by Aidan Harte
Geta dashed back inside, found his charger and mounted up. ‘Avanti!’ he cried as he led a dozen men through the gate into the piazza. They rode three abreast, and the clatter of hoofs on cobblestones echoed over the roar of the fire. Up ahead, a black figure holding a bottle stuffed with a burning rag backed away from the palazzo. In a fluid practised motion, Geta released his reins, slowed his horse with his legs, reached for his arquebus and whipped out the weapon. He took aim, snapped the flint and fired. The figure in the distance spun where he stood, but did not fall; instead, he ran limping for the bridge, and when he reached the lions, threw down his bottle. It exploded, leaving a rather feeble line of fire at the bridge entrance.
The recoil had knocked Geta out of the saddle, but he sat up laughing. ‘There – clipped the bastard!’ he shouted. ‘On, lads! Ride him down!’ Other riders leapt over Geta, swords drawn, prey in sight and the scent of blood in their nostrils. Their trained destriers effortlessly leapt the fire and thundered onto the bridge.
As Geta remounted, he glanced at what remained of the Palazzo del Popolo. The clock tower struck its final hour, then tumbled with a great groan of cracking metal and the muffled dusty pops of bricks exploding from the heat and pressure. Geta considered himself something of an expert when it came to arson; he realised that it needed more than a few oil bottles to set that blaze. This had taken time. He thought of the night-watch’s eyes so carefully removed and without thought, slowed his horse to a standstill. A second wave of cavalry rode by, hastening to the bridge, and Geta looked at the other side of the bridge. The fleeing figure was escaping into Piazza Stella, his limp miraculously cured.
‘Get off the bridge!’ Geta roared. ‘It’s a trap!’
Some already halfway across heard the warning and turned around, and Geta realised his mistake. ‘No!’ he screamed, ‘keep going!’
They turned again in confusion, more running into them even as others turned back, causing total mayhem.
Cursing all fools, Geta pulled his horse about and jammed his spurs in its haunches mercilessly—
First there was a patterning drumroll, barely perceptible, except for the soles of the feet, the fingertips.
Pah-Pah-Pah-Pah-Pah-Pah
Then came a world-rolling pounding, like a wave breaking overhead.
OOOoooommmmm
The bridge suddenly turned black, its graceful arch silhouetted by the synchronised explosions around the supporting pillars, glowing yellow as the flames licked greedily around it. Bits of horse and men and lumps that could have been either slowly floated upwards before raining down in sizzling blobs that congealed in greasy pools on the river surface. White glowing stones that had been balustrades, pillars and archways hurtled up into the sky and tumbled beside the stars.
The explosives had been tightly packed at either end of the bridge and now the arch appeared to expand for a moment, even as its components came apart, before losing cohesion, sending great boulders crashing into the piazzas on either side, smashing cobblestones into pebbles. There was a rapid pat pat pat as the three lions that had survived the Wave and years under the Irenicon vanished and the stones, all that was left of the huge beasts, rained down into the river with serpentine hisses, their individual splashes lost in the majestically billowing steam clouds.
Then … it was gone.
Rasenna was bisected once more. The last few years were exposed as an impossible, aberrant dream, now dissipating just like the ringing echo of the explosion, fading away and leaving the roar of the Irenicon unchallenged. The few disorientated riders who made it across to Piazza Stella were felled by arrows and rocks and banners, then finished off by a giant death-dealing figure with hammers in place of hands.
Geta had been thrown off his horse again, this time by the explosion. He landed badly and was knocked unconscious, but he was lucky: he was far enough away to avoid the heaviest of the falling debris.
When he awoke, he was covered in grey dust that streaked black where the water streamed from his eyes. He limped back, but headed not to the fortezza but to the adjoining stable. The doors swung open. He stepped inside and found all the cells were open and empty, as was the trapdoor to the cellar, where the Hawk’s Company’s powder reserves had been stored.
Those condottieri who saw Geta emerge couldn’t understand why he looked so merry. How could he explain to men to whom war was only a profession? This was why he’d come back to Rasenna. Mayhem was home here.
CHAPTER 83
‘Torbidda?’ The Drawing Hall’s door was ajar and though Leto walked in feeling like an interloper, he found himself remembering many happy hours spent in that room. He stopped in front of the warped mirror to examine his uniform, and to compare his current self with the boy he’d been. The comparison was not pleasant. Through old, experienced eyes he saw the endless deceit that marked his still youthful boy’s face like acid-etched metal. How did Torbidda live with it?
Outside, a cloud moved away from the sun and a sudden shaft of light struck the desk behind him. He saw the reflection of the drawing first, and he turned and approached it with a feeling of transgression, the sense of spying some forbidden thing. The scale was impossible, insane, and mildly nauseating, though it was just a drawing. All about the desk were crumpled pieces of paper, all scarred with the same dense scribbling, rows of digits overlapping each other, sometimes scratched out, with lines drawn between the rows at various angles. Scattered about the floor were old Ebionite and Etruscan texts, with passages underlined, and etchings of Solomon’s Temple and the Molè had been torn apart and taped together in mad combinations that were almost unbearable to look at.
Fra Norcino watched through the bars with a patronising smile as the coffin descended and slowed. His cell was near the bottom of the pit now. ‘Seems I shall meet the Master before you. What shall I tell him?’
‘Tell him I’ve achieved everything he did – I control Concord. Rasenna and Ariminum are broken. Tell him my cathedral will be as beautiful as his Molè was terrible. Tell him the Handmaid’s child will soon be brought to me.’
‘And you have not the wit to make use of its blood. Shall I tell him that you’re still afraid?’
‘I am master here!’ Torbidda shouted.
‘You can’t even master yourself. I can smell your fear, even here where the air is saturated with the stuff. You’re still a little boy, weeping for his mother. If you weren’t, you’d confront him.’
‘Confront him?’
‘Come, we both know why you keep returning. It’s not to keep me company. You want his wit as much as he wants your flesh. Why not fight for it? Your will against his. If you were truly a wolf, you’d fight.’
Torbidda said nothing and Norcino showed his black teeth as he laughed. ‘Fearful child, take off that red. You won it on false pretences. You’re no Apprentice. You will always be afraid until you confront him … Agrippina would not have hesitated.’
‘She should have won,’ Torbidda said, watching himself backing into the pod. ‘What if I’m not strong enough? What if I am just a lamb?’
‘Courage, lad. I know a king when I see one.’
When the door hissed closed and there was no one to hear, Torbidda whispered, ‘Madonna preserve me. I’m afraid.’
As the pod started to descend and the blue light danced between the grinding torque of the rows, Norcino started cackling. ‘Alas for thee, child, blind men make poor guides.’
A storm cloud churned around the summit of Mont Nero, and purple lightning stabbed the summit, again and again. Those watching from the streets and canals of New City swore next morning that they saw the Molè’s ghost appear every time the lightning struck. Finally, one swollen sea-blue bolt exploded in the air at a point where once Argenti had looked at the stars and wept, where once the lantern’s flame had been lit to call back a boy running for his life. The writhing electric charge dropped, straight as water falling, and impaled itself on the upraised sword of the angel, the only part of the Molè still st
anding.
It emerged a second later, searing the darkness of the pit like a razor, shooting past Norcino’s cell to the lake into which the coffin had just sunk.
The buio leapt and clawed and climbed over one another, each particle of the filthy water striving to separate itself from the rest to escape the writhing agony that churned the depths until the ascending coffin parted the surface, wreathed in fronds of black-green scum, and rose.
The exhausted water went still.
The thing inside it was no longer crying. A talented, terrified boy had descended moments before; what stepped out was something else; Fra Norcino’s blind eyes could see that plainly.
‘Welcome back, my king.’
‘Come, astrologer. The hour is late and we have work.’
The story concludes in
Spira Mirabilis
Book III of The Wave Trilogy
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
They say that Labor Vincit Omnia, but it’s nice to have help:
Seth Grodofsky assisted my research by showing me Israel, not quite from Dan to Beersheba but near enough, while Merav and the girls showed me great hospitality. Michael Harte lent me a critical pair of eyes on the first draft (he can have them back now – they’ve gone dry). Jo Fletcher deftly nipped and tucked a somewhat baggy version of The Warring States into something presentable. Throughout this my agent Ian Drury has been a constant support.
My thanks to all.
Thanks too to Nicola Budd, Lucy Ramsey, Georgina Difford, and everyone at Jo Fletcher Books and Quercus who are working hard to spread the word.
Lastly, most especially, my wife Bronagh deserves a bathtub of diamonds. Since I can’t afford one yet, I give her my love.
AH
1 Saint Eco, a follower of Saint Francis, travelled from Gubbio to Concord to minister to those unlucky Crusaders who returned from Oltremare with the venereal affliction known as Roland’s Horn. The miracles ascribed to Eco are too numerous and repetitious to relate, but his popularity was such that the Curia named their cherished cathedral for him.
2 The Author demolishes this jejune theory in Volume II, showing how the Curia’s inertia could not have been overcome without a force as dynamic as Bernoulli.
3 Today the giant skeletons of these cathedrals litter the continent. To many engineers the real tragedy of the Europan wars is they will never be rebuilt; walls expected to be bombarded cannot soar.
4 In the cities, their marble had been long cannibalised.
5 Since the fall of the Etruscan Empire, the dome had presented an insurmountable logistical challenge.
6 The centuries-old plans had been elevated to holy relics at this stage.
7 In our era of rampant egoism, it seems natural, predictable even, for an architect to disparage his predecessors. Students should be wary of projecting contemporary values onto an age when slavish ancestor-worship was the norm. It was then a given that those who wished to succeed had to adorn the dead with laurels and spew bile on innovators; this complacent ethos sat well with an institution like the Curia.
8 Revealing also the influence of Bernoulli’s ill-fated patron, Senator Postumus Tremellius Felix.
9 ‘I hate every line that is not vertical. I hate every colour that is not black. History’s chains will not bind me.’
10 Shrill but ineffective protests. Some were erudite dialogues; more popular were the lampoons that exploited traditional Concordian xenophobia: the slander that Bernoulli’s ancestors were fur-wearing northerners originated here. Ciuto Brandini’s judgement that ‘Bernoulli expresses in stone the iron in his blood‘ was much duplicated in the Piazzetta Bocca della Verità.
11 The first reliable reports of the settlement appear in the fifth century. We must not imagine the exquisite beauty of the contemporary city but a motley cluster of huts wobbling on stilts like insects.
12 Fortis Iusta Trona Furias Maris Sub Pede Pono – Enthroned, Just and Strong, I defeat the Fury of the Sea. How then to explain her recent expansion onto Terra Firma and acquisition of the accoutrements of war? Ariminumese diplomats maintain that these are precautionary measures prompted by Concordian expansion. Less biased commentators call it a betrayal of Terra da Mar, the source of her greatness.
13 Typically, former Doges.
14 One can buy one’s way into anything in Ariminum, with the exception of the Maggior Consiglio. According to tradition the Golden Book was closed forever in AD 1001 on October 1st at 10.01 AM.
15 This mundane truth is deeply unsatisfying for conspiratorial Etrurians, and where reality fails, imagination takes flight. The rumour goes that The Ten are subject to another ministry of state, the so-called Consilium Sapientium, a three-man body that spends men’s lives like days, that has not slept since the city’s foundation. The identity of these mythical wise men is a favourite speculation amongst the cognoscenti.
16 If you can ignore its plodding prose, The Bifurcated Goddess by Duke Spurius Lartius Cocles competently demonstrates that the Madonna’s iconography and supernatural powers are almost identical to the Etruscan fertility goddess, Thalna (virgin consort of the Sky God, Tins). Likewise, the Madonna’s short-lived child, Jesus, was equated with the wonder child, Tages (son of Thalna). Etruscan shrines to the fertility goddess were converted into Marian baptisteries throughout the peninsula.
17 By ‘we’, the Author means Post Re-Formation Concord; Etruria’s other cities have retained their primitive idols with a grip as tenacious as it inexplicable.
18 The worst of these values find their fullest expression the Curia of the last Century, the best, in the empire of reason founded by their successors.
19 The only pillar to survive the cataclysm was the school of cardinals based in the northern city of Concord. The vigorous new faith was a light the Curia shielded against the gathering gloom.
20 Ignore chauvinistic propaganda of ’Manifest Destiny’; Ariminum’s early start was but the accidental consequence of taking refuge in a singularly defensible lagoon. The interested reader can track Ariminum’s evolution more precisely in The Southern Principalities, an earlier chapter in this volume. It would be remiss not to mention The Stones of Ariminum, a highly regarded cultural study, also by the present Author.
21 As the post-imperial Etruscans become known. The interested reader may consult Appendix XXIII for a detailed survey into the predictably chaotic etymology of this period.
22 Inevitably, this success was seen as proof of God’s favour, but as detailed in Volume I, the late Etruscan Empire was beset with internal and external problems. Specifically, the attempt to use devalued currency to pay the legions, already exhausted and demoralised after the prolonged Sassanid war, prompted several mutinies at exactly the worst time. Absent this chaos, the Radinate could not have won so much so quickly.
23 Barabbas was the first ‘Rightly Guided’ Melic. Following the Schism, Saul derisively described Barabbas’ followers as ‘the Poor Ones’. Barabbas responded that, before God, all were poor. Thereafter Ebionite became an honourable appellation amongst the Jews.
24 The nomads’ contribution to the Radinate is similar to that of the Romans to the Etruscans. Also analogous is their equivocal attitude to the sybaritic excess of their respective capitals – the Radinate’s decadence prior to the Crusades had attained new depths.
25 This was not altogether selfless. Larger urban incomes meant larger tithes could be collected.
26 That is, he increased the tolls on roads and bridges along the pilgrim trail.
27 There were some tragic exceptions – in the VIII Century, an ambitious but naïve Frankish king initiated a correspondence with the renowned Ebionite melic Haroun al Raschid. Since Charles the Great was illiterate, al Raschid replied with a wonderful clockwork toy. The delighted king played with the musical menagerie until the birds fell suddenly silent. When he wound the clock it exploded. Later preachers cited this as clear evidence that all Ebionites were duplicitous and intent on killing Marians.
28 The Re
conquista myth dies hard, but the collapse of the Ebionite occupation of southern Etruria in the IX Century was a result of rivalries back in Akka more than any effort by the occupied. See Chapters III to V.
29 Whether part of the Radinate or Oltremare, this famous city bestrides East and West. While the Bosperous prevents encroachment from the East, the Dalmatian March prevents encroachment from the West.
30 The ancient martial art the Curia had preserved since Etruscan times.
31 The Old Man of the Mountain is credited with reviving the Wind-based martial art of the Sicarii.
32 This Europan interloper rudely bisected the Radinate. Alexandria became the capital of the southern Radinate and Byzant, the northern capital.
33 This was but one front on which the insatiable race advanced. Ariminum had long sought access to the trade routes that ran though Byzant and, when they solicited the now-isolated city with fresh entreaties, the previously haughty Byzantines proved receptive. In Etruria, this scandalous alliance with an Ebionite power drew down a long-threatened Curial interdiction on the Serenissima. The Ariminumese attributed this excommunication more to Concordian jealously than piety. It was, in any case, a small price to pay for Byzant’s friendship and the wealth it brought.
