by Mary Gentle
“She’s out of her mind.” Floria blinked. “Is this true?”
“I see no reason to doubt Jonvelle’s men. I have, besides, seen her now. It is the Visigoth general.”
“She has to be killed,” Ash said. “Somebody get my axe: let’s get up to the north-east gate.”
“Ash—”
Amazed, Ash heard something close to hesitation in Floria’s voice. Jonvelle drew himself up; plainly ready to take orders from his Duchess.
“This isn’t a matter for argument. We don’t mess around here,” Ash said gently. “Fucking hell, girl. You hunted the hart. She’s my blood relative, but I know that we have to kill her, now. She’s what the Wild Machines will use, to make an evil miracle. The second you’re killed, that’s what happens: they act through her – and we’re dead. All of us. As if we’d never been.” Ash watched Floria’s face. “Like it is beyond these borders. Nothing but cold and dark.”
“I came only to be sure it was not you, Captain Ash,” John de Vere said briskly. “Otherwise I am not sure but I should have done the task myself.”
Jonvelle coughed. “No, sieur, you would not have. You would not have been obeyed by my men. We are at the command of Burgundy, not England. Her Grace must give the word.”
“Well, God’s grace grant that we do it now!” De Vere was already turning, giving orders to the Janissaries, when Floria interrupted:
“Wait.”
“Christ, Florian!” Ash shouted, appalled. “What do you mean, ‘wait’?”
“I’m not ordering any execution! I took an oath to do no harm! I’ve spent most of my adult life putting people back together, not killing them!” Floria gripped Ash’s arm firmly. “Just wait. Think. Think about this. Yes: I hunted the hart: she’s no danger while there’s a Duchess of Burgundy.”
The Earl of Oxford said, “Madam Florian, this is a hard truth, but men and women are dying in the streets of this city from siege-weapon fire, and if by the same accident we were to lose you, with the Faris yet living, we lose everything.”
“You were in Carthage with me,” Ash urged. “You saw the Wild Machines. You saw what they could do to me there. Florian, in Christ’s name, have I ever lied to you about anything important? You know what’s at stake here!”
“I won’t do it!”
“You should have thought of that when you killed the hart,” Ash said wryly. “An execution isn’t easy. It’s vile, messy, and unjust, usually. But there isn’t a choice here. If it makes it easier – if you don’t want the blood on your hands – then me and my lord the Earl and Colonel Bajezet’s five hundred Turks will go up to the north-east gate and do it now, whatever Jonvelle here says.”
Floria’s fist clenched. “No. Too easy.”
What there might be of an ache inside – for Floria, for the Faris; for herself, even – Ash put away, in the same way as she forced tears back from her prickling eyes. Ash put her hand over Floria’s; the woman still in the Noble Doctor’s long gown, fragments of palmate green leaves caught in her hair, her cheeks red with the heat of the hall.
“Florian,” she said, “I’m not going to waste any time.”
Robert Anselm was nodding; if was apparent from the faces of the company’s lance-leaders that there was no disagreement. They might look with all sympathy at the doctor; but in terms of action, Ash judged, that was irrelevant.
Angelotti said quietly to Floria, “It’s never easy, dottore. After battle, there are some men who cannot be saved.”
“Sweet Christ but I hate soldiers!”
Hard on Floria’s agonised, appalled exclamation, a soldier in Jonvelle’s livery tumbled through the door between the company’s guards. Ash narrowed her eyes to better see his sweating, distraught face under the brim of his war-hat. She immediately beckoned the man forward; then signalled her deference to Jonvelle himself.
“Yes, Sergeant?” Jonvelle demanded.
“There’s a Visigoth herald at the north-east gate! Under flag of parley,” the man gasped. He dashed the edge of his cloak across his streaming nose, and heaved in another breath. “From the King-Caliph. He says you have his general here, and he demands that you release her. He’s got about six hundred of our refugees rounded up in the ground between the lines. He says, if you don’t let her go, they’ll kill every last man, woman and child of them.”
The refugees and their escort stood in the excoriated no-man’s-land under Dijon’s walls, between the north-eastern gate and the east river.
Ash wore no identifying livery; had her bevor strapped on, and her visor barely cocked high enough above it to give her a field of view between the two pieces of armour. She rested her shoulder against the battlements of the gatehouse, knowing herself barely visible to any outsider, and stared down.
Behind her, an abbey bell rang for Sext. The midday sun cast a pale, slanting southern light. The crowd of men and women standing aimlessly on the cold earth seemed small, truncated by perspective. One man beat his hands together against the bitter wind. No one else moved. Breath went up in mist-white puffs. Most of them stood together, in ruined clothes, huddling for warmth; most looked to be barefoot.
“Dear God,” Jonvelle said, beside Ash. He pointed. “I know that man. That’s Messire Huguet. He owns all the mills between here and Auxonne; or he did. And his family: his wife and child. And there’s Soeur Irmengard, from our hospice in St Herlaine’s.”
“You’re better off not thinking about it,” Ash advised.
It was not the dirt that moved her, or the other evidences of their living rough, but their faces. Under the blank expressions that long experience of pain gives, there was still a bewilderment; an inability to understand how and why this destitution should have happened at all, never mind happened to them.
“Is the King-Caliph serious, Captain?” Jonvelle said.
“I see no reason why he shouldn’t be. Roberto told me they crucified several hundred refugees in sight of your walls here, back in October, when they were trying to force a quick surrender.”
Jonvelle’s face assumed a blank severity. “I was in the hospice,” he confessed, “after Auxonne. There were stories of massacres. Knights act sometimes without honour, in war.”
“Yeah … tell me about it, Jonvelle.” She squinted north-east, at the trenches and fortifications of the Visigoth camp; saw the wooden shielding that would shelter mangonels and arbalests. “They won’t even need engines. Longbows and crossbows will do it at this range.”
“Christ defend us.”
“Oh, we’re fine,” Ash muttered, absently trying to count heads. The estimate of six hundred would not be far off: it might even be a few more. “It’s them you want to worry about… Captain Jonvelle, let’s have as many hackbutters and crossbowmen up here as we can manage. Make it look like we’re concentrating our forces here. Then get some units by the postern gate.”
“You will get a very small number of hunger-weakened women and children to that gate,” the Burgundian said. “Never mind through it.”
“If it comes to it, that’s what we’ll do. Meanwhile…” Ash moved back from the crenellations, walked a few yards down the wall to her own herald’s white pennant, and leaned out over the hoarding. “Below there!”
Two of the stone messenger-golems stood a little way out from the foot of the wall. In front of them, under his gold-and-black embroidered white banner, Agnus Dei stared upwards. A dozen of his own mercenaries were with him; and a few more under a red livery that Ash did not recall until she saw Onorata Rodiani standing beside the Italian condottiere.
“Hey, Lamb.”
“Hey, Ash.”
“Mistress Rodiani.”
“Captain-General Ash.”
“They still dealing you out the shitty jobs, then?”
Onorata Rodiani’s face was unreadable at the distance. Her voice sounded taut. “Boss Gelimer was going to send your own men, Mynheer Joscelyn van Mander’s men, to do this. I persuaded him it might not be in his best interests. Do we h
ave a deal here?”
“I don’t know. I’m still checking it with my boss.” Ash leaned her plate-clad arms on the stonework. “Your man serious, is he?”
Agnus Dei tilted his armet’s visor up, a straggling coil of black hair escaping. His red mouth made a mobile space in his beard, far below; his voice coming up clearly to Ash:
“The King-Caliph gave us orders to demonstrate his commitment here. These golem will go over and tear one of those peasant women or children apart, at the word of command. Madonna Ash, I wish we might deem that to have been done, I have no great wish to do it. But we stand where my master sees us.”
The dull light flashed off the flutings of his German gauntlet as he raised his hand.
The sandstone-coloured figure of the golem trod towards the refugees. Even from the walls, Ash could see the depth of its footmarks in the churned earth; could guess at the weight of each limb. Women screamed, pressing back against the Visigoth spearmen, hauling their children as far back into the press of people as they could; one or two men made as if to move forward, most fought to get away.
The golem reached forward with a smooth precision, bronze gears glimmering. Its metal and stone hand went past one spearman’s shoulder – Ash couldn’t see if the soldier reacted – and closed on something. The arm pulled smoothly back. A woman of about fifty kicked and clawed and screeched, hauled forward by the grip on her biceps. Two small children were pulled through the spear-line, clinging to her thighs.
A sharp snap! bit through the winter air.
The woman drooped and hung awkwardly from the golem’s hand, her arm and shoulder the wrong shape. Shaken loose, the two children raised square-mouthed squalls. One of the spearmen kicked them back into the refugee-crowd. Ash found herself muttering “thank you!”, knowing that it was, for once, a gesture towards safety.
She leaned forward between the merlons and bellowed: “You don’t have to—”
The golem did not lift its head. Alone in some solipsistic world, in which flesh is no more significant than any other fabric, it dragged the semi-conscious woman with the broken shoulder around until she faced the north-east gate. Her ankles, under her long kirtle, were brown with mud, yellow with shit.
Gears of bronze slid and glinted. As she scratched and clawed at stone arms with the ripped fingers of one hand, the golem reached down and closed his huge hand around both her thighs. A sharp screech shattered the morning. Ash saw stone fingers buried to the second knuckle in flesh.
The golem lifted the woman up between its two hands. It grasped her at neck and thigh, front and back.
It wrung her body, like washing.
All noise stopped. Pink intestines slid and steamed, in the chill air. The golem released the twisted flesh. In her own mind, Ash tabulated broken back, broken pelvis, split body-cavity, broken neck – don’t be stupid: you can’t smell it from up here!
She blinked and looked away.
As far as she could see, in the cold air that made her eyes run, Agnus Dei’s gaze was fixed on the grey frost-haze over the Ouze river.
“Christ.” Ash let out a long breath. “Shit. How long have I got to come back with an answer?”
Onorata Rodiani, apparently unaffected, called up, “You’ve got as long as you like. They—” She pointed with one steel-clad, flashing arm at the refugees “—have got until Boss Gelimer loses patience. You have the woman who, until today, was his Empire’s first general and commanded his troops in Christendom. How long? Your guess is as good as mine, Captain-General Ash; probably better.”
“Okay.” Ash drew herself up, resting her palms flat on the battlements. “I’m on my way. You can tell your man, we’ve got the message.”
Floria del Guiz said, “If I kill her, six hundred people die.”
Ash followed the Duchess of Burgundy through the cloisters of St Stephen’s – six streets back from the north-east gate – which Jonvelle’s men had judged a safe place for keeping the Faris under guard.
“If you don’t kill her, everybody dies.”
“I’m not dead yet,” Florian snarled, as the large group of armed men entered the main buildings. “If I do get killed, it may be under circumstances where the Burgundians can hunt again – I’m thinking about six hundred people out there. They’re the ones I’ll have to watch die.”
“No reason for you to watch it,” Ash observed pragmatically. She caught the look on Florian’s face; sighed; her pace slowing. “But you will. Because the first time this happens, everybody thinks they have to. Trust me, you’re better off staying away from the walls.”
At Ash’s shoulder, Jonvelle said, “And this from you, Captain-General, who are planning to sally out of the postern gate and rescue who you can of them?”
Momentarily embarrassed, Ash glanced back to check that her own men, as well as the Burgundians, were following her towards the refectory.
“It’s worth a try,” she muttered. “You ask those poor bastards outside.”
The cloisters behind her rang to the boots of soldiers, on flagstones striped white with frost. Even at noon, frost still lay where each shadow of a pillar was cast. Inside, entering the great whitewashed refectory, there was at least the heat from the kitchens. Ash ignored the monks, scurrying in the background; and the sounds from the dormitories, taken over for nursing the sick.
“Look, Florian, I’ll put it this way – do you want to order the Faris’s execution now, so the Burgundians are happy with it, or do you want to watch me and my lord Oxford and the company get killed by the army, trying to reach her?”
Florian made a spitting sound; gave Ash a look of frustrated, contemptuous anger. “You mean that, don’t you.”
The exiled English Earl gave her a quizzical look, but what he said was, “Madam, I also agree.”
A woman stood up in the crowded refectory.
Winter sunlight bounced back from the white walls. It illuminated motes of dust; the woman’s hacked-off silver hair. A woman, standing up between Visigoth slaves in short tunics; a woman wearing European doublet and hose that were plainly not made for her, were far too big. The chopped-off hair threw her cheeks into sharp relief. No smeared dirt could give the impression of scars. She looked very young. She wore neither armour, nor sword.
Across the few remaining wooden benches and tables, Ash found herself facing the Faris.
The child-slave at the Faris’s left was Violante, shivering in the cold. A grey-haired fat woman sat on the floor, half hiding under the long table: Adelize.
Floria del Guiz walked past Ash and put herself between them.
“Have some sense,” she said. “We have to send her back, to save lives. Right now! She’s no danger while I’m alive.”
Ash glared at the woman blocking her way. She thumbed her sword loose from the scabbard’s tension. “You might not have noticed, but there’s a fucking war on. While you’re alive, yes; but that might not be for long!”
Floria made a wry mouth, and flapped her hand as if pushing the gesture with the sword away. When she spoke, it was not a plea, but irritable scorn:
“For Christ’s sake, Ash! If you won’t save the people out there, here’s another reason to keep her alive for a few hours – think about this, if nothing else: up until today, she’s been the Visigoth army commander.”
“Shit.” Ash looked away from the Faris, to Floria. “You have been paying attention while you’ve been company doctor.”
The surgeon-Duchess, dishevelled and oddly dignified, repeated, “Visigoth army commander. Think how much she knows about this siege. She knows what’s happened after she stopped reporting through the Stone Golem! That’s weeks! She can tell us what it’s like out there now!”
“But the Wild Machines—”
“Ash, you’re going to have to talk to her. Debrief her. Then we send her out again, to Gelimer. And we pray,” Floria said, “that he doesn’t start a massacre out there before we do it.”
The immediate rush of people into the room behind the
m slowed. Ash became aware of men-at-arms spreading out: her units, and Burgundian army units, and Jonvelle talking urgently to the just-arrived Olivier de la Marche. She caught the eye of Robert Anselm; held up a warning hand. No action yet.
“Do you know what you’re risking?”
Floria’s brows went up. She looked momentarily very like her younger half-brother. “I know I’m risking six hundred people’s lives out there, if King-Caliph Gelimer decides to start killing them in the next few minutes and not the next few hours.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“No, but it’s true, too.”
“Shit.” Ash gazed around.
She registered Angelotti’s presence at the refectory door: the master gunner talking excitedly to Colonel Bajezet. Apart from the Burgundian troops surrounding the Visigoths, there was a woman in green there – Soeur-Maîtresse Simeon – obliviously and waspishly trying to coax Adelize out from under the table.
The fat, drooling, white-haired woman wept and flapped her hands, slapping the nun’s hands away.
At Ash’s side, Fernando del Guiz tried to conceal an expression of disgust. She looked away from him, feeling heat, knowing her cheeks were reddening.
“Fucking Christ!” she exclaimed bitterly, fists on hips. “We’re going to have the whole bloody town in here. Roberto! Seal this room off!”
Anselm did not look to the surgeon-Duchess for permission. Jonvelle moved to intercept him, and only stepped back at Floria’s acerbic order: “No one else in here – unless it’s the Abbot!”
“This is a Michaelmas Fair,” John de Vere sighed. “Captain, an enemy commander in one’s hands is not to be despised; this might turn the siege. And though the matter concerns more men than there are in Dijon, we have men here whom we command, whose lives should not be spent needlessly.”
