Chapter Three

The San Colombo Pass—Ser Alison

Hundreds of leagues to the south and west, the combined strength of Venike, Berona, and the company descended the San Colombo Pass and wound its way back into Etrusca.

Sauce and the duchess had discovered that they had a great deal in common, and there was a good deal of laughter as their armies drove south.

Kronmir envied them. The duchess paid him little attention, and as both of them were well versed in the tactics of scouting and exploration, they had little need for the Thrakian, who rode with ill-concealed temper.

It wasn’t just being ignored. Knighthood lay on Kronmir’s shoulders like a burden, an unasked-for reward that threatened his equilibrium.

I am a spy, not a man of honour. If I have honour, it is my secret. And when I order a man’s death by stealth, is that knightly?

Who does he mock? Me, or chivalry?

Why can Giselle not notice me, if only for a moment? To be polite?

Why am I behaving like a child?

It was a little more than a hundred imperial leagues from Arles to Mitla, leaving aside the towering mountains and the winding San Colombo Pass through them. Six days’ march for a determined army.

They came down the San Colombo on the second day like a torrent from the mountains, and Kronmir was delighted in a dour way when Daniel Favour, acting as commander of the green banda, invited the Thrakian to join him in leading the push into the forests of the Mitlan highlands. Kronmir was unemployed until he could find Brown; he’d already sent a message summoning Lucca, who had to be healed enough to function. Or so Kronmir had to hope.

The green banda moved fast, even by Kronmir’s professional standards, and every man and woman of the company’s scout had a bag of flour and a slab of bacon at their saddlebows.

They reached the endless waves of ridges that Kronmir remembered so well from his first visit by nonnes. The land was still; birds sang, but no large animals moved, and no church bells sounded.

“This land is still in Darkness,” Kronmir said.

Favour changed horses. “We need to go further,” he said. “Nightfall in seven hours, give or take.”

The whole banda split into groups of five; hands, the company scouts called them. Two hands rode south, toward the sea.

“Genua is at war with Venike,” Favour said.

“Agreed.” Kronmir nodded. “Sooner or later they will take the field against us, without a single Odine being involved.” He was nonetheless impressed to see that a junior officer in the company could make a political decision. The scouts would watch the Genuans; and capture a few if it came to that. Or kill them.

“What do I do?” Favour asked him.

He shrugged. “It is really Ser Alison’s decision. But we watch everyone, Daniel. I have spies in taverns in Arles. I have spies in Venike. We should be watching Genua.”

The rest of the banda rode north and east, spreading out as they went. An hour after they crested the first ridge, Kronmir and Favour were almost alone; a tall Hillman named Gilchrist moved with them carrying a heavy oliphant, or ivory horn, in his hand. From time to time, horn calls echoed along the ridges.

Kronmir enjoyed the ride, and the speed, and being away from the duchess. He had no role to play, except that he’d covered the terrain before, and twice he was able to guide them.

At midafternoon, a low horn called three times, paused, and called again.

Favour smiled. “That’s good to hear,” he said. “Long Paw has found the Venikans.”

Kronmir was startled at how young they all were; Favour was twenty-one, if even that old. But two years of uninterrupted war had made them masters, and they covered the terrain without breaking a skyline or crossing a valley except by stealth.

They rode along the highest ridge through oak trees so old that there was no undergrowth, and emerged into a clearing with the ruins of an ancient temple amid a grove of apple trees.

Standing in the ruins were a trio of rangers, all wearing dark green and carrying the crossbows preferred by all the Venikans. Kronmir dismounted and tied his horse to a sapling. He took Favour’s as well; the younger man was in command.

Favour looked puzzled to hand his horse to anyone. “I’m not much of an officer,” he commented wryly.

Suddenly Kronmir was in demand. He spoke Etruscan fluently; Favour’s Low Archaic was not up to detailed planning. Kronmir listened to the Venikan officer, Lorenzo. Long Paw, the eldest, stood patiently in shadow, saying nothing. Kronmir knew that Long Paw spoke Etruscan and several dialects, and assumed that the man was employing an excellent caution.

“He says that the Mitlans are snug behind their entrenchments waiting for the Patriarch. The Patriarch is close; perhaps two days south,” Kronmir said.

Favour nodded. “Do you know where the Patriarch’s troops are? And how fast they are moving?”

Lorenzo nodded. He spoke rapidly, drawing on a wax tablet.

“I think I got all that,” Favour said with a smile.

Kronmir translated anyway. “He says that the Patriarch is north of Firensi, and that he is making less than twenty leagues a day; he has infantry and baggage. He says that he saw them himself yesterday.”

Lorenzo said in Etruscan, “I do not think that the Patriarch or the Duke of Mitla know exactly where the other is.”

Kronmir translated.

Favour chewed the end of his mustache.

Kronmir glanced at him. “Ser Alison should know this immediately. I’ll go.”

“Do it,” Favour said, nodding. “Tell her I’m going to assume we’ll attack the Patriarch. I’ll push south; start beating up their scouts, if they have any. I’ll leave Captain Lorenzo to watch the Mitlans.”

Kronmir nodded. “I have it.”

“What do you think?” Favour asked.

“I think that surprise is Ser Alison’s greatest ally. Don’t be seen, would be my advice.” Kronmir hated giving advice, but in this, his views were simple.

Favour was confident enough not to bridle. He thought about it a moment. “Alright. It’ll be dark before I could make contact anyway. Get her to tell you what her plan is. And you can guide the column to here. Ask Captain Lorenzo how far to the Patriarch’s outposts from this ridge?”

Kronmir asked.

“If he marched fifteen leagues today, he’s forty leagues away right now. Mayhap as little as thirty. There is a … hmm … hand of the Venikan rangers watching; he’ll have a report eventually.” Kronmir shrugged. “Do you need me here to translate?”

“Yes,” Favour said. “But I imagine Ser Alison needs you, too. We’ll muddle through.” He glanced at Long Paw, his mentor. The older man smiled.

“I can manage a little Etruscan,” Long Paw ventured.

Kronmir took his mare, originally provided by the Duchess of Venike in what seemed like another time and another world, and a spare horse given him by the Hillman, Gilchrist, and he was away. It was a little like fleeing the not-dead dragon; if he allowed himself nostalgia, he could imagine the duchess riding beside him.

He did not allow himself nostalgia.

He covered three ridges in less than two hours, and found the company’s pioneers just planting the little banners that marked a camp. They waved him to the rear, and less than a league on he found the two commanders with Conte Simone of Berona on a little knoll above a stream, watching the army march by.

He dismounted and bowed.

Ser Alison waved him forward. “From Favour?” she asked.

“Yes, my captain,” he said.

She grinned. “You and I may yet be friends. Say your piece.”

“My ladies, before terce we made contact with the duchess’s rangers. They report that the Patriarch is less than fifty leagues hence; south, toward Firensi. The Duke of Mitla is behind his entrenchments and under observation.”

All three of the commanders dismounted. He extracted his wax tablets from his saddle pouch and drew a map.

“Ser Daniel will push forward but will not make contact until ordered. With the Patriarch. Captain Lorenzo will continue to observe the Duke of Mitla.” Kronmir bowed.

“Eh?” Ser Alison raised an eyebrow.

“My lady, we assumed you would go for the Patriarch before he can join the duke.” He looked at her, and then at the duchess, who winked, warming his heart absurdly.

“You guessed right, for all you are is a hired killer, Ser.” She looked at him as if he were a particularly loathsome insect. Then she grinned. “Best news I’ve heard in a week. You willing to ride all the way back?”

“I am, but Ser Daniel thought you’d want me as a guide.”

“I have the duchess as a guide.” She looked at him as if buying a horse.

The duchess smiled at him. “As we were together the last time we passed these ridges,” she said.

Kronmir bowed. “I can reach him before the last light if I ride now.”

“Tell Ser Daniel I am behind you. We will not halt or camp if we can reach the old imperial road before dark.” She looked at Giselle, who nodded.

“We can,” she said.

Ser Alison nodded. “Then tell him to cover the crossroads …” She looked at Kronmir’s wax map and then snapped her fingers and her squire unrolled a chart on parchment. “San Bastide is the third town on the pilgrim itinerary,” she said, looking at a scroll. “Between Fortalice and Mitla.”

“That’s San Bastide,” the duchess said. She reached over Ser Alison’s shoulder and pointed with her dagger. “Where the Via Etrusca turns to come here. And the Berona road crosses the river.”

The two women smiled at each other.

“Perfect,” they said in unison.

Ser Alison turned to Kronmir. “Ride back to Daniel and tell him the battlefield is at San Bastide. You know it?”

“No,” Kronmir said. “But I will, and I see where it must be.”

Giselle glanced at him.

“Where we crossed the river, and took our doses,” she said. “You’ll know it.”

Kronmir nodded.

Giselle vouchsafed a smile. “Where’s your friend?”

Kronmir actually had to think. “Ah,” he said with a bow. “I would hope he is on his way to us by now. He was paying a visit to … Mitla.”

The duchess laughed. “Of course he was. Well, that would simplify matters, would it not? You know that the Duke of Mitla has a brother …”

“Who hates him …” Kronmir said.

Giselle laughed. “Perfect,” she said. “He was really a fine neighbour until last year. Now he rapes choir boys and burns people for entertainment.”

“So I understand,” Kronmir said.

Sauce watched the two of them with ill-concealed impatience. “Are you two done?” she said. “You taking my orders forward, or not?”

“I am,” Kronmir said.

“You have it all?” Ser Alison asked. She really didn’t like him, he could tell. Many employers did not.

“San Batiste is the battlefield. Move forward, no contact.” He nodded.

“I didn’t say no contact,” she snapped. “But you are right; I want surprise. He’s got to cross the river?”

“Yes,” Giselle said.

“It really is perfect. Let’s get him. Just before dark tomorrow.” She snapped her fingers to avert ill-luck. “Dammmmn this is fun.”

Kronmir bowed and went for his horse. He defied himself and glanced at the duchess, but Giselle was talking to the captain of the marines.

He changed horses, left his second riding horse in the hands of Ser Milus’s squire, and rode off with his best horse on a lead.

His horse was fresh, and he felt well enough. It was curiously relaxing to have no responsibility beyond that of courier; he had time to think. He thought about how much Ser Alison disliked him, and he had to assume it was her extreme loyalty to the emperor, whom he had, it was true, attempted to kill on several occasions.

He hadn’t thought about Brown in a week; now he was seized with worry. Brown was as close to a friend as he counted; Kronmir had sent him to Mitla without a qualm.

Examining Giselle, he had to assume that, now that she no longer needed him, his friendship was inconvenient. The thought depressed him, but there it was. Or perhaps her new friendship with Ser Alison precluded him. He knew the duchess’s tastes; he didn’t imagine, as some men did, that he’d change them.

He avoided examining himself. It was as if the knight’s belt had unleashed a torrent of emotions, each more irrational than the last.

And why am I not standing at the side of the empress? he wondered. She needs my guidance, and she likes me. Why did I choose to go with Ser Alison?

And then he thought, Of course, she must resent me; she must see me as the emperor’s eye on her.

Of course.

He sighed.

He spent a good deal of the ride examining the problem of the secret rivals as he called it in the code inside his own head. He had access to details and nuances that he merely summarized for the emperor.

There was a fairly reliable report, for example, that people who touched the Patriarch were burned, and that the robes he wore were woven almost entirely from metallic wire and some Ifriquy’an substance that would not burn. There were tidbits; he’d read a dozen reports on the Ifriquy’an fabric, trying to find a commonality.

The commonality had been reported four days ago, when Brown reported that the Duke of Mitla burned people he touched, and wore clothes woven for him in Ifriquy’a, and had done so for over a year.

And Kronmir had begun to piece together a theory about the Odine that held water, but for which there was little evidence. That the Necromancer was the “Rebel Odine.”

Old rebels. Rebels from the last opening of the gates, when the dragons were triumphant. The rebel Odine must have been allies of the dragons. The will was imprisoned; might still be imprisoned, capable of acting only through intermediaries. Until it was released. Thus, it would have only allies, not not-dead. Perhaps the Patriarch and the Duke of Mitla.

Kronmir tasted his theory, testing it the way a man might suck at a bad tooth. He was almost certain that he had detected a real flaw in the way that Odine matured; that as they took other creatures into their thoughts, the thoughts themselves matured. Perhaps the Odine functioned like democracies, and in time, the will ceased to be a unified entity and began to divide and divide again …

Perhaps not.

How many of them will appear on the day the gates open, Kronmir wondered.

The sun was no longer visible and he had pulled his hood out of his pack when he found the ruined temple. There were two Venike rangers there; they passed him forward to a long ridge overlooking the Mitla road, where he found a hand of the green banda eating a hasty supper.

They sent him south; one offered to guide him, and he declined. He crossed two ridges as darkness fell, and he cursed when his horse almost fell in a deep hole. He was tired, both of his mounts were done, and the woods and hills of northern Etrusca were vast.

The moon rose, and Kronmir dismounted, had a mouthful of wine, and listened. It didn’t help. He rode south again, and tried angling east.

The moonlight increased. He was about five leagues east of the ruined temple; he knew the imperial road was in the shadowed valley at his feet. He just couldn’t find the green banda. He felt foolish for declining a guide.

There was nothing else for it. He would have to ride all the way back to the post, and ask for a guide. The message had to be delivered.

He considered riding openly along the road. On the face of it, it appeared reckless, but he had to assume that Favour would scoop up any courier or rider on the road, and his main fear was being shot down in the moonlight instead of taken.

But this part of his night, at least, went well. Before midnight, two green-clad men appeared out of the darkness; Wha’hae recognized him.

“How in fuck are you comin’ fra’ the south?” the man asked.

“I don’t know myself,” Kronmir admitted.

But five minutes later, by lantern light and a small mage light, Kronmir was showing Favour where San Batiste was.

“The boys and girls will be tired,” Favour said. “She’ll want to make camp right here; on this ridge, or behind it.” He nodded, his face monstrous in the lantern light. “Want to scout the battlefield or set the camp?” he asked Kronmir.

Kronmir had been tired, but the younger man’s enthusiasm was infectious. “Battlefield, if you don’t mind.”

“Off you go. Take this lot; Wha’hae may smell like a farmyard, but he’s a good scout.”

Kronmir found himself in command of a dozen scouts without a scrap of uniform among them. In fact, except for some weapons, every one of them might pass for a pilgrim or a minor merchant. They all spoke Etruscan except Wha’hae, who barely spoke at all.

They grumbled, but they mounted, and they rode down the last ridge, well strung out, and then they were in a river valley, which Kronmir knew more by sound than by sight. It was very dark; the moon was too new to provide much beyond a pale and confusing glow. Off to the north there was another long ridge; to the south stretched the beginning of the richest agricultural plain in the old world.

The comet was clear in the sky above, burning white, a pointing finger that seemed aimed at the bridge. As the comet rose off the horizon, it provided more light than the moon.

“We’ll want people on that ridge,” Kronmir said. “In case …”

Wha’hae grinned in the comet light. “In case it all goes to shite?” he asked softly. “Aye. The ridge; Enri, you take Cranmer and Cromwell and More; ride the ridge end to end, flash me, and then get some sleep.”

The four men grunted and rode off.

“I want to see the bridge,” Kronmir said. “I’m going to guess there’s a ford.”

Indeed the river, whose name he didn’t even know, wandered along the flat valley bottom and seemed shallow in the moonlight. But from the height of the high-arched imperial bridge, it looked considerably wider.

Kronmir was looking south, at the plains, which shone in the comet light, because they were covered in golden wheat or the stubble thereof.

He and Wha’hae rode west, looking at the river, and found a broad cattle track that led into the black water.

“How’d you come to being a scout?” Kronmir asked.

“Better than stealing coos,” Wha’hae said. He shrugged. “Looks deep.”

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained,” Kronmir said and rode his borrowed horse into the water. It came up chest high to the horse, just to the tops of Kronmir’s boots; the bed was sand and gravel under his horse’s hooves. Downstream, toward Genua, there was more gravel; a long gravel island gleamed in the dying light.

Dying. Because clouds were coming in. First long streamers of cloud, and then suddenly the moon was gone, and most of the stars; the big bear lingered, the eye burning through the thin cloud for a long minute before vanishing. But when his horse was clear of the water, the whole sky was obscured, and it was darker.

Off to the north, a flicker of flame winked on the ridge, surprisingly high up.

“Now put it out, you fools,” grumbled Wha’hae, but the fire lasted only for as long as a pious woman would say an “Ave” and it was gone.

“Rain,” Kronmir said. He pulled out his riding hood again and buttoned it with the hood down. He put his hat back on. “It looks to me as if the whole river is fordable from here west.”

“We can’t guess that,” Wha’hae said.

Kronmir liked the man’s intensity. And his professionalism. “Aye,” he said, unconsciously imitating the Hillman’s delivery.

So they rode west again. Sure enough, the river broadened in sandy soil. Big rocks stuck up out of the black water, but it was shallow; a quarter of a league west of the cattle ford, they crossed to the south bank without the water passing their fetlocks.

“Why is there a cattle ford at all?” Kronmir asked.

Wha’hae grunted and his horse let go a long fart.

“You hungry?” Wha’hae asked. “How’d ye come to be a killer, then?”

Kronmir met his eye. “I did it often enough, and it became a habit,” he said.

Kronmir smelled the garlic sausage before it was in his hands, and he wolfed it down.

They rode back along the north bank, and there they had to pick their way across a rocky streambed. Both men had to dismount.

“That’s why the cattle ford is where it is,” Wha’hae said. “No drover wants the like o’ yon. Bad on the coos.”

“Just so,” Kronmir agreed. He ate the rest of his sausage.

“Let’s go look at the Patriarch’s camp,” Kronmir said.

“Fuck, I knew you’d say that,” Wha’hae muttered. “You an’ Favour are kin, I reckon?”

They rode east into the night. Wha’hae sent men away; a messenger to Ser Alison, half a hand to move parallel to them in the darkness.

Twice they stopped to get their bearings, but the light of the comet and the moon served to guide them, and before the moon set, they could see watch fires and campfires.

“Fewkin’ long way to march to get to San Batiste,” Wha’hae said. “We may not fight at all tomorrow.” Then he looked back at the wooded ridge on which the fire had long since been extinguished. “And not so far, neither,” he admitted.

Kronmir was trying to get an idea of the terrain in the darkness when he saw a movement off to the south.

“Run,” he said.

Wha’hae’s head snapped around, and he, too, saw the glint of comet light on armour.

He gave an owl cry, and he was away, galloping furiously on his small horse into the darkness. His two men turned with him, and Kronmir turned his horse and realized, his heart sinking, that they were on fresh horses and he was not.

His horse was done; had come eight leagues or more without rest.

Kronmir went for the woods to the north.

He looked back, and saw that all of the enemy light horse were following him. He was glad for Wha’hae, but very sorry for himself.

An amateur’s error. I am a fool, and I will die very hard.

He sighed.

He rode on, but already his poor mare was flagging, and he wished he was on the horse Giselle had given him. Gilchrist’s spare horse was a third-class nag with no heart, and Kronmir knew he was doomed.

He considered suicide.

It wasn’t in him. It was too bad, really; what would follow when they caught him would be horrible. Unless he could hide his identity, which was possible, but his sword was fine and he had his knight’s belt on his hips. He undid the latch on the buckle and dropped it in the brush through which his tired horse was cantering heavily.

He began to rid himself of everything he could think of, but they were closing in on him, only a few dozen yards away, and the brilliant moonlight and comet light were too much; he saw a rider pull up when he dropped his purse, and he cursed.

He saw another way.

He wheeled his horse to face them.

She fell.

Kronmir kicked his feet out of the stirrups and got clear. It wasn’t his finest dismount, but he was on his feet in seconds, and the first of his pursuers died when he turned to ride Kronmir down and got Kronmir’s sword through his groin and out his back. Kronmir got the reins of the dead man’s horse and swung into the blood-soaked saddle, took a blow on his back that was turned by the maille under his hood, and he was off, riding west now.

Men came up on either side.

It had been worth a try.

Kronmir turned and cut at the closest, but the man on his right raised a latchet, a small, self-cocking crossbow, and shot his horse. The bolt went into Kronmir’s horse’s rump; Kronmir’s sword deceived his left-hand opponent and cut straight into his skull above his nose, and for the second time in two minutes, Kronmir was leaping from a foundering horse.

His knee struck a rock in the darkness.

In that moment of pain, he knew he was done.

But he couldn’t stop trying, even though his left leg was useless, the pain awful. He fell. He drew his dagger; considered suicide again. Thought of the little ballestrina and the poison, which were, thanks to God, back in his bags at Arles.

He thought of Giselle.

He used the same rock that had apparently shattered his knee to get a purchase, and he rose unsteadily on a rising tide of pain. A rider came out of the darkness. He was moving slowly; he knew Kronmir was down.

Kronmir put his rondel dagger into the man’s horse. It was a stupid thing to do, but the man was not in the right position for Kronmir to kill him and something in his head wasn’t working well. The horse kicked him.

And died.

He assumed his pelvis was broken by the kick, but he crawled to the rider and put his dagger in the man’s neck.

If I kill enough of them, they will not take me prisoner, he thought.

Or perhaps it was just self-rage at all the mistakes he’d made.

He lay in the dark, wet ground, listening to them search. The pain came in waves. He had thoughts, and once, he put the tip of his own rondel dagger to his own throat.

But it was his way to struggle, and never surrender.

Which was another stupid mistake, of course.

They got him in a wave of pain. One kicked him in the head, and another stood on his dagger hand.

Captured.

Between Arles and San Batiste—Ser Jules Kronmir

Kronmir awoke to find himself in a fine room, a timbered hall with tapestries, not that he had any eye for them. He was lying on a table, about waist high, and his hands were chained over his head. The pain was immense, and his left leg simply would not move.

A man came into his line of sight, blocking out tapestries of unicorns.

“The blessings of all the saints on you,” he said. He had a tonsure, like a monk, but he wore armour. He put his hands on Kronmir’s head and his fingers made the sign of the cross. “What is your name, my son?”

Don’t talk. Say nothing. Once you start, you never stop.

“Is he too badly injured to be questioned?” asked a voice over his shoulder. A sibilant voice. Flat.

The priest jabbed a finger into Kronmir’s shattered pelvis.

Kronmir screamed.

“No,” said the priest. The man giggled nervously.

Amateur, Kronmir thought through the pain.

Kronmir was gone briefly, and then he was awake again. Cold water was being poured on him.

“You know,” the priest said kindly, “nothing will save you. This is all a question of how you die. You are a professional, aren’t you?” he asked kindly.

Say nothing.

Someone he couldn’t see pulled at something that moved his arms and feet. The pain was terrible.

I’m hurt internally. With a little luck, I’ll be dead. Soon.

“You have a wax tablet with some words on it. Can you explain them? Who is Alison? Why no contact? Is that no contact with Alison? Come, sir. You are a knight. Do not die unshriven and go to hell. Tell me what I need to know and I will shrive you, and Carlos here will send you on your way.” The priest was friendly. “Or we can gradually pull you apart.”

Kronmir knew how it all worked.

“Cut off some fingers, Carlos,” the priest said. “I’m in a hurry.”

Kronmir could watch.

Three fingers from his right hand went, one by one.

He screamed for each one. Never again to hold a sword, or a pen. Of course, that was faulty thinking, as he was not getting away. Never again now applied to everything.

Actually, none of it hurt as much as his hip, when he writhed at the pain from the fingers.

“He is someone very important,” the priest said to someone else. “He has been trained to resist. This is an extraordinary discovery.”

“Is this their Red Knight come in person?” the sibilant voice said. “That would be excellent. But it is not he. He is in the north, fighting the rebel.”

“God’s will,” said a third voice.

“I need this to move faster,” said the sibilant voice. “I have no time for this. Cut his manhood.”

“Holiness, I have found .…” said his torturer.

“Speak,” said the voice.

“Once you cut the manhood, they surrender to death, not to you.” The priest-torturer shrugged. Kronmir could see him. He was young; the same age as Favour.

Kronmir wished he had magical powers of communication. Brown might avenge him. He certainly wanted to be avenged. He had no Christian forgiveness in him. He hoped that Brown would, someday, track them all down.

“Have him raped, then,” said the voice. “I am told this works.”

“His pelvis is broken,” said the priest. “He could die.”

“Ssssssssss!” the voice said. “Break him! The sun rises in an hour! I have no time for this.”

Kronmir was just congratulating himself that they needed to hurry, and then Carlos rolled him on his back.

There was a jolt of incredible pain.

Kronmir took refuge in unconsciousness.

It didn’t last long enough, and then he awake again.

He knew immediately that he had been gelded; the whole of his manhood cut away. He could feel the wound.

He felt curiously detached now. The priest knew something about torture; Kronmir agreed with him. He had crossed over. The man’s giggles were not nerves, but a tick. He was skilled, and his principal was not letting him do his job.

There was light coming in the windows. He turned his head to it.

“Fine,” said yet another voice. “Send for the archpriest. We will use the worms.”

Kronmir lay, mutilated, alone, and terrified. He knew better than most what the worms were.

He lay and prayed fruitlessly for death.

The mutilation of his body had been seamlessly healed; not the pain, or the brokenness. Someone had used the sorcerer’s art to stanch the blood. Not the pain. Not the mutilation.

Not even the fever he already felt. Or the feeling of defilement.

Kronmir’s only armour was that he had always expected to end this way, and he had imagined it many times. It was not too horrible to be real; it merely was. He was dead; he needed to be dead, before they broke him. That was now the contest. And the worms …

But the light was growing. He was in a strange place, where time had little meaning, and the pain was something for which he had practiced. He had been tortured twice before. Once by experts, and once by amateurs. Of course, there had been limits on them, both times, and people coming to save him.

Not this time.

The light was growing. Even pain, terror, and death could not hide the sound of an army breaking camp, and every moment he did not break was a tiny moment of victory. He screamed and whimpered, but in the fortress of his thoughts, even if that fortress was breached and considering surrender, he could acknowledge that he’d done pretty well with this part.

“Now, you have been very brave,” said the voice. “You know you are going to die.”

It was all Kronmir could do not to agree, and thus, speak.

“The Patriarch wants me to feed you to these worms. Do you know what they are? They go in through your eyes and eat your soul. Your soul is destroyed. No heaven, no hell. They master your will and you never were.”

Weak theology, Kronmir thought, and was delighted he could think such a thought.

“And once they eat into you, we’ll have your whole life at our disposal in a few hours,” the man said.

Kronmir heard himself whimper.

I will break in a few seconds, he promised himself. Just not yet.

Not yet.

Not yet.

“Open your eyes, or I will pull the lever again,” the voice said.

Eventually, there was an eternity of pain, and then Kronmir’s eyes were opened physically. He felt the invisible Carlos put thumbs on his eyelids. The big man put pins through Kronmir’s eyelids into his forehead, pinning his eyes open. Tears and blood cascaded down, blinding him.

He writhed again, in fear and loathing of the end he faced, and his hip exploded in pain.

He vomited.

They cleaned the vomit off his lips and face.

And he saw the worms. The tears were slowing, and his eyes focused, without his volition, and they were there.

There were the long, sinuous grey worms, writhing in a man’s armoured hand. A hydra of six; their mouths were purple, their tiny teeth just visible to the human eye.

Kronmir screamed. He could not help himself.

“Who is Alison?” the voice asked.

Kronmir was at his limit. Somewhere, in the part of his head that could still think, he knew that every man has a limit for torture; he was far past his. He’d really done very well, and they’d killed him and ruined his body anyway. It didn’t matter. Or it did.

But the mouth he needed to talk with was screaming, and he couldn’t master it.

The voice said, “And who is Giselle?”

Giselle.

Giselle.

Giselle.

The name went through him like magic. For an instant, he was himself; he had command of his mind.

He thought of Giselle, fighting the will.

He thought of Giselle. He loved, and he would not betray. His resistance rose and his surrender fell away.

And he said nothing.

“I’m afraid this is your very last chance. No repentance, no afterlife, no hope.” The priest’s hand moved a fraction, and the heads of the worms all but brushed his eyes, pinned open now.

I was destined for hell anyway. Perhaps extinction is what I deserve. But I will not betray. I will defeat you.

“You fool! The worms will have it all from you anyway. Your entire life. Speak, or be damned!” the priest growled, frustrated.

“Just do it,” said the sibilant voice.

And as Kronmir screamed out what little life was left to him, the worms ate his eyes and started into his brain.

The San Colombo Pass—Ser Alison

Sauce stood at a small camp table while Daniel Favour sketched a chart on a large sheet of cheap paper from Venike.

“Isn’t paper wonderful?” the duchess asked.

Sauce shook her head. “Really?” she asked. “I’d rather have Mortirmir to make me a piece of sorcery. With the terrain. And colour.”

Behind her, in the darkness of the early hours of morning, her army snored, sound asleep except for a handful of sentries.

A messenger arrived, and then another. The duchess read the messages and passed them to Sauce, and she drank quaveh and looked over her chart.

“The river is rising,” the duchess said.

“Better and better,” Sauce said.

She began to dictate orders to her two scribes and No Head, whose literacy had now reached churchly proportions.

“What do you want?” she asked Giselle.

“I’ll take the attack on his baggage.” Giselle was cleaning dirt from under her nails with the tip of her eating knife. “It is the kind of war I know best. And mostly my own soldiers.”

Sauce nodded. “Whole point of the battle,” she said. “Time?” she asked No Head.

He raised an eyebrow and looked outside. “Half past three.”

“Officers,” she snapped.

“You are enjoying this too much,” No Head said.

“Fuck yes,” Sauce said.

It took almost half an hour for the captains and senior corporals to come in; many attended by squires or pages still arming them. She had all the red banda and all the white, with Ser Milus commanding the red and Ser George Brewes taking Ser Michael’s place.

She had only three battle mages, the best of whom was Mortirmir’s wife, Tancreda, university trained and strangely ruthless; and in addition to the three, she had Magister Petrarcha, whose skills in combat were untested, although Mortirmir and Gabriel both seemed to think he was a peer.

Conte Simone had six hundred excellent knights; she doubted that her opponents could match the quality of her heavy cavalry.

But then, she didn’t plan to use her heavy cavalry unless things went wrong.

Which, her experience told her, they always did.

“What’s the first thing you do in a sword fight, gentlemen?” she asked, looking around. She and Giselle, Duchess of Venike, were the only two women present; odd, as they were in command. Sauce was smiling, trying to will one of the old salts to answer her. She needed them to participate; to participate was to accept her authority. She didn’t expect to be challenged, but she wanted enthusiasm, dammit.

Ser Milus grinned. “Defend myself,” he said.

Dammit, Bad Tom would know the answer.

Corner, the captain of marines, made a very Etruscan face.

“I hope he’s an idiot,” he said.

Sauce gave the Venikan her full, broad smile. “And then?”

“And then, if he’s a fool, I kill him without risk.” He nodded.

“And if he’s no fool?” she prompted him.

Corner raised an eyebrow. “Then I work harder perhaps.”

Sauce nodded emphatically and turned her broad smile on the candlelit tent. “Exactly. First try the easy way. Without risk. If that doesn’t work, then we all have to work hard. Here’s my plan.”

She laid it out, with schemes and a timetable.

Milus nodded. “Pretty simple, lass,” he said.

“Didn’t Ser Jehan always say to keep it simple?” she asked. She looked at Conte Simone.

The great count was frowning. “We will never fight,” he said.

“You can have my part,” said George Brewes.

“You will if something goes to shit,” Sauce said. “And to be fair, in war, something always goes to shit.”

The Count of Berona shook his head. “I do not generally wait to charge. I like to settle the battle myself.”

Sauce thought again of Bad Tom. “I know someone who would suit you very well,” she said. She laughed. “Listen, my lord. If you have to charge, you will settle the battle yourself; this, I promise you. There is no dishonour in being in reserve; I will, in fact, be beside you.”

For a moment, she wondered if he would say that she’d been a whore and knew nothing of honour.

It hung there a moment, and then the older man tilted his head like a hungry hawk. Half a smile lit his lower face. “Ah,” he said. “As long as I have the pleasure of your company, Ser Alison,” and he snapped his fingers. “That for the enemy.”

“You are the very soul of courtesy,” Sauce said with a curtsy. In armour. Then she turned back.

“Remember what Gabriel says. We have to win every time. Play this careful; like a sword fight. Try easy, then try blunt, then try subtle. We can’t afford losses and we don’t have any time. So just get it done.” She looked around. “Listen for the signals. Follow orders. But you are all good captains; you know your business. If you have the moment to, then get it done. Understood?”

They all smiled.

In seconds, the pavilion was empty. To the east, a smear of orange had been spread across the base of the sky.

“You are a strange woman,” Giselle said.

“This from you, darlin’?” Sauce asked.

“You have just told them they may use their own initiative, something my husband at his strongest would not have done.” Giselle was eating berries. She looked as if she had a mouthful of blood.

“They are all masters in their own house,” Sauce said. “Why should I put reins on them?”

Giselle toasted her with quaveh. “You are as remarkable as Blanche, or Sukey. Or Tom or Kronmir. Where did your emperor find you all?”

Sauce smirked. “Whorehouses mostly,” she said. “Well, Blanche was a laundress. Kronmir … is no man’s friend, nor woman’s.”

“I must disagree, although we are sisters in most things,” Giselle said. “He saved me. He had other options, and he chose to save me.” She sat languidly for a bit, and then rose. “I should arm.”

“If’n he saved you, then it suited another agenda,” Sauce said. “He’s not a man. He’s an automaton. After we win, I’ll put him down, just to make sure he doesn’t work for someone else.”

“I wouldn’t like that,” Giselle said softly.

The two women looked at each other.

“You fancy him?” Sauce asked.

“I do not fancy men,” Giselle said. “But I can be loyal to one who was loyal to me.”

Sauce thought about that a moment and kissed her friend’s cheek. “Mayhap I’ll come to see what you see, then,” she said, and went out and started giving orders.

Giselle stretched, and called for her squire.

San Batiste—The Patriarch of Rhum

An hour after first light, the Patriarch’s scouts entered the town of San Batiste and found it empty. They weren’t particularly thorough, but they checked cellars and pillaged the church like normal soldiers, and then pushed on.

A handful crossed the bridge, saw the enemy vanguard waiting for them, and retired, chased by inaccurate crossbow bolts. Messengers tore back along the road and found the Patriarch under his canopy of embroidered cloth of gold.

He issued orders.

The Patriarchal army had more than twelve thousand men, mostly trained militia from the powerful towns around Rhum, and the great city itself; some thousands of armoured spearmen from the Rhumanol, and three thousand knights and squires from the south of Etrusca, mostly sell-swords, and some mounted crossbowmen as well, prosperous merchants’ sons and a handful of adventurers. He also had a small band of foreign mercenaries from Dar as Salaam—exiles from the Sultan, and fallen Mamluks.

He tended to listen to their advice; they knew more about his enemies than anyone he’d ever spoken to, and they knew a good deal about war as well.

The Patriarch snapped his fingers and pointed at Ali-Mohamed el Rafik. The exile was never going home; he’d killed the sultan’s son. And he looked the part of the dangerous infidel: dark skin, and a scar across the bridge of his nose that made him look more like an imp of Satan than was quite right.

“Holiness,” he said when he came even with the Patriarch’s red shoe.

“This enemy army is waiting on our road north. At the bridge at San Batiste.” The Patriarch pointed north. “Go and look at them and come back and advise me.”

“This is the only crossing for ten miles, north or south,” said one of the endless priests who surrounded the Patriarch.

“What did the prisoner say?” Ali asked. He knew a high-ranking prisoner had been taken.

“Nothing yet,” muttered the Patriarch.

“Impressive,” said Ali. His mustaches moved into his imitation of a smile. “I will return,” he snapped, and whirled his horse and rode away in a little whirlpool of dust. He enjoyed showing his superior horsemanship.

The morning passed while he rode forward and reconnoitered the edge of the river. He noted the shingle of gravel and the cattle crossing, but there were fewer than two hundred enemy soldiers in sight.

He galloped back to his master.

“I think perhaps you are being bluffed,” he said.

The Patriarch was no novice to war. “You think this is some rear guard, and my enemy has gone to face the Duke of Mitla?” he asked.

“That is one explanation,” Ali said. “There are many. If I had a hundred Mamluks, I would ride across the bridge and see what could be seen by the ridge.” He shrugged. “There is nothing in the plain. The enemy captain either is bluffing, or is a fool. We can cross the bridge either way. And once across, we cannot easily be stopped from joining the Duke at Mitla.” He shrugged. “Or the enemy captain is using the plain to trap us against the river, in which case he is absolutely confident that his army is superior to ours.”

“The enemy commander is a woman,” the Patriarch said.

“Holiness,” the man called the archpriest said. “Surely, if she is a woman, we can assume she is a fool. Women know nothing of war. And we caught her spy, did we not? So she will not know the terrain.”

Ali-Mohamed raised an eyebrow. “Women can be devious,” he said quietly.

The Patriarch looked around, but none of his other captains or advisors was bold enough to speak, perhaps because of his policy of punishing those who failed. He sat above them, in a palanquin entirely of metal, and he seemed to emanate heat like a furnace. People said no horse would bear him.

“I have won ten battles and never met a woman who could lead an army. Let us cross the river. At worst, we will have more men and more knights, and we will simply break out.” His voice was low and sibilant, and his delivery flat and unemotional.

Everyone nodded.

Except Ali-Mohamed, who began to look at the girth on his horse.

“Let us march.” The Patriarch turned to one of the younger priests. “What of the prisoner?”

“He is infected. It will be another two hours before he can be questioned.” The priest shrugged.

The Patriarch shrugged. “If there is no enemy force, kill him and harvest the worms,” he said. “Really. I do not desire the will to know more than we know ourselves. In two hours, we’ll have this over with. So much for torture.”

“Yes, Holiness,” the priest replied.

Half an hour later, the Patriarch’s advance guard crossed the bridge. There was very little resistance; a few dozen peasants with crossbows, all Brescians and Beronese, pelted his vanguard and slipped away into the woods on the slope above.

They killed two men. Their lack of success cheered the whole Patriarchal army; the rain was sapping their will to fight, and they were a patchwork of loyalties at the best of times, to the Patriarch’s intense irritation.

The rest of the Patriarch’s army began the laborious process of crossing. Soon enough, the scouts explained the cattle ford, and the army crossed twice as fast. Ali and the Patriarch’s constable, both mortal men, breathed easier when the cavalry was across, and a battle line formed.

High on the slope where the green banda had built its signal fire, Sauce looked down through an opening in the forest canopy at her opponents on the plains below. She knew from Wha’hae that Kronmir had been taken. She cared little for the man, but was painfully aware that he’d known most of what she planned.

And what Gabriel had planned.

And that Giselle valued him.

In retrospect, sending him scouting sounded like the stupidest thing she’d ever done.

But if there was one thing at which Sauce excelled, it was dealing with problems as they unfolded, and not thinking about things that didn’t need to be thought on. She had sold her body for money; and then put that away. She examined Jules Kronmir as a problem, and then she put him away. She had to win the battle. Then she’d deal with the next thing.

“Sound the signal,” she said.

Horns rang off the hillsides and echoed along the beautiful valley floor.

Ali-Mohamed el Rafik shook his head. “Why not just stop us at the river?” he asked the djinns of the air. “We’re across now.”

Down on the lower slopes of the wooded ridge, steel was glinting in the trees.

The two battle lines were slightly misaligned. More than slightly; almost half of the Patriarchal army faced an empty wooded slope, and to Ali’s left almost a third of the enemy army hung off his flank.

He winced. He tied back the heavy silk of his khaftan to leave his bow and sword arms free, and while he did that, he watched the hillsides and thought dark thoughts.

Eventually, when he was sure that his employer was not working some dark magic, he pushed himself into the group of priests, so close to the Patriarch that Ali-Mohamed could feel the unnatural heat coming off the man. If he was a man. He pointed.

“Holiness, we will need to crush these before that cavalry crushes us,” he said, pointing at the woods almost directly to their front.

The Patriarch sat above him in a great palanquin of gold, held aloft by twenty men already given to the worms. They wore plate armour and yet would walk all day.

Most of them were the Patriarch’s former political enemies.

“Now I sense a trap,” the Patriarch said. “Those woods could be full of men.”

Ali shrugged, as if to say that anything was possible.

“Speak,” the Patriarch said.

“Holiness, what you say is possible. But standing still is never a good thing in war.” Ali shrugged again. “It is too late to go back across the river.”

A few hundred men on horseback emerged opposite their center. They took a little time to form up; they had become entangled in the deep woods. But when they were formed, their order was superb.

There were perhaps a thousand of them, Ali thought. They rode forward as if they were alone on the field.

“Banner?” the Patriarch asked.

“Saint Katherine,” said a priest. “The foreign sell-swords.”

The Patriarch’s sibilance increased. “We were assured they were in the north? Chasing the rebel?”

None of the priests spoke. Some looked uncomfortable. Ali-Mohamed had spent enough time with them to know that the Patriarch’s tone and even his language had changed very rapidly in the last few weeks; that he said things that were openly blasphemous; that the priests were upset. And that the Patriarch often spoke of the will and the rebel in ways that defied theology.

“What are they doing?” the Patriarch asked.

The soldiers under the banner of Saint Katherine advanced alone. They came forward almost half a mile onto the plain, their brilliant red surcoats and polished armour flaunting their presence. Every eye was on them.

Two hundred paces from the front of the Patriarch’s army, they halted.

The Patriarch raised a screen of hermetical defence. It was done quite casually. Uniquely, in Ali-Mohamed’s experience of sorcery, the Patriarch’s signature colour was scarlet.

“God’s blessing be upon us,” he said. The red dome towered over the field.

Quite close, the enemy mercenaries dismounted.

A woman, her feminine form clear in a kirtle and overgown, stepped out of the ranks of the dismounting men and raised her hands as if invoking God.

San Batiste—Smoke

Six hundred veteran Alban archers reached for arrows.

“Nock,” shouted Smoke. His voice carried on the light breeze.

“Ready,” said Mistress Tancreda, her voice thin and quavering with nerves.

“Mark,” Smoke called.

Tancreda released her working, and opened a two-hundred-yard hole in the Patriarch’s shield, about seventy feet in the air where it was weak. It worked just as it ought to have worked, and she was surprised and almost lost her concentration.

“LOOSE!” shouted Smoke.

Six hundred heavy arrows rose into the air at a steep angle, passed through the enemy shield, and dropped into the empty air behind, and then into flesh.

Of six hundred arrows loosed, perhaps a tenth struck flesh. But others struck armour and shattered, sending needle splinters in all directions, and the loss of forty men, with as many more wounded, in a single stroke, had its effect.

So did the effortless penetration of the Patriarch’s glowing red shield.

The army had to endure three more volleys before the Patriarch mastered the difficulty of making all the parts of his sphere of equal strength; it was really much harder to stop arrows in the real than assaults in the aethereal. Men and horses were dead; a dozen priests who had been near the Patriarch were lying full length in the grass, their magnificent copes stained in their blood, and the Patriarch himself was nearly incandescent with fury. His skin seemed to glow; the smell of burning meat pervaded the air.

“Withdraw,” Ali said. “Holiness, it is you who were correct. It is a trap.” He meant that he’d been correct himself; life as an exile had taught him to pretend that his employers were always right.

The Patriarch had been forced to change the shape and size of his scarlet shield to make it more robust. Now it covered only the center.

Crossbow bolts began to flay his left. They were coming from the Beronese peasants who’d run before. They were back, in a clump of brush almost two hundred paces from the left of the Patriarch’s army. And suddenly their shooting was much more accurate.

The Patriarch rose on his throne and threw gouts of raw red potentia into the leftmost ridge. Two of his emanations started forest fires.

The rest skidded along a low shield and vanished.

His fury was such that he continued a little longer, loosing two more, and heads craned to follow the roaring fireballs as they crossed the sky.

A dozen of the Venikan marines died where they lay, silent, in their ranks, far from the sea and their usual enemies, their bodies burned by the Patriarch’s fury when it splashed through Magister Petrarcha’s shield, and the old man had tears rolling down his cheeks.

“I didn’t know,” he said. “He is like nothing I have ever endured. Red? I know nothing of this.”

“Now’s not the time,” the duchess said, putting an arm through his to steady him.

“I will try attenuation,” Petrarcha said. “I will change his colour.”

The next pair of fireballs were defeated.

“He is puissant,” Petrarcha muttered. “But untrained. Or rather, not trained as we are trained. He’s like a … dragon.”

Giselle was watching the far hillside. Now that she knew that the old magister was up to the task, her next worry was timing.

The center of the enemy sparkled again as a hundred pinpoints of fire rose from the Patriarch’s shield.

Petrarcha snuffed them out.

The center of the enemy army began to bulge.

“He’s charging the company,” Giselle said with satisfaction.

“Mount!” bellowed Smoke. The pages came forward, and the horses were to hand, and even as the spears of the enemy militia wavered and came on, the company archers rode to the rear.

They rode two hundred yards.

And dismounted.

And of course, by then, the militia were out from under the blood red shield.

The Duchess of Venike turned to her cavalry: the green banda, the best of the company’s pages, and a hundred professional light horse who were her husband’s bodyguard in happier times.

“Let’s go,” she said.

At her feet, Corner stood up. He waved his sword at his men. “Did you want to live forever?” he asked. “Let’s go.”

With a cheer, six hundred Venikans rose to their feet and left their dead to be buried later. They flowed through the wood edge, and out onto the open ground. They were already behind the enemy flank, because of their position.

Corner had his orders, and he knew his part. And he added to them, embroidering quickly. He had been told to engage, but this was sweeter than engagement, and the bastard Patriarch had killed his men, and now Corner would avenge them. His marines were with him; they knew that they were about to deliver a hammer stroke. They strode across the plowed fields as if they were giants of legend, not mere men.

He formed his men up, and then started forward at the leftmost flank of the enemy army, at a trot. It wasn’t lightning fast.

Not to him.

To Sauce and to the Patriarch, it was like a bolt of lighting.

The Venikan marines did not stop at the range of their magnificent crossbows.

Or at half the range.

They trotted forward, three hundred paces wide and two men deep, until their own right was against the river. Another three marines were dead by then; a handful of crossbowmen in the enemy army had begun loosing at a hundred paces. Most had missed the narrow line. Some bolts struck home, and the line closed up.

The enemy line flinched back, trying to find a formation that could resist the Venikans and their rapid advance.

Corner smiled.

His men continued forward, crossbows cocked, thumbs holding their bolts in the grooves.

The enemy line flinched again. They weren’t professionals but butchers and papermakers and perfumers and silversmiths.

At twenty paces, Corner shouted, “Halt.”

Somewhere, a voice was demanding that the mercenary knights charge.

Behind Corner, farther west, Duchess Giselle led her light cavalry across the gravel flats and over the second ford; almost a thousand horse.

“Make ready,” Corner said. His part was already done, really. The movement of the enemy’s cavalry to crush him had been shadowed by the Conte Simone. It wasn’t exactly what Ser Alison had planned, but it was close enough, and Conte Simone liked a good charge. In his rapid advance, Corner had turned a third of the enemy army and opened a hole in their line.

“Present,” Corner said. Six hundred crossbows went to six hundred shoulders; massive crossbows that could throw a bolt two hundred paces or penetrate a small boat. Or armour.

The militia facing him wore breastplates and had magnificent painted pavises, and they knew what was coming.

Men began to flinch, and men broke from the back of the formation and began to run.

“Loose,” Corner said.

Six hundred bolts struck home.

None missed.

A hole seventy paces wide appeared in the enemy spear wall. There were screams.

“Charge,” Corner called, and blew his sea whistle.

His marines dropped their heavy crossbows, drew their swords, and trotted forward, strapping on their bucklers as they went.

Ali-Mohamed saw the enemy light horse go for the baggage. He pursed his lips.

“Holiness?” he said. “We must leave right now.”

The Patriarch was watching his militia in the center fail to catch the company.

He heard the screams and turned to see the collapse of the militia on his left. Who had moved, and thus opened a gaping hole …

Into which a wedge of knights was trotting as if they didn’t have a care in the world.

Ali-Mohamed began to shake his head, because it was as he had predicted. Their left would now collapse; the mercenary knights, if they had any collective brains, would not even try to match the chivalry of the infamous Conte Simone of Berona, whose silk banner was now covering the enemy flank. And the knights in a wedge … could ride straight to the Patriarch without any interference.

“I am not beaten,” the Patriarch said. He drew himself up. He raised a hand and loosed a scarlet beam of coherent light at the wedge of knights, and Conte-Simone’s banner bearer immolated. The next two men in the wedge died; their armour burned and the edges welded together, the soft tissues cooked away inside.

Ali-Mohamed grabbed one red-silk-clad foot. It burned him; he jerked his hands away in shock.

He did not, personally, want to die, but he almost never abandoned an employer. “You are beaten, and worse, Holiness. Now it is only a matter of …”

The Patriarch was shifting his shields to cover his militia.

Three enemy casters all worked together, and there was an emanation.

A levin bolt struck the Patriarch’s shield, and a second passed under the moving shield to detonate in the grass under the hooves of the knights of the Rhumanol, spooking horses and maiming them.

The third working struck by the Patriarchal banner. The Patriarch and all his palanquin carriers were struck to earth as if by a fist, and many did not rise. Ali-Mohamed’s charger was killed and he was down; it took him a long minute to pull his way clear of the dying animal.

He cut its throat. He had loved that horse; more than he did people.

But he’d been paid and well paid to help the Patriarch. Who was on his feet, and casting. There was blood everywhere; the enemy manifestation had been puissant and dozens of messengers and officers were dead. Ali-Mohamed gave the army perhaps fifteen minutes before it broke up; when he saw Conte Simone’s magnificent armour deep in the mercenary knights, he revised that. Shocked by the hermetical attacks and their horses terrified, they’d been caught almost at a stand. The Rhumanol knights were already running. Conte Simone’s banner was back, held aloft by another knight, advancing at a trot, the wedge of his knights cutting like a knife, and the lance in the conte’s hand was bloody and unbroken.

Ali-Mohamed cursed.

He spent another long minute catching a horse.

Then he rode back to the Patriarch, who was rebuilding his shields. By then, Lucius was deep in conflict with four mages. He was not winning.

The Venikan marines had cut their way onto the bridge and now stood astride it, closing off any hope of retreat by the main army, while the smoke rising from the Patriarch’s baggage told him that they had lost even if they could fight their way out. They now had no food.

A whole, untouched enemy battle line emerged from the woods to Ali’s front.

“Now, Holiness. We must run right now.”

The Patriarch rose on his toes, and then continued to rise until he was several feet in the air. He cast another beam of scarlet; the whole ridge was on fire above them.

Ali-Mohamed rode for the cattle ford. He looked back, and the Patriarch was following him, like a tethered kite.

The Duchess of Venike sat her horse in the middle of the rout of the Patriarch’s baggage. Her cavalry had their orders, and the baggage was set alight, the wagons broken or overturned, the patient oxen and terrified horses slaughtered.

The frightened acolytes and fearful whores of both sexes were driven off and ignored.

Daniel Favour took the green banda south along the road, making sure there were no reinforcements coming to save the day for the Patriarch. They spread out as they went.

The duchess was unmoved by the screams of the horses or of the women caught by her cavalry. She moved out of the smoke when it got in her eyes, and looked back north, where the serious butchery had begun. The Patriarch’s army had collapsed, and now they were going to drown. The river had risen.

The Duchess of Venike looked at the wreckage of the Patriarch’s army and began to consider a new future for the whole Etruscan peninsula. Her dream of unification was punctuated by sounds of desperation and despair, and she didn’t hear them.

She did hear the hoofbeats of the horse coming through the mess, and she turned to see Petite Moulin, one of the company pages, emerging from the smoke of the burning baggage. She looked around, spotted the duchess, and came straight to her, reining her light warhorse so hard that the animal skidded.

“My lady,” she said with a crisp salute. “Corp’ral Favour says he’s taken a messenger; that Ser Jules was captured last night, and that he’s being—”

“Take me,” Giselle said, her face harder, if anything, than it had been a moment before.

The priest they’d taken had made no pretence at resisting; Wha’hae had broken his arm and twisted it a few times, the man had soiled himself, and now he sang like a bird.

Giselle ignored him. She spotted immediately that Wha’hae wouldn’t meet her eye.

“Well?” she asked Favour.

“Ser Jules was taken last night,” he began.

“And no one told me?” Giselle said patiently.

“Sauce said not to,” Favour said. He shrugged. “Sorry, Duchess.”

Giselle pursed her lips.

“This bastard says they’ve tortured him for eight hours. It’s bad.” He met her eye. Even with her anger burning on her, she admired that he could meet her eye.

“I know what eight hours means,” Giselle said, weeping inside.

“Couple hours ago they fed him worms. Odine,” Long Paw said. “Way I see it, we have to find him and put him down before the Odine can read his memories.” He never took his eyes off her. “Sorry, lady. But that’s how I see it and I’ll need all the light horse to do it. And I’d want the same if it was me.”

“Yes,” she said tersely. Her gut writhed as if the worms had her. “As would I,” she said softly.

He saluted. “On me!” he roared.

Men began to fall in, cantering up over the fields. “You—” Long Paw began.

“I’m coming,” she said. She raised a hand to forestall him. “I’m the Duchess of Venike. I know what torture is. This is my command. Let’s get this done.”

Long Paw and Favour bowed in their saddles.

Alfred Gowp raised the little-used green banner. The horns sounded, and all across the south bank, men in green and brown raised their heads and then went for the flag.

The little headquarters group grew, and burgeoned. Word spread.

They were the men and women who went out and sometimes got caught. They knew what Kronmir faced. Men crossed themselves, or spat.

Loosened their weapons.

Petite Moulin licked a long dagger. “Let’s fuck them up,” she said in her Galle-accented Alban.

They rode in no particular order, and they killed every fugitive they passed, deviating only to overrun farmhouses. Their methods were ungentle, and a line of burning barns and small holdings marked their progress.

“The body you have provided is not acceptable,” the monster said.

The priest stood as far away from the prisoner and his possessor as he could.

“I require access to his memories,” the priest said.

“The body you have provided is ruined. Why are you so foolish? I need a better body than this. This one is broken and cannot even walk, much less fight or procreate.” The voice was mellifluous, like a choir, as if different men sang a harmony out of Jules Kronmir’s former throat.

“His memories …”

“Are very difficult to find. Because he has been abused. You make me bathe in filth for a meal not worth eating. Truly, mortal, you tempt me to …” The voice slowed. “There are horses coming in great numbers.”

The priest raised his cross between himself and the thing on the table. “If I promise you a better body later …” he began. Then he got a hold of his loathing and began the spell, the exorcism, or so he hoped, that would allow him to make a safe bargain with the possessor. The Patriarch promised them that these methods were sanctioned, but lately the priest had begun to have doubts.

The possessor’s voice cut across his prayer like a song in a crowded tavern. “Your promises are all lies, mortal. Tell your fiery master that if the will is treated like this again, it will focus on him. Tell him that.”

A door opened above them in the house, and there was shouting in a language that the priest didn’t know. He turned, motioning to the two men-at-arms who attended him, and they drew their swords.

The door to the underhall opened, and a tall blond woman came through. She had a crossbow, and she shot one of his men-at-arms from so close that the bolt went through his front plate, his back plate, and into the doorjamb behind him.

Behind her, a man in green emerged even as the woman produced a sword. She made the man-at-arms parry, a strong cut, and the second green-clad man shot him under her arm. Carefully. In the abdomen.

Another man, older, pushed past the dying men-at-arms even as Carlos ran at him with a heavy sword. The older man drew across his body, passing back; his arming sword seemed to flicker in the air, and Carlos fell to his knees, both of his hands severed.

The woman continued walking down the hall. She looked at the thing on the table once.

The priest fumbled for his sword.

“Who are you?” he asked.

“A fury,” she said.

Favour put a hand on her shoulder. “We need to … kill him. Kronmir. I’m sorry, lady. But he knows … everything. If the worms get it …”

Giselle seemed to surface through the thoughts on her face. The priest was still very much alive. “Yes,” she said thickly.

“Axe, Wha’hae,” Favour said.

Long Paw was standing over the man he’d behanded.

“Wait,” Giselle said. “I must try something.” She still had the priest at sword’s point.

“Somewhat that’s worth the fate of the fuckin’ world?” Favour asked.

She looked at him.

“Try it. I need an axe anyway.” They all knew how hard it was to “kill” the not-dead. And what lay inside them.

She let go her long sword with her left hand and wrapped an arm around the priest like a lover forcing a kiss, and then jacked him by his shoulder joint, hard. She dislocated his shoulder, at least. Then she took the middle of her blade in her left hand so that it forced his bent head farther down, locking his head against her steel.

He screamed.

“This is so fitting,” she said quietly. “Though I have no idea if it will work.”

She forced the priest, step by step, across the floor to where the broken shards of Kronmir lay in a terrible caricature of crucifixion on the torture table. “You were talking to this creature?” she asked the priest.

“I was ordered. Oh, by the Blessed Virgin, I was only—”

“So they talk,” Giselle said. “To you.”

“Please please please please … It is angry, it doesn’t want that body …”

“This body is ruined,” Kronmir said in the flat voice of the not-dead.

Giselle knew exactly what was speaking. She could feel it in her head, and see it in his eyes. His right eye; the left still showed the wound where … it … had entered.

She shifted her weight slightly. “Why don’t I give you this one instead?” she said.

“That is acceptable,” Kronmir said.

Then she forced herself to do it. She fought her terror of the Odine, and her revulsion at what Kronmir had been made. She forced the priest’s face down and down against the priest’s incredible, desperate strength with the inexorable arm lock and the keen edge of her sword. Down and down, inch by inch, until the priest’s face almost touched Kronmir’s like a pair of lovers. And the worms slithered out of Kronmir’s eye. She fought her revulsion while the worms emerged in bloody sinuous horror and took the screaming priest. His struggles stopped slowly.

Wha’hae, entering with an axe, turned away in revulsion.

“Acceptable,” said the priest, who suddenly stopped screaming. The voice was flat. “Much better. Only the shoulder is damaged. I will begin repairs.”

Giselle swept his legs before he could effect full control, and with two blows of her pommel broke his knees.

The not-dead did not cry out. But its arms lashed at her, and she kicked one, stepped past.

“This is not useful,” the voice said. “We are in pain. Stop this.”

“Take it,” she said. “Put it in a net, and take it to Sauce.”

“This is inefficient,” protested the priest’s body.

“Aye, lady,” said a very impressed Daniel Favour. “And Kronmir?”

“Leave me,” she said. It was kind enough, for an inhuman voice, and Favour wanted out of that room; he was a tough man, but this was too much for him.

“I’ll guard her,” Long Paw said. He nodded. The torturer was bleeding out on the floor.

Wha’hae broke the rest of the thing’s limbs with the haft of the axe. Then they bundled it into a hunting net. “About six hours before the worms have enough strength to attack a horse,” Hobb said to two other men, but they were all careful anyway, and as soon as they found a dozen of Conte Simone’s knights, with armour and visors, they handed the thing over with deep gratitude. Everyone feared the Odine. Like the plague.

But in the underhall, Giselle sat by the broken remnant of her friend. She talked to him for a while, and he didn’t respond. She never remembered what she said. Perhaps she spoke of her helpless passion for the empress, or about her first kitten, or her life in the woods. But at some point his right eye moved, and one of his hands spasmed.

Outside, on the road, the Patriarch’s fugitives were mostly allowed to run, but some were slaughtered, and she cared not. She sang some songs.

She hated herself, because she was so revolted by what had been done to him that she couldn’t touch him. But she was brave, and she overcame it. She took his hand. The one with three fingers cut away. The one that seemed to twitch.

She held it as she would have held a woman’s, and she was silent a moment.

His right eye fluttered open. Blinked. And a little life came into it.

“You,” he croaked, his voice as ruined as his body. The remains of Jules Kronmir took a deep breath and released it. “Dream. Bad dream.”

She couldn’t think what to say, except to pray to God for mercy.

“Report,” Kronmir said.

Something like a shock went through her. She kissed his hands.

“Will,” he said. “Not … Will.”

She shook her head.

He made a face, whimpered, and a little blood came out of his mouth. His good eye closed. Behind her, a door opened and closed, and she didn’t turn.

“Necromancer,” Kronmir said with enormous effort, pronouncing every syllable. “Necro … man … cer … is … rebel .…”

She listened.

“Odine. Will is …”

Father Davide, the company padre, was kneeling by her. His lips moved, and she could hear his words as he sang, In nomine Patris …

Kronmir’s attention went briefly to the cross in front of his face. “Damned,” he said clearly.

“N-n-no m-man is d-damned except …” Father Davide concentrated. “B-b-by his own will,” he said softly. “Evil is a choice.”

Kronmir’s lips twitched, and he made a horrible sound. Then his right eye snapped open. It met Giselle’s.

“Love you,” he said. Then he gave a shudder, and he screamed. Giselle pushed the priest away and leaned down to Kronmir.

“Will not Necromancer,” he said clearly.

“You did not tell the Necromancer?” she asked.

“I think he is saying that the will is not the Necromancer,” Father Davide said without a stutter.

Kronmir’s one eye looked at the priest and blinked.

“I know,” Kronmir said. “Ahh,” he said. He seemed to smile.

Even as Father Davide held the cross in front of his eyes, Giselle lost her ability to leave Kronmir to suffer. She leaned down and kissed his lips, and then she passed her knife across his throat, and then she wept.

And Father Davide sat with her, his arm around her shoulders, as if they were old friends. Or perhaps for a moment, they were.

“Duchess is in a state,” Favour reported.

“Don’t blame her. No one trouble her.” Sauce shrugged at the loss of Kronmir, and a little at the strange intersections of men and women. “The Patriarch?”

“We missed him,” Favour said. He shrugged. “Sorry. We all went for Kronmir.”

“Right answer,” Sauce said. She was in her harness, and she hadn’t struck a blow, and thousands of men were dead. It all felt a little odd.

She’d won, though. A great victory; a master-stroke, even though it wasn’t her original plan. Conte Simone had done the right thing, emerging from concealment to cover the marines. Corner had done the right thing; Milus had done the right thing. Petrarcha and Tancreda had held the enemy sorcery.

Did that make it their victory? Or hers?

Prepared as she was for men to claim all the credit, that hadn’t happened, and her people all glowed when they saluted her, so she assumed she’d done well.

“Pity we missed him,” she said. “Will his army rally?”

“His army is dead,” Favour said. The man was virtually brown with the blood of others. The light horse had been savage.

Ser Milus nodded agreement and handed her a cup of red wine. “Some o’ the boys liked Kronmir,” he said. “Lot of dead after they knew what’d been done.” He shrugged at the inferred atrocity. “Cap’n ain’t around to hold anyone’s hand …”

Sauce was distantly aware that Gabriel might have acted to prevent a massacre, but Sauce was made differently and was fully aware that the Patriarch’s army, massacred, was a problem solved for the next few months at least.

Sauce shrugged. “I’d like the Patriarch’s head on a spike,” she said. “But I don’t always get what I want, so let’s talk Mitla.”

The silk door of the pavilion rustled, and the duchess entered. Her face was composed. Her eyes were red, but not exceptionally so.

Everyone rose to their feet and she smiled. It was a very brittle smile.

“Mitla,” said the duchess. “We have eighteen days.”

“We need at least thirteen to march back over the pass,” Sauce smiled at the other woman. Their eyes met.

“I’d like someone to track down the Patriarch of Rhum,” the duchess said. “I feel like we should tidy up as we go.” Her voice was light. “I am in a position to pay well.”

Favour nodded. “I’d be happy to get him,” he said. “So would Ser Robert.”

Everyone looked blank.

“Long Paw.”

Sauce shook her head very much the way Gabriel might have. “I’d like to get him, but there are bigger things at stake. Mitla’s behind nine miles of forts and trenches; any idea how to get him?”

Conte Simone bowed to her. “My lady, I assumed you had a plan.” He smiled. “So far, you always do.”

Sauce liked Conte Simone; for all his male vanity he was a bonny fighter. “I fight one fight at a time,” she said. “And I always drop the easy punter first.”

Everyone nodded.

“Punter?” Simone asked.

“Customer?” Sauce said. “Or, er … adversary?”

Giselle barked a laugh. She took a deep breath. “Mitla,” she said. “While we move food. We don’t need to beat him. If we hold the river line and keep open the road to Arelat, then we need do nothing more.” She looked at a set of wax tablets from her purse. “Captain Corner says that we should have our first convoy through here in two days. Let’s make Mitla dance to our tune.”

Sauce was looking at a map. She realized with a start that it was one of a sheaf of maps Kronmir had drawn himself. She also realized that Giselle knew who had drawn it.

She’s a tough girl, Sauce thought. She tapped her gapped teeth with a brass-bound pencil.

“I wanted him beat,” she admitted to her captains. “But fuck it. That’s just my pride. Duchess is right. Let’s start moving food. Milus, you dig in here.” She pointed at a town called Fornello. “Make it sturdy. You’re the covering force. Simone, you are with me, in reserve.”

“I very much enjoyed this ‘reserve,’” he said. “Good fighting.”

“I was hopin’ that this time it’d be a little more restful,” she said.

“I am hoping to see you favour us by breaking a lance on an enemy,” he said.

She licked her lips. “You callin’ me out?” she asked.

He looked startled. “No,” he said. “I assumed, as you are a knight, that you are … sad? … that you were not fighting.”

“Christ, are you sure you ain’t related to Tom Lachlan?” she said. “But aye. I like a scrap. No doubt we’ll find one. An’ since we’re coverin’ the road and not pushin’ north, Daniel, why don’t you take some of the lads an’ lasses and fetch us the Patriarch?”

“If the Patriarch is … roughly handled …” Simone said carefully. He fingered his elegant beard. There was blood under his nails. “It could … have consequences.”

“I would like to go with the party to catch him,” the duchess said.

Sauce looked at her and shrugged. “On your head be it,” she said. “I need you here. Or I’d rather you were here. Kronmir should never have been where he could be caught, and that was my fault. Now I’m not happy to let you go, but you’re the duchess and I can’t stop you.” She turned to Simone. “I was no great friend to Kronmir but he was one of mine. The Patriarch …” She smiled in a way that made her ugly.

She thought of a man who had done her a wrong, long ago. And Cully’s hands on hers, and the blood. “I cover my debts. So does the duchess. The Patriarch will pay …” She gave a small shrug.

Daniel Favour nodded.

“They say you’ll go to hell if you kill the Patriarch,” the duchess said, as if contemplating the words.

“Oh,” Sauce said with a shrug. “I doubt God’s that stupid.”

“‘Vengeance is m-m-mine,’ s-s-saith the Lord,” quoted Father Davide. “B-b-but I agree that G-G-God is in f-fact not a f-fool.” The thin man wore only a robe and sandals and would not wear even a dagger. He was very different from Father Arnauld, and yet many already accepted him despite his stutter.

“I will share my vengeance with him,” said the duchess.

Sauce smiled. She rose. They all rose. She was human enough to savour her moment; triumph and power over others, love and respect.

A life she’d never even imagined having. She thought of them: the tormentors, the evil ones. The right bastards and the casual bastards, and how she had once felt. She looked at Giselle, and had a glimmer of what was in her head.

She smiled at Giselle. “Fuck it then. Go get him,” she said. “But I need you here, and it seems to me, sister, that you don’t actually need to get him in person.”

As they filed out of her pavilion, Father Davide remained. “Rev-v-venge is ugly,” he said.

Sauce shrugged. “We’re not choir boys, Padre,” she said.

He shook his head. “C-c-choir b-boys are not c-c-choir boys, C-C-Captain.”

“Listen, Padre. You will have my confession, and you know what we are doing.” Sauce shrugged. “It may be vengeance for some, it definitely is for Giselle. For me, it is strictly business. When they scrag the Patriarch, that’s one job done.” She looked away, poured them both wine, sat back. “You’d try this line on Gabriel?”

“Every t-t-time,” Father Davide said.

She nodded, looking out the open side of pavilion at the quiet bustle of a camp at night.

“People did bad things to me once,” Sauce said after a long pull at her wine. “Cully helped me fuck them up.” She nodded.

“And that made it better?” Father Davide asked without a stutter. “Or is that just a s-s-story you t-t-tell yourself?”

“Isn’t religion a story we tell ourselves?” Sauce asked. “C’mon, Padre. It’s all a story. Yes, it made me feel better, and no, none of those bastards will ever have a chance to fuck with another girl, nor boy. Eh?”

Father Davide drank his wine.

Sauce looked at him. “How’re we going to win this without leaving a trail of blood?” she asked.

“I have no idea,” Father Davide said, with a trace of bitterness Sauce had not heard before. “Sometimes I f-f-feel like the f-fucking court jester.” He took a deep breath, finished his wine, and rose to his feet. “But actions have c-c-c-consequences, my lady, and the k-killing of innocents …”

“The Patriarch?” she asked.

“Granted,” he said. “The m-men standing by the P-P …” He paused and looked away. “Patriarch? The foot soldiers from Firensi?”

She nodded.

“Honestly, my lady, I wasn’t here to d-d-debate the m-morality of our m-methods,” the priest said. “The d-d-duchess is n-not herself, but K-K-Kronmir said something as he d-died. He s-s-said,” and Father Davide paused again.

Sauce had time to wonder to whom priests turned when they were out of faith. Father Davide looked bad.

“He said,” Father Davide’s eyes locked with hers, “That the w-will is not the Necromancer.”

Sauce thought of her interview with the worm that had been in Kronmir. “Ahh,” she said. “I interrogated Kronmir’s worm.”

“You know I’m going to tell you that even the Odine are part of God’s creation,” Father Davide said in one go.

“Of course. From the same time he made mosquitoes and cockroaches, no doubt.” Sauce gave the priest a look, as if to say that her faith gave him a certain license, but he was nearing its limits.

He bowed. “I m-merely relate what K-K-Kronmir s-said. He d-died … with incredible c-courage.”

Sauce had trouble reading the priest in the candlelight. “And he would know, I guess,” she said. “Blessed Saint Michael.”

She called to her new page. “Alissa! I need to change the message.”

She then dictated it all: Kronmir’s death, his last words, and the curiously naive ragings of her captive Odine.

Who had complained bitterly of the perfidy of something it called the Fire.