The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (51 page)

“The reality of empire,” said the Greek.

Ganelon snorted indelicately. “Oh, come! We’re both conspirators here. You know as well as I, that our sacred empress will never consent to bed with a heathen Frank. However passionately he may profess his conversion to the true faith.”

“No,” said the Greek, too gently. “I do not know it. Irene is empress. She understands practicalities. She knows what the empire needs. If her lord had lived a year or two longer ...” He sighed “It wins no battles. The Basileus is dead, and the Basilissa requires a strong consort. Your king has that strength, and the lands to accompany it.”

“But will he suffer Byzantium to call them its own? He has no reason to love the empire; he resists its faith, as his fathers resisted it before him. To him Our Lord is a felon who died on a tree, less noble and less worthy to be worshipped than the Saxons’ Wotan, our Church has no power where he can perceive it, only a gaggle of half-mad priests on the edges of the world, and an impotent nobody in Rome who calls himself the successor of Peter, and quarrels incessantly with the Patriarch in Constantinople. Simpler and more expedient for him to subscribe to the creed of the Divine Julian, which allows him to rule his own lands in his own fashion, and leaves him free to live as he pleases.”

“Divine,” said the Greek in distaste. “Apostate, and damned, not least for the world he left us. Our empire divided, the West fallen to barbarian hordes, the light of Christ extinguished there wherever it has kindled; and now the terror out of east and south and west, the armies of Islam circling for the kill. Charles must choose between us, or be overwhelmed. He is the key to Europe. Without him, we can perhaps hold our ground in the East, but the West is lost to us. With him, we gain the greater part of our old empire, and stand to gain the rest.”

Ganelon spoke swiftly, with passion enough to rock Oliver where he crouched. “And if he turns to Islam, not only is Europe lost; Byzantium itself may fall. Charles the pagan fancies himself an enlightened man, a man of reason, dreaming of Rome restored. Charles the Muslim would see naught but sheer, red war.”

“Therefore,” asked the Greek, “you would force a choice?”

Ganelon had calmed himself, but his voice was tight, and grimly quiet. “You are wise, and you are skilled in the ways of war and diplomacy. But I know my king. We are not wise to leave matters to fate, or to God if you will. It is not enough to trust that our memory of Rome will speak more clearly to his heart than the raw new faith of Islam. He is, after all, a follower of Julian the Apostate. As is his hotspur of a nephew - who has been heard to swear that he will never bow his head to any God who makes a virtue of virginity.” Ganelon paused as if to gather the rags of his temper, and the threads of his argument. “Count Roland is a danger to us and to our purpose. While he lives, the king will not turn Christian. Of that, I am certain. He were best disposed of, and quickly. How better than by such a means, which should serve also to turn the king to our cause?”

“And if it fails? What then, my friend?”

“It will not fail. You have my oath on it.”

* * * *

That was all they said that mattered to Oliver. He lingered for a dangerous while, until it was clear that they were done with their conspiring. There was a stir near the front of the tent: guards changing; a mutter of Greek. Oliver beat a rapid retreat.

It was an age before he could catch Roland alone. The count, having recovered his temper, had thrown himself into his duties. Oliver’s return he greeted with a flurry of commands, all of them urgent and most of them onerous. Oliver set his teeth and obeyed them. But he kept his eye on Roland, as much as he might in the uproar.

A little before dawn, when the camp had quieted at last, to rest for an hour or two and restore its strength for the march, Oliver followed the count into his tent. It was not the first time he had done that; Roland looked at him without surprise. “I think you should sleep tonight,” he said with careful gentleness.

Oliver blushed. That was not what he had been thinking of at all. He said so, bluntly.

Roland’s brows went up. Perhaps he believed it. Perhaps he did not. After a moment he shrugged, one-sided, and went about stripping for sleep.

“Roland,” said Oliver.

Something in his tone brought Roland about. He had his drawers in his hand. Oliver could count all the scars on the fine brown skin, the bruises of his struggle tonight and his hunt this morning, and one on his neck that men in the camp called the sweetseller’s brand.

“Roland,” Oliver said again. “There’s something you should know.”

And Oliver told him, all of it, word for word as he remembered it. Roland listened in silence that deepened the longer it lasted.

“I may have misunderstood everything,” Oliver said at the end. “You know how bad my Greek is.”

“Yes,” said Roland, soft and still. “I know.” His eyes were wide; in rushlight they seemed blurred, as if with sleep.

He shook himself suddenly, blinked, was Roland again. But not, quite, Roland. Roland was a wild man, everyone knew it. Such news as this should have driven him raving mad.

But Oliver was not everyone, and he had known Roland since they shared the nurse’s breast. He laid a hand on the slender shoulder, “Brother. Don’t think it.”

“Why?” asked Roland. “What am I thinking?”

“You know what will happen if you kill your father. Even a stepfather. You can’t do it. The king needs you too badly.”

“Kill? Did I say kill?”

“Roland - “

“Oliver.” Roland closed his hand over Oliver’s. “Brother, I won’t kill him. Even I am hardly that vast a fool.”

“Then what will you do?”

“Nothing.” Roland said it with appalling lightness. “Except thank you for the knowledge. And - yes, brother nurse, keep watch against treachery.”

“You’re too calm,” said Oliver.

He was. He was not trembling, that Oliver could see or feel or sense. He looked as if he had learned nothing more terrible than that his third-best charger had - a girth-gall. “I’m . . . almost. . . Yes, I’m glad,” he said. “I’ve always known what a snake that man is. Now he lays the proof in my hands. Let him strike at me. Then the king can deal with him.”

“And if you die of the stroke?”

“I won’t die. I gave you my oath, don’t you remember? I’ll never die before you. We’ll go together, or not at all. And,” said Roland, “it’s not you he wants, or will touch.”

Oliver was by no means comforted. But Roland had heard all he wanted to hear. He flung his arms about his milkbrother and hugged him till his ribs creaked, and thrust him away. “Go to bed, brother nurse. Here, if you will, but I tell you truly, I intend to do no more than sleep.”

“Here, then,” said Oliver, not even trying to match his lightness. And he kept his word. Two cloaks and a blanket were ample for them both; and Roland humoured a friend. He let Oliver take the outside.

* * * *

2

Oliver did not know whether to be glad or to be more wary than ever. Days, they had marched. They had broken down the walls of Pamplona, almost for sport, to soothe the Arabs’ fears, and left them there with the pick of the spoil. The ambassador from Baghdad lingered, and would linger, it was clear, until the king saw fit to dismiss him or his own caliph called him back. Likewise the envoys from Byzantium. The king was a battleground, and well he knew it; he seemed to find it amusing, when he troubled to think of it at all.

No one had moved to strike Roland. No dagger out of the dark. No poison in his cup. Not even a whisper in the king’s ear, to shake Charles’s confidence in his nephew’s loyalty. All that Oliver had heard might have been a dream. Or the Greek had prevailed, and Ganelon had turned his mind elsewhere, to other and easier prey.

Roland acted no differently towards him. For Oliver it was harder. Oliver was a very bad liar. He kept out of the traitor’s path, not gladly, but with every ounce of prudence in him. Ganelon murdered by Oliver was hardly less shocking a prospect than Ganelon murdered by Roland, and equally likely to ruin the Breton count. Which dilemma, too, the subtle snake might well have wished upon them.

Therefore they did nothing, not even to tell the king; for after all they had no proof. The days went on in marching and in encampments, and once the diversion of Pamplona. Beyond the broken walls, where the Pyrenees rose like walls shattered by gods, the army moved a little lighter. There were the ramparts; beyond them lay the fields and forests of Gaul.

It was the custom, and Roland’s own preference, that the Bretons with their heavy cavalry kept either the van or the rear. Through most of Spain, Roland himself had ridden first of all except the scouts; but as the hills rose into mountains, the king called him to the centre. Oliver followed, unquestioned; the count’s milkbrother and swordbrother, as inseparable as his shadow. Already the way grew steep; they had left their horses ahead with their armour bearers, and taken to surefooted mules. Not a few along the line chaffed them for that; Roland laughed and chaffed back, but Oliver set his teeth and endured.

The king, who was above all a practical man, had mounted his lordly bulk on a brother of their own beasts. No one, Oliver noticed, even looked askance at him. As always when he was at war, he wore nothing to mark him out from any common soldier, except the circlet of gold on his helmet. He greeted them both with his usual gladness.

Neither was quick to match him. He was attended, as always. The Byzantines were there, and the men from Baghdad. And Ganelon, close at his side, riding a horse with an Arab look about the head. The man was all limpid innocence, the loyal counsellor attending his king.

Charles beckoned Roland in. Ganelon drew back with every appearance of good will, no dagger flashing in his hand, no hatred in his glance. Roland would not meet it at all. There was a pause while the mules settled precedence; then the king said, “Roland, sister-son, now that the land is changing, I’ve a mind to change the army to fit it. The way ahead should be clear enough for lesser forces. It’s the rear I’m wary of; the brigands’ portion. And the baggage can’t move any faster than it’s moving. I need you and your Bretons there. Will you take it?”

Oliver’s hackles quivered and rose. It was a perfectly reasonable order, presented in the king’s usual fashion: as a request, to be accepted or refused. The Bretons with their armour and their great lumbering horses would deter anything that a brigand might think of. And a brigand would think of, and covet, the baggage and the booty.

It was not the prospect of robbery that chilled Oliver’s nape. It was Ganelon’s expression. Calm; innocent. Barely listening, as if the hawk on the wing mattered more than the count in the rearguard.

It was too well done. He should be sneering, making it clear whose counsel it was that Roland breathe the army’s dust and shepherd its baggage.

As if he had realized the oversight, he lowered his eyes from the sky and smiled at his stepson. Oliver did not need to be a seer to foretell what Roland would do. Roland bristled; his mule jibbed and lashed out. Ganelon’s mare eluded it with contemptuous ease. “You,” said Roland. “What are you plotting? Why this change, now, when we’re so close to Gaul?”

“My lord king,” Ganelon said with sweet precision, “has been apprised by his scouts that the way ahead of us is steep, the passage narrow. He has need of both valour and vigilance, and in the rear most of all, where robbers most often strike. Who better to mount guard there, than the knights of Brittany?”

Smooth words, irreproachable even in tone. Oliver would happily have throttled the man who uttered them. Roland raised his head, his black eyes narrow, searching his stepfather’s face. It gave him nothing back. “You want me there,” he said. “What if I refuse?”

“Then another will be sent,” said the king before Ganelon could speak. He sensed something, Oliver could tell, but he was too preoccupied or too accustomed to his kinsmen’s enmity to take notice. “I have reason to think that there may be one last stroke before we ride out of Spain: revenge for Pamplona, or a final blow from the rebels of Cordoba. Will you guard my back?”