by Mary Gentle
It was a stranger who found her as she was coming down off the wall at last: a Burgundian knight who rode up to her and her command group in the street, intercepting her as she stepped across the central gutter; still, even in this bitter weather, semi-liquid with excrement.
“Demoiselle-Captain—”
“Just ‘Captain’!”
“—the Duke sends word.”
Ash, every muscle aching, and wanting little more than to find Floria’s salve for bruises, dark beer, and pottage – in that order – eyed him wearily. “I’m at the Duke’s command.”
“He told me that you have a more urgent task than the defence of the walls,” the knight said, “and he asks you, when will you begin it?”
II
The November day died in grey twilight, an hour or more before Vespers. Of the wounded, all survived that long. Those inns within a quarter-mile radius of the company tower became packed with mercenary men-at-arms getting loudly drunk. Riding back through the streets, Ash thought it wise not to see, officially, what might be going on in the way of brawls and sexual encounters in the street; wise to leave ab Morgan to keep it from becoming murder and rape.
The top floor of the company’s tower having been reorganised to contain the armoury, the war-chests, and Ash’s own belongings, they were now stacked more or less in order on the open, rush-strewn floor. Ash strode past the armed men at the door, nodding her acknowledgement.
She threw a handful of sketches down on the trestle table in front of Robert Anselm. “There.”
“You’ve been all round the walls.”
“Twice.” Ash moved over to a brazier, unbuckling and stripping off her gauntlets. A page – one of half a dozen recruited new from the baggage train – ran to take them from her. She huffed, grinned, beating her cold hands together. “Euen Huw’s whingeing on again. He said, You’ll wear the lads out before the rag-heads even get in here—”
Her accurate mimicry made Robert Anselm laugh.
“I must have passed six of the Duke’s messengers on up to the walls since Nones6,” he added, reading the rough charcoal lines and dots that represented enemy dispositions outside the walls, and not her face. “Did any of them happen to find the bit of it you were on?”
“Green Christ! We only got into this fucking town this morning! And we’ve had to fight. Can’t the man give me a few hours? I’ll do it, when I’m ready—” Ash straightened, hearing footsteps and guards’ muffled voices. No challenge. The door opened.
Floria del Guiz stepped inside, flushed, her hair dishevelled. She shed her cloak as she strode to join Ash at the brazier.
“Damn, but I love a good row!” Her eyes sparkled; her expression hard. “Free and frank exchange of professional views, I should say.”
Robert Anselm put the maps down. “Been talking to doctors up at the palace, have you?”
“Half-witted leech-ticklers!”
Ash, her fingers and cheeks prickling with returning warmth, demanded, “So. Tell me. How’s the Duke?”
Floria’s expression lost its anger. She signalled the serving page to add more water to the offered wine-cup. “You trust that man. I can see it. That’s a new one, for you.”
“Do I?” Ash broke off to tell another of the pages, at the hearth, that she should mull the rest of the wine. “Yeah. He’s promised me another try at Carthage. That’s what I trust. He’s in this for survival; and the man knows what to do with an army. So: what’s the prognosis? When will he be on his feet again? Is it the wound he took at Auxonne?”
“That’s what I’ve been discussing. Ha! Ash, do you know? It was the name of this company that got me through to him. A ‘woman-doctor’.” Floria walked across to the window embrasure, peered out into the gloom, and hitched her hip up on to the window ledge. Her hands described the shapes of bodies in the air. “His surgeons finally let me see it – he’s taken a wound in the middle of his back. Lance, I’d say.”
“Shit!”
Floria’s green gaze flickered at the empathic flinch that came from Ash. She pointed at Anselm. “Stand up!”
As the big man stood, she crossed the chamber and seized his left arm, holding it up from his body. Robert Anselm looked gravely at her. The surgeon tapped his armour, under his left arm.
“As far as I can see, a lance strike here – from the front or the side, into the left side of the Duke’s body.”
“It should have glanced off. That’s what the deflective surfaces of armour are for.” Ash went to where Anselm stood thoughtfully motionless. She put her fingers on the join of breast- and back-plate. “Unless the lance hit one of the hinges, here. That would let it bite.”
“I’ve also been able to examine the Duke’s armour. It’s burst open.”
Anselm, not moving except to try and look over his shoulder, speculated, “A lance would hit hard. Bite. Burst the hinges, maybe. The lance-tip would penetrate.”
“Might slide round the inside of the backplate.” Ash looked questioningly at the surgeon. “Did the lance deform, maybe? Break off in the wound?”
“I did hear it was a lance,” Anselm admitted. “Someone said de la Marche cut the lance-shaft with his sword, almost as soon as it struck home.”
“Fuck.”
“Better than having a full hit. He’d have been dead inside minutes.”
Floria waved her hands. “This is what I’ve been debating with the Duke’s physicians! I believe it wasn’t the lance that hurt him – it was his armour.”
The page approached with wooden cups, serving Ash first, then Anselm – who relaxed his self-imposed immobility – and finally the surgeon; before the girl went back to huddle at the spidery, dirt-crusted hearth with the rest of the children. Smoke gusted into the room with a change of the wind.
“There are fragments of his own armour still in the Duke’s wound. I examined the cuirass. The hard outer layers have shattered, and the soft iron underneath has torn.” Floria put her free hand on Anselm’s waist at the back, above the fauld. Ash noted that he did not flinch.
The surgeon said, “There are two organs, bean-shaped, that lie under the flesh here. One is crushed; we think the other has fragments of steel in it.”
“Oh fuck,” Ash said blankly. She shook herself back to concentration. “So, how is he?”
“Oh, he’s dying, no argument about that.”
III
“Dying?”
The blank professionalism of Floria’s gaze altered as she became cognisant of Ash’s appalled stare. The shaggy-haired woman laced her long fingers together.
“His surgeons have been debating cutting him. They won’t do it. It won’t save him if they do. But it won’t harm him much, either… You’ve seen him. You’ve talked to him. He’s stayed alive for three months, he’s nothing but bones. He doesn’t eat. It’s only his spirit keeping him going. I give him a week or two at the outside.”
Anselm rumbled, “Who’s his heir?”
Automatic, stunned, Ash said, “Margaret of Burgundy, if she wins at Bruges; de la Marche by default.”
“The heart will go out of the defence.”
“Dying,” Ash repeated; ignoring Anselm. “Sweet Christ. A couple of weeks? Florian, are you sure?”
Floria del Guiz spoke with a brittle rapidity. “Of course I’m sure. I’ve seen guys cut up every way you can think of. Barring a miracle, he’s dog-meat.”
Anselm drained his cup and wiped his mouth. “Have to rely on the priests, then.”
“His priests’ prayers aren’t getting any answers. I’m seeing it with our men, here,” Floria said. “Bad air from the rivers, maybe. They don’t heal well.”
“Who knows how bad it is?”
Floria looked at Ash. “For certain? Him, his doctors; the three of us, now. De la Marche. The soeurs, I expect. Rumours? Who knows?”
Ash became aware that she was biting at her knuckle; tasting salt sweat, and feeling the tender bruises of blows that have only hit gauntlets.
“This
changes everything. If he dies – why didn’t he tell me? Green Christ… I wonder if he can order a force to Africa before he…” Ash broke off. “Dying. Florian, you know what I thought, as you said it? ‘At least I won’t have to talk to the Wild Machines, now.’ I’ve been avoiding it all day. And I won’t have to. With Charles dead, the Visigoths are going to come right over those walls out there!”
“Then we find out if your demon-machines are just voices,” Robert Anselm stated, pragmatically. “Just farts in the wind. We find out what they can do.”
Floria made as if to touch Ash’s arm, and stopped herself. “You can’t be afraid for ever.”
Easy for you to say.
Ash said abruptly, “Wake me in an hour, Robert. I’m going to sleep before the food comes.”
She was aware that they exchanged glances, but ignored them. The chamber chilled as evening darkened. Noise came up from below, the main hall filling up. She listened to guards patrolling the access corridors, that ran through the twenty-foot-thick walls; and the pages chattering as they stripped her down to her shirt and helped her into her gown; all without noticing much but the shock-reaction chilling her body. She lay down on her box-bed, close to the hearth, thinking, Dying? She can’t be sure. Only God knows a man’s last hour—
But she’s been right in the past, about most of the wounded in my company.
Shit.
The flames licked at the wet, smoking logs, charring the damp bark away. Central wood burned away into ash, that still held the shape of the grain until a draught from the chimney stirred it, sparks flying up. Smoke stung her eyes. She wiped at them repeatedly.
What am I worrying about? It’s just one more employer who didn’t make it. If I can get him to set a task-force up to go from Flanders to North Africa … there isn’t time.
Come to think of it, I wonder where John de Vere is, right now? Oxford, I wish you were here; we could do with all the good men we can get.
But if I’m honest, I could do with your companionship as much as your skills.
The ache of fighting eased, now that she lay on the bed; rubbing at one overstrained shoulder; wondering where, exactly, in combat the blue-black bruises on her hands had come from. With practised ease, she set herself to fall asleep.
On the borders of unconsciousness, the chill draught from the windows turned into a biting gale, and her eyes saw white snow, and the light of a blue sky.
She had the impression of a forest, and that she knelt in snow. In front of her, plain to the last winter-thick white hair and grey-brown bristle, a wild boar lay on her side. The earth was scored up by the sow’s thrashing hooves.
Ash stared at the beast’s fat belly, nipples visible in the thick hair, and the rump that she was facing. Without any warning, the sow writhed, arched and flexed her back, and cocked her leg. A blue-red mass pushed halfway out of her body.
Not here! Ash thought. Not in the snow!
The slumped, razor-backed body of the sow rippled. The steaming mass pushed out of her vagina, long blind snout first, teardrop-shaped body after; all in a rush, out into the stinking snow. Mucus smeared the boarlet’s body. It flopped, in the snow, wet legs twitching; muzzle blindly turning, seeking the sow’s nipple. She groaned, snorting. Ash saw her begin to shift, as if she would get up.
“No…” The thickness of her voice as she spoke, aloud, almost brought her back to her bed and the crowded solar; but she deliberately let that go.
As one does in dreams, she fought to move through air as thick as honey. Light sparkled from each snow-crystal. She closed her hands around the new-born boar, her fingers slick with mucus and juice, and thrust the thing towards its mother’s belly.
Fast as a snake, the sow’s jaws clashed.
Ash snatched her bare hands back.
Now that her snout all but rested on it, the sow appeared to notice the boarlet. Her jaw dipped. She chewed through the white birth-cord. Her head flopped forward again. She took no more notice of the new-born thing, did not lick it, but by now it had its snout clamped firmly into her belly-fur, attached to a nipple.
“Not in the snow,” Ash mumbled, anguished. “It can’t survive.”
– Stranger things have happened. Deo gratias.
“Godfrey?”
– You are hard to reach!
Robert Anselm’s heavy tread vibrated through the floorboards by her head, as he stomped past her towards the mulled wine resting by the hearth. She rolled over, away from him, open-eyed. Muffled under gown and sleeping-furs, she whispered, “Only when I want to be. You could be a demon. So tell me something only you would know. Now!”
– In Milano, when you were apprenticed to the armourer, you slept under your master’s work-bench, not allowed into inns, not allowed to marry without his permission. I used to visit you. You said you wanted to run an arms-dealing business.
“God, yes! I remember, now…”
– You were eleven, as near as we could judge. You told me you were tired of having to break apprentice-boys’ heads. I believe that was with the broom you swept up with. The voice in her head tinged with amusement.
“Godfrey, you’re dead. I saw you. I had my fingers in the wound.”
– Yes. I remember dying.
“Where are you?”
– Nowhere. In torment; in Purgatory.
“Godfrey … what are you?”
Let him say a soul, she thought. Her nails dug painfully into her palms. The life of the company went on around her – she could hear Angelotti’s voice, now, in the solar; and Thomas Rochester; and Ludmilla Rostovnaya loudly complaining about burns bandaged and thick with goose-grease. Under the noise, she whispered again:
“What are you, now?”
– A messenger.
“Messenger?”
– Here in the dark, I still pray. And answers come to me. They are answers for you, child. I have been trying to speak to you; to give these messages to you. You never relax, except at the edge of sleep.
Hairs shivered on the back of her neck. Although she lay prone, her body tensed with the alertness of imminent attack.
Ash has a momentary memory, mosaic-like, of a hundred skirmishes, a hundred fields fought; and the same voice always clear in her head: advise this, advise that, attack, withdraw. The Stone Golem: the machina rei militaris. It is the same voice that she hears now – and yet now it is illuminated by a presence, changed utterly.
“It is you,” she said. Water welled in her eyes and she ignored it. “I don’t care what this is, demon or miracle, but I’m going to get you back, Godfrey.”
– I am not the man you knew.
“I don’t care if you’re not a saint or a spirit, either. You’re coming home.” Ash covered her face with her hands, under the edge of blankets and furs. She felt her breath hot against her cold skin. “Do you know, you speak to me where the Stone Golem speaks? Godfrey – can you hear that, too?”
– A voice speaks in me, of war. I have thought, since I became … this … that such a voice must be your machina rei militaris. I have tried to speak through it, to the men of Carthage, but they believe my words to be nothing but errors.
She uncovered her face, if only to see, now that candles were being lit, that she lay on her bed among her company, neither in a snow-bound forest, nor in a cell in Carthage. The yellow light swarmed in her vision; she felt hot, then cold.
“My sister? Will she speak to you?”
– Not to me. I have tried. Nor, now, will she speak to the machina rei militaris itself.
“She won’t?”
Is that since I talked to her, last night? Shit! If it is—
“Jesus wept!” Ash said devoutly! “If that’s true, she can’t have been using it when she attacked the wall—”
– ‘The wall’?
Vehemently shaking her head, Ash whispered, “Doesn’t matter! Not now! Shit, if that was her decision – firing on her own men – that was a shit-bad judgement call!”
– Child, I’m lo
st on this one.
“You’d hear, though? You’d hear, if she spoke to it – to you?”
– I hear everything.
“Everything?”
The floorboards creaked under her, the noise of a couple of hundred off-duty squaddies coming up from the hall below: belligerent, boisterous, loud. Ash flinched.
She spoke, barely moving her lips:
“Godfrey, I’ve given my word that I’ll speak to the Stone Golem again. I’m afraid of it—no. I’m afraid of what can speak through it. The other machines.”
– The name they have for themselves is ‘Wild Machines’. As if your machina rei militaris were tame and domestic!
Fear and amazement washed through her. She thought, But he shouldn’t know about them, he was dead before I found out! And then: But it is Godfrey. And he does know.
“How do you know about them?”
– More than one voice speaks to me. Child, I am among many voices, here. I tried to speak to you, but you put up a wall to keep me out. I have been listening, then, to them. Perhaps this is the rim of Hell, and I hear the great Devils speaking between themselves: these ‘Wild Machines’.
“What … what do they say?”
– They say to me: WE STUDY YOU…
In Godfrey’s voice, repeating it, she hears an echo of the voices that blasted her mind wide open.
“Maybe they want to know what people are like,” she said, and added painfully, with bracing sarcasm: “Green Christ alone knows why! They’ve had two hundred years of listening to military reports from the whole Visigoth empire, they must know everything about court politics and betrayal there is to know!”
– I hear them, voices in the dark. They say, WE STUDY THE GRACE OF GOD IN MAN… They say, LAST SUMMER, THE SUN WENT OUT OVER THE GERMANIES. I hear them say, THAT WAS ONLY A TRIAL OF OUR STRENGTH.
A long sigh shuddered through her body. “You do hear them. That’s what they said to me.”
– That it served as a demonstration of power? But that it was not done for that, not done to bring darkness to Christendom. It was done only to see if they could draw on such power. If they could use it. But they have not wholly used it yet. That is to come.
