Irenicon (33 page)

The armor bent like paper. Metal is the weakest element, no match for water.

He was unconscious before he landed.

Sofia picked up a lance and broke off the handle. With one eye on the horizon, she took a banner from her satchel and unrolled it; black and gold gleamed darkly. She fastened it to the stick and then closed her eyes, testing the weapon with a combination, listening for the snap—and hearing it. The Vanzetti made their banners to last.

She waited calmly. The other knights had seen their colleagues attacking individually and falling one after the other, and now they charged together and it made no difference. As John Acuto watched
eight experienced knights fall to a slip of a girl, he decided that Contract or no, he must see Rasenna before he died. It would be a fitting last pilgrimage for a warrior.

Sofia drove the banner into the ground and pulled the old man to his feet. “General. I offer the Hawk’s Company a Contract.”

“We’ve been over this. Who are you to offer Contracts?”

“I am Sofia Scaligeri, Contessa of Rasenna.”

CHAPTER 66

The walls of Rasenna emerged from a slowly churning white sea, and the morning mist advanced until the fiery banners of besieging and besieged were the same neutral gray. As yet there had been no assault. The Twelfth Legion had arrived a week ago, and now the town and the river together were blockaded. The forests nearby were besieged too for wood to make siege towers, ladders, and other tools.

The tumult outside Rasenna prompted none within; her walls and towers were silent. To Concordians, accustomed to inspiring panic and hate with their war machine, this pure indifference was strangely disquieting.

General Luparelli contemplated the empty walls with rueful curses: he cursed his previous clemency, and he cursed Rasenna for all it had stolen from him—his hand, his son, and, worst of all, his laurels. After Tagliacozzo, did he not deserve plaudits? Had he not
deserved a Triumph? But as usual, he got nothing; it was a noble’s lot.

Unusually, all three Apprentices had come to watch the siege unfold. For some reason, they had become suddenly fixated on Rasenna. Luparelli did not know why, nor did he care to know; he just welcomed the opportunity to make Rasenna pay.

So it seemed especially cruel when the First Apprentice showed him the terms of surrender.

“My Lord,” he sputtered, “these terms are absurd—we will lift the siege if they surrender the engineer? That’s impossible; I saw him die!”

“He lives,” the man in red said simply. The front line separated to make way before him, and General Luparelli followed dutifully.

“I don’t question your orders, but can you be sure your information is accurate?”

The Apprentice came to a stop by the legion’s carroccio. “Bring him out!”

An aide led out the prisoner. His pale, malnourished body was a ruin, a patchwork of bruises and scars. His eyes darted around like a snared animal.

“You recognize the Morello heir, General?”

Luparelli held up his stump. “I remember his brother, my Lord, and if this
boccalone
told you Captain Bernoulli lives, don’t believe it. Rasenneisi are liars!” The general grabbed Gaetano by the arm. “What’s your game, boy?”

The prisoner said nothing.

“We too thought he was lying at first. When he finally understood our intention to make Rasenna our final example to Etruria, he became somewhat less cooperative.”

“You cut out his tongue?”

“We remained skeptical until our Wave signal was disrupted—only a very gifted engineer could manage that. His tongue is no longer necessary; these walls suffice to tell us a Concordian engineer schools Rasenneisi in our hard-won secrets.”

The general recovered his composure and growled, “They’ll be less impressive as rubble.”

“Well, we shall see,” the Apprentice said. “The traitor will deliver our terms, General. Before you send him home, collect what’s owed; the heir inherits everything, including family debts.”

Fabbro, Pedro, and the Doctor crouched behind the walls, waiting.

“This fog is a godsend,” whispered the Doctor. “The Virgin hasn’t abandoned us even if Ariminum has.”

“Is everything ready?” Fabbro asked. He was accustomed to being the one supplying all the answers, and now he felt redundant. The last month of anxious preparation had taught him the stark truth: Rasenna’s fate once more depended on her warriors.

The Doctor kept his eyes on the Concordians. “All’s done that can be. War isn’t any more predictable than business.”

“Where’s Giovanni? Shouldn’t he be here? Surely they’ll want to talk first.”

“We’re done talking.”

“He’s on the bridge, Signore Bombelli,” said Pedro, “monitoring the Wave frequency. It’s been building for a month, and now it’s peaking. If we can hold it back for a couple of days more, it’ll dissipate.”

“If we don’t?”

“We wake up tomorrow dead.”

“That’s not funny, Doctor. What are these water buckets for, in case of fire?”

“Look, it’s going to get dangerous soon,” Pedro said. “You should get to a safe tower.”

“No. I failed your father when he needed me; I’m staying.”

“Your family needs you now, and Rasenna will need you in the aftermath.”

“What if there is none?” he said reluctantly.

“Then it won’t matter,” the Doctor said.

But when Fabbro finally got up, there was a sudden loud crack, and he dived back under the battlements.

“Has it started?”

The catapult’s
whip-snap
echoed in the silence, and a golden missile flew over their heads.

“Not yet,” said the Doctor, leaping up, “but that’s our ultimatum.”

The golden bundle landed in Piazza Luna, and blood started seeping almost immediately from it, running toward the river. As the Doctor knelt beside it, he saw Uggeri coming across the bridge.

“Stay in position, damn it! You don’t need to see this.”

“Yes, I do.”

He didn’t argue anymore. The boy did have the right to know his old Master’s fate. The Doctor unrolled the Morello banner. Inside, gold had turned red. If the fall hadn’t already killed Gaetano, blood loss would have. His arms were bound together and severed at the wrists: a disgraceful death. The Doctor tore away the scroll fastened to the stumps.

“Uggeri, I need you to follow the plan. If everybody does their part, we’ll avenge all our fallen soldiers. Is everything ready?”

“That’s what I came to report.”

“All right. Keep your flag up, bandieratoro.”

“You too, old man.”

The Doctor watched him go and ripped up the scroll. As he covered Gaetano’s face with the Morello banner, he thought on his own death, doubting it would be much better. He’d lived life thinking that the only good fight was one that was winnable, but reason and experience, those two dry sages, assured him he would not see tomorrow. And yet the fight was good—the best.

Giovanni called from the bridge, “What did it say, Doc?”

“Nothing—surrender or die. All good?”

“So far.”

As General Luparelli rode closer to the walls, he could see the rows of stakes planted in the surrounding embankment. His horse grew skittish. and he failed to calm it; he couldn’t master himself, let alone another.

He cleared his throat and shouted, “Men of Rasenna! You have seen how we treat collaborators. Think how we shall treat enemies. Your walls, your towers, and your leaders’ lives are forfeit, but you can save your women and children. Accept our terms. This is your final warning. Give us the—”

Out of the silent mist, a solitary dab of gold floated toward him with the patter of mechanical wings. The general swore; he’d been looking forward to taking revenge on Rasenna and taking it nice and bloody, but it looked like the quailing burghers were prepared to give up the engineer. He should have known Doc Bardini would do anything to save his skin.

ticktickticktickticktickticktick

The annunciator’s wings beat like a terrified bird’s as it ascended, and the general had to spur his horse forward to catch it. He took the paper from its grasp and read:

“Luparino! Still wondering if you are on the side of the Angels. Look to heaven, Dr. B.”

The wings slowed. “Is this a joke?” he shouted up at the walls.

And then he saw them, lighting up like stars as another and then another angel emerged from the mist until a thousand annunciators were floating from the walls over the neat line of his siege towers, over his head.

Tick tick tick tick tick tick

General Luparelli stared at the angel in his hand, a single thought exploding in his mind.

Tick beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeb!

“Oh, sweet mother of Go—!”

The soldiers saw the general shatter before they heard the blast. His blood-spattered horse bolted and trampled the soldier who ran to catch it, but the ruckus was ignored as every eye stared in horror at the hovering swarms now descending.

Wings beat more slowly, then stopped, and first one angel, then dozens dropped to the ground. The first wave hit behind the front
line, in the middle of ranks packed too densely to flee. They landed in clusters, causing stampedes and wreaking even more carnage, wave after wave of them, until the legion’s handsome face was spoiled and the irregular
crump!
of the explosions was joined by the shrill screams of the dying.

Rasenna’s walls remained gallingly empty, indifferent to the suffering. When the panic subsided, the Second Apprentice sniffed and gave an amused snort, recognizing the bitter smell of serpentine.

The First Apprentice tapped an aide on the shoulder. “Fetch me the general’s baton, there’s a good boy,” he said, and when the aide returned, snatched it from him, looked about for a moment, and then handed it back. “I suppose you’ll do.”

“Oh—! Thank you, my Lord—I really don’t know what to say—”

“Say ‘attack,’ General.”

“Yes, my Lord, of course—Concordians, attack!”

The order was an incantation. At once sleeping engines shuddered into life. Catapults sent hails of fiery comets over the still-silent walls, and where they struck the towers, the burning cages burst open and spilled fire in the streets. The fog meant targeting was arbitrary, but terror and confusion were the real aim of these opening moves: a panicking town defeated itself, so the best military theory advised.

But from Rasenna there was nothing.

Fire rained uselessly on empty streets, and no screams or cries were heard over the muffled explosions. Concord’s war engines were the terror of Etruria; for their onslaught to be simply ignored was unprecedented. Lurking behind the soldiers’ professional concern was a more atavistic fear: if panic found no purchase in Rasenneisi hearts, it needs must prey on others.

Swallowing their fear, they advanced, dragging and pushing their engines closer to the walls. The siege might be progressing unusually, but they took reassurance in the knowledge that there was another front, and another army, advancing beneath their feet.

In silence and darkness the subterranean siege had begun days ago when the sappers began burrowing like black worms, ignoring the constant threat of collapse and suffocation. Unlike their brothers overhead, the sappers never lost heart—for men already in graves, there is no retreat; their only way out was to dig, stopping only when they reached the walls, where they would kindle fires with pig fat hot enough to crack stones. When the walls fell, some would be buried and some would see daylight, and either fate was freedom.

Overhead, the infantry waited patiently, ready to rush headlong into any breach created. This dual offensive was how the Concordian Army won sieges; there was no reason for disquiet, for with an army so well drilled, so experienced, there really was only one question: How long would Rasenna hold out?

Pedro made the rounds, checking in at every wall tower. Since the Twelfth had arrived, Rasenna’s engineers had been monitoring the sappers’ progress. The Concordians’ belief that their machines’ speed made countermining ineffective was correct—unless countermining had begun weeks ago. Studying the landscape over the last months, Giovanni had predicted where tunnels would most likely be dug; now they waited for their early-warning system to reveal which route they’d taken.

They watched the water bucket together. The tremors were regular.

“Getting close?” the engineer asked.

“Too close,” said Pedro, and gave the command.

The walls shook as the water passed under, and a moment later, deep behind the Concordian ranks’ front line, the tunnel’s concealed entrance exploded. Sappers’ bodies rained down with the water and mud and rock.

Just as Concord’s underground advance was parried, its more conventional assault stalled too. Before the first row of siege engines could get close enough to the walls to cast their grapping hooks,
the top-heavy beasts toppled ignominiously into the concealed pits everyone had failed to spot.

As Concord’s own power over machines and water turned back on it, even veteran courage wavered.

The Apprentices, discerning a designer’s hand everywhere, marveled. Their soldiers were no more free than livestock herded to slaughter. Like an architect, the Captain had known where pressure would bear fruit, and their army’s rote-learned tactics, efficiency, and speed were liabilities against the rare—the
very
rare—opponent who could exploit them.

“And you said he lacked imagination,” the Second Apprentice observed.

The First Apprentice was serene. “He learned something at his grandfather’s knee, but he cannot understand what is happening. Our privilege, gentlemen, is not only to witness the moment when God moves His hand in the world again but to have the power to slap It away!”

The Third Apprentice laughed like a boy.

The first wave of infantry, concentrated at Rasenna’s north gate, fell without a blow as rusted caltrops planted weeks earlier pierced boots, leaving the slow-moving incapacitated to be crushed under their own machines that followed so close on their heels.

“Loose the Sows!” ordered the Twelfth Legion’s new and increasingly apprehensive general.

The crews were protected by the hide roofs of the battering rams as they blundered to the embankment and its rows of waiting stakes. Those who escaped the crush at the wall were swiftly cut down by unseen archers, but they had done their job and cleared paths for the siege towers, which spit flaming arrows at the walls as they followed. Soon the towers themselves became targets. The most effective firebrands were mallets wrapped with rags and studded with nails, all dowsed in burning pitch; they stuck fast wherever they hit.

Catapults were too unwieldy to effectively cover the towers, so smaller ballistae were wheeled up, and their practiced crews quickly gauged trajectories to concentrate their loads on one target: the northern barbican. This too was routine; the gates were naturally the weakest part of any wall.

Under the unyielding barrage, the first gate broke and the infantry, frenzied for revenge, trampled injured comrades to be first to the breach. They paused only to flay a fallen siege tower of its protective skin. They used the hide-covered wattle to bridge the embankment, but no sooner had they entered the barbican than a second gate dropped behind them. Trapped inside the tower, immobilized by their own numbers, all they could do was scream when the long pikes came thrusting out of the murder holes overhead.