Ash: The Lost History Part 163

"Do you need to take so many of the fit men to ride out and bring d.u.c.h.ess Floria back?" Olivier de la Marche questioned.

Ash, on a borrowed Visigoth mare, grinned down at him from her war saddle. "Yup," she said cheerfully.

"You are taking the better part of three hundred men. To meet Bajezet's five hundred mounted Janissaries."

Ash glanced back at the hundred and ten men under the Lion Azure standard, and Lacombe's Burgundians. "We don't know that Bajezet's Turks won't turn round and ride straight back to Mehmet. I'm paranoid. Peace has broken out - but I'm still paranoid. Look at it out there. No food. Dark, over the border. Breakdown of law. It's going to be years before this country's quiet. How would you feel if I lost her to some roaming gang of bandits?"

The big Burgundian nodded. "I grant you that."

Over these four days, dozens of men and women from nearby burned villages and towns have trickled in to Dijon; as the news spreads out across the countryside. Some from caves in the limestone rocks, some from the wildwood; all hungry, far from all honest.

He added, "And I grant you, the men that bore the weight of the battle for our d.u.c.h.ess should have the honour of seeing her home to us."

Any day now, I can be done with this 'Lioness' c.r.a.p. Just as soon as we start planning a southern campaign.

"But - her?" De la Marche looked at the Faris, where the Visigoth woman rode between two of Giovanni Petro's men.

"I prefer to have her where I can see her. She used to command this lot, remember? Okay, it's over, but we don't take chances."

Not that I haven't taken steps to encourage her co-operation.

On the edge of the crowd of citizens around the open north-east gate, she caught sight of a man in priest's robes: Fernando del Guiz. His escort of Lion billmen flanked him in a business-like manner. He lifted a hand in blessing -although whether to his current or past wife was not apparent.

Ash glanced away, up at the sky. "There aren't many hours of light. We won't get to them before tomorrow, at the earliest - if we find 'em that easy! Expect me in three, maybe four days. Messire Olivier, since the Visigoths are being so generous with their food and drink and firewood - do you think we could have a celebration?"

"Captain-General, Pucelle, truly," Olivier de la Marche said, and he laughed. "If only to prove the truth of what I have always said: employ a mercenary and he will eat you out of hearth and home."

Ash rode out over the eastern bridge, pa.s.sing below the Visigoth gunners camped up on the rough heights. She waved, touched a spur to the mare, and rocked in the creaking saddle, moving up the column.

Cold s.n.a.t.c.hed the air from her mouth. She acknowledged, in a cloud of white breath, the new lance-leaders as she pa.s.sed: Ludmilla with Pieter Tyrrell and Jan-Jacob Clovet riding with her, instead of Katherine Hammell; Vitteleschi marching at the head of Price's billmen; and Euen Huw's third-in-command, Tobias, leading his lance. Thomas Rochester rode led by his sergeant, Elias; bandages over his blind right eye, and a covering of forge-black steel over the still-weeping hole in his face. Other lance-leaders - Ned Mowlett, Henri van Veen - looked newly serious, newly senior.

The faces change. The company goes on.

With scouts out before and behind and to the flanks, Ash's force rode out of Dijon, into the deserted hamlets and strip-fields, through outflung spurs of the ancient wildwood, into the wasteland.

"Do we know which way Bajezet went?" she asked Robert Anselm. "I wouldn't like to try getting across the Alps, they're too f.u.c.ked to even think of crossing!"

"He said they'd ride north, through the Duchy," Anselm rumbled. "Then east; Franche-Comte, over the border to Longeau in Haute-Marne, then northwest through Lorraine. Depending on how they could live off the land. He said if they had no word the war was over, he'd ride towards Strasbourg, then cut across to the east, and hope to run into the Turks coming west across the Danube."

"How far do the messengers say they got?"

"Over the border. Into the dark. They're on their way back from the east." Anselm grinned. "And if neither of us is lost, we might even be on the same road!"

Towards the end of the day, flakes of snow began to fall from a yellowing sky.

"Make it as hard as you like," she murmured under her breath as she rode, with the icy wind finding gaps between bevor and visor and numbing her face.

'HARD, YES, COLD-'

'WINTER-COLD, WORLD-COLD-'

'-UNTIL WINTER COVERS YOU, COVERS ALL THE WORLD!'

She heard a note of panic in their voices.

Ash thought, but did not say aloud, We've won. You can turn Christendom into a frozen wasteland, but we've won. Leofric's Caliph. We sign this treaty, and we leave for the south - we're coming for you.

She rode east and north, among the clink of bridles in the bitter snowy air, smiling.

The following day, after much frustrated wandering in snow-bound featureless countryside, Janissary outriders encountered Lion Azure scouts a mile outside what Ash found - as they were escorted into it - to be a burned and deserted village. Diminis.h.i.+ng smoke still rose from the ruins of the manor house and church. Snow covered the hill-slopes, that had been covered in vines.

With visibility closing in, she rode with Anselm and Angelotti and the Burgundian Lacombe, over a frozen stream by a shattered stone bridge. Perhaps two of the eleven wattle-and-daub houses still stood, thatch weighed down under snow; and the Janissaries led them into a surprisingly neat military camp of tents around the intact buildings and a mill.

Two men came out of the high, half-timbered building. A man in armour, with a Blue Boar standard; another man taking off his helmet to disclose sandy hair and a lined face, that split into a broad grin as he saw her liveries.

"She's safe," he called up.

Ash dismounted, gave her helmet to Rickard, and went forward to meet John de Vere, Earl of Oxford. She said, "It's peace."

"Your rider told us." His faded blue eyes narrowed. "And a bad field, before it?"

"I'm beginning to think there are no good fields," she said, and at his acknowledging nod, added, "Florian?"

"You will find 'brother d.i.c.kon' by the mill's hearth," John de Vere murmured, grinning. "G.o.d's teeth, madam! An Earl of England is not to be shoved aside like a peasant! What's the matter with the woman? You'd swear she'd never seen a d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy before!"

The snow ceased in the night. The next morning, the fifth day of January, they rode south-west, in column, as soon as there was light.

Riding knee by knee with Florian, she told the cloaked surgeon-d.u.c.h.ess, "Gelimer's dead," and let herself be drawn, skilfully, into what details of fighting and death of friends Florian might want to know. She found herself answering questions about the wounded: how Visigoth doctors had treated Katherine Hammell, Thomas Rochester, others.

"It's peace," Ash finished. "At least until they a.s.sa.s.sinate Leofric! That should give us a few months. Until spring."

"It'll take years. Recovering from this war." Florian dug the folds of her cloak in around her thighs, attempting to s.h.i.+eld her body from a wind that is colder now that the snow has stopped. "I can't be their d.u.c.h.ess. Dispose of the Ferae Natura Machinae, and I'm done."

The Visigoth mare wuffled, softly, at snow clogging her hooves. Ash reached forward to pat the sleek neck under the blue caparisons.

"You won't stay in Burgundy?"

"I don't have your sense of responsibility."

"'Responsibility'-?"

Florian nodded ahead, at Lacombe, and Marie's men. "Once you've commanded them, you start to feel responsible."

"Aw, what c.r.a.p!"

"Sure," Florian said. She might have been smiling. "Sure."

Two miles down the track, in a valley where the ancient wildwood that covered the hills had been burned black and snow-blotched halfway up the slopes, Ash reined in at the sight of a scout coming back. A long-boned boy in a padded jack.

"Let that man through."

Thomas Tydder shoved through to her, panting, to grip her stirrup. He gasped, "Troops up ahead. About a thousand, boss."

Ash said crisply, "Whose banners?"

"Some of the rag-heads?" His young voice cracked, hesitant. "Mostly Germans. Main banner's an eagle, boss. It's the Holy Roman Emperor. It's Frederick."

"On his way home," Robert Anselm remarked.

"Oh, yeah, I guess he'd have to come by this road . . ." Ash sat up high in her saddle, looking ahead, and back down the winding track. Snow-shrouded woods tightly flanked the road where they were. "We'll ride on to where it widens out, pull off, and let him through."

"Didn't take him long to abandon the rag-heads, did it?" Robert Anselm rumbled.

"Rats fleeing from a s.h.i.+p, madonna." Angelotti walked his own Visigoth mare up beside her. "He'll be no favourite with Amir Leofric. He'll be off home to settle politics in his own court."

"Robert, go back and make sure Bajezet understands we're giving him the road - I don't want brawls starting."

A hundred yards further on, Ash halted, waiting among her men; John de Vere's household and the Janissary escort drawn up either side of the track that pa.s.sed as a road.

"Boss!" Anselm galloped back, breath huffing out into the cold air. "We've got a problem. No scouts back. n.o.body's reported in for the last fifteen minutes."

"Aw, s.h.i.+t. Okay, hit the panic b.u.t.ton-" Standing up in her stirrups, Ash squinted back down the hoof-trodden snow to the point where the woods closed in tight against the road behind them. Two or three dark figures dropped down off the banks as she looked. "They've got outriders round behind us! Sound full alert!"

The trumpet snarked a long yowl across the snow-covered valley; she heard horses s.h.i.+fting behind her, units forming up, men calling orders, and Robert Anselm jerked a thumb, pointing ahead.

"They're stopping. Sending a herald."

Break and run? No: they've got the woods covered behind us. Straight on through? It's the only way. But Florian!

Paralysed, she watched a herald ride forward from among the German troops. There was not enough wind in this rose-mist, frozen morning to stir the drooping wet banners. She recognised the man's face vaguely - wasn't he at Frederick's court, outside Neuss? - but not the Visigoth qa'id officer riding with him.

"Give up the woman," the herald demanded, without preamble.

"Which woman would that be?" Ash spoke without taking her eye off the other troops. Between a thousand and fifteen hundred men. Cavalry: European riders in heavy plate, and Visigoth cataphracts in overlapping scale-armour. The Visigoths, at least, had the look of veterans. She saw the eagles.

Those are men from the new legions, III Caralis and I Carthago, Gelimer's legions-as-were.

With them, a black ma.s.s of serf-troops, and a solid block of German men-at-arms; not much in the way of archers- "The woman calling herself d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy," the herald called, voice shrill. "Whom my master Frederick, Emperor of the Romans, Lord of the Germanies, will now take into his custody."

"He what?" Ash yelped. "Who the f.u.c.k does he think he is!"

Exasperation and fear made her speak, but the Visigoth officer looked at her sharply. The qa'id brought his bay mare around with a s.h.i.+ft of his weight. "He is my master Frederick - who was loyal va.s.sal to King-Caliph Gelimer, late of glorious name; and who now takes upon himself the caliphate of the empire of the Visigoths."

Oh f.u.c.k, Ash thought blankly.

"Frederick of Hapsburg?" Florian said incredulously. She stifled a cough in her hand. "Frederick's standing for election to King-Caliph?"

"He's a foreigner!" Robert Anselm protested to the Visigoth officer, but Ash paid no attention.

Yes, he can probably do it, she a.s.sessed.

Back in Dijon, the army's split into yes, no and maybe. 'Yes' - those for Leofric. 'No' - those who were loyal to Gelimer; but a dead man has few friends. And 'maybe': the ones who are waiting to see which way it all jumps.

These guys here will be ex-Gelimer's clients that he put in as officers in his legions. And the reason they're following Frederick is- "Hand over the woman!" the Visigoth legionary qa'id snapped. "Do not mistake Lord Frederick for Leofric. Leofric is a weak man who wished nothing more than to make peace with you, when we stand on the brink of victory. My lord Frederick, who will be Caliph, is determined to carry out that which was the will of Gelimer, before Gelimer was treacherously killed. My lord Frederick will execute this woman, Floria, calling herself d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy, to make our victory over Burgundy complete."

Anselm said, "Son of a b.i.t.c.h," in an awed rumble.

The rose-mist on the hills whitened, with the sun's rise. Churned snow glinted. Ash's breath drifted white from her mouth. She checked positions: Bajezet on her left, now, at the head of his troops; de Vere's Blue Boar banner to her right. She narrowed her eyes, staring across the five hundred yards between them and Frederick and his troops.

'"King-Caliph Frederick' . . ." she said. "Yeah. If he kills the d.u.c.h.ess, turns this into the defeat of Burgundy, then he's the hero of the Visigoth Empire, he probably is Caliph - and he gets a big chunk of Burgundy for himself. Louis of France probably gets some of it, but Frederick gets a lot. And when the Turks come howling over the borders - his borders - he's got control of his forces, and the Visigoth armies, and he's safe: he can give them one h.e.l.l of a run for his money. Holy Roman Emperor and King-Caliph. And all he has to do to get it is come out here, and kill the d.u.c.h.ess of Burgundy."

"I don't believe-" Florian's voice exploded with a cough. She wiped her streaming eyes, nose perceptibly pink; and Ash had a split second of complete tenderness for her, this doctor-d.u.c.h.ess with the beginnings of a cold. "This is a petty political struggle! Frederick must know what the Wild Machines will do!"

Ash said, "Evidently he doesn't believe it."

"You beat the Visigoth legions! It can't end in some ambus.h.!.+"

"No one's so special they can't die in some grotty little sc.r.a.p after the war's won," Ash said grimly, and to Robert Anselm, in the camp patois, "We'll a.s.sault through them. My lord Oxford, you and Bajezet take Florian - break through and keep going. Send help when you get to Dijon."

"When we've established who's in command at Dijon," John de Vere corrected her grimly. He turned in his saddle to give orders to the Janissaries.

Covering him, Ash nudged the mare's flanks, riding closer to the German and Visigoth heralds. "Go back and tell Frederick he's barking. The d.u.c.h.ess is under our protection, and he can just sod off."

The Visigoth officer lifted his arm and dropped it down. The blurred, buzzing tw.a.n.g of bows came from ahead. Ash's head ducked automatically: arrows struck among the horses: the heralds set spurs and sprinted at the gallop back down the track.

The Janissaries charged without hesitation. Hooves of upwards of five hundred horses kicked dirt, rocks and snow into the air. A clot of wet slush hit Ash's helmet. She shoved her sallet back, wiped her face clear, shouted, "Form up!" to Anselm; and the Janissary mounted archers drew bows and shot as they rode, de Vere's banner and Florian del Guiz in the centre of them. Surely they can't reach her! Ash thought, and the charge ahead of her dissolved into a ma.s.s of screaming beasts, falling men, toppling banners.

In a chaos of screaming horses, Ash saw the ranks of the troops ahead part.

Figures taller than a man walked through the trampled snow. Their motion slow, they nonetheless covered the ground frighteningly fast, stone feet digging in with such weight that they did not slip or fall. The red sunrise light glowed on their torsos, limbs, and sightless eyes.

One of them reached up and took a man off his horse. Holding the flailing Turk by his ankle, with one stone hand it cracked his body like a whip.

Twenty or more messenger-golems of Carthage strode heavily across the earth towards her, hands outstretched.

Backing the mare in a flurry of slush, she found Rickard and the banner at her side. Her whole body cringed, waiting for the flare of Greek Fire- One golem, bra.s.s harness glinting against the snow, sent a coughing jet of fire roaring into the middle of the Turkish riders. Their formation dissolved.

Only one: are they short of Greek Fire: where did the golem come from?

A ma.s.s of riders bolted across in front of her, hiding the golems momentarily; a second roar of flame sounded, and horses screamed. Her command group opened up; she received Bajezet, a dozen Turkish riders, and John de Vere with the rein of Florian's mare gripped in his gauntlet.

"They come through, Woman Bey!"

"Robert! Scout reports! Where can we hole up until we can send a rider for help?"

Anselm pointed. "Buildings, edge of the woods, up on that slope to our right. They're ruined, but they're cover."

"Florian, that's where you're going. Don't argue." Ash threw herself out of the saddle, off the panicking mare, landing hard but on her feet. She ripped her sword out of its scabbard and pointed, screaming to the Lion Azure standard-bearer, "Fall back to the woods!"