Part 96 (1/2)
”I'll wear my other one.” He snicked a buckle home, expertly threaded the tail of the belt through itself in a knot, and let the blue leather strap, studded with bra.s.s mullets, hang down over the pleated white damask skirts of her demi-gown. ”You ain't at Neuss now, girl.”
The memory of kneeling before the Holy Roman Emperor is sharp in her mind's eye. Silver hair rippling to her knees; young, scarred, beautiful; a woman in full Milanese plate s.h.i.+ning so brilliantly in the sun that it hurts the eye, leaves dazzles on the vision - and says, as clearly as a shout: This is what I earned as a mercenary captain, I'm good.
They're going to look at me now and think: she can't even afford plate armour. Well, s.h.i.+t, I'm down to a helmet and gauntlets: that's it. Everything else - spare leg harness, borrowed cuira.s.s - is lost, damaged beyond repair, or out there with the f.u.c.king Faris . . .
Is this going to be enough?
Ash reached out and took the borrowed sallet, prodding the padding for a better fit. She lifted her chin as Rickard tied the fastenings of a clean, dry livery jacket, and buckled the sallet's strap.
”Looks like I'm going to the council. Angelotti, Anselm; with me. Geraint, I want a complete muster-roll of the whole company before I get back. Okay: let's move it!”
A cl.u.s.ter of men sorted themselves out into a remarkably clean, if now unspectacularly dressed, Angelotti; a Thomas Rochester, equally rapidly cleaned up and wearing other people's kit; and his lance of twelve as escort with Ash's banner. Ash strode at their head, out of the shadow of the doorway, into the open air. The courtyard scurried with pigs and a few remaining hens, chased by screaming children; clanged with the noise of the armoury sheds that lined the inside of the tower's perimeter wall.
A crack! made her whole body startle - the invisible impact of a rock, not far off. Animals and children simultaneously froze for a second. Pale sun struck her face: her chest suddenly constricted, her breath coming shallow.
”Hitting up at the north-west gate again,” Anselm rumbled, glancing automatically and uselessly at the sky, and reaching up to buckle on his sallet.
Beside him, Rickard flinched. Ash reached out to shake his shoulder companionably.
Unexpectedly, she felt sweat cutting runnels in the dirt on her face. What's wrong with me now? This is just the usual s.h.i.+t for a siege. She made herself start to walk down the stone steps, towards the men and horses in the courtyard.
There was a brief moment of the confusion that she has been used to for over a decade; armoured men mounting into the saddles of war-horses: trained, restless stallions. As the Burgundians mounted up, Rickard led forward a mouse-coloured dun stallion with black points and tail visible under the caparisons.
”Borrow Orgueil,”9 Anselm said. ”I don't suppose you picked up any remounts on the way back from Carthage.”
The dun's s.h.i.+ning black eyes looked into Ash's face, dark nostrils flaring. Anselm's rough, sardonic tone demanded humour, or at least comrades.h.i.+p.
”Boss?”
”What?”
”Wrong time of the month for a stallion? We can find you a gelding.”
”No. 'S okay, Roberto ...”
Momentarily - reaching up to put a firm hand against the beast's soft muzzle; feel warm horse-breath on her bare, cold skin - she is stopped dead: incapacitated with loss.
Six months ago, she owned destrier, palfrey and riding horse. All gone, now. Iron-grey G.o.dluc, wide-chested, bossy and protective. Lady's flaxen chestnut sweetness and greed. The Sod's dirty-water-grey colouring and foul temperament.
For one second her heart hurts, thinking of the golden foal that Lady might have had, and The Sod's viciousness (nipping at her leg when least expected; nuzzling at her chest equally unexpectedly), all lost in the rout from Basle. And G.o.dluc - I swear, she thought, eyes stinging, mouth twisting with black humour; I swear he thought of me as a horse; some misbehaving mare! -skewered and dead at Auxonne.
Easier to grieve for horses than men? she wonders, remembering the dead buried on rocky, inhospitable Malta.
”We'll get you another war-horse,” Anselm said, appearing at a loss when she did not speak. ”Shouldn't have to lay out more than a couple of pounds. There's been enough dead knights won't need 'em any more.”
”Jeez, Roberto, you're an ever-present trouble in time of help ...”
The Englishman snorted. She cast an eye around at the armoured knights on their war-horses, the bright richness of rounded steel plate. Her own blue-and-gold liveries on the mounted archers shone out brilliant in the grey morning; men with open-faced steel helmets and mailed sleeves mounting up - she guessed - on some of the riding horses the garrison still maintained. Jutting bow-staves and her striped banner-pole pierced the air. A careful eye could have picked out rusted cuisses and poleyns, and boot-leather blackened and cracked by wet and cold.
”. . . Let's go.”
They rode in the wake of the Burgundian officers, out into a crowded street where cold air moved against her face. Her escort formed up around her. Dust blew, filling the air; and old ashes skirled across the cobbles, spooking two of the geldings. Groups of people standing talking on the corner moved back out of the way of the armed men. She laid the rein over to avoid a man hauling a hand-cart of rubble away from a collapsed shop. In the s.p.a.ce of a hundred yards, she picked half a dozen constables out of the crowds.
Another heavy crack! and boom of something landing and exploding into fragments echoed through the morning air over Dijon. Orgueil fluffed a plume of breath into the chill air, and she felt him s.h.i.+ft discontentedly under her. Another succession of sharp impacts sounded, to the north. The Burgundians rode on, with an unconsciously hunched posture - men used to shrinking, however pointlessly, away from what the sky might deliver to them.
”s.h.i.+t, that's close!”
”Couple of streets. Sometimes they play silly b.u.g.g.e.rs like this all day.” Robert Anselm shrugged. ”Limestone. Reckon they're quarrying rocks all the way down the Auxonne road by now. It's just hara.s.sment.” Riding up to her side, he jerked his thumb at a church further on down the street. Ash saw it was a blackened sh.e.l.l. ”When they're serious, they use Greek Fire.”
”s.h.i.+t.”
”Too f.u.c.king right!”
”I've been up on the walls. They must have upwards of three hundred petriers10 out there,” Angelotti called, his voice thinning. Careful on the flagstones, he brought his brown gelding over closer on her other, side.
”Perhaps twenty-five trebuchets that I can see, madonna. They shelter their mangonels and ballistae with hides; difficult to count them. Perhaps another hundred engines - but truly bad weather will make at least their catapults unusable. But . . . they have golems.”
Wryly, Ash said, ”I thought they might.”
Angelotti said, ”But do we fight here, madonna?”
Our options are narrowing all the time- The Burgundian officers, picking up the pace, struck off diagonally down a narrower street; riding from the cover of one house to the next. Here there were fewer broken roofs and burned-out houses. Under the iron hooves of the horses, rubble strewing the cobbles made footing uncertain.
Deliberately not answering his question, Ash asked, ”If you were their magister ingeniator 11 Angeli, what would you be doing right now?”
”I would look to undermine the north wall, or break one of those two gates.” The Italian's oval-lidded eyes narrowed, looking past her to study Anselm's reaction. ”To weaken morale first, I would have had men up on the bluff, to draw me a map of what could be seen in the city; then I would concentrate my barrage on public targets. Markets, where people congregate. Churches. Guild halls. The ducal palace.”
”Got it in one!” Anselm snorted.
The churning in her stomach, and the tightness in her chest, both increased. A man desperately nailing boards across his remaining windows paused as she pa.s.sed, pulling off his hat, and then ducked into his doorway as another spray of rocks cracked and whined across the rooftops.
”Ah, f.u.c.k it!” Ash exclaimed. ”Now I remember how much I hate b.l.o.o.d.y siege-engines. I like something I can get within axe-reach of!”
”No s.h.i.+t? I'll tell Raimon the Carpenter that.” Robert Anselm: sardonic. At her inquiring look, he added, ”Had to make someone Enguynnur,12 with Tony here b.u.g.g.e.red off to Africa and likely dead.”
Doubled-up commands aren't going to make anyone's life easy.. . .
”Christus Viridia.n.u.s!” Ash shook her head. ”So much for 'safe inside Dijon'. We're sitting smack in the gold!13 Okay, brief me, before we get to this d.a.m.n council - what's been happening, Roberto?”
”Okay. Debrief.” Robert Anselm wiped his hand across his nose. There was a slight awkwardness about the movement that she guessed meant a wound taken during a Visigoth a.s.sault; knew he would not mention it himself.
”They bottled us up here after Auxonne. We could see the sky on fire, every night - burning towns, off in the boonies. First off they set up their engines and guns, gave us a major artillery barrage. Those big trebuchets? They had 'em lobbing dead bodies in, dead horses, our own casualties from Auxonne. That was when they set up the flame-throwers opposite the three gates, 'bout fifteen to a gate, covering the walls and river. We blew up the south bridge; they started mining in from the north.”
”Didn't miss a trick.” She blinked at the backs of the men and horses she followed, as they rode into a larger public square, where a slide of bricks blocked half the road. I wish I couldn't picture everything he says.
What's wrong with me? This stuff never bothers me!
”Oh, they done their best to f.u.c.k us, all right,” Anselm said grimly. ”Been bombarding us from the end of August, soon as they found they couldn't take the city straight off. They couldn't get no bombards and siege-engines over on the east of the Ouche river, ground's too broken, so they stuck their artillery north and west of the city. Ploughed up as much of the place as we thought was in their range.”
He looked down, bringing his mount around a crater that gouged the flagstones. As they pa.s.sed it, Ash saw the sandstone walls of a church were pocked with holes.