Burdens of the Dead: Chapter Twenty One

Milan

    Fillipo Maria was delighted with the new conduit of news coming out of Venice. Details of the 48 pounders ordered, and how they were being fitted — along with the Arsenal guild masters varied reactions to it. The coming spring campaign was enough to make him chortle to himself. Firstly because by spring he planned to be ready for a fairly bloody summer — with a lot of Venice’s soldiery away. And secondly because his engineers had laughed at the bombards. The duke of Milan had nothing but disdain for the emperor of Byzantium and his rapidly shrinking and collapsing empire. But he must send Alexis word somehow. The news that Venice and Genoa would be engaged in far away wars was a good thing. They had territory that would be lost by the time they got back. And it fitted so well with his plans for Sforza.

 

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    Carlo Sforza read the report carefully. It was not why he had put the man in place, but it was still extra information, and valuable. Not for the first time did he ponder his future. A great condottiere had to keep winning. Not only did his mercenary soldiers need the loot and the morale boost, but his employers tended to have strong ideas about what they were paying for. Many of his peers were good at playing the part. Sforza had been good at doing the deeds. Now…Now he knew his employer wanted him to challenge Venice again.

    And he did not wish to.

 

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Vilna

    Jagiellon sat on the throne, motionless. Someone more ignorant than the tongue-less slave that brought the message might have thought the Grand Duke deep in thought. But by now the slave knew better. Someone was going to die. His master used blood-rites in that chamber down in the dungeons. Blood rites and dark magics feared even here in pagan Lithuania.

    The slave was correct. “Fetch me Count Tcherkas.” So he did. The count, like many of the nobility here, dabbled in magic. He was not in the league of Count Mindaug — but then Count Mindaug had gone to great lengths merely to seem an ineffectual academic. But the rituals the Grand Duke and the demon Chernobog used needed participation. And needed terror — both from the victim and from the perpetrator. Jagiellon was too far gone to feel human emotions. Tcherkas felt fear, revulsion and…eagerness, in the blood sacrifice and skin eating. It helped to penetrate the veil — not to Venice, but to Milan, deep within the western lands.

    From there the news he could glean from Venice — where Chernobog dared not venture, not even in spirit — and other points of the Mediterranean was that the West was readying itself for a spring attack on Constantinople.

    “Spring. By then it should hold, until the fleet from Odessa reaches there, even if the Venetians have somehow managed to work out a way to fire massive forty-eight pound bombards from the decks of their vessels without sinking them.”

    Jagiellon turned to the count. “Send word. Alexis must be warned of this. The Byzantine emperor should concentrate his guns on the seaward walls, on the walls facing the Sea of Marmara as the great chain will keep the vessels out of the Golden Horn. That will keep them out of effective range.”

    The count, still gagging from his meal, nodded.

    Jagiellon went on as if he had not engaged in torturous blood rituals a scant hour before. “If Alexis can be kept from alternating between his depravities and total panic, he will hold the city. He is a weak reed, but at least that means that he is corruptible and malleable. I also want some men and weapons sent with the raider fleet to the coast of the sultanate of Pontus. The Baitini are squalling from Ilkhan lands.”

    The demon was somewhat more concerned about this leg of his plans. It appeared that the laissez faire methods of Mongol rule were changing in response to the Baitinis’ attempts to instill panic and terror. Not — as they dreamed — cracking and disintegrating. He might have to spare some troops there to take Mongol pressure off the borders with Alexis’s Themes in Asia Minor. They would read great things into a small landing somewhere, and redouble their efforts. The demon did not care if they won or lost. He wanted westward geographic expansion for reasons that were not earthly.

 

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Constantinople

    Antimo quietly locked the door. The first two sets of his maps and coded notes had already been dispatched. A good spy also had to be a good scribe, and a patient copyist. He could lose six month’s work by not making multiple copies. He could lose his life by traveling with them. None-the-less he had copies of his notes. Not hidden in the obvious places like the soles of his shoes or lining of his bag. The church might not be forgiving if they read the Latin text of some of the bible he carried. With luck, which had favored him in the past, they would never see it and neither would anyone else.

    Leaving at night was a risk — it meant getting over walls and bribing guards, and there was no need for that yet. It was, outside of the foreign quarters, still business as usual in Constantinople. Yes, trouble was coming as sure as sunrise, but not until springtime. A lifetime away. In the morning he’d be leaving quietly with a group of minor merchants going to a cattle sale some miles away. He wouldn’t be coming back with them. There were just a last few things to be arranged tonight.

    He was unsurprised to see Red-ears and his sister there, tails wagging. He’d met Ripper and Ravener so often on his nightly walk-abouts that he’d taken to carrying a tit-bit or two with him. Dogs — they were always hungry. He’d been like that as boy himself. Maybe that was why boys and dogs had such an affinity. He hadn’t met their mistress again. Somehow he felt that was just as well.

    But she was there, standing in the shadow.

 

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    He was plainly leaving the city. Hekate had watched him obsessively, she had to admit, for the last while. He intrigued her, he brought her out of herself. For so many centuries, she’d been wrapped in her grief, mostly oblivious to the marchings of the mortal world. That grief had not left her, and it never would. But now that she had begun to shake free of the total absorption of it, she was aware of so much that had changed. She had been peripherally aware of it, of course. But she just hadn’t cared enough to pay any amount of attention to it all.

    The world had become a very strange place to her; she was forgotten as a goddess, and mentioned only obliquely. She had been so forgotten, in fact, that only the drink- and drug-addled and the mad could see her. And…those who still had magic, which were few, very few here. The only point of connection with this new world she’d found was the silent magic-user and his strange business.

    What was he doing? It puzzled her. There must be some form of magic involved, she had at first concluded, what with the pacing, the writing, the complex diagrams. She could not imagine what else it could be.

    But magic was something over which she had had some power, and which was a part of her, and she saw no trace of it in these workings of his.

    Had that too gone from her?

    No. Impossible. She still walked in the shadowed paths, she still, when she chose, could easily, trivially, work bits of sorcery that were beyond all but the most powerful of mortal magicians.

    Was he in the service of some other god or goddess unknown? Was that why he did what he did? Were these some strange rites she did not recognize?

    And now — now he was leaving.

    She was Hekate. What did she care if one mortal moved away?

    Yet she did. And the dogs would miss him. She parted the shadow so that when she spoke, he would see her.

    “Where are you going?” she asked.

    He turned very cautiously. “I didn’t see you there, Lady. Just out.”

    She shook her head, denying his words. “You are leaving the crossroads. This place.”

    “I was trying to make that less than obvious. Yes. I have to go. You’ll take care of my friends here, will you?” He petted them, scratching behind their ears. Then, looking at the dogs. “I think you should leave here, if possible, as soon as is practical. There’s siege and war coming, probably sooner than they anticipate. That’s not kind to dogs or women.”

    She knew that. Oh, how well she knew that. “Will you be coming back?” she asked, remembering. Remembering far too much. This man was…kind. Unexpectedly kind. He was warning her.

    “It’s possible,” he said, cautiously. She sensed why. He did not want to lie, nor to promise what he could not do. “I go where I am sent. I may come back here to finalize things.”

 

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    She was moved to a generosity of her own. She moved her power and set it lightly on his shoulders. “Hekate’s blessing goes with you. You will walk safe and silent in the darkness. It will cloak and hide you. And at the crossroads, the moon will light the right pathway for you, if you call on me.”

    He seemed taken aback, perhaps at the generosity. “I can help you to get out.”

    Now, she was touched. He did not need to do this thing, to offer safety to her, as he understood it. And he was not offering, thinking he would gain carnal favors of her. He did so because he — he liked her dogs. And thus, her. And he would do both of them a kindness.

    But of course, he still did not know to what he spoke. “I am Hekate,” she told him, gravely. “I choose my path.”

 

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    Antimo Bartelozzi did not know what insanity had overtaken him. He’d seen enough sad sights and victims, and indeed, beautiful women, for the lifetimes of ten men. He’d never let that impair his judgment or distract him from his task. Why was he telling her all this? And offering to get her out of here? Had he been poisoned and was he in some kind of hallucination? That might be why her image was so strange. She seemed for an instant, to be the night itself. He shook his head, desperate to clear it. He wanted a goblet of wine. Badly and right now. But she wasn’t going away. She wasn’t, somehow, the kind of woman you could brush past, or merely excuse yourself, saying you had to get on with things. “Um. Can I offer you a glass of wine?” he said, awkwardly.

    She nodded regally. “That would be acceptable.”

 

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    Libations and sacrifice at the crossroads were her due. It had been many years since anyone had done so much for her.

    “We could go to the taverna on the corner I suppose. Just…ignore anything they say to you. It’s not really a place for…ladies.”

 

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    It was at a cross-roads. It also reminded her why she had always had the sky as her temple. Darkness was not something that She of the Night disliked. The stale smoky dimness of this place was less appealing. No one saw her, or her dogs. There were other women in the place. One of them even attempted to come and sit in the alcove near the back of the smoky room that this Antimo had led her to. Ripper growled, and she backed off, looking a little confused. “Two goblets. Of the good mavrodaphne,” said the celebrant to the servitor who came to ask what he’d have. He must be a celebrant, who had come to enact the ancient sacrifice and act of making a libation. That strengthened her, slightly. It had been many years since she last had had any true worship from humans.

    “Two? You want some company, mister?” asked the servitor.

    “No,” he said, his voice seeming harsh, almost angry for a second. The servitor looked at him, as if seeing him for the first time. It was possible, considering the magic Antimo wove about himself, that this was true. He did not see Hekate at all, but that was how she desired it.

    He brought the two goblets, and set them in front of Antimo. Wooden goblets, as appropriate. Antimo pushed one across the table to her.

    Was that it, nowadays? No prayers? No songs? No respects?

    “It’s surprisingly good wine,” said Antimo, reassuringly. “Taste it. I know it seems hard to believe coming from a place like this.”

    She did. It was indeed good wine. Rich and full of fruit, full of the summer. It was the first thing that she had tasted for many generations and it brought back a flood of memory. She had always been associated with the fruits of fertility. With harvest and the birthing. There had been feasts under the harvest moon, and the best wine offered…

 

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    It wasn’t really a whine. Just a sort of well, what about us? comment from Ripper, accompanied by a nose against his elbow.

    “Gently hound. I could have spilled that,” said Antimo. “I wouldn’t eat here myself, but dogs have a tougher digestion than most people. I suppose it is unfair at least from your point of view, eh?” He called the servitor over again. “I’ll have two bowls of stew.”

    “Two. To keep the other goblet of wine company, mister,” said the fellow. “Well, you’re paying.” He brought two shallow bowls of meat and vegetables from the black pot hanging on a chain at the fireside. Antimo set them down. Hekate’s dogs didn’t even wait for them to get to the floor. Hekate did not say she wouldn’t have said no to the food herself. She did not, strictly speaking, need it. But this was the closest she had come to being part of the mortal world for a long time. Antimo seemed content to sip his wine, however. So she did likewise, working her magic on it.

    “You will take some of this wine with you on your travels. Pour some out at the crossroads and call on me.” And then feeling a little odd — perhaps it was the wine after so many years, she stood up. “You must come back. My dogs and I will wait for you.”

    This time, he made the pledge. “I will.”

    She swept the night around her like a cloak and called Ripper and Ravener to her, and went out, to the third way. To her place.

 

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    Antimo sat looking into the gloom at the empty seat. What was all of this about? Why was he doing this? Was it all some kind of hallucination? But the bowls, when he picked them up, were empty and so — when he reached across and took it — was the crude wooden goblet. Only…it was no longer just a crude wooden goblet. Someone had carved into it, with artistry that was plain even in this poor light, a frieze around the body of it. A complicated scene of the chase, by the looks of it. Antimo quietly slipped it into his cotte, put a copper down to pay for it — or for the servitor’s pleasure, and left. Someone was complaining about how dim the taverna was.

    He was a little afraid. He’d often been scared and in real danger, and he was used to controlling that fear. But this, this was something different and alien. He remembered the silky softness of the dogs ears and was somehow comforted.

    He left town the next day as planned. But he had a wineskin filled with the wine from the taverna.

 

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    Two days later, at dusk, he left the group of cattle-buyers and struck out on the back roads. He was seeking a port to find a ship to take him back to Ferrara or, as his master had instructed, at least as far as Corfu, that he came to the crossroads.

    The other three travelers had all stopped a little further back and were eating a simple supper. Antimo was a little wary about them. They were chance-met companions of the road…apparently. But two of them were even more vague about where they came from and where they were going. The other man was a farmer heading for the coast to buy a horse. He’d had a good harvest, and never owned a horse before. There were bargains to be had down at Echinos. He spoke of it as if it was the big city and not just a coastal village.

    Antimo told them he was going to relieve himself. When he got to the crossroads, on the spur of the moment he pulled out the wineskin and spilled some out onto the ground “Hekate.”

    The moon peered over the lip of cloud and seemed to brighten the left hand path.

    “What did you say?” It was the young farmer.

    He’d plainly overheard exactly. “Hekate. It’s…its an appeal for good luck and wise choices on a journey. An old superstition from my village.”

    “Oh. I thought she was the witch-goddess of the underworld.”

    The last thing he needed was a witch-hunt. “No. Just an old superstition about crossroads. I’m going to walk on a bit.”

    “Oh. Yes. I don’t like those fellows. I’ll be getting along too. We can’t be that far from Echinos.”

    Antimo noticed that he lingered a moment behind and spilled a little out of his wineskin onto the ground too. And that the other two had also got to their feet and were hastening to gather up their things and go after them through a dusk that was thickening, and shadows that seemed darker than usual. He and his companion quickened their pace; the road ahead seemed brighter, lit by moonlight that made the shadows behind all the darker.

    He expected at any moment to hear the footsteps of the other two catching up with them. And, truth be told, felt for his knife, expecting he might have to use it. The farmer had been a little too open about the money he carried with him, and Antimo had a pack that might contain, well, anything. He didn’t want a fight; the farmer would certainly be useless, and two against one were never odds he liked.

    But somehow, they must have taken the other track.