Ash: The Lost History
Chapter 126 : The first smile tugged at her mouth.I'd like to see de la Marche copy my command-

The first smile tugged at her mouth.

I'd like to see de la Marche copy my command-style.

And then, her eyes on Lacombe and Romont and the others: If I get this wrong - if I'm not up to this job - all of you will be lying dead in the streets. And soon.

She turned, walking to the table and putting her hands on the back of her chair; and as if there had been an order given, the centeniers of the Burgundian forces returned to their seats, and waited for her to speak. She waited until Florian sat down.

"I'm not a one-man show." Ash leaned on the chair-back, looking at each of the faces around the table in turn. "I never have been. I have good officers. I expect them to speak their minds. In fact-" she looked across at Anselm and Angelotti "-most of the time I can't shut the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds up!"

It was not the laugh that warmed her, but the unmistakable body-language of men settling down to listen. Their expressions held cynicism, hope, judgement: This is standard commander bulls.h.i.+t, we've heard it all before, mixed with We're in deep s.h.i.+t here, are you good enough to get us out?

Burgundy may be different. But soldiers are soldiers.

Thank Christ I'll have de la Marche.

"So I expect you to talk to me, to keep me up to date with what's happening, and to relay what I say to you to your men. I don't want us blindsided by trouble because some dipstick thought he didn't have to tell me about a problem, or he thought his guys didn't need to know what the command people are saying. I don't have to tell you we're hanging by a thread here. So we need to get it together, and we need to do it fast."

There were perhaps two, out of the twenty, who still automatically looked at Olivier de la Marche after she had finished speaking. She mentally noted faces, if not yet names. Two out of twenty is f.u.c.king good ...

"Okay. Now."

Ash left the chair and paced, primarily to let them get a clear view of her newly polished, expensive Milanese harness, but also to look out of the tower window, at the ant-like movements of the Visigoths beyond their trenches.

"What we need to know is - why the f.u.c.k have they given us three days to talk about this?"

Chapter Six."Madonna?" Angelotti's oval-lidded glance took in everybody gathered at the table.

Ash briefly explained, "My magister ingeniator," and gestured him to speak.

"The new golem-built entrenchments are a fathom deep, at least; and the same wide. In some places the lines are three-deep. Any attack would have to throw down fascines and pavises and boards, to cross the ditches. There will always be time now for the Visigoths to sound the alarm and deploy to meet us."

Ash saw heads nodding among the Burgundian centeniers.

Angelotti added, "I've spoken with the Burgundian engineers. Those dugouts go clear over to the Ouche, in the east; and they continue all the way down the broken ground over on the east bank." He shrugged, eloquently. "We can't break out in any direction, madonna! This was worth their three days. If--"

About to interrupt, Ash found herself interrupted: "Is a ditch that important, for G.o.d's sake?" Florian leaned forward, as she has done in tents from northern France to southern Italy, arguing with Ash's command staff.

"It stops us sallying out." Robert Anselm hit the table with his fist. "But it's crazy! Why are they worried about that? They can take this city. Right now! You look out there! They'll lose a lot of men - but they'll do it."

Imperceptibly, Olivier de la Marche nodded.

"A ditch is important." Ash waited until Florian's attention came back to her. "Trenches. Trenches are defence - not attack. Florian, they've got the Wild Machines behind them, urging them on. What we need to know is, why have they spent forty-eight hours digging, not attacking?"

Now Florian nodded, too, green eyes intent; and Ash prodded the oak table-top with her finger for emphasis.

"Why dig? Why not attack? I can make a guess why - and if I'm right, we're going to have a little time."

Lacombe's flushed face took on a look of hope. Ash surveyed the other Burgundian officers. "The Faris has stopped the a.s.saults on the walls. She's sticking to bombardment. She's dug entrenchments round the whole f.u.c.king city-"

"Do you not hear her orders?" de la Marche interrupted. "Does she not speak with this Stone Golem that you, too, hear?"

"G- Saint G.o.dfrey told me she doesn't speak to it now. If he's right, she hasn't used the machina rei militaris since I went into her camp and spoke to her, before we came into the city. That means she isn't listening to Carthage . . . And I'm willing to bet I am right: that last attack she put in on the northwest gate, before the Duke died, she must have done that without the Stone Golem."

"They so nearly took the gate!" the elderly Chamberlain-Counsellor Ternant protested. "Was that the act of a mad woman?"

"It wasn't smart." With the bull-necked Lacombe and the other centeniers already interrupting, Ash raised her voice over theirs and pursued the point. "She made a feint on the wall where we were, and when it looked like we were pus.h.i.+ng it back, she put Greek Fire down on her own people. Oh, I know why she thought sending van Mander's company would work - she thought it would freak out my guys who'd fought beside him before. They're hard b.a.s.t.a.r.ds; it'll take more than that. And then she thought that dumping Greek Fire on us and van Mander when his a.s.sault was failing would clear the wall, and let her attack with her Visigoth troops and win. But it was a bad mistake. She killed her own mercenaries. There isn't a Frankish soldier in Dijon who'll go over to the Visigoths now."

Memory flashed her back to the wall. Not, as she might have expected, to Ludmilla Rostovnaya rolling, body on fire, but to the face of Bartolomey St John as she shoved fourteen inches of steel dagger into his eye socket and blood soaked the velvet cover of his brigandine. I was there when he ordered that one from the armourer. And now d.i.c.kon Stour's dead too.

Into the silence, Ash said, "The machina rei militaris would have warned her off doing that - I know it would, because it would warn me off it, if I ever thought anything like that was a good idea!"

She grinned. It was not clear from the expressions around her whether they were worried by the lack of divinity of their Pucelle's voices, or rea.s.sured by her military ac.u.men.

"The Faris isn't using the Stone Golem. I'd bet money she won't, now. She knows that anything she reports, any tactical advice she asks for - we'll hear it too. Even Carthage is keeping silent. She can't get orders from them, now. For the moment - she's on her own."

"And?" Olivier de la Marche prompted. "What does this mean, Demoiselle-Captain?"

She has a brief memory of the Faris, profile illuminated by the lamps in her headquarters, hands resting in her lap, the skin on her fingers chewed ragged.

"She's frozen up. I think she's terrified of making mistakes. She knows the Stone Golem is overheard. And she knows the Wild Machines are there. That simple. She can't pretend they're not there any more. She knows what they can do to her - could do." Ash frowned. "So she can't ask for battlefield advice. And she's too scared to do it alone."

Bishop John said quietly, "And do they still have their power, demoiselle: this machina plena malis,19these Wild Machines?"

There was silence, except for the crackling of the fire in the hearth. The Burgundian officers turned, one by one, to look at her. The green-robed bishop of Cambrai touched his fingertips to the Briar Cross above his heart.

"I hear them." Ash watched expressions. "They could be damaged, and lying about it. But we can't afford to bet on it. And, having spoken to them once, at your d.u.c.h.ess's request, I don't plan to do it again - if nothing else, it works both ways: whatever the Wild Machines say to me, the Visigoths will know. They only have to ask the Stone Golem, and it'll repeat every question I ask."

She nodded an acknowledgement to de la Marche. "The less the Wild Machines know, the better. The less House Leofric and the King-Caliph know, the better."

Lacombe's friend Romont put in, "Does King-Caliph Gelimer know about these . . . 'Wild Machines'?"

"Oh yeah." Ash grinned at him, in morbid humour. "They call the light over the King-Caliphs' tombs the 'Fire of the Blessing'. 'Arif Alderic told me that, in the Visigoth camp." Restless, she began to pace again, thinking aloud. "Up to now, the Faris has kept quiet about the Wild Machines, but - if I was her, I might not. If the Visigoths believed her, they might just say, hey, we have a whole lot more tactical machines on our side. Their morale might go up!"

Anselm scowled. "Yeah. They're f.u.c.king stupid enough!"

"The last time I saw the Faris, at the truce, she admitted to me that she heard the Wild Machines. She had a fit, when the hunt happened - I think she's s.h.i.+tting herself. By now she knows there's a successor to Duke Charles. She can't be sure the Wild Machines are damaged. As soon as the Duke's successor dies - sorry, Florian - the same thing is going to happen again. She's going to make a miracle, for the Wild Machines. The Faris is going to be used ..."

A look went between Olivier de la Marche and Bishop John: it might have been something as simple as fear.

"She's jammed her head up her a.r.s.e," Ash said brutally, "and she's waiting for the problem to go away. It isn't going to. And it would be a good idea if we didn't jam our heads up our a.r.s.es too!"

Another of the centeniers spoke in a heavy northern accent. "If she does plan to let cold, and hunger, and time do her siege-work, without attacking, then, we have time to plan."

Ash rested her armoured hand on his shoulder as she reached the chair in which he sat. "Even if she does, Captain - one of her qa'ids could take over tomorrow. Then we're f.u.c.ked."

De la Marche nodded.

Meeting his gaze, moving on, the oak boards creaking under her, Ash said, "Say that the Faris continues to soft-pedal - Carthage will get increasingly s.h.i.+tty with her. They still want Burgundy's surrender. -They don't want any more of a winter campaign than they're already stuck with . . . King-Caliph Gelimer's in charge, Amir Leofric is sick - I don't know how much weight this Sisnandus carries. How long will it take before Gelimer sends a-" Ash paused; said sardonically, "-a more 'conventional' general out to replace the Faris? Anything from two to four weeks. a.s.suming a new commander hasn't left already. And he'll follow orders and attack. What," she added to de la Marche, "is the matter?"

Olivier de la Marche started, and wiped his hand over his mouth. When he removed it, there was no trace of a smile. "You appear to have a sound grasp of the situation, Demoiselle-Captain."

Ash put her fists on her hips. "Yeah. It's my job."

Someone at the far end of the table laughed out loud in brief appreciation. She could feel the balance of the room s.h.i.+ft, the very beginnings of a p.r.i.c.kly dislike that anyone - even de la Marche - would think of denigrating the Maid of Burgundy.

"If I'm right-" another glance out of the windows. "-she's going to sit behind that ditch she's dug, and wait for us to starve. They won't let her do that indefinitely. We could have anything from fifteen minutes to four weeks before things go pear-shaped." A quirk of her mouth. "If we had enough food for four weeks ..."

Olivier de la Marche's expression became absorbed in calculations. He broke off, looked up at Ash again. "So. She has experienced qa'ids out there. They might give her advice; she might get her confidence back. She might use the machina rei militaris to devise a plan to take this city - although she hardly needs to."

"Oh yeah. Any of that. I said I think we have time - I don't think we have very much time. Okay ..." Ash began to point at random around the table: "Suggestions."

"We might take a leaf from their magister ingeniator's book," Antonio Angelotti said, unexpectedly.

Ash paused, staring at him. She put out of her mind the suddenly overwhelming fear that she might have committed herself wrongly, that four hundred men - two and a half thousand men, now - will suffer from this decision. She responded to the new atmosphere in the room. Now we can make plans.

"Go on, Angeli."

"A sap," the Italian gunner said. "Let me look at the ground up in the northeast quarter of the city. We might dig a sap out under the wall on that side, west of the wet ground on the bank of the Ouche, under their northern camp. We might get Madonna Florian out that way. Then the d.u.c.h.ess is preserved, even if Dijon falls. And," he looked at de la Marche, "you can get to the north and fight back."

Olivier de la Marche blinked. "Mining for such a distance? Under those ditches; under their camp? And deep enough not to be overheard? That would take a phenomenal amount of time and timber, Messire Angelotti."

Robert Anselm murmured, "Sounds good to me ..."

"Okay: that's one." Ash snapped her fingers. "Next. You!"

Captain Romont, startled, blurted out, "Send men out with grenades and powder. We could burn their stores!"

"If we could get to them." Ash glanced at the bright gla.s.s of the chamber's windows. "We know from G.o.dfrey that she has three legions up north, fighting at Bruges and Antwerp and Ghent; she's only got two legions here to feed, one under-strength. And she can keep on s.h.i.+pping food and Greek Fire over the Med . . . Although that gives her f.u.c.king long supply lines to cope with."

Anselm grunted. "Enough to give them problems?"

"It's just possible we could wait them out. They didn't expect not to be able to live off the country when they got here. I don't believe that they expected darkness to cover Iberia - all their fields and farms there. But even if Iberia's Under the Penitence, now, they've still got Egypt, and they've had twenty years to prepare for this."

Momentarily, she sees not the weak sun outside the tower window, but the frozen blackness of Lyons and Avignon; the snow falling in Carthage.

The half of Christendom that didn't starve this harvest is going to starve next year. There is going to be famine. Just, too late to help us here.

"Any sabotage we can do is a plus. And the next!"

One of the centeniers, barely more than a boy, grinned. "We've got some captured liveries, Demoiselle-Captain! I have men who are brave enough to try getting through those trenches in disguise. It's no lack of chivalry to sabotage the enemy."

Ash just stopped herself saying And it isn't chivalrous when you come back by trebuchet, either.

"If you can get men out," she said grimly, "what they have to do is kill my sister."

Bishop John's expression showed extreme distaste. He said nothing. Nor did Philippe Ternant - the old man, after a meal, and in this warm chamber, might have been asleep. There was no distaste or disinterest from the officers.

"Take the Faris out, and the Wild Machines are stopped cold. I suspect the Visigoth army is, too. Okay, we'll discuss this one in detail in a minute - we should send out some two-man and four-man teams, and try to a.s.sa.s.sinate her, but it won't be easy. The rag-heads can have patrols in those ditches twenty-four hours a day-"

"But if we could do it!" de la Marche exclaimed. "It would prevent their miracle; it would throw the legions here into confusion; it might save Dijon, or buy us time to break out, or time enough for the army in the north to march here!"

Another of the centeniers, whose name she could not remember, said acidly, "If you know where she is, my lord. She may have withdrawn her HQ to the rear of the enemy camp. She may have withdrawn it to a nearby town or fortress. I grant you, spies may tell us where she is - but we have to retrieve them first."

"Okay." Ash stopped pacing, now at the far end of the table, looking down at the seated Burgundian knights. "Okay: any more?"

"Send out heralds."

The voice was Florian's. Ash glanced back at her in surprise.

"Send out heralds. If you're right, the Faris knows something's badly wrong. She might talk to us. Negotiate."

Ash thought de la Marche's face held a certain scepticism, but he said mildly, "There are the heralds of the ducal household, your Grace. They stand ready."

"Any more?"

Robert Anselm rumbled, "We could do a ma.s.s a.s.sault, if we could get over those f.u.c.king trenches, boss - but I don't even know what strength of troops there are in the city, total."

Thanks, Roberto.

"Okay, that's a good point." Ash's circ.u.mnavigation of the long table brought her back past Florian to her own chair. She leaned on the tall carved oak back, looking across at Olivier de la Marche. "You want to give the overall picture here?"

"Demoiselle-Captain."

Olivier de la Marche fumbled at ink-stained lists on the tablecloth, in front of him, but did not look down at them. He kept his gaze on Florian - weighing her, Ash thought suddenly - contrasting this exiled Burgundian n.o.blewoman with the man he had followed through battle and court for so many years. And Charles has only been dead two days. Christus, how he must miss him!

Philippe Ternant opened lizard-eyes and said, perfectly alertly, "We are not the strength we were. At one time, your Grace, I might have offered you a hundred chamberlains, with myself as first chamberlain; a hundred chaplains under your first chaplain-"

Olivier de la Marche waved the old man to silence. Ash could see acknowledgement of the respite in the glance that went between them.

Grief almost indistinguishable in his tone, de la Marche said, "We had high casualties at Auxonne. Your Grace, before that field, I could have offered you two thousand men as your personal household troops alone. Forty mounted chamberlains and gentlemen of the Duke's chamber died with the standard at Auxonne; and of four hundred cavalry, fifty survive."

The atmosphere around the table changed, the men's expressions taking on more weight, more memory. Feeling how it did not exclude her, Ash realises: I have been watched, up at the north-west gate. And at Auxonne, too.

De la Marche said, "I myself led what survives of sixteen one-hundred-strong companies of mounted archers and household infantry back to Dijon. There are three hundred of us."

He kept a steady gaze on Floria del Guiz.

"We lost our bombards, serpentines, and mortars on that field. Of the army itself, there died men-at-arms to the number of one thousand, one hundred and five-" He looked down at the slanting ink lines on the paper he held. "Mounted archers, upwards of three thousand; crossbowmen, one thousand or less; the archers on foot, eight hundred; the billmen, fifteen hundred or more."

Romont, Lacombe, and two or three of the other officers stared down at the table.

Florian said nothing. Ash saw her lips move, soundless. Hearing it listed made her own gut turn over, remembering that half-dark wet morning scarred by Greek Fire. It must be worse, she thought, for a surgeon who only sees the result of such numbers, and never the butchery that brings it about.

"Your Grace, I may still offer you your archier de corps, but there is one captain now, and not two; twenty men, not forty. They are your bodyguard; they will die to keep you alive. For the rest, I have re-structured the companies of Berghes and Loyecte and Saint-Seigne." He nodded acknowledgement to those centeniers. "If I could make up twenty full companies in Dijon now, I would count us rich. What strength we have is knights, foot archers and arquebusiers, and billmen, in the main. No more than two thousand men."

"The Lion is down to forty-eight lances," Robert Anselm put in. "Mostly men-at-arms, archers, and hackb.u.t.ters; some cannon. The company's light guns are still in Carthage. Unless the rag-heads s.h.i.+pped them north and they're out there in the artillery park."