Authors: Aidan Harte
*
South of the strait, the situation was quite different. Though Khoril’s initial blow had been magnificent, the Moor had recovered
to wreak a grievous revenge. He was still stationed on the
Mars
, now his last surviving lantern, and his captains were at home in mêlée. Khoril’s inner crescent, now reduced to ten, had become ever more circular as they were pushed back towards the strait. Burning and sinking ships presented another obstacle to both sides, and between the smoke and rain and increasingly turbulent west wind, all was confusion.
The
Mars
was an embarrassment to its name, the Moor had decided, equipped as it was with only one large cannon. His sunk lanterns had all the long-range guns, so the remainder were obliged to fight at intimate distance. The first galley that closely engaged a Sirocco ship had been overrun by swarms of Sicarii, leaving the Moor no choice but to sink them both.
Since he couldn’t board them, he had the Golden Fleet – or what was left of it – attack Khoril’s ships in pairs, hammering at them from both sides until their decks were reduced to charred splinters. They were left drifting aimless, unable to do further harm, while the Moor’s men moved on to the next enemy vessel. At the start he had superior numbers in the region of two to one and now, despite his initial losses, it was more like three to one.
It wouldn’t be long now … His relish was interrupted by an unexpected cry from the crow’s nest: ‘Admiral, vessels portside!’
‘Portside?’ He scrambled aloft, ready to throw down the blind fool, but the boy spoke true: a fleet of galleys was coming from the Port of Syracuse. Their formation was tight; their speed, with sail and oar pulling together, good – their intention as obvious as it was incredible: to break through his now-dispersed line with a concentrated punch and to relieve his beset quarry. But why would
Sicilians
wish to antagonise distant Concord? It made no sense – but he had been too long amongst the heathens to be much surprised at anything they might do.
His
orders were precise and not up for interpretation. There was time for only half the line to turn about, no more than that,
and though they still had the numerical advantage, fighting with another enemy at your back was rarely pleasant.
*
On the far northern rim of this intense struggle, the
Bernoulli
and the two reserve galleys sat untouched and uninvolved. Instinct said flee, but Scaevola knew it was his duty to lend help where needed. The question was: which side’s need was greater?
To the west they were contending with Charybdis’ crazed currents and even more crazed Sicarii invading from all directions, and the fight had descended into a mêlée. He watched with terrible fascination as a ship drifting on its beam ends was swallowed by the whirlpool and vanished in seconds.
To the east, the xebecs had struck the chain at several points at once and completely destroyed his neat formation. In the confusion two galleys had collided, and although neither was going fast enough to do real damage to their hulls, they still became entangled. More troublesome yet, the collision had broken loose an improperly secured cannon, and after crushing the deck-crew, it had acquired a taste for murder and finished the job by plunging down the forehatch and straight through the galley’s bottom. As the first ship sank, it dragged the other galley with it.
Faced with the awful reality that this battle had no centre, Scaevola decided there was no deciding and sent one reserve galley east and one west. The
Bernoulli
remained uncommitted: a monument to caution.
*
A tin cup slid off the edge of the shelf and Sofia opened her eyes. Everything in the cabin was at a weird angle: were they sinking? It wasn’t the creaking or the muffled explosions that pierced her grogginess but the fact that Iscanno was not smiling. She rolled over to see a grim arsenalotti standing over her wielding a rigging-pin.
‘Forgive the intrusion, Signorina, but there’s a pretty reward for you.’
He took a step towards her and then stopped, sighed wistfully and fell to the ground.
Bakhbukh wiped his blade clean. ‘Time to go, Mistress.’
He helped her to her feet and over the body. The scene on deck was hellish. A pall of black smoke hung over everything like a sickness, and parts of men were littered everywhere, caught in the rigging, piled on the deck, floating in the waves. Ahead of them was a forest of swaying masts and from the crow’s nests to the rowing decks she could see men locked in earnest conflict. The general drift towards Charybdis was tangible now; that monster would not be twice denied.
The eastern wing was entangled with the xebecs and had by now turned so it was perpendicular with the strait. The conflagration drifted west like a great trawler net, trapping everything it touched, and explosions started fires on those few ships not already burning and infused the cloud of gun smoke drifting before it with foggy blackness. Storms of men draw storms in nature: the sulphur merged with the gathering storm clouds and the cannons’ report was now echoed by real thunder.
The ships of the western wing were thoroughly entwined: one great rootless island drifting west. The arsenalotti had regrouped sufficiently to stop the Sicarii advance, yet it was too late to do more. The Lazars took control of the guns of each ship as she was claimed and spread confusion with random fire; those not yet taken did the enemy’s work by firing pre-emptively on each other.
The galleys Scaevola had sent ahead had already become hopelessly entangled in the fray. The
Bernoulli
itself was in a corridor of sorts between the two merging wings, and burning debris surrounded them. If they tarried much longer they would be trapped – so surely now the imperative must be survival. He
desperately wanted to turn north and sail back to Veii, but his navigator insisted the corridor behind them was closing too fast.
‘We can’t take the
niponti
!’ Scaevola screamed.
‘Well, if you have any better—?’ The navigator’s head was whisked off by a piece of spinning spar as a portside explosion buffeted the
Bernoulli
. She listed precariously. Grappling hooks flew from the clouded island to starboard and when the
Bernoulli
righted herself, she pulled dozens of Sicarii up into her yards. More hooks portside came flying from the smoke as arsenalotti, Sicarii, Lazar and pirate alike sought to escape the general doom.
‘Cut the ropes!’ Scaevola screamed at the deck-crew, but they were too few and the enemy too many.
‘How can I serve?’ she asked again, but taunting silence was the only answer Carmella got from the stained-glass Madonna. She’d called Isabella a child, but here she was, dumbly replicating her actions. Why was she praying in the chapel? Because Isabella had done so – but it hadn’t worked. The Madonna in the window looked reproachful, certainly, but there was no forgiveness.
As was just. Carmella believed in old Rasenna’s law: blood for blood. She’d blamed Isabella for not letting her shine, but there was no one to blame now. This wreckage was her doing. She alone had elected to stay, and she alone had stained the baptismal font with blood. Uggeri’s blood.
‘What do I do? Speak!’
This time she heard something.
‘Unhand me, you dirty peasant!’
‘Shut up. It’s time you made your confession.’
Carmella went out into the garden to investigate the raised voices. Bocca came striding into the baptistery, pulling a young woman along. ‘Hello, Sister. Still take orphans here?’ He did not wait for an answer before throwing the woman at Carmella’s feet.
Maddalena’s head had been roughly sheared and her lip and cheek were bleeding and swollen. She stared at the font. Her lips moved, but she was dumb with terror.
Carmella said, ‘Who did this?’
‘Me,’ Bocca said resolutely, ‘and I’ll happily do worse if you don’t keep her from mischief. Them dancers outside is nearly all dead now, so the last thing we need is for some lunatic to open
the gates and start it all over again. If she wants to kill herself, I’ll provide the rope, but I won’t let her endanger Rasenna.’
‘Papa will have you whipped!’ Maddalena screamed.
‘I told you already, slut: your papa’s dead and even that criminal Geta’s abandoned you. The Signoria is back in charge.’
‘Signor, there’s no cause to abuse her,’ Carmella said calmly.
‘Perhaps not, but it feels great to give a Bombelli a good hiding. You should try it – you look like you need a laugh. Or treat her like a principessa if you prefer, she’s now your responsibility. But if you don’t keep her here, out of trouble’ – he leaned close – ‘I’ll chain her up like the bitch she –
ahhh—!
’
Maddalena’s claws drew blood and Bocca raised his fist, but Carmella deflected the blow with one hand and with the other spun him around and off his feet.
He got to his feet with an offended dignity and said, ‘You’ve been warned.’
When he was gone, Carmella led Maddalena into the garden. Away from the font, she calmed down and began to speak. ‘There’s no justice. Our podesta has fled. The Furies have come for the rent and my purse is empty. I’ve seen them knocking on our gates and they won’t let me sleep and if we cannot give them justice, we must show them hospitality—’
‘How long since your last confession?’
Somehow Carmella’s question cut through her mania. ‘I’ve never made one,’ Maddalena answered. ‘Not truthfully, anyway.’
Carmella took her hand. ‘Then do so now. It’ll ease your mind, I swear.’
Maddalena pulled her hand away, rigid and proud, and Carmella braced herself for a tirade. Instead, she collapsed and buried her face in Carmella’s habit. ‘Sister, I killed my papa – what penance answers that?’
Carmella glanced towards the font inside the baptistery. ‘You’ve already been punished for that.’
‘I want to be whole again,’ she wept. ‘I want to be … like you.’
Carmella grabbed her by the shoulders. ‘You shall be!’
*
Geta and Leto entered the tavern together. The old buttero was surrounded by stacks of empty bottles and strumming a mandolin.
‘You’ve been busy.’
‘I have not been inactive, signori. Will you assist me with the last jug that Tagliacozzo has to offer?’
‘Certainly. You didn’t lie about the Big Pebble, Sergio, or the Highlanders.’
‘They know how to make a fella feel welcome, don’t they?’
‘We return poorer in men and equipment,’ said Geta, mournfully concluding, ‘I lost a toe.’
‘You’ll recover,’ Sergio said, waving his four-fingered hand. ‘I was always afeared of losing a finger and then it happened. Weren’t all that bad after all – nothing’s bad as all that.’
‘The mind conjures monsters,’ Leto remarked, sceptically studying the buttero.
‘Well put, young fella. This your boy, Geta?’ Sergio pinched his cheek before Geta could stop him.
Leto kicked his chair back and drew his dagger. ‘Back off, you drunken oaf.’
Geta faked a coughing fit to stifle his amusement. ‘Sergio, this is General Spinther.’
‘This is the mighty warrior? I ain’t going to lie, I expected taller. I heard they started young in Concord, but I never rightly believed it. Hell of a thing, to see a calf leading bulls.’
‘Don’t be so touchy, Spinther,’ said Geta patting the empty chair. When Leto sat down, Geta refilled Sergio’s glass. ‘The general has a proposition.’
‘That so?’
‘As the mountains are closed to us, we need a guide, Signore.
The Minturnae has a fearsome reputation but you butteri pass over it as easy as the birds of the air.’
‘That’s a flat-out exaggeration but I
can
find my way across, just about. Don’t rightly know whether to be flattered at the offer or offended by the implication. What makes you think I’d betray my folk?’
Leto stared at him coldly. ‘We’ve been making our way south these last months. Some towns we have to burn, most are handed to us. There’s always someone willing to strike a deal. I was given to understand that you were left to burn in this town’s dungeon – that or be executed – which would surely have been your fate had anyone but Geta here found you. Your folk, as you call them, consider you an enemy.’
‘I ain’t from round here, for your information.’
‘No, you’re a Salernitan. And butteri don’t let their brothers get locked up. I see you’re missing more than one digit.’
Sergio self-consciously pulled his other hand into his poncho. ‘Ain’t you sharp. What of it?’
‘The transgression that led your folk to permanently ostracise you was not your first, which makes you a recidivist. And it gives you two choices: you can try to drown your criminal nature in this hovel’ – he leaned forward – ‘or you can accept what you are and strike a blow to make your countrymen rue the day they shunned you.’
The buttero had begun by staring defiantly at Leto. He ended with his head bowed. When Leto had finished speaking he turned to Geta. ‘He don’t talk like no calf.’
Geta tilted his head. ‘Maybe not – but he does talk sense. What do you say? We’ll pay.’
‘
Corpo di Bacco!
Why’d you leave that till last?’ He grabbed his hat. ‘I’ll show you the way, but let me warn you this before you all start grumbling that I sold you something you didn’t want: the Big Pebble offers frostbite and pneumonia; the marsh offers
footrot, flux and fever. She’s a treacherous bitch, even for those who know her intimately. My former partners won’t make it easy on us neither—’
‘Men we can afford to lose,’ said Leto. ‘It’s the attacks on the wagon-trains that are causing the longest delays. Even when the engines survive, the wagons are often beyond repair. I’m damned if I know how they know which to attack – it’s not like we announce which are carrying our engines and which carry supplies …’
Sergio laughed. ‘
You
don’t need to say a damned thing,’ he said. ‘The tracks announce it loud and clear. And even if they didn’t, it don’t take much smarts to know folks’ll take the best roads when they’re hauling something worth something. Once you cross the Liri, it’s all marsh till you get to the Garigliano. They’ll expect you to avoid the lowlands with your heaviest loads but I know some lowland ways what’re dry. That won’t fool ’em fer long, but if we keep up a pace it won’t take long. So what now, young fella? You want another finger to make sure I’m bonifide, or do we just shake on it?’