Ash: A Secret History (87 page)

He pointed at Ash. She gripped a fold of her cloak and shook snow off herself; wiped the snow from her eyelashes. The brown mare whuffed, too tired to pull away from the
nazir
’s grip on her reins. Ash sniffed back a runny nose, staring up at Gelimer; at this richly robed and armoured man, white snow lodging in the braiding of his beard.

“Well, fuck you too,” she said, almost cheerful, if only because of the appalled expression on Fernando del Guiz’s face. “You’re not the first person to act like I’m an abomination, my Lord-
Amir
. If I were you, I’d be worrying about worse problems than me.”

“You!” Gelimer waved a finger at her. “You and your master Leofric! Theodoric was misguided enough to
listen
to him. Yes, it is essential that Europe be eradicated, but not—” He stopped, wiping a blast of snow out of his face. “Not with a slave-general! Not with a useless war-machine. These things
fail,
and then where are we?”

Ash made great show of looking around her, at Theudibert hunched over his saddle, at the troopers pretending not to listen to the overwrought
amir
as they rode knee to knee in a tight little group, at Alderic ahead supervising Gelimer’s men.

She raised her head to the high, white, whirling air, and the snow-covered immense statues, and the blanket of snow smoothing out the desert in the sputtering light of the wet pitch-torches.

“Why is it winter here?” she demanded. “
Look
at this. My mare has her winter coat and it’s only September. Why is it so damn
cold,
Gelimer? Why?
Why is it cold?
”

She felt as if she slammed, face-first, into a stone wall.

Her expectation of a voice in her head was flooded – no other word for it – with a stunning, fierce, complete silence.

The lord-
amir
shouted something in return.

Ash didn’t hear it.

“
What?
” she said, aloud, bewildered.

“I said, this curse began with Leofric’s slave-general going on crusade, it will probably stop when she dies. All the more reason to put a stop to his activities. Del Guiz!” Gelimer shifted his attention. “You could serve me yet. I can forgive!”

He spurred his mount. The gelding arched its back, took a kick in the flank, and cantered forward, iron shoes skidding on the snow-covered flagstones. The lord-
amir
called out. Gelimer’s men spurred forward, away from Alderic’s troop, on into the dark blizzard ahead. The ’
arif
let them go.

Fernando groaned. “I thought he’d given up on me.”

Ash paid him no attention. Her breath steamed around her face. Even her knees, where she clasped the mare’s flanks, were numb with the cold; and snow gathered in the folds of her cloak. The iron chain from her collar burned, where it touched her skin under her clothes.

Appalled, she whispered delicately, “Forty men and fifteen men, armed cavalry, escape and evasion, how?”

“What?” Fernando sat down in the saddle from peering after Gelimer.

“Forty men and fifteen men, armed cavalry, escape and evasion,
how?
”

No voice sounded in her mind. She let herself will the effort of active listening, making a way in through defences, demanding an answer from the silence within.

A cold slap of ice-flakes on her face snapped her attention outwards.

Am I not … hearing? That’s it. That’s it. It isn’t as if I’m stopped, blocked… There is no voice here. Only
silence.

Beside her, on his palfrey, Godfrey spoke cheeringly over what was plainly her indistinguishable mumble. “These
amirs
are crazy, child! You know that Gelimer was a rival with Leofric for the King-Caliph’s money, for the crusade? To raise troops? And now they’re both trying to get themselves elected king—”

“What is the secret breeding?” Snow burned Ash’s face. She muttered insistently: “What is the secret birth?”

No voice. No
answer.

The potential there, but utterly, utterly silent.

“
Where’s my fucking voice?
”

“What do you mean?” Fernando pressed his gelding close in and reached out to pull back her hood. “Ash? What are you talking about?”

Theudibert reached across in front of her, over the mare’s saddle, to push the fair-haired European knight away. Ash lunged, almost automatically, reaching across the
nazir
’s mailed back, grabbing for his knife where its scabbard hung on his right hip, with the intention of slashing through the mare’s reins.

A soldier shouted a warning.

Something fast and black came down between her and the
nazir
, a lance-shaft. She jerked away.

“Shit!”

Ash grabbed for the saddle.

She knew she hadn’t made it, was falling off the mare. Something caught her arm a numbing blow. She cried out. Her heel jerked back. The furry mare jinked to the right. She grabbed for the saddle and her numb bare fingers slid across leather, fear flooding her gut as she slipped, falling, falling forwards and down towards snow-covered stone.

Her stomach swooped. Her head banged sharply against something that gave – the mare’s foreleg. Every muscle cringed, taut, against impact. Waiting for an iron-shod hoof to kick back into her face. Waiting to hit stone pavement.

The fall stopped.

Ash hung, upside-down.

A hoof clopped on stone, close by her ear. Something banged her jaw, very softly. She thrashed her head in the enveloping cloak and kirtle and shift falling down over her ears, and found herself staring at pale-tipped brown horse-hair.

The underside of the muzzle of the brown mare.

The horse stood, all four feet planted, knees locked, her head hanging exhaustedly down to the ground in front of Ash’s face.

Above her, there was a noise. A man laughing.

Dazed, Ash made out that she was hanging with both her hands and feet above her. Her cloak and skirts fell down over her head.

“
Shit!
”

She hung upside-down, the chain between her ankles now taut across the mare’s saddle, and her whole body suspended under the mare’s belly. Some confusion of garments and chain and collar had both her hands pulled up tight into one stirrup and trapped.

Her cloak and gown fell back over her head and shoulders, baring her legs to the blizzard.

Ash giggled.

The mare placidly nosed back at her wool-shrouded head. Folds of wet cloth slid down, across her face, and uncovered her again, drooping to sweep the snow-covered stone.

“
Nazir
!” a voice she recognised as Alderic’s bawled hoarsely, through the blizzard.

“
Arif?
”

“Get her back on that horse!”

“Yes, ’
Arif.
”

“Ah – wuff!” Ash choked, tried to muffle it, and a wet laugh burst out from between her lips. She snuffled. In front of her, upside-down to her view, the legs of horses milled about, male voices shouting in confusion. Her chest began to ache as she laughed harder, not able to stop, her convulsing body driving out all her breath, tears streaming out of the corners of her eyes and down into her cropped hair.

She hung, completely unable to move, while mail-clad soldiers of the Visigoth Empire tugged thoughtfully at the chain across the mare’s back, and picked hopefully at the tangle of her wrists in the cloak and stirrup.

A face came into her view, a man bending down. The
nazir
Theudibert shouted, “What have you got to laugh at, bitch?”

“Nothing.” Ash shut her lips firmly together. His upside-down face, beard at the top and helmet underneath, and with an expression of complete bewilderment, sent her off again. A chest-heaving, belly-shaking laugh. “N-n-nothing – I could have been k-killed!”

She managed to wrestle her right hand and chain free. With that resting on the flagstones, wrist-deep in cold wet snow, she took some of her own weight. Hands manhandled her and the world swooped, sickeningly, and she was upright, the saddle between her thighs, feet scrabbling for stirrups.

A circle of dismounted men with swords surrounded her and the mare, wind driving snow into their faces. Beyond that were a ring of surrounding riders; and a clump of cavalry close around both Godfrey’s palfrey, and Fernando’s riding horse. Even in the increasing wind and poor visibility, there was no way through the cordon.

“Nobody made a mistake, then,” Ash remarked cheerfully as her gut settled.

She freed her hands and wiped her nose on the linen lining of her cloak. The inner cloth was still dry. She started to speak, giggled, swallowed it back, and surveyed the cavalrymen around her with a warm, appreciative, and entirely embracing smile. “Whose dumb idea was this in the first place?”

One or two of them grinned in spite of the foul weather. She sat back in the saddle and picked up her reins, snuffling back chest-aching mirth.

Fernando del Guiz, from where he and his German troops sat surrounded on their horses, called, “Ash! Why are you
laughing?
”

Ash said, “Because it’s funny.”

She caught sight of Godfrey. Under his snow-whitened hood, he was smiling.

The ’
arif
Alderic’s horse moved back into the circle of torch-light, Alderic riding with a solid, erect stance despite the driving snow.

“
Nazir
. Get that damn horse moving. The scout’s come back. We’re no more than a furlong from the city gate.”

III

“But they goin’ to
kill
you!” the boy-faced soldier, Gaiseric, emphasised; his tone somewhere between confused malice, and awe. “You know that, bitch?”

“Of course I
know
it. Do I look stupid?”

The north-east quadrant steps of House Leofric jolted Ash as she plodded down their spiral again, Gaiseric and Barbas and the
nazir
in front of her, the rest of the squad behind. Mail jingled; sword scabbards scraped the curved wall. Her soaking wet wool skirts dragged behind her on the steps.

“I don’t think,” Ash said, “that you’ve understood.”

As they walked out into a corridor, she hauled her cloak out from under her feet. The glasses of Greek Fire in the corridor showed her Gaiseric’s bewildered face, white with the cold.

“Don’ get you,” the boy said, as his
nazir
went ahead down the mosaic-tiled corridor.

Ash only smiled at him. She surreptitiously flexed her bruised and aching arms. The muscles of her inner thighs burned. She thought, It must be three weeks since I’ve ridden anything – not since the field of Auxonne.

“I’ve been taken prisoner before,” she explained. “I think I’d forgotten that.”

As to why I’d forgotten
– she cut the thought off, putting the cell with the blood-soaked floor away in some part of her mind where she need not look at it. She is young, she heals quickly; there is a background discomfort from her head, her knee; it does not, now, affect this rising of her spirits.

A voice called, “Bring her!”

Leofric, Ash identified. Yeah, thought so.

Gaiseric unexpectedly mumbled under his breath, “You’ll be all right in there. He has a fire in there for the vermin.”

Two soldiers slid open an iron-bound oak door. Theudibert pushed her through. She shook off his hand. There was a brief exchange of words between the lord-
amir
and the
nazir
. Ash strode forward, direct as a crossbow-bolt’s flight, towards a brazier full of red-hot charcoal, and sank down on her knees on the stone floor in front of it.

Something rustled. Something squeaked.

“Oh,
yeah…
that’s more like it,” she sighed, eyes closing. Heat from the fire soaked her face. She opened her eyes, reached up clumsily, and pushed her hood back. Steam rose off the surface of the wool. The stone floor was wet all around her. She rubbed her fists together, biting her lip against the pain as numbness gave way to returning circulation.

“Lord-
Amir
!” Theudibert acknowledged. The door slammed; soldiers’ footsteps departing down the corridor. She looked up to find herself alone with the lord-
amir
Leofric and a number of his slaves, some of whom she knew by name.

The walls of the room were stacked with iron rat cages, five and six deep. A myriad beady eyes watched her from behind thin metal grills.

“My lord.” Ash faced Leofric. “I think we have to talk.”

Whatever he had been expecting, it was not speech from her. He turned, more like a startled owl than ever, his grey-white hair and beard jutting out where he had run his fingers through it. He was wearing a floor-length gown of green wool, spotted with the droppings and litter of his animals.

“Your future is decided. What can you have to say to me?”

His incredulous emphasis on
you
stirred her temper. Ash got to her feet, pulling down the tight wrists of her gown, so that she faced him as a young woman in European dress, her shorn hair hidden by her coif, her body swathed in the wet cloak and hood that she would not abandon in case some slave cleared it away.

She approached the bench where he stood by an open cage. Violante stood beside him, carrying a leather bucket of water.

“What are you doing?” It was a deliberate distraction, while she furiously thought.

Leofric glanced down. “Breeding a true characteristic. Or rather, not. This is my fifth attempt. And this, also, has failed. Girl!”

The iron box in front of the
amir
was full of chopped hay. Ash lifted her brows, thinking, The sheer expense of that, here, where nothing grows—!

Wriggling white grubs lay among the hay. She peered closer, memories coming back of living in a wagon with Big Isobel, when she had been nine or ten: the quartermaster paying a loaf of bread for ten dead rats, or a litter of babies. She leaned over the box, looking at the rat pups – their blind heads big, like hound-pups’, and their small bodies covered with a fine white fur. Two were plain grey.