Ash: The Lost History Part 138

Glancing around the chamber, Ash noted Richard Faversham among her own men; the English deacon's face shrunken, under his black beard. His eyes burned. He was nodding.

Floria said, "But Gelimer specifies, if I'm not present, there's to be no parley."

John de Vere said, into the silence, "Hold a parley, madam, but make sure King-Caliph Gelimer himself is present at it as well as yourself. They then cannot use their siege-engines or guns."

"I wouldn't count on it. If I were him, I'd get there, then leg it, and let the artillery take care of it." Ash slid her hand down to the scabbard of her sword, for comfort. "Florian's right about one thing. We do need the delay. Once they start any serious a.s.sault, it's going to show up how low we are on ammunition and men. Okay ..."

Floria shrugged. "I'll find a way to do this, Ash. Never mind the hart. Where can we hold a parley?"

"On a bridge?" John de Vere offered. "Are all the bridges down? That would be neutral territory."

"No!" Olivier de la Marche growled, "No!"

"Madness, my lord!" Philippe Ternant cried. "We know what treachery bridges can bring. The late Duke's grandfather, Duke John, was treacherously slain on a bridge during a truce, by the wh.o.r.eson French.12 They cut off his right hand! It was most vile!"

"Ah." De Vere's pale brows went up. He said mildly, "Not a bridge, then."

Ash converted a laugh into a cough. "Where, then? Not in the open. Even if Gelimer was there, it would still be too easy to load up one of their Greek Fire throwers, and get us before we could get back inside the city walls."

A silence: in which the knots in the firewood cracked as the fire burned down. A cold draught breathed down through the chimney, despite the fire.

Robert Anselm laughed. Ash looked across at him.

"Spit it out. You got something?"

Anselm looked first at her, and then at de Vere; and rose to his feet. Standing, stubbled head gleaming, he said, "You want somewhere that isn't in the open, boss, don't you."

Colonel Bajezet said something to the interpreter. Before the Voynik could translate, Robert Anselm was nodding.

"Yeah, your lads did that in the Morea a couple of times. Built a tiny fort out in no-man's-land and had both sides meet inside. If anyone started a fight, everyone got killed." Anselm hunched his shoulders. "Won't work, Basi. They could still get us on the way there, or the way back."

The Turk raised his hands. "Plan, what?"

"Meet 'em underground. In a sap."

"In a-" Ash stopped. Robert Anselm looked her straight in the eye. He did not smell of wine, or the fermented rubbish Henri Brant's cooks had concocted from pig-garbage. He stood with his head up.

Ash thought, Is that de Vere, his old Lancastrian boss? Or has he finally decided to get his finger out on my behalf? Either way, if he has, do I care?

Yes. I care. I'd rather he'd done it for me.

It's me that's putting other people's lives in his hands.

"A sap," she repeated. "You think we should meet the Visigoths in a tunnel."

This time it was de Vere who laughed; and his brother d.i.c.kon with him. Viscount Beaumont said cheerfully, in English, "And I suppose we ask them to hold the negotiations until we have dug one, Master Anselm?"

Anselm put his hand back on his sword pommel. He glanced at Ash. She nodded.

"Gelimer wouldn't risk artillery. Collapse a tunnel-" Anselm smacked his palm down: flat for ill.u.s.tration. "Everybody's dead. Start a fight in one, and you got a bloodbath. Same thing. Everybody dies; no one can be sure they'd survive - that includes Gelimer. Take the Colonel's Turks down with us, and I reckon that'd swing it."

There was a buzz of discussion. Ash watched Robert Anselm, without speaking. He watched her, and not John de Vere. She slowly nodded.

"But not Florian. Me, de la Marche, anyone; not Florian. Or-" she brightened. "Not the first time. That's what we tell Gelimer. It's what, now, the twenty-third? We can spin this out for three or four days, past Christ's Ma.s.s.

That's more time; it's all more time ... if we make him think Florian will come out if we can get negotiations started ..."

Florian interrupted her thinking aloud. "If it were you out there, you'd attack. To hurry the parley up."

"Gelimer will do that anyway. We're going to lose people." Ash's grim expression faded to amazement as she looked back at Anselm. "A sap. It won't work, Roberto, we don't have time to send a mine out from the walls."

"Don't need to. I know where there's one of theirs, that we counter-mined. Under the White Tower. You remember, girl. It's the one Angelotti's lads cleared out with a bear."

De la Marche looked aghast; the Earl of Oxford spluttered his watered wine back into his cup; Floria whooped. "You never told me this! A bear?"

"It was two or three days after the hunt." Ash grimaced. "Before we would have thought of bear-steak. There was a bear left in Charles's menagerie."

Robert Anselm took it up. "Angelotti's lads heard the Visigoths mining towards the wall. The rag-heads were tunnelling under the wall, propping it up with wood. They were going to set fire to the props and bring the city wall down when they collapsed. Angelotti's engineers dug a counter-mine, and we opened it into their tunnel one day, and the following night, when they were in it, the gunners got the bear out of the menagerie."

Ash frowned, trying to remember. "It wasn't just a bear, was it ... ?"

"They got a couple of bee-hives out of the abbot's gardens as well. They put the bear down into the tunnel," Robert Anselm said, "and they dropped the bee-hives down after, and shut the end of the counter-mine up f.u.c.king quick."

Floria's face contorted, obviously visualising men, darkness, bees; an animal maddened by stings. "Christ!"

Her exclamation was drowned out by laughter from the men-at-arms.

"We did see 'em come up out of the other end pretty d.a.m.n fast!" Anselm confessed. "And the bear. And the bees. They closed their end up, but they ain't been down there since! We could open that up. Clear out the bodies."

There was a raw, black edge to the laughter in the room. Ash saw Floria's face, appalled at the cruelty. She stopped laughing.

Florian looked down at the horn crown in her hands.

"It's worth trying. We have to keep them talking. I don't want to see another a.s.sault on the walls. We have to put some bait in this. We'll tell them the d.u.c.h.ess will be there - no." Floria, completely inflexible, repeated, "No. This is my decision. Tell Agnes Dei, yes, I'll meet with Gelimer."

Forty-eight hours later, on the very day of Christ's Ma.s.s, the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy and the English Earl of Oxford, together with the Captain-General, the Janissaries of the Turk and the d.u.c.h.ess's mercenary bodyguard, met in parley with King-Caliph Gelimer and his officers and allies of the Visigoth Empire.

The tunnel stank of old sweat, and blood, and dank earth and urine: so strong that the lanterns guttered and burned low.

Ash walked with her hand on the war-hammer shaft stuck through her belt. No room for bill-shafts, for spears; only close-quarter weapons here. She shot a glance at the sides of the sap - widened out in a desperate hurry in the last two days, fresh planks shoring up the walls and the roof a bare eighteen inches above her head.

Angelotti, standing with one of the Visigoth engineers and Jussey, nodded confirmation to her. "It's a go, boss."

"Anything drops on my head, it's your a.s.s'll suffer for it . . ." Ash spoke absently; gesturing for Robert Anselm to hold up his lantern, hearing voices from the far end of this widened underground mine. Cold still air walked shivers up her spine, under her backplate.

I suppose at least, with Florian with us, we don't have to worry about tiny miracles.

s.h.i.t. They don't need their priests. All they need to do is send one of their golem-diggers in; this roof will come down with a thousand tons of earth- She bit her lip, literally and deliberately. The words were in her mouth: Position of Visigoth troops, location of Visigoth command?

But it won't know. Couriers from here to Carthage are out of date. If the Faris isn't reporting to the Stone Golem, it can't give tactical advice about their camp here. It won't do me any good to speak to G.o.dfrey.

I just want to.

"Is he there?" Robert Anselm said quietly.

The gravel that covered the floor of the sap crunched underfoot as she walked forward. She squinted in the poor light. The voices ahead of her died down.

A pale, cold blue light began to glow. Visigoth slaves uncovered globes of Greek Fire, no larger than Ash's fist. She saw first their thistledown-white hair and familiar faces, where they knelt either side of the pa.s.sageway. Then, between the two lines of them, she saw men in mail and rich robes; and one in the midst of them, in a great fur-lined cloak, his beard braided with golden beads, the King-Caliph, Gelimer. He looked strained, but alert.

"Confirm," she said. "Move the rest up. He's here."

No banners - the low roof didn't allow it - but all the armed men wore liveries, stark in the cold light. Gelimer's portcullis. The Faris's brazen head. A notched white wheel on a black ground. A two-headed black eagle upon a field of gold. The lilies of France quartered with blue and white bars.

Black double eagle. She searched the ma.s.s of faces in front, and found herself looking at Frederick of Hapsburg.

The Holy Roman Emperor had only one man with him that she could see: a large German knight in mail, carrying a mace. A small, dry smile crossed Frederick's lips as he saw her. Conquest and surrender notwithstanding, he looked much the same as he had in the camp outside Neuss.

"In person? Son of a b.i.t.c.h ..." She stepped to one side as men came up behind her, de Vere's Turks. The Janissaries lined the walls and stood three ranks deep in front as Floria del Guiz walked forward, surrounded by twenty men of the Lion Azure, in mail hauberks and open-faced sallets. Burgundian troops flanked them to either side.

Elbow to elbow with Floria on one side, Colonel Bajezet and his interpreter on the other, and with John de Vere crowded close in behind her; Ash has a sudden visceral memory of Duke Charles, downed by a Visigoth flying wedge at Auxonne, his armour leaking blood between the exquisitely articulated plates. She felt herself start to sweat. Her palms tingled.

She did the familiar thing, alchemised it into excitement: let her vision go flat in the unnatural light and take in, without effort, which men were armed with swords (which they might have difficulty drawing in a scuffle), which with maces and picks and hammers; which of Gelimer's lord-amirs were armoured and helmeted - all - and which were the obvious targets.

One of the Burgundian knights behind her said something foul under his breath. She looked questioningly at him as the group halted.

"That is Charles d'Amboise,"13 the Burgundian, Lacombe, said, indicating the French liveries, "Governor of Champagne, and that wh.o.r.eson a.r.s.elicker beside him is the man who betrayed the friendship of Duke Charles. Philippe de Commines."

Much more, and the towering, fair-haired Burgundian would have spat on the earth. Ash, as she might with one of the company, nodded acknowledgement and said, "Watch him: if he moves, tell me."

Ash stepped ahead of Floria, among the spotless silent Janissaries.

"We're here for a parley with the King-Caliph." Her voice fell flat in the enclosed s.p.a.ce. "Not with half the lords of France and Germany! This isn't what we agreed to. We're pulling out."

It's too much to hope for that I might get away with this - spin out the negotiations about negotiations to another few days ...

The French knight bowed, where he stood cramped in beside the little dark man that Ash recognised as de Commines from his previous visit to Charles's court. He said smoothly, "I am d'Amboise. My master Louis sends me to serve the King-Caliph. I am here to acquaint her ladyship the d.u.c.h.ess with the benefits of the Pax Carthaginiensis. As is my lord of Hapsburg, the n.o.ble Frederick."

Charles d'Amboise continued to look at Ash with a perfectly open and amiable expression. Ash grinned at him.

"You're here as Louis's spy," she said. "And, like 'my lord of Hapsburg', you're here to see Burgundy stand against the King-Caliph. In which case, if I were King-Caliph, I'd watch my back . . ."

Her grin did not waver at d'Amboise's evident unease. Any dissent we can spread is good!

Six of the Turks had positions in front of Ash and Floria. There was not s.p.a.ce enough in the mine for more than that. Ash looked past the mail and hanging sleeves of the Janissaries - men consenting to use their bodies as a human shield - and saw Gelimer's bearded face, in the light of the Greek Fire globes.

He was showing no emotion. Certainly no anger, or uncertainty. He seemed both older and more military than when she had last seen him, in Carthage; lines drawn in the skin around his mouth, and a long mail hauberk and coat-of-plates under his cloak.

Harsh illumination, cold darkness beyond: the mine is not so different from the dark palace at Carthage, with the great Mouth of G.o.d above her and the tiles about to crack and shiver apart in an earthquake. Seeing the man again shocked her. No picture in her memory of Gelimer running from his throne -instead she had a sudden physical recall of the dead flesh of G.o.dfrey Maximillian. A long shudder went down her spine under her armour.

"Where is the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy?" Gelimer's light tenor also flattened, under the low boarded tunnel roof.

Over Ash's shoulder, Floria said dryly, "You're looking at her."

The King-Caliph's eyes remained on Ash for a long moment. He shifted his gaze to regard the cloaked woman wearing the bone crown. "The fortune of war means I must have you killed. I am not a cruel man. Surrender Burgundy to me, and I will spare your peasants and your townsmen. Only you will die, d.u.c.h.ess. For your people."

Floria laughed. Ash saw Gelimer startle. It was not a demure laugh; it was one she had heard often in the surgeon's tent, with Floria outside of two or three flagons of wine; a loud, pleasant, raucous contralto.

"Surrender? After we've resisted? Get out of here," Floria said cheerfully. "I'm a mercenary company's surgeon. I've seen what happens to towns under siege when enemy troops sack the place. The people I've got in here are safer staying in here, unless we sign a peace."

Gelimer shifted his gaze from Ash, again; past her to the Burgundian lords. "And this - woman - is what you would have lead you?"

There was no answer. Not, Ash saw as she quickly glanced back, from uncertainty or doubt. Obdurate faces regarded the King-Caliph with contempt.

"She is most wise and most valiant," John de Vere said, with stinging courtesy. "Sirs, what is your business with the d.u.c.h.ess?"

Ash appointed herself discourteous mercenary Captain-General to his n.o.ble foreign Earl, and said loudly, "If that's his best offer, they ain't got any business with the d.u.c.h.ess! This ain't serious. Let's f.u.c.k off."

De Vere let her see his brief amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Call your She-Lion off," the Visigoth King-Caliph said contemptuously to de Vere. She saw his eyes flick from the English Earl to the n.o.ble Burgundians behind him; skimming over herself and the Turkish commander and Floria del Guiz.

He's looking for the man in command, Ash realised.

He's thinking: Not the Englishman, not in Burgundy. The Burgundian lords? Which one? Or Olivier de la Marche, back in the city?

And then she saw Gelimer's small-eyed gaze flick to d'Amboise and Commines, and from the Frenchmen to Frederick of Hapsburg. Only a split second of loss of control.

G.o.d bless you, John de Vere! Everything you said is right. He's here because he has to have Burgundy, and because he thinks he has to look as though he's not afraid of us in front of them.

Ash smiled to herself, and glanced back to grin rea.s.suringly at Florian. She whispered in the woman's ear, her lips touching the soft hair under the hart's-horn crown: "Gelimer would have done better to just pile in, never mind a parley - and he hasn't done it, and they're watching him now, like a hawk, to see what he does next."

"Can we keep him talking, Ash?"

Looking at Gelimer, and his closed expression under the gold-rimmed helmet he wore, brought memory vividly into her mind: the man riding in driving snow in the desert, with his son - his son - the boy's name was gone from her. Is it still snowing in Carthage?

She formed a fast and brutal judgement. "He'd be all right if this was armies. Maybe all he did three months ago was talk himself into a job he can't hold down - but if it was just a matter of telling his generals and his legions what to do, he could win this one. But it's the dark, and the cold. I don't know how much he knows. He'll hesitate if we give him half a chance."

"Keep talking," Floria murmured. "Let's spin this out as long as we can."

The Visigoth King-Caliph turned to listen to a man speaking at his shoulder, appearing not to hear what Ash said. He nodded, once. The air, growing warm with the number of bodies crowding the mine, caught at the back of Ash's throat. The kneeling slaves holding the Greek Fire globes in their padded iron cages appeared bleached by light: fair brows and lashes air-brushed from weather-beaten faces.

The ma.s.s of armed men parted, with difficulty letting others through from the back of the King-Caliph's party. Ash could not at first make out faces among the blaze of heraldry, the glint of mail and sword-hilts and helmets.

Greek Fire reflected back from a river-fall of hair the colour of pale ashes, robbed of all silver in this light. Ash found herself looking again into the Faris's face.

"Faris." Ash nodded a greeting.

The woman made no reply. Her dark eyes, in her flawless bright face, regarded Ash as if she were not present. Her flat gaze brought a momentary frown to Ash's face. About to comment, Ash realised that King-Caliph Gelimer was - while apparently listening to his advisor - watching her with a complete and total avidity.