Between Two Fires (9781101611616)

by Buehlman, Christopher

  “Forgive me, Sir Thomas,” the seigneur said. “I didn’t know my horse was a fucking coward.”

  Thomas crabbed his way to his feet. Why wasn’t his squire helping him up? He removed his borrowed helmet and looked back down the list. He saw Matthieu now, lolling against a rail, his head tipped back. The viol player from before was pouring wine down his throat, his free hand rubbing the older man’s crotch.

  The lord barked, “On foot!” and now Thomas turned and saw the other knight stomping toward him, swinging a flanged mace, his helmet also off.

  “Right,” Thomas said, and drew his sword.

  He moved first against Théobald, running at him and lunging his point at the other man’s face. The knight spun and sidestepped at the same time, bringing his mace around into Thomas’s back, breaking a rib. Thomas let the momentum take him forward so he wouldn’t be in jeopardy from a second blow. The armorer was right. Théobald was fast.

  As a fish from a dead man’s skull.

  He heard the armor moving behind him and sensed the mace passing only half a hand’s length from where his head had just been.

  But Thomas had tricks, too; he planted his foot and spun suddenly, crouching at the same time, driving his point at the other man’s middle. It struck home, and, even though the mail stopped it, the force pushed the man back and sapped the strength from his mace swing so that, when it landed on Thomas’s shoulderpiece, it hurt but didn’t damage.

  His back was in agony.

  Did water just come from Théobald’s armor?

  Thomas didn’t have time to pull back for a proper swing, so he chopped short across his body, hacking at Théobald’s inner arm to try to knock the mace out of it; he knocked the mace arm wide, but his foe kept his weapon, letting the momentum carry it over his own head, and backhanded into Thomas’s arm, which went numb.

  Salt water got into his eyes. Théobald was definitely leaking salt water. And his armor was now finely coated with rust. Thomas didn’t actively notice these things; without hesitation, he switched hands and licked out with the sword point, which caught the other man between the knuckles of his mace hand, opening the links of his chain mitten and making him drop the mace.

  Now Thomas saw the exposed hand and how white it was. So white it was almost translucent.

  A fucking hand!

  He lashed out with the blade again and caught Théobald across the side of the head. Seawater, not blood, gushed from the wound. It stank. Théobald looked amused. He opened his mouth and a scream came out, but it was not his scream. It was the scream of the fat peasant who had died in the river. It was the scream the thing in the river had mimicked.

  Thomas recovered from his stupefaction and swung hard now with his working arm. Théobald, who was getting puffier and whiter by the second, raised his arm so it caught the force that had been meant for his neck. The armor saved the arm from getting severed, but the bones in it were broken and he careened sideways. More water gushed from him.

  An eel slithered out of his leg armor to writhe on the sand.

  The sky was not as dark as it had been.

  Théobald scrambled for his mace now, picking it up with the badly broken arm; Thomas struck him across the back, breaking his scapula. Unconcerned, Théobald lurched up and the mace head backhanded Thomas across his own numb arm, which was also broken.

  The opponents paused now and looked at each other.

  Théobald grinned at Thomas, and thread-fine marine worms sprouted from his lips. A small fish ate one of his eyes from the inside.

  And he stank, and he stank.

  Théobald de Barentin, Théobald…

  Dead at the battle of Sluys.

  He fell into the sea when an English ship rammed into the ship he was on. He was the best fighter in Normandy, but he was not stabbed or shot with arrows. He just slipped on the wet deck and fell into the water, where his armor pulled him under. Thomas’s lord had told his men before they met the English at Crécy, to remind them that no death was inglorious when suffered in the field.

  Light was coming into the sky.

  “Hurry!” screamed a woman from the stands, and the cry was picked up by the other spectators, all of whom were beginning to rot now. Some yelled “Kill him!” or “The sun!” The lord of the castle shouted “HURRY!” as well, and tried to shout it again, but the word changed into the roar of a lion. Thomas spared a glance at him, and saw that he was growing taller, stretching out of his armor, so that his skin showed between sections. His head was a lion’s head now, but lumpy and corrupt, balanced badly on the ungainly stack of flesh and armor he had become.

  A devil.

  A devil from Hell and a court of the damned.

  The thing that had been the seigneur started taking jerky steps toward them.

  Théobald lashed madly with his mace now, and Thomas blocked or avoided all but one blow, which he stepped into at the last instant to avoid taking the head of the mace; instead he caught the shaft across his jaw, which broke.

  “Hurry,” screamed the mob, which had begun running off the stands toward the combatants.

  Thomas shoved his sword into the face of what used to be Théobald de Barentin, and it shuddered and stopped moving. Thomas yanked the sword out of it but fell on his side. The lion-devil roared, standing over Thomas.

  The crowd of finely dressed corpses moved closer. One of the monkey-things tugged the armor off his foot and bit it.

  Thomas held his sword up.

  The sun’s crown came over the edge of the land, just one brilliant orange diamond’s worth.

  And it was all gone.

  Everything.

  Thomas was lying in a cow field, holding up his sword, dressed in his rusty armor. Neither his arm nor his rib nor his jaw were broken. A rusted plow stood where the lion-devil had been, one of its spars hanging at the angle of the axe it had just been holding. A dead sheep lay in exactly the position the corpse of Sir Théobald had assumed when he collapsed. A small Norman tower, long abandoned and crumbling, stood where the mighty castle had been when they first saw it at dusk. The priest, lying facedown in his robes, was breathing heavily in sleep.

  “A whoring dream,” he said.

  He got to his feet and stretched.

  He saw a mound of dirt and walked over to it, having a long piss against it. He realized he had to shit as well, and walked around the dirt mound to see if he could find an ass-wiping plant. What he found instead was a common grave. The last corpses were recent and had not been shoveled under very well. A woman’s moley, nude back stood out at him. Also, the herald; the small boy, Simon, in bright livery; and the Moorish musician. A little dead dog had been tossed in as well.

  The sunrise was among the most beautiful he had ever seen. He got to his knees meaning to thank God for it, but couldn’t think of any words to say.

  The girl walked over to him, brushing a leaf out of her hair.

  “Are you ready to go to Paris now?” she said.

  “Yes.”

  PART II

  Now the great plague had stilled the hearths in the countryside, and darkened the windows of the cities of man; Death’s hand sat upon the brow of the king and also the farmer; Death took the beggar and the cardinal, the money changer and the milkmaid. The babe died on the breast, and sailors brought their ships to port with dead hands. And the wickedness of man was laid bare, so great was his fear of this pestilence; for the mother fled her children and the son nailed shut his father’s door, and the priest betrayed his flock. Still other men said, “God is gone from us, or never was at all; let us do as we will, and take pleasure as we may, for all is lost.” And so the wicked went in bands and took the daughter’s maidenhead, and killed others for their sport. And some shut themselves away in walled towns, and let none pass; when the bread was gone, they drew lots, and some were given to the butcher that the rest might live. Some righteous men and women yet held faith, but they were scattered so far that none could see the other’s light, and it seemed th
e darkness had no end.

  And the Lord made no answer.

  Now devils walked the earth, at first in dreams and then in flesh, and Hell had dominion in diverse kingdoms. Those men who died in furtherance of evil yet walked as shades, and even those who died in goodness might be raised by devils and abused. Sacred places were turned rotten, and holy men abased, so the seed of Adam could take no comfort, and the prayers of men and women would not strengthen the angels of the Lord, who were grown frail.

  And the Lord made no answer.

  Now the greater devils who walked the earth were Ra’um and Oillet, and Bel-phegor and Baal’Zebuth, whose agents were flies. Two-thirds of the fallen had gone even to the walls of Heaven, where a great war raged, a war of bent light and thrown stars and noises that killed; a war of great limbs locking, and the spear, and the sword, it was a war of tooth on wing; a war of machines whose effects were abomination, a war of shaken walls, a war of hammers that, though turned, broke the arm that held the shield. For the strength of the angels of God was reflected strength, and the source was grown distant; yet the fallen had sat long in the coals of their exile and grown hard, and their strength was their own; and their generals were Lucifer and Asmodeus and Astaroth and Moloch; and the angels who resisted at the gates were Michael and Zephon and Uriel and Rafael, for Gabriel had gone to look for the Lord.

  But the Lord made no answer.

  Some few angels of God slipped from Heaven by stealth, and hid themselves, whether in the fields or in the cities, and worked against the fallen angels as best they could, and to save the lives of men, though they did these things in secret, for their powers were grown weak upon the earth. Certain treasures from Heaven they hid in the earth as well, in case the walls were breached, and among these were pots of oil and scents from Heaven’s gardens, and nectar, and gold from the tails of stars; and also they preserved certain tokens from the time God walked among men, and among these were His sandals, and His crown of thorns, and the nails from His wrists and ankles, and also the spear that pierced His side.

  It was the hour of the fallen angel.

  And God had stopped the fountain of His love.

  And it was said that He had gone to make a new world and new angels and new men.

  And the walls of Heaven would fall.

  And all these now struggling above and below would perish.

  NINE

  Of the City of Paris

  Paris first announced herself with a column of smoke rising over a hill. They knew they were close, as they had been following the river from the west, and Thomas and the priest wondered if the whole city might be burning. When they crested the hill, Thomas felt ashamed of his naïveté; the city dwarfed the fire, which was outside the walls in any case. A fire big enough to burn that city would have rivaled the furnaces of Hell, and the smoke from it would have blackened the bottoms of the clouds.

  All that was burning was a wheat field, and the fire was at its end, burning itself out against the banks of the Seine. Several houses had been reduced to blackened skeletons, as had two cows. One calf lowed from a hillock, barely visible from behind the curtain of white smoke that surrounded it; the fire would spare this beast. The octet of ragged figures around it, however, would not. Already they were testing the smoking earth to see if it would burn them through the rags and bad shoes on their feet. Already they were hefting their axes and daggers. They didn’t look like farmers. Thomas scanned the fields and saw a pair of legs jutting from a patch of unburned wheat. Murder, then. Thomas was suddenly sure these men had set the fire. He should have waited and watched longer before they approached; but it was too late now. Several of the killers looked at the cart as it passed, but nothing in the cart could possibly interest them as much as the calf. One of them looked at Thomas, and he met the man’s gaze, not in threat, but to let him know he would fight if he had to. The man quickly assessed that they could take the cart, but not without cost. He looked back up the hillock. Now Thomas lowered his eyes in shame to remember that, had things fallen out differently, he might be standing in that group, along with Godefroy and Jacquot, waiting to carve the dead man’s calf.

  I saw it.

  What?

  Your soul.

  Thomas remembered the last winter with Godefroy, when his were the most feared brigands in High Normandy. In the better months they had restricted themselves to robbing merchants, particularly on the roads leading south and east toward the Champagne fairs, trundling away carts laden with food and wool on the way down and gold and spices on the way up. December came, however, with rain and sleet in its fists and breath that numbed them to their feet. Food ran scarce and their reputation now worked against them—what merchants traveled then did so under arms. Villages set watches for them and hid their grain in caves and under clever hidden doors and pits in the fields. Their very few coins and other small goods went down wells or in coffers buried under straw. They hid themselves, too, because they knew that Godefroy, whom they called “the black cat,” would stop at nothing, even torture, to learn where they hid their meager treasures.

  And their livestock, which, to Godefroy’s mind, included daughters.

  In response, Godefroy learned stealth.

  Near Gisors, just before the Christmas feasts began, the brigands stopped outside a village they would all remember, though they never knew its name. Two men stayed with the horses; the rest waited until almost sundown and walked two miles through the woods to the most isolated farmhouse. Everyone inside was likely to be asleep; peasants slept long hours in the winter to save strength. The thieves muddied their faces and crawled on their bellies until they were close enough for Jacquot to shoot the guard dog. The windows were hung with sheepskins to keep the heat of the fire in, and the cold thieves coveted the warmth nearly as much as the food they hoped to find.

  Thomas grabbed the sheepskin and yanked it down, rolling awkwardly through the window with his sword drawn. A calf lay in the middle of the dirt floor, with a goat and two children sleeping against it. They woke up at the sound of Thomas’s heavy feet, and stared at him; they thought a devil from Hell had come to them, and they weren’t far wrong. The others leapt in as well. One of the children cried out and the rest of the house woke up, all in one room, six adults on a moss-stuffed bed. An old man at the end reached for something on the floor, but a nearly toothless little killer named Pepin leapt the calf and the children in two steps and stabbed the man’s belly. He dropped whatever it was he’d grabbed for and palmed his wound, huffing, “Oh, oh.”

  The only other men, probably an in-law and a hired man, froze and offered no fight; they were soon shamed by an old woman who swung at Thomas with a fire poker. He ducked it and shoved her down, where another man sat on her. She yelled and this man punched her until she stopped.

  Godefroy noticed that one of those on the bed was a decent-looking girl of perhaps fourteen. Probably already married. He yanked her off the bed by the foot while Pepin hovered over the rest of them with his knife.

  They took the girl and the beasts out; Thomas carried the goat over his neck, and Jacquot led the calf, but the real prize was a milk cow on the other side of the house. They butchered her that night in the hills, along with the other animals, smoked the meat, and rode off before the local lord could muster sufficient men to deal with them. Just before they left, they let the girl stumble back into town, mostly intact on the outside.

  Thomas had argued with Godefroy about the girl, but in the end he had walked away.

  The meat had gotten them through January.

  The family, of course, would have been reduced to begging from their neighbors, perhaps even forced to sell their land.

  As the brigands left the house that night, the old woman had gotten up and yelled after them from the doorway. Her words were slurred from her newly broken teeth.

  “God will see you in Hell! You’re the Devil’s now. May you choke and die and go to him sooner.”

  Normally some of them would have je
ered back at her, but her words fell on them with the weight of a proper curse. Robbing peasants felt much more sinful than robbing merchants, but winter didn’t care about such sensibilities.

  In February, they robbed another farmhouse, and this time the men fought. Pepin was killed. As were the men. Godefroy ordered the house burned. A dark-haired little boy just in pants stood bewildered near the blaze, saying, as if there had been some mistake, “We live here. We live here.”

  Not six months later the plague had come, killing most of the thieves.

  And everybody else.

  Nothing matters anymore.

  Thomas shook away his ghosts and turned his eyes now to Paris. Her walls were the faintly yellowed white of bones, and her turrets stood proudly, each a lazy bowshot from its neighbor. He could see what must have been the Louvre, the king’s fortress, strong and white, cut from the same stone as the city walls. The spires of cathedrals poked at the sky, and the roofs of the shops and houses tumbled against one another. Even dead, if she was dead, Paris made a lovely corpse.

  And yet Thomas wished she had burned. He would have embraced any excuse to keep going, as they had been, on small roads or no roads, meeting few living souls, foraging as best they could. How long could they live like that? Until winter. But what then?

  “I don’t care,” Thomas said, at the end of this chain of thoughts, and neither of his cartmates pressed him for what he meant. There was a great deal in this world not to care about.

  The Port du Louvre was the closest gate, and, luckily, one of the few that remained open; the provost of Paris, on the authority of the king, who had long since fled, had shut most of the other gates in a vain attempt to close out the scourge that was killing the city. Rare carts bearing food were allowed in; anyone at all was allowed out; strangers could enter so long as they appeared healthy.

  The guards on the top of the wall did not appear healthy. They were underslept, ashen, and cranky, though not energetic enough to cause much mischief. They told the girl to display her armpits, neck, and groin to them, but did not care to make Thomas strip down his armor, and likewise told the priest to keep his robe on. The priest shook his head at them. One of them apathetically tossed a small stone at the priest. They waved the cart through.