“Yes,” he said. Outside the rare occasions on which Master Julius drank too much, he became taciturn and wasted few words.
Michael sat back. “That’s an uncomfortable notion,” he said.
“Gabriel says there could be fifty powers, or more, and we wouldn’t know until they tip their hands,” Blanche said, tapping a roll of parchment on the table. “From now until Gabriel returns, we guard everything. Messengers go in pairs, convoys have guards. It seems to me that our most sensitive point right now is food.”
Julius was nodding along with his mistress.
She passed Michael a large, folio-sized sheet of paper. On it was a report in a small, expert hand detailing levels of dissent inside Arles, especially about the seizure of food.
“Christ, we spy on the new queen?” he asked.
“Michael,” Blanche said, the way a mother might speak to an erring son.
Michael grimaced. “Silly me, of course we do. Blood of God, you mean people are angered when we’re feeding those starving wretches out there?” he asked.
Blanche nodded. “There is a good deal of anger in Arles,” she said. “Not least of which is about how many or how few of the wretches starving out there in the fields may actually be missing sons and husbands. A very prickly topic. Comnena is trying to process people as fast as he can, but it’s not quick.” Comnena was, in fact, examining anyone who claimed to be from Arles. Twice now they had found men with living worms. “And the city people treat them like traitors; some of them anyway.”
“Merciful saints,” muttered Michael, reading the report to the end. “I wondered why someone as important as Comnena was on this.”
Blanche nodded. “Two reasons,” she said softly. “One, because we cannot afford a new infiltration. The second, because at least one of our two cases seems to be a new worm, not an old worm.”
Michael paled. “They’re still out there,” he said.
Blanche shrugged. “We don’t even know where they come from,” she admitted. “Or how they get into people in the first place.” She shuddered. “I used to dread dying of leprosy; then I dreaded rape. Now all my fears have been replaced by this … infestation.” She looked away, took a breath. “Kronmir went south to investigate the Patriarch; now he’s dead.” She rolled her head, stretching her neck. “I need to do more sword swinging.” She smiled. “My point is that we’re not safe, Arles is not safe, and we need to remain vigilant right to the end.”
Michael nodded. “Right. So we send the Scholae to cover the convoy.”
“And anything else you can think of to feed the survivors, get them shelter, and get them processed so we can move them,” Blanche said. “We have almost six thousand northern Etruscans ready to go home. More by the end of the week. They need food and a safe road. If we’re quick, they can, maybe, help bring in their own harvests on their own farms.”
Michael was reading another report, also about dissent, this one from Harndon. “So?” he asked.
“What if Comnena marched them to the convoy, fed them from the beef herd there, and then took them over the mountains to Sauce? While we have a clear chain of logistics and outposts?” She leaned forward.
He shook his head. “I know you feel for them—” he began.
“It’s not Christian charity,” she snapped. “Or if it is, it’s also practical. By Thursday we could have ten thousand of them out of the fields; that’s ten thousand mouths we are not trying to feed at the end of a two-hundred-league supply line. That’s a lighter burden on the Arelat, both here in the city and out in the countryside. Because the food coming over the mountains isn’t for starving people, is it, Michael?”
“No,” he said. “It’s for armies.” He looked at the paper with the report on dissent in Arelat, and back at Blanche’s eyes. “Gabriel said nothing of this,” he said.
“No,” she said. “He didn’t think of it. I did.”
Michael looked out a small window. “I hate making decisions,” he admitted. “But yes. If we can get ten thousand mouths back over the mountains to Mitla and Berona, let’s do it. They’ll have to leave day after tomorrow, though. Sauce will come home in three days, unless there’s more action. The big convoy will pass her position … later today? I hope?”
Blanche was already writing orders.
Forty leagues from Arles—The Red Knight
It was twelve days until the gates would open, and Gabriel was suddenly awake, his brain busy. His first thought was that he was just forty leagues from Blanche, and he wondered what she might be doing, and with an awkward grunt, he threw his cloak over his squire and page, who were both sound asleep. He lay for a moment with his back hurting, and he flexed, first his silver hand, which caused him no pain at all, and then his flesh hand, which ached from old injuries and because he’d slept on it. His hips hurt, his shoulders hurt, and he lay thinking about people dying.
Sometime in the night he’d rolled off the pile of cut ferns provided for the emperor’s “comfort” and he got slowly to his feet and shook his head, shivering from the cold. He crept away, feeling three times as old as he really was.
But his rising woke Anne, and she leapt into action, fetching a copper pot, boiling water at a campfire, and making a tea from spruce tips as her mother had taught her. She added his usual dollop of honey and put the cup in his hand just as Francis Atcourt limped to the command fire with a black-and-white bird on his arm and a leather folder. Anne knew that this was an important time; she slipped away to see to Ataelus.
Gabriel took the tea, sipped it, and took the scroll from the small tube on the great bird’s left leg. The bird grabbed his thumb as if it was a perch and pierced his chamois gloves.
Gabriel rolled his eyes. “Is this the famous E.34?” he asked.
“The very same,” Atcourt said with pleasure.
Gabriel patted her plumage and kissed the top of her head. “You probably saved us all, sweeting,” he said. E.34 had been the first messenger bird to survive the trip into Arles and out again, bringing them word that the citadel on the mountain was still holding. He held her on one hand while he opened the scroll with the other and he smiled. It was in Blanche’s own hand, the ink scarcely dry; she had been awake earlier than he.
Convoy 4 is in. Sauce is moving north; her cavalry may reach the San Colombo today. Clarissa has the harvest rolling in; we went to the fields ourselves yestereven and I’m tired. E.16 reports a terrible attack on Havre, with heavy losses in shipping; “sea monsters” blamed. I have sent Ser George south with a convoy of Etruscan refugees. All is well here. When will you come?
The word back was lined through and made him smile. So did the somewhat scattershot order of the information. On the other hand …
They had eight convoys out there; some entirely of cattle on the hoof. Four was the largest convoy of wagons and its arrival was another tiny victory. Gabriel did some mental arithmetic and realized that Sauce would have the main body back to Arles either eight or nine days before the gates opened—a day behind his own column. Clarissa was concentrating on the Arelat grain harvest; everyone needed that grain.
Ash’s surrogates had assaulted the major Gallish seaport, which meant that Ash was expending masses of effort on sea monsters.
As soon as he read Blanche’s words, Gabriel saw the implications of repatriating the thousands of northern Etruscan peasants and former soldiers who had been taken by the Necromancer. He all but winced that he hadn’t thought of sending them back to where they could feed themselves.
He kissed the message.
Then Jon Gang appeared with a stool and pushed it behind his legs until he sat; Monteverdi, his trumpeter, produced hot water. Gang brought another stool for Atcourt, who was over forty and happy to have it.
Before the sun had fully risen, Gabriel was shaved and had his rancid arming clothes back on over a clean shirt, and so did Atcourt and Tom Lachlan. The camp, such as it was, was being packed on a couple of horses. Toby was still coaching Anne, whether she need
ed it or not, and Gabriel was tempted to intervene, but instead he and Atcourt put on their gloves and traded blows; sharp arming swords against bucklers until their breath steamed in the mountain air. Tom Lachlan took a tour of the flying column’s horse lines and then rode up and dismounted, already in full harness; but he picked up a buckler and took a turn.
Father François appeared in his nut-brown habit and bare feet, and said mass for the command staff while Gabriel dispatched three birds and a pair of human messengers, one eye on the celebration of the eucharist, the other on his messenger birds. Du Corse was one ridge to the north with a thousand Gallish knights; Pavalo Payam was two ridges to the south with almost two thousand Royal Mamluks and their servants, all mounted. In the last hours, as reports rolled in, their various armies’ roles had transformed from a race to Arles to save the gate, the former mission, to a slow ride across the southern Gallish plains, making use of available forage, fattening his horses for the next fights and resting his men and women. Arles was his depot, and any time he spent there would deplete his reserves.
“We have a week in hand,” he said to Tom Lachlan after they had swaggered swords and swashed bucklers.
“Lads and lasses need to take a breath,” Tom said. “Where’s Sukey?”
Gabriel raised an eyebrow. “At Arles as of last night,” he said.
Tom nodded. “Hoot, hoot,” he said. “That’s a treat.” He paused, as if embarrassed; a rare moment for Tom. “Let’s say we win,” he said after a pause.
Gabriel smiled. “Sure,” he said.
Behind him, Anne Woodstock and Monteverdi exchanged looks.
Tom looked at his emperor. “I want somewhat,” he said finally.
“What kind of somewhat?” Gabriel asked.
“Earl of Eastwall,” Tom Lachlan said. “Or northern Thrake. I’ll take either.”
“You’re the Drover!” Gabriel said.
Tom laughed. “That was Hector’s world, not mine. He was a pretty, pretty man, and a maun fighter, but his whole world ran from the Inn to the Hills.” Tom looked out over the distant plains of Galle. “I want to wed Sukey,” he said.
“Tom Lachlan!” Gabriel said. He reined in his horse in surprise.
“Ach, aye. Don’t make it worset for me.” Tom grinned.
Gabriel grinned back and realized that somehow, at twenty-three, he’d become one of those middle-aged men who liked to hear that other men were getting married.
“But ye ken, Gabriel—I’m not king o’ any man, nor duke nor earl nor baron. Drover is just a job.” Tom was actually flushed.
“So’s emperor,” Gabriel said. “It’s like being drover. Ask Blanche. Mostly it’s about moving cattle.”
“Aye,” Tom laughed. “I kenned that when Kronmir made me tell him everything about movin’ coos. I was maun feared you’d send me to drove ’em.”
“I considered it,” Gabriel admitted.
“I like leadin’ men. I like fightin’ but I could, perhaps, be brought to admit I’m a little weary o’ the whole thing.” Tom made a face. “Never thought I’d admit to yon,” he said. “None o’ this is worth a kettle o’ beans. Here’s my point.”
Gabriel raised his hand. “I hear you,” he said. “Give me a few days. I think you’d make an excellent Earl of Eastwall, but I’m not at all sure we’re going to have a wall when we’re done. And I’m not sure Outwallers need feudal lords. I’m not sure anyone needs a feudal lord.”
“An’ that’s a load o’ bull-whallop, Gabriel. Don’t go prat’n to me about the rights o’ man. You know as well as I that ye’re a bloody-handed tyrant in drivin’ this war; nor could she be done any other way. Aye?” Tom shook his head. “Most loons can nae more govern themselves nor they could swim in fire.”
Gabriel set his jaw.
Tom laughed. “Ye’r plannin’ to turn Jack?” he asked.
Gabriel had to smile. “I want to leave our world with a system to hold the next few times without all this …”
Tom laughed. “Well, for me, I would na’ ha’e it any other way. A red sword and a bright sunset, that’s me,” he quipped, quoting a popular epic poem. He shrugged. “Ye’ll gi’ me somewhat ta make Sukey a great lady?”
Gabriel wondered if this wasn’t Tom putting his own dreams on Sukey’s head, but he smiled. “Tom, I’ll make you Grand Duke of the Moon if that’s what you want.”
Lachlan laughed. “Now that’s my cap’n,” he said.
Gabriel smiled at Tom. “Sukey is already a great lady,” he said. “The title won’t change her.” He raised an eyebrow. “But mayhap it should be a title for each of you? And not just a reward for you.”
Tom’s beliefs didn’t always run to equality of any kind. “Hoot, hoot,” he said thoughtfully. “Aye, mayhap. In point o’ fact, I can all but hear her shoutin’ at me now.”
Chapter Six
The Adnacrags—Aneas Muriens
In a summer that had been the hardest of his life, entailing the loss of his ancestral lands, his mother and father’s death, constant warfare, wounds, fatigue, and hardship, the day after Ash’s attack was the hardest day Aneas had ever known.
There were dead people everywhere, and they had to be buried in the sodden, thin leaf mould and sandy soil, and legions of normal Adnacrag predators and carrion eaters gathered in the evening shadows to feast on the dead; Kevin Orley’s legions were not the immediate threat. Wolves and coyotes and ravens, and even raccoons, were.
But beyond the grim work of pulling the dead out of tree roots and high tree branches where lake and fire and sorcery had flung them; beyond the backbreaking labour of digging through the topsoil and lifting the endless small rocks to make graves, there was the work of reclaiming their supplies from wind and water and devastation; a ton of split peas soaking in the clear waters of the lake, acres of wet canvas drowned like linen counterfeit jellyfish on a storm-wracked beach.
And atop it all, there was the threat of attack from Orley; the need to complete the boats that lay, half finished or merely ribbed, floating atop the calm waters of the lake.
Aneas was everywhere, and so was Nita Qwan, and so was Irene. Looks-at-Clouds lay in a coma, wrapped in blankets, teeth chattering; Skas-a-gao sat by hir, working what healing he could. The changeling’s eyes were half open, skin pale as parchment, breathing very shallow.
Aneas was terrified that s/he would die. He had not examined his feelings for the changeling, but faced with hir death, he …
… worked. He stacked damp birch bark sheets, he stripped to his braes and swam into the lake with a tin bucket and rescued peas, and he hauled canvas out of the shallow water below their peninsula, he broke his nails and hardened his already calloused hands digging graves.
At first he just worked, silently, endlessly, banishing the daemons in his head with toil; Richard’s death, Irene, Looks-at-Clouds. More work. Death, and corruption; bury it. He sent Ricard Lantorn into the woods with a patrol; sent Tas-a-gao south to look at their back trail, sent the wyverns spiraling west. Gave orders, and didn’t think.
He worked.
Evening was falling, the red sun beautiful over the crisp blue lake, and Irene put her arm through his.
He started.
“You need to talk to them,” she said. “Now.”
His first reaction was anger, and he turned on her, his hand going to his dagger hilt.
“If I needed your advice, Majesty, I’d be sure to ask you,” he hissed.
Irene had changed in just a couple of weeks. She was dirty; her nails were broken, and she wore a curious mixture of men’s and women’s attire. Her hair was back in a tight braid like the ones the irks wore. She stood her ground and met his eye. “I’m not attacking you,” she said. “If you don’t start cheering them up, I suppose I’ll have to, but they prefer you, Aneas Muriens.”
A dozen angry replies leapt into his brain.
He bit his lip, turned away. Stared over the beautiful lake a moment.
“Very well,” he said, his voice
cold.
Then he regretted his tone and the language of his body, but when he turned back, she was gone.
Still, he took her words as law. When the grave he was digging was done, and he and Tessen had piled dirt and stones on a dead Jack, he bowed to the irk and wandered, first out to the wall of hordles that guarded the peninsula, where he made sure the guard was changed, and then sat with the new quarter-guard and smoked a pipe. He handed his pipe axe from man to man. He didn’t say much; neither did they.
“We need a guard,” he said finally. “I know you’d rather be burying the folk who fell. We’ll get that done as well.”
“Then what, Cap’n?” asked a ranger.
“Then we’ll strike at Orley’s throat,” Aneas said.
There was no cheer; just a growl.
“What of the dragon, then?” asked another.
Aneas looked at his hands in the dying light. “We will get him,” he said. “He thinks he is God, and we are nothing.” He looked up. “But we are not nothing. We, together, have the power to bring Ash down.”
Ricard Lantorn, back from patrol and never one of the most vocal of the rangers, growled. “Give a lot to see that,” he said. “Give my right hand,” he said.
Other men and women nodded.
Aneas rose early in the morning, his head already working. He was curled next to Black Heron, and he lay a moment, looking up through the spruce branches above his head into the endless vista of the dawn sky, which seemed transparent all the way to the boundaries of the aethereal. He ached; he sat up slowly, so as not to disturb the sleeping warrior, and saw Looks-at-Clouds lying on the other side of the Outwaller. S/he opened hir eyes and looked at Aneas.
“Hello,” s/he said softly.
Aneas grinned. “Good morning, Changeling.”
“Ah,” s/he said. “Just so. Changeling.”
Aneas went to the fire, where Ta-se-ho was already making tea and laying up kindling he had split with a very small axe.