Ash: The Lost History Part 95

"Okay, we'll take it from the top." Ash brushed crumbs off the front of her demi-gown. "If it's been long enough since you came through the sally-port for rumours to get out among the citizens, then it's more than long enough for rumours to get round the company, I know that!"

She raised her voice, over the noise: "These are facts. The old King-Caliph Theodoric died. They've got a new one - he's c.r.a.p, but they've got one. That's King-Caliph Gelimer. The city of Carthage was flattened by an earthquake. But, sadly, as far as I can tell from the Faris's camp, Gelimer survived, and there's still a functioning government."

Euen Huw, in deep Welsh gloom, remarked, "Oh s.h.i.t," and then narrowed his black eyes in surprise as half the company burst out laughing.

One of the younger garrison crossbowmen thumped his fist on the floor. "Get us a contract with the attackers, boss! That's safer. Fight with the Visigoths."

A woman beside him, in archer's gear, muttered in English: "I heard rumours they'd pay us twice as much as they're paying Cola de Monforte if we go over. One of van Mander's lads got word back to me last week."

Before Ash could comment, one of the sergeants leaned over the woman's shoulder: a hatchet-faced Italian, Giovanni Petro.

"Sure they might sign us up for twice the money," he rasped, "and who do you think would get to walk up and mine the walls? Or bring a siege tower up to the gate? Or go through the first breach? There's a lot of s.h.i.t jobs in a siege, and we'd get them all. We'd never live to collect."

Pieter Tyrrell said flatly, "I don't want a contract, after Basle. Not after they broke the condotta."

There were many heads nodding in agreement. A babble of suggestions, contradictions, and complaints broke out. Ash let it go on for a minute or so, then raised her hands for quiet.

"Whether you could sign up with them and survive it or not - and you're tough motherf.u.c.kers, I still think it's your best chance - the Visigoths want me," she repeated. "That's why they sent a s.n.a.t.c.h-squad in at Auxonne. That's why the scientist-magus Leofric tried to take me apart in Carthage. And I do mean 'take me apart' - maybe he's been learning from our surgeon!"

She took the opportunity of the unsubtle joke to check on Floria. The woman raised her wine jug, acknowledging the subdued rumble. Ash saw no hint in her expression of any loyalty to the country of her birth. f.u.c.k knows it was hard enough for her last time we were here - but she can't start drinking again because of that.

"Why don't they want you alive, boss?" Jean Bertran, one of the armourers, yelled from the back. She lifted a hand, acknowledging him; soot-blackened, unchanged in her absence. He shouted across, "Two's better than one, right? And you hear their old machine too!"

Another man-at-arms who had stayed with the garrison stood, hauling up his drooping hose. "Yeah, boss, if you're another Faris, and you hear the Stone Golem too, why won't she employ us? f.u.c.k, the rag-heads would flatten everybody, then!"

Ash, head tilted slightly sideways, eyed the footman. "You know, next time I'm going to have feudal levies, not b.l.o.o.d.y mercenaries, then I can just tell them what to do without all these f.u.c.king questions. Listen up, d.i.c.kheads! I'll say it again. House Leofric and the King-Caliph don't give a fart in a thunderstorm about the company of the Lion. If you guys decide to get out of here - maybe go look for the Turk, maybe go north - then you'll get no more trouble than you ever do. If I'm with you, we're the prize target. Without me, you can leave Dijon."

"We can take 'em! f.u.c.k the rag-heads!" Simon Tydder yelled, to general approval.

"How about a bit less morale and a bit more intelligence?" Ash's hands dropped to her side. "Now f.u.c.king listen. This isn't war. No - shut up! Right. This isn't human war."

The hall hushed.

"There are other powers in the world besides men. G.o.d gives His miracles to those who believe in Him. And the devil gives power to his own."

Into an almost total silence, Ash went on: "Those of you who were with me at Carthage saw it. The Visigoths won't admit it, but their empire is founded on demons. We've seen them. Stone demons, stone engines, wild machines in the desert. They put the sun out, not the amirs."

Now the silence became total. The better part of three hundred men and women of the baggage train; forty lances of fighting men who will pa.s.s this word on to those of the Lion Azure out on guard duty or elsewhere; the children and the mastiffs - all still, and watching her face.

"They're spreading this darkness. Not the Visigoths - it's the Wild Machines who tell the King-Caliph and his Faris what to do. They speak to her through the Stone Golem. I hear them. She hears them. She knows the Stone Golem's possessed by demons. And she's scared!"

Richard Faversham got to his feet. "These Wild Machines killed Father Maximillian!"

"No, that was an earthquake," Floria called out.

"Doctor; priest!"

A sudden, private shudder threatens to demolish this public argument: G.o.dfrey! she thinks; aware of sweat cold now against her skin.

"Later. Now listen up! I know you guys don't give a s.h.i.t about demons. You'd scare the a.s.s off demons, anyway!"

A cheer.

"But the demons-" Ash put her fists on her hips. "-the demons are only after me. Maybe the demons want another Faris. But if they do-" A shrug. "It isn't to lead their army! As far as they're concerned, I'm a loose cannon. I'm a Faris they don't control. So House Leofric wants me dead, the King-Caliph wants me dead, the demon Wild Machines want me dead." Her mouth moved into a grin, lopsided with private emotion. "I don't kill so easy. You know that."

"f.u.c.king right, boss!"

"But they won't sign a condotta with me. I'm giving you guys - advice, let's say. Take Robert Anselm as your commander. Sell Dijon to the Goths. Break out and head for Dalmatia. Take Visigoth money, rob this city of supplies if you have to, and head for the Turks."

It is cold advice, standing here in this beleaguered city which has held out for three long, bitter months. Advice that the machina rei militaris might have given her, if she could have asked it.

"The Sultan isn't going to see the Visigoth Empire take over Christendom without doing something about it. You could get a condotta with him-"

Over the great confusion of noise, shouting, men springing to their feet, sergeants trying to restore order, Robert Anselm got to his feet.

"I won't take the command! You're our commander!"

"Never mind the f.u.c.king heroics!" Ash shouted, roughly. "Never mind the f.u.c.king company flag and loyalty. Think about this. Do you really want a captain who the Visigoths and their demons are determined to kill? Because if you do, we're stuck in here!"

"Screw the f.u.c.king rag-heads!" Euen Huw, also on his feet, punched the air with his fist.

Ludmilla Rostovnaya yelled, "Nah, we want to fight with you, boss!"

A wall of sound hit Ash: it was a second before she realised it was agreement.

"Ash wins battles!" Pieter Tyrrell shouted.

"Ash gets us out of the s.h.i.t!" bellowed Geraint ab Morgan. "Got us back from f.u.c.king Carthage, didn't you, boss?"

"This isn't your fight! " She paced, nearing the window embrasure. The weak sunlight of a clouded day touched her, showing clearly a woman in stained and muddy brigandine and hose, a dagger at her belt, her face white with exhaustion. Nothing about her that is fire except her eyes.

Trying to guess at the mood of the meeting, the necessity of reducing four or five hundred interior lives, complicated souls, to names on a muster-roll and a gestalt mood: this bewilders her, sometimes. She stared around at faces. Those she would have automatically picked out before to be trouble-makers and authority-grabbers - Geraint ab Morgan, Wat Rodway - did not avoid her eye. Both men, and others like them, watched her with a raw loyalty that frightened her.

Part of it's that no one wants to be boss right now, and have to take these decisions. They're afraid they might lose if I'm not in charge - and that's not reason: war doesn't depend much on rational thought.

But that's still only part of it.

"For Christ's sake," Ash said, voice rough. "You don't know what you're getting into."

"A fortunate commander is worth much," Antonio Angelotti remarked, as if it were a proverb.

Ludmilla Rostovnaya stood up, facing Ash.

"Look, boss," the raw-featured Rus woman said reasonably. "We don't give a f.u.c.k whose fight it is. I never fought for any lord or country. I keep my eye on my lance-mates' backs, and they watch mine. You're a f.u.c.king awkward boss sometimes, but you get us through. You got us out of Basle. And Carthage. You'll get us out of here. So we'll stick with you." A dazzling, gap-toothed smile towards the shaven-headed soldier beside Ash: "No offence, Captain Anselm!"

"None taken," Anselm rumbled, confidently amused.

Jolted, Ash demanded, "What do you mean, 'awkward'?"

"You spend half your time playing up to the local n.o.bs." Ludmilla shrugged. "Like with German Emperor Frederick? All this social climbing s.h.i.t? I was embarra.s.sed, boss. But we kicked a.s.s at Neuss anyway."

Thomas Rochester unexpectedly said, "And I've covered more miles as your escort than I ever did in the entire Yorkist war! Can't you ever stay in one place on the f.u.c.king battlefield, boss?"

"Yeah, then the runners would know where to find you!" a sergeant of archers called.

"Excuse me-" Ash began a protest.

"And you don't get drunk half often enough!" Wat Rodway called. Baldina from the wagons added, "Not with us, anyway!"

Ash, trying to press home the seriousness of it, began to laugh. "Are you quite finished?"

"Not yet, madonna, there's plenty more. The gunners haven't even started."

"Thank you, Master Angelotti!"

The hall filled with a buzz of friendly, foul-mouthed hara.s.sment. Ash put her fingers through her cropped hair, at a loss. Opening her mouth, and not sure what she was going to say as she did, she was interrupted.

"Boss ..."

A raw voice. She turned around, trying to locate the man who had spoken; found Floria del Guiz on her feet, grabbing at the arm of a man on crutches.

Black bandages looped his face, covering the cauterised sockets of his eyes. Above them, white scars gave way to wisps of white hair. He snarled something at the surgeon, hitching his crutches under his armpits, tilting his head up, listening, sightlessly staring off into a corner of the roof.

"Carracci," Ash began.

"Let me speak," the ex-Sergeant of Bill cut in, his head turning approximately to face her.

Ash nodded; then realised. She said aloud, "What is it, Carracci?"

"Just this." His blind head weaved a little, as if he were trying to face all of the company there, or as if he wanted to be clearly seen by them. "You didn't have to bring me back from Carthage. I'll never be any use again. I'm not the only one you brought back, boss. That's all."

A different quality of silence fell. Ash reached out, gently closing her hand over his forearm, where corded over-developed muscles trembled with the tension of balancing upright. There were people nodding heads all through the hall, a few men shifting uncomfortably or going back to their rations, but most murmuring quiet agreement. A voice said, "Right on, Carracci."

"We don't leave our own," Robert Anselm said. "Works both ways. No more s.h.i.t, girl."

She turned her head sharply to one side, momentarily not in control of her expression.

There is no way to escape this: not if you are asking men to pick up swords and axes and walk out into wet fields, and end up face down in the mud; no way not to create that fierce mixture of fear and affection that - she admits to herself - will lead them to this refusal, nine times out of ten.

Could've been the tenth time, she thought, somewhere between black humour and appalled resignation. I'd better be able to handle this now I've got it.

A clatter of feet and weapons at the stair broke the silence. Still holding Carracci's arm, Ash yelled across, "What is it?"

A hara.s.sed company guard entered the hall, behind him a dozen or so men in armour and Burgundian liveries. She saw in an automatic glance that their swords were in their sheaths; that the leader carried a white baton.

"Captain Ash," their leader called across the hall. "My lord Olivier de la Marche has sent us. He wishes you to be suitably escorted to the Viscount-Mayor's siege council. It is my honour to ask, will you come with us now?"

"You go," Ash said instantly to Robert Anselm. "a.s.suming I'm right, and he's here, I've got more important things to do - if you're all set on staying here, I need to talk to the Duke."

"To Charles?" Anselm lowered his voice. "They won't let you in, girl."

"Why not?"

"You don't know yet? f.u.c.k. I should have told you." Anselm hitched up the belt that held his purse and b.o.l.l.o.c.k dagger, settling it under his beer-belly. His gaze on the Burgundian men, he said, "You know Duke Charles was wounded at Auxonne? Yeah? That was three months ago. They tell us he still hasn't recovered enough to leave his bed."

Chapter Four.One of the aides standing beside the Burgundian with the white rod called across impatiently, "Are you deaf, woman? The council's waiting!"

Jolted, she turned her head: found herself among men-at-arms swearing, straightening their shoulders, beginning to move. She made the abrupt mental gear-change necessary to realise that violence is about to happen - especially now; especially after Carracci - and nodded at Geraint, watching as he and his provosts brought the lances to order.

"Son of a b.i.t.c.h!" Robert Anselm muttered, from his tone as disoriented as she was.

The leader of the Burgundian officers - Jussey? Jonvelle? - said something sharply condemnatory in French to his companion. He shrugged a very informal half-apology towards Ash. His expression, as far as Ash could decipher it in the dim, high-roofed hall, was embarra.s.sed. His gaze went up and down her, head to foot.

"He's got a point," Ash said grimly.

The night-before-last's sodden rain still blackened her brigandine's blue velvet and buff straps. She glanced down at the high boots pointed to her doublet skirts, and the mud drying black and crusted on them. One moment of feeling naked without cuisses and greaves - without armour - then she realised, too, that the bra.s.s-headed studs on her brigandine were dull, and her sallet (where Rickard, blushing, picked it up) was glazed orange and brown with rust.

"Get me a sword," Ash said abruptly.

"And the rest ..." Robert Anselm gave her one a.s.sessing glance, already signalling to one of his squires. The boy came back across the hall with his hands full of straps, scabbard, and sword.

"Arm me." Anselm, stripping off his demi-gown, stood with his arms outstretched, while his pages pointed and strapped leg armour and cuira.s.s to his arming doublet. As if they weren't there, he stared around at the men-at-arms, and finally fixed on the master gunner. He showed his teeth. "Tony!"

Angelotti, kneeling by a bucket, lifted his head and threw a quant.i.ty of wet-gold hair back, spraying his own squires with dirty water. His face was a little cleaner, still showing traces of having come in through mud, rain, and freezing slush. He looked first at Anselm, then at the Burgundians, scowled, and muttered something mellifluous and filthy.

"Yeah, yeah. I know you. You got clean stuff in your pack, wrapped up dry. Right?" Robert Anselm kicked at the Italian gunner's kit with his sabatons, as his pages laced his arm-defences on to his obviously newly repaired arming doublet. "You're about her size. That demi-gown. The one you always wear when you're on the pull . . . You manage to bring that all the way back from North Africa?"

Ash covered her mouth with her hand, feeling a sudden grin under her palm. Angelotti knelt, unwrapped a pack of leather and waxed pelts, and stood up and turned, a garment across his arms.

A white silk damask demi-gown. Spotless. Furred at the high collar, skirts, and slit sleeves with the soft, multiple greys of wolf-fur.

"Can't 'ave boss going out there looking s.h.i.te," Anselm said, giving the Burgundians a brawl-starting grin. "Now can we, Tony? Get the Lion a bad name."

Long minutes, while the Burgundian officers waited meekly: two pages brushing her boots, Rickard pointing and b.u.t.toning the spotless demi-gown on over her filthy brigandine and calling to a mate of his for the loan of a polished archer's sallet. He deftly twisted blue and yellow silk ribbon around the open-face helmet, and skewered a white plume into the holder.

The soft wolf-fur lining Angelotti's collar stroked her scarred cheek.

"Sword!" Anselm beckoned his squire forward. Ash automatically raised her arms for the squire to kneel at her side.

Anselm reached across and took the weapon from the boy, with a deliberate, expansive physicality that always brought him far more clearly into her mind than anything else.

He stepped forward and knelt on the flagstones in front of her, an armoured man now but for his helmet and gauntlets. He began to buckle the sword-belt and weapon on around her waist, over the shining demi-gown.

She dropped her hand down, encountering a hand-and-a-half grip: blue velvet bound with gold wire. She touched the flutes of a writhen bra.s.s pommel and cross; the metal polished to a deep, glimmering brightness.

"This is your best sword, Robert."