“Weaker still if we arrive too late and find Lissen Carak fallen,” she said. “Gentles all, I find this to be very like the fight of two years ago; indeed, it is almost as if the former contest were a rehearsal. But this time we are better prepared: better wagons, better training. Let us march.” She looked at Becca Lochlan. “Where is the Count of the Borders?” she asked.
“Your Grace, he marched west two days ago,” she said. “On the Market Road.”
“Then he will be at Lissen Carak, or near enough,” the queen said. “Surely his force will cover us.”
Wishart shrugged. “Your Grace, anything we do has risk. It is all … fortune. And the will of God.”
She nodded sharply. “I trust in the will of God,” she said. “The advance guard will march immediately. All the wagons will go now, empty; I expect them to make Lorica tonight and sixth bridge tomorrow.”
Her logistics plan was simple; but the details were complex, as details always were. She was sending the wagons overland, empty, so that they would be at seventh bridge when the riverboats came up and needed to be carried, with all the goods, past the cataracts. Beside the royal guard and the Order, she was out of crack troops; the chivalry was already in the north with Count Gareth and her brother, Prince Tancred. The militias had been summoned; now they had to assemble. Some had only just arrived home from the last effort, and not since the summer of the great battle in the north, thirty and more years ago, could anyone remember the militia being summoned twice in a summer.
“We will have our most valuable assets strung out on the river and road, and no one to defend them,” Ser Gerald said.
“So we will,” she said. Her eyes flashed with her old vitality; her hair burned red-brown-gold in the sun, and she threw her head back. “She either fears her fate too much, or her deserts are small, who dareth not put it to the touch, to win or lose it all,” she said. “Go!”
One by one, her captains saluted. And then they sailed, rowed, rolled, or marched.
When they were all gone, she moved briskly to Prior Wishart. He bowed deeply; in some ways, with Gerald and Harmodius, he was her most loyal servant.
“I beg your pardon for making you wait,” she said. “I share your fears. I have a letter for you, for the royal post houses. You will go like the wind.”
Wishart bowed. “I still might have left an hour before,” he grumbled.
She smiled. “Not with the potent magister I will send with you to the relief of our fortress,” she said. “See that this valuable person arrives alive.”
Less than an hour later, a hundred belted Knights of the Order, their squires, and two hundred great warhorses trotted through the gates of Harndon, their steel-clad hooves ringing on the cobbles. Men and women came out to cheer them in their black cloaks and scarlet surcoats.
A single cloaked figure rode in their midst; slighter than the knights, and unarmoured, but wrapped close in a great black cloak with the eight-pointed white cross.
As soon as they passed over First Bridge, the whole array began to ride faster.
Arles—The Red Knight
Gabriel stood on the battlements of Arles watching the roads: east, west, north, and south. Arles stood at the crossroads.
“The gates open in seven days,” Michael said from behind him. “Or ten, or seventy. Christ.” He clasped his hands and leaned on the parapet.
The plain below Arles was covered in tents and hasty shelters. The autumn air was cool; the smoke of hundreds of campfires rose into the air, and the carefully laid-out camps ran into the distance. Close into the walls, the camps were full, where the Milice of Arles and the phalanx of scarecrows, as Michael called them to their faces, survivors of the Necromancer’s worms, drilled and lived. And there were the Scholae, their own horse lines and fires, their small hospital, and the mess tent of their officers, one of whom was now co-emperor.
But beyond, there were rows of empty tents awaiting Sauce’s army; the company camp with a skeleton crew of veterans living well and sleeping too much; the camp prepared for the Nordikaans, with fifty new recruits who had swaggered in from the north and who had already proven that they could at least drink with heroic prowess; a camp for the casa and another for the guilds of Harndon and their regiment; then more shelters for the Venikans and the Beronese, and then, beyond, in all directions, miles of white linen tape delineating blocks of tents as yet not erected, and lines of fires as yet unstoked, for more soldiers. More and more, lines of white tape that extended as far as the eye could make out their tracery against the black earth.
“Bad Tom tomorrow?” Michael asked.
“Or day after. Every day he stays in the west, we save a day of shipping oats and straw. It will be close, even as it is. And we’re leaving this place to starve unless Sauce brings them supplies …” Gabriel shrugged. “Never mind. She’s done everything we asked and more; her chevauchee has netted another four hundred wagons and she’s filled them with grain.”
“And it is still close,” Michael said.
“Oh yes,” Gabriel answered.
Blanche emerged onto the narrow parapet walk, and behind her was Kaitlin and Syr George Comnena, now Caesar.
Michael watched the horizon. “And Sauce?” he asked.
Comnena settled into a merlon. He produced a flimsy. “Bird,” he said. “Sauce is climbing the San Colombo. She says …” Comnena smiled. “A lot of things about oxen. She says five days.”
Gabriel nodded.
“Perfect,” he said.
Michael turned, so that the setting sun seemed to cast fire across his face. “We’re on schedule. By God, Gabriel, I thought it was impossible. And if the astrologers are right, we only have six days. And we are still on schedule.”
“New motto,” Gabriel said. “We make the impossible seem merely really, really difficult.”
Blanche laughed. “I’ll have it put on the household banner.”
“Food?” Gabriel asked her.
She produced a tablet. It was not, in fact, wax; the plain ebony wood held a smooth substance, like fired clay with a glaze, except that the glaze was hermetical. Mortirmir had made the tablets. There were six sets so far; all of them could communicate with each other, and they had an inexhaustible supply of invisible pages.
She flipped through those pages with one finger. “We’re preparing to use fifty tons of food a day,” she said.
“Fifty tons?” Kaitlin asked.
“With four hundred wagons, we can only carry four days’ rations for the army,” Blanche said quietly.
“Carry where?” asked Kaitlin.
Michael was still shaking his head. “Four hundred wagons …” he said. “And all pulled by horses and oxen who eat—”
Gabriel shrugged. “Don’t worry,” he said. “If we fuck up the numbers, we can eat the draught animals. Thanks, my dear.”
Michael looked back at the setting sun and the plain. “So we have seven days, and a rising tide of soldiers. What do we do?”
“Do?” Gabriel said. “Do? We train like athletes. We practice until every man hates us.” He turned to them, and his smile was broad. “We’re not going to dick this away, my friends. We’re going to do this beautifully. So we will train. For six days. And all our hermeticals are preparing a lovely set of surprises.”
“And what do we do on the seventh day?” Blanche asked, and she was smiling before she finished, aware …
“On the seventh day we have a party,” Gabriel said. “At least, I think there should be a party.”
Morning. Cocks crowed in the town of Arles.
Gabriel lay in bed and looked at the glowing gold in his good hand. He could hold it up in the darkness and see Blanche by it. It was brighter each day; noticeably brighter since his extravagant expenditures in battle.
“Oh God,” he said, and then stopped at the edge of a blasphemy even he did not find funny.
Blanche stirred, frowned, and awoke. “Gabriel?” she asked.
He kissed her.
“My lord?” came a voice. It was Anne, opening the door to the bedroom.
Gabriel kissed his wife. She didn’t respond the way he wanted, but put a hand on his chest and gave him the very gentlest shove.
He tried to insist, and she pushed hard.
“Oh,” he said.
She shoved him hard, rolled over suddenly, and cursed. Then she threw up, spectacularly, all over the bedclothes.
Arles—Empress Blanche
“Pregnancy,” Kaitlin said, shaking her head. “Honestly, women should stick to knitting and good books.” She frowned.
Her husband smiled. “Surely we’re good for something,” he said.
Blanche looked pale. “Nothing comes to mind,” she said. “Could I have some privacy, please? Doesn’t the emperor need you for something?”
Michael sighed and went out into the solar. Master Julius’s quill was flying; the emperor was being shaved. Pavalo Payam had on a magnificent scarlet silk khaftan and emerald green silk trousers tucked into yellow leather boots worked in gold; he looked as if he were the emperor, not Gabriel. The Mamluk was bent over a chart.
Michael pulled a wooden stool from against the wall as the Queen of Arles was announced. She was in men’s clothes: green hose and a plain brown cote and a knight’s belt. Her beautiful red-brown hair had been cut short.
“Your Highness,” she said formally.
“Your Grace,” the emperor said from his chair.
Clarissa broke from a somber look to a wide grin. “Say it again,” she said. Everyone laughed. “I just love hearing it.”
Michael walked to the fireplace, poured himself some rewarmed hippocras, and then walked to Master Julius’s writing table. He took the stack of copied messages on the board labeled Imperial and, with them, settled into his hard chair. He drank off about half of his hippocras.
“Ready?” he asked the emperor.
“Go,” Gabriel replied.
Albinkirk. Ser Shawn. Multiple reports of Odine activity west of Albinkirk. Observed Odine emergence in standing stones personally. Request Magister immediately.
Lissen Carak. Abbess Miriam. Multiple sightings of Odine-infected creatures in townships. Screening process in place. Choir to cast Al Rashidi counter tonight. Pray for us. Four thousand, two hundred and six laborers employed on field works; am concerned for their camp. Request military support.
Harndon. Desiderata in person. Advance guard under Ranald Lachlan on river for Albinkirk fastest route. Harmodius with Lachlan. Plague attacks in Harndon now sporadic. Will accompany rear guard in person.
Southford. Prince Tancred. Allied reserve army moving west …
Michael looked up. “Did we order that?”
“Nope,” Gabriel said. “Gareth Montjoy has a mind of his own and no great love for me.”
Michael looked down again … moving west. South bank of Cohocton, looking to relieve Ser Gavin. Odine-controlled creatures in woods. Due caution employed …Damn it? Is he wode? He could be supporting Miriam at Lissen Carak.
“The Odine are moving,” Gabriel said. “So they think the gate’s opening in six days, too.” He laughed grimly. “You know, the Odine are awakening to a nearly empty landscape, so the last three years of war may have actually been for something.”
“We can hope Miriam will burn them back tonight,” Michael said.
Anne’s razor lifted, and the emperor raised his head. “Think how fast the rebel responded,” he said.
Morgon Mortirmir was cutting an apple on Master Julius’s table, to the notary’s considerable consternation. “The rebel was a mishmash,” he said. “An amalgam. A multidisciplinary entity of men and Odine in rebellion against the will.” He made a face. “Apple, anyone?”
“What are you saying, Morgon?” Michael asked. He seldom understood the young magister, who operated so deep in a web of his own perceptions that he spoke in mysteries.
“Ah, apologies,” Morgon said, raising his head. “I mean that the rebel had … skills, and attributes, and even … capabilities that the will is unlikely to possess.”
“Do you know that?” Michael asked.
Morgon smiled nastily. “I subsumed the last of the rebel,” he said. “I can read its memories.”
As was common when Morgon spoke, no one had an answer.
“Well,” Gabriel said. “We’ll just accept that, then.”
Anne cut away at his sideburns and murmured something, gave him a hot towel, and he sat up, thanking her.
The Caesar, George Comnena, came in, bowed, was bowed to. Took a cup of hippocras, and leafed through Blanche’s and Sukey’s notes on logistics.
Michael went back to the messages. He read:
San Batiste. Giselle. Accepted reparations from Mitla and added them to rear guard. No further news on salamanders. On my way.
San Colombo. Alison. Four hundred fifty-one wagons intact and on the way. Advance guard at the top. Three days if weather holds. No news on salamanders.
“Nothing from Gavin?” the emperor asked.
“Nothing today, my lord,” Michael answered.
“All of those except Sauce must be from yesterday, so we’re two days behind with Gavin and he was facing a major engagement at the fords of the Cohocton,” Gabriel said. “Time to assume he lost. Badly.”
“Pretty much guaranteed,” Michael said. “Tell me again why we let Harmodius and Desiderata go south?”
“Because we can’t lose Harndon,” Gabriel said. “And because the Queen of Alba isn’t really subject to my commands.”
Michael shook his head. “Don’t you find it … ironic that the Sieur Du Corse is a more reliable ally than the Queen of Alba?”
“No,” Gabriel said. “Not at all. I’ve beaten Du Corse twice, and Desiderata still thinks I’m her subject, not the other way around. I am married to her laundry maid, for example. We’re lucky she responds to our messages. Listen, Michael. She is a sovereign queen. Despite which, she sees herself as the head of the alliance. For many reasons. I cannot give her orders, and despite that, she’s taking the right actions. Let it go.”
Michael nodded. “But if she and Harmodius were at Lissen Carak …”
“We’d all sleep better?” Gabriel said. “True enough. But we all have to plan for a world after the gates open and then close again. And there’s one of the questions no one has asked … how long do the gates stay open? Regardless of it all … even if we win, we have to eat and trade and farm and continue to have lives. Or there is no point to winning. Harmodius has his own agenda, and so does Desiderata, and to be honest, so do Tom and Sauce and probably Cully and MacGilly here. Even Blanche …” he said as the door to the bedroom opened.
Master Julius rose. His report was interrupted by the emergence of the Queen of Alba’s former laundry maid, who entered in a purple silk kirtle and a matching overgown of purple wool trimmed in squirrel. “My lord,” she said.
Gabriel beamed at her.
“May I just say of my former mistress that she is absolutely loyal; she is, if anything, painfully aware of who kept her on her throne and saved her from the stake, and nothing short of death would keep her from the coming fight.” Blanche found her voice shaking. She was still, in her heart, a loyal servant of the crown of Alba.
Michael rose and bowed. “I’m sorry, Your Highness,” he said. “I …” He paused. “I am afraid,” he admitted.
“We are all afraid,” Gabriel said. “Revel in it; it is the bond that holds this alliance together. Master Julius?”
“Highness,” the notary said. “I have a report from your astrologers.”
“Go on,” Gabriel said. Anne had his doublet; MacGilly had his hosen.
“Highness, they have repeated their experiments and they wish to report directly to you. But in brief …”
“Thank God,” Michael said, sotto voce.
Master Julius glared. “… in brief, they are more certain of their date and time. They wish to discuss other ramifications.”
“Yes,” Gabr
iel said.
“When, my lord?” Julius asked.
“Now,” Gabriel said.
Michael poured them both more hippocras.
“I’ll be drunk as a lord,” Gabriel muttered. “Which may be the best way to spend the next five days.” He reached out to take the cup, a plain cup of red-brown earthenware.
Michael could not control his gasp of astonishment. “Holy Mary Mother of God,” he spat.
Against the red-brown of the cup, the emperor’s natural, human hand glowed like hot metal.
Every head turned.
Blanche stood. “Michael,” she said firmly.
Gabriel was looking at his hand, too. “Damn,” he said.
Then he looked at Michael. “Yes,” he said.
“Oh my God,” Michael said.
“Please don’t call me that,” Gabriel said.
There was nervous laughter. Payam frowned at the implied blasphemy while Clarissa laughed aloud. But the laughter was interrupted by Magister Bin Maymum and Magister al-Shirazi. Both of them looked fresh, well dressed. Surprised at all the laughter.
Bin Maymum unrolled a scroll dense with equations.
“Gentlemen, ladies.” Gabriel took his hosen from MacGilly. “You’ll note I still have to put these on one at a time.”
There was further laughter, especially from the veterans.
As Anne and MacGilly began on the laces, he turned to face the scholars. “Please begin,” he said.
“Highness,” Bin Maymum began. “As you requested, we reperformed all of our observations from this point, and confirmed our timing.” He looked at Blanche and bowed. “As Her Highness requested, we examined some of the errors we have observed, and we examined the errors in light of what we now know of gate locations.” He nodded, and looked at his companion. “What follows is more in the line of a theory than an established fact.”
Gabriel was getting a skin-tight scarlet doublet pulled over his torso. He had a variety of small wounds and his left shoulder still burned whenever he rotated the arm in his socket; he made a face as MacGilly tried too hard on the left sleeve.