devilstone chronicles 01 - devils band (40 page)

Bos, who was busy fencing with three Swiss swordsmen, heard the roar of the explosion and looked up to see the tower of flame, fifty feet high, rise from the gun platform. For a heartbeat, he thought that God had appeared to lead his chosen people out of bondage and though the distraction lasted less than a second it was enough for one of his attackers to snatch a wheel-lock pistol from his belt and fire. The pistol’s ball struck the Frisian’s leg at point blank range and buried itself deep in the muscles of his thigh.

In spite of the shock and pain Bos remained on his feet but the pistoleer’s companions saw their opportunity and moved in to finish off the Frisian. Even badly wounded, Bos managed to parry his opponents’ cuts and lunges but he was bleeding like headless hen and his strength was ebbing fast. In another minute, Bos would have been swept away by the blizzard of Swiss steel but Prometheus ran to his aid. The Nubian cut down two of the Swiss as if they more nothing more than stalks of wheat then thrust his sword into the pistoleer who was frantically trying to reload his weapon.

“So the ox has had his horns trimmed,” said Prometheus as he knelt down to examine the ragged hole in Bos’ leg.

“A child’s mistake,” groaned the Frisian weakly, he tried to stay standing but the pain was too great and with a roar as loud as that of the Minotaur in the Labyrinth he collapsed. Immediately, Prometheus started to tear strips of cloth from the dead
reisläufers’
tunics.

“Don’t move or you’ll bleed to death and I’m sure St Peter isn’t ready to receive Lutheran heretics just yet,” he said as he tied the makeshift bandages around Bos’ wound and used his dagger as a tourniquet. He twisted the cloths tighter until Bos yelped with pain but the flow of blood ceased.

“Does that feel better?” said the Nubian but Bos didn’t reply, he’d passed out. Prometheus cursed the gods of war for their fickleness but imperial casualties had been mercifully few. For the loss of just twenty of their comrades the raiders had slaughtered every defender in the garrison and as a reward for their total victory, Thomas told his men to strip the abbey of everything of value then destroy what they couldn’t carry. The chance to plunder was what every man in The Devil’s Band had been waiting for and the loudest of the approving cheers came from Quintana.

“C’mon lads, the chapel is sure to be stuffed full of money for the relief of the poor and none are poorer than us, so fetch a barrow and follow me!” he cried. His men quickly found a handcart and eagerly followed their sergeant into the abbey’s chapel. The barrow’s wooden wheels clattering up the stone steps made a noise loud enough to wake the dead entombed in the chapel’s crypt but Quintana emerged a few minutes later with nothing but an angry face and an empty handcart.

“Those thieving, cow-buggering Swiss bastards, they’ve picked the place clean!” Quintana cried and he kicked a dead Swiss halberdier in disgust just as Prometheus emerged from the darkness.

“I thought I’d find you here, now if you’ve no use for that cart follow me. That damn fool Frisian has taken a pistol ball in the leg and he lies as senseless as a millstone by the gate,” he said urgently. Grumbling at the injustice of being left a pauper, Quintana ordered his men to lend a hand but they wouldn’t attend to any of the wounded until they’d finished searching every corpse they could find for rings, coins and anything else of value. The pickings were slim and the dead bodies in the abbey’s cloisters and dormitories seemed to be as impoverished as their late comrades by the gun platform.

There could be no doubt that the abbey’s gold and silver had been looted by the Swiss months ago, and immediately spent buying whores and wine from the sutlers camped in the French baggage park at Mirabello. Though this knowledge did little to alleviate Quintana’s anger, he had the wit to realise that the
reisläufers’
empty purses could only mean that the entire French army hadn’t been paid in weeks. Frundsberg was bound to be interested in the news that his enemy was running short of cash so, leaving his men to help Prometheus heave Bos onto their barrow, he went to find Thomas.

Having completed his mission, the captain of The Devil’s Band was busy supervising the evacuation of the abbey and he agreed with Quintana that Frundsberg must be told of the Swiss mercenaries’ poverty as soon
as possible. There was no sign of Bos or Prometheus by the gate so Thomas and Quintana joined their men picking their way over the boggy ground between the French and imperial lines. As they reached the bridge over the Vernavola, a series of explosions from the abbeys of San Spirito and San Giacomo indicated the other companies had also accomplished their tasks.

It was as they crossed the bridge that Thomas and Quintana caught up with Prometheus who was dragging the cart carrying Bos and three other wounded by himself. Forgetting their rank, the two men immediately took hold of the shafts and helped the Nubian haul the barrow across the ditches and craters in front of the imperial lines. On their return, Thomas was summoned to a meeting of captains so it was left to Prometheus and Quintana to carry Bos to his tent. There were plenty of doctors, of varying degrees of skill, in the camp but Prometheus had become an accomplished physician during his long war with the Funj and he knew how clean and close a gunshot wound.

“The Frisian is lucky, the ball didn’t sever an artery so if I can remove it and stitch the wound he’ll live,” said Prometheus and he asked Quintana to buy a bottle of aquavit, a needle, physician’s pincers and a catgut crossbow string from the nearest sutler’s tent whilst he removed the blood soaked bandages. Without a word Quintana disappeared from the tent and returned some minutes later carrying everything the Nubian needed. With the bandages removed, Prometheus used the aquavit to clean the bloodied flesh but the stinging spirit roused Bos from his slumbers.

“Dear sweet Jesus Christ! What in the name of Pope Julius’ puke-stained beard have you done to me?” Bos cried as his senses, and the pain, revived but in the next moment he slumped back on his cot and his whole body began to shake as if possessed by demons.

“Quickly, the angel of death is trying to tear the Frisian’s soul from his body, unless we hold him still the ball may move and sever an artery after all!” snapped Prometheus. There was no time to find a length of rope to bind Bos to the cot and the only way to stop him convulsing was for Quintana to sit on his chest. Through the waves of pain Bos could see the Portugee sitting astride him like a catamite trying to satisfy a lazy bishop, which did nothing to put the Frisian at ease.

“What are you doing you foul sodomite,” he roared but his curses became nothing more than strangled screams as Prometheus thrust the pincers deep into the wound.

“Is this vengeance for having your liver torn from your body by the eagles’ talons,” Bos moaned. In his agony the Frisian imagined his physician had been transformed into the Titan of Greek myth but Prometheus ignored him and continued to probe Bos’ punctured muscles for the pistol ball. After what seemed like an eternity of torture, the Nubian gave a cry of triumph and pulled the misshapen bullet from the hole in Bos’ leg yet, even now, there was no respite for the tormented patient.

“I still have to remove the patches of cloth torn from your breeches and hose, if they stay in the wound your blood will be poisoned and you will die of fever,” said Prometheus and he plunged the pincers back into Bos’
mangled flesh. As he searched for the grubby bits of cloth, the Frisian howled, screamed and cursed but Quintana’s weight and strength held him still. The Nubian kept to his task and eventually pulled out two scraps of bloody fabric, each only slightly larger than a thumbnail.

“Almost finished,” he said with satisfaction.

“Who taught you healing, Torquemada the Inquisitor?” Bos cried but there was still more pain to come. The Nubian poured some aquavit into the wound and Bos yelped like a whipped hound.

“The caraway in the spirit will kill any poisons,” the Nubian explained but the wound had begun to bleed profusely and had to be closed at once. Ignoring the Frisian’s threats to take terrible revenge if he bled to death, Prometheus deftly threaded the needle with a thin length of catgut taken from the unwound bowstring and sewed the wound shut as expertly as a tailor mending a torn coat. When he was done, Bos lay panting and sweating on the cot whilst Quintana dabbed away the gore and bound the stitches with clean bandages.

“Is that supposed to cure me?” Bos said through the mist of sweat and pain that shrouded his body.

“The mother who bore you suffered much more than that little tickle. Besides, your pain will ease in a few days whereas she suffered for years!” replied Quintana. The Frisian said nothing in reply, instead he snatched up the flask of aquavit, took a long draught and let his tortured body relax. In the next moment he was fast asleep.

Whilst Bos was suffering at the hands of his doctor, Thomas and the other captains who’d led the raid were making their report to the imperial commander-in-chief. The Count of Lannoy listened carefully to what his men had to say, especially about the lack of plunder, before awarding them each a bounty of five guilders for a good night’s work and dismissing them from his tent.

Lannoy was pleased with the success of the raid, apart from destroying the siege guns threatening his camp, the dashing Spanish horsemen had delivered his letters to the besieged garrison’s commander Don Antonio de Leyva and returned with vital information. However, as his captains left to claim their reward, Lannoy could only ponder on the irony that although he served the richest monarch in Christendom, his financial situation was as parlous as that of the French king.

The letters from Spain Lannoy had received the previous day had warned him that the emperor’s patience was almost exhausted and His August Majesty would not send any more gold to Italy until the Imperial Army had, at the very least, rescued the 9,000 men of the imperial garrison trapped inside Pavia. Lannoy had angrily tossed the letter into the fire and as the flames consumed the emperor’s ill-disguised rebuke, he’d wondered how his star could shine so brightly one moment yet fade so quickly the next.

Like the emperor he served, Lannoy had been born in Flanders and, because both the German Hapsburg emperors and the French Valois kings claimed his homeland, it was inevitable that he should become a soldier. Though his ancestors had fought on the French side at the Battle
of Agincourt, Lannoy had chosen the Holy Roman Empire and had entered imperial service during the reign of the old Hapsburg Emperor Maximilian I. The ambitious young man had greatly impressed his patron, who’d made Lannoy a Knight of the Golden Fleece and chief equerry to his grandson the future emperor Charles V.

Lannoy’s meteoric rise had continued once Charles had ascended the imperial throne. In rapid succession, the new emperor had appointed his favourite Governor of Tournai, Viceroy of Naples and commander of all the imperial armies in Italy and Lannoy had repaid Charles’ faith in him by crushing a French army at the Battle of the Sesia River. This victory had opened the way for the rebel Duke of Bourbon to invade Provence but Sesia had been the imperial army’s last success on the battlefield. Bourbon’s failure to capture Marseille, followed by the ignominious retreat over the Alps and the abandoning of Milan to the French, meant the imperial army’s commander in chief was in danger of losing his lucrative position.

If Lannoy couldn’t relieve Pavia, let alone drive Francis and his army out of Italy, his career would be over but he was to loathe risk a full-scale assault on the city. If such an attack failed his own army would be destroyed, the French would finally win control Lombardy and he’d be utterly ruined. On the other hand, if he continued to disobey The Emperor’s orders to relieve Pavia, the flow of imperial gold would cease, his unpaid army would mutiny and his disgrace would also be total.

There seemed to be no way out of this impasse and Lannoy knew time was running out. In the dispatches
brought from Pavia by the previous night’s raid the garrison’s commander, de Leyva, had admitted he’d only recently averted a mutiny by melting down church plate to pay his mercenaries. De Leyva had also claimed that had he not committed such sacrilege, his
landsknechts
would have surrendered the city to the French and gone home.

Though Lannoy and de Leyva were both spending gold faster than an old fool married to a young trollop, the revelation that there was nothing worth plundering in the Five Abbeys could only mean that the French king had also seized church plate to pay his men. If Francis was as bankrupt as himself, it followed that neither commander could keep their mercenaries in the field any longer than the other and this gave Lannoy an idea of how he could simultaneously assault Pavia and abandon the siege whilst keeping both his honour and his purse intact.

Instead of a bloody assault on the French siege works, an attack on the enemy camps in the deer park would keep Francis’ army occupied whilst Pavia’s garrison broke out of the besieged city. Once the two imperial forcers were reunited, they could withdraw to the safety of Lodi and wait for the better weather, and the imperial treasure ships, to arrive in a few months’ time.