He wasn’t sure if throwing a French word in there would work, but nez did rhyme with “away,” at least in its native pronunciation. But work it did; the smoke boiled backward as if it were a genie returning to its lamp, then disappeared with a soft crunching sound. There was only a charred spot in the center of the cupola floor, to show where it had been… And Saul, hanging over the railing, groaning in reverse as he tried to hold his stomach down. Matt called,
Saul straightened up, looking surprised, then turned to Matt with a sigh of relief. “Never thought I’d be glad to hear that jingle.”
“Singing commercials have to rank as one of the curses of civilization,” Matt agreed, “but they work-presumably increasing sales in our home universe, and settling stomachs in this one.”
“Funny, they had just the opposite effect back home,” Saul said. He turned to look out over the condottieri army with a very vengeful look. “Chemical warfare. Full-scale.”
“I can’t say no,” Matt sighed, “since they did it to us. After all, ours won’t be lethal.”
“I’ve smelled enough incense during my time to testify to that,” Saul agreed, “though I will say St. Basil’s nearly smoked me out of my apartment, the one time I tried it.”
“Never trust anything that needs charcoal to keep it going,” Matt agreed, “but we’re out in the open, so the smoke shouldn’t matter-and under the circumstances, I think St. Basil’s is what the doctor ordered.”
Saul snorted. “What doctor?”
“The Doctor of Divinity.”
“Wish we could feed them back their own medicine,” Saul growled. “Sweets to the sweet, after all.”
Matt was watching a small upheaval in the center of the army, right below the main avenue. “We just did, and it didn’t do much. These boys are used to bad smells, and know how to damp them out.”
“Where’d you get that from?”
“They’re Satanists-they must be used to the smell of brimstone by now. Okay, St. Basil’s incense, it is.”
“What else, in the Vatican?” Saul said.
Smoke billowed up everywhere-from the roads right in front of the riders, all long the bottom of the hill, drifting out over the army. Matt could hear the hacking and coughing all the way up to the top of the dome-but the shrieks of agony and cries of disgust took him by surprise. “We’re hurting them!” He raised his hands to start a counterspell, but felt Saul’s hand on his shoulder. “What do you think they were planning to do to us? Don’t worry, they’ll get away from it very fast.”
Sure enough, the whole army was on the move-away from the smoke. Half a dozen horses carrying robed figures burst out of the far side, riding hard. “There go your sorcerers,” Saul said. “Nothing fatal, worse luck.”
“The rest of the army isn’t hanging around, either,” Matt said. “Somehow, though, I wouldn’t call this a rout.”
“No, not when they’re just going home for the night, and home’s only a few blocks away. I can almost hear some of those footmen saying, ‘All in a day’s work.’ ”
“Yeah, and talking about how the officers messed it up again,” Matt agreed. “Don’t enlisted men always? Look at ‘em go!” They watched as the army boiled, moving steadily outward, away from the Vatican. Already, the leading edge was breaking up into units and going into long, low houses that had a very temporary look. Several of them were inside the Colosseum, which explained why the bandits were making it look like a crowd charging into a football stadium with only ten minutes left till game time. There was a huffing and a wheezing, and Arouetto hauled himself into view. “Arouetto!” Matt stepped over to catch his elbow, giving support. “What are you doing here? You’re in no shape for that climb!”
“I had need to tell you,” the scholar panted, “what you no doubt already know-the condottieri are in retreat! The pope sends his thanks!”
“He’s welcome,” Saul said, “but I think maybe we’d better stay up here for a while and make sure they don’t try to rally again today.”
“Why should they?” Matt shrugged. “They’ve put in their time, and they’ve got some partying coming up. We should come back tomorrow before sunrise, though.”
“Still, Wizard Saul speaks with prudence.” Arouetto found himself a seat on a pile of stone blocks. “We should wait.”
“Then while we’re here,” Saul said, finding another block to sit on, “I’d just like to double-check that history of Reme the pope gave us. You’ll pardon me, scholar, but I’m just automatically suspicious of history as told by a clergyman. Was the pope’s thumbnail history of the empire true?”
“So far as it went, yes,” Arouetto said slowly, “though he did not mention Caesar Decembris, who converted to Christianity and led most of the empire with him, by his example-”
“Only ‘most’?‘
“Aye, he did not insist on converting those who did not wish it. That is why there were so many pagans left for Hardishane to convert. And, of course, there is a great deal that he did not tell you, about what happened after the empire fell.”
“Sounds more like a slow slide than a fall,” Saul said sourly, “but I’ll take what I can get. Let’s start with Hardishane. What was going on in the rest of the world while he was rebuilding the Western empire? Ever hear of a prophet named Mohammed?”
“Of course,” Arouetto said, seeming surprised that they would think he had not. “He arose in Arabia during the last days of the empire, and preached a message from a holy book he wrote himself. It spread among the desert tribes, then became a fire that swept through Asia and North Africa, uniting their peoples in a new belief.”
“Only the Near East and North Africa?” Matt asked. “They never got into Spain-I mean, Ibile?”
“Oh, they tried.” Arouetto smiled. “But Reme would not allow it, and later the Gothic folk who had learned Latrurian civilization and military ways united behind a hero they called ‘the Lord.’ ”
“El Cid,” Saul murmured. “Are those their words for it? They united behind him and drove the Moorish folk back whenever they sought to invade.”
“That explains why the Moorish influence is so much less than it is in our universe,” Matt said to Saul, but the Witch Doctor was already asking, “Did the Moslems set up their own empire?”
“Aye. United in their new religion, they were the first of the southern provinces to break away from the Latrurian empire. Within years, they had founded one of their own.”
“But it was the missionaries who managed the conquest, not the generals?”
“At first, yes. But once Reme fell, the Moslems proclaimed a holy war and conquered what they could-though Heaven knows they had enough already! They battered at the gates of Byzantium itself, but were beaten back. Then, under the conqueror’s sons, they settled down to the wise and enlightened rule of their own Arabian empire.”
“Which hit its peak about the same time Hardishane welded Europe together into a new empire?”
“Aye.” Arouetto frowned. “You really must tell me how you can come from another world that is so like this one, and yet so different!”