On the final day of the journey, high above the world, they toiled onto an undulating ridge, a narrow spine of rock along which the final leg of the road was laid. The vast gulfs to either side were a test of a man’s steel; one needed only to stray a yard from the road and he would plunge to his doom. With early afternoon came rain, heavy and teeming, and after the rain a miasmal gloom. By late afternoon, they were relieved to find bluffs approaching, and soon they were following a narrow passage between sheer walls of granite.
“Make haste!” the bishop called through the roof of his coach. “We are almost there.”
The driver did not make haste, for the alley was so tight that he could barely advance without the carriage’s wheel hubs scraping on rock. Several times the way was blocked by iron portcullises, now rusty and thick with moss. Far overhead, on the stone lintels of these gateways, were walled and roofed guard-posts, but no guards were on duty. In each case it took two of the bishop’s men to scale these great iron frameworks and work the crank-handles, slowly lifting the obstructions out of the way.
At last, with dusk falling, they came to a point where the passage ended, and a bottomless chasm lay before them. On the far side sat the arched entrance to Castello Malconi, although at present the drawbridge was raised and out of reach. Wearily, the bedraggled party gazed up.
“Sister!” Malconi cried. “Sister, we seek admittance!”
After what seemed an age, a lone figure appeared on the black battlements: Duchess Zalmyra. She wore a fleece shawl; her long, tar-black hair was bound in a scarf.
“Zalmyra… your passage gates are unmanned!” Malconi called up to her. “How can this happen in a time of trouble?”
“It has happened,” she called back, “because, thanks to your master, there are no men to operate them.”
“If by ‘my master’ you mean Emperor Lucius, you’ll be shocked to know that he is dead.”
“Hardly shocked, brother.” She still made no effort to have the drawbridge lowered.
“For God’s sake, Zalmyra! Arthur’s army is on the move. It heads southward through France, sacking every Roman-held castle or town.”
“You seemed unconcerned by this possibility a few weeks ago.”
“That was before I knew Arthur had put a price on my head.”
Her voice crackled with scorn. “How little foresight you princes of the Church show.”
“Open the gates, I beg you!”
She shrugged and turned away.
With much squealing and grinding of cogs, the drawbridge was lowered. Malconi almost ran across it, his guards and coach following at a more sedate pace.
His sister met him in the courtyard. Malconi could only regard the deserted parapets with mouth agape. “You have no household guard?”
“Most died at the Vale of Sessoine,” she replied.
“Then we are in very serious trouble.”
“You have your Praetorians. Will they not suffice?”
“Against the whole of Arthur’s army, which grows stronger by the day? Now, I hear, the Franks have joined him; they call it ‘liberation,’ the insolent curs. Everything Childeric has he owes to Rome, yet now he accuses us of tyranny and says his people are glad to be free.”
“And who wouldn’t?” Zalmyra chuckled. “Emperor Lucius called the Franks his servants. King Arthur had the wisdom to call them friends.”
“This is madness, complete madness.”
“If so, it’s a madness cooked up by your beloved Simplicius.”
“He may save me yet. I can’t believe he’d cut off his strong right hand without resistance.”
Zalmyra laughed again. “He sacrificed fifty thousand men at Sessoine. Why would he not sacrifice you?”
Malconi’s voice became desperate. “Proclates of Palermo and Pelagius of Tuscany have been named as well. Warrants for our arrests have been issued. But surely Arthur won’t make good on this threat? We are men of the Church.”
“Arthur may consider that you have betrayed the Church,” she said.
“Betrayed…?”
“Not the Church of Simplicius, that tottering palace of wealth and intrigue. But the people of Christendom, the ocean of innocent souls entrusted to you and your kind by Jesus Christ, and abused and neglected ever since.”
“But that isn’t true.”
“Hah! Tell the people of Brittany.”
Malconi felt butterflies in the pit of his belly as he recalled the stories he’d heard about the war-crimes committed in Brittany. Neither he, nor any other churchman, had ordered such depredations, but neither had they sought to stop them. “Say you’ll give me refuge. Zalmyra, I beg you…”
“Don’t beg, Severin,” she said disparagingly. “In the name of your carpenter God, don’t lower yourself to that. I’ll give you refuge. Of course I will.”
“And you’ll find new men, new soldiers with which to fight?”
“I need no soldiers. When the Vandals came against our bastion… half a million of them died in the valley below, and they landed not a single blow on us.”
“But Arthur won’t attack from the front. He’s too clever…”
“Arthur won’t attack at all, you fool. He is otherwise engaged. But there will be a challenge… in due course.”
“You think you can meet it?”
“I already have. He’s a flesh and blood man. Very human. But strong. I got close enough to sense that much.” She smiled strangely. “No matter. The agents of our defence are abroad on the slopes of these mountains even as we speak.”
Malconi remembered the cries and gibbers in the benighted vales below. “Don’t tell me you’ve unleashed demons?”
“Ask me no questions, brother, and your prissy Christian conscience can remain clear.”
Twenty-Seven
Wulfstan braced his foot against the corpse and tugged on the sword-hilt. With a grating of bone, he freed the weapon.
“Roman falcata,” he said, holding the bloody blade aloft. “Seems our friends are falling out among themselves.”
“How long?” Lucan asked.
“Well… this fellow was killed about a day and a half ago.”
“We’re gaining on them,” Turold commented.
Wulfstan nodded. Before they departed The Red Gauntlet, its landlord had informed them that, just short of a week earlier, a party of New Rome’s soldiers had passed by in the company of two women, one young and fair, the other matronly.
Lucan glanced across the rock-strewn hillside. The encircling pinewoods were deep, filled with impenetrable shadow. It was easy to imagine someone observing them, though everything he’d learned about his quarry so far suggested he was in headlong flight, not thinking rationally enough to launch an ambush.
Less than half a day later, they encountered a village.
It was located at the lower end of a narrow defile. The first they saw of it was a stockade made from pine-logs, the gate partly open. Roofs of houses, thatched with sticks and firs, were visible beyond. There was no sound, and no sign of movement on the village rampart. Lucan and his men reined in about sixty yards away. They were within bowshot, but still nothing happened.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Malvolio said tightly.
For once Benedict didn’t dispute with him.
“Disperse,” Lucan said quietly.
The horsemen fanned out into a broad skirmish-line. Steel clanked as visors were snapped shut. With shields raised and spears lowered, they advanced. For several moments the only noise was the snuffling of horses and the clumping of hooves.
Still nobody appeared on the village stockade.
They halted again, about thirty yards short.
“That open gate is a clear invitation,” Wulfstan said, voicing a suspicion Lucan shared, “but it isn’t a risk I’d take if I was them. My lord… I don’t think there’s anybody here.”
“Everyone, hold your ground,” Lucan said, climbing from the saddle. He glanced to his archers, who were mounted nearby, arrows nocked. He made eye contact with them, and they nodded their understanding.