Ash: A Secret History (119 page)

“I suppose I should consider you my prisoner,” Alderic said, stolidly. He moved, and the firelight shone on to his face. Ash saw, along with the amazement, that he was concealing, a brief spurt of amusement. “God in His mercy damn you. I did not believe a woman could do what you did. Where is the English
jund,
the white mullet livery? Is he with you here? Who is with you?”

“No one’s with me.”

Her mouth dried as she spoke. She thought, Damn, it had to be him, he knows me, he’ll turn the camp guards out, John Price will have his work cut out for him down at the siege-engines.

Well, he’s a hard bastard, he can take it.

“What you see is what you get,” Ash remarked, keeping her gauntleted hands in plain view. “Yes, I am bearing a sword; I’d like to keep it.”

The ’
arif
Alderic shook his head. He gave a deep bellowing laugh. With a good-natured cheerfulness, beckoning his men forward, he said, “I wouldn’t trust you with a blunt spoon,
jund,
never mind with a sword.”

Ash shrugged. “Okay. If I were you, though, I’d ask the Faris first.”

Alderic himself put back her cloak, while two of the guards held her arms, and began unbuckling her sword-belt. His fingers were quick, even in the chill. Straightening up, her scabbarded blade in his hands, he said, “Don’t try to convince me the General knows you’re here.”

“No. Of course not. You’d better tell her.” Ash met his gaze. “You’d better tell her Ash is here to negotiate with her. Sorry I didn’t bring my white flag.”

She could see in a second that the cheek of it appealed to him. The ’
arif
turned, gave orders to the gate-guards, and the men either side of Ash pushed her forward, not particularly roughly, into the camp. The river rustled below, as they crossed the bridge, walking out into muddy lanes between tents, that showed clear in the white moonlight.

The sheer reality of her presence, here, now, among armed men who will have absolutely no hesitation in killing her – that reality makes her eyes open wide to the freezing night wind, as if to imprint the moonlit silhouettes of hundreds of frost-rimed pavilions; her ears take in the noise their feet make, crunching through the mud. It nonetheless seems unreal.
I should be with my company: this is crazy!

Ash, walking in the ’
arifs
wake, heard a hound bark once; a pale, lean-bodied shadow in the night, nosing at rubbish abandoned outside one of the big barrack-tents – almost no small tents, she noted; the Visigoths like to keep their men in bigger units – and an owl flicked like the white shadow of death over her head; brought her heart into her mouth with the memory of hunting, in Carthage’s darkness, among the pyramids.

They skidded, walking up and down slopes, walking for half a mile or more, still within the camp, hardly closer to the north wall of Dijon. Moonlight glinted from something – the artillery-battered tiles on Dijon’s turreted roofs.

Somewhere a sally-gate is being opened. Please God.

“Six men of my forty died when you attacked the House,” Alderic said, dropping back to walk beside her. He still gazed ahead, profile stark in silver light. “
Nazir
Theudibert. Troopers Barbas, Gaina, Gaiseric…”

Ash let a little of the bleakness she felt into her voice. “Those are men I would have killed personally.”

Looking at his bearded face, she thought him entirely aware – as a good commander should be – of the beating that had lost her her child; who had done it, their names.

“You are too seasoned a campaigner to let it become personal. Besides,
jund,
you did not die in our Citadel when it fell. God spares you for something: other children, perhaps.”

At that, she stared up at the big Carthaginian.

He knows I lost a child: not that I can’t have another. He knows I got out of Carthage: he doesn’t know about the Wild Machines. He’s assuming I’m here for another contract. A
condotta.

If he knows anything, it’s barrack stories that I’m another Faris, I hear the Stone Golem.

If they’d had reason to stop using the
machina rei militaris
– and he’s House Leofric; he’d know! – he’d be
afraid
of me.

As if to confirm her thoughts, the ’
arif
Alderic continued calmly: “If I were you,
jund,
I would not risk myself within reach of the
amir
Leofric’s family again. But our General is a fighting woman, she may well have a better use for you with us, here.”

She registered that
Leofric’s family
rather than plain
Leofric.

“The old man’s dead, huh?” she said bluntly.

In the sharp contrast of moonlight and shadow, she could see Alderic raise his eyebrows. When he spoke, it was still in the tone of one professional colleague to another:

“Sick, I thank you,
jund;
but recovering well. What else might we expect, now that God blesses us so clearly?”

“He
does?
”

A flicker of amusement. “You could not know, in Dijon. God touches His earth, at Carthage, with the light of His blessing; and any man may see His cold fire burning over the tombs of the King-Caliphs. A seer told me it presages a speedy end to our crusade here.”

She blinked, thought,
He assumes I’ve made my way
out of Dijon? and then,
Cold fire over the tombs
—

Over the pyramids.

The aurora of the Wild Machines.

“And you think it’s a sign of God’s
favour?
” she blurted.

“How else? You yourself,
jund,
were there when the earth shook the Citadel, and the palace fell. And, all in one moment, the first Fire of the Blessing was seen, and King-Caliph Gelimer was spared from death in the earthquake.”

“But—!”

There was no time to formulate questions: they were arriving on the heels of the ’
arifs
messenger; the man still shouting at the guards on what Ash saw, by the livery, was the Faris’s quarters. No tent here: raw timber had been knocked together into a long, low, turf-roofed building, surrounded by braziers and troops and slaves waking from their sleep.

About to persist, she shut up when a white-clad figure opened the arched doorway and stepped out.

The automatic attention of the men would have told her it was the Faris, if nothing else; but the moon on the river-fall of silver blonde hair, falling down about her shoulders to her thighs, was unmistakable. Ash, watching and not yet seen, had a second to think
I used to look exactly like that
before she strode forward, long-legged and gawky, arms wrapped in her cloak, and said in a cheerful voice, “This is a parley. You want to talk to me.”

With absolutely no hesitation, the Visigoth woman said, “Yes. I do. ’
Arif,
bring her inside.”

The Faris turned and walked back through the doorway. Her white garment was a heavy robe of marten fur and silk, swathing her body. Unarmed, bareheaded, barely awake, she seemed still in complete possession of herself. Ash stumbled on the wooden steps, her feet numbed by the cold.

Two golems stood, one either side of the door, oil-lamps held in their stone hands.

They might have been merely statues of men: one in white marble, the other in carved red sandstone. An artificer’s hand had certainly shaped the muscled arms, the long limbs and sculpted torso; given form to the aquiline features. Then the bright polished bronze of shoulder- and elbow-joints flashed in the light, as the marble golem raised its lamp higher. Ash heard the infinitesimal sound of greased metal sliding on metal. The red golem mirrored the movement; the vast weight of its stone body shifting.

“Follow!”

At the Faris’s word the two golems fell in behind her, their stone tread making the wooden floor creak. A flickering light danced on the tapestried walls.

Ash stared at the backs of the golems.
I was so damn close. So damn close to the Stone Golem itself, the
machina rei militaris…

She called ahead, “You want to speak to me privately, Faris.”

“Yes. I do.” The Visigoth general walked without hesitation into an arch hung with silk curtains, and hands pulled the material back for her to pass. Ash, as she followed, glanced to one side and saw fair-haired slaves in woollen tunics, House slaves, sent up from the African coast; even one or two men she knew by sight from House Leofric. But not – a swift searching glance – the man Leovigild, or the child Violante.

Leovigild, who tried to talk to me in my cell; Violante, who brought me blankets.

Of course they might be dead.

“Isn’t it nice when you get important enough that people don’t kill you out of hand?” Ash said sardonically, walking into the low, lantern-lit chamber, and throwing herself down on to a stool in front of the nearest brazier. She didn’t look at Alderic or the Faris for a moment, putting back her hood, stripping off gauntlets and sallet, and stretching her hands out to the heat. When she did, it was with a look of complete confidence. “Not won Dijon yet, then?”

It was the ’
arif
who rumbled, “Not yet.”

She had one dizzy moment, literally light-headed, looking at the ’
arif
commander Alderic and seeing how he watched herself and the Faris.
Identical sisters. One, you’ve followed around Iberia, and trusted your life to in combat. And the other
–
you cut the throat of, when she was fourteen weeks old.

Ash’s hand moved. She put it down again, not wanting to reach up to the unseen scar on her neck. She settled for grinning at Alderic, and watching him wince at her scarred face. There was still sympathy in his expression, but not to excess. Professional, military … evidently he felt his semi-responsibility discharged with his own confession to her in Carthage.

“Dijon is not yet won by assault.” The Faris wrapped her arms around her body, lifting her robe as she turned. The light on her perfect face showed her tired, but not drawn; campaigning hard, but not starving.

“Assaults don’t end sieges. Hunger, disease and treachery end sieges.” Ash lifted a brow, at Alderic. “I want to talk to your boss, ’
Arif.
”

The Faris said something quietly to him. Alderic nodded. As the big man left, the Faris signalled to the slaves, and remained standing while food and drink was brought in by men wiping suddenly-broken sleep out of their faces.

The long chamber contained trestle tables, chests, a box-bed; all of it European and probably looted. Among these Frankish items, the war-gear of the Visigoth general, and the red clay and white marble of the golems, seemed jarring.

“Why interrupt my sleep?” the Visigoth woman said, suddenly quizzical. “You could have waited until morning to be a traitor.”

Both of them?
Ash thought, nothing registering on her face. Without my saying anything – they’re both assuming I’ve been in Dijon all this time?

Of
course
– because the Faris will have seen men in my livery on the walls!

And since I haven’t talked to the
machina rei militaris,
it can’t have told her where I’ve really been.

She thinks I’m here to give her the city.

Let
her think that. I’ve got about thirty minutes. I only have to keep them guessing for that long. Stay alive for that long.

And meantime do what I came for.

The Faris stared for a moment. She walked back to the chamber door, past her mail hauberk hanging on a body-form, and gave quiet orders to the slaves. The men left the room. Turning, she said, “The golems will tear you apart if you attack me. I need no guards.”

“I’m not here to kill you.”

“I will doubt that, for my own survival.” The Visigoth woman walked closer, seating herself in a carved chair further off from the brazier. It was as she sat, her body dropping limply down on to the silken cushions, that Ash realised how weary she was. Long silver lashes drooped over her eyes for a moment.

Still with her eyes closed, and as if completing long thoughts, the Faris said, “But you wouldn’t be here, after I’ve taken the city, would you? You’re too afraid of being taken to Carthage again. You haunt me,” the woman added unexpectedly.

“Dijon,” Ash said neutrally.

“You will have your price for opening a gate.” The Faris put her hands in her lap. The fur gown slid back, exposing her leg to the charcoal brazier’s heat. Red light gleamed on her fine, pale skin. A self-possessed woman, little different from the woman Ash had seen at Basle.

Looking at the Faris’s hands in her lap, Ash saw that the flesh at the sides of her perfect nails was nipped, bitten; fragments of skin stripped out and the meat showing red beneath.

“The safety of my company is paramount,” Ash said. As if it were a normal negotiation – and
might
it be? – she added, “We march out with full honours of war. All our kit. Give an undertaking not to contract to the Empire’s enemies in Christendom.”

As if she did not want to look, but could not stop herself, the Faris met Ash’s gaze. With a quiet fretfulness, she said, “Our lord Gelimer presses me hard. Messengers, pigeons, as well as the
machina rei militaris.
‘Press the siege, press hard’ – but other commanders could hold the siege, my place is with my field armies! Give me the city and I am in a mood to make it worth your while.”

So Gelimer
did
make it out of the palace alive. Damn. That’s one rumour down.

Ash briefly considered asking
Is my husband Fernando alive?
and dismissed both the thought and the odd stab of grief that came with it.

And are they still fighting up in Flanders?

“My money was on Gelimer thinking: the campaign’s going to have to stop for the winter, the crusade’s succeeded so far, it can all wait till spring. Meanwhile Gelimer makes himself a
secure
elected monarch.” Ash rubbed her cold hands together. “If the real action’s in Flanders, Gelimer won’t send you orders. You’re Leofric’s toy; Gelimer doesn’t want him looking good at the moment.”