by Ken Hood
For a moment a flash of the old arrogance darkened the adept's face, then he rearranged it like putty into its customary pout. "Even demons draw the line somewhere, but if it will contribute in any way to the overthrow of the Fiend, then of course no task is too humble for me."
"Thank you." Toby pushed his feet into his buskins. He stared at his party clothes on the floor, all rumpled and in need of a wash, and he decided to worry about the fate of Italy first. "The condotta has been agreed in principle, so I have a million letters to send." He crouched to see his face in the broken mirror, cursing the great mop of hair he had to comb now. "There was a rumor going around last night that the Khan has sent a darughachi. He's said to be in Naples, expected to head north shortly."
The hexer drew in his breath with a hiss. "I suppose fourteen years too late is better than never."
Not necessarily. An emissary with plenipotentiary powers might appoint a suzerain or take overall command himself. Either way, he would certainly ruin all of Toby's carefully laid plans.
"It may be all hogswiggle, because the Magnificent never mentioned it." He would certainly have been one of the first to learn of any emissary, and why would he not confide in his captain-general?
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lisa felt guilty for not feeling more guilty. Every step her horse took carried her farther away from Mother, who must be half-insane with worry, yet she kept catching herself actually enjoying this wild adventure, this unreal Arthurian romance into which she had fallen. Lack of sleep had stuffed her head with bed socks, and the beautiful Tuscan landscape enclosed her like a painting—fields, vineyards, olive groves, red-tiled roofs, geese, goats—all glistening in the sharp morning light. She must believe that it was real. She had seen a demon and witnessed Master Campbell bloodying his sword in her defense.
He was most attentive and excellent company. He had bought clothes for her from the innkeeper's daughter and sent one of his men back into Siena to organize a hunt for the countess. Every now and again he would peer back along their tracks to where his other man, Carlo, was trailing a mile or so behind, keeping a lookout for pursuit. Even Mother had never gone to quite such lengths, but Lisa was much more inclined to trust the mercenary's appraisal of danger than hers.
That did not mean that she trusted him without reservations. He was not being completely frank with her. He had motives he was not revealing. There were questions he would not answer—
"Why did you tell me to keep my kerchief?"
He blinked guilelessly. "When we locate your mother, we can send it along as proof that we're genuine."
"Then why didn't you give it to Rinaldo to take back with him?"
"I didn't think of it until he'd gone. Oh, look! Newborn lambs! Spring!"
Those were not the first lambs they had passed. Master Campbell was lying. Later she tried again. "What did you mean about Longdirk using me politically?"
"Taking advantage of you. Demanding ransom, for instance."
That was not what he had meant originally! And the questions he asked were not all innocent, either. He kept trying to find out things about Mother, who was none of his business. As Lisa was riding sidesaddle and he was on the left, she could watch him more easily than he could watch her. She could tell when he was just making conversation and when he was probing. She could also admire his profile, which was acceptably handsome for a knight-errant.
He was good company—witty, intelligent, well read, and very well traveled. Between them they could speak more than a dozen languages, although all they had in common were English and the usual smattering of Latin and Tartar that all well-educated people professed. Nor had they identified a single city they had both visited, for he had traveled mostly in the Fiend's domains, while Mother had always stayed inside territories loyal to the Khan. They shared a love of books. Many of the homes in which she had stayed had possessed books, even if the owners never opened them. Too often, books had been her only companions for months at a time, yet she had never met another genuine book lover. Now the two of them juggled titles and quotations back and forth with mutual glee, arguing what Plato had said in the Republic or whether it was worth learning Tuscan just to read Dante.
He admitted to leaving Scotland when he was fifteen, and later he mentioned this had been in 1519, so he must be about twenty-one now. Most men married younger than that, but she could not ask, and he did not volunteer the information. Despite her best efforts to match his vagueness on personal matters, he was revealing much less than she was. He would talk endlessly about his friend Longdirk:
"Aristocrats despise him because he's not of noble birth, and the crabby old veterans are worse. Some of them still seem to think his success was all just luck, but he calculates everything. He moved us from client to client—Verona, Ravenna, Naples, then Milan, so all the captains-general and collaterali got to know him, and when Nevil sent Schweitzer across the border last fall and they needed a comandante in capo in a hurry, they elected him because he was the only one they all trusted. He was a neutral, of course. Venetians don't trust Milanese, Milanese don't trust Venetians, and the Florentine captain-general was an idiot."
Lisa soon developed a strong dislike of this vagabond mercenary lord into whose power she was about to be delivered. "Yes, but—"
"The men worship him. He remembers their names, and their horses' names, looks after their comfort, shares out the loot fairly, never spares himself. They're Longdirk's men and proud of it. They swagger and strut like pigeons, and no one queries their right to do so. He's never lost once—siege, skirmish, or set-piece battle."
"But what sort of a person is he? Does he brag and swagger, too? Does he enjoy the killing?"
"Toby?" Hamish grinned. "Brag? He's the only man in Italy who still calls it the Don Ramon Company. He hides behind the don and tugs his forelock and runs circles around them all. He certainly doesn't enjoy killing. The only thing he hates more than war is the Fiend, who makes it necessary. He really tries not to shed blood. Take San Leo, for example. It was supposed to be impregnable. Ha! Two days after the condotta was signed, he went up a ladder in the middle of a rainy night with one companion and opened the gates for the Company. By the time the garrison woke up in the morning, the town was ours! That condotta only lasted a week."
"Who was the companion?"
"There's Carlo coming now. We can go on—"
"Who was the one companion?"
"It doesn't look like anyone's following you, I mean us. Why are you looking at me like that?"
"At San Leo? Who was the one companion?"
"Me," he admitted grumpily.
"Aha!"
He scowled. "I don't usually do such crazy things. I had to go with him because I'd seen a map of the town, that was all."
Master Campbell was being modest, which was a very odd trait in a man, but might be quite appealing once one got used to it. "Of course," she said. "And no one else ever had? I suppose during the Battle of Trent you sat in your tent the whole time reading a book?"
He shot her a worried look. "Lisa... don't!"
"Don't what?"
"Don't start getting ideas about... Oh, demons!" He stared straight ahead along the track and said nothing more.
"I was inquiring, Chancellor, what part you played in the Battle of Trent?"
He spoke to the fields. "A very small, very insignificant part. But I did ride in the Great Charge, when Toby led the cavalry against the guns and the demons were loosed. I saw little of it. I was much too busy trying to stay on my horse, and there was fire and smoke and thunder everywhere. Magazines blowing up... bodies flying through the air like starlings."
"Monsters?"
"Yes, there were monsters. My horse didn't much like running with dragons. But we had more monsters than they did. Then the Swiss pikemen came in on the right... That was awful. Nevil's troops were hexed, so they couldn't surrender."
"So Constable Longdirk does shed blood when he has to! Is it true that he's possessed by a demon?"
"Oh, look! Lambs! Isn't it amazing how early spring comes in Italy? Back in Scotland—"
"Did he really set the forest on fire at Trent?"
Hamish turned to look at her then. His face was grim. "Yes. He had our hexers do it, and that left us open to Schweitzer's demons, so we took heavy losses for a while, but nothing compared to what the fire did to the Fiend's troops later."
"You mean he'll roast an enemy army without a thought but won't dream of using a maiden in distress for political purposes?"
After a brief hesitation, Master Campbell said, "Yes."
CHAPTER TWELVE
Given that Italy was a morass of conspiracy and intrigue, it went without saying that there were spies everywhere, using the dark arts of gramarye or just the ears they were born with. Toby tried to make things as hard for them as he could, although he also assumed that anything he said or did would be promptly reported to his enemies or allies or both. He held important meetings in the courtyard, which was enclosed by walls of ancient Roman brick and shadowed by cypresses, fruit trees, and grapevine trellises. It could be entered by a gate from the orchard or a door from the villa itself, but only the hearing of a cat could eavesdrop on what was said there. Even so early in the year, when the vines were bare and the almond blossom had not yet exploded into spring glory, the air was often warm enough to do business out-of-doors. There he passed the day, struggling to recruit an army without actually spending money he did not yet possess.
Seven men defined the Don Ramon Company. The don had ridden off to do verbal battle with Benozzo and the rest of the dieci, and Hamish had not yet returned from Siena. Maestro Fischart was also absent, communing with demons in an effort to find the missing gold. The four who met around the mossy stone table that day were Antonio Diaz the marshal, Arnaud Villars the treasurer, Brother Bartolo the secretary—and High Constable Longdirk, whose duties were mysterious, even to him, although he knew the organization would fall apart without him.
"Twenty thousand men," he said. "At the moment we have...?"
"Three thousand and thirty-three," Arnaud growled. He was the one the other three thousand and thirty-two were threatening to hang if they were not paid soon.
Toby looked inquiringly to the marshal.
"Another four squadrons, no more," Diaz said—roughly six hundred men or about a hundred helmets. More men made the Company more difficult to manage efficiently, which was why Arnaud was nodding agreement, although he and Diaz rarely agreed on anything. To fulfill his condotta, the condottiere must subcontract other companies.
"Who else is good?" Toby asked, although he had a clear list in his head already, plus extensive notes Hamish had left him. Arnaud answered first.
"The Mad Dogs."
"Brucioli's too fond of marching." Diaz's face never showed his feelings. "They fight well if they get the chance, though."
"We'll give them the chance," Toby said. "How about the Red Band?"
—|—
The day flew by in argument and discussion, the men by turns sitting on the wooden stools or pacing around. Who was good, who unreliable? Who clashed with whom? Why hadn't so-and-so's band been signed up already?
Time and again Toby's mind slid back to the problem of the missing gold. It made no sense. Whoever the mysterious shadow was, why make an impossible mystery out of the crime? Why take one small bag and ignore all the rest? Why take any? Perhaps the unknown spy's purpose was merely to sow distrust. Now no one could feel completely safe or rely on anyone else.
"Fifteen lire a man won't buy many," Diaz was saying. "They all know there'll be no looting, and the cost of everything is going up like a bombard shot. Rosselli is asking a twenty-thousand-ducat signing bonus."
"Can't afford it. He's good but not that good."
How much silver for a man's life? How much gold for his honor? Ignoring gramarye, who might sell out for simple avarice? Any of these three?
Brother Bartolo? The friar was a wine tub of a man, rubicund face perpetually beaming, with only a faint fringe of silver around his tonsure, an Italian edition of Friar Tuck. During a memorable celebration after the Battle of Padua some very drunk young squires had found a steelyard and started laying bets on who weighed more, Longdirk in his battle gear or Bartolo in his gray Franciscan robe. Because those striplings had acquitted themselves like veterans that day, Toby had submitted to the indignity of being weighed. He had lost handily. Enormous Bartolo ran the secretariat with good humor and unfailing efficiency. Even now, as each decision was reached, he would poke two fingers in his mouth and emit a whistle louder than a bugle call. A clerk would come running out to hear the details and then run indoors to write the letter. Soon corrected drafts and fair copies were piling up, ready to be signed and sealed. Toby could not imagine life without the fat man to handle his endless correspondence.
Yet he knew almost nothing of the friar's past. Don Ramon had hired him to write some letters the day after reaching Italy, and that timing made it very hard to see Bartolo as a spy planted on the Company, because the Company had not even existed. He evaded his oaths of poverty and chastity by insisting that his wages be paid to his mistress and their rapidly increasing family, and a man who could bend his sworn word like that was not perfectly honest.
Who was? Certainly not Arnaud Villars, with his enormous black beard, his ferocious dark scowl, his well-checkered past. The first time Toby had met him, he had been running a profitable smuggling operation between Aquitaine and Navarre. After war had ruined business, they had run into each other in Barcelona—apparently by chance—and Toby had hired him on the spot. Without doubt Arnaud skimmed something off the payroll, so he had no reason to steal openly. Furthermore, it had been he who reported the loss. As quartermaster, he was astute enough to stay level with the Florentine suppliers, as paymaster he ran a personal army of clerks to keep track of what every man was owed in wages or what he still had to repay on his equipment if the Company had provided it, to assign fodder for his horse and record whose horse it was—and on and on. Toby got headaches even thinking about it. He had known Arnaud longer than anyone in the Company except Hamish. They had fought shoulder to shoulder in Navarre.
But? But why was the leopard curled up on the hearth-rug? Men of action rarely transformed themselves so willingly into quill-pushers. Maybe the old scoundrel was just starting to feel his age.
Diaz? The captain was a true professional, a soft-spoken imperturbable Catalan with a face carved from well-seasoned oak. It was he who had turned the Company into a fighting machine as fine as any in Italy. He recruited, outfitted, drilled, disciplined, and never complained or argued or displayed any facial expression whatsoever. He was a devout man, deeply troubled by the spiritual dangers of his chosen career. The Don Ramon Company would collapse without him. As far as trust went, he ranked right after Hamish Campbell.
Men were never simple. The don, who would die rather than blemish his precious honor, would lie like a horse trader to seduce a pretty girl, promising anything. Maestro Fischart's hatred for the Fiend knew no bounds whatsoever, but he spent his days and nights in the company of demons; he had been enthralled once and might be trapped again. Even Hamish, honest as the hills, was usually either aching from a broken heart or so starry-eyed in love that he blundered into doorposts.
—|—
Toby was shocked to realize that the shadows were growing longer already. An arrow took only seconds to flash across a field and end a man's life, but if you counted the year or longer needed to make the bow and the many years required to train the archer, then an arrow was a slow death. Similarly, a war might be settled in a single hard battle. It was preparing for war that took the time.
The don's appointment had become known in the city, and volunteers were reported at the gates. Diaz sent word that they should wait, even knowing that most would turn out to be runaway apprentices lacking even a horse.
They had run out of names at last. Toby arranged the letters in heaps—the good, the bad, the p
ossible, the last resorts. He pulled out four. "Desjardins, if he is still available." According to yesterday's rumors, he had signed on with Naples. "Simonetta, D'Amboise, and della Sizeranne. We need those four."
Three heads nodded.
All four condottieri had wintered near Naples. The fastest mail was the service run by the Marradi Bank, which was efficient—so efficient that a copy of any letter he sent would undoubtedly arrive on the Magnificent's desk before the original left Florence—but message and response would still require at least ten days. If the offers were refused, that meant ten more days lost. A demon ride would be faster, but that option was not available to Toby himself, and he would not call for volunteers. What sort of man would risk his soul for a handful of gold? What sort of man would ask him? The Marradi mail it would have to be.
He threw the letters on the table and sat down to reach for the quill standing in its silver inkwell. "Let's send these ones on their way as soon as possible. Who's next?" Biting his tongue, he began penning his signature...
"There is one position you have not mentioned," Diaz said.
Toby looked up sharply, but the marshal's face was as scrutable as mud.
"Who?"
"Il comandante in capo."
"Ah!" He went back to signing the letters.
They were all waiting to tell him he was the logical choice for the supreme command, but that was just loyalty—they would say so if he had a crossbow bolt embedded in his forehead. Was he? Of the thousands of soldiers in Italy, many must know the country better than he did, although he had spent most of the last two years in the saddle, exploring it from the Tyrrhenian Sea to the Adriatic. Almost all would speak the language better, and most would have more experience. Who was he to take the fate of the peninsula on his shoulders? He should not try to judge his own abilities, because no man could be totally impartial about himself. All he knew for certain was that he wanted the job more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. Wasn't that the best possible reason not to get it?
