Ash: The Lost History Part 89

s.h.i.t! I'm surrounded by bodies!

A clear sky brought lower temperatures: frost glittering on the mud; cat-ice forming a skin on puddles, water-filled holes, and expanses of quagmire. Around her, crammed together in the slopping impa.s.sable mud ruts, horse-drawn carts and people - horses with bony, arched spines, heads hanging down in sleep or exhaustion. And men, men and women bundled up on the ground, filthy, careless of the mud that froze around and on them as they slept, or sprawled dead in the night.

Ash froze, squatting down in the bitter cold, listening for shouts.

Nothing.

She rubbed the wind's cold tears from her eyes, thought: No; it only looks like a field of battle - but there's no dead bodies piled up man-high, no scavengers looting, no crows and rats, no drying blood; it doesn't smell like a skirmish, an ambush, a ma.s.sacre.

These men are sleeping, not dead.

Refugees.

Sleeping, exhausted, wherever they were when darkness fell tonight.

She remained perfectly still, alert for any movement of men waking, orienting herself. The Lion camp behind her; this, the road running south from Dijon to Auxonne. Dijon a mile ahead, across water meadows and an invading army.

A thought invaded her mind. But, of course, I could just keep going. Stay clear of Dijon.

Keep going: leave Floria and the Faris, the company and the Wild Machines, behind me: leave everything, because it's all different now; I only ever wanted to be a soldier- That ended on the beach at Carthage. That ended when something made me start walking towards the pyramids; towards the Wild Machines.

South of her, she heard the distant bugling of a wolf's call. Another; two more; then, silence.

Still want to run?

She felt her mouth move, wryly.

I am a soldier. I have a couple of hundred living, breathing reasons behind me for why I need answers right now.

Of course, I could f.u.c.k off and leave Tom Rochester in charge. Go someplace else. Sign on as a grunt. Stop trying to hold all this together- A twist of unease in her bowels made her aware of the extent of her fear. Greater than she expected.

Is that because going to the Visigoths now is lunatic? It is lunatic. Some d.a.m.n guard can hack me down without a question asked. The Faris can have me executed. Or on a ship back to Carthage - what's left of it. I think, after Basle, I know her - but do I? It's stupidly dangerous!

And that's before I get my questions answered.

Lose the armour, lose the sword; Ash thought. Lie down to sleep beside one of these women, get up in the morning, and carry on walking. I'd keep my face hidden, but no one's going to recognise me; not among this lot.

There must be hundreds of thousands of refugees in this war. I'd just be one more. Even if they manipulated the Faris's army, the Wild Machines wouldn't find me. I could get out of Burgundy. I could stay hidden for months. For years.

Yeah: lose the armour, lose the sword; get raped and murdered because I still own a pair of boots.

No one stirred out of their exhaustion.

She got carefully to her feet. The demi-gown buckled over her brigandine, and the cloak over all, kept her armour from being obvious. She kept one hand on the scabbard of her sword. Under the hood, and helmet, her face felt naked. The cold wind whipped her hair against her scarred cheeks; hair too short now to get in her eyes.

I'd stay alive, she thought. At least until I starved.

The taste of urine settled into her mouth. The road stank of p.i.s.s and excrement. She stepped across deep cart-ruts, moving quietly on the sodden earth between groups of slumped bodies.

It was a minute before she realised that she was seeing children everywhere; almost every family with swaddled babies or small brats. Someone far off coughed; a young baby cried. Ash blinked, in the night chill.

At that age, I was one of a slave's litter in Carthage. Waiting for the knife.

Moving through the mud with the quietness of an animal - and there were no dogs here, few horses; only people on foot, with what they could carry on their backs - she placed her boots with care, avoiding potholes, and crossed the track. She had an impulse to leave her cloak spread over one child, but her automatic stealthy movement carried her past before she could give way to it.

The Faris and me, we have more in common with each other than we do with these people.

Her breath smoked on the chill, moonlit air. Without hesitation, she turned north, trudging towards the crossroads and bridge north of the town.

I'm not going to run. Not with Robert and the rest in Dijon. The company know it, and I know it: that's why we've never had a choice about coming here.

d.a.m.n the Earl of Oxford, d.a.m.n John de Vere; why didn't he bring all my men to Carthage-? I could be half the world away!

Done, now.

I'd still be hearing a dead man's voice- G.o.dfrey - ah, Jesu! I miss G.o.dfrey!

Bad enough to remember him so clearly I think I hear him?

She plodded on, through frozen scrubland, through ground it would have taken her minutes to cross in daylight. She spared a glance for the moon, saw something under an hour had pa.s.sed; and with that came over a rise and in sight of the bridge, and the great north part of the siege camp.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h . . ."

Seeing it from the bluff with John Price, she had only seen west of the river: tents spread out across three or four miles of what had been vine-covered hills and cornfields and water meadows. Across the bridge now, north of the town, there was nothing but tents, hundreds of them, white in the moon; and, further over, dark structures might have been field-forts, thrown up as winter quarters. And more great siege machinery: trebuchets, and the square silhouettes of hide-covered towers.

No golems visible.

The bridge was dark, only a campfire here and there on the perimeter this side, and the intermittent movement of guards around them. The remains of old crucifixions hung from trees: mute reminder of what happens to refugees. She began to catch s.n.a.t.c.hes of voices, across the cold air: Carthaginian Latin.

I've got an hour before John Price does his stuff. I hope. Don't get it wrong, rosbif. . .

It is easy, in the night, the confusion, the lack of timing and command and control, for everything to go to h.e.l.l in very short order. She knows this, wonders for a moment if she should go back; and on that doubt straightens her shoulders and walks forward, down the muddy slope, on to the road that leads to the bridge, and the perimeter of the Visigoth camp.

"Halt!"

"Okay, okay," Ash called, good-humouredly, "I'm halting." She held her gauntlets out from her side, open palms clearly displayed.

"We ain't got no f.u.c.king food!" a despairing voice bawled in French. "Now b.u.g.g.e.r off!"

Another, deeper male voice said in Carthaginian, "Put a bolt over their heads, n.a.z.ir, they'll run."

"Oh, what?" Ash snuffled a laugh. Excitement fizzed in her blood. She found herself grinning so broadly that her mouth hurt, and the night cold stung her teeth. "Green Christ up a f.u.c.king Tree! Alderic? 'Arif Alderic?"

There was a brief moment of complete silence, in which she had time to think, No, of course you were mistaken, girl, don't be such a b.l.o.o.d.y idiot; and then, from one of the dark figures at the wagon-gate, the same male voice said, "Jund? Is that you, jund Ash?"

"h.e.l.l's great gaping gates! I don't believe it!"

"Step forward and be recognised!"

Ash wiped the moisture off her upper lip with the cold sleeve of her demi-gown, and tucked her arm back under her cloak. She stepped forward, stumbling on muddy ground, night vision gone with having looked into their fire; and came down on to the trodden mud around the wicker gate, between wagons that blocked the bridge.

Half a dozen men with spears came forward, a bearded, helmeted officer at their head.

"Ash!"

"Alderic!" She reached out, at the same moment that he did; they gripped arms and stood grinning at each other for a stunned second. "Keeping an eye on your perimeter guards, huh?"

"You know how it is." The big Carthaginian chuckled, letting go of her, running his hand over his braided beard.

"So - who'd you upset, to get posted back up here?"

That jolted him, she saw it; made him focus himself again as a soldier, and an enemy. His shadowed face became severe. "Many died in your attack on House Leofric."

"Many of my men, too."

A thoughtful nod. The 'arif snapped his fingers, muttered something to a guard, and the man set off at a run back into the camp. Ash saw him slow, once away from the guiding firelight at the gate.

"I suppose I should consider you my prisoner," Alderic said, stolidly. He moved, and the firelight shone on to his face. Ash saw, along with the amazement, that he was concealing, a brief spurt of amus.e.m.e.nt. "G.o.d in His mercy d.a.m.n you. I did not believe a woman could do what you did. Where is the English jund, the white mullet livery? Is he with you here? Who is with you?"

"No one's with me."

Her mouth dried as she spoke. She thought, d.a.m.n, it had to be him, he knows me, he'll turn the camp guards out, John Price will have his work cut out for him down at the siege-engines.

Well, he's a hard b.a.s.t.a.r.d, he can take it.

"What you see is what you get," Ash remarked, keeping her gauntleted hands in plain view. "Yes, I am bearing a sword; I'd like to keep it."

The 'arif Alderic shook his head. He gave a deep bellowing laugh. With a good-natured cheerfulness, beckoning his men forward, he said, "I wouldn't trust you with a blunt spoon, jund, never mind with a sword."

Ash shrugged. "Okay. If I were you, though, I'd ask the Faris first."

Alderic himself put back her cloak, while two of the guards held her arms, and began unbuckling her sword-belt. His fingers were quick, even in the chill. Straightening up, her scabbarded blade in his hands, he said, "Don't try to convince me the General knows you're here."

"No. Of course not. You'd better tell her." Ash met his gaze. "You'd better tell her Ash is here to negotiate with her. Sorry I didn't bring my white flag."

She could see in a second that the cheek of it appealed to him. The 'arif turned, gave orders to the gate-guards, and the men either side of Ash pushed her forward, not particularly roughly, into the camp. The river rustled below, as they crossed the bridge, walking out into muddy lanes between tents, that showed clear in the white moonlight.

The sheer reality of her presence, here, now, among armed men who will have absolutely no hesitation in killing her - that reality makes her eyes open wide to the freezing night wind, as if to imprint the moonlit silhouettes of hundreds of frost-rimed pavilions; her ears take in the noise their feet make, crunching through the mud. It nonetheless seems unreal. I should be with my company: this is crazy!

Ash, walking in the 'arifs wake, heard a hound bark once; a pale, lean-bodied shadow in the night, nosing at rubbish abandoned outside one of the big barrack-tents - almost no small tents, she noted; the Visigoths like to keep their men in bigger units - and an owl flicked like the white shadow of death over her head; brought her heart into her mouth with the memory of hunting, in Carthage's darkness, among the pyramids.

They skidded, walking up and down slopes, walking for half a mile or more, still within the camp, hardly closer to the north wall of Dijon. Moonlight glinted from something - the artillery-battered tiles on Dijon's turreted roofs.

Somewhere a sally-gate is being opened. Please G.o.d.

"Six men of my forty died when you attacked the House," Alderic said, dropping back to walk beside her. He still gazed ahead, profile stark in silver light. "n.a.z.ir Theudibert. Troopers Barbas, Gaina, Gaiseric ..."

Ash let a little of the bleakness she felt into her voice. "Those are men I would have killed personally."

Looking at his bearded face, she thought him entirely aware - as a good commander should be - of the beating that had lost her her child; who had done it, their names.

"You are too seasoned a campaigner to let it become personal. Besides, jund, you did not die in our Citadel when it fell. G.o.d spares you for something: other children, perhaps."

At that, she stared up at the big Carthaginian.

He knows I lost a child: not that I can't have another. He knows I got out of Carthage: he doesn't know about the Wild Machines. He's a.s.suming I'm here for another contract. A condotta.

If he knows anything, it's barrack stories that I'm another Faris, I hear the Stone Golem.

If they'd had reason to stop using the machina rei militaris - and he's House Leofric; he'd know! - he'd be afraid of me.

As if to confirm her thoughts, the 'arif Alderic continued calmly: "If I were you, jund, I would not risk myself within reach of the amir Leofric's family again. But our General is a fighting woman, she may well have a better use for you with us, here."

She registered that Leofric's family rather than plain Leofric.

"The old man's dead, huh?" she said bluntly.

In the sharp contrast of moonlight and shadow, she could see Alderic raise his eyebrows. When he spoke, it was still in the tone of one professional colleague to another: "Sick, I thank you, jund; but recovering well. What else might we expect, now that G.o.d blesses us so clearly?"

"He does?"

A flicker of amus.e.m.e.nt. "You could not know, in Dijon. G.o.d touches His earth, at Carthage, with the light of His blessing; and any man may see His cold fire burning over the tombs of the King-Caliphs. A seer told me it presages a speedy end to our crusade here."

She blinked, thought, He a.s.sumes I've made my way out of Dijon? and then, Cold fire over the tombs- Over the pyramids.

The aurora of the Wild Machines.

"And you think it's a sign of G.o.d's favour?" she blurted.

"How else? You yourself, jund, were there when the earth shook the Citadel, and the palace fell. And, all in one moment, the first Fire of the Blessing was seen, and King-Caliph Gelimer was spared from death in the earthquake."

"But-!"

There was no time to formulate questions: they were arriving on the heels of the 'arifs messenger; the man still shouting at the guards on what Ash saw, by the livery, was the Faris's quarters. No tent here: raw timber had been knocked together into a long, low, turf-roofed building, surrounded by braziers and troops and slaves waking from their sleep.

About to persist, she shut up when a white-clad figure opened the arched doorway and stepped out.

The automatic attention of the men would have told her it was the Faris, if nothing else; but the moon on the river-fall of silver blonde hair, falling down about her shoulders to her thighs, was unmistakable. Ash, watching and not yet seen, had a second to think I used to look exactly like that before she strode forward, long-legged and gawky, arms wrapped in her cloak, and said in a cheerful voice, "This is a parley. You want to talk to me."

With absolutely no hesitation, the Visigoth woman said, "Yes. I do. 'Arif, bring her inside."

The Faris turned and walked back through the doorway. Her white garment was a heavy robe of marten fur and silk, swathing her body. Unarmed, bareheaded, barely awake, she seemed still in complete possession of herself. Ash stumbled on the wooden steps, her feet numbed by the cold.

Two golems stood, one either side of the door, oil-lamps held in their stone hands.

They might have been merely statues of men: one in white marble, the other in carved red sandstone. An artificer's hand had certainly shaped the muscled arms, the long limbs and sculpted torso; given form to the aquiline features. Then the bright polished bronze of shoulder- and elbow-joints flashed in the light, as the marble golem raised its lamp higher. Ash heard the infinitesimal sound of greased metal sliding on metal. The red golem mirrored the movement; the vast weight of its stone body shifting.

"Follow!"