Demon Knight

by Dave Duncan

  “Seems a little hasty. He’ll need at least fifteen minutes at his age.”

  Guilo had been drinking heavily. He found that remark so hilarious that he had a coughing fit, and then had to whisper the joke to his other neighbor. While it was going on down the table, he turned back to Toby to explain how the bride and groom would complete the ceremonies by visiting the sanctuary next morning as husband and wife. In this case, that would be when the prince would recognize Cousin Pietro as King of England, Ireland, and other barbarous places.

  Assuming Nevil’s ghouls had not broken through the gates by then.

  Toby fidgeted, wondering how the war was going. The sun no longer shone into the courtyard. Servants removed the canopies over the tables. He should return to duty, although there was no reasonable chance that Nevil would be in a position to attack before tomorrow at the earliest. Sartaq would undoubtedly speak at some point in the evening. He should wait for that.

  Another glittering goblet was paraded along the tables. Who was going to be the lucky one this time? Marradi took the goblet, filled it, and rose to his feet. He was pinker than usual, but so was everyone after all the food and wine. “Your Highness, my lords …”

  Obviously it was to be Toby himself. He gritted his teeth, wondering what he could possibly say in his response. A few words of thanks were customary, but they would want more than that from him. What was there to say—that he was sorry? That they had entrusted their city to the wrong man? That he would have tried to do better next time but there wasn’t going to be a next time? Try to lay the blame on Marradi himself and the Khan’s son?

  Now the Magnificent walked across, but he did not at once give Toby the goblet. Smiling, he looked around to include the ladies, then spoke to the men. “This is an unusual announcement at a wedding, friends, but in this case a very appropriate one. You all know that the Chevalier D’Anjou was wounded in battle and is now reported to have died, although that has not been confirmed. In his place, with the permission and enthusiastic agreement of His Highness, in my capacity of suzerain for His Majesty Ozberg Khan the Glorious, I name Sir Tobias Longdirk comandante in capo of all loyal armies in Italy, and charge him to drive the rebel forces from the land!”

  What a good idea! It came three months too late, though.

  Loud applause. One or two of the men were drunk enough to cheer. Toby rose and leaned across the table to accept the gift. It was heavier than he expected, his fingers were still greasy from the lamb ragout … or perhaps he felt a prickle of warning from the hob. Whatever the reason, he dropped the cup. It hit the board between him and Marradi and exploded rich red wine all over the Magnificent. He fell back with a cry of anger.

  Somebody screamed very shrilly.

  Marradi wiped his eyes with a sleeve, waving his other hand for a towel as servants came running to assist. He dropped his arms and gaped incredulously at Toby … slid limply to his knees … toppled facedown … and lay there, motionless.

  Many people screamed then. Guilo and even old Whitemouth leaped to their feet, knocking over their stools in their haste to get as far as possible from the scarlet stains on the white cloth. Prince Sartaq vaulted nimbly over the table and was the first to reach the corpse. He knelt to see, but he did not touch it. Several Tartar guards came roaring into the courtyard, with two shamans at their backs. Screaming, shouting, and hysteria.

  Toby said nothing, did nothing. That was more than poison. That wine had been hexed. That was supposed to be him lying there.

  “Silence!” Sartaq was on his feet, and his bellow echoed over the tumult. Despite his youth, his voice had a royal resonance that compelled respect. He pointed at the women, who were all on their feet by now. “Which of you screamed first? Who was it?”

  In the icy moment of horror while the accusation gelled, all faces turned to face one face.

  “Lucrezia!” Lisa shouted, backing away.

  “Lucrezia!” said another.

  Lucrezia shrank as if she were arching her back like a cat. She raised a clawed hand to her mouth, gabbled a command, and was gone, vanished as she had vanished when the statue fell on the night of the Carnival Ball. More screams. Women swooned. Men rushed around the ends of the tables to reach them and comfort them. The shamans began thumping their drums, either exorcising the poison or trying to locate the culprit. An ashen-faced Hamish had his arms around the widow, who was clinging to him fiercely and sobbing on his chest. That was not going to reduce the scandal any.

  The Magnificent was dead. Florence had no ruler.

  The suzerain was dead.

  The Fiend was outside the walls.

  “Longdirk!” Sartaq roared.

  “Your Highness?”

  “Did you mean to do that?”

  “No, Your Grace. I didn’t know. It slipped through my fingers.” Was that true? Had he been incredibly lucky or had the hob saved him?

  The prince stared very hard at him, as if trying to read his thoughts. “Very well. Your appointment stands, comandante. Go and attend to your duties. Go and save the city.”

  Where had this vibrant royal leader come from? Why hadn’t he appeared months ago, when there had still been time to save the city?

  Hamish was still consoling Lisa.

  Toby bowed and hurried from the courtyard.

  43

  He commandeered a Marradi horse and galloped through streets darkened by evening shadows but still breathlessly hot. An ominous hush had settled over Florence. The revelers had dispersed—many to the sanctuary to pray, no doubt, and others to the walls or bell towers to watch the Fiend’s armies digging in. The shock of the Magnificent’s death was still to come.

  In the stable yard he hit the ground running, yelling for Smeòrach to be made ready even as he dived through the low door into the inn itself. Brother Bartolo was holding court there at a table littered with papers and several abacuses; clerks and pages were streaming in and out the front door like ants provisioning their nest. “Report!” Toby roared, and went up the stairs at a rush, which risked breaking an ankle or stunning himself on the beams, but he made it to the top safely and ran along the gallery, hauling off his doublet. Shirt and hose followed it as soon as he was in his room; he grabbed up the fighting garments he had left there ready: shirt, breeches, padded jerkin.

  Floorboards creaked outside, then Bartolo’s great bulk filled the doorway. His normally rubicund face was pale as parchment.

  “Well?” Toby demanded, stamping his feet into riding boots.

  “Two hundred and three thousand. Still coming.”

  “From Lucca, too? Well, they won’t be much good for a few days.” Nevil’s fondness for exhausting his armies with inhuman marches would betray him sooner or later—but not this time, because there was no enemy to oppose him. “You can stop counting now. Did you organize the bell towers?”

  “We have reliable watchers in every campanile, and a sharp-eyed youngster as well. If they try any sort of sneak attack anywhere, the nearest bells will start ringing. The guards on the walls have been told how to use the bells to call for help.”

  “Good work. Put the criers into the streets right away—I’ve been appointed comandante in capo.”

  The friar beamed. “Well, that is certainly the best—”

  Toby buckled on his sword. “And the Magnificent is dead.”

  Bartolo’s gurgle of horror was a fair warning of how Florentines would react. Florence without a Marradi to run it was unthinkable, and there was no obvious heir ready to take over.

  “What? How?”

  “Murdered. Announce my appointment first!” Toby squeezed around him to reach the door. “Keep the other thing under your“—he ran along the gallery—”cowl!” He avalanched down the stairs. Clerks scattered out of his way like chickens.

  He rode first to the Porta al Prato, near the stadium, which was an obvious site for an attack and close to where he guessed the army from Lucca would have pitched camp. The myriad campfires starting to shine in the
gathering dusk showed him that his instincts had been correct. Nor was he alone in his inferences, for there he found Antonio Diaz.

  The Catalan was haggard with exhaustion, but his dogged confidence had inspired his troops. The cheers with which they greeted Toby were both gratifying and appalling, so he did not know whether to weep or clap his hands over his ears and scream. Instead of doing either, he made a rousing speech from Smeòrach’s back. What lies he told hardly mattered, because he kept twisting his head around to speak to everyone, and also his horse was very restless, clattering hooves on the cobbles all the time. Besides, his accent was so bad that no one would be able to catch much of what he said, but they cheered him again anyway, even louder. It was bad enough that he was condemning most of these men to die, but far worse that he must deceive them into thinking their deaths would serve some useful purpose.

  Before leaving, he drew Diaz aside. “San Miniato is going to kill us. We’ll have to sortie at dawn, before they’re ready to open fire. Spike the guns at worst, drag them into town at best.”

  The Catalan nodded resignedly. “I know. And I know they’ll be waiting for us to try just that. You want me to lead it?”

  “Please. I’ll join you if I can.”

  “No. You’re too valuable.”

  “I have never felt more worthless,” Toby said, but he knew there was truth in what Diaz was saying. A commander who threw his life away on a suicidal mission at the opening of the battle was not serving his cause. He ordered Diaz to get some sleep and rode away, despising himself from the bottom of his heart.

  That was only the beginning. The night became a repeating nightmare of torch-lit faces. He circled around the city walls, crossing and recrossing the Arno, inspecting, approving, encouraging. Everywhere he found men of the Don Ramon Company and the Florentine militia together—gnarled veterans husbanding their strength for the morrow in among peach-faced apprentices shivering with excitement. All of them seemed glad to see him, cheering and jesting. Not even the crabbiest old trooper showed doubts or threw angry questions at him: Why have you locked us up here to die? What difference can we make? How will anyone benefit from our deaths? No one asked. He would have had no answers if they had. They all stood a little straighter when he left.

  The Fiend had bridged the river both upstream and downstream from the city, just beyond cannon range. That was a very efficient piece of work, considering how long he had taken to span the Po, and the forces that had crossed already had completely surrounded the city. Lisa would not escape to Siena. Nor would Toby Longdirk, although he had never intended to try.

  He found Arnaud Villars making his own tour of inspection, checking on stocks of arrows and missiles and powder and shot and grappling hooks and all the other thousands of items that might be needed at dawn. Toby ordered him to get some sleep. The attack might not come for days yet.

  He even ran into desiccated Alberto Calvalcante the gunner, working on a few last adjustments to some of the defenders’ cannons. He, too, looked as if he had not slept in weeks.

  “You were right, Sir Tobias,” he growled. “They do have guns on wheels, what I said were impossible. Saw them being dragged up to San Miniato. Don’t know they’ll work good, of course,” he added grumpily.

  “I knew it ought to be possible, and I’d heard the Fiend emplaced his artillery very quickly at Trent. Did you see how they do it?”

  “Lugs, messer! They cast the cannon with a lug on each side of the barrel to make a pivot.”

  So then the guns could be tilted to the correct elevation and wouldn’t blow themselves out of the mobile cradles. Simple! “Can you melt down all our cannon and recast them by dawn?”

  Calvalcante spat. “Certainly, but those lazy carpenters can’t make me the carriages I’d need.” The listeners laughed, which was good, and Toby—feeling like a parrot now—told him to get some sleep.

  He rode off to the next tower, the next gate, the next cluster of men around a lantern or brazier, the next lying speech telling them to hold firm if they were attacked, that help would come. Dying in battle was not such a terrible death, but dying with so many lies on his conscience was going to be. Strange that there was no sign of the don anywhere! Toby had expected him to return before the siege began, but perhaps the man just wanted to die in the open. A charge of a few hundred lances against tens of thousands might appeal to him as a worthy death.

  The night was breathless and steaming hot. Eventually he realized that he had worn himself out, and his poor horse, too. If he went back to the inn, could he take his own advice and enjoy a few hours’ sleep? More likely he would just toss and worry, but he turned Smeòrach in that direction, or as close to it as he could, for he was in the old Roman quarter, with its grid of narrow ways. A shutter opened above him.

  “Sir Tobias?” It sounded like a child, but it might be a woman.

  He reined in and peered up at the window, seeing only the faintest blur of a face. “I am, but how did you know?”

  “The spirit wants you. Go to the sanctuary.”

  Ah! He could deceive the men of a thousand lances, but never the tutelary. His crimes had caught up with him.

  “I will. May it send you good rest in return for this service.”

  He turned Smeòrach again and nudged him into a weary trot.

  FOUR

  May

  44

  As he had expected, the sanctuary was busy. Even the streets outside were full of aimless people, as if Florence had been smitten with a plague of insomnia. He had dismounted and loosened the girths before one of the inevitable horse urchins appeared to hold his reins.

  “Business is good tonight?” he asked.

  “Sì, messer!” The lad tried to grin, and it became a yawn.

  “His name is Smeòrach. He won’t cause you trouble.” He thought of adding, “And if I don’t come back before dawn, he is yours,” but of course no one would believe the boy. “He needs water.”

  He walked stiffly over to the door, feeling a huge load of fatigue settling on his shoulders. When the attack came, it would come from so many directions at once that he would be as bewildered as anyone. From then on there would be no central command, only terror and bloody struggle. He would have little more to do than try to die as bravely as other men. He had done everything he could do, and it would not be nearly enough.

  The interior was a vast darkness, packed with unseen humanity, many of them singing along with the choir that stood before the altar at the end of the long nave. That was where the candles burned, illuminating the altar and the incarnation on the throne—which was a small child at the moment. The heady odor of incense could not hide the reek of too many people, suffocating heat, the palpable oppression of dread. Alas, poor Florence, doomed to join the ghostly ranks of cities Nevil had razed. Weep for her!

  Men did not normally visit the sanctuary wearing swords and carrying steel helmets. He began to edge his way forward, trying not to frighten people or disturb their singing. Finding he was making little progress, he stopped, and quietly said, “Help?”

  The elderly man in front of him turned around. “Is it not about time you asked our help?” He was stooped and toothless and ragged; he did not smell very pleasant, but the air around him had taken on a pearly shimmer.

  “I have been busy, Holiness.”

  “We are well aware of what you have been doing. Come with us.”

  When the incarnation led him, the crowd parted unasked, people moving out of the way without realizing that they were doing so. They first went forward, toward the altar, and then over to one side. Above them the great dome soared unseen. Toby’s guide halted at an insignificant door near the north entrance.

  “Go up, Tobias, all the way to the top. We shall meet you again there.”

  He bowed, but the old man was already just an old man again, looking around in surprise. Toby began to climb the stairs.

  It was a long climb for a man in full battle gear, and the night was sweltering. He was
puffing hard when he emerged on the gallery around the lantern at the top of the great dome, fifty spans above the ground. Another incarnation was waiting there for him, an elderly woman. In the darkness, she was an indistinct, humped little shape.

  The view was awe-inspiring. He could overlook everything—the dark and silent streets far below, the blank no-man’s-land beyond the walls, and the whole valley of the Arno, which twinkled with myriad camp-fires as if half the stars of heaven had fallen. The cooks were already preparing breakfast so the troops could fight on full stomachs. Probably the guns would be ready by dawn to begin the brutal business of battering down the walls. It was surprising that the Fiend’s demons had not begun their attack already.

  He had never failed to take a city that defied him, nor had he ever shown mercy to the inhabitants.

  “What are your plans, Captain-General?” asked the tutelary. “The damage so far has been serious but not unendurable. Tell me of the Allied forces that will arrive to lift the siege.”

  “Allies?” Toby laughed bitterly. “Milan’s army is guarding Milan, Rome’s guards Rome, Venice’s Venice. They would not listen. They would not cooperate. Nevil will pluck them one by one. We are but the first.”

  “So this failure is as serious as it looks?”

  Did the spirit expect him to deny the obvious?

  “I see no hope at all. The fault is mine, and I accept the blame.” He would not plead for mercy when he did not deserve it. He would not even beg for a quick death, for that would be too great a favor when everyone knew how the Fiend would treat the citizens after he took the city. Whatever form of execution the Florentines might decree for Toby Longdirk would be infinitely more merciful than anything the Fiend would do to him if he caught him. “I shall be surprised if the city lasts beyond sunset, Holiness.”

  The eastern sky was perceptibly lighter than the rest. Traitors were traditionally executed at dawn, but if the failed captain-general was to be subjected to some pretense of a trial, he would apparently live through this dawn and die another day. He wished the tutelary would just throw him in a cell and let him sleep, although that might mean he would fall into the Fiend’s hands. It would be better to die on the battlements. Meanwhile, the responsibility was still his, so he ought to be down there on the walls, inspecting the sentries, guarding against one of Nevil’s sneak dawn attacks like the Bloody Sunrise that had destroyed Nuremberg.