The Witch of Torinia

by Clifford Beal

  Danamis sighed, a long exhalation of weary exasperation. He had only just arrived and already found nearly half of Valdur lined up against them. “I’ve got a few hundred men and two ships. I can get a party here to the palace to form a bodyguard for you and the prince. A dagger in your boot so to speak, if it comes to that. But only if you think that will help your security and not insult your palace guard.”

  Cressida wet her lips. “It’s delicate. You know that. But I will accept your offer. For Sarant’s sake.”

  “Consider it done. Now what of the city—the Decurions, the Prelate and the rest of the Temple priesthood?”

  “They are standing loyal so far as I can tell but talk of war is on all tongues. Whether their backbones will stay straight if Torinian and Milvornan armies appear, I cannot say.”

  “Mother?”

  A boy burst into the chamber, an abashed guardsman at his heels. Danamis stood up to greet the prince of Valdur, dressed in a fine dark silk gown with a dagger on his hip. The boy halted at his mother’s chair, placing a hand on the ornate carved lion’s head of the armrest. Cressida dismissed the guard and stroked her son’s chest lovingly. Danamis took in the lad’s jet black hair, as dark and full as his own and the large blue-grey eyes. He had been praying the boy was blonde, or even ginger and freckled. Still, the king had dark hair, he remembered. This was no consolation even if the lad’s complexion was fair like his mother’s.

  “Is this the pirate you spoke of?” the prince inquired, staring down Danamis somewhat haughtily with one hand on his golden dagger.

  “This is Messere Nicolo Danamis, knight of the Silver Boar and an Admiral of Valdur. He is indeed the one I told you of.”

  Danamis bowed. “I am your servant, my prince.”

  The boy fixed him with a steady gaze. “They won’t let me be king yet. I don’t think that’s fair. I am already king now that my father is dead. What can you do about that?”

  Danamis looked over to Cressida, who silently seemed to be urging him to give answer. He looked back to Sarant, who was still staring at him and no doubt puzzling out if one such as Danamis could be trusted. “I will do all in my power to see that you sit on your throne when the law says you may. You’re right. You are the king now. But you must listen to your mother.”

  “There. Wise words and the same as I told you before,” said Cressida, soothingly. “Now go back to your chambers and wait for me.”

  His face, innocent and young as it was, already had a hard, determined cast. He remained expressionless as he looked up at Danamis, as if the answer was not the one he had been hoping for. He took two steps back and gave a court bow to Danamis and then another to Cressida before leaving the chamber.

  Slowly, Danamis sat down again, one question burning on his lips.

  “He took the death of his father very hard,” said Cressida quietly. “Probably harder than me. He was in the throne room when the creature lashed out and bit Sempronius. At first I thought that was cruel of God—that he had to witness such a thing. Then it struck me that it was a good lesson for a future king. Never underestimate your enemies. Or overestimate the promises of friends.”

  “Where does that leave me then?”

  Cressida smiled. “I haven’t overestimated you.”

  “You think there was more to what happened to Sempronius than the attack of a wild beast? I saw the cockatrice when last I was here. Thought it was tame.”

  “Something changed that creature. It was always unruly but never savage. I saw how it went for Sempronius, and no one else. Its eyes had changed from red to black, I swear it.”

  “Guided by another’s hand?”

  She shrugged. “And why not? I remember the satyr’s prophecy. The priests tell of dark rumblings in the countryside. The Old Faith stirring.”

  Danamis remembered the horror at Ivrea that he and Strykar had seen; that which had nearly killed Citala. “More reason to gain allies why there is still time. Send word to the dukes of Maresto and Saivona. To Ivrea. Tell them the throne is endangered and that you are calling them to their oaths. Demand that your father send an army from Colonna. Use the Temple messenger birds if you can trust the Prelate. There is little time to lose.”

  The queen leaned closer to him. “Are you telling me to invade Torinia or Milvorna before Ursino has even declared himself traitor? Before he has even threatened Perusia?”

  Danamis studied his untouched plate piled high with food. His mouth was dry. “Yes. I am saying exactly that. Strike before Ursino strikes you. For he surely will.”

  “They will say I do this because of you. Because Palestro and Maresto are already at war with Torinia. But, even so, I know you are right, Nico. If I wait until the hammer falls it will be too late to do anything.”

  For a moment neither of them said a thing. Danamis looked past the queen towards the doorway. The guards stood like statues, uninvolved in what was being said and hopefully out of earshot.

  “Cressida... is he mine?”

  The queen looked at him with neither affection nor anger, her emotions colourless. But her delicate right hand, resting upon the table, extended and settled on his own, gently pressing down on his tanned and roughened knuckles. Her touch triggered old memories. His eyes fell to her hand: very warm, small and pale, so very much unlike his mermaid’s.

  “No, of course he’s not,” she replied.

  IN THE LIGHT of the huge wrought iron lantern on Vendetta’s quarterdeck, Danamis squinted at the smudged and crumpled piece of paper in his hands. Torches on the docks blazed, keeping the darkness at bay as his men stood at the watch on the quay. He had been distracted ever since returning from the palace late that afternoon, fretting over the advice he had given to the queen. Reticence was a trait he was rarely afflicted with, but this time, he was feeling he may have promised too much. What if all the duchies, excepting Maresto, were in sympathy with Ursino? And he thought of the boy. To Citala, keen at his return, he did not confide his worry or tell much that had transpired at the palace. He convinced himself this was because he owed his report to Bassinio and Gregorvero first. Then, as the hour had grown late and the crew had gone to their berths, Citala awaiting him below, a street urchin had delivered a note to the shore watch.

  “Come now, what does it say?” demanded Gregorvero, pushing his way in over Danamis’s shoulder.

  Danamis angled the paper anew. “It’s in a cramped hand I can barely read, and I am no scholar as it stands.” He lowered his hands and looked at Gregorvero. “Someone says they have information for me. About the attempt on my life last summer. They give a place, and a time. Happens to be now. Says look for a man in a red padded coif. A soldier.”

  “Anything else? Who are they?”

  Danamis scoffed. “No, just the usual. A purse of gold.”

  “Are you meeting him then?”

  “I’ll take four men. It’s not far. Behind the taverns on the quay.”

  Gregorvero shook his head like an annoyed bear. “No, no, Nico. More likely than not like they’re planning on finishing what they botched before. If you must go then take a dozen, me included.”

  “And frighten them off? No, just a few with me and even they’ll hang back, unless there’s trouble. But you can come if you’re worried.”

  Gregorvero smiled. “Oh, aye, you can count on that.”

  Talis and two of his brawniest led them torch in hand as they made their way through the alley at the opposite end of the quay. No less than five drinking houses lay here, interspersed with the bay-front warehouses of Perusia. They found the one they needed—a small pictogram of a grinning dog-ape holding a wine jug had been scrawled on the note—and they slowly made their way into the dilapidated lean-to of the tavern. Out in the yard filled with trestles and benches, perhaps two dozen seamen and traders drank their wine and conversed, a roaring fire pit at the centre sending sparks floating into the lush cypress trees beyond. In the orange glow, Danamis scanned the fringes for the man who sought him. It wasn’t diff
icult to find him. Down at the back, only a few lone souls—either drunk or asleep—were thinly spread near where a tall stone wall snaked its way through the neighbourhood.

  The man was leaning up against a tall gate post, a close-fitting soldier’s cap, scarlet red, upon his head, tapes untied. Danamis motioned to Gregorvero and the others to hold back and he alone went down into the yard. The man had not yet seen him, standing motionless with his chin drooping slightly, as if in thought. Danamis gently swept back his cloak and reached across his belly to put a hand on his falchion’s hilt. He stopped a sword length away from the man.

  “Hail, friend. Are you looking for a ship from Palestro?”

  The man’s eyes seemed to look past Danamis and no reply came. Danamis raised his voice. “If you have intelligence for me you’d better spit it out and be done.”

  Just above the man’s high-necked doublet, and what he initially mistook as a button, he now saw to be the small silver pommel of a blackened dagger. It was protruding from the hollow of the man’s throat above the collar. Danamis swore an oath and stepped forward. The long stiletto had been thrust in up to the hilt and out at the man’s nape, deep into the wood post. It was holding him upright—dead on his feet.

  Sixteen

  THE SILVER ARM stood upon the table, the delicate female hand raised in greeting. Every detail of the sleeve, from wrist to flattened elbow serving as a base, was finely etched, a bracelet of emeralds and garnets rendered in astounding relief circled the wrist itself. Saint Ursula the martyr gestured skyward, frozen in time. Halfway down the forearm, a glass window revealed a gruesome fragment of yellowed bone.

  “One must admit he was right.”

  The High Priest shook his head at Acquel, a look of mild disgust on his face. “It will fool no one. It looks too new for a start.”

  “We can rub it down with ash and soot. Make it appear old.” Acquel reached out and touched the cold metallic limb. “We are lucky to have this in just a week.”

  Kodoris was in no mood to compromise his scepticism. “Volpe’s beautiful deception won’t save Livorna. That old goat’s cynicism knows no bounds. All this will accomplish is to cheapen the One Faith and lose us the confidence of the people.”

  “Volpe’s logic is sound, Holiness. The people will see that one side is lying and they are more likely to believe that the Torinians have the changeling—not us.”

  Kodoris moved around the table and stood at the high arched window that looked out on to the inner gardens of the monastery. “It will do us little good regardless, Brother Acquelonius. I have yet to hear from the dukes of Saivona or Maresto. They have abandoned us it seems. Perhaps they take the side of Duke Ursino, that he is the true protector of the Faith. Not us.”

  Acquel’s hand rested on the pommel of the sidesword that hung from his waist, an accoutrement he still found awkward. “Duke Ursino is a pretender of the Faith. At best he is being bewitched into his actions. At worst he has gone over to the old religion and embraced it.”

  Kodoris’s voice became soft, almost plaintive. “I cannot rid my mind of what I saw when I burned with the fever. Those terrible riders, destroyers of worlds. They are coming.”

  “And we will fight them.”

  Kodoris turned back to him. “With what? A metal arm such as this? A few spells from Ugo Volpe’s book of plants?”

  Acquel’s heart sank. His fate was in many ways tied to that of Kodoris: he had concealed the man’s role in murder to ensure the new commandments would be adopted by the Temple hierarchy. But in the days following the attack in the Temple, and his wounding by the hell wasps, the High Priest had grown increasingly dejected and detached. Now, Acquel worried that the leader of the Faith was losing his mind. “Elded chose me as his vessel to carry the new Word. The amulet guides us, quiet as it may be. The Saint will not abandon us to the horrors we have seen.”

  The High Priest fingered the ten-spoked golden medallion, a blazing sun, that hung from his neck. “You are right. But he has chosen separate paths for each of us. The enemy appears to have direction and guidance in full measure. I wish Elded’s revelations were less obscure and his help more obvious.” His eyes fell to the silver arm upon the table. “You may take that away. Do with it what you will.”

  “Do you not wish to hear of our preparations? At the walls and the gates?”

  “No, that is your jurisdiction, Magister. I go now to pray at the Temple. For all our souls.”

  “Prayer and battle are both needed, Holiness,” replied Acquel. “You once wielded a sword. You know what war is like. I need your skill as much as Brother Ugo’s.”

  Kodoris’s eyes seemed to look past Acquel, through him, as if something else entirely was playing out in his disordered mind. “Battle... yes. I know I will see battle again. But for my many sins, Brother Acquel, my battle will be very different from yours. I have foreseen it.”

  ACQUEL JOINED UGO Volpe and Lieutenant Poule on the barbican gate of the city, only recently shored up from the earthquake of a year ago. In the past weeks the old monk and the mercenary had become fast friends and fond of a shared pot of wine. As Acquel made his way along the high wall towards the top of the barbican he saw that Poule had already begun to stock the embrasures with barrels of sand and buckets of water. Cast iron braziers on tripods stood every thirty feet, ready to be stoked and fired to light arrows. Where the walkway met the crenelated walls, he saw long forked poles lying at the ready. He was no soldier but their purpose was obvious: to push off and tumble scaling ladders that would be raised against the outer walls.

  “Have you seen the piazza down in the town, Brother Acquel?” shouted Poule as the young Magister reached them. “Looking like market day every day of the week what with bullock, cow and pig stockaded from end to end. They’re paying five men just to shovel shit from dawn to dusk!”

  Acquel nodded. “We must deny the Torinians of as much as we can outside the walls. God knows how long a siege might last.”

  “A long siege might be the least of our problems,” said Volpe ominously, “if the enemy storm us within a few days. The wall at the western end, near the monastery, is low. That’s a weakness for us. The barbican here—and at the east gate—I think are strong. The lieutenant agrees.”

  Poule nodded vigorously. “Aye. Strong enough,” he said, “but I reckon we’ll be stretched thin along the length of the city wall. Barely enough men even if we put a bow or a bill in every monk’s hand. If the Blue Boar and the rest of ’em scale us at the Ara end—as well as here—we’d better hope the saints are watching out for us.”

  Acquel looked out over the walls, his eyes settling on the dry ditch and drawbridge and then moving out over the broken rolling countryside south. “Will they have guns?”

  Poule thrust out his lower lip. “They’ll have guns all right. Question is, will they be field guns or siege pieces? I don’t rightly know what kind of a pummelling this old gate can take.”

  Acquel somehow managed a laugh, borne of desperation. “I thought my commanders might have some plans for a defence of Livorna rather than just complaints.”

  Poule held up his hands. “Easy, brother! I hadn’t gotten to that yet! We’ll be hard stretched but that useless castellan did point us to a good store of gunpowder and a few hackbuts if we can find any of the militia who know how to load and fire them.” He grinned widely. “And I spied some clay fire pots in the arsenal as well. Maybe fifty or so. Fill ’em with pitch and rags and push in a saltpetre fuse and they’ll give the Torinians a rain they won’t soon forget.”

  Volpe noticed the dark cast to Acquel’s youthful face. “Fear not, we have a strong position here. The walls are sound and we have missiles to last a fair few of their assaults. If we bloody their nose they may leave us for easier prey.”

  “And how many men do we have now?” asked Acquel.

  Poule wiped his forefinger under his nose. “Aye, best as I can figure, the Count can summon a hundred or so—many have seen some service. The militia�
��next to useless. They’ve got more experience of tavern brawls than war—we can equip around three hundred of those from Marsilius’s armoury. That leaves your Templars on the Ara.”

  “Four hundred on the rolls.”

  Poule nodded. “Of which I reckon three hundred and fifty can wield a sword or a crossbow without managing to kill themselves.”

  “A very thin gravy,” muttered Acquel.

  “Aye, but the enemy won’t know that,” said Poule. “We station what we have at the two weakest points on the walls and pray to Elded. At least your Templars can pray and fight. You were well ahead of things to begin recruiting your fighting monks when you did, Brother Acquel. Otherwise, we’d be down to tradesmen and merchants holding back the tide.”

  Acquel’s fingers tapped his sword pommel. “And we have six constables to divide up the militiamen and men-at-arms.”

  Again Poule gave a vigorous nod. “Some good men there. I’ve met every a one now. They know when the bells sound to gather their soldiers and take to the battlements.”

  Volpe turned to Acquel. “You know they will ask for the surrender of Livorna first? Are you ready to speak from the walls when their herald comes calling. It falls to you as Magister, if not the Castellan or Count Marsilius.”

  Acquel had already rehearsed such a moment each night for the past week as he lay abed. If he refused and they stormed the city, they would kill and plunder at will. And every surviving monk would be put to the sword. Livorna would be awash in the blood of innocents. “They want the High Priest, and me as well. Lucinda della Rovera will see to that. It does not benefit them to destroy Livorna. They want to turn it.”

  Volpe smiled, his deep-set eyes twinkling with fire. “We won’t be handing you or the city to them. We will have a few tricks to show them. And mercenaries don’t much like sieges from my experience. They hate climbing ladders when folk are pouring buckets of hot sand or shit down on them. Am I right, young Bartolo?”