by Mary Gentle
“I don’t think so. Told the Stone Golem and House Leofric, maybe. But not you. She won’t listen to you.”
‘THAT IS NOTHING, SHE WILL HEAR, WHEN THE TIME COMES, LITTLE ONE, LITTLE ONE; STOP FIGHTING US.’
“In a fucking pig’s ear!”
It is pure mercenary, mercenary as she has always wanted to be seen: foul-mouthed, cheerful, brutal, indestructible. If anything else is under the surface, it is hidden even from her, now, in this adrenalin-rush.
“You’re not Wild.” Tears dripped down her face: and she could not have said whether it was pain or painful humour that put them there. “We made you. Long, long ago – by accident – but it was us, we made you. Why do you hate us? Why do you hate Burgundy?”
‘SHE HAS HEARD.’
‘SHE HAS SHARED.’
‘KNOWN WHAT WE KNOW.’
‘LITTLE AS WE KNOW.’
‘KNOWN THE BEGINNING, BUT WHO KNOWS THE END?’
What had been chorus became, with the last voice, a braided sound. Sorrow keened in it. Ash blinked under the power of it, momentarily saw the flames in the hearth and the blackened stone chimney behind, burned with the fires of centuries. Where the fire had been fierce, a piece of stone had cracked and fallen away. The pattern of fracture remained.
In her memory, Ash sees the dome of the King-Caliph’s palace fracture and fall, the weight of stone hurtling down.
‘WE KNOW THE END…’
‘THE VILENESS OF FLESH!’
‘LITTLE VILE THINGS, NOT WORTHY TO LIVE—’
‘—BECAUSE OF YOUR EVIL—’
Pressing her fingers into her palms so hard that her nails penetrated the skin, Ash gasped, sardonically, “Don’t let two hundred years of listening to Carthage prejudice you!”
There is something that may be rueful amusement – Godfrey? And a soul-deafening, icy babble in her mind:
‘CARTHAGE IS NOTHING—’
‘—THE VISIGOTHS, NOTHING—’
‘GUNDOBAD SPOKE WITH US, LONG BEFORE THEM—’
‘VILEST OF MEN!’
‘WE REMEMBER!’
‘WE REMEMBER…’
‘WE WILL BURY YOU, LITTLE THING OF FLESH.’
The last reverberation in her head made her wince, taste blood where she bit her tongue. She said aloud, not seeing the people around her, “Don’t worry. If they could move the earth here, they would. If they’re not doing it, they can’t.”
‘ARE YOU SO SURE, LITTLE ONE?’
Chills ran down the skin under her clothing; she thought, with appalled disgust, ‘Little one’: that’s what Godfrey calls me; they’ve taken that from him.
“Something’s stopping you,” she said aloud. With a fierce sarcasm, she spat, “According to you, the Faris doesn’t need an army! She’s Gundobad’s child, she’s a wonder-worker; she can make Burgundy into a desert just like that. All you have to do is pray to the sun, and bang! there you are. One miracle. So why haven’t you done it?”
With that vehemence, she instantly focused herself – finding the same interior state that she finds when she handles a sword – and listened.
Instantly, she grunted with a soundless impact. Her mouth stung. She put her hands up, opened her eyes; saw blood, realised she had bitten her lip. Someone said something abrupt, beside her. She could say nothing, only jerk her hand, wave them back. She felt at once winded, and numb; as she felt when she first learned to ride. It is that split second between hitting the ground, and pain. She froze.
Physical pain did not come.
‘YOU CANNOT HEAR US. NOT IF WE CHOOSE, YOU WILL NOT SURPRISE US AGAIN.’
“Shit, no.” Ash rubbed her hand across her mouth, feeling blood slick on her skin. “No, sir.”
‘WE DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOU.’
“No. You don’t. Join the fucking club,” Ash said bitterly.
There was no feeling in her of their puzzlement or confusion. Only the interior sound of the voices. Her blood dried cold, pulling on her skin. She probed it tenderly with her tongue, thought, That’s going to hurt, and swallowed blood and saliva before she said, “You can’t keep me out for ever.”
Nothing.
“What does it matter if you tell me? It’s already getting cold. You’re drawing down the sun, and it’s getting cold, where you are. Pretty soon you won’t need the Faris here. Or a miracle! The winter will kill us all.”
Again, voices in unison:
‘WINTER WILL NOT COVER ALL.’
“Godammit!” Ash hit her fist against her thigh, exasperated. “Why is Burgundy so important to you?”
‘WE CAN DRAW DOWN THE SUN’S SPIRIT—’8
‘USE ITS POWER, WEAKEN, BRING DARKNESS—’
‘DARK, COLD AND WINTER—’
‘—BUT—’
‘WINTER WILL NOT COVER ALL THE WORLD.’
Ash opened her eyes.
Robert Anselm knelt in front of her, one hand steadying his hilt. Behind him, Angelotti had his hand on Anselm’s mailed shoulder. Both of them stared at her. Floria squatted between the two priests, resting her arms on her thighs, her long fingers almost touching the floorboards.
‘WINTER WILL NOT COVER—’
‘—ALL!—’
‘DARKNESS WILL NOT COVER ALL THE WORLD.’
“In nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti,” Richard Faversham said in a hoarse, high whisper.
Ash repeated, “‘Darkness will not cover all the world’…?”
She did not shut her eyes, could still see them all, but the sound of great voices in her head blasted her attention away from the tower room. A vast, cold sorrow almost drowned her:
‘—WINTER MAY KILL ALL THE WORLD, BUT FOR HIM.’
‘DARKNESS MAY COVER ALL THE WORLD – BUT FOR HIM.’
‘WE CANNOT REACH—’
‘—BURGUNDY DIES AT HER COMMAND, ONLY—’
‘SHE WILL DESTROY BURGUNDY. OUR DARK MIRACLE. AS SOON AS THE DUKE DIES.’
“All the world,” Ash said. “All the world!”
‘WHEN IT IS GONE—’
‘—MADE DESOLATE, MADE A DESERT—’
‘WHEN IT IS NOTHING: BURGUNDY DESTROYED, AS IF IT HAD NEVER BEEN—’
‘THEN EVERYTHING—’
‘ALL THE WORLD—’
‘—CAN BE CLEANSED AND PURE, ALL THE WORLD—’
‘—FREE OF FLESH; VILE, DESTRUCTIVE FLESH; FREE—’
‘AS IF YOU HAD NEVER BEEN.’
The surge and ebb of the great voices drained away. The floorboards shifted under her feet— no, were solid, but she lost balance and fell back and sat on her rump, Richard Faversham catching her, so that she sprawled up against him, his blacksmith’s arm around her shoulders.
A numb, desolate silence filled her soul. Into it, no voice came. No Godfrey. A white and deathly tiredness filled her.
“Did you pray?” she asked.
“To cast out the voices.” Faversham’s body shifted as he nodded his head. “To cast the demons out of you.”
“It may just have worked…” She snuffled, not knowing quite whether she would laugh or cry. “Godfrey, Godfrey.”
Softly, in her mind, his voice spoke:
– I am with you.
“Son of a bitch.” She reached up to thump Digorie Paston on the arm. “Exorcism isn’t going to do it. No. And I don’t even know if it matters, now—”
She found her gaze fixed on Floria’s face.
“What?” the surgeon demanded. “What?”
“Burgundy isn’t an objective,” Ash said. “Burgundy is an obstacle.”
Robert Anselm growled, “What the fuck, girl?”
She stayed resting against Faversham’s solidness because she doubted her ability to sit up on her own. A fever ran through her body; all her muscles weak.
“Burgundy isn’t the objective. Burgundy is the obstacle.” She looked up at Robert Anselm’s sweating face. “And I don’t know why! They’ve kept saying they must destroy Burgundy – but it isn’t because they just want Burgundy wi
ped out. After Burgundy’s gone…”
A shudder went through her flesh; weakness at some deep level better not examined, better ignored. To her own surprise, her voice came out harsh and amused:
“It’s us they want to be rid of. Men. All men. Burgundy – Carthage, too. They’re … farmers who’d set fire to a barn to get rid of the rats. It’s why they want their ‘evil miracle’. After Burgundy’s gone – they say, then they can make their darkness cover the whole world.”
V
Ash added, “I have to see the Duke! Right now!”
Floria, holding a candle up uncomfortably close to Ash’s face, ceased peering into her eyes and focused instead on her. “Yes. You do. I’ll go ahead and clear it with his physicians.”
The disguised woman stood abruptly, shoved the wooden candlestick into Digorie Paston’s hand, and strode towards the dark stairwell. Her footsteps clattered down the stone steps.
“I’ll get you an escort.” Robert Anselm stood and bellowed. Ash heard the sound of men in mail running.
“But, madam, you should rest,” Digorie Paston protested. The English priest took her hands and turned them over, studying her palms in a businesslike way. “God’s grace has failed to rescue you. It were better you should fast and pray, humble yourself, and pray to him again.”
“Later. I’ll come to Compline.9 The Duke has to know about this!” Ash probed for voices, as a tongue probes an aching tooth. “Godfrey—”
A weak warmth. Godfrey’s voice faint, all but inaudible:
– Blessed be!
A sound like wind through trees filled her soul. Creaking and whispering at first, and then loud, until her eyes watered, and she rubbed with the heel of her hands at her temples. “Okay—”
As she withdrew the impulse of her mind, the deafening interior sound sank to a keening mutter.
The Wild Machines, choral, lamenting, their language old, now, and incomprehensible. The language in which they spoke to Gundobad, so many centuries ago: an ancient, impenetrable Gothic tongue.
Richard Faversham said, “Don’t tell God ‘later’, madam. He wouldn’t like it.”
Ash stared at him for a second; and chuckled. “Then don’t tell Him I said it, master priest. Come with me to the Duke. I may need you to explain that your prayers failed. That I can’t be cut free of the Stone Golem.”
And I’ll ask him again. Why is Burgundy so important? Why is Burgundy an obstacle to the Wild Machines? And this time I’m going to have to have an answer out of him.
With the reappearance of Rickard and her younger pages, she was fully dressed in minutes; borrowed sword belted on under a thick campaigning cloak, and the edge of her hood pulled down over her helmet.
Anselm and the escort surrounded her through Dijon’s pitch-black streets, under the stars. The deep boom of cannon shattered the silence, and from somewhere far off, towards the northern wall, came the crackle of fire. Men and women slid through the shadows, civilians running from the bombardment, or thieving; Ash did not stop to investigate. A company of Burgundian men-at-arms passed them in one square, a hundred men, feet slapping the frozen earth, running in order for the wall. Her hand went to her sword-hilt, but she kept on going.
The palace was a dazzle of light; candles brilliant through the glass of ogee windows, torches flaring among the guards at the gates. In the light, Ash caught sight of a flaxen head of hair.
Floria, her hood pushed back and her face red, stood gesticulating at a large Burgundian sergeant. As Ash arrived at her side, she broke off.
“They won’t let me in. I’m a bloody doctor, and they won’t let me in!”
Ash pushed to the front, standing between men-at-arms in Lion livery. Smuts from torches stung her eyes. Bitter wind snapped at her mittened hands; her exposed face. Her stomach thumped, cold.
“Ash, mercenary, Duke’s man,” she explained rapidly to the sergeant in charge of the cordon of guards. “I must speak with his Grace. Send word to him that I’m here.”
“I ’aven’t got time for this—” The Burgundian sergeant’s harassed expression faded as he turned. He gave her a nod. “Demoiselle Ash! You came in last night; I was on the gate. They say you razed Carthage. That right?”
“I wish it was,” she said, putting all the frankness she could into her tone. Seeing that she had his momentary respect and attention, she said quietly, “Pass me through. I have important information for Duke Charles. Whatever crisis you’ve got here, this is more important.”
She had time to think But I don’t need to fool him, this is more important, and to see that it was her conviction of that, rather than her faked sincerity, that convinced the man.
“I’m sorry, Captain. We’ve just cleared all the physicians out. I can’t let you in. There’s only priests in there now.” The Burgundian sergeant jerked his head, and as she stepped aside with him from the front of the crowd, lowered his voice:
“No point, ma’am. There’s a dozen abbots and bishops up in his Grace’s chamber, all wearing their knees out on the stone, and it isn’t going to do one damn bit of good. God lays His heaviest burden on His most faithful servant.”
“What’s happened?”
“You’ve seen wounded men when they’re in the balance, and it suddenly goes one way or the other.” The sergeant reached up, tilting his sallet, his bloodshot eyes weary in his lined face. “Keep it quiet, ma’am, please. There’ll be upset soon enough. Whatever your business, you’ll have to keep it for whoever succeeds him. His Grace the Duke is on his death-bed now.”
Floria came back into the upper floor of the tower. “It’s true.”
She walked across the chamber to the hearth, ignoring Anselm and Angelotti; spoke directly to Ash, and sank down in a huddle by the fire, holding her hands out to the flames.
“I managed to get as far as his chamber door. One of his physicians is still there: a German. Charles of Burgundy is dying. It started two hours ago, with fever, sweats. He became unconscious. It seems he hasn’t passed water or faecal matter for days. His body has begun to stink. He isn’t conscious for the prayers.”10
Ash stood, gazing down at the company surgeon. “How long, Florian?”
“Before he dies? He’s not a lucky man.” Floria’s eyes reflected flames. She continued to stare into the hearth. “Tonight, tomorrow; the day after, at the latest. The pain will be bad.”
Robert Anselm said, “Girl, if he were one of your men, you’d be up there with a misericord right now.”11
An air of unease had spread up and down through the tower’s floors, from the cooks and pages in the kitchens, to the troops, to the guard on Ash’s door. Knowing that the surgeon would be overheard, Ash made no attempt to stop her speaking. If there’s going to be a morale problem, I want it out in the open where I can see it.
“Well, we’re fucked,” Robert Anselm remarked. “No second try at Carthage. And watch this fucking siege collapse!”
His tread was heavy as he clattered, still fully armoured, across the floor. Outside the slit-windows, the sound of a night bombardment echoed; golem-machines, which require neither sleep nor rest, throwing missiles, battering ceaselessly at Dijon’s walls. She saw him flinch at the nearer strikes. “What does happen ‘when the Duke dies’? What will these Wild Machines be able to do?”
“We are about to find out.” Antonio Angelotti came forward into the fire’s light from the door. “Madonna, Father Paston sends word he is about to begin the service of Compline.”
Ash gestured irritably. “I’ll do Matins.12 Angeli, we don’t just sit here. If that’s ‘Gundobad’s child’ out there… If the Wild Machines say the Faris can do a miracle, like Gundobad did when he made Africa into a desert – are you going to sit there and wait to find out if they’re right?”
The gunner came to squat beside Floria del Guiz, two golden heads together. Angelotti had the air of a man who knows that, as soon as the bombardment stops, he will have to be ready to deal with the follow-up assault. From time to t
ime he experimentally flexed his bandaged, gut-sewn arm. “What is there to do but wait, madonna? Sally out and see if you can kill her in battle?”
There was a small silence. Angelotti cocked his head. She saw him recognise that the Visigoth guns had ceased firing.
“He promised another raid on Carthage. I was counting on it.” Ash calculated as she spoke. “With him dead – no chance. So: we don’t get to take out the Stone Golem. There’s only one answer left. Angeli’s right. We take out the Faris. And then it doesn’t matter what the Wild Machines planned, or what they bred her for, or any of that. Dead is dead. You don’t do miracles of any kind when you’re dead.”
Robert Anselm shook his head, grinning. “You’re mad. She’s in the middle of a fucking army, out there!” He paused. “So – what’s our plan?”
Ash shook his shoulder as she passed him, walking to study the papers on the trestle table; maps and calculations drawn spider-thin in the candlelight. “‘Plan’? Who said anything about a plan? Damn good idea if we had a plan…”
Between Anselm’s deep laugh, and Angelotti’s more subdued amusement, Ash heard a commotion on the stairs. Deep voices boomed. She was instantly and instinctively shoulder to shoulder with Anselm and Angelotti, a glance checking that Floria was safely behind them; all three facing the stair entrance, hands gripping sword-hilts.
Rickard stumbled as he came in, falling to his knees on the floorboards. He dropped what he was carrying in both arms.
The blanket-wrapped bundle dropped with a muffled, sharp clatter.
“What the fuck?” Ash began.
Still kneeling, the black-haired boy flipped the blanket open.
The shifting candles reflected from a mass of curved, banded, and shining metal. Ash glimpsed confusion on Floria’s face as the surgeon stared, while the two men had already begun to laugh, Robert Anselm swearing in an amazed, cheerful stream of filth.
Ash walked across the floor to the blanket. She leaned down and picked her cuirass up by its shoulder straps. The hollow cuirass sat in the concertina’d skirts; and the fauld clicked down as she lifted the empty armour up, the tasset plates swinging on their leathers.
“She’s sent my fucking armour back!”
