Ariosto (21 page)

Lincepino moaned and his chanting ceased altogether. Cifraaculeo stared at the thing that had come forth from the mouse and he closed his eyes at the enormity of it. Falcone inadvertently stepped back and cried aloud when his foot touched the base of one of the torches.

“Anatrecacciatore?” Lodovico whispered, unable to speak any louder.

Cifraacuelo, aghast, nodded.

The mists were growing denser, becoming palpable. In the tent the torches nearly guttered and the stench that filled the place had little to do with the herbs that Lincepino had burned. The presence was miasmic, seeping out to touch each of them in turn.

“No!” Lincepino shouted, and at the sound of the shout, the others were released from their thralldom. The wizard of the Cesapichi grabbed for certain objects he had set before the torches and these he held aloft while barking out terse phrases that Lodovico could not understand.

Something of the loathsome manifestation responded, for the light returned a bit, and the form in the air trembled as if disturbed by a wind.

“What is he doing?” Lodovico murmured to Falcone. “He is binding it so that it cannot harm us. If it had reached us…” He broke off, nearly retching at the thought.

“How does he control it, if Anatrecacciatore is such a great power?”

“Every wizard has his weakness, surely you know that,” Falcone said in spite of the utter condemnation in Cifraaculeo’s expression. “No matter how great his power, in some way Anatrecacciatore is vulnerable. You yourself know that his power does not extend to ducks. It may be that because of his name, the ducks are sacred to him and cannot be bound by his power, since it is from them that it was drawn.”

The figure now was more defined, almost solid, its baleful eyes hot with rage. It struggled against the invisible bonds that held its tenuous shape and though silent, it seemed to roar with frustration. Lodovico was apprehensive, for he sensed that this formidable sorcerer might have more power than even Cifraaculeo credited to him. He watched the arms raise up as if to strike, and encounter a barrier. The spirit turned as if seeking to find its tormentors, and there was no pleading or supplication in its manner: here there was imperious and virulent enmity.

Lincepino positioned himself out of the light, and there was sweat on his body now that had the scent fear in it. The wizard of the Cesapichi trembled as he chanted, his voice on a higher, less certain pitch.

“You idiot!” Cifraaculeo spat at Lincepino. “He will find your terror and the binding will fail!” The high priest of the Cérocchi took up a set of wooden clappers and began to circle the ring of torches, adding his own words to the spell that bound the sorcerer. He went quickly and with a sharp, angry step, but Lodovico could see the shaking of his hands that went beyond the rattling of the wooden clappers.

“Merciful and Omnipotent God,” he said softly as he crossed himself. “You Who see our plight, send us Your strength or surely our souls are lost forever to the force of Hell. If it is Your wish that I and these good men suffer the pangs of damnation, then I submit humbly to Your wish. Yet I pray that we are not beyond You thought and out of mind in darkness, and that You will send Your angels so that the Sword of San Michele will strike again for us against this devil’s spawn as it struck down this sorcerer’s parent. In the Name of Your Son, Who came to save us, I ask this. Amen.” Again he crossed himself, resigned now to accept whatever heaven decreed. His heart was not calm, but he felt greater certainty, knowing that he had survived with miraculous aid in the past. He took the dagger Falcone had given him and began to draw a line around the torches so that now the sorcerer was bound by steel as well as fire and water.

Cifraacuelo stopped his singing a moment to stare at the Italian. Then, as if sensing some worth in this action, he continued his mystical offices, this time with more determination. His hands no longer shook.

The apparition could not move quickly, being made of mist, but it drifted slowly to find the source of this new irritation. When it faced Lodovico, it stopped and there was in that lean face an expression of such wrath, such inexorable venom, that Lodovico nearly dropped the dagger he held as he was caught in the light of that malevolent gaze. It took the whole force of his will for him to look away and to resume his task, though he felt the excoriating hatred in those phantom eyes following him, implacable in their villainy.

His face was ashen when he at last stood erect, the circle completed. Lincepino nodded toward him once, a new respect in his noble face. Even Cifraaculeo gave him a grudging nod of approval.

“What did you do?” Falcone demanded softly, who was not as reticent as the other men to acknowledge Lodovico’s service.

“It is a protection known in my country. I should have thought of it sooner. It has saved me before.” The first time, in the trackless desert, when the ancestral spirits of the Great Mandarin had been sent against him, he had contained them with this trick. He put his hand on Falcone’s arm. “But I tell you, I have never known such potent evil before in all my travels.”

“You do well to acknowledge that, pale one,” said the phantom, though the lips did not move. The voice spoke out of the air, out of the very fabric of the night. It was deep and strong as a bell, and as sweet. It was a voice for a Prince, for a Pope, for a seducer. It went on, “You have evaded me before, but I warn you that I will not let you escape me again. And you, Cesapicchi, you puny men of little talent, hear me. For the, moment you have restrained me, but it will not happen again. You think you are safe, that my power cannot touch you.” The laughter that followed this caused Lodovico’s very bones to turn cold.

There was a cracking sound and a sudden, violent wind that rocked the tent and extinguished the torches and that was gone as quickly as it had arisen. In the next instant the three beams that supported the tent broke and toppled, falling as if to strike down the men who stood, stupefied, within it.

They examined the husk of the mouse, for it seemed to be no more than skin and crumbling bones. Cifraaculeo, looked grave and for the first time held his pessimistic tongue.

“Do you think he will be back?” Falcone asked the question that filled the others’ thoughts but which they would not voice.

“He can,” Cifraaculeo said grimly and glared once again at Lodovico as if the Italian had in some way put them all at a disadvantage.

“What will we do, if we can’t contain him?” The Cérocchi prince grasped the dagger Lodovico had given him in a futile defiance. “If there are no weapons that will defeat him and he has power more than he has al- ready shown…”

“Good friends,” Lodovico said as he put his hand to the jeweled collar that held the Order of San Basilio, “what choice have we? Either we go forward and meet the forces of this tremendous evil or we lie here craven, worse than that mouse cowering in a burrow, and we leave ourselves open to any attack that he may send against us. What will he decide upon next? His is the Fortezza Serpente, so it might be the snakes he uses. Or what of bees? Imagine the sky covered with bees in swarms darker than storm clouds and more painful and deadly than the lightning. I have already learned what he can do with birds, and that was against only one man. What he could muster to stop this army, I dare not consider. We must advance or we might as well begin our epitaphs at this moment, and name ourselves cowards.” He had not meant to speak so sternly, but now his blood was up again. He held the mouse in his hand and felt the little creature which seemed much like a rotten, furry grape. What monstrous horror would so abuse those little animals? “We are simply more mice to him, in his arrogance. I, for one, will not wait for that malefic presence to poison my soul. If I must give it up to God, so be it, but let it be as it was given to me, untainted by any sin but those I have committed, not that execrable sorcerer.”

“You humble me,” Falcone said quietly. “You are right. No,” he added to the other two men, “do not dissuade me. It is time that I remembered what I am. Let you, wizard, and you, high priest, do all that you can to counteract the strength of Anatrecacciatore, with prayers and invocations and spells. I will go into the field as a Cérocchi Prince must, and I will take my soldiers with me, and fight beside this Italian hero who has done so much for us.” He had crossed his arms over his muscular chest and stood, legs apart, head proudly high.

Cifraaculeo lifted his arm as if to strike the son of his King, then dropped his hand. “If there are gods and powers and spirits enough left in this land to aid you, then you have my word that I will do all that I can to invoke them on your behalf. But you go to your death, Falcone, and I am not the only one who will mourn for you.”

At those resigned words, Falcone nodded somberly, and whispered “Aureoraggio.”

That name filled Lodovico’s being with a warmth like the sunlight she was called knew that his face reflected this sense and it was with misgiving that he faced his friend Falcone. That beautiful woman flooded his senses and the world was made of her. How could he continue to prevaricate? When would Falcone see the truth, and what would he do then?

“Our friend is already fired with zeal,” Falcone said, misreading the light in Lodovico’s eyes and the brightening of his face. “He is willing to take up this fight in a land that is unknown to him. What else can we do, but emulate his example?”

Now Lincepino attempted to recover his confidence. He squared his shoulders. “Surely it will be difficult for us to battle such a formidable sorcerer, but it is as the pale man says, the alternative is to live as the mole does, in the darkness of the earth, to be blind and debased. I have gone in my magic with the moles, and the rats and the vermin of the earth, and it is not the life for a man.” He picked up two wide bracelets made from the hollowed bones of deer and boar, strung with jewels and mystically painted wooden beads. These he tied to his arms and gave a single nod.

“The life of a man is better than the life of a mole,” Cifraaculeo agreed as he shook the wooden clapper he still held. “It will be difficult in the days to come to remember that, when the dead outnumber the living and we see the skins of our brothers filled with sorcerer’s breath and sent against us, but I will not retreat.”

Falcone smiled as he took Lodovico’s hand. “It is settled, then. We march at dawn.”

Lodovico woke in terror, then realized that it was only the chirping of birds before dawn that he had heard, and not the clarion of another attack. He sat up slowly, drawing the three sewn wolf pelts around him against the chill. His face was still sensitive from the beaks and talons that had raked it, but he knew that he must shave and trim his beard if he was to make a creditable appearance. He shook off the last of his sleep and got to his feet, yawning as he stared out the tent flap into the camp.

There was a slatey light in the clearing, and the many campfires were dead or dying, sending up blue ribbons of smoke into the dew-laden air. The woods around them rustled with wind and far off the brook was scolding its way between the banks. There was a moist smell in the early morning, as if the mists above the trees had caught the scent of earth as if it were a gigantic tent. Across the camp, beyond the tents and the little hillocks of sleeping soldiers, there was the looming mass of the forest. Here and there a branch reached into the clearing as if to tempt the men there, into the green depth. But on this morning, with white wraiths of vapor winding in flocculent streamers among the trees, the wood offered more than the velvet stillness of a day verging on dawn. Now there was a subtle danger, as if those insubstantial fogs would trap and bind anyone sufficiently foolish to venture near them. Lodovico drew the wolf pelts more tightly about him and walked back into his tent and began to look for his razor.

By the time he had shaved and trimmed his beard, the camp was already awake. The few men who had stood guard were grumbling loudly in complaint from the hours they had passed in the clammy fog, and berated the fortunate ones who had slept.

Fires had been rekindled and the first odors of cooking mixed with the mists, imbuing the brightening morning with trout and wild pork.

“There you are,” Falcone said at the door as he came into Lodovico’s tent. “After last night, I felt you must surely have spent the night in the tent of your priests.”

“I did go to confess,” Lodovico said as he pulled his mantled guarnacca of tooled leather over his silken shirt, “so that if I fall in battle, I will be as free of sin as a decent man may be. After that, I knew it would be wisest to sleep. We will have a long day, I think.”

Falcone nodded. “How were your dreams?”

He had dreamed of Aureoraggio, of her radiant face suffused with adoration and love, of her eyes gazing into his with that candor, that limpid purity that had captured his heart. “I have forgotten them.”

“I wish I could forget mine,” Falcone sighed. “All night I was tormented with visions of Aureoraggio so that I thought my heart or my loins would burst.” He did not see the distress in his friend’s eyes, and he went on, “There are many things I would sacrifice to conquer this foe of ours, but after last night, I know that my manhood is not one of those things.”

“Truly,” was Lodovico’s curt answer. He took his time fixing his belt and the scabbard that lay across his back to hold Falavedova so that he would be entirely composed when he faced Falcone.

“Do you ride Bellimbusto today?” Falcone asked, a little wistfully, when Lodovico indicated he was ready to leave.

“On the ground. After the beating he took in the air, he will need some little time to recover.” As he passed out of the tent, he clapped his hands and pointed to the Lanzi corporale who had been appointed to wait on him. “You may dismantle my tent and pack my belongings. We march in two hours. Be certain that all are ready.”

The corporale, who was called Antonio and came originally from Torino, saluted smartly, as if to show the Cérocchi Prince how a real soldier behaved.

“Your men are strangely trained,” Falcone observed though it was hardly the reaction that Antonio hoped for.