yeah, then the runners would know where to find you!” a sergeant of archers called.
“Excuse me—” Ash began a protest.
“And you don’t get drunk half often enough!” Wat Rodway called. Baldina from the wagons added, “Not with us, anyway!”
Ash, trying to press home the seriousness of it, began to laugh. “Are you quite finished?”
“Not yet, madonna, there’s plenty more. The gunners haven’t even started.”
“Thank you, Master Angelotti!”
The hall filled with a buzz of friendly, foul-mouthed harassment. Ash put her fingers through her cropped hair, at a loss. Opening her mouth, and not sure what she was going to say as she did, she was interrupted.
“Boss…”
A raw voice. She turned around, trying to locate the man who had spoken; found Floria del Guiz on her feet, grabbing at the arm of a man on crutches.
Black bandages looped his face, covering the cauterised sockets of his eyes. Above them, white scars gave way to wisps of white hair. He snarled something at the surgeon, hitching his crutches under his armpits, tilting his head up, listening, sightlessly staring off into a corner of the roof.
“Carracci,” Ash began.
“Let me speak,” the ex-Sergeant of Bill cut in, his head turning approximately to face her.
Ash nodded; then realised. She said aloud, “What is it, Carracci?”
“Just this.” His blind head weaved a little, as if he were trying to face all of the company there, or as if he wanted to be clearly seen by them. “You didn’t have to bring me back from Carthage. I’ll never be any use again. I’m not the only one you brought back, boss. That’s all.”
A different quality of silence fell. Ash reached out, gently closing her hand over his forearm, where corded over-developed muscles trembled with the tension
of balancing upright. There were people nodding heads all through the hall, a few men shifting uncomfortably or going back to their rations, but most murmuring quiet agreement. A voice said, “Right on, Carracci.”
“We don’t leave our own,” Robert Anselm said. “Works both ways. No more shit, girl.”
She turned her head sharply to one side, momentarily not in control of her expression.
There is no way to escape this: not if you are asking men to pick up swords and axes and walk out into wet fields, and end up face down in the mud; no way not to create that fierce mixture of fear and affection that – she admits to herself – will lead them to this refusal, nine times out of ten.
Could’ve been the tenth time, she thought, somewhere between black humour and appalled resignation. I’d better be able to handle this now I’ve got it.
A clatter of feet and weapons at the stair broke the silence. Still holding Carracci’s arm, Ash yelled across, “What is it?”
A harassed company guard entered the hall, behind him a dozen or so men in armour and Burgundian liveries. She saw in an automatic glance that their swords were in their sheaths; that the leader carried a white baton.
“Captain Ash,” their leader called across the hall. “My lord Olivier de la Marche has sent us. He wishes you to be suitably escorted to the Viscount-Mayor’s siege council. It is my honour to ask, will you come with us now?”
“You go,” Ash said instantly to Robert Anselm. “Assuming I’m right, and he’s here, I’ve got more important things to do – if you’re all set on staying here, I need to talk to the Duke.”
“To Charles?” Anselm lowered his voice. “They won’t let you in, girl.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t know yet? Fuck. I should have told you.” Anselm hitched up the belt that held his purse and bollock dagger, settling it under his beer-belly. His gaze on the Burgundian men, he said, “You know Duke Charles was wounded at Auxonne? Yeah? That was three months ago. They tell us he still hasn’t recovered enough to leave his bed.”
