They saw the mill silhouetted against the dawn before they heard the river or the clack of the waterwheel. Dogs were barking at every farm; the dozen of them had made plenty of noise galloping over the plains of Firensi.
Short Tooth reined in. “That’s her, Tip.”
Tippit chewed on an end of his mustache while he looked at the big mill in the growing light. “No rest for the wicked,” he said, loosening the sword on his hip. “Where’s Long Paw?”
Short Tooth shook his head. “Not a fuckin’ clue, Tip. He were ’ere yestere’en.”
Tippit looked around. He had all veterans; of his cronies, only Smoke was missing, back with the main column. In the distance the mill made an odd sound; tick-bang. Tick-bang.
“Ready?” he asked.
“Like old times,” Simkin said.
Several of them smiled.
They rode to the very door of the mill unopposed, and dismounted. There was a big stone bridge in easy bowshot, and beyond, her towers gilded by the rising sun, was the magnificent city of Firensi—one of the richest cities in the whole of the world. A huge church was being built; even in the pale light, Tippit could see the unfinished dome.
“No Head should see that,” he said.
“Ee will, in two hours, if we do our bit,” snapped Simkin.
Flarch was busy looking for something to batter the door. Simkin slipped the latch with his dagger and pushed it open cautiously. A man shouted, a woman called, and the heavy shutter opened over their heads.
“Fuck it,” Simkin said, and rolled through the door.
Tippit was right behind him. There was a man in a nightshirt roaring in terrified Etruscan. Tippit used the pommel of his sword to sweep the man off his feet; when the man moved, Tippit kicked him, and Scrant hit him again and the man fell facedown on the brick floor.
The woman was screaming now. Tippit raced up the open wooden stairs. The mill was running; he could hear the sound of the grindstone, and something else. His feet pounded on the steps, and he shouted, “Check the mill floor!”
Simkin kicked another door, and hurt his foot; the doors were heavy oak. Scrant put his left hand on the latch and pulled.
Tippit reached the first floor. There was a short hall; the woman was screaming in the first room, and the door was locked. Tippit put his shoulder against it, and broke the wooden latch.
A middle-aged woman with long hair unbound was screaming out her window. Tippit’s Etruscan was virtually nonexistent but banditti came through.
He grabbed her shoulders and pulled her back into the room, cutting off her screams for a moment. “Shut up!” he roared in her face.
She collapsed onto a stool, writhed, and came at him with the stool.
He blocked it with his left hand, which hurt, and then threw her to the floor with his right arm across her throat. It was not a gentle throw and she squawked.
He put the point of his sword at her throat to cross the language divide.
She lay still.
Scrant went through the door into the main hall of the mill.
There were quite a few men. And they were big. They weren’t particularly well armed, but they looked like smiths—heavy arms, brawny chests. Several held bars of iron, or farm implements.
One had a piece of metal glowing white hot.
Scrant drew his heavy dirk off his hip left handed and threw it. It was a clumsy throw and it hit White Hot flat across his face, but he dropped the glowing metal and then screamed as it struck his foot, and then Simkin and Flarch were there, swords drawn, and the fight went out of the Etruscans. A small boy stood, round eyed.
“I thought mills ground wheat for flour,” Flarch said.
“I thought there’d be some’at to eat?” Scrant muttered.
There was a mill wheel; it was grinding away, and a pure white flour was pouring from a wooden funnel into a sack. But the main power of the great wheel went to a trip-hammer; and even though the smiths were all gathered in a corner of the room, the hammer went on tripping; tick slam, tick slam.
“I’ll go fuckin’ deaf,” shouted Simkin. “Tie ’em up.”
Tippit appeared.
“You was supposed to yell ‘all secure’ when you had the rest o’ the building,” he said.
Flarch shrugged. “All secure?” he said with his usual smile, and farted.
“Oh Jesus,” Simkin said, moving away. “Save it for the fewkin’ enemy. Anything worth stealing?”
“I ha’e all they purses,” Scrant said.
Tippit fetched the rest of his men from the road outside. He put four on the roof keeping watch, and the rest of them tore the mill apart, opening the feather mattresses, prying up flags, tossing the kitchenware on the flags.
The mill was rich, and they found a small fortune in gold and silver; the woman had jewels; the husband had a superb dagger and a matching scabbard and purse that almost led to blows.
Tippit caught Scrant heading upstairs and he grabbed the smaller man by the collar and pulled him back. “No rape. Sauce’ll have yer guts for garters.”
“Just gonna ha’e a look at her,” Scrant snapped.
“No,” Tippit said.
“Who died an’ made you God?” Scrant muttered.
“The cap’n,” Tippit said.
“TIPPIT!” came the call from the roof.
Tippit, already on the stairs, ran to the woman’s window. She was sitting on a chair; he’d tied her hands but he hadn’t gagged her. He put his head out and saw the armed men coming across toward the bridge.
“Here we go!” he yelled down the stairs. “Time to earn the loot!” He pushed Scrant ahead of him up the stairs to the roof.
Then he followed. The mill was the size of a small castle; the roof was peaked, but had a walkway all the way around, and a low wall, so that it was easily defensible; not crenellated or pierced, but still a tough nut.
The Firensi militia was still out of range. Tippit looked west along the riverbank, and there were farmsteads and towers burning as far as the eye could see; ten leagues or more, the flames like huge campfires, the columns of smoke rising straight in the still air of dawn.
His people began to emerge onto the roof, pulling their bows out of their bags and dumping livery arrows onto the roof tiles.
The Firensi knight commanding the militiamen had stopped riding and was looking back at the columns of smoke all the way along the riverbank.
Tippit grinned. He nocked an arrow.
They made two attempts on the bridge. The first was a straightforward attempt to force a passage; the archery of a dozen master archers filled the bridge with corpses, and the knight, despite his impressive armour, took an arrow to the inside of his elbow and had to be carried back.
But the Firensi militia were tough bastards, and they came on again, this time with their hardier souls crossing under the arch of the bridge and coming up the bank. But they had forgotten the millrace and they were stuck on a stony island, blocked by the pool and the wheel, and after two men died, the rest slipped back under the arch.
Then a dozen knights and men-at-arms came with a big banner; orders were shouted, and the whole body of militia and knights marched away west on the south bank. Tippit made sure that the riverbanks under the stone arches were clear and then he sent Scrant on horseback. The thin man had been gone only a handful of minutes when the bells of the great city rang in alarm.
And then Sauce was there. She rode right up to the mill doors with only a handful of knights at her back, flung her reins to her squire, and ran, in full harness, all the way from the door to the top floor of the tower. The Duchess of Venike was right behind her.
“You can’t take Firensi with two thousand light horse,” Giselle panted.
Sauce leaned over the low wall. “How d’ya do, Tippit?” she asked.
“Fair well, my lady,” he said. “Apple?” he asked, and tossed her one.
She took a bite.
“Bridge is ours,” Tippit said. “No one dead. No one
hurt. Well, some o’ they. None o’ we.”
She took another bite. “Can’t storm it,” she said to Giselle. “But I can scare the fuck out of them, and make ’em pay.” Her grin was almost ear to ear. “Lovely job, Tip. Woman downstairs?”
“No one touched her,” Tippit said.
Sauce’s look was a study; a grim smile. “Good. I’d hate to end the day with a hanging.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Tippit nodded.
“Good. Mount up and join your lances.” She gave orders and a dozen of the company’s pages took over the mill. The archers were too important to be left in garrison, even to secure her retreat.
The archers came out of the mill. Tippit took the bag of coin and put it on his pack mule.
Simkin slapped his back. “I cut the boy loose and gave him a knife,” he said.
Tippit nodded and vaulted onto his horse. “You’re a good man,” Tippit said.
Simkin shrugged. “When do we split the loot?”
Tippit spat. “When we’re in camp. And rested.”
“So, never,” muttered Flarch.
Firensi—Ser Alison
Most of Sauce’s two thousand horse poured over the bridge, and the city of Firensi panicked. Half of the town’s army was caught outside the walls, another thousand guildsmen were dead in the fields of San Batiste, and here was the dreaded enemy at the very gates.
The very gates. Sauce led her column across the river and through the richest suburbs she’d ever seen. The enormous city walls rose high above the burgh. She waved the column on with the knurled oak baton that some of her knights had made for her and rode on, and in a quarter of an hour, she was at the barriers of the great gate of San Giovanni. It was closed; one knight waited at the barriers; even the postern was shut and locked.
He bowed.
Conte Simone began to dismount, but Sauce put a steel-clad hand over his reins.
“Mine,” she said.
Sauce dismounted and vaulted over the barriers; in normal times, taking the barriers of a town was a great chivalric feat. Her troopers cheered.
Her sabatons clinking, she walked to the great gates. She looked up at the murder holes, wondering if her great gesture would be ruined by boiling oil.
The knight of Firensi bowed. “Is there a weapon you would prefer, sir?” he asked.
Sauce returned his bow. “I am Ser Alison Audley, captain of the grande alliance,” she said. “I can send for any weapon you name, or we can fight with swords, right now.”
The knight raised his visor. He was tall, slim, handsome, with olive skin and a long, silky mustache. “Donna,” he said, “if I defeat you, men will say I beat a woman; if you defeat me, men will say I was a man of no worth.”
Sauce shrugged. “Your problem, Ser. I’m in a bit of a hurry. I intend to sack your town.”
He bowed again. “You may have it, as far as I am concerned. I am the only one who would come out and face your barbarian hordes. The rest are apparently worthless.” He shrugged. “Of course I will fight.”
“Good,” she said, and drew her sword.
She moved forward, her sword moving steadily back and forth between a high guard and a low as she stepped. The Etruscan knight circled, but she was having none of that. She snapped a blow from her high guard and he covered; his cover told her a great deal.
She fell back a step, back in her high guard, sword held with both hands on the hilt, back over her right shoulder, left leg forward.
Her adversary stepped forward, his blade low.
Sauce changed her grip. It was a sudden, practiced move; her left hand shot forward and took the blade at the middle, and she passed forward, into the tempo of his advance. She raised her own hilt, crossing his blade strongly, and he made the error, as a big, tall man, of trying to outmuscle her at the cross. Her mid-sword grip had all the advantages the art of swordsmanship and the science of leverage could give; she pushed his sword aside and stepped deep with her right foot, inserting it behind his left, which had all his weight on it. Her pommel slammed into his visor, doing no damage but buying her a fraction of his balance, and then the pommel was past his helmet, the whole of her hilt across his armoured throat, and her foot behind his, and in one swing of her hips, she threw him to the ground.
Her people roared.
She put her sword point at his throat. “Listen,” she said, popping her visor. “If men give you any shit, send them to me and I’ll kill a few.”
“Ah, ma donna!” he said. “Beautifully struck.”
She liked him, so she let him live. She stepped back so her squires could take him, and then Dick Waster, Ser Milus’s squire, handed her the white baton of command and took her helmet.
She took her baton and slammed it into the gates. “Open!” she cried. “Come out and treat with me, or by God, I’ll blow these gates to flinders and sack your town.” She pointed at Tancreda, who had cloaked herself in smoke and fire.
It seemed insane; the high walls and the sheer size of the city dwarfed her and her horse people, but before the echoes had died away, the postern opened, and a white-faced priest in rich vestments emerged, and a man with a heavy gold chain.
Giselle vaulted the barrier behind her. “I don’t believe it,” she said, and embraced Sauce. “Watch they don’t assassinate you.” As if reading her thoughts, a dozen of Sauce’s knights came over the barriers; George Brewes first among them, his poleaxe in his hand.
“We have come to—” the priest began.
“Don’t make me storm your town,” Sauce snapped. She pointed at Tancreda. “One word from me and your walls start falling. I’ll tell you what the terms are.”
The Adnacrags—Aneas Muriens
Looks-at-Clouds was standing on the bow, watching the horizon. The ship was well handled; the sailors knew their business, and despite the density of the rocky, tree-covered islets on either hand, the ship was under sail, moving briskly upstream against the gentle current. Deadlock, the Alban ranger, sat out on the crosstree of the stubby bowsprit, watching the water.
One of the ship’s boys came and tugged at hir hand. “Captain wants you,” he said in his accented Archaic.
Looks-at-Clouds frowned, annoyed at being interrupted, but then hir face changed and s/he settled on an appearance of amicability, and s/he followed the urchin across the deck, hir mind powerfully elsewhere. S/he opened the door to the captain’s gallery and saw Irene sitting alone at the captain’s long table, and s/he smiled. S/he had a tendre for Irene. And …
S/he was very fast, but the blow caught hir by surprise. S/he started to turn hir head and saw Nita Qwan just as his open hand slammed into hir cheek, turning hir head …
Something horrible happened.
In the real, Aneas took hir, off balance, and threw hir over his outthrust leg and down to the hardwood deck. He pressed a dagger to hir throat.
S/he screamed.
Witchbane, witchbane witchbanewitchbanewitchbanewitchbanewitchbanewitchbane!
“Stay with us,” Gas-a-ho said from behind a fractal web of shield shards that spun.
Looks-at-Clouds retched, and bile came from hir mouth.
Aneas shook his head.
Irene leaned forward. “You hurt hir!” she cried. “S/he’s bleeding!”
Gas-a-ho’s voice was steady. “S/he has a witchbane thorn in hir cheek,” he said. “Shaman, we are sorry for this.”
Looks-at-Clouds felt unclean. Violated.
“Sorry?” s/he hissed. “You are sorry?”
Nita Qwan kept his hand on hir cheek, and his dagger, too, was at hir throat. “Who are you?” he asked.
The changeling could not turn hir head. “Ahhhgh,” s/he spat.
“Who are you?” Aneas asked. His voice was hard.
“I am … ssss … the changeling … Looks … at … Clouds … you bastards …” s/he spat.
Gas-a-ho shook his head. “No,” he said. “Tell us who you are, or we kill this body. Looks-at-Clouds, we are sorry. But too much is at stake.”
/>
S/he felt the daggers. S/he spoke the language of death.
They told hir that Nita Qwan at least meant hir death. Aneas was less sure.
“Witchbane will not hold me!” s/he muttered.
“All the more reason to end you,” Nita Qwan said.
“Surrender and let me in,” Aneas said. “Or—”
“You attacked me with witchbane!” the changeling said. “You expect me to trust you?”
“Only if you want to live,” Nita Qwan said.
The being surrendered. It was sudden, and there was Aneas, standing in a vast emptiness. There was no memory palace, no field of flowers, no …
“Damn you, Muriens,” said Master Smythe. “I am only borrowing him. Her.”
“Sweet Holy Trinity,” Aneas Muriens muttered.
“Listen to me. I cannot allow Ash to know I am alive. I lack the power to … do anything. I have Looks-at-Clouds safe. And if we can take the sorcerer’s island, the Lake-on-the-Mountain, I will have the power to restore myself. I beg you, Aneas. I will not—”
“You could have just told us,” Aneas said.
Gas-a-ho appeared through his link with Aneas, emerging, owl-headed, from Aneas’s forest pool. Then he reached back, and Irene rose from the pool, wearing the rich, gold-encrusted robe of the Empress of Man, and behind her came Nita Qwan, a dark-skinned man in a nut-brown linen shirt and deerskin leggings and a fine red sash. He looked around, stunned.
“This is the … magik place?” he asked.
“And this is the dragon,” Aneas said.
“The other dragon,” Gas-a-ho said. “Master Smythe.”
The slim, black-bearded man bowed. “You are the shaman Gas-a-ho?” he asked. “I believe we have met.”
“And this,” Aneas said, “is Irene, Princess of Empire. And Nita Qwan, war leader of the Sossag.”
“I know Irene,” the dragon said. “Why have you brought these people? Who have no powers?”
“To judge you,” Gas-a-ho said.
“You will judge me?” Smythe spat.
“Show us Looks-at-Clouds,” Aneas said.
“I cannot,” Master Smythe said. “If I release her, she will retake this body, and I will be no more.”