The road to Lissen Carak—Ser Gavin Muriens
Ser Gavin marched his army, better rested and better fed than in days, into a day blessedly free from rain.
“Where is he?” Gavin asked Tamsin.
She shook her head, watching the skies. “It is like a miracle,” she said. “I can say this much: Something took him away in the last fight. Something surprised him, or hurt him. My guess is that Master Niko hit him hard, but I would have thought I’d have felt that.” She smiled. “I’m sorry, Gavin. I really don’t know. I would like to see Tapio alive. I would like …” She shrugged.
“I’d like it all to be over,” Gavin said. “I was tired of being second fiddle to my brother, and now I think I’d happily be a second fiddle for the rest of my life.”
The sun rose, and the army marched east. Before the sun was halfway across the sky, Gavin’s advance guard reported contact with the Count of the Borders and his prickers, northern horse, and by midafternoon, Gavin had the near infinite satisfaction of bowing to the Prince of Occitan and introducing the Queen of Faery, who sparkled with pleasure.
“You are far west of where I expected you,” Gavin said to Count Gareth.
The Count of the Borders nodded. “Mayhap a foolish notion,” he said. “But I wanted to be here to support you if you were close pursued.”
“As far as I know, I’ve broken contact, and the enemy is moving along the north bank of the Cohocton,” Gavin said.
“I put all my foot into the works at Lissen Carak and came on,” Count Gareth said. “Ranald Lachlan and the queen’s advance guard should be only two or three days behind me; we should arrive at Lissen Carak together.”
“Pray God that the dragon can’t break past your infantry,” Gavin said, deeply worried. “How is your hermetical support?”
“Thin,” Count Gareth admitted.
Gavin’s eyebrows seemed to knit together.
The Wild—Bill Redmede
Well north of the river, the Jacks and the irks moved very slowly east, sometimes making less than ten miles a day. The country was broken; the western flanks of the Adnacrags in autumn, with beautiful stands of beech interspersed with vast marshes and alder brakes that ran for hundreds of paces. The irks moved easily, the men less so.
Bill Redmede leaned on his bow and looked at the endless golden leaves. “We’re too far north,” he said.
Tapio shrugged. “We have to be well to the north,” he said. “We cannot afford even the chanssse of detecssshion.”
Redmede shook his head. “My people have mayhap five shafts a bow,” he said. “I agree; we cannot fight. But this is mortal slow.”
Kwoqwethogan was recovering. He raised his head. “I know these trees,” he said. “I know that great burl there, by the stream.” He pointed with a bronze talon, and Redmede could see an ancient maple with a burl the size of a farmer’s table growing from the side.
“We call him the old god,” Kwoqwethogan said. “We are not so far from roads the people travel. Over the next ridge is one of our trails. It runs to the Sononghelan; what you call the Black.”
Redmede’s heart flickered with hope. “A trail?”
“Broader than my shoulders and smooth as my tail,” the warden replied.
Redmede sighed. “Damn.”
The Cohocton—Ash
Ash’s war of metaphysical logistics had reached its limits, and the loss of his well in the north demanded an instant counterattack. But for the first day, he had to be careful; he’d overspent his resources, and he was vulnerable, and the endless limitations of the real continued to cloud his plans.
He abandoned a grandiose plan to trap the remnants of the enemy army with a force of bogglins thrown across the Cohocton with sorcery; he gave up the notion of throwing bridges of ice or even stone at key positions. He had the power, but it would have a cost. Even as it was, he knew he’d lost a sizable number of bogglins; some to the enemy, and some simply wandering off to live their own lives or return to their nests.
He rose from the ground at dawn, beating at the air with his enormous wings, feeling the shifting world of the real. To the west, four long columns of ash rising into the already clouded heavens showed that four of the newly formed volcanoes were still spewing. The clouds of ash and effluvia so generated were already changing the quality of the light.
Far to the north, north of the Inner Sea, he had another army, but it was too far away to seize the Sorcerer’s Isle. He had set that force to laying siege to Mogon’s network of natural caves and fortifications, the heartland of the mighty northern wardens. But they had become bogged in an endless series of small skirmishes that demanded his near constant attention; and the albino warden, Lostenferch, his lieutenant, was skilled at the use of magic but not at the employment of archers, and was wasting Ash’s time every day.
Ash dismissed the northern arm of his efforts. Too little; they will be too late. They failed to distract Mogon even from the prize.
In the east, he had Orley. Orley had too much of what Lostenferch lacked; Ash was tired of the thing that had been a man and his constant demands. Orley had a force that might or might not be strong enough to retake the Sorcerer’s Isle. Ash was poor at self-examination, but he had to confess that the seizure had surprised him; the revelation that Lot was not only alive but newly empowered …
Ash raised his head. Orley could never stand against Lot.
And the time, the time, the time. Suddenly there was so little time.
I will have to go myself.
It may be a trap.
How has he done this, my enemy? How has he raised all these forces and disposed them all across all the paths?
They are all against me.
I must defeat them all.
But doubt was now nagging him; the doubt of embodiment, of entanglement. He could no longer see anything of the future; had trouble remembering the pitfalls he’d seen from the aethereal.
How did Lot escape me? Why are his slaves so loyal?
One part of his many compartmented selves was moving the main army along the north bank of the Cohocton while another directed foragers and a third prepared workings in the aethereal. Too many of his compartments were brooding; counting casualties, trying to understand how many foes there were, from too little information.
I will retake the well and kill Lot.
At some point I will face the will.
Then I will turn and take the gate.
But even that was a complicated future; the ally he’d made and the deal for control of the gate were both gone. He no longer knew what stood on the other side of the gate—friend, or foe.
One of his many busy, planning selves offered a suggestion—of plain treason.
Ally with Lot.
In the physical world, his whole frame shuddered with revulsion.
Never! he screamed.
But the idea was still there.
Arles—The Red Knight
Gabriel had ordered a grand review, but when he awoke the next morning to the sound of his wife retching in a basin, he had doubts. He wondered if it was a waste of time, and his waking thought was to cancel the damned thing. Everything seemed to accelerate toward the moment that the gates were open; everything seemed to be fluid.
Blanche finished her morning sickness and collapsed on the bed with a groan.
Master Nicodemus, with his usual perfect timing, appeared at the door with a cup of something that smelled like happiness; apples and cinnamon and peppermint and honey and lemons. The smell filled the inside of their closed bed hangings.
“Oh, you are wonderful,” Blanche said, and Master Nicodemus closed the bed hangings and she drank. “Oh …” She sat up.
Gabriel smiled.
“It’s not funny,” she said. “Not even a little bit.”
Gabriel did his best to keep his face smooth.
“I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “If it’s tomorrow, then I will never lie beside you again. I don’t want to be pregnant. I don’t want to feel this bad. I don’t want you to remember me throwing up into a basin.”
Gabriel lay back and looked at her.
“It could be tomorrow,” he said. “I think this is what I was meant to do, and everything has been preparing for this.” He watched her a moment. “I don’t have time to hold a grand review. I need to tell Julius to copy out orders and cancel it. It’s a waste of time; vainglory.”
“Unless it is an important moment for building unity and good morale,” Blanche said. She obviously felt better; she polished off her morning drink with relish, put the cup outside the bed hangings, and rolled over toward him.
“I take your point,” he said. “But fifty thousand men; it’ll take four hours to get them on parade and four hours for them to file off. They could be …” He paused, because she moved closer.
“Shut up,” she said.
A surprising amount of time later, she leaned over him, her hair all around him. “They want to see you,” she said. “It’s not vainglory. It’s monarchy. Also, cancelling will start a lot of rumours. And it will keep everyone’s mind off … tomorrow.”
“I know what would keep my mind off tomorrow,” Gabriel said. He lifted his real hand and ran the calloused palm lightly across one of her nipples.
“Why, kind sir, what can you mean?” she asked.
He had new arming clothes. They were scarlet, dyed with the bodies of a type of small beetle found only in the east. Beautifully cut, carefully and lightly padded, they fit him like a second skin.
But in the way of tailors, some of the lacing points were in the wrong places for his new golden armour, and the solar was suddenly full of men and women. The grand review was less than an hour away, and Gabriel stood in his shirt and braes, drinking fennel tea and being besotted with his wife while she and Kaitlin and Gropf and her new maid Beatrice sat working eyelets through layers of linen and scarlet wool and velvet.
Master Julius brought him a stack of messages. The room was emptier than usual; most of his officers were out on the field of Arles, moving troops. Michael came and stood reading over his shoulder.
Master Julius was grinning from ear to ear.
Michael and Gabriel whooped together. “Master Smythe is alive,” the emperor said. “It is confirmed.”
Blanche looked up. “The queen will be so pleased,” she said.
Gabriel nodded. “MacGilly, fetch me Magister Mortirmir.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” MacGilly said, and he went out.
“I need more red silk twist,” Blanche said.
Beatrice rose, but Kaitlin waved her off. “I’ll go; I’m up,” she said, and she pecked Michael and continued, looking in on her sleeping child and stopping at the window with a gasp. Then she came back with a bone thread winder full of scarlet silk thread.
“You must look out the window,” she said.
Gabriel continued reading.
“Aneas took Lake-on-the-Mountain right under Orley’s nose,” he said exultantly. “Nice work, useless little brother.” He nodded at Michael. “He was our mother’s favourite after …” He paused. “Never mind. Ash will be weakened now, and distracted.”
He read through another, and another, his expression changing. “I am … concerned about Lissen Carak,” he said. “The Odine are moving and the royal army is not yet in place. Even Alcaeus is moving; he’s taking the rest of the Morean reserves toward Middleburg as of yesterday.”
“All the eggs in one basket,” Michael said.
“What can the Odine accomplish without bodies?” Blanche asked.
Gabriel thought a moment. “I don’t know anything,” he said.
“You really need to look out of this window,” Kaitlin said.
Gabriel walked to the window, a cup in his hand, and looked out over the plain of Arles.
There, laid before him like a child’s collection of toy soldiers, was the army. The army. Almost fifty thousand men and women, a sizable proportion of them mounted; a vast wagon train, grain carts, water carts, knights, archers, light cavalry …
They filled the plain.
Michael came and stood by his shoulder. “The company had a good recruiting day,” he said with a smile.
“Fifty thousand,” Gabriel said. “Holy … Lord.”
The Wild—Bill Redmede
Bill Redmede stood looking at the morning mist rising over an autumn valley filled with beaver swamp and scrubby spruce trees that appeared dark and gothic against the golden brilliance of the foliage on the ridges above.
“We are more than halfway to the Inner Sssea,” Tapio said. “It isss very beautiful here. Thisss valley sssings to me. I wish for Tamsssin.”
Redmede frowned. “I wish there was more here.” He shook his head. “I haven’t seen a deer in a day. Nor a track of deer or moose.”
Langtree, one of the Golden Bears that had broken out with them, paused to distribute late-season blackberries. “We know this, grr, valley,” he said. He had a very expressive face; his big eyes were a golden brown. “Grrr. Strange, rrrr, valley.” He swung his linen bucket by the handle, a fearsome warrior turned into a bear drunk on berries.
“Strange how?” Tapio asked.
“Mrrrm,” Langtree said. “Witch-bears come, grr? Come here, rrr? Test their powers and grow them, mmmmrrrr?”
Kwoqwethogan ate a handful of the berries. “These are full of green potentia,” he said. He took a wooden cup carved from a maple burl and beautifully inlaid in gold and silver, and with a nod of permission from Langtree, he dipped a measure of berries and poured them into his beak.
“Ahh,” he said. “Ahhh,” he said again, as purple-blue fire played along his back. His red ridge crest engorged and rose atop his head. “Ha!” he exclaimed. “Damn. That cleared my head.”
Langtree nodded. “Witch bears say the berries here grow all year.”
Redmede handed his berries to the warden. “Be my guest,” he said. “I don’t fancy being turned into somethin’ unnatural.”
Tapio was still watching the mist. “I agree that isss odd. Where are the animalsss?”
Albinkirk—Shawn
The Grand Squire, now captain of Albinkirk, had withdrawn most of the population of the Albin north of the river into Albinkirk. His garrison was small; mostly recovering wounded from the great battle at Gilson’s Hole, reinforced by a trickle of volunteers and replacements for the western alliance army; two dozen Occitan knights under a famous troubadour, Ser Uc Brunet; a company of Occitan crossbowmen, all borderers, released by the termination of Outwaller raiding in the west country of Occitan, and a trickle of Morean cavalrymen. All told, he had almost five hundred men and women fit for duty; a far larger and better garrison than his predecessor had. In addition, he had all the farmers of the region; this time, unlike their response to Thorn’s incursion, they had come in immediately when ordered, and every man and strong woman had joined their militia company willingly.
Albinkirk was packed not just with men and women but with animals, because by Lord Shawn’s order, every animal larger than a house cat had been brought inside the gates. Since the alarm at Mistress Heloise’s manor house, the militia had been digging out the old moat and fosse; dozens, if not hundreds, of small garden plots were ruined to scrape the old brick clean and dig the ditch back to its original depth.
Shawn had two of Slythenhag’s brood—young male wyverns with too much courage and poor language skills—but he sent them out rather than risk his knights or his archers, and they brought back frightful pictures of a countryside suddenly denuded of life, interspersed with views of a field full of various animals: deer, cattle, wolves … all standing together. The Grand Squire emptied his roosts sending out warnings: to the queen, to Lissen Carak, to the Count of the Borders.
Leaning on a merlon and watching her daughter like a hawk, Mistress Heloise shook her head at the orderliness of the castle courtyard beneath her feet. “It is almost as if the last time was a drill,” she said. “Or a warning.”
The Grand Squire was watching the ground toward Southford. “The queen’s army should be passing the falls today,” he said. He shook his head. “I hope they are ready for this.”
N’pana—Ash
“Ah, my lord.” Orley went down on one knee as the vast presence filled the sky and then settled on the beach. The ruins of N’pana had provided enough bark and boards for a hasty camp, and three more invaluable canoes, sunk in the shallow bay, had been recovered, but Orley was afraid, deep in his soul, and angry at that fear. He knew he had failed, when his boats were burned; he knew that his dark master was angry, and he feared Ash as he had never feared Thorn.
Ash had no sooner settled his vast bulk to the sandy beach than he transformed, his enormity gone. A single dark-haired man strode up the beach, a long cloak trailing off his shoulders like a pair of sooty wings, and he limped heavily. He bore no weapon, wore no jewel.
Orley’s host stood silent, their tongues stilled with terror. Because the entire wave front of the dragon’s terror preceded the tall, dark-haired man like the prow of a great ship.
“How many?” Ash asked. His feet didn’t actually touch the sand. His boots were black, a deep black, like velvet or soot. His appearance had an artistic falsity to it; the breeze did not move his hair, nor did the sand stick to his clothing.
“My lord?” Orley asked.
“I ask you how many. How many what, you ask?” Ash’s derision was like the cut of a sharp sword. “Perhaps I mean gems, or beautiful damsels.” He paused, his face almost slack; thinking, working on something else. Then the life returned. “How can Lot stand to work in such a limited carcass?” His eyes met Orley’s, and they were circles of fire, as red and bottomless as the molten rock that burned under the Lake-on-the-Mountain. “Orley. How many useful fighting … things … do you have?”
“Almost four thousand,” Orley said proudly. “My lord.”
Ash nodded. His face was expressionless. “That is better than I expected. Open yourself.” He did not look away, and his eyes, lacking pupils, also lacked any semblance of humanity. “How did you permit Muriens to delay you?”
Orley stood silent.
“Answer me,” Ash said. His voice was quiet, and yet it carried through all the ranks of antlered men, twisted wardens, irks, and bogglins. The Rukh shuffled and looked uncomfortable.
Orley moaned. “My lord?” he asked again. “I …”
“Yes?” Ash said. He hissed the last syllable.
“My sentries failed me! And he had overwhelming strength of arms and ops!”
“Really?” Ash’s voice drawled contempt. “Your collection of things outnumbered him ten to one. Your powers are the equal of his; you have other sorcerers to call upon.”
“My lord, I …” Orley’s voice crawled with self-contempt and irrational anger.
“I hate men,” Ash said loudly. “I hate their vanity, I hate their promiscuity, I hate their selfishness, their endless greed, their pettiness, and most of all, I hate their failure to pay attention to details. When I have extirpated man, this world will return to its natural order. And the details will be properly attended to. Kneel.”
Orley stood silent under the lash of his master’s anger.
“You failed, and in your failure you exposed me to defeat.” Ash reached out suddenly and put a hand between Orley’s mighty antlers and forced him to kneel with a twist of his hand. “Open yourself, Kevin Orley,” he said.
Orley squirmed. “My lord, I …”
“Comply,” Ash said.
Orley complied, and Ash flooded him.
Orley tried to scream.
Ash left almost nothing of Orley’s personality, although he noted that there was little enough as it was—a poisonous mixture of hatreds and insecurities. He went through them ruthlessly, leaving only buttresses of himself.
Thorn should have done this, Ash thought. He restructured the writhing, silently shrieking mind’s internal processes and massaged the surviving consciousness into talent, replacing most of the mental structures with one of his own, but even this activity was interrupted.
Something was happening in the south. He felt a dozen bogglins slip his control, then a hundred, and the mind he set aside for higher thought wondered if “he noticed even a bogglin’s fall” was humourous.
Ash reached out a hand without turning his head and beckoned at the line of dark, antlered men.
“Come,” he said. It was an excellent precaution anyway—to distribute his selves. Insurance against disaster.
Most of them fell on their faces, shrieking in terror, and the smell of their fear—musk, and urine and worse—filled the air. The terror was palpable, like a miasma; hundreds of bogglins fell beneath it.
Five of the antlered men made themselves go forward into the fear.
Ash gave them a lopsided grin. “But men are very, very brave,” he said. “Really, it is your only talent.”
He repeated the process with all five; he rearranged them and made them better, according to his lights, and he imprinted himself on their meat, leaving them very little self and a reimagined node that would function only to receive and transmit his will. Each received an entire imprint of him.
But he found there were aspects of Orley that pleased him—in spite of its debasement, or perhaps because of it—and he overwrote these aspects of Orley on them all.
He grinned with pleasure, and his grin caused the same terror as his grimmer face.
“Good,” he said. “Now you are all Orley. A triumph, of sorts.” He touched each of them. “No mortal weapon of steel or bronze will touch you, my children. You are my will.”
“Yes,” all six of them said instantly.
“It is almost like talking to a person,” he said.
“Yes,” they chorused.
He couldn’t stifle a giggle. “I am God,” he said, delighted. “I can make and I can destroy.”
He touched another dozen cringing slaves and made their slavery more abject.
And more efficient.
All of this required an investment of power, as did the maintenance of his armies, the empowerment of his various shields, and the bonds of adamant that held his aquatic “allies” to his purpose.
And through the ties of will that bound him to every bogglin in his host, he felt the further stirrings of the will. The process was not unlike the way a cat might feel the edges of a tunnel with her whiskers. And Ash’s reaction was as instinctive.
Even as the distant will began to seize his slaves, Ash drew himself up. He withdrew his will from Orley’s monsters and turned to walk back down the beach.
In a forest clearing, a hundred leagues to the south, two Rukh, a cave troll, and a hundred bogglins were conquered. The process was as swift as lightning.
The battle was on.
Ash cursed.
Trees died.
He took on his true form and leapt into the air, flying south. Almost as an afterthought, he ordered Orley’s horde to follow him. Lot had won this round; he could not retake the well and face the will at the same time. And the well was not vital.
Ally with Lot?
The will was the true enemy.
Or so he might say to Lot.
The Inner Sea—Aneas Muriens
On the shore of the Inner Sea, Aneas’s rangers were ready. The two Gallish round ships waited like floating fortresses in the two coves, covering possible landing beaches; the rangers waited in concealment, under webs of defensive spells, their own and those cast by Master Smythe.
The sun rose and dispersed the mist on the great lake, and eyes searched the sun-dazzled water for the flash or oars or paddles.
Aneas fell asleep, and woke, ashamed. But no crisis had occurred, and he changed his position, adjusted the screen of orange leaves he’d woven to cover himself, and listened.
Master Smythe walked out of the cover of the forest and onto the gravel beach as if Aneas was not concealed in any way.
“Aneas,” he said. “He is gone.”
“Ash?” Aneas said.
“We should not say his name,” Master Smythe said. “Entanglement has many effects. He is now utterly of this world, and so in this world his name will now draw his attention.” He looked out over the water. “He has other problems than losing his well right now, so he is running off to fight the Odine, who are awakening on schedule. He cannot spare me his attention.”
Smythe was smiling.
“And that’s good?” Aneas asked.
Smythe nodded. “Orley is headed south to the great battle,” he said. “I thought you would want to know.”
Aneas stood up. “You want me to follow him?”
Smythe shrugged. “Don’t you want to follow him?” he asked.
Aneas narrowed his eyes. Other rangers were rising from their concealment: Ricar Lantorn, already recovered; Looks-at-Clouds, Nita Qwan, Irene, Gas-a-ho. “Can’t you see the future?” Aneas asked.
“No,” Master Smythe said. “But I know a good deal about the past.”
“But Irene says you planned all this,” Aneas said.
“Irene gives me far too much credit,” Master Smythe said. “But what I have done is done. My role is largely finished. I planned some of it. But other hands shaped the wax, and some of them even I cannot see.”
“Is that just mumbo jumbo?” Irene asked.
Nita Qwan began the process of lighting a small stone pipe from his pouch.
“Ask Amicia, if you can find her,” Master Smythe said. “There are now forces in contention that are to me as I am to you.”
“And so you drop your tools?” Irene asked.
Master Smythe frowned. “I prefer to think that I allow my allies the free will to complete the task ahead as they see fit.”
“Will you help us to pursue Orley?” Aneas asked.
Nita Qwan had his char cloth lit with flint and steel, and he drew deeply of the pipe, pulled the smoke over his eyes and head like a hood, and turned to face the four cardinal points.
“Oh yes,” Smythe answered. “But fairness requires me to tell you that Orley is no longer Orley. Your enemy, the man who was Ota Qwan, is effectively dead, and more horribly than any revenge of yours or sentence of the Sossag Mothers would ever have arranged. He is now a living extension of our enemy, in a way that Thorn never was.”
Aneas nodded. Nita Qwan handed him the pipe and he, too, drew deeply on it and turned to face the sun, and then the other three points.
“I was never charged to punish my brother,” Nita Qwan said. “The mothers told me that he will only punish himself. But I am to kill him, as one would kill a beloved dog who suddenly foamed at the mouth and bit strangers.” He touched the blue stone dagger at his waist.
“There is much wisdom in men and women,” Master Smythe said. “But it pains me to say that in this war I have discovered that we dragons are just like you men in this one thing: that we project on you what we are ourselves, as you do on your pets.” He took another pull and shrugged. “I have reconsidered. When I am a little more secure in my form, I will follow you to war. If this is the last battle, I risk nothing by being there; I will not long survive defeat by any of the contestants. Even here. And you are good companions.” He shrugged. “But I think it will be aeons before I can fly, or take my natural form again. Or work power anywhere but near my sources.” He shrugged. “Still, I have sufficiently become a man that I cannot really imagine waiting here to find out who won, either.”
Arles—The Red Knight
Every foot soldier occupies approximately one pace, or three imperial feet, of frontage and depth in a military formation. A mounted soldier occupies almost two paces in width, and almost four paces in depth, because horses are so big.
So fifty thousand men, in a single rank, on foot, occupy fifty thousand paces, or almost twenty-five miles. Even formed four men deep, they would occupy a frontage of almost six miles, and if a sizable proportion of them were mounted, it would amount to almost ten miles.
Even formed in deep divisions, the ends of the line would never even see each other, and they would take hours to take up their formations.
When Gabriel, clad head to foot in cleaned and repaired armour of gilded steel, worn with gilt maille and scarlet arming clothes, mounted Ataelus, most of his officers had been awake for ten hours, chivying men and women and the occasional inhuman into ranks and files; checking girth straps, reacting to foolish suggestions, reminding, cajoling, and sometimes threatening. The fifty thousand men, women, and monsters of the imperial army had recently been five armies and no army. The Sieur Du Corse’s Gallish forces shared a language and a great deal of ill-will with the newly reestablished Army of Arles; the Etruscan states had various internal conflicts and histories, and almost everyone in every contingent shared a mixed feeling of dread and distrust for the “scarecrows,” former slaves to the rebel. The distrust was almost as deep for the magnificent cavalry of the sultan.
The opportunities for bad feelings, slights, petty jealousies, and subtle insults were legion.
Among all these, the company stood out; professional, multinational, and even multispecies, the company had the habit of cooperation … and of victory. The company’s officers were the glue that held the alliance together, and yet the experience of creating this grand review stretched them to their collective limits.
Ser Tobias sat on his charger with the imperial banner in his fist: a golden, double-headed eagle on a ground of crimson silk. Next to him was Ser Francis Atcourt with the casa’s three lacs d’amours, and Toby could see Ser Michael, mounting his charger after a short conversation with the Duchess of Venike, and Ser Milus, who had command of the company. Ser Alison was far off to the right, commanding the Army of Etrusca.
Ser Thomas, head-to-toe black and gold, was already mounted on his stallion, as big as a monster. He was commanding the same troops that he had led east: the Vardariotes, the Nordikaans, the casa, and the Armourers’ Guild. Under the Umroth banner, no longer a joke, they were the imperial guard with the addition of Comnena’s Scholae—almost two thousand mounted soldiers, the elite of the army. They were drawn up already, along the road that led to the castle.
To Toby’s left, the empress and the Queen of Arles were mounting. Both wore armour.
“How are we doing?” the emperor asked his chief of staff.
Ser Michael nodded. “Just a little late,” he admitted.
Gabriel looked back. MacGilly had his helmet and lance; Anne Woodstock carried his war sword, unsheathed. She glanced over at Toby, and Toby caught her look.
She grinned.
He grinned back.
Most of the women and men in the courtyard were grinning.
“If I die,” Gabriel said to Michael, and Toby felt like a lightning bolt had gone through him. “Are you ready to take command?” he finished.
Ser Michael looked for a moment at his wife, who was across the yard, getting up on a horse he felt was too big for her. “Yes,” he said. He shrugged. “I mean, probably not, but what the hell else have you trained me for, the last three years?”
“Exactly,” Gabriel said, at his most smug.
Toby wondered if he was supposed to be hearing this.
Atcourt glanced at him.
Ser Michael sighed. “May I ask what I hope is a very intelligent question?” he said.
“Is this an apprentice imperial commander question?” Gabriel said.
“Yes.” Michael looked back at Kaitlin, who was mounted and looking apprehensive. “Did you send armies to finish the Necromancer and defeat the Patriarch of Rhum just to train all these people to obey our officers?” he asked.
Gabriel returned a smug smile. “Mostly,” he said. “Idle hands are the devil’s tools.”
“You mean, it was all an exercise?” Michael asked.
“Oh no,” Gabriel said with his most annoying smile. But then he looked at Blanche, and his smile changed. “We had to finish the Necromancer. Far too dangerous, and anyway”—he was looking somewhere else, but then his attention snapped back to Michael—“to cement the alliance with the sultan if for no other reason. Did I tell you the Necromancer tried to surrender?”
Michael whistled. “No,” he said.
“There were lots of good reasons to fight both campaigns,” Gabriel said.
Michael realized that the emperor was not really talking to him. He was talking to Blanche. “We had to pin Mitla in place so that Venike didn’t feel threatened, nor Berona. We needed all these allies, Michael, and they all have their own concerns. And Kronmir—” Here Gabriel looked away. He took a deep breath and released it in a sigh. “Kronmir had a theory that needed to be tested in the field. We needed northern Etrusca secure. We couldn’t have the Patriarch threatening our lines of communication.” He shrugged. “But yes, in part they were exercises.”
“Remind me never to go to war against you,” Michael said. He looked back. “Everyone’s mounted up.”
“Then let’s go and see this army,” Gabriel said.
The emperor led the way, alone, out of the gate.
Behind him, Blanche, wearing her crown, and armour, rode between the banners. But today, the emperor rode out alone.
Just outside the gate, Harald Derkensun roared an order. Hundreds of axes went to shoulders. Most of the Nordikaans were so tall that their heads came even with the eagle on the emperor’s coat armour, even when the emperor, not a short man, was mounted on Ataelus, eighteen hands of black warhorse.
Derkensun raised his great axe straight in the air. “Ave,” he called in a voice as deep as Ocean.
IMPERATOR
… came the reply from thousands of throats.
The emperor struggled to hold his composure. It was hard not to show what he felt; difficult not to let the tears in his eyes flow over his face. Almost impossible for a man who remembered being a despised adolescent to accept the roar of such acclaim with equanimity.
The Nordikaans closed in around his horse and walked forward with him. There were more than two hundred of them; more than there had been before the disasters of the last three years.
Beyond the Nordikaans were the Scholae; beyond them, the Vardariotes; beyond them stood the casa, who bore at their head the ancient Phoenix of the Athanatoi, the immortals of Emperor Atreus. Gabriel hadn’t seen the banner before, but he paused, and smiled, and looked back at Blanche, who beamed.
The emperor looked down at Derkensun. “Blanche embroidered that,” the emperor said proudly.
Derkensun smiled. His mind was elsewhere. Battle was coming.
As he passed, each company saluted and fell into the column.
Last among the “guards” stood the gonners of the Harndon guilds, augmented by the Etruscans they’d recruited as well as detachments of Galles, Mamluks, and Venikans, all states who had claimed to need to have the new weapons immediately. Edmund wore light harness and commanded almost a thousand men, but still only the three falconets. Arles could cast bronze hand-gonnes, but no one in Antica Terra could cast a two-ton bronze tube on such short notice.
The gonners were still learning to march.
“Pitiful,” Derkensun muttered.
“They’ll have lots of practice in the next few days,” the emperor said.
“They make the guard look shabby,” Derkensun said.
Gabriel looked back over his guard; thousands of men in brilliant red and green and gold, steel bright, silk-turbaned, moving in unison. “Oh, we don’t look so bad,” the emperor said.
From the end of the ridge on which the citadel of Arles sat, the whole of the army was laid out, lining both sides of the road for almost four miles, facing inward. On the right, Du Corse’s Galles; on the left, the scarecrows. Gabriel led the guard down the plain at the center, and the guard marched eight abreast, thirty ranks at a time, led by a phalanx of flags.
The scarecrows were thin, and their eyes burned, and many of them were one-eyed like the king of the old gods, but they’d all come up with undyed white wool cotes, many of them donated by the women of the town, and every one of them bore the phoenix badge in red wool on their left breast over the heart. There were more than ten thousand of them, the Duchess of Venike had refused the regency of Etrusca to command them, and every man and woman had survived the experience of hosting a worm.
Across the road stood Du Corse’s levies, the Arriere Ban of Galle. He, too, had armed his foot with very long spears, fronted with halberds and war hammers for crushing the larger monsters, and he had four big blocks of arbalesters and a big company of heavy brigans in good armour; the very men who had so oppressed the burghers of Harndon not a year before were now imperial infantry. Gabriel detected no flaw, no irony in their cheering; less than a year before, he’d ambushed that very company on the road south of Lorica. And captured Du Corse, who now sat on a magnificent charger with the silver crown of the Regent of Galle on his helmet.
The regent saluted the emperor gravely and Gabriel returned the salute, turned, and raised his sword to the Duchess of Venike, who also returned his salute.
After the scarecrows came the Mamluks; on the other side of the road, the Galles gave way to the company. Ser Pavalo sat easily on the parade’s finest horse, his Fell Sword in his hand, facing Ser Milus across sixty paces of sunny dust.
Gabriel turned and made a motion to Bad Tom, four horse-lengths behind him, and Bad Tom’s bronze lungs roared the order to halt.
As near as could be managed, the company’s Saint Catherine banner was in the center of the whole army.
Gabriel rode his horse in a tight circle, looking at them all, and then he beckoned to Mortirmir, who, bored, had his feet up on the cantle of his saddle and was reading.
“A mighty tome of magik?” he asked, sotto voce.
“No,” Morgon said. “Here?”
“Yes,” the emperor said.
Mortirmir’s fingers grew with a pale fire, and then he nodded.
Gabriel sat up straight.
FRIENDS
Even the emperor himself was startled by the sound, and Atealus laid his ears back and twitched.
Tippit mimed putting his hands over his ears and No Head slapped him on the helmeted head.
Gabriel took a breath. He felt foolish; felt that he should never have done this at all.
Every eye he could see was on him. And Blanche was probably right.
Friends! he said again. It was better this time.
For a moment he could not remember a thing he had intended to say. And then it was all there, like the hermetical workings in his memory palace; hung on neat pegs. Because …
Tomorrow, barring accident, we will begin the greatest adventure that any army since Livia’s Legions has undertaken. We will go to another world. In fact, my friends, we will go to three other worlds before we return to our own. We have a map. We have food, and water, the best equipment, and for many of us, months or years of training and planning. This is not a desperate gamble. This is the culmination of a careful strategy. We do not have to die to the last man. We only expect everyone to do their duty, and we will triumph, and our children and their children will have peace.
You have survived the claw of the monster and the silence of the Darkness, the wing of the wyvern and the breath of the dragon. Many of you bear the marks of the weapons of the Wild and the weapons of Man.
Whatever awaits us across the gates will not be worse than what you have already faced, because your ancestors and your adversaries here are the survivors of other wars for those same gates. We have a level of hermetical support that our ancestors would have envied. We have the best weapons our world can supply.
Conquering fear is what everyone in this army has in common. We have all done it, and tomorrow we will do it again. And in conquering fear, we will win.
Then, quite spontaneously, he smiled.
And all the loot will be divided equally, by the divisional commanders, he said.
Now there was laughter.
Cully roared “Now ye’r bloody talking!” so loudly he hurt his voice.
And when we are done, you will go HOME.
Men cheered, although some members of the company looked uncomfortable.
Gabriel waved to Morgon, afraid that if he even cleared his throat, the noise would resonate. Mortirmir bowed in the saddle, his feet now in the stirrups, and turned his horse, but the magister was stopped by Bad Tom.
Three cheers for the emperor! Tom’s voice rolled over the fields so loudly that it raised dust devils.
It had all been arranged, Gabriel saw, because the Nordikaans had the right of leading any cheer for the emperor, and there was Derkensun by Tom Lachlan’s stirrup.
He raised his axe.
Ave!
IMPERATOR
Ave!
IMPERATOR
Ave!
IMPERATOR
And then Gabriel, deafened and reeling from the waves of emotion not unlike the wave front of a wyvern or a mighty dragon, turned his horse, waved his sword, and began to ride along the cheering ranks. The Nordikaans grinned; the company roared; the Mamluk kettle drummers played crescendo after crescendo.
Beyond the company were the Etruscans; Sauce stood in her stirrups to cheer, and by her side was the famous Conte Simone; behind them stood ranks of Venikan marines, and Beronese knights and crossbowmen, and Padovans, Vrescians, and a handful of Venikan nobles, as well as contingents of mounted rangers and Venikan light horse, and a thousand professional soldiers of Mitla led by the new duke’s bastard brother: hostage and contribution in one man.
Across the road stood the chivalry of Arelat and a party of volunteers from farther east; heavily armoured in elaborate, fluted harnesses and speaking yet another language, they were the chivalry of the many princes of the Almain, an almost mythical place with a high reputation for chivalry and for beer. There were almost five hundred of them, despite their own lands being invaded by the eastern Wild, serving under Ser Calvin von Ewald and Ser Parcival, and they had brought a party of easterners to reinforce the Vardariotes.
And beyond them, filling the rest of the parade, were wagons and drovers; more than a thousand high-sided military wagons, all of them already loaded; grain, spare wheels, sheaves of arrows, more than a dozen mobile forges, bar iron stock, thread, wool, beeswax, candles, bandages, hats, sword blades, and all the sinews of war; beyond the wagoners stood the corps of drovers, six hundred armed men and women who would drive thousands of head of beef across the gates.
“Incredible,” Gabriel muttered. He saluted them all, Alemains, Arelats, and wagoners, and rode to the very end and embraced Sukey, who stood on the box of a wagon that had its own flag.
Adrian Goldsmith sketched it all.
There was no pay parade. Tippit called it; they were all standing in ranks, relaxed, or as relaxed as they could be with Ser Milus four paces away and watching the emperor recede toward the distant wagons.
“Going to take for-fuckin’-ever to unfuck this,” Tippit said with a professional’s disgust for amateurs.
“Oh aye,” admitted No Head, who was already worried about an engineering problem that the captain had given him.
“No Head, how long will it take for fifty thousand men to file off to the right and left and march back to camp?” Tippit asked.
No Head stared at the cloudless afternoon sky a moment. “Four hours, give or take,” he said.
Smoke looked back at them from his exalted place as master archer of the whites. “Hey, No Head, if you have your thinkin’ cap on … you know those stakes we’ve been practicing at?”
“The gates,” No Head said wearily.
Smoke nodded. “So how long will it take fifty thousand o’ us, wi’out animals an’ wagons, to pass the gates?”
No Head nodded. He looked after the distant emperor, as if the man might hear him from almost a mile away.
“Call it twenty hours,” No Head said.
“Fuck,” Tippit said. “Gates open when?”
Smoke looked around. No one was supposed to know.
Long Sam shrugged. “Sometime after five, I hear.”
“Aye, just when they ring matins, or so I hear,” agreed Simkin.
“Ave Maria. Does every one of ye know the timetable?” No Head looked disgusted.
Tippit looked at the sun. “Let me measure this for ye, then, lads. The gates, if they open at all, will spread their wings for us at matins. That means Cap’n will call it an early night. An’ we won’t get off this parade for another hour, at best.”
“Fuck,” Smoke muttered, seeing where this was going.
“We’re goin’ ta’ get fed a big meal, ’cause the company always gets steak before we fight …” Tippit continued.
“Fuck,” Smoke ventured again.
“And then the cap’n, or Bad Tom or Sauce, will stroll by an’ order us to our blankets, fer our own good,” Tippit said with relish. “’Cause if’n the gates open at matins, Tom Lachlan will want us booted and spurred before the cathedral strikes three.”
“Fuck,” said Smoke. “Right y’are. Dammit.”
“No pay parade,” Tippit said with disgust. “We’ll have to fight our way through somethin’ ’orrible, just to get paid.”
Mark my words. Smoke started. They all looked around.
“Damn him,” Long Sam muttered.
“Jesu, Sam, ye had to know that Wilful was too fuckin’ mean to stay dead.” Robin Hasty shrugged. “No disrespect intended,” he added, crossing himself.
Snot raised a hand in his tentative manner. “No Head?” he asked.
No Head rolled his eyes. “I ain’t a bleedin’ oracle,” he muttered.
“I got a question about loot, No Head.” Snot’s voice was a little whiny at the best of times.
“Loot?” No Head asked.
Men and women who’d ignored the rest of the exchange glanced at them. Oak Pew paused and stepped out of her spot. “Loot?” she asked.
“How much loot d’ye think a whole world might ha’, No Head?” Snot asked.
People held their breath. The silence was absolute; almost hermetical.
No Head calculated.
The silence lengthened.
Finally the short archer shook his head. “No idea,” he said. “I don’ ha’e any basis for calculation. But whate’er it is …” He grinned. “Whate’er it is, you can expect that we won’ get as much o’ it as we deserve.”
The last night was an odd one. No one in the emperor’s confidence could doubt that the gates were going to open; there was light coming through the gate as bright as a new dawn, and all the magnificent stained glass burned with colour before the sun set in midafternoon.
They all knew what was ahead of them, or rather, they all shared a legion of doubts about what awaited them.
The emperor stunned his household by attending evensong in the castle chapel. The priest kept looking at the emperor as if expecting him to sprout wings—or perhaps horns. As soon as he had been served dinner, he ordered everyone in the household to bed. Toby appeared as if by magic and led Queen Clarissa’s servants in clearing.
The emperor looked at his former squire and raised an eyebrow.
Toby flushed. “I thought I’d make sure that we were served by the castle,” Toby said. “So the rest of the casa could go to bed. Master Nicodemus agreed.”
“Bless you,” Gabriel said. He glanced at Ser Michael, who was wolfing down little rolls of beef.
Toby saw the tables cleared and the boards pulled and stacked. The emperor took his lady by the hand, and she, attended by her new maid, rose, accepted bows, and went up the tightly twisting steps to their apartments.
The Queen of Arles sat alone. She was in a plain brown gown and wore a knight’s belt as her only jewelry. She sat with her chin on her hand, looking out the great double window that dominated the upper hall.
Toby was the only other person there by happenstance. His purpose had been to find Anne, but he’d been too successful in organizing dinner, and she’d already gone up to help the emperor with his clothes and weapons. Toby knew how much needed to be done to prepare the man for dawn.
Toby was afraid. He was afraid to go up the stairs and help Anne; afraid that this would be too much of an admission. Afraid she didn’t want him, as a man and as a squire.
He found the queen’s eye on him.
“Wine, Your Grace?” he offered.
She smiled. “You are a knight now, are you not?” she said in her curiously accented Alban.
“Yes, Your Grace,” he said, and when she held out a silver goblet, he filled it.
“So you will ride with them tomorrow,” she said.
“Yes, Your Grace,” Toby answered.
She smiled. When Clarissa de Sartres smiled, she was quite beautiful; the transformation was breathtaking. “I envy you,” she said. “Many of my knights are going. I am not going. I will sit here and be queen.”
Toby had no idea whether there had been acrimony about the queen remaining behind. He didn’t know what to say. So he said nothing.
She looked at him, and drank some wine. “Do you think you will triumph, Ser Tobias?” she asked.
Toby nodded. “Yes,” he said.
She rolled the goblet along the edge of the chair arm. “Why?” she asked. “Why so confident?”
Toby shrugged.
“Because of him?” she asked.
Toby felt trapped, but after a moment, he said, “I’ve been with him for some years, Your Grace. He doesn’t … lose.”
She nodded. “I want to be there,” she said. “A moment will come; the moment of victory. I do not want to be a girl and sit at home. I want my barons to remember that I was there.”
Toby was far out of his depth. But in that moment, he knew he would go up the stairs; Anne’s rejection, on the cosmic stage, was a small thing, a risk he could and should take, compared to the unfairness of being left behind.
“Maybe you should just come,” Toby blurted out.
Clarissa frowned. “That is not the path of duty,” she said. “All my life I have done what I have been ordered to do. Because, for the most part, the world would collapse if rulers did not do their duty.” She looked out the window. “I went to the Gallish court because my father ordered me to,” she said softly. “And I stayed home when my father went out to face the Wild.”
She shook her head. “I am unfair to you, young sir. These are not your troubles.”
Toby nodded. “Well,” he said. “I am a great one for duty, Your Grace. I ha’e been a servant, a page, and a squire; I generally do as I’m told.” He shrugged. “If you was to go along o’ us, and die …” He met her eye. “What would happen? Here?”
“My family line would end,” she admitted. “There would be trouble. Political trouble.”
“And if you don’t go?” Toby asked. He didn’t know why he was doing this.
“Ser knight, if we both survive this, I think perhaps you should return to my court and take a place as one of my counselors.” She put her wine aside, and Toby knew what she had decided.
Toby paused, ready to walk up the steps. But daring was coursing through him; perhaps it was her flattering words, or his intention of confessing his love to Anne. Either way, he nodded. “Listen, Your Grace,” he said. “Philipe de Beause needs an armed page. You can handle a lance?”
The Queen of Arles smiled again. “Oh yes,” she said.
Toby bowed. “If you choose this path, I can see to it …”
“Say no more,” she said. “Perhaps I will see you in the morning.”
Toby sprang up the steps with the energy he’d have used in a storming action. He reached the top and the door to the outer solar was open; he walked boldly in, to find Master Julius copying rapidly with both of his clerks and one of the imperial messengers helping him. Through two open doors he could see the empress being undressed by her lady. The emperor had his back to the door and was reading a message. There was a fire in the grate, and darkness was falling across the world.
Anne appeared at the inner door with a doublet across her left arm and the emperor’s war sword in her right hand. When she saw Toby, her face lit up. His heart beat very fast.
“I’ll do the sword,” he said, sitting on one of the benches at the second writing table. He drew the sword; it was spotless, but Toby took a rag and some oil and touched it up, checking the edge …
“Is that you, Toby?” called the emperor.
“Yes, Your Grace,” Toby said. Sharp in the last ten inches toward the point; sharp enough to shave with. But the rest …
“Shouldn’t you be rolled in a blanket with a sweet friend, Toby?” the emperor asked. “Since you are not, fetch the Megas Dukas, please?”
Toby ducked out, ran down the tightly curving stairs and up the opposite set to Ser Michael’s room.
“Cap’n wants you,” Toby called past Lord Robin, who was laying out armour.
Michael appeared, fully clothed, with a baby on his shoulder. “Lead on,” he said.
His child was spitting up onto his silk-velvet doublet. Toby ran down the steps and heard Ser Michael following, and then up, noting that the Queen of Arles was gone.
Morgon Mortirmir was right behind them.
The emperor was waiting with wine he’d poured himself.
“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” he said. “I won’t keep you. A last adjustment,” he said apologetically. “I will open the gate myself.”
“It’s a foolish risk,” Mortirmir said.
“Morgon,” the emperor said, his voice flat, “can we remember which of us is emperor?” He looked around. Blanche was in a shift, standing in the bedroom door with her lady’s face peeping over her shoulder. MacGilly was laying out the emperor’s arming clothes; Anne was already laying out a cold breakfast.
“I am the strongest,” Mortirmir said.
“When Father Arnaud died, I swore that I would not risk another life if I could do the thing myself. I will do this, gentlemen.” To Toby, it had the sound of an old argument.
Mortirmir shrugged. “If you fall—”
“Then I don’t have to worry about the next part. Sorry to interrupt your evenings. Go to bed.” The emperor bowed.
The Megas Dukas and the Magister Magi both bowed.
An armourer appeared at the door. He was very nervous, and Toby poured him a cup of cider, warm from the shoe on the hearth, and tried to calm him.
“I am to fit the empress!” he said.
Anne slipped into the bedroom and emerged with the empress, who was clearly not wearing anything under a linen shift, which added magnificently to the armourer’s confusion.
“Your … sabatons … were too tight? Highness.”
Blanche smiled. “So they were, sir.”
She sat; Beatrice laced on her arming shoes. The armourer stepped forward and put the sabatons on. His hands were shaking.
Toby glanced at Anne and found that she was looking at him.
An eternity passed, and both of them were still in gaze-lock. Toby realized that someone had said his name.
The empress was smiling. “Toby?” she asked.
“Your Grace?”
“Get the poor man a cup of wine,” she said.
Toby fetched wine, and helped the armourer away from the empress’s feet. Blanche was trying not to laugh.
“Just a matter of a small change,” the armourer said. “The rivets have to be just so loose. So happy …”
Blanche rose. The man stuttered and managed a very sketchy bow.
“They are perfect,” the empress said. “I could dance in them.” She began to execute the steps of an Etruscan court dance that she and Beatrice did every morning, her steel-clad feet winking in the candlelight. Her sabatons were edged in gold.
“I have never seen anything so beautiful,” the armour said. “Oh! I said that out loud.”
He turned bright red; so red that Toby was afraid he might do himself a mischief, and he guided the man to a table and put wine in his hand. The empress grinned at her lady and then indicated the steel shoes, and Beatrice had them off in a flash.
“You’ll start a new fashion,” young Beatrice said. “We’ll all have to have armour.” She giggled. But she wiped the fingerprints from the steel with her very practical apron, and set the sabatons down with the rest of the harness laid out on the solar’s carpet by the fire.
The armourer watched Toby examine the sword.
“May I touch it?” he asked.
Toby held it out, and the man simply put a finger on the hilt, and grinned. “Ah,” he said in Galle. “What a night! I touched the empress, and the emperor’s sword.” He rose and walked out.
Toby followed him as far as the storeroom on the corridor, where he fetched a strop and a bowl. While Anne and Beatrice tidied away the last few things, he took some paste of wax and pumice and touched up the sharp blade of the war sword.
He put the sword back into the scabbard, heard Anne laugh with Beatrice, saw Master Nicodemus come through with linens over his arm, and worked the sword a few times—half draw, return, half draw, return.
Just right.
The emperor leaned out of the bedroom. “Go to bed, friends,” he said.
“Almost there,” Anne said. Toby smiled. It was exactly what he had always said. He placed the emperor’s sword in the upright rack near the fireplace. Next to the sword stand was a towel rack, which now held a spotless, newly made arming shirt and braes several sizes smaller than the emperor’s.
Master Nicodemus smiled. “Thanks, Toby,” he said. “I think we’re ready. Anne?”
Anne nodded, her arms full of dirty clothes.
Beatrice curtsied.
“I will wake you all,” Nicodemus said.
He swept out, as regal in his way as the emperor.
Anne dropped the dirty clothes in a hamper by the solar door and tried not to listen to the sound of talking from the bedroom.
Toby gathered up his polishing and sharpening and carried the refuse down the hall to the storeroom. He put the wax back, and wished he had water …
Anne came in with a candle. She rose on her toes to fetch another candle from a high shelf. Then she turned, and put her lips on Toby’s. “Don’t go anywhere,” she commanded. She went out. Master Julius came by, yawning; Toby pretended to be fussing with something in the tiny storeroom.
I’m not fooling anyone, Toby thought. She loves me! he also thought simultaneously.
Anne came back. He heard her footsteps, and they seemed to last an eternity of joy; the anticipation warred with a nameless fear …
She came in with the stub of a candle, and closed the storeroom door. It wasn’t much larger than a wardrobe. She looked up at Toby, and he leaned down and kissed her. It was clumsy, went on longer than they’d expected, and there was some dripped wax and then they broke apart.
“This is not the love nest of my dreams,” Anne whispered.
Somehow, that seemed very funny indeed.
“If we knock down a shelf in here …” Toby said. His hip was resting against all the spare oil lamps.
They both giggled.
“Why did you marry me?” Blanche asked. She was lying on their bed, and her hands were on her stomach. There was a little hardening, as if she’d grown new muscles there. She didn’t really show yet; but her kirtles didn’t quite lace up, and her breasts were tender.
“Because I love you?” Gabriel said. He was looking out the window at the night.
“I have good legs,” she said. “Or so I’m told.” She sighed. “I’m a laundress. I’m an imposter. That poor armourer; he treated me as if I was the Blessed Virgin herself, and not some woman, a woman who farts and laughs and …” She paused. “I’m not a great warrior like Sauce, and I’m not a great magistrix like Tancreda. I come from no great family. My mother was the mistress of some great noble or other.” She shook her head. “Sometimes I look at you … today, during the review. And I think … that it is like pretending you are married to God.”
Gabriel turned from the window. His face was odd in the play of the candlelight; the shadows distorted him, and he looked fiendish. “You do have good legs,” he said. He ran a hand down one.
She sighed. And slapped at his hand.
He shook his head. “My sweet, we are all imposters.”
Their eyes met.
“One of the reasons I married you was that you are the companion I wanted for this night.” He looked at her. She blushed but he went on, “I am taking a risk. Tonight, it seems insane. Jesus, why did I make this choice?” He shivered, and instantly her arms were around him.
“I pretend. I pretend I’m brave, and I pretend I’m in command, and I pretend that I have a magnificent plan, and half the time I’m making it up as I go, and I’m scared out of my wits and I am juggling eternities.” He gave a great shudder and subsided. “I have killed an awful lot of my friends and I’m still not sure what the prize is, and in the morning …” He turned and wormed an arm out of her embrace, and he kissed her. “Listen. I’m not an astrologer. But more than a year ago, I imagined …” He frowned. “Perhaps this is too much. I imagined that if we made it this far; and I didn’t even know yet how far this would be. If we made it this far …” He took a deep breath.
She kissed him. It wasn’t companionable after the first few heartbeats. It was erotic.
“When I pulled you into my saddle,” he whispered, “I knew you could … survive … anything I threw at you.”
His skin was glowing like sun-lit metal. His metal hand was dark.
She sat up and shrugged her nightshirt over her head.
“Shouldn’t we be asleep?” he asked. His hands were at variance with his words.
“No,” she said.
Seven hours later, his skin was glowing enough that there was a rumble of comment in the casa, who stood, weapons unsheathed, at the very top of the ramp down into the great underhall.
The underhall was not dark. It was lit in a brilliant rainbow of colours, as if the sun shone directly in the great half-rose window. And on the window, the Emperor Aetius marched across window after window, making laws, ordering the execution of the former emperor’s family, winning the great battle of Chaluns, living out his life as a monk.
The emperor himself wore his armour of gilded steel. He had his ghiavarina in his hand, and his helmet on his head.
Ariosto, in the hall above, gave a raucous scream.
“You’re sure?” Mortirmir asked.
Gabriel looked at him and gave an easy smile.
Cully stepped out of the ranks. “Cap’n?” he asked.
“Cully?”
“I’d like to stand wi’ ye, if you don’t mind.” Cully shrugged.
Bad Tom gave a fractional nod.
Gabriel nodded back. “Thanks, Cully.”
The two of them walked down into the sun-drenched room. It was warm. The flood of colour was supernatural.
“Cap’n?” Cully asked.
“Yes?” Gabriel asked. He was trying to rein in his impatience to get it done.
“Look there,” Cully said. He was pointing at the central figure of Aetius.
Gabriel shrugged. “Beautiful,” he said in a meaningless way. He walked forward toward the central panel, and the keyhole, and Cully could see his hands were shaking.
Cully took his great bow off his shoulder and checked the string, and then drew a single heavy arrow from his belt and put it on the string.
“Good luck, Cap’n,” he said.
Gabriel looked back. He looked up, at the waiting troops, and then he looked at the gate.
The light grew, if anything, brighter.
There was a sound, like a bell ringing, a perfect note, like silver or crystal. The sound seemed to fill the underhall.
Morgon raised his shields. So did Petrarcha and Tancreda and twenty other magisters.
Gabriel went inside his palace, where the simulacrum of his tutor stood on her pedestal.
“Ave, Prudentia,” Gabriel said.
“Ave,” she answered. “You stand on the threshold.” She smiled, her white marble lips arching. “I hear the music of the spheres.”
He nodded. He had prepared everything he could, the way he had for his tutor’s examinations; shields hung, ready to use, and spears of light, clouds of darkness, balls of fire, a sword he’d designed himself, and some subtle, complicated stuff he’d decoded from Al Rashidi’s fading mind.
He took a single shield of pure green and a living buckler of gold; perhaps the densest protective spell he’d ever cast.
“Ready?” he asked.
Prudentia smiled. “For this, you were born,” she said.
He started. “What? You can’t know that!”
Prudentia smiled. “Ask me no questions, and I’ll tell you no lies.”
“Damn it, Pru! This is not the time!” he said, but inside he felt as if a dam had burst.
Would you be lord of all the worlds?
The golden target burned like a sun on his left fist, yet being hermetical, it didn’t interfere with his grip on his ghiavarina.
He put the golden key he’d stolen from Miriam into the gate.
Lines of white fire ran from the corners to the center.
“The gate is live,” said Bin Maymum.
As the fire ran over the gate, Gabriel could see that, unlike Lissen Carak, with ten settings, this gate had only two.
He took a deep breath.
He turned the key to the second setting.
The tracery of stone and glass vanished, and a hot wind blew into his face.
Sand whispered against the edge of his green shield.
For a long heartbeat, Gabriel stood alone in the light of an alien dawn. Behind him lay the underhall of the Castle of Arles.
Ahead of him lay a road made of stone, running on a stone causeway above a desert. The road ran right to the mouth of the cave; he could see. Looking around, he seemed to be standing in what appeared to be the mouth of another cave.
His heart felt as if it might burst.
He took a step forward, even though that had not been the plan.
His green shield vanished. He stood, unprotected except by his golden buckler, in the intense heat of a desert summer day, just after dawn, and a ribbon of road ran away toward a lonely mountain rising at the very edge of the heat shimmer.
He took a breath.
It was so hot that the air seemed to burn his lungs, and he was already sweating.
“Jesu,” Cully said beside him. “You are taking us to fuckin’ hell.”