Ash: A Secret History (86 page)

The boy Witiza shoved his hunting owl at a squire and rode forward. A shrill horn split the silence.

Not from the new party – from further back.

Ash heard it; and she stood up in the stirrups, as if the mare were a war-horse, and peered forward into the flickering light.

“Exactly how much company were you expecting?” she inquired caustically.

Fernando del Guiz groaned, “Shit…” and thumbed his sword loose in the mouth of its scabbard.

Enough torches clustered together now between the two pyramids that Ash could see clearly. Crumbling plaster walls bore faded hieroglyphs in white and gold and blue, and the two-dimensional images of cow-headed women and jackal-headed men.

Riding over broken paving stones, the lord-
amir
Gelimer was reining in a bright bay gelding with white coronels, and staring behind him, past his armed escort.

Ash followed his gaze.

Thirty or forty more horses rode up out of the darkness.

These bore men in mail, riding with their lances at the rest-position. She saw a pennant with the device of a toothed wheel, and found herself looking at helmeted faces that she nevertheless knew: ’
Arif
Alderic,
Nazir
Theudibert, a young soldier – Barbas? Gaiseric? – and two more
nazirs
, and their squads, each man mounted.

Alderic’s forty men, at their full strength.

“God give you all a good night,” the ’
arif
Alderic said, his voice a deep rumble as he bowed in the saddle to Gelimer. “My
Amir
, riding so late can be dangerous. I beg you to accept my
Amir
Leofric’s hospitality, and our escort back to the city.”

Ash put one hand thoughtfully over her mouth, and deliberately didn’t catch Alderic’s eye. The soldier barely dignified what he said with the tone of a request.

She saw the lord-
amir
Gelimer glare at Alderic, glance around, see Witiza, and Gelimer’s small-eyed face shut up like a strongbox.

“If I must,” he said ungraciously.

“Wouldn’t do to leave you alone out here, sir.” Alderic rode on past him, bringing his rangy, flea-bitten grey mount up beside Ash’s mare. “Same goes for you too, Sir Fernando, I’m afraid.”

Fernando del Guiz began to shout, one anxious eye on the Visigoth noble, Gelimer.

Ash bit her lip. It was either that, or cheer, or burst out into hysterical laughter. The cold wind chilled the sweat under her arms and down her back.

She saw a dun palfrey approaching in Alderic’s wake. The rider, whose feet appeared to almost touch the ground either side, put back his hood.

“Godfrey,” Ash acknowledged.

“Boss.”

“Leofric get to hear about who’s putting the screws on my husband, then?”

She edged the mare a step sideways away from Fernando del Guiz, who was roaring furiously at the ’
arif
Alderic.

“I was talking to the ’
arif
when the order came up.”

“I don’t suppose you brought a pair of bolt-cutters? I might just about get away with it, right now.”

“The ’
arifs
men searched me. For that, and for weapons.”

“Damn… I hoped there was going to be a fight. I might have got out of here.” Ash rubbed her palms across her face and brought them away hot and wet with sweat. She huddled her cloak around herself, to keep her shaking hands out of Godfrey’s sight. Clouds coming up from the south began to blot out the sky.

Overwhelmingly, as if it was her body that thought, a physical desire overcame her for blue sky, for the gold-hot burning eye of the sun, for dry grass and bees and barley buried in red poppies; for meadowlark song, and cows lowing; for rivers glittering thick with fish; for the sun’s warmth on her naked skin, and daylight in her eyes; an ache so hard that she groaned, aloud, and let her hood fall back and tears stream from her eyes in the bitter cold south wind, staring beyond the sharp walls of the pyramids for the slightest break in the darkness.

“Ash?” Godfrey touched her arm.

“Pray for a miracle.” Ash smiled crookedly. “Just a tiny miracle. Pray for the Stone Golem to break down. Pray for these chains to rust. What’s a miracle, to Him?”

Godfrey smiled, reluctantly, gazing up at her from the palfrey’s back. “Heathen. But I do pray – for grace, for freedom, for you.”

Ash tucked Godfrey Maximillian’s hand under her arm and squeezed it. She let go quickly. Her body still shook with reaction. “I’m no heathen. I’m praying right now. To Saint Jude.”
⁸
She couldn’t manage to sound humorous as she picked up her reins. “Godfrey… I don’t want to go back and die in the dark.”

He shot a glance at the surrounding horsemen. Ash regarded Theudibert’s squad, now so close that only what appeared to be an odd, comradely compassion made his men pretend not to be overhearing her conversation.

“God will receive you, or there is no justice in heaven,” Godfrey protested. “Ash—”

Something cold stung her scarred cheek. Ash raised her head. Outside the circle of the torches, everything was black; the stars obliterated by cloud. A whirl of white specks shot across the ancient paving, among the legs of cavalry mounts moving quickly into their escort array around herself, and around Gelimer’s men.

“
Snow?
” she said.

In yellow torchlight, wet flakes showed white. Like a dropping veil snow came suddenly and thickly down on the south wind, building up swiftly on the sides of the nearest pyramid, plastering white lines along the edges of bricks, delineating unseen irregularities.

“Close up!” The ’
arif
Alderic’s hoarse shout.

“No more yapping, priest.”
Nazir
Theudibert pushed his grey mare in between Godfrey and Ash. Ash’s mare dropped her head down, presenting a winter-coated furry flank to the wind. White ice plastered the leather tack, the folds of Ash’s cloak.

“Move it!” Theudibert grunted.

“Snow. In the middle of a fucking
desert,
snow?” She transferred her reins to one hand, jabbing a bare cold finger at the
nazir
’s face. “You know what this is, don’t you?
Don’t you?
It’s the Rabbi’s Curse, come home at last.”

Judging by Theudibert’s bony, red-cheeked face, she had hit a superstitious nerve. A brief hope flared in her. The
nazir
coughed, and spat a gob between their horses.

“Fuck off,” he said.

Ash pulled her hood forward. The lining of marten fur tickled her frozen cheek.
What did you expect him to say?

The troop of horse moved off, riding back in the direction of Carthage; torches and armour glinting in the snow. She kneed the brown mare to a weary walk.
He said just what I’d say. Except that I know there
is
a curse.

Aptly, as if he could read her thoughts, Theudibert growled under his breath, “Fucking ’
arif’s
all the curse
I
fucking need!”

“Well, I’ll tell you something.” Ash let her mouth run, feeling the pull of steel chains at her neck and ankles, looking furiously around for a gap between riders, for help, for anything. “I’ll tell you. Your
amir
Leofric breeds slaves – I reckon someone out there is breeding sergeants. ‘
Arifs.
’Cause they’re all the fucking same!”

Theudibert looked at her coldly. Two of the soldiers laughed and smothered it; both of them men who had been in the cell with her, threatening rape. Ash rode on between them.

If I could kill this horse, they’d
have
to take me out of the chains. However briefly. But I’d need a weapon for that, and I don’t have a weapon. If I could lame her, get free—

She let her gaze travel ahead, looking for holes in the paving.

—then I’d be on foot, in the desert, in a blizzard, with sixty men trying to find me. Well, hey, it’s not such a bad deal. Not when you consider the alternative.

Not when you consider that, if they have to cut the chains to get me off this beast, there’ll probably be six of them with swords at my throat every minute while they’re doing it. That’s what I’d do. That’s the trouble. They’re as smart as me.

I just have to hope that someone will make a mistake.

Ash let her awareness spread out, taking in the whole troop. Alderic’s heavy cavalry platoon around her, one squad behind, one to either side; and Alderic ahead, riding with Gelimer and Fernando del Guiz, Gelimer’s troops out in front –
where he can see them,
Ash approved – and Godfrey’s palfrey plodding, head down, in the shelter of Alderic’s scraggy mount.

I do not, ever, give up. No matter
what.

Driving snow plastered her cloak against her back, and the back of her skull; freezing wind seeping through the wool. Outside the circle of torchlight, a whirling white desolation screamed, the wind rising. She saw Alderic order a scout
⁹
forward.

We came, what, two miles? Three? It isn’t possible to get lost three miles from a city!

Yes it is…

A mail-covered arm reached across in front of her.
Nazir
Theudibert yanked the mare’s reins out of her hands, and wound them around his wrist. His squad closed in, Gaiseric’s cob nipping at the mare’s rump; all of them riding within touching distance. Snow began to lie on the paved ground. She let Theudibert yank the mare into movement, clasping the furry body with her knees, keeping her weight level and her knees still.

Just a broken paving stone, a rabbit hole, anything…
Feeling the recalcitrant weight and solidity of the mare’s barrel-body, that might come crashing down on her leg if they fell.
I’ll take the risk!

The mare plodded exhaustedly on. The stink of sweating men and hot horses faded from Ash’s nostrils, obliterated by the cold. White flakes lay, eating up the flat ground, piling up against a plinth. She looked up into the star-crowned face of a stone queen, snow whitening the gargantuan granite beast-body. The sphinx’s smile blurred under clinging ice.

“Where is Carthage?”

It was the merest whisper, into the fur lining of her hood. The
nazir
glared suspiciously at her, then turned aside to speak with one of his men. A low-voiced dispute broke out between them.

In her head, words sounded:

‘
Carthage is upon the northern coast of the continent of Africa, forty leagues to the west of
—’

“Where is Carthage from where
I
am!”

No voice sounded in her head.

The mare slowed, plodding through drifting snow. Ash peered out of her hood. Theudibert’s men rode, hunched, muttering. Their tracks were churning up a hand’s-deep fall of snow now, that clung in bobbles to the hairy hocks of the horses. One white mare whickered, tossing up her head.

“This isn’t the way we rode in,
nazir
!”

“Well, it’s the way we’re riding
out.
Do I have to shut your fucking mouth for you, Barbas?”

Ash thought, What does it matter, now, if Leofric learns I’m asking the Stone Golem questions? If they get me back inside Carthage, I’m
dead.

“Forty men and twenty men and fifteen men, all cavalry, possibly all three groups hostile to each other,” she breathed, mist dampening the fur around her mouth and freezing immediately to ice. She found she was shivering, for all her wool gown and cloak. Her bare feet were numb blocks of flesh, and all sensation had gone from her hands. “One person, unarmed, mounted; escape and evasion, how?”

‘
You should provoke a fight between two forces and escape in the confusion.
’

“I’m chained! The third force isn’t mine! How?”

‘
No appropriate tactic known.
’

Ash bit at her cold, numb lower lip.

“You might as well pray, I suppose,” a light tenor voice called. Fernando del Guiz rode in from her right, pressing the roan gelding between Alderic’s troopers without a thought. Perhaps for that reason, they admitted him. His green and gold banner whipped in the blizzard, momentarily blocking out torch-light. Ash looked up at his snow-plastered helmet and cloak.

“Is that necessary?” Fernando added, indicating the mare’s reins with one gloved hand.

“Sir.” Theudibert’s tone was a gruff, less-urbane copy of his ’
arifs.
He kept her reins knotted firmly in his right hand, riding knee to knee with Ash. “Yes, sir.”

Trying to read Fernando’s expression, Ash could make out nothing. Over his shoulder, through driving snow, she saw the lord-
amir
Gelimer and his son Witiza riding back down the column towards them.

“When
I
pray, I want an answer.” She spoke lightly, as if it were a joke. Snow melted, chill on her lips.

“I’m sorry!” Fernando leaned over, close enough that his breath was damp and warm on her cheek. The male smell of him jolted her heart. He hissed, “I’m caught between the two of them, I can’t help you!”

She held in her mind the expectation of a voice. “You’ve got, what, fifteen men with lances? Could you get me out of here?”

The familiar voice in her head said, ‘
Two larger units will unite to defeat third: tactic unsuccessful,
’ as Fernando del Guiz laughed, slapped the nearest Visigoth soldier on the back, and said, unconvincingly jovially, “What wouldn’t you give for a wife like that?”

The young soldier, Gaiseric, said something quickly in Gothic which Ash could see Fernando didn’t understand.

“I’m worth more than ‘one sick goat’, trooper!” she remarked, in Carthaginian. The trooper snuffled a laugh. Ash gave him a quick grin. It’s worth making them think of me as a commander, if it slows their reaction time by even a split-second—

“Del Guiz!” The lord-
amir
Gelimer closed distance through the wind and snow.

“Del Guiz, I am riding back to the city. Ask me for no further help.” His sharp, gauntleted gesture took in the blizzard, Alderic’s horsemen, the del Guiz squires shuddering with cold and riding with the hooded owls sheltered under their cloaks, his own son’s blue-white face. “I hold you implicated in this! I should have made a better judgement of you – a man who would marry this,
this—!
”