The late afternoon sun threw long, mournful shadows. The Franco-Saxons had not repaired Pertuis after they took it; apparently they planned to fix the new border farther south. Argyros dismounted and led his horse through the yawning gateway into the courtyard. Better to spend the night there than in the open, he thought; the walls would hide his campsite from bandits.
The courtyard was full of rank grass. Argyros hobbled his horse and let it graze while he got a small fire going. He stretched till his joints creaked, then, taking bread, olive oil, and a skin of sour wine from his saddlebags, sat down by the fire for supper.
Something sharp dug into the seat of his pants (flowing robes were all very well in Constantinople, but not for serious travel). He raised up on one cheek and removed the offending object. He had expected a rock, but it was a potsherd, a triangle with the longest side about as long as his middle finger—a flat piece from the bottom of a pot.
He was about to throw it away when he noticed the potter’s mark stamped into the clay: a cross flanked by the letters S and G. “St. Gall!” he said and looked at the shard with a new and lively interest. For one thing, the monastery of St. Gall lay in the Alps, far to the northeast of Pertuis. It was no great pottery center; why was one of its products so far from home? For another, Franco-Saxon monasteries interested Argyros professionally. Such learning as the barbarians had was confined to their clerics. And St. Gall was their chief monastic center, from which abbeys had spread all through the Franco-Saxon kingdoms. The magistrianos tugged at his beard. St. Gall might well be involved in whatever mischief they had concocted.
His examination of the potsherd made him certain he was on to something, even if he was not sure what. One side of the shard was blackened, as if by fire. Yet that was the side that had been face-down; a pillbug was still clinging to it. It could not have been charred during the sack of Pertuis. Argyros reproached himself for not making a thorough examination of the fortress when he rode up. Too dark now, he thought. The morning would have to do. He took out his bedroll, spread it on the ground, prayed, and slept.
He woke with the sun. After wolfing down more bread and oil, he walked around the overgrown courtyard, scuffing through the grass to see if he could find more bits of pottery. After a while, he did. They were all of the same yellow-brown clay as the first, and all scorched on one side.
He could still make out traces of a big scorch mark near the base of one wall of the keep. He scrabbled through the matted grass there and was rewarded with several more tiny shards. One, he thought, bore part of the S of St. Gall’s mark. He grunted in satisfaction.
He also found a couple of fragments at the gateway, but learned less than he wanted there. The gates themselves were gone; the Franco-Saxons had burned their timbers.
He saw motion out of the corner of his eye: two horsemen approaching. He ducked back into the courtyard, clapped a helmet on his head, strung his bow, and slung a quiver of arrows over his shoulder. Having armed himself, he returned to the gateway and cautiously peered out. One of the oncoming riders waved as he drew close enough to recognize Argyros. “You’ll not find much garum here,” Wighard called. After a few seconds, Argyros saw that the tin merchant’s companion was Hilda. Her gilt hair was tucked up under a broad-brimmed hat, and she rode astride like a man, but tunic and trousers could not disguise her small size or womanly figure.
The magistrianos emerged from cover, but did not set down his bow. “You don’t have many ingots with you, either,” he said.
“Left ‘em behind when we got out of Tarrago, if you must know,” Wighard said. He was smiling. Argyros studied him. “I don’t believe you care.”
“Believe what you like,” the Anglelander said calmly. He glanced toward the ruined fortress of Pertuis.
“Looks like a fair place to stop for lunch.”
The sun was less than halfway up the sky. Argyros raised an eyebrow, but kept silent.
‘Hilda stirred in the saddle. She remarked, “Back in Constantinople, his imperial majesty Nikephoros must be displeased at the way the Franco-Saxons have violated his borders.”
“I daresay he is,” the magistrianos agreed politely. In fact, he knew the Emperor was furious. The Master of Offices had made that quite clear.
“Well, so is our good king Oswy,” Wighard said, seeming to come to a decision. “And well he might be, for they’ve used their foul sorcery on us as well as against you Romans.”
“Have they?” Argyros said, pricking up his ears.
“Indeed they have. Their cursed pirates have sunk or taken more than a score of good Anglelander ships in the Sleeve this past year.” That was the name the Anglelanders gave to the strait between Britannia and the Franco-Saxon lands. Wighard continued angrily, “No king will brook such an outrage for long, nor should he, even if the devil is behind it.”
“You sound very sure of that,” the magistrianos said.
“Of course I am. We always sailed rings round the lousy lubbers before. What else but black magic could give ‘em the edge now? King Oswy, God bless him, is certain of it, I can tell you.”
“And so,” Argyros said, making the connection, “you plan on inspecting the stronghold here to see if you can find out how it’s being done.”
Wighard reddened. Hilda, though, looked the magistrianos in the eye. “Just as you’ve been doing,” she challenged. “We’re well met, I think.”
She was, Argyros thought, altogether too astute. He shrugged and nodded. “We do seem to have a common interest, at any rate.”
“So you are one of the Emperor’s thegns, then?” Wighard said. Guessing at the strange Germanic word, the magistrianos nodded again. Wighard was also nodding, half to himself. “I thought it might be so, when I saw you here. Are we allies, then, in tracking down the Franco-Saxons’ wizardry?”
Argyros hesitated. If he could solve the puzzle, he was not at all sure he wanted to share the answer with another nation of barbarians. On the other hand, the Anglelanders and Franco-Saxons were enemies or one another . . . and Wighard and Hilda might come up with a solution where he could not. That would be very bad. “We have a common interest,” he repeated.
“If we do,” Hilda said, lightly stressing the first word, “suppose you tell us what you’ve found here.”
A hardheaded young woman, despite her exotic good looks, Argyros thought. In her position, he would have asked the same thing. Saying, “Fair enough,” he took the two Anglelanders around the fortress. Wighard sucked in his breath sharply when the magistrianos pointed out the scorched wall of the keep.
“The sign of the hellfire, you say?” he grunted, touching a silver chain around his neck. Argyros guessed he wore a crucifix or some relic under his tunic.
“Perhaps so, but I’d be more inclined to believe it came from St. Gall,” the magistrianos said. He dug the broken piece of pottery from his belt pouch and explained how he had found it and what he thought it meant.
He thought that would knock the Anglelanders’ maunderings about demons over the head, but it did not. To Wighard, in fact, the connection even made sense. “Who better to call up demons than monks?” he asked. “If anybody could control the fiends, they would be the ones.”
Argyros blinked; that had not occurred to him. He felt his picture of the world losing a little solidity. Who knew what evil the monks of St. Gall might work? They were heretics, after all, and capable of anything.
“Suppose it is deviltry,” he said at last. “What will you do then?”
“Me? I expect I’ll be frightened enough to piss my pants,” Wighard said, shivering. “All I’m for is getting Hilda to wherever the answers lie and keeping her safe afterward. Once she learns the summoning spells, Angleland will be able to use them too.”