Ash: The Lost History
Chapter 86 : Florian's voice said, "Before this year, the Twilight was only over Carthage.

Florian's voice said, "Before this year, the Twilight was only over Carthage. It spread. But not here. Have you thought? Maybe that's why the Faris is here with an army. We may be beyond where the Wild Machines can reach."

"Even if we are, that might not last."

Ash looked up at the sky. Automatically, still, this being Florian, she added aloud what was in her mind: "Remember 'Burgundy must be destroyed'? This is their main target area. Florian, I had no choice about bringing us back here - but now we're standing right on ground zero."

Chapter Three.Lowering her face from the faint but perceptible warmth of the risen sun, Ash wiped her muddy palm across her scarred cheeks.

Beside her, the woman took her gaze from the eastern sky and s.h.i.+vered in the cold morning.

"Girl, I wouldn't want your job right now!" Florian briskly blew on her bare fingers, looking around at the camp. "We can't go back. Can we go forward? What are you going to tell them?"

"That?" Ash, for the first time in weeks, gave a genuinely relaxed smile. "Oh, that's not the difficult part. Okay: here we go . . ."

Ash walked on, out into the middle of the clearing, clapping her hands.

Five hundred people stopped talking fast enough, gathering around once they saw it was her: men in mail, and rusted plate, or padded jacks, standing, or squatting on the mud where it was too filthy to sit down. Some few diced in the wet. Rather more were drinking small ale. She gazed around her, at their faces that kept turning away in wonder to the sky.

"Well," Ash said. "Will you look at your sorry a.s.ses!"

"We can take it, boss!" one of the Tydder brothers yelled: Simon or Thomas, Ash was momentarily unsure which. He ducked a shower of punches, mudb.a.l.l.s, and insults.

"Creep!" Ash remarked. Laughter started, unstrained; going round the crowd.

Well, well. Geraint was wrong. And I was right.

She rubbed her hands together, and grinned broadly back at the drawn faces. "Okay, lads. We're broke again. Not for the first time - won't be the last. It means a day or two more on bread-rations, but hey, we're rough, we're tough, we can hack it."

The other one of the Tydder brothers whimpered in a shrill falsetto, "Mummy!"

Ash took the laughter that followed as an opportunity to look at them closely. The Tydders and a lot of the younger men-at-arms were elbowing each other in the ribs; one with his lance-mate's head wrestled under his arm. Two hundred fighting men with faded liveries and ragged hose, bundled up in every garment they owned; mud-stained, fingers white with chilblains, noses dripping clear liquid. She took the feel of them, electric in the air; read from their faces that they seemed tighter, more exultant, high on being rough, ragged, tough, and soldiers in a world of refugees.

It's because there's sun. We've come across the border. For the first time in weeks, there's the sun ...

And they've got out of Carthage in one piece and force-marched the better part of one hundred leagues in moonlight and darkness: right now, they think they're s.h.i.+t-hot.

And they are.

Please G.o.d it's not all for nothing.

As the laughter died down, Ash lifted her head and looked around at the muddy encampment, and the mud-stained men in front of her.

"We're the Lion company. Never forget it. We're f.u.c.king amazing. We've come across a hundred leagues of this, through night and bitter cold; it's taken us weeks, but we're still here, we're still together, we're still a company. That's because we're disciplined, and we're the best. There isn't any argument about it. Whatever happens from now on in, we're the best, and you know it."

There was a ragged, good-natured cheer: if only because they knew the amount of truth in what she said. Some men were nodding, others gazed at her in silence. She watched faces, alert for fright, for arrogance, for the imperceptible loosening of bonds between men.

Ash pointed over her shoulder, in the general direction of the river valley and Dijon. She showed teeth in a fierce smile. "You're expecting me to tell you how we're going to batter those walls down, and rescue Anselm and the lads. Well, guys, I've been up ahead to look. And I've got news for you. Those walls aren't going down, they're f.u.c.king solid."

One of Carracci's billmen put his hand up.

"Felipe?"

"Then how the f.u.c.k are we going to get the rest of the Lions out, boss?"

"We're not." She repeated it, more loudly: "We're not."

A noise of confusion.

"That's a siege going on up there," Ash said, pitching her voice to carry. "Now most people are trying to break out of a siege."

"With the exception of the enemy," Thomas Rochester put in helpfully, behind her.

Antonio Angelotti snickered. A number of the men took it up, appreciative of the back-chat.

Ash, who knew very well why - in the midst of Visigoths, twenty-four-hour-a-day darkness, and speaking stone pyramids - both her officers were doing this, contented herself with a glare.

"All right," she said, breath smoking on the icy air. "Apart from the enemy. Pair of b.l.o.o.d.y smarta.r.s.es."

"That's why you pay us, madonna . . ."

"He gets paid? " Euen Huw complained, in broad Welsh.

Ash held up her hands. "Shut up and listen, you dozy shower of s.h.i.+t!"

A voice from the back of the ranks murmured whimsically, "'We're the best' . . ."

The outburst of laughter made even Ash grin. She stood, nodding and waiting, until quiet returned; and then wiped her red, runny nose with her sleeve, put her hands on her hips, and projected her voice out to them: "Here's the situation. We're in the middle of hostile countryside. There's two Carthaginian legions just down the road in front of us - the Legio XIV Utica and some of the Legio VI Leptis Parva: six or seven thousand men between them."

Murmurs. She went on: "The rest of their forces are behind us in French territory, and up north in Flanders. Okay, it isn't winter here yet, like it is under the Dark - but there's corn rotted in the fields, and grapes rotted on the vine. There's no game, because they've hunted it all. There's nowhere left to loot, because every town and village for miles around has been stripped. This land is bare." She stopped, waiting, looking around; hard dirty faces scowled back at her.

"No need to look at me like that," Ash added, "since you looted your share on the way up here ..."

An archer's voice: "f.u.c.kin' right."

"You b.a.s.t.a.r.ds carried away everything that wasn't tied down. Well, I got news for you. It's gone. I've talked to Steward Brant, and it's - all - gone."

Ash gave that a slow emphasis, saw it sink in. A billman crouched down a few feet away looked at the hunk of dark bread in his hand, and thoughtfully tucked it away in his purse.

"What we gonna do, boss?" a crossbow-woman called.

"We've done one h.e.l.l of a forced march," Ash said, "and we're not finished yet. We're in the middle of a war here. We're about to run out of rations. Now, most people are trying to break out of a siege ..."

She flirted a quick glance at Angelotti, gave Florian a grin; and turned her attention back to the men yowling questions: "Most people. Not us. We're going to break in."

Those in the front row bawled their amazement.

"Okay, I'll tell you again." Ash paused, for emphasis. "We're not going to break Robert Anselm and the lads out of Dijon. We're going to break in."

Simon (or Thomas) Tydder blurted out, "Boss, you're mad!" and blushed bright red. He stared down at his boots.

She let the buzz die down. "Anyone else got anything to say?"

"Dijon's under siege!" Thomas Morgan, Euen Huw's 2IC, protested. "They got the whole b.l.o.o.d.y Visigoth army in front of their gates!"

"And they have had -for three months. Without taking the city! So what better place to be than safe inside Dijon? If they find us out here," Ash said, looking around at faces again, "we're catsmeat. We're in the open. Most of our heavy armour's in Dijon. And we're outnumbered thirty to one. We can't face a Visigoth legion in the field - not even you guys can do that. Now we are here, there isn't any option. We need walls between us and the Visigoth army, or that's the end of the Lion Azure, right now."

She had the experience to wait then, while a hubbub of talk rose up; to wait with her arms folded, weight back on one hip, her bare cropped silver hair exposed to the wintry light under the trees; a woman no longer beautiful, but in mail coat and sword and with her pages, squire, and officers ranked behind her.

One of the billmen stood up. "We'd be safe in Dijon!"

"Yeah, till the Goths batter the gate down!" a man-at-arms in Flemish livery remarked.

Until we find out what the Wild Machines have bred the Faris for.

Ash stepped forward and held her arms up.

"Okay!" She let their noise die down. "I'm getting in contact with our people inside Dijon. I'm arranging for a gate to be opened tonight. De Vere picked you guys to move fast, for the raid on Carthage, so moving fast is what we're going to do! We won't have to fight our way in - but I'll want volunteers for a diversionary attack."

The Englishman John Price nodded and stood up, his mates with him. "We'll do it, boss."

Ash spoke quickly, not letting any more questions be asked.

"You, Master Price, and thirty men. You'll attack tonight, two hours after moonrise. Angelotti, give them whatever slow-match and powder we've got left. You guys: wear your s.h.i.+rts over your armour: kill anything that doesn't show up white."

"That won't work, boss," Price's lance-mate objected. "All them f.u.c.kers wear white robes!"

"s.h.i.+t." Ash let them see her look amused. "Y'know - you're right. Sort out your own recognition signal, then. I want you down at the west bank of the Suzon, setting fire to their siege engines - that'll bring the whole army awake, siege-machines are expensive! When you've done it, fall back into the forest. We'll pick you up in a boat tomorrow evening and bring you in through one of the water-gates."

Ash turned to her officers.

"That'll give the rest of us time enough to move. Okay, we've got ten hours before dark. We're leaving any carts: I want everything in the baggage train either on someone's back or slung out. I want the mules blindfolded." She gauged spirit, looking around at all the faces she could see in the November morning. "Your lance-leaders will tell you where you are in line of march - and when we go in tonight, we go in with weapons m.u.f.fled, and wearing dark clothes over armour. And we don't hang about! They won't know we're here until we're in."

There was still some murmuring. She made a point of making eye-contact with the dissenters, gazing around at white, pinched faces, cheeks flushed with small beer and bravado.

"Remember this." She looked around at their faces. "That's your mates up ahead in Dijon. We're the Lion - and we don't leave our own. We may be broke, it may be winter, we may need a siege-proof roof over our heads right now, but don't forget this - with the whole company together, we can kick any d.a.m.n Visigoth's a.s.s from here to breakfast! Okay. We go in, we a.s.sess the situation, and when we move on out later on, we move out with all the armour and guns we had to leave here - and we move as a full-strength company. You got that?"

Mutters.

"I said, you got that?"

The familiar bullying tone cheered them, enabled a complicit cheer: "YES, BOSS!".

"Dismiss."

In the resulting ordered chaos of men running, shelters being demolished, and weapons being packed up, she found herself standing beside Floria again.

A sudden awkwardness made her avoid the woman's eye. If Florian too was uncomfortable, she showed no sign of it.

But she will be.

"Don't-" Ash coughed, getting rid of some congestion in her throat. "Don't do a G.o.dfrey on me, Florian. Don't you vanish off out of the company."

She surprised a sudden unmonitored expression on Florian's face; a raw anguish, gone before she could be sure it was anything more than a cynical, brilliant grin.

"No danger of that." Florian folded her arms across her body. "So . . . You've solved the immediate military problem. If it works. We get into Dijon. What then?"

"Then we're part of the siege."

"For how long? Do you think Dijon will hold out? Against those numbers?"

Ash looked levelly at the Burgundian woman. There will be unease, she thought. Not enough to matter - and not for long. Because it is still Florian.

"I'll tell you what I think," Ash said, with a release of breath and tension, in sudden honesty. "I think I made a s.h.i.+t-lousy mistake in coming here - but once we landed at Ma.r.s.eilles, once we were committed, there hasn't been a d.a.m.n thing I can do about it."

Floria blinked. "Good G.o.d, woman. You've been keeping this lot on the road by sheer will-power. And you think we're wrong to be here?"

"Like I said on the beach at Carthage - I think we should have sailed for England then." Ash s.h.i.+vered in the morning cold. "Or for Constantinople, even, with John de Vere, and taken service with the Turk. Got as far away from the Wild Machines as possible, and left the Faris to whatever s.h.i.+t there's going to be in Burgundy."

"Oh, b.o.l.l.o.c.ks!" Floria put her fists on her hips. "You? Leave Robert Anselm and the rest of the company here? Don't make me laugh! We were always coming back here, whatever happened at Carthage."

"Maybe. The smart thing to do would be to cut our losses and start again with the men I've got here. Except that people don't sign up with commanders who dump their people."

Some internal honesty prompted, unexpectedly: But she's right, we were always coming back here.

She squinted into the morning wind, her eyes tearing, thinking, weather's bad even for November, and that's a weak sun. And it's been so cold, south of here, for so long now. There won't have been a harvest.

"Too late now," she said, hearing herself sound almost philosophical. She smiled at Florian. "Now we are here - there isn't anywhere else to go, except behind the nearest walls! Better dead tomorrow than dead today, right? So you can pick between Dijon falling sometime soon, and the legions up ahead finding us tomorrow ..."

She felt an immense release, as if from a weight, or an unrelenting grip. Fear flooded through her, but she recognised it and rode it; let herself become fully aware, again, that it is not merely the usual business of war that concerns her.

Floria snorted, shaking her head. "I'll get my deacons praying. Fix where we'll be in line of march. Where will you be, on this moonlight flit? In front, as usual?"

"I won't be with the company. I'll join you in the city, before dawn."

"You'll what?"

Ash beat her cold hands together. Warming circulation p.r.i.c.ked at the impacts. Cool, damp air touched her face.

Her gaze met Florian's: whimsical, bright, utterly determined.

"While the company's making an entry into Dijon tonight, I'm going to get some answers. I'm going to go down to the Visigoth camp and talk to the Faris."

Chapter Four."You're mad!"

In the wet, muddy daylight, Ash suddenly grinned to herself. I can still talk to Florian. At least I still have that.