Ash: The Lost History Part 25

He said, "You have physical courage. I never knew, until that moment - I've done tournaments, melees . . , war's different."

Ash looked at him with complete incomprehension. "Of course it is."

They stared at each other.

"Are you telling me you did this because you're a coward?"

For answer, Fernando del Guiz turned and walked away. The shifting light of candles hid his expression.

Ash opened her mouth to call him back, and said nothing; could think of nothing, for long minutes, that she wanted to say.

Over the hubbub of talk and rattle of papers being signed, she heard Basle's town clock strike four of the afternoon.

"That's long enough." She signalled Rochester; resolutely put del Guiz out of her thoughts. "Wherever the Faris-General is, she's not coming here. Get the lads."

Thomas Rochester retrieved the men-at-arms from (respectively) the stables, the kitchens, and a maid's dormitory bed. Ash sent Guido out for the horses. She stepped out of the town hall between Rochester and the other crossbow-man, Francis, two yards tall, a burly man who looked as if he might not need a crank to c.o.c.k a bow: he could probably do it with his teeth. The sky above the courtyard was empty. Black. All the shouting of grooms and horses' hooves on stones couldn't cover the silence that seeped down from above.

Francis crossed himself. "I wish the Christ would come. The tribulation first, that scares me. Not the Last Judgement."

Ash caught sight of orange dots all down her vambraces, where sleet falling on her arms had turned to rust spots during her time within the warm civic hall. She muttered an obscenity and scrubbed at the steel with a linen-covered finger, waiting for the horses.

"Captain," a man's accented, Visigothic Latin said. She looked up. She saw in rapid succession that he was an 'arif commander of forty, that he had twenty men, that all of them had their swords out of their sheaths. She stepped back and drew, screaming at Thomas Rochester. Six or seven mail-hauberk-covered bodies. .h.i.t her from behind and slammed her down on her face.

Her sallet and visor hit the cobbles, slamming her forehead against the helmet's padding. Dazed, she closed her left hand and swung her gauntlet back. Her thick metal fist thunked into something. A voice screamed above her, on top of her. She bent her left arm. Armour is a weapon. The great b.u.t.terfly-plates of the couter that protect the inner elbow joint flow, at the back, to a sharpened spike. She slammed her bent elbow back and up and felt the spike punch through mail to flesh. A shout.

She thrashed, struggled to bend her legs, searingly afraid of a hamstring cut across the back of her unprotected knee. Two mail-clad bodies lay full-weight across her right arm, across her hand that gripped her sword-hilt. Men shouted. Two or three more bodies. .h.i.t her in rapid succession, slamming down against her backplate, holding her motionless, pinned, unhurt, a crab in a padded steel sh.e.l.l.

Their hard-breathing weight pinned her absolutely. So I am not to be killed.

Weight across her armoured shoulders kept her from raising her head. She saw nothing but a few inches of stone, straw and dead cold bees. About a yard away, there was a soft impact and a scream.

I should have made them let me bring a larger escort! Or sent Rochester away- She tightened the grip of her gauntleted right hand on her sword. With her left hand unnoticed for a moment, she folded her fingers under, so that the sharp edge of the plate on the back of her hand jutted forward, and shoved the edge out to where she guessed a man's face to be.

No impact. Nothing.

A heel in a mail sabaton came down on her right hand, trapping her fingers and flesh around the sword's grip, between the steel plates of her gauntlet, between the man's full weight and the hard cobblestones.

She shrieked. Her hand released. Someone kicked the blade away.

A dagger-point stabbed down and into her open visor and stopped a quivering inch away from her eye.

Chapter Four.The waning moon cast a faint light, setting over Basle's castle. Far off, away and high over the city walls, the same silver light glimmered on the snow of the high Alps.

The tall hedges of the hortus conclusus shone with frost. Frost in summer! Ash thought, still appalled; and stumbled in the near-darkness. The sound of a fountain plinked out of the dimness, and she heard the shift and clatter of many men in armour.

They have left me my armour, therefore they intend to treat me with some respect; they have only taken my sword; therefore they do not necessarily intend to kill me- "What the f.u.c.k is all this?" Ash demanded. Her guards didn't answer.

The enclosed garden was tiny, a small plot of gra.s.s surrounded by an octagon of hedges. Flowers climbed frames. A cropped gra.s.sy bank ran down to a fountain, the jet falling into a white marble basin. The scent of herbs filled the air. Ash identified rosemary, and Wound's-Ease individually; underneath their smell was a stench of decaying roses. Died from the cold, rotting on the stalk, she surmised, and continued to walk forward into the garden, between her 'arif's guards.

A figure in a mail hauberk sat at a low table covered with papers, on top of the gra.s.sy bank. Behind her, three stone figures held torches upright in their hands. A trail of hot spitting pitch ran down a torch-shaft as Ash watched, over one figure's clenched bra.s.s-geared hand, but the golem did not flinch.

Torch-flame cast flickering yellow light over the young Visigoth woman's unbound silver hair.

Ash could not help herself, her soles slipped on the cropped frozen gra.s.s and she stumbled. Recovering, she halted and looked at the Faris. That is my face, that is how I look- Do I really look like that to other people?

I thought I was taller.

"You're my employer, for Christ's sake," Ash protested, aloud, disgusted. "This is completely unnecessary. I would have come to you. All you had to do was say! Why do this?"

The woman looked up. "Because I can."

Ash nodded thoughtfully. She walked closer, feet dipping into the springy cold turf, until the 'arif's hand on her vambrace arrested her progress some two yards away from the Faris's table. Her left hand automatically dropped to steady her sword-scabbard, and closed on emptiness. Ash planted her boots squarely, getting her balance; ready in any instant to move, and move as fast as armour permits. "Look, General, you're in charge of a whole invasion force here, I really don't think I need your power and influence to be proved to me!"

The woman's mouth quirked up at the corner. She gave Ash what was unmistakably a grin. "I think you do need the point driven home, if you're anything like me-"

She stopped, abruptly, and sat up on the three-legged stool, letting her papers fall back on to the small trestle table. She weighted them down with a Brazen Head, against the night breeze. Her dark eyes sought out Ash's face.

"I'm a lot like you," Ash said, quietly and unnecessarily. "Okay, so you're making a point. Fine. It's made. Where's Thomas Rochester and the rest of my men? Are any of them wounded or killed?"

"You wouldn't expect me to tell you that. Not until you've become sufficiently worried about it that you're willing to talk openly to me."

The quirk of an eyebrow, the same as her own - but mirror-image, Ash realised with a shock. Her own self, but reversed. She considered the idea that the general might be a demon or devil.

"They're well, but prisoners," the Faris added. "I have very good reports of your company."

Between relief at hearing her people were - or might be - still alive, and the shock of hearing that voice just not quite her own, Ash had to brace herself against dizziness that threatened to blank out her vision. For a moment, yellow torchlight wavered.

"I thought you might be amused to see this." The Faris held out a paper festooned with red wax seals. "It's from the parlement of Paris, asking me to go home because I'm a scandal."

Ash snorted despite herself. "Because what?"

"You'll appreciate it. Read it."

Ash stepped forward and extended her hand. The 'arif's men tensed. She still wore her gauntlets, and her gloved fingers only touched the paper; still, coming within scenting distance of her double - a smell of spice and sweat, like all the Visigoth military men around her - made her hand shake. Her gaze faltered. She looked down hurriedly at the paper. "You read it," she said.

"'Since that you are unbaptised and in a state of sin, and since that you have received none of the sacraments, and bear no saint's name for your own; therefore we sternly pet.i.tion you to return whence you came,'" the Faris read aloud, "'since we would not have our queens and dowagers have unclean intercourse with a mere concubine, nor our clean maidens, true wives and steadfast widows be corrupted by the presence of one who can be no more than a wayward wench or wanton wife; therefore enter not into our lands with your armies-'"

"Oh my lord! 'Wayward wench'!"

The other woman gave vent to a surprisingly deep-chested laugh. Do I sound like that? Ash wondered.

"It's the Spider,"17 Ash murmured, delighted. "Genuine?"

"Certainly."

Ash looked up.

"So whose b.a.s.t.a.r.d am I?" she asked.

The Visigoth general snapped her fingers and said something rapid in Carthaginian. One of her men put another stool down beside the trestle table, and all the armed men, whose boots had been stamping divots back into the enclosed garden's lawn, filed out through the gate in the hedge.

And if we're actually alone now, I'm the Queen of Carthage.

Armour is a weapon: she considered using it, and as rapidly abandoned the idea. Ash let her gaze stray around in the dark, trying to pick out the points of light that would be reflected by steel arrow-heads or crossbow bolts. The cool night air shifted across her face.

"This place reminds me of the gardens in the Citadel, where I grew up," the Faris said. "Our gardens are brighter than this, of course. We bring the light in with mirrors."

Ash licked her lips, attempting to moisten a dry mouth. As required by the castle's ladies, little of the outside world could enter this garden. The hedges baffled sound. Now it was true night, and the darkness genuine, and the armed presence for the moment withdrawn, she found herself (despite the golems) insensibly more at ease; felt herself becoming the person who commands a company, not a frightened young woman.

"Were you baptised?"

"Oh yes. By what you call the Arian heresy." The general held out an inviting hand. "Sit down, Ash."

One does not commonly say one's own name, Ash reflected; and to hear it said in what was almost her own voice, but with a Visigothic accent, sent the hairs on the nape of her neck p.r.i.c.kling up.

She reached up to unfasten the strap and buckle of her sallet, easing the helmet off. The night air felt chill against her sweating head and braided hair. She placed the visored sallet carefully on the table, and lifted her ta.s.sets and fauld with the ease of long practice to seat herself on the stool. Breast- and backplate kept her posture absolutely upright.

"This isn't the way to get your employee's co-operation," she added absently, settling herself. "It really isn't, General!"

The Visigoth woman smiled. Her skin was pale. She had a mask of darker skin around her eyes, tanned honey-brown from long exposure to the sun, where neither steel helm nor mail aventail shielded her face. The mail mittens dangling from her wrists disclosed her hands: pale, with neatly trimmed nails. While it is true that mail sucks on to a human body, clinging to the padded clothing underneath, leaving her looking podgy, Ash judged the woman to have a very similar build to her own; and she was consumed, for a moment, with the sheer reality of the living, breathing, warm flesh sitting opposite her, no more than arm's reach away, looking so alike- "I want to see Thomas Rochester," she said.

The Visigoth general raised her voice very slightly. The wicket-gate opened. A man held up a lantern for long enough for Ash to see Thomas Rochester, hands bound behind him, his face bloodied, but well enough apparently to stand without help - the gate closed.

"Happy?"

"I wouldn't describe myself as happy, exactly . . . Oh f.u.c.k it!" Ash exclaimed. "I didn't expect to like you!"

"No." The woman, who could not be much above her own age, pressed her lips flatly together. An irresistible smile tweaked the corners up. Her dark eyes glowed. "No! Nor did I! Nor did the other jund, your friend. Nor your husband."

Ash confined herself to growling, "Lamb's no friend of mine," and left the subject of Fernando del Guiz well alone. A familiar exhilaration began to fizz in her blood: the sheer balance required when renegotiating a trustworthy arrangement with people always more powerful than oneself (or they wouldn't be hiring mercenaries); the necessity of knowing what must be said, and what left unsaid.

"How did you come to have scars?" the Visigoth general asked. "A battle injury?"

Not negotiation, but pure personal curiosity, Ash judged. And as such, probably a weakness to be exploited.

"There was a saint's visitation when I was a child. The Lion came." Ash touched her cheek, something she did not often do, feeling the dinted flesh under her gloved fingertips. "He marked me out with His claws, thus showing I should be a Lioness myself, on the field of battle."

"So young? Yes. I was trained early, too."

Ash repeated, using the term quite deliberately, her earlier question. "Whose b.a.s.t.a.r.d am I?"

"n.o.body's."

"N-?"

The Visigoth general looked as though she were appreciating how taken aback Ash felt. We should read each other very well, Ash thought. But do we? How would I know? I could be wrong.

She let her tongue run on: "What do you mean, n.o.body? You can't mean I'm legitimate. Whose family is it? What family do you come from?"

"No one's."

The dark eyes danced, without any malice that Ash could detect; and then the other woman heaved a great sigh, rested her mailed arms on the table and leaned forward. The light from the golems' torches slid over her silver-blond hair and her unmarked face.

"You're no more legitimate than me," the Faris said. "I'm slave-bred."

Ash stared, conscious of a shock too great to recognise; so great that it faded into a mental shrug, and a so what? and a consciousness only that something, somewhere, had come adrift in her mind.

The Faris continued: "Whoever my parents were, they were slaves in Carthage. The Turks have their janissaries, Christian children they steal and raise up as fanatical warriors for their own country. My - father - did something very like that. I'm slave-bred," she repeated softly, "a bondswoman: and I suppose you are, too. I'm sorry if you were hoping for something better than that."

The sadness in her tone felt genuine.

Ash abandoned any thought of negotiation or subterfuge. "I don't understand."

"No, why should you? I don't suppose the amir Leofric would be pleased that I'm telling you. His family have been breeding for a Faris for generations. I am their success. You must be-"

"One of the rejects," Ash cut in. "Isn't that it?"

Her heart hammered. She held her breath, waiting to be contradicted. The Visigoth woman silently leaned over and with her own hands poured wine from a bottle into two ash-wood cups. She held out one. Ash took it. The black mirror of the liquid shook with the shaking of her hands. No contradiction came.

"Breeding project?" Ash repeated. And, sharply: "You said you had a father!"

"The amir Leofric. No. I've become used to ... he isn't my true father, of course. He wouldn't lower himself to impregnate slaves."

"I don't care if he f.u.c.ks donkeys," Ash said brutally. "That's why you wanted to see me, isn't it? That's why you came all the way to Guizburg, when you're running a d.a.m.n war? Because I'm your - sister?"

"Sister, half-sister, cousin. Something. Look at us!" The Visigoth general shrugged again. When she lifted her wooden cup, her hand was shaking too. "I don't believe that my father - that Lord-Amir Leofric - would know why I had to see you."

"Leofric." Ash stared blankly at her twin. Part of her mind rummaged through memories of heraldry. "He's one of the amirs at the King-Caliph's court? A powerful man?"

The Faris smiled. "House Leofric has been, time out of mind, close companions to the King-Caliphs. We gave them the golem-messengers. And now, a faris."

"What happens to the ... you said there were others. A project. What happens to the other people like us? How many-"

"Hundreds, over the years, I suppose. I never asked."

"You never asked." Incredulous, Ash drained her cup, not noticing whether the wine was good or bad. "This isn't new to you, is it?"

"No. I suppose it does seem strange, if you didn't grow up with it."

"What happens to them? The ones that aren't you - what happens to them?"

"If they can't talk to the machine,18 they're usually killed. Even if they can talk to the machine, they usually go mad. You have no idea how lucky I feel that I didn't go insane in my childhood."

The first thought in Ash's mind was a sardonic Are you quite sure about that?, and then more of what the woman had said sunk in. Utterly appalled, Ash repeated, "'Killed'?"

Before the Visigoth woman could reply, the impact of one single phrase hit home.