The Warring States (The Wave Trilogy) (49 page)

‘Gonfaloniere, I specialise in delicacy. I’ll be quiet as a lamb, gracious as your fair daughter—’ He smiled at Maddalena.

‘We’ve heard Concord’s deluged by fanatics,’ said Fabbro.

‘The last Apprentice thinks he can control them. He’s wrong. Unless I misjudge, Concord’s about to tear itself apart. When that happens, someone will have to take charge.’

‘And that would be you?’ said Maddalena with amusement.

‘I’m flattered, Signorina, and accept your nomination with gratitude.’ He bowed low, and turned back to Fabbro. ‘You have nothing to lose by sheltering me, and much to gain.’

‘Yes, I see that. Is that
all
you need, shelter?’

‘I wouldn’t say no to a glass of wine.’ He kissed his fingers, glancing at Maddalena. ‘I was always fond of the local variety.’

Initially the patrons of the Lion’s Fountain gave Geta a frosty welcome. No one had suffered as Rasenneisi had at Concordian hands, but the Hawk’s Company had suffered its share too. Geta appeased them by making it clear that he hadn’t fought at Tagliacozzo, and that he thought Luparelli better off dead. The officers of the company recognised Geta as a plain fighting man, as flexible and opportunistic as them, and he won over the rest by the simple expedient of buying their drinks, round
after round. The brewer was delighted – Geta paid in silver that was much purer than Rasenna’s increasingly debased coinage. His brash charm, his familiarity with Rasenneisi dialect and mores and – above all – his unfeigned scorn of engineers impressed the bandieratori too. By the end of the night, Piers Becket wasn’t the only one following him like a puppy.

‘To Lord Geta!’ he proposed. ‘If every Concordian was like this son of a bitch, we’d have nothing to quarrel about!’

‘Madonna forbid!’ Geta gave an exaggerated shudder. ‘Then we’d have to work for a living.’

The turn of the millennium was a moment of great hope, hope that drowned in disillusionment when the Messiah failed to return. Etruria’s impatient masses turned to the secular world for salvation. This turning, a challenge to Concordian hegemony, was tied to the demise of the Castilians. The Curia had restrained their excesses and fostered the growth of the towns,
²⁵
but once the Castilians were ousted and the other city-states began to grow in confidence and wealth, Concord’s claims of moral authority began to chafe
.

The Curia, now widely seen as a parasitical encumbrance, sought a distraction, and a mad melic obliged by initiating a vicious persecution of Marian Pilgrims to the Holy Land.
²⁶
In the centuries since the collapse of the Etruscan Empire, the Radinate and Etruria had coexisted by a simple but effective policy of ignoring each other’s existence.
²⁷
Etruria’s
role was essentially passive.
²⁸
It did not contest Radinate dominance of the Middle Sea. It stoically endured raids by Ebionite pirates
.

That defensive stance changed as the Curia employed orators to proclaim the duty of all good Marians to free Jerusalem from the schismatics.
Deus lo Volt!
resounded from the marshes of Ariminum to the towers of Rasenna. Etrurians, briefly, had common cause
.

Water lapped her feet. Gulls shrieked insistently. What was so urgent? Sofia lay there with half her face submerged in water and an overwhelming desire to go back to sleep. The water was tepid and the air was cruelly hot.

Then she distinguished another sound behind the tide: a breathless, huffing laughter. She opened her eyes and found herself looking at a strange feral dog with stripes like a cat. It smelled terrible. It was panting and padding a circle on the sand around her, getting closer with each circuit. It had a thick neck and powerful shoulders, but judging by its poking ribs and the way its long teeth emerged from slaver, it hadn’t eaten for a while. It reacted to her return to consciousness by sinking abruptly on its hunkers and preparing to jump.

Suddenly a stone splashed into the water beside it, then another skimmed its flank. It hopped up indignantly, before bolting away, laughing miserably.

Sofia rolled onto on her back and found a shadow standing over her: a dark-skinned youth, not much more than twenty. His hand rested on the dagger in a broken sheath in his belt. The blade was the only distinguished thing he wore, but his carriage was noble. His face was lean and boyish, though a few curled hairs stood out on his round chin and there was a thin attempt at a moustache under his heavy nose. His thick, expressive brows were ebony-black, like his knotted long hair, which was loosely wrapped in a shawl. Behind him, two dusty camels
moaned and butted their massive heads together, making a sound like empty cork.

‘Are you alive?’

Though Sofia was surprised to understand him, she played dead until he took a step towards her. Then she wound her legs around his and twisted, taking him off balance. As soon as he hit the ground he rolled, pulled his dagger free and pressed it – gently – against her neck. All else was hot, but the steel was cold. She flinched from it, amazed that she had been caught – he was
fast
.

‘So you
are
alive,’ he said.

‘And you’re a lousy aim.’

‘I wasn’t aiming to kill. It was only being a dog.’ His language was some barbaric variety of Frankish, mixed with an archaic version of the Ariminumese dialect. Sofia was grateful for the smattering of Europan tongues she had picked up during her time in John Acuto’s camp.

‘Where’s Levi?’

‘I’ve seen no other bodies. This Levi, he was your husband?’ His voice was calm and even; if the attack had angered him, his manner did not betray it.

‘A man I was travelling with.’

He slowly took the blade away. ‘Your husband must be a trusting fellow, to let a woman in your condition travel, or a great fool.’

‘I didn’t ask for your opinion, heathen. Is this Oltremare?’

‘Technically, yes. But many parts of Oltremare are not safe for the
Franj
.’

‘I’m not a Frank.’

‘And I’m not a heathen. I am Ebionite; my name is Arik, son of Uriah.’

She noticed the piercing, restless eyes under the thick brows. They were the eyes of a bird of prey: a light-as-honey brown flecked with amber; little mercy in them perhaps, but no
cruelty either. He held himself loose, yet poised and fully present, like other hunters Sofia had known.

‘We were bound for Akka. There was a storm.’

‘Yes, the winds were strange last night. You’ve bypassed Akka by many leagues, but it’s a day’s journey if you go by the coast along the plain of Sharon.’

‘Who is your master?’

‘God is my master, and yours, but I am employed by the Queen of Oltremare. Whom do you serve?’

Sofia looked about at the wreckage – a torn sail, some splintered wood. Had Levi and Ezra washed up on another shore, or been swallowed by the sea? She took the sail and rolled it up. She saw the Ebionite watching her sceptically. She tried to straighten up, but assuming a queenly bearing was difficult in her bedraggled state. ‘I am the Contessa of Rasenna.’

‘I never heard of it.’ He coolly appraised her. ‘Perhaps you’re a runaway slave. I could sell you …’

‘I’m an ambassador of the Etrurian league.’ That was stretching the truth, but she needed to convey that he could get more by ransom than selling her as a slave. ‘I come offering an alliance … Arik.’

He frowned, ‘A tribe’s allies are its neighbours, as are its enemies. You come from
Ereb
, a land of darkness far from here. Amity or hostility is equally meaningless with countries so far away.’

‘Unless you are the queen’s adviser as well as her slave, I don’t propose to discuss it. You will bring me to her. The queen would not thank you for keeping me waiting.’

‘The queen does not thank anyone. I am not her slave, or yours,’ he said.

Sofia got the impression that Arik was the patient type. She gritted her teeth and tried a smile. ‘I would be most grateful if you would escort me.’

He shrugged in resignation. ‘I am going to Akka. You may come along. If you can ride a horse then you should not have much trouble.’ He led the smaller yellow camel forward and patted its neck with rough affection. ‘This one’s name is Safra; in the past he has displayed great tolerance with idiots.’

He made the camel kneel and showed Sofia how to catch the pommel with one hand and place her knee into the saddle. She tried, unsuccessfully, until the camel started to grumble, then she swore and said, ‘Oh, just give me a leg up!’

He took a step back, keeping both hands at his sides. ‘I cannot. It is forbidden.’

‘I didn’t ask you to make love to me.’

He laughed, but still he would not assist her. Grumbling about his prudery, she finally managed to get her knee into the right place, but as soon as the camel felt her weight, it began rising, hind legs first, and she just managed to throw her other leg over the saddle in time. She held on with difficulty as the jerking pitched her forwards, then back. She watched glumly as Arik simply pulled down his camel’s head and placed a sure foot on its neck. As the camel raised its head again, he slid gracefully into the saddle. Arik led the way, and Sofia noticed that he rode kneeling rather than sitting.

They had gone a while when she spoke. ‘You said Akka was north.’

‘Yes?’

‘We’re going east.’

‘There’s a sizeable band of Sicarii – bandits – somewhere along here. I was tracking them when I happened upon you. Anyone they capture who is not Ebionite they kill.’

Sofia felt a dart of fear for Levi. ‘I can fight,’ she said.

‘That is obvious. Also obvious is that you need rest. I am your escort now, and honour-bound to keep you safe. Our route will be longer, for we must retreat a good distance from the coast
before turning north. Then we go through Ephraim and Manasseh and by the Megiddo road into the Jezreel Plain.
Hut hut!
’

They rode on in silence as the terrain gradually climbed. Sofia experimented with different arrangements of her feet around the hump, finally deciding that all were equally uncomfortable. She had not been ill at sea, but she found herself dizzied and sickened by the rolling gait and the untiring wind.

‘The Sharav comes from the southern deserts,’ Arik remarked. ‘It is the last wind of winter; it blows for sixty days and fills men’s tents with sand and their souls with melancholy.’ From a satchel he dug out two filthy pieces of cotton, the seed-heads still attached. ‘Here. Block your ears from it.’

There were no marks of Man’s living presence in any place they passed, though there were many desolate graveyards half-buried beneath the shifting sands.

‘The earth fills quickly,’ Arik said. ‘The Dead are territorial.’

‘Where are the towns?’

‘Nothing can live out here,’ he said, then corrected himself: ‘There were many towns once, then the Great Drought descended, twenty or more years ago. Jordan ran dry. It hurt the tribes much, the coastal dwellers less so. The desert people were once known for their generosity; the strong clans had good springs and fertile palms, but these exist no longer, and honour too has vanished. Scarcity makes locusts of those who remain.’ The heat went out of his anger and turned to resignation. ‘But God wills it. He punishes with water, by sending too much or by withholding it. Blasphemy to question Him.’

‘Is that who taught you to ration it so stingily?’

He threw her the waterskin. ‘Keep it. I’ve never met one who drank so much.’

Sofia suspected Arik’s casual act was just that; he could not have calculated on taking this long route back to Akka, nor having a companion unused to the desert.

The voracious sun warped the sky as wind disturbs a lake. Its light was like the moon’s, turning all colours bone-white. The heat came in waves that broke over the endless sand ridges. She concentrated on breathing, but the air on her dry lips was pitiless as fire. Etruria was a warm, wet land and its humid air had a palpable weight. Here the absolute lack of moisture made it insubstantial as a fairy feast – you could eat and eat and never be sated.

Arik promised she would grow accustomed to it, as she had already to the brackish water, and so it proved. She learned to pay attention to the little he said – and to what he did. She noticed he let his camel eat the few shrubs they came across, so when her camel started edging towards a small clump of thorny yellow flowers, she did not stop it.

‘Safra, No!’ Arik yelled, and Sofia’s camel turned obediently.

‘That
flower is deadly.’

‘It’s the same one you’ve been letting your camel eat!’

‘Not the flower, fool! Look at the air above.’

She did, and saw, many braccia above, yellow petals whirling slowly in the air, apparently drifting freely, but always over the flower – trapped.

‘It’s a
zar
– a most stupid Jinni that sleeps all day, but deadly to any creature that wakes it. Come away.’

They rode on until the land was spiked with rocky hills, a desiccated version of the rolling contato around Rasenna. To the east, the plain elevated precipitously, and a strange cloud of dust circled its highest point. Inside the distant storm she glimpsed man-made forms: broken buildings, walls, and towers scattered about a truncated mountain. Here Arik turned them north.