The men of Partestrada huddled like rooks on a tower. Over a hundred men shared the ghost of warmth between the cliff face and the ancient wall. They had strewn the snow with pine boughs and dead bracken, which they now fed bit by bit to damp, unwilling fires. Even in the open air, the smell of hot wool was overpowering.
Macchiata had been exactly right. They were all men. Every face that met his grew, or was capable of growing, a beard. The response to his greeting was a spiritless mumble, more wary than hostile.
Belloc, the blacksmith, and two pot-bellied burghers edged aside for him, and Damiano sank down beside the most flourishing of the fires. His staff rested in the crook of his elbow, but the lute he wrapped in his mantle and set behind him. Heat beat against his face, potent as the grace of God.
“You really shouldn't keep the fires going in the daytime,” he remarked, watching the gray smoke sail out into the air, roiling, bending east. “You are visible from a distance.”
Belloc raised one shaggy eyebrow. “Not all of us are as well clothed as you are, young Signor.” He stared pointedly at the ermine.
Damiano flushed. He had always liked the blacksmith, who once had sealed his father's caldron so that the elder Delstrego had never known that Dami had allowed it to break. With guilty haste he pulled the instrument from its wrapping.
“I don't need it” Belloc half smiled, looking away from the offering. “But there's some that might.”
Damiano flung the mantle onto the piled branches. He didn't look to see what hand plucked it up.
“Besides,” continued the blacksmith, and he sighed, “no one is looking for us.”
“According to him, there are soldiers on our trail,” said Denezzi, from behind a pile of embers that seemed to be his alone. All faces turned to the new arrival amid a sudden silence.
“Where are the women?” demanded Damiano. “And the old men and children? Surely there is no cave, or concealment nearby, that...”
“The women are in Aosta,” answered Belloc, with a dour satisfaction. “Along with the children, the lame, and those men born under a lucky star. Also in Aosta are the money, the carriages, most of the clothes and food...
“We sent them straight on, while we came to this forsaken rock covered with frozen sheep dung and hungry sheep lice.”
“Why?” Damiano looked from one uncomfortable face to another. “Why didn't you follow them to Aosta?”
Denezzi broke the silence. “If we abandon our homes, Owl-Eyes, we will return to find them occupied.” Other men grunted assent, but Belloc spoke again.
âThat was your reasoning, Signor Denezzi. But I left little I can't do without. My tools and my anvil have gone up the hills in an oxcart. Still, it is important we hang together, if we're ever to be a town again.” His sighs were deep, as befitted the size of his ribcage.
Damiano was at first heartened by the news that the most delicate part of the city, at least, was safe. But then his mind began to turn over Belloc's words.
“Signor Belloc,” he began, sliding his hands absentmindedly in
and out of the
flame.
“Your news troubles
me.”
The blacksmith stared fixedly as orange flames licked Damiano's fingers. “I could use hands like that,” he muttered. “I wouldn't need the tongs.”
Shyly the youth pulled back. “It will burn me too,” he admitted, “if I leave them there.”
“The Devil takes care of his own.”
Damiano swiveled at Denezzi's remark, but the black beard was cut by a toothy smile. “I am not serious, Delstrego. All the world knows you're the first in line at the communion rail.”
“Listen to me, Belloc, Denezzi, all of you. I know there are soldiers after you, for your money. The whole town is to be squeezed dry. You especially, Paolo...”
Denezzi scowled. “Why me?”
“Because Marco told Pardo you were very wealthy.”
The big man's cry was pitiful. “Aaii! No! Why did he say that! It's a lie!”
Belloc chuckled.
“Because he doesn't like you, Paolo. I can't think why not.” The laughter that greeted Damiano's sally raised the effective temperature inside the shelter.
Damiano continued. “If you haven't seen them by now, it means they either passed along the West Road unnoticed...”
“We've kept a sentry at the road,” interjected Belloc.
“That's how I found you,” added Denezzi.
“Worse and worse.” Damiano rubbed his face with palms hot from the flames. “Then Pardo's men must have turned back and headed north, either by mistake or intent, and come upon the carriages of the women.”
The shelter erupted in noise and movement. Half the men cursed, while the other half rose to their feet, knocking snow-damped wood into the fires.
“Impossible,” roared Denezzi, then added in calmer tones, “When would they have passed the fork in the road?”
“On horseback? Two days, perhaps. I know they stopped at Sous Pont Saint Martin.”
Cries, sobs, and gasps followed one another down the huddled line, as Damiano's news was relayed.
“God... help us. They may have caught them,” whispered Belloc, and Denezzi stared dumbly into the fire. “Perhaps they will only take the money.”
“Will they resist?”
The blacksmith did not understand.
“Signor Belloc, this very morning I buried those who dwelt at Sous Pont Saint Martin. A peasant threw a pitchfork at a soldier, you see...”
Muscles tautened in the blacksmith's massive jaws. “Jesu! Boy, do you come to kill our hope?”
“I've come to help, if I can,” said Damiano.
Denezzi stood, and all eyes looked to him. Damiano felt a hot pang of envy toward this man, whose strength and brute temper had won him more respect among his fellows than had Damiano's selfless dedication. “We'll have to take the chance he's right I will lead a party of horsemen back to the North Road.
“But tomorrow. There's little light left today.” He glanced down at Damiano. “For men's eyes, anyway.
“In the meantime, if you want to help us, then find us food. Else we will have to draw lots to see whose horse is butchered.”
Damiano glanced sharply at him. “What do you expect of me: loaves and fishes? I have a jug of tonic in my bag; it's the reason I missed the evacuation, you know. I was minding the pot.”
Despite the worry in his face, Belloc grinned. “Ah, yes, that pot.”
“What did you expect to eat,” continued Damiano. “Coming out here with little more than the clothes on your backs.”
Denezzi growled, throwing tinder into the flames. “We expected to go home!âwhen Pardo had passed through: perhaps a week's time. And I expected the shepherds to drive the flocks home as soon as they heard of the advancing army.
“But they never showed, though I held up the march a day and a half to wait. Probably they are long since in Turin, and have sold the sheep as their own.”
“Give them the benefit of the doubt,” grunted Belloc. “They may have been overrun, and all our mutton sitting in the bellies of the southerners.” Denezzi was not comforted.
“You gave the order to march?” mused Damiano, idly fingering the slack strings of his lute. “Yourself, not the mayor, or the council?”
Denezzi gestured as though to brush away flies. “I'm on the city council. My opinions are heard. Besides, most of the councilmen are not of military age; the mayor himself went to Aosta with the women.”
Damiano peered through the lacework of the ivory rose that ornamented the lute's soundhole. Was there dampness within? “I have neither meat nor bread, Paolo. Nor can witchcraft create them. You'll have to kill a horse, I'm afraid.”
“That will be a sore burden on some poor fellow,” replied Denezzi. “And unnecessary. I think you can help us, Damiano.”
“How?”
“You can call us meat from out of the hills.”
The young witch's head snapped up in startlement,
but
Denezzi continued “I have seen you do it, when we were both boys, calling rabbits from the fields and dogs from their master's kennels.
And
my horse: I remember how he threw me and ran to you, pushing his black nose into your hand. Oh, yes, I won't forget that.”
“I didn't ask him to throw you, Paolo. That was his own idea.” Damiano had his own memories of the episode, foremost of which was the bloody lip Denezzi had given him in consequence of the fall. This had occurred when Damiano had been nine and Denezzi thirteen.
The young witch furrowed his brow, trying to explain a thing that was not easily put in words. “You see, Paolo, I can... tempt the beasts to come to me, for bread or a pat on the nose. But I can't force them. And if I call them saying, âCome to me and be slaughtered,' well I think I'll be calling a long time.”
“Just say come,” suggested Denezzi. “I know how little you like the sight of blood, Owl-Eyes, so you just pat the goat or whatever on the head, and we'll do the rest.”
Damiano dropped his head again. “That's betrayal.” He heard a man snicker on the other side of the fire.
The witch ground his teeth together. “It's very hard to he, Paolo, without using words.”
Denezzi rustled beneath his black pelts. “It's very hard to go hungry. It's either a wild beast or a horse, Owl-Eyes. You can at least try.”
He could have pleaded weariness as an excuse; in truth he was swimming with fatigue. But he felt eyes on him, and he had offered to help. What was more, Damiano knew most every horse in Partestrada by its simple, unspoken name. He rose from the fire.
He passed through a gap in the brush pile, and a chill hit him. “I'll need my mantle back,” he mumbled sullenly. There was no response until he turned his black eyes into the crowd. Then the fur-lined wrap was handed out.
“If I bring in a goat,” he said to Denezzi, “you must give me time to get out of it.” The big man turned his face away.
Damiano trudged through crackling slush to the middle of the pasture. Shadows were growing, striping the field with blue. Tucking his mantle under him, he sat down on a hummocky stone. The shoe of his staff was braced between his boots; he leaned his face against the staff's lowest silver band.
For half a minute his mind floated free. Then he spoke a silent “Come,” and unbidden to his mind sprang the image of a sword. He heard it snick free of the scabbard. By willpower he burst the image, only to see it reform in the shape of a pitchfork, tines protruding through the snow.
He was very tired. He tried again, and his call carried the odor of an abattoir, of a hut filled with dying. Mother of God! He didn't want to do this. He wanted to sleep, here in the sun, if no better place offered.
In the emptiness of his mind he saw how lovely it would be to rest. He remembered the honey-colored rock where he had eaten and talked with Raphaelâonly yesterday. He felt the heat of the hearth, where a chair was burning. How wasteful, but how warm.
His mind was flooded with the memory of this very pasture in the green of summer, when his father would treat the sheep with tar poultices and incantation. Grass up to his half-grown knees, except where the flocks had cropped it. It had been cool then, in the mountains, but pleasant. Sheep's milk. Napping at midday, surrounded by curious, odorous, half-grown lambs.
All the while Damiano dreamed, his call continued, rising into the air, growing, following the wind like smoke.
He remembered waking up with nothing to do all day, a condition he had experienced as recently as a week ago. He remembered the warm flood of sound Raphael pulled out of the lute. He remembered Carla, sewing as he read to her from the gilt-edged volume of Aquinas. (Her little brass needle caught the sun. She made only the gentlest fun of Damiano's squint as he read the fine script.) He remembered how quickly and quietly the days had passed before this war.
A shadow fell across the sunlight, and his drowsy eyes opened. A face stared down at him: Sfengia, the cheesemaker. The man's eyes were wet with longing. He was not alone, for Damiano sat at the center of a circle of silent figures that was even now increasing. They came for the sunshine, for the summer, for the memories of August and the dusty roads that caked a boy's bare feet and legs. They came at Damiano's call.
He felt their minds around him, open to his. There was Sfengia, afraid for his three daughters, and Belloc, heavy and mild. Behind them all, drawn but unwilling, Damiano sensed the brittle presence of Denezzi.
The witch smiled wistfully. He had never compelled such rapt attention. It was very pleasant to sway men's minds. Let Paolo equal this.
Suddenly Damiano knew how to fulfill his task. It was all very easy. He imagined himself an animal, a hoofed beast: a sheep or a cow or maybe a goat. He allowed his dreams to shift in consonance with his animal being, though the call continued.
Green grass. That was good. Tall dry grass, with grain spilling out of the head. Free water running. Sun.
No halter. No wire twitch against the tender Up. Damiano touched the mind he had been seeking, the warm, wordless brute mind. It was tame to him and unafraid. It answered from very near. Unsuspicious, it opened to him and let him in. His meadow visions it made its own, improving them in the process. Salt. A warm back to rest one's head upon. Sage in the wind.
The old stable, out of the wind, and the smell of mash in the pail.
Once more the sun stroked Damiano's face; this pastoral rhapsody was losing him his human audience. But he scarcely noticed, for he was sharing the eyes of the cow that passed down into the dell along the lee of a cliff face, seeking summer just ahead. It was no wild beast, but lonely, lost. Its udder was shrunken, and its dappled sides gaunt. It stopped and looked around. Damiano saw the meadow and himself in the middle of it, motionless on the rock like a dark tree stump.
Summer was calling. His mind shouted it. Grass, crackling hay. The cow trotted forward.