Spira Mirabilis (44 page)

‘By the holy face of Lucca – don’t you realise you have a sword
in your hand? The Grand Legion might be riddled with flux and pox, but what does he have to oppose it? A fancy title and a yard of red cloth. Turn around while the legion’s still intact and march on Concord.’

Leto stiffened, realising that he should never have let his guard down. ‘After everything, you’re plotting still. You had your chance to overthrow the Collegio and all you succeeded in doing was destabilising the empire and giving Veii time to mount the defence that has so ruinously delayed us. I should have left you hanging on that tree.’

‘I’m beginning to wish you had, lad,’ Geta sighed.

The lanterns still retarded the Sirocco’s pace but the passage westward was faster now that they were no longer burdened with pack animals and foot soldiers. They looked like what Khoril insisted they were: a raiding party. The tribesmen were comfortable with this style of warfare and remained confident – but they had never seen the productivity of Ariminum’s arsenal, or the earth-trembling mass of Concord’s legions.

Yellow-spotted dolphins escorted the convoy across the Strait of Otranto, much to the delighted admiration of the Ebionites. It was a restful evening and they were sailing through warm green waters into a blinding setting sun when a Sicarii lazing in the rigging drawled, ‘Scout ship ahoy!’

Moments later, the lead crow’s nest confirmed it by raising a red flag.

The xebecs either side of the
Tancred
took off like loosed arrows. Sofia was in the first xebec, the
Solomon
, which was beating at attack-speed, while the other xebec, following at battle-speed, began firing its forward chasers.

The scout ship had spotted them now and briefly presented its beam as it tacked to bring itself about; the xebecs’ light guns fired and it completed the turn with only a shattered bowsprit. Every hand not at the oars lined the weather rail to stiffen the xebec and increase its speed. The cutwater struck the cresting waves like a hammer, shattering them to foamy spindrift, till an apparent snowstorm enveloped them. Captured wind moulded the sail to stiffness and the yards were braced taut.

The scout’s stern chasers were aimed squarely at them and a ball went hissing over Sofia’s head and punctured the mainsail. The gap increased. The Lazars were strong, but the scout’s crew were more practised.

Then they struck a lucky stroke: the sniping xebec missed, but the shot skidded along the scout’s portside and tore through the oarsmen. The havoc it wreaked below deck was apparent from its sudden stop. The uninjured rowers on the other side succeeded only in exposing their beam again and this time two volleys struck home.

A thin plume of white smoke rose up from the becalmed scout.

A cheer went up from the rest of the Sirocco, who had been watching the chase, but it died when the scout fired a shot into the westward sky which exploded into green sparks. Sofia’s worst fears were realised when she heard the cry from above, but she ascended the rigging herself to confirm it. There, a league to the west, was a second scout ship silhouetted against the dying sun, going about.

‘Shall we give chase?’ the tillerman panted. ‘We’ve reserve rowers – we could pump out our water and throw the guns overboard to give us more speed—’

‘Save your energy,’ she said. Even if they did manage to run the second ship down, there was likely another further west still.

Instead, she had the stranded ship’s slaves unchained and let loose on their former masters.

As the rest of the xebecs returned to formation, Sofia came aboard the
Tancred
.

‘They know we’re coming.’ She spoke casually, but they all knew that their odds, never good to begin with, had just got even longer. The moon rose and the stars became visible, merging with the running lights and glowing battle-lanterns. The ships spread out to avoid collision, and each sailed alone with its fears on the dark sea.

*

Next morning’s blue-green sea was beautiful, but Khoril was wary of the slow, pregnant swells beating against the starboard bow. ‘Augurs storms in the west. Madonna help us if a nasty Gregale comes upon us.’

There was nowhere to seek cover, though Taranto – the thumb of Etruria – was due north. It was Sofia’s first sight of her motherland in a year. She held up her child and said softly, ‘Look, Iscanno! That’s
home
.’

He solemnly chewed on a lock of her hair and looked. Taranto was the Black Hand’s best port, so the Moor would have it well-blockaded, Khoril assured them. Besides, it was capacious enough for the better-armed Ariminumese galleys to keep their distance – just the type of fight he wanted to avoid. They needed somehow to fight a land battle at sea. Besides, their destination was on the far side of Etruria. If they rescued Salerno, the war was not won, but if Salerno fell it was most certainly lost.

Even so, once they passed Taranto all of them felt another fatal irrevocable step had been taken. That feeling was confirmed when a dozen Ariminumese galleys emerged from the port in hot pursuit.

*

While each ship was being stripped for battle – the yards padded and slung with chains, splinter-netting rigged, powder prepared and shot stacked – the leadership held a midnight council on the
Tancred
’s foredeck. The Messina Strait was leagues away yet, but they could just make it out, stretching before them in the moonlight.

The creased corners of Khoril’s old map, pinned down with a sextant and a spyglass, trembled in the wind. The lines might be faded, but it clearly showed the dread gauntlet between the Black Hand and the Three Sicilies. Besides what lay ahead, they could see the distant lights of the chasing galleys behind them.

‘They’ve not increased their pace since Taranto,’ Khoril said.
‘They’re content to keep us in sight. They’re herding us towards the strait, knowing we’ll never cross it.’ He drew a half-circle around the Sicilies. ‘We have to go round to get to Salerno.’

Sofia stared at the map. ‘Let’s cross the strait then – they won’t be expecting that, and if we go now, by the time they see us, we’ll be through.’

‘Navigate the strait by moonlight?’ Khoril was aghast. ‘I’d not do it for all the silver in Ariminum.’

Bakhbukh was with her, but his voice lacked his usual authority. In this liquid desert, he was an alien. Sofia couldn’t explain her urgency, but now that Etruria was in her sight, the Darkness could see her: she could feel it reaching out for her and for Iscanno. ‘To get this far and have our nerves fail—’

‘If you had ever seen Charybdis, believe me, you’d not be so casual,’ Khoril said. ‘Think of your child.’

‘I am!’ she insisted, but saner heads agreed with Khoril.

‘West it is.’

*

After the council broke up, Fulk climbed down to the
Tancred
’s rowing deck. Whatever happened in the next few hours, there would be no further time for talk. Over the last weeks, the Lazars had sought to lose themselves in servitude, but this voyage into the unknown had been an ordeal for their faith.

They knew the hour was imminent and they were all leaning at their stations, praying. Here in the ship’s bowels, the air was thick, the walls caulked with the congealed fog of sweat.

‘Brothers,’ he said softly.

They made the sign of the Sword and warily, grudgingly, gave their Grand Master their attention.

‘This day you are Crusaders.’

‘We are orphans, Grand Master,’ said Gustav dryly. Such back-talk would have been unthinkable a year ago.

‘Yes – just as the first Crusaders were orphans. They had no
fortune at home, so they sought it doing God’s work. For them, Crusade meant protecting the Holy Land from the devil. Things were more complicated than they could have imagined. The Ebionites aren’t the infidel – their fidelity to God is equal to ours.’

‘But they are not so handsome,’ said the old knight.

Fulk chuckled with the rest. ‘I’ll give you that, Gustav.’ He looked over the rows,
seeing
each man despite the masks. Even those the disease had ravaged still wanted to hold onto their self-respect. ‘I won’t lie: most of us will never see Akka again, and I know some of you begin to fear that we have given our lives for a dead cause. Brothers, Crusade
never
ends. This night has brought us to the very shores of the land our fathers left. We made the devil so unwelcome at home that he has retreated here – and we will not let that worm rest. All lands are holy lands, even Etruria. We are as fortunate as our fathers, for like them, we are doing God’s work. Like them, we fight wherever we can make our sacrifice count most. Tonight that’s here. Be brave: fight for Akka, fight for your brothers – fight because
God wills it!
’

The chant of
Deus lo Volt!
made the deck vibrate beneath the Ebionites’ feet, and though they rolled their eyes at the gauche manners of the Marians, it cheered them to know such madmen were at their side this night.

*

The Sicilian coast was dark except for the light of burning Syracuse. The Sicilies’ division into a trinity was a convenient fiction of the geographers – the same queer breed that fancied the archipelago formed a stiletto for which Etruria was eternally reaching. Beside the three principal islands – Palermo, Messina and Syracuse – there were any number of islets, not to mention hidden mile-wide reefs waiting to tear into the hulls of careless ships like a fishmonger’s gutting knife.

In an instant the night was impaled by a trail of fire that streaked across the starry sky and hung for a moment before
melting into flaming drops that hissed where they landed on the water – hissed, and kept burning like lime-coloured lights of a ghostly puppetshow. The glare pulled back the curtain of darkness to reveal some forty ships directly ahead, lined up beam to beam. At the far end of the line was the source of the fiery rainbow, and several smaller ships were extending the barricade of fire in case they should try to circumnavigate.

Khoril ordered a full stop before they came within range of the fire-siphons. The gun crews were ready: slow-matches smoking in little tubs along the deck, the men at their stations. ‘We could go south,’ his navigator suggested hopefully. ‘Creep along the Barbary coast for a few days then turn north?’

‘And if they intercept us? We run away again? If we take that craven course then Salerno is done for.’ He shouted across to the
Solomon
, ‘Looks like you got your wish, Contessa. The strait it is, Madonna help us. The strait it is.’

*

The Moor’s men cheered as the
Tancred
changed course. He only nodded and scanned his formation again, not to ensure the line was straight – he trusted his captains’ seamanship. Their greed, that was another matter. Pirates practically considered it a sacred duty to pursue a feeing enemy but –
mirabile dictu
! – they restrained themselves. He was strangely disappointed. How soft the Serenissima had made them.

*

Khoril too was bothered by the restraint. ‘Not that I’m complaining, but usually they’d fall on us like wolves.’

Sofia, on board the
Solomon
, was looking back at the wall of ships just waiting. Yes, it was ominous. She was almost relieved to see the wall slowly beginning to turn. The most southerly ship travelled a wide arc while the ship nearest to the coast merely turned about forty degrees. It looked like a great door shutting
behind them, an image compounded as the fifteen galleys from Taranto arrived to complete the encirclement.

Khoril could not bury his misgivings. He hovered near the tiller. Their pursuers’ pace had not increased; it was just a slowly tightening noose. ‘What’s he waiting for?’ he grumbled.

‘They don’t think we have the salt,’ the tillerman said. ‘Well, he’s in for a—’

‘Full stop!’ Khoril shouted.

*

The
Tancred
’s oars lifted – the action was simultaneously replicated by the thirty ships behind it – and the Moor grinned. He could just imagine Khoril’s crestfallen face.

Beyond the strait, beyond Scylla’s rocky teeth and swirling Charybdis, fifteen ships were waiting, five of them copper-plated lanterns armed with the heaviest of Concordian guns.

Salerno is one hundred and fifty miles south of Veii as the crow flies – but in Etruria, the eel was a more reliable pacemaker. The route was complicated by endless lakes and circuitous rivers which were especially high at this time of year, and the Min-turnae Marsh was treacherous at all times, so they had to go some distance east to where the Albula narrowed. The pontonniers assembling the bridges were constantly harassed by a small band of butteri – but such a host could only be delayed, not defeated.

Leto sent hundreds of skirmishers across in small rafts to protect the bridge, and supported them with a flock of annunciators. Stocks were perilously low but Leto was in no mood for half-measures. Soon enough the Grand Legion was assembled on the far side, complete with the carroccio displaying their banners.

They had to cross the Allia before the day ended. Frustrated at their pace, retarded by wagons in need of repair, Leto declared that all unnecessary baggage was to be burnt, and to show a good example to his men, he set fire to his own books. But few were inspired, and the order had to be carried out forcibly. The men grumbled as they watched all their Veian loot go up in smoke. The next day’s march brought no rivers worth recording, but no reprieve either: the land got progressively more wet, and the men more despondent.

Exhausted and hungry, they stopped early and while the surveyors marked out the camp, Leto made a short address. ‘I daresay this is familiar to a few of you. For the rest of you, the name of
this place is Tagliacozzo. Three years ago, John Acuto fought and lost here. Three years ago, your countrymen smashed an army of the south. We can do it again.’

The men listened patiently, desperate for encouragement, but who could be impressed by a
field?
A skin of bright yellow lichen and dark green covered the ruined engines, softening their edges so they resembled disembodied limbs, as though titans did battle here. Weeds grew thickly through collapsed earthworks. The trenches had turned into connected canals of stagnant water, hazed over with the last of the year’s mosquitoes – the hardy
zanzara
, big as wrens, that delighted to feast on the eyeballs of buffalo or, even more succulent, those of their shepherds. As for the thousands who had died here, they had left no mark. More impressive were the ash-blue mountains to the east: massive, impassive and changeless. In this land, time alone was victorious. The officers were glum for other reasons: they knew their general proposed to take the highlands route to the south. The Great Pebble, as it was called, had three summits: Big Horn, Middle Horn and Small Horn, which together resembled the profile of a sleeping giant.