Arcanum (18 page)

It started to rain: slowly at first, no more than mist in the wind as the clouds above churned and darkened, but it grew to become a steady drizzle, cold and uncomfortable. The road beneath him grew sticky, and puddles appeared in the potholes on the compacted surface.

“My lord,” called a voice, and in turning to see who it was, Gerhard was forced to twist his head into the blustery rain.

“What is it, man?”

Reinhardt, swathed in a waxed cloak with only his head visible, ran up beside him. “The wagonmaster begs for a moment’s rest. His men are finding the conditions difficult.”

“Difficult?”

“Yes, my lord.” Reinhardt, already apprehensive, lowered his head further. “The wagons…”

“May Sleipnir shit on the wagons.” It had rained for barely an hour, and already they were whining, thinking of their beds and their beer. Meanwhile, the Teutons were ahead, pressing on with their rude horse-drawn carts. They could be crossing the Enn by now. So he came to a decision. “I’ve got new orders.”

“My lord?”

“Those on horse will ride on to Obernberg, and scout the land ahead. Your spearmen will help the wagons get to us by afternoon. And when I say help, they’ll put their shoulders to the wheels and push the fucking things all the way if they have to. Clear?”

The man knew better than to argue. “My lord.”

Gerhard clicked his heels again, and his horse responded, breaking into a trot for a few lengths, before subsiding back into a walk.

He could hear what was going on behind him, though his helmet muffled some of the sounds. Barked orders, the rattle of tack, the stamping and splashing of horses’ hooves against the ground.

They were doing what he’d told them to do. Anything else would be unthinkable: literally, because he couldn’t genuinely think of a reason for anyone not to obey, and obey instantly.

The magic, though. He did think about the magic, and how the bridge at Simbach was real enough to take the weight of a man, but not a horse. He didn’t understand that, and didn’t accept it either. Perhaps it meant, at least, that the Teutons couldn’t double back and cross the river there, but there were other considerations.

Everything he knew depended on the working of magic. His whole kingdom, down to the very last penny, relied on some sorcery somewhere along the process. The river flowed as the seasons dictated, but the barges that plied its broad reaches were driven by tattooed bargemasters who willed them upstream and controlled them down it. The whole network of trade on the inland rivers – the Donau, the Rhein, the Volga – would simply grind to a halt without magic.

And speaking of grinding: fields of golden grain didn’t plant themselves in the soil in spring, or mill themselves into flour come harvest. The goods from the farms and the forests rattled their way to markets on wagons like those on the road behind him, ones that didn’t need a horse and could travel tirelessly day and night forever.

Even the lights in the city’s squares. Even the fountains.

Where were his hexmasters?

He almost stopped. He almost turned around and ordered everyone back to Juvavum, where he could take counsel and question his wizards and work out what to do next without having the smell of damp horse assaulting his royal nostrils and the uncaring rain running down his back in a small, cold trickle.

But Carinthia didn’t retreat. Moreover, it didn’t know how to retreat. It only knew how to advance, an irresistible, inexorable force that others either ran from or were consumed by. When Carinthia went to war, it rolled across the countryside like one of the magicked wagons. All it needed was to be steered this way and that, preferably directly at the enemy, and, as history had proved time and again, it was enough.

When they did turn for home, it was because they had been utterly victorious and their foes totally vanquished. Those who were not scattered after the battle had been annihilated during it. How to lead a harried force safely away without loss wasn’t in any of the stories he’d been told.

He had no wish to be the start of any such tale, so he summoned his nerve and remembered his ancestors. Three hundred horse: it was barely worthy of the name “army”. He had his spears, his knights, and the adept. If he shied from a fight now, his name would be synonymous with cowardice. Not Gerhard Stoutheart, Gerhard Strongarm, Gerhard Widowmaker – yes, he liked the sound of that last one – but Gerhard Two-minds, Gerhard Pissblood, Gerhard Tiny-cock. Those, he liked not so much.

It was raining hard now, a constant, heavy blatter of water in fat drops that clattered against his plate. There was some ice in each, just for the extra discomfort.

His was royal blood, the same blood that had flowed in the veins of Alaric. What was rain? What was cold? His character was stronger than that.

Gerhard slowed his horse and turned it so that it walked diagonally across the road. His earls, heads bowed against the weather, looked a sorry sight, and he was ashamed for them. They were his nobles. One of them was his son. The only one of them who seemed to shrug the conditions aside was the witch.

“Straighten up in your saddles, you sacks of shit,” he shouted, venting his frustration and uncertainty. “You are Carinthia, yet you ride like condemned men. Fuck the weather. Laugh at it. Scorn it. Mock it. The Teutons? Barbarians. Weak, ill-fed, ill-trained, ill-disciplined children. What do you fight for? The handful of gold florins you’ll get for every one of their heads you lay at my feet? Or for your own honour? Because I’ll tell you which is more precious to me.”

He walked his horse in a tight circle. “Any of you lack the passion to defend Carinthia’s virginity? Any of you who’d stand by and let its soil and its treasure be deflowered by Teutonic cocks? No? Good.”

They looked back at him, those who dared. Others looked anywhere but.

“We’ve men to kill. Let’s do it quickly.”

Büber was still smarting from Gerhard’s rebuke, and he rode at the back of the column of horse with the other disgraced: Allegretti, who didn’t seem at all bothered, and the hexmaster, who did.

Gerhard may be a prince, but she was a sorcerer. If she’d been a man, she wouldn’t have been spoken to like that. From the look on her face, she both knew and resented that fact.

What if she simply refused to perform when the time came? Büber had come to realise that the outcome of the whole expedition depended entirely on her, and the prospect of his lord and master screaming and begging for her to cast one simple spell to save them all while she smiled inscrutably and folded her arms gave him a vicarious thrill.

The prince could hardly have her killed for disobeying orders. In fact, and the mere thought twisted in his guts, all she had to do was to change sides. Here was Gerhard, here was Felix, here were most of his earls – those able to be mustered, at least.

The prince was right in one thing: Carinthia was here, and it suddenly looked vulnerable.

“Mistress?” he ventured.

“What?” She didn’t even bother to look at him.

“Can I … can I ask you a question?”

“I suppose so. It passes the time.”

“What will you do?”

Allegretti looked askance at Büber from under the dripping brim of his hat. Büber ignored him.

“I will discharge my duty to the prince. As always.” She wiped water from her eyebrows, and used her long fingers to clear the rest of her face. She looked at him now, and something like a smile flickered across her face. “Why? Did you think that because he wouldn’t listen to me, I’d get angry with him?”

Büber shrugged. “I suppose so.”

“You’d be right. I am angry with him. But when has that ever made obeying his orders something I could choose to do? I’ll do what’s necessary when the time comes.” She flicked a water droplet off the end of her nose. “He’ll learn.”

“The bridge, Mistress. What was wrong with the bridge?”

“Was it not obvious, Signore Büber?” said Allegretti.

“No. No it wasn’t. Though it was to that bastard cat. What could it see that I couldn’t?” Even now, the marks on his cheeks had set uncertainly, and the earlier wound from the arrow was looking puckered and white between the black stitches.

“That the bridge …” started the witch.

“…was not there,” finished Allegretti. He smiled to himself, and at the woman’s consternation. “Oh, come. It is hardly a secret.”

“No, that’s exactly what it is,” she said. “The prince said that no one must know.”

“Hang on,” said Büber. “Not there? I walked on it. So did you, Master Allegretti.”

“I cannot deny it. But you asked what the cat could see – the answer is it saw precisely nothing. As did my horse, your horse, their horses.”

“But …” said Büber, then quite deliberately he shut his mouth and looked away. They rode on for a while, and eventually the silence between them became unbearable.

“Something else you wish to say, signore?” prompted Allegretti.

All Büber could think about were the unicorns, how their horns were just sat in the hollows made by their missing bodies. He’d always assumed – he’d always been told – that the horns were the most magical part of them. What if that wasn’t true? What if it were the exact opposite, and the horn was the only part of the beast that wasn’t magical?

Nothing had stolen them away. They had, like the bridge, just ceased to be.

He stared at the woman, all in white. “Does the prince know?”

“He knows everything he needs to know to make the decisions he alone can make.” She gave him another smile; thin-lipped, more desperation than mirth.

“But
you
can still…”

“Yes,” she said, “and before you ask, I don’t know why.”

“But the…”

She sighed, the sound catching in the back of her throat, making it end in a growl. “Yes. I know.”

“Apparently, signore, she knows. So do you. So do I, at least in part. As does the prince. Who else?”

Büber immediately thought of Thaler: had he worked it out? There were so many books in that library of his: what was the likelihood of finding the right one?

“I don’t know. No one. I think,” he answered.

“Not so,” said Allegretti. “A great many people know. Except – they chose not to be here.”

“The hexmasters?” Büber blinked. “How long has this been going on for?”

“Weeks, months even.” The woman in white looked entirely resigned. “If magic started to fail, they would have been the very first to realise. They’d know the signs long before anybody else would even suspect anything was wrong.”

Büber remembered the gold florins he’d been given for the first unicorn, and how very solicitous, very insistent, the masters had been. “I should have known, too.”

“You?” There was scorn in her voice.

“Yes,” he said, irritated. “Me. I don’t suppose you know anything about any missing children, do you?”

It was her turn to get annoyed. “No.”

“Nothing at all? Four kids, that I know about? About one a month? All under twelve.”

“No.”

“It’s just that if you know how long this has been going on for, maybe you know about them?”

“The masters tell us nothing.”

Allegretti narrowed his eyes and shook his head slightly, but Büber missed the expression and ploughed on regardless.

“What do you mean? You’re one of them.” Now he noticed. “Aren’t you?”

“Signore Büber, may I introduce Signorina Agana, adept of the Order of the White Robe.”

“An adept? You have got to be fucking joking.”

There was a pause, and Allegretti eventually said: “Not the most tactful response. She can still immolate you where you sit.”

She was staring at him. She hadn’t raised her hands, or made any threatening gesture towards him. But her look was such that he suddenly realised that he needed to apologise, completely and at once.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that you couldn’t, or weren’t a …” He closed his eyes and wondered how death would take him. Magic terrified him, like it did most people.

“If I had a short temper, huntmaster, I would have died long ago.”

He opened first one eye, then the other. Her gaze was steady, despite the cold wind and the rain blowing at her face. Then she laughed.

“It’s what they do,” she continued. “They goad you. Belittle you at every opportunity. Strip you and beat you, and you’re too weak to resist. They call it training, but they actually enjoy every last humiliation they heap on you. If they manage to break you, they count it a success. If they don’t, the next time you make a mistake, they are twice as vicious. I have survived all that. Your mis-spoke words? Hardly worth mentioning.”

“I’m still sorry, Mistress.” And he genuinely was. He’d had no idea.

“I think the man’s suffered enough, signorina.”

She turned her head with a flick. “He has no idea what suffering is.”

“Signore Büber is well-enough acquainted with hardship, I think,” said Allegretti mildly. “This is, however, a mere distraction, which we must turn away from and come to one mind over a different matter: what is to be done?”

“Us?” The adept seemed surprised that the conversation was to include her. “We follow, and the prince leads.”

“A noble attitude, signorina. But our service would surely be rendered all the more valuable for being considered, timely, and, how shall we say…”

“Not stupid?” ventured Büber.

“I would have gone for wise. Your version lacks grace.” Allegretti removed his hat, squeezed the excess water from it over to his side, then spent a while reshaping it. “Let me put it this way: we are twenty or so horse, travelling towards an enemy of considerably greater number. Our armour is back on the wagons, which may or may not reach us in time, and our spearmen – of considerable assistance when facing cavalry – are exhausting themselves elsewhere. We have our melee weapons, but little else. They have plentiful bows, as Signore Büber has discovered. Our esteemed sorcerer is with us, which is excellent, but whereas before we had infantry to protect her, now we do not. How can we three stop this turning into the disaster it threatens to become?”

His hat went back on his head, looking much sorrier than before.

“Why us?” asked Büber.