Dark North

Twenty-Six

Bishop Malconi reasoned that the smaller his party, the less chance there was of it being noticed. Thus, aside from his travel-coach — a solid wooden box plated with steel, once overlaid with fabric bearing the red and gold lions of Ravenna, but now clad in simple rustic brown — he journeyed north with only his ten bodyguards, who wore their hauberks under cloth and were armed unobtrusively.

Such anonymity served its purpose as he passed through the dusty villages and rural towns of Lombardy, but when he left lowland Italy behind and entered the Ligurian foothills, he became afraid that he now wasn’t protected enough. The bleaker and wilder the terrain, the more the bishop travelled with his coach shutters bolted, his bright eyes glued to a viewing slot too narrow for even a broad-headed arrow to penetrate.

Even in late summer, with the meadows still green and only tinges of red in the trees, this was a desolate region. The few people they saw were illiterate shepherds who lived in turf huts, the only livestock sheep and goats. The higher they rose into the great Alpine massifs, the more this meadowland fell behind them, until soon they were following narrow ways amid misty crags, or winding through dense pinewoods. The road was increasingly difficult, churned to porridge by rain and hardened again by the summer sun so that it was all ruts and divots.

Night was a particular challenge — for that was when they heard things. After dark, Malconi would not even venture out of his carriage. He now wore mail himself and sat rigid inside, his face beaded with sweat. Outside, his bravos — not quite as afraid as he, but still on edge — slept around their fire, two of them always standing guard, listening to the encircling woods and to the cries and gibbers of unnatural creatures.

On the final day of the journey, high above the world, they toiled onto an undulating ridge, a narrow spine of rock along which the final leg of the road was laid. The vast gulfs to either side were a test of a man’s steel; one needed only to stray a yard from the road and he would plunge to his doom. With early afternoon came rain, heavy and teeming, and after the rain a miasmal gloom. By late afternoon, they were relieved to find bluffs approaching, and soon they were following a narrow passage between sheer walls of granite.

“Make haste!” the bishop called through the roof of his coach. “We are almost there.”

The driver did not make haste, for the alley was so tight that he could barely advance without the carriage’s wheel hubs scraping on rock. Several times the way was blocked by iron portcullises, now rusty and thick with moss. Far overhead, on the stone lintels of these gateways, were walled and roofed guard-posts, but no guards were on duty. In each case it took two of the bishop’s men to scale these great iron frameworks and work the crank-handles, slowly lifting the obstructions out of the way.

At last, with dusk falling, they came to a point where the passage ended, and a bottomless chasm lay before them. On the far side sat the arched entrance to Castello Malconi, although at present the drawbridge was raised and out of reach. Wearily, the bedraggled party gazed up.

“Sister!” Malconi cried. “Sister, we seek admittance!”

After what seemed an age, a lone figure appeared on the black battlements: Duchess Zalmyra. She wore a fleece shawl; her long, tar-black hair was bound in a scarf.

“Zalmyra… your passage gates are unmanned!” Malconi called up to her. “How can this happen in a time of trouble?”

“It has happened,” she called back, “because, thanks to your master, there are no men to operate them.”

“If by ‘my master’ you mean Emperor Lucius, you’ll be shocked to know that he is dead.”

“Hardly shocked, brother.” She still made no effort to have the drawbridge lowered.

“For God’s sake, Zalmyra! Arthur’s army is on the move. It heads southward through France, sacking every Roman-held castle or town.”

“You seemed unconcerned by this possibility a few weeks ago.”

“That was before I knew Arthur had put a price on my head.”

Her voice crackled with scorn. “How little foresight you princes of the Church show.”

“Open the gates, I beg you!”

She shrugged and turned away.

With much squealing and grinding of cogs, the drawbridge was lowered. Malconi almost ran across it, his guards and coach following at a more sedate pace.

His sister met him in the courtyard. Malconi could only regard the deserted parapets with mouth agape. “You have no household guard?”

“Most died at the Vale of Sessoine,” she replied.

“Then we are in very serious trouble.”

“You have your Praetorians. Will they not suffice?”

“Against the whole of Arthur’s army, which grows stronger by the day? Now, I hear, the Franks have joined him; they call it ‘liberation,’ the insolent curs. Everything Childeric has he owes to Rome, yet now he accuses us of tyranny and says his people are glad to be free.”

“And who wouldn’t?” Zalmyra chuckled. “Emperor Lucius called the Franks his servants. King Arthur had the wisdom to call them friends.”

“This is madness, complete madness.”

“If so, it’s a madness cooked up by your beloved Simplicius.”

“He may save me yet. I can’t believe he’d cut off his strong right hand without resistance.”

Zalmyra laughed again. “He sacrificed fifty thousand men at Sessoine. Why would he not sacrifice you?”

Malconi’s voice became desperate. “Proclates of Palermo and Pelagius of Tuscany have been named as well. Warrants for our arrests have been issued. But surely Arthur won’t make good on this threat? We are men of the Church.”

“Arthur may consider that you have betrayed the Church,” she said.

“Betrayed…?”

“Not the Church of Simplicius, that tottering palace of wealth and intrigue. But the people of Christendom, the ocean of innocent souls entrusted to you and your kind by Jesus Christ, and abused and neglected ever since.”

“But that isn’t true.”

“Hah! Tell the people of Brittany.”

Malconi felt butterflies in the pit of his belly as he recalled the stories he’d heard about the war-crimes committed in Brittany. Neither he, nor any other churchman, had ordered such depredations, but neither had they sought to stop them. “Say you’ll give me refuge. Zalmyra, I beg you…”

“Don’t beg, Severin,” she said disparagingly. “In the name of your carpenter God, don’t lower yourself to that. I’ll give you refuge. Of course I will.”

“And you’ll find new men, new soldiers with which to fight?”

“I need no soldiers. When the Vandals came against our bastion… half a million of them died in the valley below, and they landed not a single blow on us.”

“But Arthur won’t attack from the front. He’s too clever…”

“Arthur won’t attack at all, you fool. He is otherwise engaged. But there will be a challenge… in due course.”

“You think you can meet it?”

“I already have. He’s a flesh and blood man. Very human. But strong. I got close enough to sense that much.” She smiled strangely. “No matter. The agents of our defence are abroad on the slopes of these mountains even as we speak.”

Malconi remembered the cries and gibbers in the benighted vales below. “Don’t tell me you’ve unleashed demons?”

“Ask me no questions, brother, and your prissy Christian conscience can remain clear.”