Vitteleschi came at the run: billmen forming up in front of her, arrows rattling off war-hats. One man grunted and reached down to snap off a shaft stuck out of his calf. Rickard reached for her reins, fumbling the mare and the Lion banner. She rattled a string of orders: lance-leaders shouted at their men; they backed slowly, slowly, off the road, fighting German knights now, unwilling to charge the billmen, bolts shrieking out from Jan-Jacob Clovet"s crossbowmen- "Okay, pull "em back, steady, come on!"
She was conscious of nothing but weariness in her limbs and the need to run, fast, in full armour, up a snowy, tree-stump-littered slope. The snow dragged at her legs; every hidden rabbit-hole threatened to turn her ankle.
Two Oxford household riders and Florian went across in front of her at a shattering, unsafe pace. She glimpsed ruined grey walls ahead of them. Robert Anselm, bellowing, made a long wavering line out of the men; one end running to anchor up against the sh.e.l.l of a building. She sprinted for the other end of the line, against a deadfall of half-burned ancient trees, shoving men physically into position - her banner at her shoulder, Rickard carrying it, white-faced, panting, breath spraying out of his mouth; the little page Jean leading the horses - and she swung around as the red granite golems piled up the slope and into the line.
They can come through us, they can flank us if they get back of us, through the trees- "Ash!" Rickard screamed in her ear, pushing between Ned Mowlett and Henri van Veen. "Ash!"
"What?" She screamed at a runner, "Tell de Vere to use crossbows. If they"ll shatter armour, they"ll break stone! Rickard, what?"
"It"s Florian!"
Ash wrenched her gaze off the struggle: a wavering line of men backing up the hill. The Lion Azure standard flew in the centre of the line, a bright swallow-tail; Pieter Tyrrell carrying it braced in its leather socket against his body. In the sh.e.l.l of the ruined building behind her - a church, she thought, noticing in a split moment that the gla.s.sless windows had the striped-stone round arches of ancient religious buildings - a handful of men cl.u.s.tered where Rickard was pointing. Richard Faversham, Vitteleschi, Giovanni Petro.
"She"s hurt!" Rickard yelled. "She"s hurt, boss!"
"IT IS TIME, IT IS OUR TIME!".
The Wild Machines shout triumph through her. The strength of the voices knocks her staggering; she grabs at Rickard"s shoulder to hold herself up.
A shadow pa.s.sed over the boy, dulling his armour. She looked up.
The morning sunlight began to dim with the speed of water running from a broken jar.
Chapter Six.A last dimness showed her the snowy slope, glimmering, black with men thronging up the hill towards them, and the Eagle banner of Frederick of Hapsburg - and the banner of Sigismund of the Tyrol, she sees, with a second"s rueful amus.e.m.e.nt, remembering Cologne: that is the man who got me married to Fernando out of petty spite - and another banner: the notched wheel, differenced with a stripe. Half a dozen things fell into place, she remembers the young man with Leofric at the peace table, at the funerals: Sisnandus - although we were never formally introduced. With golems stolen from the House.
She stumbled, tripping over Vitteleschi as he sprints back to the line; reached down and found herself holding the shoulder of Thomas Rochester while he sc.r.a.ped steel and flint desperately together, single eye squinting, all the contents of his purse in the snow at his feet, except for his tinder-box.
"Slow match!" she bellowed. "Torches! Lights!"
She strode on up the slope, between struggling men, making for the ruined chapel. Somewhere ahead in the darkness a voice rose up, singing in Latin: Richard Faversham. She elbowed through the ma.s.s of men and Antonio Angelotti shoved a torch into her hand. The yellow light licked at his yellow hair.
"Got the arquebuses on the left!"
"Take those f.u.c.king golems out! Crack them! Get moving!"
She did not break stride, leaving it to her escort to keep up; lurching over a low, ruined wall and falling on her knees beside Richard Faversham.
Florian lay beside the priest, in as much shelter as the five-foot-high remnant of a masonry wall provided. Ash shoved the torch at Rickard, who held it and her banner-shaft.
Florian"s helmet was gone. Skin abraded at the throat. Black blood matted her hair, above her right ear. Ash fumbled off her gauntlets and touched her bandaged fingers to the clotted ma.s.s. Something gave. The woman moaned.
"What did this?"
d.i.c.kon de Vere, visibly white under the visor of his helmet, yelled, "One of those things! George is dead. It ripped my lord Viscount Beaumont out of his saddle. My lord brother Oxford got us out. It hit her. It hit her. Through helm and all!"
"s.h.i.t! " Lay her quiet, for weeks or months; give her into the care of priests; and she might mend. Not here, on a stricken hillside, in pitch-darkness, with a fight howling a few yards away, the other side of a wall.
Thomas Rochester stumbled into the circle of light and churned snow, treading on Richard Faversham"s feet. He held up a second torch. Off in the dark, Anselm"s strong voice bellowed commands; from further off, John de Vere"s shout lifted: "Hold the line!"
A thrum in the air warned her. Arrows fell out of the dark all around them. She straddled Florian with her body, grunting as one shaft deflected off her backplate.
"Get her into shelter!"
"There isn"t any!" Richard Faversham shouted over the close crash of blades. "This wall is the best we can do, boss!"
"She"s dying!" d.i.c.kon de Vere fell to his knees beside Florian, weeping. "Madam, it is the end of all things!"
"Son of a b.i.t.c.hl"
A raucous yell echoed, close at hand. She sprang up, cut at a dark figure piling over the wall; and the man fell down on to Richard Faversham, four bodkin-head arrows sticking out of his back. A figure in plate armour appeared at the end of the wall.
The Faris, a drawn sword in her hand, came into the light as she strode up to Rickard and the banner. "There are too few of us, too many of the golems. We have destroyed three, with bolts, but there is no holding against them with blades-" She stopped dead, seeing the unconscious body of Florian del Guiz in the torchlight. "Mouth of G.o.d! Is she dead?"
Richard Faversham stopped intoning. "Dying, madam."
The Faris lifted her blade.
Ash watched her do it.
As the sword"s point lined up with her open visor, where she stood straddling Florian, her body tensed without her willing it. The razor-edge and point grew in her vision.
"There is no time to be sorry," the Visigoth woman said. As she spoke, she snapped into movement, both hands gripping her sword and bringing it up and over her head and down, all the weight of her body behind it.
A hard crack! battered the black air. The Faris"s sword dropped out of its curve, missing Ash by a foot. The woman fell over on her back, screeching. Ash, mouth open, saw her writhe.
"No way!" Antonio Angelotti, at the end of the wall, stood up. The arquebus he held still smoked. The scent of his slow-match was strong on the cold air. He walked forward, looked down at the smashed bone, cartilage and blood that had been the woman"s right knee. "f.u.c.k. I was trying to get her in the back. Madonna, do whatever it is you"re going to do. And do it now!"
"What I"m going to do?" Ash said, dazed. She couldn"t hear herself or the battle over the Faris"s agonised screaming, high-pitched screeches punched out into the black morning air. "What I"m ..."
"Madonna." Angelotti came forward, between d.i.c.kon de Vere, Rickard, and Thomas Rochester, and gripped her hand. "They will force you, now; the Wild Machines. I think they already speak to you. You have something that you will do. Do it."
She was dimly aware that Richard Faversham cradled Florian, the surgeon-d.u.c.h.ess tiny against his broad chest and huge arms; that a man-at-arms and Thomas Rochester were kneeling, daggers out, cutting straps, stripping the leg armour from the Faris"s shattered knee.
I will never know whether Florian would have ordered my death, at this moment. She moved from Angelotti"s side, knelt, and touched the woman"s golden hair.
"This-" Angelotti"s light voice came from behind her. "This, the Faris, she thought she was the weapon of the Wild Machines. Knowing now that it is you, and that they control you, and that you cannot stop this - why then, yes, madonna; she was wise to try and kill you. You have something you will do."
When she looked over her shoulder, it was to see him finishing reloading the arquebus. Rickard"s white face stared, appalled; Rochester, shouting orders to the command staff, had not noticed what happened on his blind side; d.i.c.kon de Vere was nodding to himself.
"Do it," the Italian said, "or I will finish what she began. I saw the Wild Machines at Carthage, madonna. I am scared enough to kill you."
A wave of pressure went through her. She swayed, moving away from Florian"s body, facing him. Tears had cut white channels through the powder-black of his face; she saw it clearly in the torch"s light. He bit at his lip. He stood some ten, eleven feet away; far enough - if his arquebus missed fire - to draw his falchion before she could get to him.
He"s serious, she thought. And he"s right.
Ash smiled.
"Yeah, I got something I can do. I didn"t know it until now. You"re a persuasive man, Angeli."
"I am a frightened man," he repeated, steadily. "If you die now, there will still be a chance for us to wage war and destroy the Wild Machines. We would have time. Madonna, what can you do? Can you resist their force?"
Another wave of weakness: deep in mind and body.
She grinned at him.
"They control me. I can"t stop this. I can"t do anything," Ash said. "Except -I can talk to them. I can still do that."
She walked a few feet to the overgrown fallen altar. The torch illuminated the stonework, the carved lions at the four corners, and, on the front panel, the Boar under the Tree. She knelt down in the trodden snow.
"Why?" she said aloud. "Why are you doing this to us?"
The voices in her head, multiple and cold, braided themselves into a single inhuman voice: "IT MUST BE. WE HAVE KNOWN FOR LONGER THAN YOU CAN IMAGINE THAT IT MUST BE.".
A sorrow pierced her.
Not her own, she realised in shock; not a human sorrow. Bleak, implacable grieving.
"Why must it be?"
"WE HAVE NO CHOIC, WE HAVE LABOURED THROUGH AEONS FOR THIS ACT. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY BUT THIS.".
"Yeah. Right. Just because you want to wipe us out," Ash said. Her tone was sardonic. Her face dripped tears. She felt Antonio Angelotti"s fingers gripping her pauldron, where he stood behind her.
"It"s bad war," she said. "That"s all it is. Bad war. You just want to wipe us out."
"YES.".
Pressure grows in her mind, the impetus to an act she cannot deny.
"Why?"
"WHAT IS IT TO YOU, LITTLE SHADOW?".
"You want to wipe everything out," she said. "Everything. As if we"d never been, that"s what you said. As if there"d never been anything but you, from the beginning of time."
"MORE HAS GONE INTO THIS THAN YOU CAN KNOW, IT IS TIME, BURGUNDY DIES. IT IS-"
"I will know."
Ash listened. She wrenched: mind, soul, body; fell forward across the snow-covered stones, tasting blood in her mouth.
She realised that she was not being resisted.
"WE SORROW FOR YOU." The voices of the Wild Machines clamoured in her inner hearing, "but we have seen what you become."
Bewildered, Ash said, "What?"
They sing in her head, sorrowful voices, the great demons of h.e.l.l mourning: "FOR FIVE THOUSAND YEARS, WE GREW, MINDS, BECOMING BRIGHT IN THE DARKNESS. WE SENSED YOUR WEAK FORCE, DEDUCED WHAT WE COULD, FORM GUNDOBAD, WE LEARNED THE WORLD-"
"I just bet you did," Ash muttered sourly, on a mouth full of blood and snow. She was simultaneously aware of Angelotti standing over her, falchion in hand, the rest standing back as the noise from the line-fight shrieked closer to the chapel; aware of every muscle tensing as she flinched at the fighting; and of the voices thundering inside her head.
"WE HAVE COMMUNICATED FOR CENTURIES, WATCHED YOU FOR LONGER, AND WE HAVE CALCULATED-"
"SWIFTER THAN THOUGHT, SWIFTER THAN A MAN"S MIND-"
"AND FOR CENTURY UPON CENTURY-"
"CALCULATED WHAT YOU WILL BECOME.".
They speak together, as one: "YPU WILL BECOME DEMONS.".
"I"ve seen war, and I"ve done war," Ash said flatly, getting herself back up on to hands and knees. "I don"t think I need to believe in demons. Not given what men do - what I do. That doesn"t give you any right to wipe us out!"
"WHAT YOU HAVE DONE IS NOTHING, ALL THE ATROCITIES OF WAR, FOR CENTURIES, ARE AS NOTHING TO WHAT YOU WILL BECOME.".
Kneeling back, tears dripping down her face, in bitter cold, in darkness, she cannot help a hysterical hilarity creeping into her mind. I"m arguing with demons at the end of the world. Arguing! s.h.i.t.
She said, "Worse weapons, maybe-"
"YOU CHANGE THE WORLS," soft voices sang in her mind, lamenting.
"GUNDOBAD. YOU. EACH MAN HAS HIS BURDEN OF GRACE. YES, WE OURSELVES HAVE BRED THE RACE TO PRODUCE YOU, BUT WE HAVE ONLY DONE FIRST WHAT YOUR RACE WOULD HAVE DONE IN TIME. THERE WILL BE MANY ASHES IN YOUR FUTURE.".
Bewildered, breath coming hard in her throat, she forced out: "I don"t -understand."
"YOU WERE BRED TO BE A WEAPON. STRONG: STRONG ENOUGH TO MAKE UNREAL THIS WORLD. THERE WILL BE MORE, BRED LIKE YOU, WE HAVE FORESEEN IT. IT IS INEVITABLE. AND THE WEAPONS WILL BE USED - UNTIL.
AT LAST, THERE WILL BE NOTHING SOLID. WE WILL NOT EXIST. THE MANY SPECIES OF THE WORLD WILL NOT EXIST. THERE WILL BE ONLY MAN, THE MIRACLE-WORKER, RENDING THE FABRIC OF THE UNIVERSE UNTIL IT TATTERS. CHANGING HIMSELF, TOO. UNTIL THERE IS NOTHING STABLE, WHOLE OR REAL; ONLY MIRACLE UPON MIRACLE, CHANGE UPON CHANGE, AN ENDLESS, CHAOTIC FLOW.".
Colder than the snow she knelt in, Ash said, "More wonder-workers ..."
"IN THE END, YOU WILL ALL BE WONDER-WORKERS, YOU WILL BREED YOURSELF INTO IT. WE HAVE RUN THE SIMULATIONS A BILLION, BILLION TIMES: IT IS WHAT WILL BE. THERE IS NO WAY TO PREVENT IT EXCEPT BY PREVENTING YOU. WE WILL WIPE OUT HUMANITY, MAKE IT AS IF IT HAD NEVER EXISTED, SO THAT THE UNIVERSE WILL REMAIN COHERENT AND WHOLE.".
Chapter Seven.It entered her mind complete: words processed so rapidly that her understanding was not verbal: was an intact apprehension of a world which may flow, slide, mutate, morph into multiple realities, none with any more stability than any other. Until pattern itself is lost, structure unstructured; geometry and symmetry lost. And there is no mind with any continuous self, that cannot be changed, by a friend, or enemy, or a momentary impulse of despair.
"That"s why?" Ash found herself shaking, dizzy. Fear shook her pulse. "That"s why. What - just destroy us? Is that it?"
"YOU ARE OUR WEAPON, WE WILL CHANNEL THE SUN"S POWER INTO YOU, NOW.".
"GIVE YOU ALL POSSIBILTY, ALL PROBABILITY THAT EVER HAS BEEN-"
"ROOT OUT YOUR PEOPLE, WHEREVER IT HAS BEEN POSSIBLE FOR THEM TO BE, MAKE IT DIFFERENT, IMPOSSIBLE-"
"COLLAPSE THE BIRTH OF YOUR KIND INTO IMPOSSIBLITY-"