Ash: The Lost History Part 74

Rope-and-wood ladders hung from their scaling hooks on the parapet, twenty feet above her head. She reached up, had one terrifying moment when her arms seemed too weak to pull her up - Christ, I've rested, I can't be sick now! - and then she found her footing, powerful leg-muscles pushing her up, swaying in the winter-dark air, reaching up to hands at the parapet and the muttered oaths from men who didn't recognise her in borrowed armour.

A row of pavises, broken doors, and splintered beams made a temporary barricade across the wall. Further along was bare. On the higher front of House Leofric, that overlooked that stretch of wall, she glimpsed the flash of light from Visigoth steel helmets, and from the heads of arrows: the amir's soldiers able to lay down a withering fire if they went forward of this position.

"Francis; Willem!" She greeted her crossbowman and lance-leader. "What's it like at the Citadel gate?"

"f.u.c.k," Willem muttered.

The two men stared at her, frozen, holding a solid oaken cask between them. The bowman, Francis, abruptly coughed, spat, and said, wonderingly, "Couple of skirmishes, boss. There's n.o.body really down there right now. Everybody's running around like a b.i.t.c.h in heat because of the quake damage."

"Let's hope it stays like that. Okay, get shifting!"

"Boss-" The crossbowman gave up, shaking his head, but with a wide grin. He turned back as other men came running up with casks. "Here! She's back-!"

Up here, on the roof of the city, out of the sheltering alleys, the bitter wind sheared across Ash's face, under her visor, and tears sprang into her eyes. She was instantly frozen. She ran, half-crouching, to the harbour-facing side of the city wall, glancing out into the black depths.

John de Vere went back to the ladders, shouted down, took something, and came across to her, holding a thick woollen cloak which he thrust at her. "Madam, take this. I've had your people coming into the city disguised for the last three days. They are G.o.d's own b.a.s.t.a.r.ds and a joy to lead. I had the raid planned for a later hour, but this-" A stark gaze around, at the broken roof-lines of the inner city, at tumbled walls and blocked alleys: "This was an opportunity not to be refused. Will you take command again under me, madam? Are you well enough to do so?"

Ash glanced up at the sky. Nothing to give her the hour. Maybe thirty minutes since she had emerged from the sewers? No more.

The cold at least kept some of the stink out of her nostrils; she doubted the others, with a stench of powder and killing on them, had even noticed it.

"Who else of my officers is here? And where the f.u.c.k are the others?"

"This is but half your full company. By Duke Charles's command, Master Robert Anselm stays in Dijon, with two hundred men, keeping up the defence against the Gothic forces; his last message reached me a week since. They hold out."

"Robert's-" Safe. Alive. "They're alive!"

Or, they were, a week ago.

Sod it, they're alive still, I know they are! I know them.

Her eyes filled up with tears.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.hl" Ash said weakly. "I might have known. It takes more than a bunch of rag-heads to finish these a.r.s.eholes off. Sweet Christ, I should've trusted them for that!"

"You had no word?" the Earl said.

"None: and I was lied to, told we were all dead on Auxonne field!"

"Then I am glad to bring you this news." John de Vere smiled, one ear c.o.c.ked to the shouting and clamour below. "And if I had a better thing, I would have brought it to you with as good a heart. Your people sorely felt your loss."

"I didn't know-" Ash swallowed, her throat tightening. She felt herself grin. "s.h.i.t. They made it? You're sure they made it? When you left, they were okay? Robert's okay?"

"Inside the walls of Dijon, and like to hold out, I think. The news of its fall would have been heard, madam. They have Charles within the walls, also, and the capture of a Duke, or his death, would have been shouted abroad. Now." De Vere reached out and gripped her forearms in his gauntlets. "We must take counsel together."

When you wake up on a runaway wagon, you either grab the reins, or you jump off. One or the other.

Dozens of men on the wall now, heaving weapons and crates down the scaling ladders, into the alleys; and all of them detouring past Ash as they ran back and forth, staring, calling it's her, it is her, receiving her nods of acknowledgement; running with a new fervour, excitement, joy.

"b.u.g.g.e.r counsel!" Ash said. "We go or we fight. Now-"

Perhaps an hour, now, from the moment of the quake. The sense grows in her of a clock, ticking, ticking away time in which the overturned hive of Carthage might recover, regroup, begin to send troops out of the fortress-houses of the inner city and into the streets and alleys. To discover Frankish cannon-fire.

"They won't have heard us yet. Or they'll think it's just some amir or other taking advantage of the confusion to do in old enemies-"

BOOM!.

"s.h.i.t! " Ash grabbed the stone parapet. The violence of the sound jabbed into her eardrums. One of Angelotti's cannon exploded? she thought, about to run to that side of the wall; and then a flare of light bloomed on the night's darkness, towering up, rising from the harbour below.

"That," the Earl of Oxford directed her attention, "will be Viscount Beaumont."

The pillar of fire rose up, illuminating the cliff below Ash, shining red light across the inner harbour of Carthage. Smoke, flames: and at the foot of the towering conflagration, a great Visigoth war-galley, burning - burning to the water line.

She gripped the stone and leaned over, staring down at black water, ice. Fierce crackling flames billowed up, fork-tongued: stabbing up into darkness. By their immense light she saw other ships, a whole harbour full of vulnerable, inflammable wood, rope, cord, cargo. Another curl of flame suddenly ripped the night air, racing up the masts of a merchant cog, spidering out along the yardarms, wisping ropes into so much ash on the cold wind.

Two ships now on fire. Three. Four. And over there- Ash squinted, tears running down her frozen cheeks from the wind, at the roofs of warehouses across the inlet. She unconsciously hauled the cloak around her shoulders and knotted the ties. Warehouses, with forked curls of flame flickering up from their roofs and upper granary stores- Another sudden noise came on the wind, as if the explosion had been a signal. Noise blown from the west, from the main part of Carthage town that lay over the next headland. She could not distinguish if it were fire or voices.

"And that will be my brothers, Tom and George," the Earl of Oxford added. "The King-Caliph brings in a lot of cattle, Captain. Thousands of head, to feed all Carthage, where nothing may graze. George and Tom will, I trust, have taken and stampeded the stock market..."

"The stock-" Ash wiped her streaming nose. She choked back a laugh. "My lord!"

"Streets full of maddened cattle, in these ruins, should spread more confusion." De Vere added thoughtfully, "I wanted to fire the naphtha plant too, but that would be too well-guarded, and I could gain no solid information as to where it is sited."

"No, my lord." You're a f.u.c.king maniac, my lord. In her mind's eye: tremor-ravaged buildings, running men, women, wild-horned beasts, fire, injury, death, utter confusion. Utter effective confusion. "How many of us are with you?"

"Two hundred and fifty. Galley-crews back at the ships. Fifty men on this Citadel gate, fifty holding the south gate where the aqueducts come into the city. Above one hundred here, light armour, close-combat weapons, and light guns; crossbows and arquebuses."

In the harbour, flame runs from ship to ship along the docks, carracks and cogs burning, a throng of men like black lice running frantically, a bucket-line forming to the warehouses, chaff and embers sprinkling red on the wind, drifting towards other roofs. Small boats are being frantically rowed across the black vitreous water, trying to take cargo off before vessels are burned - and a throng of merchants, clerks, sailors, tapsters and wh.o.r.es shrieks around the warehouses, leather buckets of water p.i.s.sing on the conflagration, chains of men pa.s.sing cargo out, fights starting, theft.

Ash heard screamed orders, shouting, and on one burst of wind, the sound of a man bellowing in such pain that it made her hurt in sympathy. This will be happening a thousand times across Carthage now: no one is thinking about one amir's house, up on the Citadel.

"s.h.i.t." She found herself grinning at the Earl of Oxford. "What an opportunity. Nicely done. There won't be another chance like this."

John de Vere gave her a shining, utterly reckless-smile. "I thought this worth the venture, though foolhardy or desperate even if it succeeded in destroying the machina rei militaris. Now, with the earth tremor, madam, yes, we may succeed and leave. Oftentimes I am blessed with such lucky accidents when I need them."

"Wuff!" Ash felt breathless. "'When I need them'-!"

"However," de Vere continued, squinting down at the chaos of burning ships and men, "I had planned for us to leave by way of the aqueducts - which have not fallen, but they may not be safe after the earth tremors."

"We won't get out by way of the streets, even in this." Ash's scarred face shone in the nickering light of the flames below. "Even if they're falling down, the aqueducts are a d.a.m.n sight better than trying to fight our way out through Gelimer's army - this confusion won't last for ever."

"Gelimer?"

"The newly elected Caliph."

"Ah. That was his name."

"You have been lucky," Ash said. She spoke to Oxford over her shoulder as she crab-crawled behind the barricade, back across the wall. Two black-feathered shafts abruptly stood out from a pavise over her head. She ignored them as if they were a mere irritating nuisance. "Theodoric's death, and the election! - all the amirs' troops are wiping their own masters' bottoms right now, instead of thundering around the city. All there is down there is the militia, and they're c.r.a.p. Up here ..."

Ash wiped her nose on the leather palm of her mail glove, wet skin freezing in the air.

"This city spends half its time with lords' households at war with each other," she said. "They're used to shutting themselves up in these house-forts and waiting for the s.h.i.t to go away. But Leofric's men are going to come out real soon."

"They need not do so, if we cannot take that gate!"

A shriek thirty feet away whipped her head around. On the roof of House Leofric, another mail-clad man in white robes threw up his arms and slumped over the wall, tumbling down into the alley. A raucous cheer went up from below. Carracci ran forward and dragged the twitching dead man behind the shields; Thomas Morgan scooped up the Visigoth's bow.

"Leofric left troops guarding the place - or maybe he's made it back from the palace. Either way, they've about worked out that we're not Visigoths, we're Franks, this isn't another amir attacking them."

A whistling sound split the air. Ash had no time to throw herself flat, only to wince - herself, Oxford, and the soldiers on the Citadel wall half-ducking in identical jerky movement - and something whooshed up from inside the walls of House Leofric, and a flare and flat concussion banged out fifty feet above their heads.

White light strobed collapsed buildings, blocked alleys, the ma.s.s of helmets below.

"Distress rockets! Calling their allies." Ash shook her head. "Okay. Decision, my lord - we attack right now, or we withdraw."

"No! No retreat!" The Earl of Oxford swore. "I will have this Stone Golem of the Faris's, and I will leave it rubble like the rest of this thrice-d.a.m.ned city!"

"The Visigoths have other generals."

"But none that they believe to be of such great power." Oxford gave her a look which, despite battle-dirt and their situation, was all reflective irony. "I dare say they have better generals, madam - but none with a mystical war-machine at home, none that they believe invincible. We are in such straits, in Burgundy, we must stop her!"

Something about Burgundy tugged at her mind: she forcibly ignored it.

"My voice for the attack. d.i.c.kon?" The Earl glanced at his younger brother, who stuttered, "Yes, my lord, mine also."

Ash loosened the strap of her helmet and lifted the edge, listening - hearing nothing but the racket and clamour of her own men. "They're still my people. This is my company. The decision's mine." When we run, we'll get mauled getting out, too. "You may be an English Earl, my lord, but I am their captain, who are they going to follow?"

John de Vere regarded her grimly. "In especial, after a miraculous reappearance?

Better not to put it to the test, madam. Leadership cannot quarrel, not where we stand now!"

"Who's quarrelling?" Ash grinned widely, breathing in the chill air that stank sweetly of black powder; putting aside her invaded soul, other voices, everything, for this now-or-never second. "There'll never be another chance like this! Let's do it!"

"Boss!" Geraint's voice came from an anonymous head in an archer's sallet, stuck up just above the level of the parapet. "They're trying to get runners out, down the wall from their roof!"

"Get your bowmen back out there, pick them off!"

The helmet vanished. She has not fully taken it in, the reality of the presence of these men: Geraint, Angelotti, Carracci, Thomas Morgan, Thomas Rochester - and Floria! Christus! Floria . . .

Here. Here in Carthage. s.h.i.t.

She risked a glance over the edge, into the alley below. Floria and Richard Faversham knelt in a protective cordon of billmen, a thrashing yelling body between them - the crossbow-woman, Ludmilla Rostovnaya - rolling b.l.o.o.d.y on the cobbles; Floria's surgeon's box open, bandages welling red with blood.

"Don't attack through that front gate," Ash snapped. "It opens into a tunnel. A closed pa.s.sage full of murder-holes!"

De Vere frowned. Still more of her men came piling past them now - mere minutes since she'd come up here - climbing down the scaling ladders, shifting iron barrels on wooden trenchers, casks, arquebuses, barrels of arrows and bolts. The Earl lowered the intensity of his tone so that his voice should not carry: "I could purchase no information about the inside of these palaces."

"But I know, my lord." Ash's face went momentarily bleak, remembering. "I talked a lot to slaves. The houses go down into living rock. There are six floors below street-level. I was in this House for-" She had to force herself to think. "Three, four days. There are shafts, murder-holes, and deep bolt-holes. It's f.u.c.king impossible. I don't wonder Carthage was never taken!"

"And the Golem?" De Vere's sandblasted fair face, under his visor, lit up grimly. "Madam, do you know where this golem is kept?"

The realisation came to her with the sensation of machinery locking home: this man's knowledge, and her own.

We're going to do this. We're going to succeed.

"Yes. I know exactly where the Stone Golem is. I talked to the slaves who clean it. It's in the north-east quadrant of the House, and it's six floors down."

"G.o.d's b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!"

An odd abstraction overcame her. She ignored the swish of a second distress rocket climbing the black sky, blasting a hollow sphere of light above her.

"How would I attack this place. . . ? Not frontally, that's for sure. We could scale their walls and climb down into the central courtyard - and then be caught in a crossfire from all directions, when they pot us from inside the building ..."

"Madam Ash!" John de Vere shook her by the shoulders. "No time for talk. We go or we stay, we run or we attack! There is no time. Or I shall lead this company in despite of you!"

Ash leaned out from the wall, one hand to the top of a ladder. "Carracci! Geraint! Thomas Morgan!"

"Yes, boss?" Red-faced under his helmet, Carracci bawled happily up at her.

"Clear this alley!"

"Yes, boss!"

"Angelotti!"

The master gunner ran through the crowding armed men to the foot of the wall, and shouted up: "What, madonna?"

This is the north-east side. Allow about twenty paces for the thickness of the city wall - then allow another twenty feet- "Put powder casks up against the House wall, right down there." She pointed. "Everything you've got in casks, and clear this area!"

"Yes, madonna!"

The powder will not be going off in a confined s.p.a.ce, so it will have less force; but in an alley ten feet wide, even open to the stars, it will have such force between the buildings that it will rip masonry apart.

As Angelotti and his crews ran, Ash said, "I paced it out, my lord. My cell, the pa.s.sage. I know where things are on the other side of that wall."

Preparing to climb down the scaling ladder, John de Vere gave her a look that was equal parts admiration and appalled shock. "This, while you were prisoner, and doubtless ill-handled? Madam, you are an amazement to me!"

Ash ignored that. Her pain, her blood on the floor; these are somewhere she cannot feel or notice them now.

She pointed at the growing heap of powder casks. "We don't mess about with storming gates, we go straight in through the wall - blow the side of the building in. That puts us in at ground-level in the north-east quadrant."

The Earl of Oxford nodded sharply. "And we take the whole House?"

"Don't need to. It's built in four quadrants, around four stairwells, and they don't connect. Take the top of one, and you've taken the whole - or bottled up anyone who's in there. I need men on the ground floor, to hold this quadrant against the rest of the House. Then we have to fight our way down six floors to find the Stone Golem ..."

She turned, swung herself down the ladder, awkward in ill-fitting armour but growing accustomed; down out of the icy night wind, sweating into her padded arming doublet, into the empty alley, John de Vere and d.i.c.kon beside her; the alley dim now almost all the lanterns and torches had been pulled back.

A tall, leggy man in a powder-scarred padded jack heaved a last barrel into place: Angelotti, his curls bright gold under the metal rim of his helmet. Approaching, catching what she said, he offered, "The casks are in place. I still have powder. We can toss grenades down the stairwell."