Ash: The Lost History Part 91

Have the Wild Machines already spoken through the machina and made House Leofric set a guard on it? Can I ask her that?

No. I'm not getting through to this woman. Whatever I'd ask her - she doesn't want to know. She's shut down for the duration.

And I don't know what she'll repeat through the Stone Golem.

The Faris leaned back in her chair. The orange light from the oil lamps limned her brow, cheek, chin, shoulder. She pa.s.sed a hand over her face. Some of the weariness went, and with it, strangely, some of her authority. She looked up at Ash, her expression acutely indecisive.

"Is your confessor with you?" the Faris said, suddenly, into the silence.

Ash gave a startled laugh. "My confessor? You're going to have me executed? Isn't that a bit extreme?"

"Your priest, the man Gottfried, Geoffroi-"

"G.o.dfrey?" Stunned, Ash said, "G.o.dfrey Maximillian's dead. He died trying to get out of Carthage."

The Faris put her arms on the back of her chair, resting her weight on it. Ash watched her look up at the plank-and-earthen roof, as if the answers were somewhere in the dirt; and look down again, meeting Ash's gaze.

"I ... have questions I would have asked a Frankish priest."

"You'll have to try someone else. They don't come much deader than G.o.dfrey when I saw him last," Ash said coa.r.s.ely.

"You're certain?"

A chill that was nothing to do with winter twisted in her gut. "What's one priest, to you? When did G.o.dfrey Maximillian ever meet you?"

The Faris looked away. "We never met. I had heard his name at Basle, as a priest of your company."

Spurred, impulsive, Ash blurted, "Would you know his voice?"

The colour of the woman's face altered, subtly; she looked now as if she were unwell.

"You are the only other one," the Faris said suddenly. "You hear. You and I, both. How else am I to know I am not sunstruck-crazy?"

"... Because we hear the same thing?" Ash said.

It was no more than a whisper: "Yes."

Armour, golems, the Visigoth camp outside: all forgotten. Nothing else exists but the realisation: She isn't talking about the Wild Machines now.

Cold sweat slicked Ash's palms. Dry-mouthed, she asked, "What do you hear, Faris?"

"I hear a heretic priest, persuading me that I should betray my religion and my King-Caliph. I hear a heretic priest telling me that my machina rei militaris is not to be trusted-"

On the last word, risen an octave, she cut herself off.

Almost in a whisper, the Faris finished: "I hear great voices, tormenting a heretic's soul."

Ash, holding her breath, released air slowly and silently through her nostrils. The golems' perfumed lamps made the atmosphere heavy; both cold and stifling. Aware that one wrong word or gesture could lose it, she said quietly, "A 'heretic priest' . . . yes, it is; it must be. G.o.dfrey Maximillian. I . . .heard him too."

With that, the realisation hit home. She momentarily forgot where she stood; was back in the command tent, her dream of boars and snow fading, hearing a voice- It really is him. G.o.dfrey, dead G.o.dfrey; if she hears him too, it has to be!

She pushed the heel of her hand into her eye-sockets, one after the other, smearing away water. Rapidly, remembering the woman in front of her, she said, "And the 'great voices' you hear are the Wild Machines."

"A dead heretic, and ancient machine-minds?" The Faris's perfect face moved in an expression of sardonic humour, fear, forgiveness: all in a second. "And you'll tell me, too, that I can't trust the Stone Golem to win my battles for me, now. Ash - what else would you say to me? You're fighting with the Burgundians."

"And if you pay me to fight on the same side as your men," Ash said steadily, "I'll tell you exactly the same thing."

"I will not trust an enemy!"

"But you'll trust the Stone Golem, after this?"

"Be quiet!"

The flickering light of oil lamps gleamed on armour, on mail, on the red stone limbs of the golem.

G.o.dfrey, Ash thought, dazed. But how?

"I could hire your men," the Faris said absently, "but not to fight under your command: I would need you elsewhere. Father wants you," she added. "He told me so, before he grew ill. Sisnandus tells me he still orders your presence."

Oh s.h.i.+t, I bet he does!

"Your 'father' Leofric wants to dissect me, to know how you work." Ash lifted her eyes to discover an expression of bewilderment on the woman's face. "Didn't you know that? Probably he'd want it even more badly, now! If you and I can hear a dead man-"

A voice outside bellowed, "To arms!"

Oh, Christus, not now! What a time to be interrupted!

A fist hammered at the outer door of the command building. Ash heard shouting, did not s.h.i.+ft her gaze from the Visigoth woman's face.

"Maybe," Ash said, "it isn't just Leofric and this Sisnandus who want me in Carthage. Do you know who's giving you orders, Faris?"

"To arms!" a male voice bawled again, outside the chamber door.

The Faris swung around, breaking eye-contact with Ash; marched to the door and flung the curtains aside, just before a slave male could do it.

"Give me a proper report, 'Arif," she snapped.

The man-at-arms, with the 'arifs rank on his livery, gasped, "They're attacking the camp-!"

"Which perimeter?"

"South-west. I think, al-sayyid."2 "Ah. That will be a diversion. Get me the qa'id for the engineers' camp, but first, send a message to alert the qa'id of the east camp. Get me 'Arif Alderic and his troop, here, now. Slaves! Clothe me!"

She flung back into the room, brus.h.i.+ng past Ash, who had to take a step back to keep her balance. Jolted, Ash had time to think, Is that what I look like when I get in gear?

"I'm not sending you to Carthage, yet. Father will have to wait. I need the city. I'm sending you back to Dijon, jund." The Faris looked up from the clothing on her bed, with a brief, surprising smile. "With an escort. Just in case you get ambushed on the way."

Back to Dijon. Into Dijon!

A handful of slaves pushed past Ash, two or three of them showing stark surprise and recognition at seeing her. They began to strip robe and s.h.i.+ft from the Visigoth general, and dress her from the skin out.

"You're giving me an escort?"

"Dijon is where you are crucial to me, now. I need the city! We will talk again. About these . . . Wild Machines. And your dead priest. Later."

Ash shook her head, spluttering between frustration and anger. "No. Now, Faris. You know what war is! Don't leave something because you think you can do it tomorrow."

The other 'arif rushed back in. "Now they are attacking the eastern perimeter, al-sayyid!"

Ash opened her mouth, all but said, aloud and incredulously, Two attacks? She shut her mouth again.

"And that will be the true attack. Get your men to arms! You were a distraction, to allow these sallies out of the city? Well, you may still have your price!" Not waiting for a confirmation, and still with a wicked smile covering her immense weariness, the Visigoth woman put her arms up as her slaves lowered her mail hauberk over her head, wriggling arms and body and neck until the mail snugged down over her body.

I need another hour with her! Ash thought, frustrated. She wants to talk, I can feel it- As a child tied the waist of the hauberk to her belt with aiglettes, the Faris continued: "Alderic will take you to the gates once we have contained these attacks. We will talk again - sister."

Stunned at the swiftness of it, Ash found herself stumbling out, down steps into the moonlit camp, into a flurry of lanterns, men running with spears and recurved bows, n.a.z.irs bawling hoa.r.s.e orders; all the ordered confusion one might wish to see in a camp surprised by a night-attack. By the time she got her helmet on and her night-vision back, she was being hurried along between two of 'Arif Alderic's men, boots ringing on the frosted earth, towards the great dark bulk of the city walls of Dijon.

She can't just send me off like this! Not without answers-!

Torches moved outside the impromptu holding-area. Her feet grew numb in her boots.

From somewhere to the east she heard steel blades slamming together.

Two attacks? One will be mine. I wonder if Robert's sent a force out of the sally-gate himself? It'd be like him. Twice the confusion.

"'Hurry up and wait'," she remarked to Alderic's n.a.z.ir, a small, spare man in well-worn mail. He said nothing, but he gave a brief smile. No different in this man's army.

After an interminable wait, the sounds of combat moved off. Nothing then but torches moving in the Visigoth camp; legionaries on fire-watch shouting in frustration; war-horses neighing from their lines. She considered asking if the cooks had been woken up too; decided against it; found herself almost falling asleep on her feet, the length of the wait blurring in her mind.

"n.a.z.ir! " The 'arif Alderic strode back into the circle of torchlight, nodded abruptly at his men, and they all moved off; Ash in the middle of the eight, the cold forcing her half-sleeping mind back to alertness.

She stumbled down trenches, behind palisades, the smell of earth and powder thick in her nostrils; then out into the open, beyond the last of the defensive barriers. Ahead, across a wide expanse of blasted, raw earth, torches already began to flare - up on the h.o.a.rdings hanging out from the battlements, above the north-west gate.

"Best of luck," the 'arif said brusquely. Glimpsing Alderic's face, she saw the last of his guilt-induced kindness.

He and his men vanished back into the trenches, the darkness, the flames.

"G.o.d d.a.m.n it!" Ash remarked into the cold air.

She let me go. Yeah. Because she can. She's sending me into a siege. Because she wants me to betray Dijon. She doesn't think I'm going awywhere.

And she thinks she can get me for Leofric any time . . .

"Cow!"

Ash stopped dead, on the battered, rutted, rough ground, up to her ankles in mud. Cold wind made her eyes leak tears down her numb, scarred cheeks. Through the helmet's padding, she could hear the river running somewhere off on her right-hand side; water not yet frozen over. Closer, dancing in her vision, she saw sheer towering walls; and lights in front of her, over the north-west gate of Dijon.

"Oh, the cow. She's already got my armour. Now she's kept my b.l.o.o.d.y sword, too!"

A nervous voice came from the parapet above the portcullis and gates. "Sarge, there's someone out there laughing."

Ash wiped her eyes. G.o.dammit, they should have had word about me -fine time to go down to friendly fire!

"Some crazy rag-'ead tart," a second, invisible male voice commented. "You going to go down there and give 'er one?"

"Yo, the wall!" She walked forward, at an easy pace, into the circle of light now spread by the lanterns; keeping an eye on the combat-ready and twitchy men lining the parapet of the gate above her. She squinted. In the poor light, their livery was unclear.

"Whose men?" she sang out.

"De la Marche!" a beer-roughened voice bawled, arrogantly.

"Who the f.u.c.k are you?" another, anonymous, voice demanded.

Ash looked up at bows, bills; one man in armour with a poleaxe.

"Don't for the Green Christ's sake shoot me now," she said unsteadily. "Not after what I've just been through! Go tell your boss he wants to see me."

There was a silence of sheer, dumbstruck amazement.

"You what?"

"I said, go tell your boss de la Marche he wants to see me. He does. So open the gate!"

One of the Burgundian men-at-arms snorted. "Cheeky b.i.t.c.h!"

"Who is that?"

"Can't see, sir. Not in the cloak. It's a woman, sir."

Still, grinning, Ash put her cloak back over her shoulders.

Over her brigandine, dirty-yellow but perfectly distinct, the livery of the lion Azure shone in the light of their torches.

A clutch of Burgundian men-at-arms, swords drawn, hustled her through the man-high door cut into Dijon's great gates; hustled her into darkness, and echoes off masonry, and the smell of sweat and s.h.i.+t and pitch-torches burned down to the socket.

I'm in! I'm inside the walls!

The relief of such safety deafened her, for a second, to the voices of men and officers.

"She could be a spy!" an over-excited billman shouted.

"A woman dressed as a man? Wh.o.r.e!"

A lance-leader stuttered, "No, last August I s-saw her in the English Earl's affinity-"

She blinked, eyes gradually adjusting to the torchlight in the long tunnel of the gates, and the faint glimmer of light - dawn? torches? - at the arched exit.

And I'm sane. Or- a smile hidden by helmet and hood - as sane as the Faris, anyway, which may not be saying much.