Ash: A Secret History (142 page)

A thread of coldness tickled in her gut.

“Nice kit.” She rapped the knuckles of her gauntlets against the sergeant’s cuirass. All twenty of Rochester’s men had armoured up, borrowing what fitted from other men.

“Showing the rag-heads what we got,” the sergeant grunted.

Walking between them, surrounded by men mostly taller, and all in armour, Ash felt a fallacious sense of complete security. She smiled to herself, and shook her head. “All this metalware, and what happens? Some little oik shoves a pointy stick up your backside. Never mind, lads. All wearing our mail braies,
¹⁵
are we?”

“Don’t plan to turn our backs on them!” Rochester snorted.

The atmosphere of expectancy was electric: an exhilaration born out of the certainty of risk. Ash found herself striding energetically forward across the narrow square leading to the northern sally gate. Black rats, and one stray dog, scuttled away into the dimness at the clatter of armour.

“Godfrey,
has
she spoken to the Stone Golem again?”

This time the voice of Godfrey Maximillian sounded quietly inside her head. –
Once, only. She ignores Carthage: their words to the
machina rei militaris
grow frantic. She has asked only if you speak to it … where you are, what your men are doing; if there is to be an attack.

“What does it – do you – tell her?”

–
Nothing but what I must, what I can know, from the words you speak to me. That you are on your way to her. For the rest, I know nothing of it; you have not told the
machina
your forces, nor asked for tactics.

“Yeah, and I’m keeping it that way.”

She spoke quietly, aware that the men closest around her would be hearing what she said over the clatter of armour and scabbards.

“The Wild Machines?”

–
They are silent. Perhaps their will is to let her think they are a dream, an error, a story.

Ash’s personal banner hung from its striped staff, a chill breeze not enough to stir the blue-and-gold cloth. The Burgundian troops at the sally-port recognised it, coming forward with their own torches.

“Madonna.” Antonio Angelotti walked out of the gloom by the wall, noise announcing a cluster of grooms and beasts behind him in the dimness. “I’ve arranged horses.”

Ash surveyed the riding horses; most ill-conditioned from the long siege, and with their ribs visible to count. “Well done, Angeli.”

While Rochester confirmed passwords and signals, she remained silent, hands cupping the points of elbow corners, her eyes fixed on the eastern sky. Grey clouds lightened above the pitched roofs, and the merlons of the city wall above. One of the nearer buildings – a guild house – still smoked, blackened and burned out, from the alarm that had turned out most of the Burgundians in this quarter to fight the fire. The weather had warmed from frost to bitter-cold rain, in the night; now it began to freeze again.

“Thank Christ for bad weather!”

Angelotti nodded. “If this were summer, we would be burned out, and have pestilence besides.”

“Godfrey, is there any later report of where she is?”

–
She has not told me where she is since Lauds.

“This is a dumb thing to do, isn’t it?”

–
If this were merely a war, child, you would not do it. In eight years I have known you be reckless, bold, and adventurous; but I have not known you waste lives.

Another one of Rochester’s men-at-arms glanced sideways at her, and she gave him a reassuring grin. “Boss talking to her voices. That’s all.”

The young man-at-arms had a white face, under his visor, but he gave her a sharp, efficient nod. “Yes, boss. Boss, what have they got for us out there? What should we watch out for?”

Fuck only knows! About ten thousand Visigoths, I should think…

“Those recurved bows. They don’t look like much, but they’re as fast as a longbow, even if they don’t have the penetrating power. So. Bevors up, visors down.”

“Yes, boss!”

“Now they feel safer,” Angelotti observed in an undertone. “It isn’t weapons, madonna. It’s sheer numbers.”

“I know.”

The thread of disquiet in her belly turned into a distinct twinge.

“That’s the problem with armour,” she said musingly. “Strapped in. You can’t take a shit in a hurry when you need to…”

–
Ah. Dysentery: the warrior’s excuse.

“Godfrey!” Ash spluttered, amused and appalled.

–
Child, are you forgetting? I’ve followed you around military camps for eight years. I minister to the baggage train. I know who does the laundry, after a battle. You can’t hide anything from the washerwomen. Courage is brown.

“For a priest, Godfrey, you’re a deeply disgusting man!”

–
If I were a man still, I would be at your side.

It jolted her, not out of the warm feeling of comradeship, but into a keener grief for him. She said, “I
will
come for you. First: this.” She raised her voice. “Okay, let’s do it!”

As the units of armed men passed into the tunnel-like gate below one of Dijon’s watch towers, Thomas Rochester’s sergeant bent down and muttered in her ear, over the noise, “What does he say?”

“What does who say?”

The Englishman looked uncomfortable. “Him. Your voice. Saint Godfrey. Do we have God’s grace in this?”

“Yes,” Ash replied, automatically and with complete conviction, while her mind murmured
Saint Godfrey!
in something between appalled amusement and awe.
I suppose it was inevitable…

“Troop movements, Visigoth camp, central north section?”

–
No movement reported.

And that means fuck-all, Ash thought grimly, hearing her boots echo off the raw masonry walls of the sally-port; hearing, in her soul, an incursion of ancient, inhuman muttering. Right now,
she’s
not talking to the Stone Golem either.

The Lion grooms brought the horses forward; Ash’s new mount a pale gelding some yellow-tinged colour between chestnut and bay, points barely dark enough to be distinguished; Orgueil returned to Anselm. She mounted up. Angelotti reined his own scrawny white-socked chestnut in beside her, still favouring his wounded arm. Ash glimpsed the bulk of linen bandages under the straps of his vambrace and his arming doublet.

Ahead, Burgundian soldiers yanked iron bars down from the gates as quickly as possible, passing her and her men through and out with indecent haste. The gates slammed behind them. She looked up, as they came into the open air, but her helmet and bevor prevented her turning her head enough to see the top of the wall, and the Burgundian archers and hackbutters she hoped would be up there.

The high saddle kept her extremely upright, legs extended almost straight. She shifted her weight, moving forward in the grey light, anxious to traverse the uncertain sloping ground before the walls. One of the men-at-arms on foot beside her grunted, and efficiently kicked a caltrop out of the way.

A quick glance to the east showed her Dijon’s city walls emerging from white mist, and, at their foot, a moat three-quarters choked with faggots of wood thrown down by assaulting troops. Beyond the churned earth, trenches and ranks of mantlets covered the ground between her and the Visigoth main camp.

“Okay: move out…”

Once out of the gateway, Rochester’s sergeant raised Ash’s personal banner.

“ASH!”

The shout came from the walls above: a deep roar of voices, that broke into “Hero of Carthage!” and “Demoiselle-Captain!”, and ended in a ragged cheer, extremely loud in the early morning. She wheeled the gelding, leaning back in the saddle to look up.

Men chanted: “Scar-face! Scar-face!”

The battlements were lined with men. Every embrasure thick with them; men climbing on to merlons, adolescent youths hanging from the wooden brattices. She lifted her hand, the gauntlet dull with freezing cold dew. The cheerful noise went up again; raucous, bold, and disrespectful; the same noise that men make before – unwillingly trusting – they commit themselves to the line-fight.

“Kick the bitch’s ass!” a woman’s contralto voice yelled.

“There you are, madonna,” Antonio Angelotti, at Ash’s side, said. “We have a doctor’s advice!”

Ash waved up at Floria del Guiz, tiny face almost invisible on the high walls. There was a cluster of lion livery jackets with her; they made up a sizeable proportion of the crowd.

“You can’t keep anything a secret overnight.” Ash turned the gelding. “Just as well, really. We may need someone to haul our asses out of this fire.”

Ahead, east of the river, lateral banks of white mist clung to the Visigoth barrack-tents and turf huts. Droplets of water illuminated the guy-ropes, and the tethers of the horse lines, in the weak rising sun. A freezing wind flapped one tent, its canvas side bellying out.

A long, black line of Visigoth men-at-arms stood along the palisade. A thin shout went up, in the distance.

There’s bold, and there’s stupid, Ash reflected. This is stupid. There’s no way we’re going to be allowed back out of there.

She tapped one long rowel-spur back, just touching the gelding’s flank. It plodded forward. Not a fighting horse.

No, Ash thought, squinting against the first rays of the sun. Not stupid. What did I say to Roberto? Don’t lose sight of the mission objective. I’m not here to fight the Visigoth army.

Faintly, in her shared soul, the clamour of the Wild Machines begins to grow again. Nothing intelligible to a human mind.

Does she hear it too?

I’m not even here to get out of their camp alive, if there’s a chance to take the Faris out.

What do I know about sisters, anyway?

“Doesn’t look good, boss,” Thomas Rochester said quietly.

“You have my orders. If we’re attacked, and the Faris is there, kill her. We can worry about getting us out
after
she’s down. If we’re attacked, and the Faris isn’t present, we bang out. Make for the north-west gate, behind us. Sound the retreat loud and clear, and pray for some Burgundian help. Got it?”

She spared a glance for the Englishman, his stubbled face visible between visor and bevor; his expression alert. Lines of strain showed he understood that they might be dead before the end of the morning. He was, nonetheless, unexpectedly cheerful.

“Got it, boss.”

“But if it looks like sheer suicide for no result – we don’t attack: we
wait.
”

Antonio Angelotti turned in his saddle, pointing into the early morning mist. “Here they come.”

The long clarion call of a truce rang out. White standards went up, five hundred yards away.

“Let’s go,” Ash said.

Rochester and the escort formed up and moved forward.

Ash became aware of the way they closed around her, horse and foot; not protectively, but prideful, as if to show their own efficiency as guards. Men who would let no fear show.

She rocked gently to the pace of the gelding, riding on, in among the tents, staring down from the saddle at Visigoth soldiers; not a barefoot woman, now, prisoned in Carthage; nor a lone woman walking through their camp; but a captain who is surrounded by well-armed men, who has – for good or ill the responsibility of ordering them to fight and live or die.

The Faris, illuminated by the lemon-yellow low light of dawn, stepped out on to the beaten earth. She wore armour but no helm. From fifty yards, there is no reading her expression.

I could kill her now. If I could get to her.

Companies of the XIV Utica lined the way through the camp; men in mail and white robes, dank in the dawn, the light flashing from the leaf-shaped points of their spears. Somewhere between two and two and a half thousand men, she guessed. All eyes on her and her men.

“God damn you,” Ash said quietly. “
Fuck Carthage!
”

A voice in her head, that was both the
machina rei militaris
and Godfrey Maximillian, said, –
Before you take vengeance, go and dig your own grave.

A smile moved her lips. It did not reach the taut, controlled fury that she would not let show. “Yes… I was never sure how you used to mean that one.”

-
It means no vengeance is worth such anger, such hatred. You may lose your own life in the attempt.

She feels the rocking of her hips, as she rides; lays one hand on the fauld of her armour, over her belly. A chill, controlled shudder goes through her. A memory of the smell of blood, in a cold cell like this same cold morning, passes through her mind. She is suddenly aware of the razor-sharp edge of her sword in its scabbard, of the balanced weight of metal at her thigh.

“I’ll give you another version of your proverb,” she murmured. “It means, the only way that you can be sure to achieve vengeance is to count yourself already dead. Because there’s no defence against an attacker who isn’t afraid of dying. ‘Before you take vengeance, go and dig your own grave’.”

–
Be very sure that you are right, child.

“Oh, I’m
sure
of nothing. That’s why I have to talk to this woman.”

Angelotti, quietly, said, “Have you forgiven them the Lord Fernando’s child? Carracci, Dickon; those who died in House Leofric, that’s war – but have you forgiven them your child?”

“It didn’t have a soul. Isobel used to lose two out of every three, when I was living with her on the wagons. Every year, regular as a clock.” Ash squinted into the light, growing as the mist lifted. “I wonder if Fernando’s dead as well?”

“Who is to know?”

“What I
won’t
forgive her is, she should have thought this through years ago. She’s known for years that she’s hearing a machine. Sweet Green Christ! She’s just followed it blindly, she’s never thought, why
this
war?”

Angelotti smiled with enigmatic calm. “Madonna, when you untied me from a gun-carriage outside Milano and told me, ‘Join my company because I hear the Lion telling me to win battles,’ I might have said much the same thing. Did you ever ask the Lion, why any particular war?”