Ash: A Secret History (130 page)

Evidently the Faris believes in keeping up the pressure.

“If I had to find a word for … for
golem-towers,
” Ash said, still staring, her tone somewhere between awe and black humour, “I think my voice would call them ‘self-propelled artillery’…”

The Duke of Burgundy’s voice came from behind her. “They are stone and river-silt, as the walking golems are. Fire will crack their stone. Arquebus bullets will not. Cannon have cracked their bodies. The Faris has ten towers, we have immobilised three. Go to the north window, Captain Ash.”

This time, knowing what to look for, it was easier for Ash to rub moisture from the glass and lead and pick out details of the northern part of the encircling forces. Here, she saw the great camp between the two rivers laid out – the moats in front of Dijon’s north wall half-full of bundles of faggots; dead horses rotting in the no-man’s-land of open ground.

It took her a while to pick it out from the tents, pavises, barricades, and men queuing outside the cook-tents. A blink of brightness from the southern sun caught her eye, gleaming from a brass and marble engine longer than three wagons.

“They’ve got a ram…”

A marble pillar as thick around as a horse’s body hung sheathed in brass, suspended between posts, on a great stone-wheeled carriage. Men could not have swung the weight of that ram, or have wheeled the body of it up to the gates, but if the wheels would turn of themselves, the great metal-sheathed point slam into the timbers and portcullis of Dijon’s north gate…

“If it hits too hard, it’ll disintegrate.” Ash turned back to face the Duke. “That’s why they use their ordinary golems for messengers, not combat, your Grace. Bolts or bullets will chip them away. That ram, if it hits too hard, will crack its own clay and marble. Then it’ll just be a lump of rock, for all the
amirs
can do.”

As she walked back to stand in front of the Duke’s austere bed, he said authoritatively, “You have not seen the most dangerous of their engines – nor will you. They have golem-diggers, tunnelling saps towards the walls of Dijon.”

“Yeah, your Grace, my captain Anselm’s told me about those.”

“My
magistri ingeniatores
have been kept employed in counter-mining them. But they need neither sleep nor rest, these engines of the scientist-magi, they dig twenty-four hours a day.”

Ash said nothing to that, but could not entirely hide her expression.

“Dijon will stand.”

She couldn’t keep the sudden scepticism off her face. She waited for his anger. He said nothing. A sudden spurt of fear moved her to snap, “I didn’t bring these men halfway across hell just to get them killed on your walls!”

He did not appear offended. “How interesting. That is not what I expect to hear from a mercenary commander. I would expect, as I heard from Cola de Monforte on his leaving, to hear you say that war is good, good for business, and however many men are killed, twice as many will flock to take their place in a successful company. You speak like a feudal lord, as if there were mutual loyalties involved.”

Caught wrong-footed, Ash reached for words and failed to find anything to say. At last, she managed, “I expect to see my men killed. That’s business. I don’t expect to
waste
an asset, your Grace.”

She kept her eyes stubbornly on his face, refusing to identify, even for the briefest moment, a nagging dread.

“How are your men made up?” the Duke demanded. “Of what lands?”

Ash folded her hands in front of her, to stop the sudden tremble in her fingers. She ran through the muster in her mind: the comforting neutrality of names written on paper and read to her. “For the most part, English, Welsh, German and Italian, your Grace. A few French, a couple of Swiss gun-crews; the rest who-knows-what.”

She did not say
why?
but it was plain in her expression.

“You had some of my Flemings?”

“I split the company, before Auxonne. Those Flemings are out there with the Faris, your Grace. Orders,” she said, “will only take you so far. Van Mander was a liability. I want my men fighting because they want to, not because they have to.”

“So do I,” the Duke said emphatically.

Feeling verbally trapped, Ash spelled out the necessary conclusion. “Here in Dijon, you mean.”

Charles’s face tightened. He gave no other sign of pain. He looked around for a page to wipe the sweat from his face; they having been sent away, he wiped his sleeve across his mouth, and raised his dark eyes to look at her with determined authority.

“I show you the worst, first. The enemy. Now. Your men will be one in five, or one in six, of my total forces here.” A sharp jerk of the head, towards his captains further down the chamber. “It is my intent to bring you into my counsel, Captain, since you form a sizeable part of the defences. If I will not always take your advice, I will listen to it nonetheless.”

That’s the respect he’d show a male captain.

She said soberly, and completely neutrally, “Yes, your Grace.”

“But in that event you will say that you and your men are, nonetheless, fighting only because you must. Because you must fight to eat.”

Oh, you’re
good. Ash met his keen, black gaze. He was not very many years older than her; a decade, perhaps.
²³
Lines cut down the skin at the sides of his mouth, put there both by authority and, more recently, she guessed, by pain.

“Your Grace, I’m a mercenary. If I think my men should leave, we will. This isn’t our fight.”

Charles said, “Therefore I intend to offer you a contract.”

“Can’t take it.” She shook her head, her answer immediate.

“ Why not?”

Ash spared a glance for the big archer behind the Duke, wondered momentarily how close-mouthed the man might be, and then mentally shrugged.
The rumour-mill will have had everything around the city before Sext,
²⁴
no matter what I say.

“For one thing – I signed my name on a contract with the Earl of Oxford,” Ash said measuredly. “He’s employing me right now. If I knew for certain where he was, your Grace, I’d feel obliged either to get his orders, or to take the company and leave to rejoin him. As it happens, I have no idea where he is, or even whether he’s alive – from Carthage to the Bosphorus is a damn long way, right now, through war and freezing winter, and who knows what mood the Sultan’s in? I guess that my lord of Oxford may have a better idea where
I
am. He may get word to me here. He may not.”

None of what she said appeared to come to the Duke as a surprise.
At least
his intelligence is reasonable.

“I wondered what you would finally say to me when I asked for your commitment.”

So did I.

She became aware that her heartbeat increased.

“I kept you from Visigoth hands, Captain, last summer.” Charles leaned forward in the bed, as if his back pained him. “You feel no obligation to me?”

“Personally, perhaps.” Saying that, unsure, she decided to let it stand. “This is business. What happened in Basle to the contrary, I don’t break contracts, your Grace. John de Vere is my employer.”

“He may be lost. Imprisoned. Or dead these many weeks. Sit.” The Duke pointed.

A three-legged stool stood not far from the ducal bed. Ash sat, carefully, balancing her weight in the brigandine; wishing she could turn around and see people’s expressions. It is not everybody who is invited to sit in the presence.

“Yes, your Grace?”

“You doubt my competence as a leader, now,” Charles said.

It was a forthright statement, with no uncertainty about the uncomfortable fact; given with a kind of confidence nonetheless. Ash, startled, could think of nothing to say that would not get her into trouble.
It’s true. I do.

“You’re wounded, your Grace,” she said at last.

“Wounded, but not dead. I still command my officers and captains. I will continue to do so. If I fall, de la Marche, or my wife who commands in the north, are both perfectly capable of withstanding the invading army, and relieving the siege here.”

Ash let no doubt show in her voice. “Yes, your Grace.”

“I want you to fight for me,” Charles said. “Not because towns and cities have been destroyed, and out there on the horizon the dark is closing in on us, and you have nowhere else to go. I want you to fight for me because you trust me to lead you, and win.”

He continued to hold her gaze, where she sat. His voice became quieter:

“When I first ordered you into my presence, this summer past, you were concerned that your own men might not follow you, you having been wounded at Basle. I think that you wondered, later, if they would have rescued you at Auxonne – if that wound, and their doubt of you, had not held them back. Then, when your men came to Carthage, it was not for you, but for the Stone Golem. You are still partly troubled over their loyalty, even if you do not express your concern.” Charles gave a small smile. “Or do I read you wrong, Captain Ash?”

“Shit.” Ash stared blankly at him.

“I’ve been in the field since I was a boy. I read men.” The Duke’s smile faded. “And women, too. War makes nothing of that distinction.”

How the
fuck
do you know what I’ve been thinking?

Ash shook her head, unaware that she did so; not so much a negative, as a rejection of the thoughts in herself.

“You’re right, your Grace. I thought exactly that. Up to today. Now… I’ve just had a demonstration of – loyalty, I guess. That’s even harder to cope with.”

The Duke surveyed her for a long moment.

“You may sign a contract with me that leaves de Vere your master,” he said, abruptly. “If orders come from him, or if you hear of his whereabouts, you and your men are free to go. Until then, remain here, fight for me. When you agree, I will have you fed along with my men, which is worth more than coin in this city now; and you and your officers will have a say in the defence of the city. As for the rest-—”

Charles broke off again. One of the green-robed soeurs edged closer, glaring at Ash in unmistakable anger. Ash got to her feet, the previous night’s exertions aching in her muscles.

“Your Grace, I’ll retire until you’re well.”

“You will retire when you are given leave.”

“Yes,
sir,
” Ash said under her breath.

Her gaze weighed him, as she stood before him; a woman in man’s demi-gown and hose, her own bodyguard holding her sword-belt and weapons six paces away.

Whatever wound he had taken at Auxonne, it still pained him. She looked away from his sallow face, caught by his gesture as he waved the nun away. His right hand was blotched, at the first knuckle of the middle finger, with black oak-gall ink.

He’s still up to writing orders and ordinances, however sick he is.

That’s a good sign.

He’ll probably stand by his word, too, if the past’s anything to go by.

That’s a better one.

He’s no John de Vere. On the other hand, he’s certainly no Frederick of Hapsburg.

She remained silent, weighing him on the one hand with the English soldier-Earl, on the other with the political acumen of the Holy Roman Emperor, realising without much surprise that – even with his little humour and less social grace – what she felt comfortable with was the soldier in him, rather than the Duke.

There’s six thousand men and three hundred engines out there, minimum. Against some vague hope of a relieving force from Flanders. And the minute this guy keels over – the city goes.

And he has more than men for enemies.

“Follow me, and trust me,” Charles said. He spoke with a brisk, awkward confidence, but nonetheless a confidence that was total. Looking at this man, even on his sick bed, Ash found she could not imagine him in defeat.

Dead, yes, but not defeated. That’s good. If they’re that confident, we might settle this before his death’s an issue.

“You believe you’re going to win, your Grace.”

“I conquered Paris, and Lorraine.” He spoke without boasting. “My army here, though much reduced, is better equipped, and made up of better men than the Visigoths. There is another army of mine in the north, under Margaret’s command, in Bruges. She will come south soon. Yes, Captain, we shall win.”

Whether you will, or whether you won’t – right now, I can’t feed my men without you.

She met his dark gaze. “Upon condition, I can sign a
condotta
that’s limited to what you’ve just said, your Grace.” And then, an irrepressible grin breaking out, born of relief at having taken any decision, no matter how temporary: “I guess we’re with you for the moment!”

“I welcome that much trust. I shall ask you questions that you will not answer unless you trust me, Captain.”

He gestured. She sat down again. He shifted on the hard bed, a grimace of pain twisting his features. One of the priests moved forward. Charles of Burgundy waved him back.

“Dijon is in danger because its Duke is here,” he added reflectively. “This Goth crusade is determined to conquer Burgundy, and they know they cannot do it except by my death. Therefore the storm falls on the place I am.”

“Fire magnet,” Ash said absently. At his questioning look, she said, “As a lodestone draws iron, your Grace. The war follows you, wherever you are.”

“Yes. A useful term. ‘Fire magnet’.”

“I learned it from my voice.”

She rested her forearms on her thighs, supporting herself on the stool, and gave him a look that said
pick the bones out of that!
as clearly as if she had voiced it. Let’s see
how
good your intelligence is.

He made as if to lay his shoulders back into the bolster, and stopped. No pain showed on his face, but visible droplets of sweat ran down his sallow, shaven cheeks; drenched the chopped-straight black hair that lay across his forehead. With illness and with the Valois features, nose and lip, he made a singularly ugly young man in some respects, Ash reflected.