Ariosto (18 page)

The claws of the hawk raked his forehead and blood poured over his face, clouding his eyes. Impatiently he wiped it away with his sleeve and at the same time brought Falavedova around to hack at the bird. He knew a moment of gratification as the hawk faltered and fell, and then he felt the battering of goose-bills on his legs.

Below the forest waited, the trees offering the spurious comfort of their leafy crowns that surely concealed deadly limbs capable of breaking him and Bellimbusto if they could be lured onto them. A woodpecker landed on his arm and began methodically to peck at his flesh. That beak, used to drill holes in trees, was hideously efficient on his shoulder. With a sense of revulsion that horrified him, Lodovico pounded the bird with the hilt of his sword and tore it away from him.

Still the trees covered the river, and still Bellimbusto, exhausted and harried now nearly to the limits of his legendary strength, flew lower and lower. The birds circled around them, their wings and their cries louder than any tempest Lodovico had ever known.

He reeled in the saddle as a wild turkey blundered against him, thrashing wings at his head. Lodovico took Falcone’s dagger and stabbed blindly at the enormous bird and was rewarded by feeling it go limp in his grasp. He was about to thrust it away when he knew that he would have to sleep in the open that night, and determined that these birds would feed him and Bellimbusto. He shoved the turkey against the knot of blankets at the back of his saddle, and began to slice at the myriad attackers. He fared little better with the dagger than he did with his sword, but he found that working two blades together gave him a measure of protection he had not had before. With an effort he shouted heartening words to Bellimbusto and sensed his mount understands in the renewed surge of power from the huge wings.

At last he saw a narrow stretch of sand, and he gave the signal to the hippogryph to descend. In dismay, he saw that there were ducks on the riverbank and as they neared them, the ducks rose up in a body. It was more than he could endure, he feared, and he felt his heart grow cold in his breast. He brought his bloody hand, with Falavedova still clutched tightly in his wounded fingers, up to cross himself. He had failed his men and his God. He wondered if he should drop his weapons and give himself up to the fury of the birds.

Then he saw that the ducks had flown in terror, away from him and the faltering Bellimbusto in their fearsome cloud of screeching, chattering, birds. The ducks had fled! His face set itself in a hideous smile and he began once again to hack at the feathered adversaries around him.

Even as Bellimbusto’s gold-painted talons touched the sand there was a shudder of thunder in the air. Lodovico was out of the saddle at once, crouched low to fend off the continued attack.

It never came. The birds stopped, hovered in confusion, and then with strange cries, flew away from the spot and each other in terror, as if suddenly brought to their senses of the enormity of their unnatural transgressions. Lodovico stood still, one hand on Bellimbusto’s reins, and stared at the sky, empty now of everything but the thunder.

He landed the next morning in torrential rain near the camp his troops had set up. There was a great bustle to meet him, and shouted questions that were stilled when the men were close enough to see the tatters of his clothes and the bruised lacerations of his face and body.

“I must see Prince Falcone,” he said in a voice was cracked with exhaustion. “Where is he?”

A number of the men pointed the way to the Cérrochi’s tent, and just as Lodovico stumbled forward, the men parted as Falcone himself approached. “What happened? Why didn’t you return…” His demands ceased as he caught sight of Lodovico.

Lodovico lifted one blood-caked, shaking his hand to his forehead. “I met with opposition,” he said, hoping to make light of it. He felt fear sink cold fingers into the vitals of the men around him, and he knew that he had to dispel it at once. “It seems Anatrecacciatore has a certain humor about him.”

“The soldiers of flint and frost?” Falcone asked, the very name making his words soft.

“Oh, nothing so grand as that. A flock of birds.” He knew he could not venture laughter, so he contented himself with a shaking of his head.

“Birds?” Falcone echoed with a swift glance at the men. “Birds did that to you?”

“Well, there were a great many of them,” Lodovico allowed. “You know, targets that small are damned hard hit.” He was relieved to see the men lose some of the rigidity his arrival had occasioned. If only his voice didn’t sound as if it belonged to an enormous frog. He had not been able to do more than make the most cursory examination of his injuries, but he had a fair idea that he was not a pretty sight.

“Birds.” Falcone came forward now, and clasped his arm around Lodovico’s shoulder, more gently than it appeared, and still Lodovico could not entirely disguise his wince when Falcone’s arm touched him. “You must tell me more of this.” He looked toward Bellimbusto, standing in the rain, bedraggled feathers and matted hair making that glorious animal seem a discarded toy for a god. “Your mount…”

“I must see to him,” Lodovico allowed wearily. “He must be dried and stabled and fed. When I have done that, I will be with you in your tent. If you will tell Fabroni and your father that we must speak, I will be you directly.” His every joint ached, but he refused to limp. He waved to those warriors he knew and called a few greetings as he turned to lead Bellimbusto to the northern edge of the camp where the Lanzi horses were sheltered.

“But you are certain that the ducks did not attack you?” Cifraaculeo demanded for the third time.

“They flew off,” Lodovico answered patiently, though his body hurt and he was almost too tired to speak. He had been in Falcone’s tent for several hours and had yet to be given food or the opportunity to bathe and change his clothes. He reminded himself that his report was more important than his comfort, but his weary sinews protested inwardly.

“But the other birds came at you in a body.”

“I have said so,” Lodovico responded more sharply. “I did not have time to determine how many of what bird attacked me, and I confess that I have not yet learned all the varieties of fowl that live in this land, but I assure you that there were a great many. Geese, swans and other water birds among them, but not ducks.” He had asked once why that should be important, and had been given no answer. Now he repeated his inquiry. “You have laid a great deal of importance on these ducks. Why is that?”

“Anatrecacciatore is the Duck-Catcher,” Falcone explained in spite of the fulminating glance cast on him by Cifraaculeo. “There has long been speculation about his name, but no answers. From what you have told us it would seem that he has control over the birds of the air, all but the ducks. It may be of use.”

It seemed to Lodovico that much of his fatigue had evaporated as he heard this. “He has no power over ducks? Do they inevitably flee him, do you know?”

Cifraaculeo glared down at the Italian hero. “We believe this is so.”

Lodovico got to his feet, uncaring of the protestations of his muscles and joints. “Why was I not told this earlier?” he wanted to know, looking from the Cérocchi Prince to the high priest. “If the ducks are not under his influence and always flee him, then they will be our advance scouts. We need only see where they are…”

They flee from us, too,” Falcone reminded him, though there was a guarded expression of hope in his black eyes.

“But, listen—they will fear Anatrecacciatore more than us, will they not?” He saw the tentative nods of agreement and hurried on. “We must set out flanking scouts, so that nothing will be missed. If the ducks flee toward us, then we know that the sorcerer’s forces are on the march. We’ll need a system of signals that will not alert the enemy to our tactics, and that way we will gain still more time. Unless Anatrecacciatore can command every other creature in the forest, we will have gained an advantage. With so malefic and subtle an opponent, we must have more intelligence if we are to defeat him.”

Falcone’s face grew sharper as Lodovico spoke. “It is well,” he said after a moment. “There are men of the Scenandoa who are noted for their skill in scouting. They will be glad to do this, for they have suffered much at the hands of Anatrecacciatore.”

“Yet these forests are vast,” Lodovico said, feeling he had to interject a word of caution. “It would be an easy thing for all of us to blunder through them and never engage the other side in battle, so that in the end all each had to show was fatigue and field losses.”

“Do not underestimate Anatrecacciatore,” Cifraaculeo said gloomily. “He will know where we are and what we do, no matter what precautions we take. He will strike when it suits him, after we have gone far, when the spirits of our men have become disheartened, when each band of warriors is full of rivalry with all the others, so that they will not fight together, then, then Anatrecacciatore will send his invincible armies against us…”

Lodovico interrupted this catalogue of woes. “If his warriors are invincible, as you say, there is no reason for him to wait until we are lost in the forest and without provisions, weapons or morale. All he need do is send them crashing down upon us now, conquering your men near their cities so that plunder as well as victory is close at hand. If he must lead us far into the wilderness, it is only that his strength is not so vast as we have been led to believe and either he must fight on his own accursed ground, as the wizards of Russia did, or his troops are not invincible and he must stay near the source if they are to triumph in battle.” As he spoke, he could feel more hope surge through him. Yes, he saw that their cause was not entirely lost. While the birds had attacked him and Bellimbusto dropped through the air, he had feared that there would be no way to conquer such a powerful sorcerer, but now, hearing the words of the high priest and listening to the warnings, he realized that they had some small chance for success. His great heart was lightened and in his soul he thanked the mercy of God for this information, and begged forgiveness for his doubts, and the great sin of despair.

“Then it is folly to proceed!” Cifraaculeo cried out. “Each step takes us closer to his power, giving him more of an advantage!”

“Perhaps.” Lodovico took a turn about the tent, his mind too preoccupied for him to admire the appointments of tooled leather and embroidered cloth. “Still, we dare not expose your homes to the full attack of his forces. There must be a way…” He glanced down and saw a mouse hidden in the fold of the tent cloth. The animal did not move as Lodovico approached it, but stared upward with eyes shiny as black glass. “Strange,” Lodovico mused as he paused near the little animal. “Strange.”

“What?…” Falcone started forward but Lodovico waved him back.

“In a moment, my friend.” Quite suddenly he moved, scooping the little rodent from the fold in the cloth. The mouse made tiny shrieks of rage and tried to bite through glove-leather into Lodovico’s palm with its teeth. Lodovico swore but refused to drop the animal. “I have found a spy, I think,” he said, feeling something between terror and amusement.

“A spy?” Falcone asked, bewildered, as Lodovico approached him. “What spy?”

“I have a mouse in my hand. It did not run when I came near it and now it is biting me with the will of a tiger.” He felt the blood run out between his gloved fingers and had to resist the impulse to crush the creature in his hands. But that, he knew, would be foolish, for if it were truly under the control of Anatrecacciatore, such an act would free the sorcerer from the little body and give it the chance to inhabit another. Such as Falcone. Such as Cifraaculeo. Such as himself. He ground his teeth and looked at the high priest. “Who among you knows the rituals to make such animals speak?” At his words, the mouse was still.

“I do. And there is one more powerful still with the Cesapichi who is known everywhere for his gifts.” This last was told reluctantly, though it was certain that Cifraaculeo did not relish the talent himself.

“Bring him. This mouse, absurd thing that he is, may yet be more important to us than all our warriors, horses, and weapons combined.” He did not look to see which of the two Cérocchi obeyed his instructions, but set himself the task of holding the suddenly active mouse while it scrabbled on his bleeding leather-covered palm, biting, scratching, for all the world like a marauding wolf seeking escape from a trap.

La Realtà

It was one of those lachrymose summer storms that flailed in out of the west, wrung its gray fingers over the Arno valley, and spent itself in hysterical fluttering’s against the hills. Lodovico sat at his desk and listened to the last of the rain as it spattered on the shutters. A book lay open before him, but he had not been reading it for some time.

“Husband?” Alessandra called from somewhere beyond this little haven. “Lodovico?”

He roused himself from his thoughts and answered, “In my study, my dear.” He heard her as she trudged up the narrow stairs and the rap of her knuckles on the door. “Come in.” The small courtesy both pleased and annoyed him. He knew she was coming to him, had heard her approach the door. What would have been the point in refusing her entrance?

Alessandra came into the study, an expression of ill-use on her face giving her somewhat bland appearance a character that it rarely achieved otherwise. “There is a messenger below. He says he must speak with you.”

“A messenger? In this weather?” He was at once startled and wary.

“You weren’t reading?” Alessandra asked, indicating the darkened room and the unlit lantern.

“Reading? No. I was…thinking.” Lodovico smiled apologetically. He always found it difficult to recall himself when his thoughts had been broken into so abruptly.

“Well, then.” Alessandra stood aside in the doorway, doing her best to conceal her impatience. “The man told me it is urgent. You should hurry, I think.”

“Of course,” Lodovico murmured, setting aside the vellum pages he had stacked by his elbow. “Yes. Tell him I will be there in a moment. I’ve had a great deal on my mind…”