Between Two Fires (9781101611616) (50 page)

Jacquot squinted his eyes, waiting for the smoke from the pope’s twin braziers to drift in another direction. His post as papal guard would not allow him to rest his loaded crossbow, nor could he wipe his tearing eyes. Neither could he fetch the untouched quail that mocked him from the plate of the new bugger cardinal just in front of him, despite its tempting crust of herbs and his desperately rumbling stomach.

Fuck off, smoke.

The smoke persisted.

He fought the urge to turn his head away, fearing to draw attention to himself. His duty was to remain still. Thus far, his duty was proving indistinguishable from that of a pillar.

He had not worn the crossed-key insignia of the guard for very long; it was less than two weeks since he rode into Avignon with the troop of Breton archers that had pulled him from his Norman tree, all of them slavering for Jerusalem gold and the absolution that going on crusade would bring. Yet his ability to quarrel a crabapple off a
stump at thirty yards had so impressed the quartermaster that the captain of the guard had sent for him.

Now this.

Cunting, cunting smoke.

He had just wondered for the fortieth time how much longer this goddamned feast could last when he heard a gasp go up from the crowd. Several pointing fingers jabbed toward the rear of the courtyard, and the cardinals turned to look as well. Now the other guards looked, so Jacquot did as well.

What he saw bewildered him.

A second pope had entered the courtyard; Jacquot’s watery eyes were unsure, but this pope seemed a perfect twin to the one who sat before him, save for his white robes and miter. A troop of soldiers in cross-key tabards, the captain of the guard among them, marched at this white pope’s side. His right hand held a crosier and a peasant girl held his left.

The seated pope, wearing ruby-littered robes of burnt orange and a miter with three crowns of gold, looked right at his
geminus
but remained seated. The guards around the nearer pope, like him, were all new recruits culled from those who had drifted south, and none of them had the first idea what to make of this.

The men near the pope in white had their gazes fixed. They had been prepared for what they would see. Most of those were veterans of the palace, kept farther away from His Holiness these last months, but now standing together near the pretender.

Sweet Christ there’s going to be a fight and fuck this fucking smoke.

He stepped back out of the smoke’s path and wiped his eyes in case he had to shoot.

“False pope!” the pope in white shouted, his voice echoing off the walls in the Courtyard of Honor. “You know you are a devil! Show your true form or depart!”

Now the near pope stood, his eyes wide, pointing at the other.

“A devil in white cries devil at your Father! Lord protect us!” he shouted, but his fear seemed false.

“Tell them what lord you mean,” said the little girl. Her voice seemed familiar to Jacquot. He wanted to wipe his eyes again to get a better look at her, but now the knight who had lately accompanied the pope and all but taken over the duties of the captain of the guard, a harsh seigneur with a leonine face and black teeth, growled, “Crossbows ready.”

Jacquot raised his weapon.

The bugger cardinal, his upper lip dewed with sweat, turned on his bench and looked first at Jacquot and then at his crossbow, where his trigger hand partly obscured the ivory inlay picturing the Last Supper.

“No worries, Your Eminence,” he said, knowing that a wink from his drooping eye was unlikely to inspire confidence but giving the young cardinal one anyway. He had found that steadying others steadied himself.

Peering from beneath his lowered hood, Thomas saw that the true pope had entered the courtyard of honor. All eyes had turned that way. The knight in friar’s robes did not breathe like a bull before his charge, but silently readied his sword, curling his body around it to hide it from the poor of Avignon jostling around him.

He must slide it from its sheath and leap the first table in one motion.

He must be upon the higher table before they saw him.

He must kill the false pope before they could react.

He must surprise them.

At least two at the upper table were devils.

Now,
he thought.

The sword leapt from its sheath and he leapt upon the first table, kicking a plate of dark bread aside.

The lion-faced knight turned, faster than Thomas had hoped, his axe already out. Recognition flashed in his little black eyes; he did not alert the others—he wanted to handle this himself.

YOU FUCKING THIEF YOU WANT DEATH AND HERE IT COMES

The devil-knight leapt upon the cardinal’s table, just where Thomas had planned to jump. It squatted and slashed with its axe, but Thomas ducked and turned so it bit through his habit and glanced off his backplate, continuing his turn so the point of his sword wheeled around and into the lion-knight’s face. It continued through the back of the head. The stabbed knight screamed, but it was also a roar.

Thomas yanked out his sword.

The impossible gash in the thing’s head smoked.

It staggered back from the table, shaking furiously, like a wet dog.

It was growing larger, popping its armor.

Screams from the courtyard behind him.

Cardinals struggled to stand up, but some were too paralyzed with fear to move and weighed the shared benches down.

“Shoot him!” the new cardinal screamed, pointing at Thomas.

Now a crossbowman stepped forward.

Cheeked his weapon and triggered it with a flat but potent
whack
audible even through the chaos of crowd and devils.

The bolt shot true.

It struck Thomas in the chest, and he staggered back, stunned.

His cowl fell away.

Another bolt flew from farther down the table; this one clipped his neck, but got no cords.

The first one, though.

He looked down at the goose-feather fletching where the quarrel stood from the dimple in the comte’s armor, the dimple Thomas’s final axe-blow had made in their fight by the stream. It would have clanked off otherwise, for such was the art of the Milanese at curving and hammering their armor.

Dead dead I’m dead now

“Thomas!” the crossbowman said desperately. “I’ve killed you!”

Thomas saw his drooping eye.

“Jacquot?”

“Jesus Christ, forgive me,” Jacquot said.

The old cardinal near him disliked his words so much he unhinged his jaw and bit Jacquot’s face, dragging the skin from it and leaving his lidless eyes staring in disbelief.

Blood all over the young cardinal, his silk gloves.

Jacquot fell.

Thomas did not fall, though he expected to.

Through the bone the point tickling the heart I feel it

Panic in the courtyard.

It seemed everyone shouted or screamed at once.

People fled, running for the gates.

I can’t I can’t I can’t

Thomas gathered strength in his mighty thighs and leapt up on the cardinals’ table. Cardinal Cyriac grew larger. Blood on his face like a dog at the stag. Growing new eyes. Growing bird’s legs beneath his robes.

Thomas ran past this monstrosity and made for the pope.

The thing that had been Cardinal Cyriac reached for him with one of its hands, snagging the sleeve of his left hand.

He turned and lopped the hand from it.

It screamed in rage.

The girl’s blood hurt it.

Three more loping steps to the pope’s cathedra.

Almost there.

The pontiff in orange stood with his hands out, magnificent, smiling.

Thomas’s legs pumped.

Something awful behind him, the smell of sour milk and burning.

If he stopped, if he slowed, it would break his neck from behind.

The smoke from the braziers in his eyes.

ARE YOU SURE?

Yes.

Are you?

His sword fell and struck the pope’s miter, cleaving the three crowns, and cleaving the head.

The crowd screamed in outrage.

His sword went all the way to the chin and the man’s eyes rolled back white and dead, the wound smoking. The arms, though. One of them (not an arm so much as a fly’s limb) grabbed the sword by the blade and yanked it. It spun in the air and away, over the walls of the courtyard. Thomas saw it for an instant, moonlight on it.

You’ll never hold a sword again

Another head was growing from where the first one had split.

A wicked seraph.

A fly’s head, but golden.

Baal’Zebuth.

One of the fallen.

A biting fly.

Shrieks of fear and horror.

The spear!

He pulled the spear out of its sheath.

The thing that had been the pope slapped him now with the arm that was still a man’s arm.

Not in the face.

In the chest.

It hurt.

The peeled head smiled in its two halves.

Dizzy.

Intomyheart!!! but i can still do this ican still

He blew out of his nose, bloody now.

This is what i’m for i do this i drive it home i’m strong

strong please

He hammered down the spear in his fist with all his might, his hips in it.

It moved so fast.

It was as though it wavered in the air.

He missed.

Then something irresistible grabbed his arm.

Jerked it behind him, the pain dazzling.

Ripped it off.

His arm off still gripping the spearhead.

He looked around and saw it.

The other devil had it.

The lionish one, his wound almost gone.

i never had a chance did i

DO YOU KNOW WHAT WE ARE

ONLY ONE IS OLDER

ONLY ONE IS STRONGER

AND HE HAS LEFT YOU TO US

I’LL SHOW YOU

YOUR HEART HAS TWELVE BEATS LEFT

TRY TO LIVE LONG ENOUGH TO WATCH THIS

Delphine saw Thomas run for the false pope and her hands went to her mouth. She wanted to run toward him, help him, save him, but she knew she would never reach him. Could not stand against them. She kept her place near Pope Clement, holding his hand to strengthen him. He was shaking, but he did not run.

Delphine screamed with hope and joy when she saw her Thomas cleave the wicked one’s head,

So strong he’s so strong

but the nature of her scream changed as the thing in the orange robes changed. She screamed Thomas’s name over and over again and fell to her knees watching his arm ripped from him, watching him fall on the table like a pile of laundry, then roll onto the flagstones.

Dead.

She screamed,
“NO!”

She screamed,
“PLEASE!”

They came.

She begged her Father in Heaven in Latin, then in Hebrew, then in Aramaic to stop them, but they came.

Six wings, six wings, and two wings.

Twelve-eyed thing, Fly-headed-thing, Lion-thing.

Tall enough now to look in second-floor windows.

They stank and a noise came from them, and heat.

Everything they walked past or over began to smolder.

They were coming toward her, toward Clement. One latched onto the brickwork of the palace and flung it over on a group of knights who had moved forward to fight, finishing some of them; the devils waded into the remainder, throwing them aside, treading on them, killing them like blind puppies.

Getting closer.

Clement’s shield bearers began to fall away and run.

Not Delphine.

The twelve-eyed one, its mouth an O of fire, held its regrown hand over a dead man clutching a spear; the corpse jerked to his feet, his head lolling on a broken neck and his tongue out. The dead man now convulsed and threw his spear where the devil pointed.

At Clement.

The throw was true, but Delphine threw herself in front of it.

It went through her, into her abdomen, through her viscera, out the other side.

The worst pain she had ever felt.

Behind her, men grabbed the pope and ran with him for the palace.

She fell, bleeding so fast she could hear it spatter.

The twelve-eyed one picked the dying girl up by one arm like a poppet while the other two came near.

Careful not to get her blood on it.

The moon, blood red over them, wheeled madly as she dangled.

God, the stink of them.

Those twelve eyes drilling into her face.

The fiery hole singeing her hair, her gown, blistering her face.

WHAT ARE YOU WE’LL FIND OUT NOW

For the first time she knew the answer.

She smiled.

She looked sleepily at it, almost gone.

You know what I am.

OH.

THAT.

The lion-faced one used the knight’s arm like a pick.

The fist still holding the spear.

THEN YOU SHOULD REMEMBER THIS.

It whipped the knight’s arm, driving the spear into her side.

She clenched her teeth, still smiling.

It bit her legs off and flung her into the middle of the courtyard.

And she died.

FORTY