Demon Knight

by Ken Hood

  "You mean, can I tell lies with a straight face?"

  "I am afraid that skill will be an essential ingredient." The fox showed sharp teeth in a smile.

  "No, I cannot. But I told you I have ways of traveling to Rome, messer. I can also invoke gramarye to prevent myself from giving the game away. I can even prevent myself from thinking about it or remembering it when I do not need to."

  "This is dangerous, surely?"

  "Life is dangerous, messer. The worst I risk is that I will completely forget the strategy someday when I need to remember it. If you ever think that has happened, Your Magnificence, then you will have to take me aside and remind—"

  Toby screamed.

  Out! Out! Sorghie, get me out of this!

  CHAPTER FIVE

  He reeled to his feet and stared out at a world made glorious by morning—the broad valley of the Arno brilliant green under the ethereal light of Tuscany, the lumpy hills in their rich garb of olive trees and mulberries, misty peaks beyond rolling off to infinity. He scowled at the disfiguring camps of the enemy ringing the city just out of cannon shot. Already the eastern sky was almost too bright to look upon, heralding the sun. The Allied armies were waiting under their masking gramarye. He had told everyone he would give them the signal before sunup—Ercole, Alfredo, all of them! If he did not appear in time, they would assume that something had gone awry and start withdrawing. Then all chance of a victory would be lost, the great surprise attack would become a panic retreat, disaster.

  "You have remembered!" the tutelary said, and there was a sound very much like joy in the normally dead voice.

  "Little One, it worked?" Sorghaghtani cried.

  "It worked!" He bent to take up his helmet and put it on his head, then he lifted her into the air as he straightened. He kissed her and set her down. "Thank you! Holiness, thank you, also. Excuse me. I must be about my business."

  He vaulted over the railing into the sky.

  By rights he should have bounced three or four times down the steepening curve of the redbrick dome and ended as a disgusting mess on the roof of the nave. He didn't. At about the time he ought to have made his third impact, his boots hit the flagstones of the piazza a couple of spans away from Smeòrach, who jerked his head up and rolled his eyes, but who was well used by now to his owner's peculiar abilities. Several early-bird passersby jumped and peered in alarm, unwilling to believe what they had seen. The genuine early birds, the sparrows and pigeons, were less gullible and exploded upward in a wild flapping.

  The boy had removed the saddle and laid it on the ground so he could sleep on it, with the reins tied around his wrist. Smeòrach's hard tug wakened him; he sat up, bleary-eyed. "Oh, messer, I am sorry..."

  "You did well!" Toby said, untying the knot. "I don't have time for the saddle. Keep it. It's yours. And this." He dropped a gold coin, which rang on the stone. It was one of the last of the bagful he had stolen from the Company coffers to use as expense money on his secret journeys.

  He vaulted on to Smeòrach's back, and Chabi settled on his arm in another whirring of wings. He tried to shake her off. "You think I'm going hawking? Be off! This is not safe for you!"

  "Who is safe today?" she asked in Sorghaghtani's voice.

  He had no time to argue with an owl. Hoping he could leave her behind, he kicked in his heels and sent Smeòrach bounding forward. The spectators saw the big spotted gelding take off across the piazza like an arrow, but after a very few strides horse, rider, and owl became smoky, transparent, then vanished altogether. The hoofbeats, some later asserted, could be heard for a few moments after that. Most of the good folk fled screaming into the sanctuary and were comforted by the spirit.

  From Toby's viewpoint, and possibly Smeòrach's, they plunged into a faintly luminescent fog devoid of landmarks or scenery. Iron shoes rang on an endless shiny plain like a dark lake, and their reflection raced along below them.

  "Hoo?" the owl screeched, digging talons into the padding on his arm. "Where is this?"

  "Are you Chabi or Sorghaghtani?"

  "Who? Do I look like Sorghaghtani? Do I sound like Chabi? What part of the spirit world is this?"

  "No part, so far as I know. I call it the Unplace." He had settled on this as the least distracting dreamscape for his ghostly excursions—not properly demon rides, because Smeòrach was not demonized. Smeòrach was probably not necessary at all, but he was company, and his presence reassured the people Toby journeyed to meet in the real world. Better a demonized horse than a demonized commander.

  He patted Smeòrach's neck. "Faster, lad, faster!" Their speed had nothing to do with him, of course, but the big oaf didn't understand Gaelic anyway. He seemed to enjoy the exercise on the endless flat surface.

  "How can you stand it without a drum?" asked the owl-shaman. "How long must we stay?"

  "I never know." Even the hob could not move him instantaneously. "I only hope I haven't left it too late."

  Busily using claws and beak, she worked her way up his arm to his shoulder. "What went wrong, Little One?"

  "I blundered. I think I was just too tired." He had ridden round to all the Allied camps the previous night, returning to Florence just before dawn to do a day's work before he went off to attend Lisa's wedding. As always he had closed off what he thought of as his hob memories, so that he would not need to tell lies to anyone, but in his haste and weariness he must have barred the door too well. He had failed to remember his other existence when he needed to.

  Chabi turned her head around, scanning the Unplace. Sometimes she seemed to make complete revolutions with her neck, but that couldn't be right. "How long have you been coming here?"

  "You are Sorghie, aren't you?"

  "Who? Why don't you answer my question?"

  "Who asks? Since just after Trent. In the middle of the battle, Nevil sent demons after me, and I fought them off. Not only demons, though—a couple of arrows seemed to veer away from me, and once I was charging straight at a cannon and their match went out when they tried to fire it. Later, when I had time to think, I decided I'd been using the hob's powers, but the hob hadn't gone on a rampage. Neither of us has gone insane since, so far as I can tell. The Fillan hob and I are pretty much one and the same now."

  "Did you not tell us that you feared you would turn into a demon incarnate if that happened?" The familiar sounded annoyed, although Sorghie must have realized she was dealing with two separate Tobys, and the daytime version did not know the moonlight version existed.

  "I do. It's my worst nightmare, but if this will help overthrow Nevil, I am willing to take the risk. I try not to use gramarye except when I must." He sighed. "Sometimes it just happens, like a blink happens if something comes too close to your eyes." Or like repelling Lucrezia's advances by dropping a statue across her path, or putting Hamish to sleep so he wouldn't notice the midnight comings and goings.

  Smeòrach was flagging, and Toby resisted the urge to drive the big fellow faster. They would arrive when they arrived. Sometimes a jaunt from Florence to Fiesole took longer than a trek to Naples or Milan or Venice. The first time he had ventured on a nightmare ride like this had been his journey to Rome for the secret audience with Ricciardo Cardinal Marradi.

  "In this horrible place, why are you laughing, Little One?"

  "Who are you calling a Little One, chicken? I was remembering that fight I had with a squirrel in your spirit world, Sorghie dear. I just realized what memory you almost awoke."

  —|—

  His Eminence had stipulated that the meeting be held at Tivoli, in the hills east of the Eternal City, where he had a summer villa, but this was not summer, and Toby emerged from the Unplace into a chilly drizzle. He had not thought to bring a cloak. Obviously he had much to learn about his new abilities.

  The Magnificent had given him directions beginning at the bridge, meaning he must first find the bridge in pitch-darkness without falling into the gorge. Just how he managed that he could not have explained, nor even how he follow
ed the trail once he had located it, but eventually he rode up to the gates bearing the Marradi arms. He was well aware that he was mud-spattered and soaked, reeking of wet horse and wet man, and he towered four or five hands taller than the wizened old doorkeeper who answered his knock, but this ancient showed no sign of surprise or alarm at the mysterious night visitor. Having admitted him in complete silence and barred the door again, he took up his lantern and led the way through a building that seemed much more a mansion than a villa. The wan light flickered on marble and gilt, hinting at riches crouching in the shadows. By the time he was ushered into the great man's presence, Toby had almost stopped dripping a muddy trail for the servants to clean up.

  The cardinal had obviously been napping over a book in a comfortable chair. He roused himself and strutted forward like a robin, offering his ring to be kissed, but holding it low enough to leave no doubt that Toby was expected to kneel first. So he knelt and was left shivering on his knees on a very cold marble floor while his host wandered back to stand in front of the hearth. The doorkeeper, having added a few more logs to the fire, had withdrawn, still silent, and no one had mentioned warm spiced wine. No one had said anything about hospitality for Smeòrach, either, but of course he was assumed to be demonized.

  "State your case," the cardinal said. "You are wasting our time unless you have something new to say."

  The noble acolyte was small, pudgy, and chinless in his grandiose red robes; and for his manners he deserved to be kicked very hard from Sicily to the Alps.

  "I have defeated the Fiend in battle, Your Eminence. That is new. No other man can say as much."

  The cardinal shrugged. "You bested one of his underlings, not Nevil himself. You did so by using gramarye, which decent men do not touch. Last week your arch-hexer died a deservedly horrible death in Siena, so now you come crawling to the... no?"

  "With respect, Your Eminence, Baron Oreste remains in excellent health."

  The little man scowled. "Carry on, then."

  After that cool beginning, the audience waxed even frostier. His Eminence conceded that the College might possess a few immured demons that had not yet been destroyed, but not that it kept any great horde of them in the crypts of Rome. Even if some could be found and their names determined, the Holy Father was adamant that the College could never allow them to be used, nay not even to defend Italy from the Fiend. That would be a great evil.

  Oreste believed that the College used its vast cache of confiscated demons to defend Rome itself. That, he had said, was why the cardinal had insisted on meeting Toby at Tivoli, because any attempt to ride a demonized horse closer to the city would be very quickly fatal. He also suspected that the present Holy Father was senile and the College was badly divided on the question of how far it could bend its principles in order to resist the Fiend.

  "If the gramarye were to be strictly limited to defense?" Toby asked. His knees ached, and the cold of his wet tunic had soaked through to his bones.

  The cardinal sniffed. "And what is defense, pray? A bowman shoots at you so you wipe out an entire army and call it defense? I see no point in continuing this conversation."

  "I am trying to save your native city from total destruction, Your Eminence."

  "It sounds to me as if you are exposing it to totally unnecessary risk. I can't imagine why my brother would waste a moment contemplating the wild plot you suggest. The Holy Father would be incensed if he heard that I was even discussing the use of gramarye. It is an evil that has perverted many fine adepts into hexers and so damned them."

  "With respect, Your Eminence, the baron believes that he can find volunteers to handle the demons according to his instructions. They would not be jeopardizing their souls with forbidden knowledge."

  The cardinal considered that offer, pouting. It was the first time he had hesitated. Oreste thought the arrangement would appeal to the College because it could more easily deny involvement if it supplied only the immured demons and not the adepts to handle them.

  "I doubt that that is possible."

  "Maestro Fischart will be more than willing to attend Your Eminence to explain how he can arrange this."

  Marradi shook his dewlaps in refusal. "I had as soon turn my villa into a public brothel as consort with anyone so notorious. The solution is of very doubtful morality. Granted that war requires taking risks, these volunteers of his, by their innocence and ignorance, would be placed in grave danger from the very demons they expected to control."

  It seemed that nothing would work. The cause was hopeless, and Toby was becoming increasingly worried about Smeòrach, shivering outside in the rain. He had only one last desperate plea left in his bag.

  "If the use of the demons were strictly limited, Your Eminence? The heart of my plan is that the Allies encircle Nevil without his knowing. With sufficient gramarye, their armies could be concealed from his view until the trap had been closed. If this is evil, surely it is no more evil than resisting his invasion by the use of cold steel or black powder?"

  The adept gathered his scarlet robes more tightly over his little paunch as he thought about that. "What guarantees would you give that the demons be used for that purpose only?" he asked suspiciously.

  A gleam of hope flickered. "Any guarantees Your Eminence requires."

  Heavy lids drooped over the fishy eyes. "And if I require you to pledge your life on it?" the cardinal asked softly.

  "I will pledge."

  "You will swear?"

  "I will swear."

  The little man's voice grew quieter yet. "Would you submit to a stronger charge than that?"

  So much for the doctrine that the College never indulged in gramarye. Toby doubted that the hob would allow him to be hexed with a lethal conjuration, but if he breathed a word about the hob to this pompous little parasite, he would find himself with an iron blade through his heart in very short order.

  "Anything Your Eminence requires." He hoped that the hob, if it did rebel, would begin by frying Ricciardo Cardinal Marradi in batter.

  "Mm." The arch-acolyte seemed almost disappointed. "I shall discuss this proposal with my colleagues. Return in four days at the same hour, and I will let you know then of Their Eminences' decision. If it is favorable, I may even have some material for you to transport to your hexer, Fischart. I warn you that you will be the one pledged for their proper use and safe return."

  —|—

  The College, or some powerful faction within the College, did accept the agreement. Even more surprising, the hob did not object to the binding, and Toby had returned from his second trip to Tivoli carrying the squirrel's horde, a sack of jewels so heavy that even he could barely lift it single-handed.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Without warning the mists wavered, and the hoofbeats lost their odd metallic note. Trees came into view, at first like wraiths and then more distinct. A wall, a gate... reality returned at the wooded uphill edge of the muddy, disfigured slope where the Don Ramon Company had camped for half a year.

  Smeòrach rarely made a fuss entering the Unplace, but coming out of it was another matter. There were dangers in the real world, in this case shrubbery, walls, many men on horses, and a foul reek of burning. He brayed, bucked, and kicked up his heels. Toby was no Don Ramon. He was an adequate horseman at best, and he had no saddle. He hit the real world with a crack that blew all the air out of his lungs. Chabi went in search of a tree. Demons! That was not exactly a dignified way to begin a war. His linen armor had saved him from serious hurt, but he needed a moment to let the sky and branches stop spinning.

  A banner bearing the winged lion of Venice came into view, being carried by a puzzled-looking young gonfalonier on a white horse. A knight in full armor on an armored destrier appeared beside him.

  "Hawking with an owl?" inquired the mocking tones of Captain-General Alfredo. "In daylight? How many mice today, messer?"

  Ignoring the scorn for the moment, Toby sat up and took stock. The villa had been sacked the previous morning�
��he had seen the smoke then, and now he could smell it and view the charred remains. But the Fiend's troops had moved on, and in the night Alfredo's had come, the army of Venice that had been treading on Nevil's heels all the way from Bologna. The wood was full of knights and their warhorses, and there would be companies of infantry behind them. This was a small host compared to Nevil's multitude, although it included men of Padua, Verona, Ferrara, and many humbler towns. Even villages and hamlets had sent their youth to Florence to fight the Fiend.

  To his left, the dozen or so hooded figures in white robes were Maestro Fischart and his hexers. Downslope, Smeòrach was still playing the fool, and no one had dared to go after him because they all thought he was demonized. Toby put two fingers in his mouth and whistled. The first edge of the sun blazed on the horizon, but there was still time, for Fiesole was very high. Dawn would come later down on the plain, where Florence glowed pink in the morning light, with no sign of war yet. Two hundred thousand men—it was a shock to realize that Nevil himself must be down there, too. For the first time in his life, Toby Longdirk was within reach of his implacable foe.

  The Fiend had walked into his trap. That felt very good.

  Feeling ready to face Stiletto's mockery, he scrambled to his feet. "Good day to you, Captain-General. Last night the darughachi appointed me comandante of the armies of Italy."

  A careful smile appeared under Alfredo's visor. "Officially at last? Congratulations! Well earned. And what orders have you for us today, Your Excellency?" As if he did not know.

  "Just one, messer." Toby pointed to the enemy. "Kill!"

  Alfredo's grin became more convincing. He raised his silver baton in salute. "It shall be done, comandante. Drummer, sound the Prepare to Advance!"