Ash: The Lost History Part 63

"Because you'll want an heir. I'm barren," Ash said.

She became aware that her bare hands locked shut on the pommel of her saddle, her shoulder-muscles rigid against - what? A punch, a blow from a whip? She looked up swiftly at Fernando del Guiz.

"You are?" The lines of his face showed only shocked bewilderment. "How do you know?"

"I was with child at Dijon." Ash found she couldn't release the grip of her hands. The leather reins, wrapped around the pommel, cut into her cold fingers. She kept her gaze on his face in the circle of torch-light. "I lost it, here; it doesn't matter how. It isn't possible for me to have another."

She expected anger, tensed against being hit.

"My son?" he said wonderingly.

"A son or a daughter. It was too soon to tell." Ash felt her mouth twist into a painful smile. "You didn't ask me if it was yours."

Fernando stared off, towards the dark pyramids, not seeing them. "My son or daughter." His gaze came back to Ash. "Did they hurt you? Is that why you lost it?"

"Of course they hurt me!"

He bowed his head. Without looking at her, he said, "I never meant. . . Did it happen when we were riding to G-" He stopped.

"To Genoa," Ash completed. "Ironic, isn't it? While we were on the river."

Momentarily, he cupped both hands over his face. Then he sat up in the saddle. His shoulders went back. The torchlight shone on his eyes, that gleamed wet; and Ash, frowning, found him stripping off his gauntlet and reaching a hand out to her. His expression held pain, sardonic humour, and a raw, undilute empathy that started to rip her open.

"Sometimes I wonder, how did I get to be this person?" Fernando pressed his other hand's knuckles to his mouth, and took them away to add, "I wouldn't have had much to leave him. A keep in Bavaria and a blackened reputation."

His pain hit her, raw, under the breastbone. She pushed it away: this is not what I need to feel.

He exclaimed, "You should have told me, at Dijon! I would have-"

"Changed sides?" she completed, sardonically; but she reached across and gripped his hand, flesh warm in the cold night. "By the time I knew, you were gone."

His hand tightened on hers.

"I'm sorry," he said quietly, "you wouldn't have had much of a husband in me."

A sharp answer came into her mind but she didn't speak. For all his inanity, what shone out of his face as he reached down from his saddle to her was a genuine regret.

"You deserve better," he added.

She let go of his hand, settling back on to the saddle's chill leather. Above, thin clouds began to hide the stars.

"I'm barren," she said flatly. "So that's the end of that. Don't tell me you don't want an annulment. You can always put a barren wife aside."

"I don't know that we are married. Leofric's lawyers are arguing over it."

He turned the gelding, riding back across the open ground.

"You're a bondswoman. Either you're now my property, because I married you - or you didn't have a right to consent to any contract, and the marriage is void. Take your pick. It doesn't matter to me - whether the Church blessing holds or not, these people still think I'm the one who knows about you. I'm the one they ship down here because of that!"

Chill, inner and outer, went through her, and she said, "Fernando. They are going to kill me. One or another of these lords. Please, please let me go."

"No," he said, again, and the cold wind ruffled his hair. He looked across at Witiza and the squires, absorbed in the minutiae of hunting; and Ash could see him picturing a fair-haired boy of the same age.

A barn-owl slid through the darkness as if the air were oil, gliding across the sloping face of a pyramid and vanishing into blackness.

"How can you let this happen? I'm sorry I hit you," Ash said in a rush. "I know you're afraid. But please-"

Fernando, his voice rough, his face growing redder, snapped, "I'm trying to keep my own head on while these heathens anoint another of their G.o.dd.a.m.ned Caliphs! You don't know what it's like for me!"

Ash talks to slaves. She knows that, up at the palace, the fretwork stone corridors resound to the screams of unsuccessful candidates for the Caliph's throne.

"Oh, I do." Ash rested the brown mare's reins under her cloaked knee, and blew on her white fingers. There was a laugh pressing up under her breastbone: or it might have been tears. "I remember something Angelotti once said to me. He told me, 'The Visigoths are an elective monarchy - a method we may call succession by a.s.sa.s.sination'!"

"Who's Angelotti, for Our Lady's sake?"

"My master gunner. He trained here. You employed him, briefly. You," Ash said, "wouldn't remember."

Overhead, the stars had moved to midnight, or close to. She saw no moon. Dark phase, then. Three weeks after Auxonne field. The freezing wind began to drop, chill on her face; and she lifted her head, hearing the c.h.i.n.k of bit and bridle - a split second before the German men-at-arms heard it, their lances lowering, visors going down.

Fernando barked an order. Ash saw lances going back up to rest-position. Newcomers obviously expected. It's now- Her stomach plummeted. She held on to her saddle with one hand, leaned out with the other and grabbed for her husband's sword. His leather-gauntleted hand smacked down, crushing her fingers. He grabbed both her wrists.

"You will not be killed!"

"That's what you say!"

Horses came riding in between the towering sides of the pyramids, their torches sending shadows leaping across the ancient stone paving. Ash smelled horse-sweat. The brown mare's flanks creamed whitely, as she backed up, pressing her rump against Fernando's gelding. The newcomers wore mail, a dozen or more of them, and she opened her mouth to say, "Twelve cavalry, swords, lances;" to the machine, ready now - now it could not matter; in this extremity - ready to break silence, but she thought, And I'm unarmed, no armour, chained; what's it going to tell me - 'die'?

The boy Witiza shoved his hunting owl at a squire and rode forward. A shrill horn split the silence.

Not from the new party - from further back.

Ash heard it; and she stood up in the stirrups, as if the mare were a war-horse, and peered forward into the flickering light.

"Exactly how much company were you expecting?" she inquired caustically.

Fernando del Guiz groaned, "s.h.i.t . . .' and thumbed his sword loose in the mouth of its scabbard.

Enough torches cl.u.s.tered together now between the two pyramids that Ash could see clearly. Crumbling plaster walls bore faded hieroglyphs in white and gold and blue, and the two-dimensional images of cow-headed women and jackal-headed men.

Riding over broken paving stones, the lord-amir Gelimer was reining in a bright bay gelding with white coronels, and staring behind him, past his armed escort.

Ash followed his gaze.

Thirty or forty more horses rode up out of the darkness.

These bore men in mail, riding with their lances at the rest-position. She saw a pennant with the device of a toothed wheel, and found herself looking at helmeted faces that she nevertheless knew: 'Arif Alderic, n.a.z.ir Theudibert, a young soldier - Barbas? Gaiseric? - and two more n.a.z.irs, and their squads, each man mounted.

Alderic's forty men, at their full strength.

"G.o.d give you all a good night," the 'arif Alderic said, his voice a deep rumble as he bowed in the saddle to Gelimer. "My Amir, riding so late can be dangerous. I beg you to accept my Amir Leofric's hospitality, and our escort back to the city."

Ash put one hand thoughtfully over her mouth, and deliberately didn't catch Alderic's eye. The soldier barely dignified what he said with the tone of a request.

She saw the lord-amir Gelimer glare at Alderic, glance around, see Witiza, and Gelimer's small-eyed face shut up like a strongbox.

"If I must," he said ungraciously.

"Wouldn't do to leave you alone out here, sir." Alderic rode on past him, bringing his rangy, flea-bitten grey mount up beside Ash's mare. "Same goes for you too, Sir Fernando, I'm afraid."

Fernando del Guiz began to shout, one anxious eye on the Visigoth n.o.ble, Gelimer.

Ash bit her lip. It was either that, or cheer, or burst out into hysterical laughter. The cold wind chilled the sweat under her arms and down her back.

She saw a dun palfrey approaching in Alderic's wake. The rider, whose feet appeared to almost touch the ground either side, put back his hood.

"G.o.dfrey," Ash acknowledged.

"Boss."

"Leofric get to hear about who's putting the screws on my husband, then?"

She edged the mare a step sideways away from Fernando del Guiz, who was roaring furiously at the 'arif Alderic.

"I was talking to the 'arif when the order came up."

"I don't suppose you brought a pair of bolt-cutters? I might just about get away with it, right now."

"The 'arifs men searched me. For that, and for weapons."

"d.a.m.n ... I hoped there was going to be a fight. I might have got out of here." Ash rubbed her palms across her face and brought them away hot and wet with sweat. She huddled her cloak around herself, to keep her shaking hands out of G.o.dfrey's sight. Clouds coming up from the south began to blot out the sky.

Overwhelmingly, as if it was her body that thought, a physical desire overcame her for blue sky, for the gold-hot burning eye of the sun, for dry gra.s.s and bees and barley buried in red poppies; for meadowlark song, and cows lowing; for rivers glittering thick with fish; for the sun's warmth on her naked skin, and daylight in her eyes; an ache so hard that she groaned, aloud, and let her hood fall back and tears stream from her eyes in the bitter cold south wind, staring beyond the sharp walls of the pyramids for the slightest break in the darkness.

"Ash?" G.o.dfrey touched her arm.

"Pray for a miracle." Ash smiled crookedly. "Just a tiny miracle. Pray for the Stone Golem to break down. Pray for these chains to rust. What's a miracle, to Him?"

G.o.dfrey smiled, reluctantly, gazing up at her from the palfrey's back. "Heathen. But I do pray - for grace, for freedom, for you."

Ash tucked G.o.dfrey Maximillian's hand under her arm and squeezed it. She let go quickly. Her body still shook with reaction. "I'm no heathen. I'm praying right now. To Saint Jude."8 She couldn't manage to sound humorous as she picked up her reins. "G.o.dfrey ... I don't want to go back and die in the dark."

He shot a glance at the surrounding hors.e.m.e.n. Ash regarded Theudibert's squad, now so close that only what appeared to be an odd, comradely compa.s.sion made his men pretend not to be overhearing her conversation.

"G.o.d will receive you, or there is no justice in heaven," G.o.dfrey protested. "Ash-"

Something cold stung her scarred cheek. Ash raised her head. Outside the circle of the torches, everything was black; the stars obliterated by cloud. A whirl of white specks shot across the ancient paving, among the legs of cavalry mounts moving quickly into their escort array around herself, and around Gelimer's men.

"Snow?" she said.

In yellow torchlight, wet flakes showed white. Like a dropping veil snow came suddenly and thickly down on the south wind, building up swiftly on the sides of the nearest pyramid, plastering white lines along the edges of bricks, delineating unseen irregularities.

"Close up!" The 'arif Alderic's hoa.r.s.e shout.

"No more yapping, priest." n.a.z.ir Theudibert pushed his grey mare in between G.o.dfrey and Ash. Ash's mare dropped her head down, presenting a winter-coated furry flank to the wind. White ice plastered the leather tack, the folds of Ash's cloak.

"Move it!" Theudibert grunted.

"Snow. In the middle of a f.u.c.king desert, snow?" She transferred her reins to one hand, jabbing a bare cold finger at the n.a.z.ir's face. "You know what this is, don't you? Don't you? It's the Rabbi's Curse, come home at last."

Judging by Theudibert's bony, red-cheeked face, she had hit a superst.i.tious nerve. A brief hope flared in her. The n.a.z.ir coughed, and spat a gob between their horses.

"f.u.c.k off," he said.

Ash pulled her hood forward. The lining of marten fur tickled her frozen cheek. What did you expect him to say?

The troop of horse moved off, riding back in the direction of Carthage; torches and armour glinting in the snow. She kneed the brown mare to a weary walk. He said just what I'd say. Except that I know there is a curse.

Aptly, as if he could read her thoughts, Theudibert growled under his breath, "f.u.c.king 'arif's all the curse I f.u.c.king need!"

"Well, I'll tell you something." Ash let her mouth run, feeling the pull of steel chains at her neck and ankles, looking furiously around for a gap between riders, for help, for anything. "I'll tell you. Your amir Leofric breeds slaves - I reckon someone out there is breeding sergeants. 'Arifs. 'Cause they're all the f.u.c.king same!"

Theudibert looked at her coldly. Two of the soldiers laughed and smothered it; both of them men who had been in the cell with her, threatening rape. Ash rode on between them.

If I could kill' this horse, they'd have to take me out of the chains. However briefly. But I'd need a weapon for that, and I don't have a weapon. If I could lame her, get free- She let her gaze travel ahead, looking for holes in the paving.

-then I'd be on foot, in the desert, in a blizzard, with sixty men trying to find me. Well, hey, it's not such a bad deal. Not when you consider the alternative.

Not when you consider that, if they have to cut the chains to get me off this beast, there'll probably be six of them with swords at my throat every minute while they're doing it. That's what I'd do. That's the trouble. They're as smart as me.

I just have to hope that someone will make a mistake.

Ash let her awareness spread out, taking in the whole troop. Alderic's heavy cavalry platoon around her, one squad behind, one to either side; and Alderic ahead, riding with Gelimer and Fernando del Guiz, Gelimer's troops out in front - where he can see them, Ash approved - and G.o.dfrey's palfrey plodding, head down, in the shelter of Alderic's scraggy mount.

I do not, ever, give up. No matter what.

Driving snow plastered her cloak against her back, and the back of her skull; freezing wind seeping through the wool. Outside the circle of torchlight, a whirling white desolation screamed, the wind rising. She saw Alderic order a scout9 forward.

We came, what, two miles? Three? It isn't possible to get lost three miles from a city!

Yes it is ...

A mail-covered arm reached across in front of her. n.a.z.ir Theudibert yanked the mare's reins out of her hands, and wound them around his wrist. His squad closed in, Gaiseric's cob nipping at the mare's rump; all of them riding within touching distance. Snow began to lie on the paved ground. She let Theudibert yank the mare into movement, clasping the furry body with her knees, keeping her weight level and her knees still.

Just a broken paving stone, a rabbit hole, anything . . . Feeling the recalcitrant weight and solidity of the mare's barrel-body, that might come crashing down on her leg if they fell. I'll take the risk!

The mare plodded exhaustedly on. The stink of sweating men and hot horses faded from Ash's nostrils, obliterated by the cold. White flakes lay, eating up the flat ground, piling up against a plinth. She looked up into the star-crowned face of a stone queen, snow whitening the gargantuan granite beast-body. The sphinx's smile blurred under clinging ice.

"Where is Carthage?"