The weeks had blurred into drawn-out months, and hope of the Ariminumese ever signing the Contract was ebbing daily.
Tents clustering in cliques redrew the camp’s lines crooked. Fights broke out every day—over equipment, over gambling, over Ariminumese women, over many things, and ultimately all over nothing. Faction thrives on hopelessness. With no prospect of fighting Concord, the enemy became Ariminumese merchants, who took advantage; John Acuto, who did not pay advances; and each other, who were available. The Company sank into chaotic equilibrium all too familiar to Sofia. It was like being sober among drunks.
Even waning, John Acuto’s star still shone: it was easy to fight and get dirty, harder to keep one’s armor polished. Levi said Acuto liked her because she stood up to him, but the past had molded them to fit—she was a tomboy raised by a fighter, and Acuto was a father without a son. But the more they talked, the more of a contradiction he was: a man who excelled at war but hated it. He fought for profit like a man doing penance. What sin is absolved by blood? she wondered.
“I never understand race who build Molè but cannot queue.” Yuri had sprained his wrist breaking up one of the daily mealtime fights. Sofia made a splint and brought him to the priest, who doubled as camp surgeon.
He examined her work. “Nicely done, Signorina.”
“I knew a doctor once.”
“He taught you well. I couldn’t do better. Yuri, just avoid punching anyone for the next few days.”
“I no promise, Father. These Etrurians, they crazies,” said Yuri darkly, leaving the tent.
“Keep him out of trouble,” the priest said.
“I wouldn’t have to if you told John Acuto to leave Ariminum. He listens to you, Father. Tell him—tell him the guts recommend it.”
The priest smiled as he lit the fire. “You think augury is sham too?”
Sofia didn’t blush. “All that matters is that the old man believes it. You have a responsibility. He asks your advice. Maybe you don’t see it, but every passing day undercuts his authority.”
“So you think someone’s planning mutiny too?”
“Mutiny doesn’t need planning any more than weeds need planting.”
The priest moved a pile of books and dropped a cushion on the tent floor. “Sit down, Sofia,” he said, seating himself among the litter of feathers and small bones.
“Are you going to tell my future?”
“Don’t patronize an old man. Even now you could see more than I ever have, if you’d let yourself.”
“Yuri said you’ve correctly predicted the outcomes of battles.”
“Two parts experience to one part luck. But once—ah, once, my Sight was keen. The Virgin’s turned her back on me since Gubbio.”
Sofia drew back. “Gubbio? But—that was Concord!”
The priest picked up a bone. He breathed out heavily and said clearly, “Concord sent the Wave. We sacked the town.”
Sofia just looked at him.
“The Company had just come down from Europa. Etruria was a great feast waiting to be eaten. The Concordians saw us for what we were, savages with just enough discipline to be useful.” While the priest spoke, his fingers moved the bones around as if trying to reassemble some long-dead beast.
“They sent us there in the aftermath. What happened, happened. We don’t talk about it. I’m not saying we became saints after Gubbio but . . . It didn’t matter, no matter what we did; it hung about us like a smell. I suppose Concord realized Acuto had lost his appetite and that’s why it terminated his Contract. Those who joined later, Levi and the rest, still think this life is a great adventure. They’re too young to know the cost, too young even to consider it. I think Harry’s become another casualty of Gubbio in Acuto’s mind, another body thrown on the heap. I told you, Sofia, everyone in a Company is a soldier: smiths, grooms, cooks—”
“And priests.”
“You too if you stay. Go home before this becomes home.”
“I have no home!” she shouted, kicking the bones away, then, more calmly, “So since then you’ve been rattling bones and gutting birds for show?”
“The price of blood is always too high.”
Sofia looked into the smoldering fire. “You give yourself too much credit. You’re guilty because you were weak, but you’re not responsible. The general wears the laurels.”
She ran past drunken soldiers carousing by campfires. They weren’t men—they were wolves in human pelts, like the old story. Outside the camp, there was a large weathered rock overlooking the valley. The old bull stood on it, studying Ariminum in the night.
“That sentry’s not too sharp, Rasenna. Good thing Concord doesn’t think we’re worth spying on.”
“Is it true?”
“No. Luigi’s a decent watch. I doubt you make much noise, and I’ve been sneaking around for years—”
“I said, is it true!”
“Why are you crying, girl?”
“The sack of Gubbio. Who’s responsible?”
The general slumped. “Who told you?”
“Answer me!”
A long time passed. Sofia prayed he would scoff and deny, but a decade of excuses no longer held up.
“I am.”
“Bastard.”
“I didn’t plan it, but I let it happen. If I’d known my destiny was to go down to Gubbio—”
“I’ve heard that excuse before. No one made you take that choice.”
“I’m guilty, no argument there, but I would have ended there no matter which road I chose. I was caught up in History. The war’s been going on in Europa since my father’s time. The Concordians think they’ll end it, but I doubt it. The Anglish and Franks quarrel like brothers, growing strong in the struggle. My family was the people Etrurians call Small—poor. My ambition was to be a knight until I saw how knights show fealty. I wanted to be rich, not dead, so I sought a new fortune. I decided the wisest course in a violent world was to fight for profit. Ha! The idiocy young men call wisdom. In Etruria, every town was a kingdom and any man could be king, if he was strong. A place where the midday sun is hot, the women are beautiful, and towns are willing to pay others to fight for them—sounds a better place to be a knight, doesn’t it?” He smiled, tasting the dream afresh.
“The Etrurians called us condottieri instead of knights. We didn’t care what they called us so long as they paid. We hitched our carroccio to the Empire’s expansion, all the while still thinking we were forging our own destiny even as we fled from what we knew was right. That naïveté made us ideal. The Concordians put us in the right place, knowing our nature. After what was left of the town was—”
He stopped and searched for the word. “—subdued, the Concordian engineers came and did worse things.”
“Don’t you dare shift the blame!”
“You misunderstand—we stood by. That was worst thing Concord did. They left us no one else to blame.”
“You expect pity?”
“No. I know this debt will never be paid. There were plenty ready to hire us after we chased the Moor’s Company out of Etruria, and we became rich. It didn’t help drown out the screaming. Look, Sofia, I’m a soldier of Fortune abandoned by Fortune!”
She turned away. “I can’t.”
Ariminum’s port never slept. Fleets of loutish fat-bellied ships waited to be unloaded and loaded, to come and go between the numberless trading partners of the Republic. In a town so busy making money, a girl, beautiful or not, tearful or not, running by the street sellers’ stalls was sure to be ignored.
The gauntlet of islands protecting the harbor from the sea’s temper also stopped wind from dispelling the accumulated stench. The sea’s conquest of the decaying land was a slow march by stealth, a mist that suited those who wanted to be lost.
Sofia stopped only when she reached the end of the dock. It was quieter here, where the ships were bound for more obscure ports. At the end of a long narrow pier an elderly yet resolutely undignified boat was moored. At first sight it looked long-abandoned, but on closer examination its sails were neatly rigged.
The old sailor who’d been charily studying the horizon noticed the girl emerge from the mist. Like his boat, he’d seen better days. His skin was cracked leather like an old turtle’s and burned bright red by a life on the water. Even on a day when the sun was a diffused blush in the mist, he squinted as if looking directly at it. “Ahoy, Signorina! Come to me, kiss me, and say you’ll miss me?”
Sofia wiped her eyes and examined him with hostility. Another wolf, probably.
“If you’re here to accuse me of besmirching your honor, I must warn you that I smirch only when invited.”
“Where do you sail?”
“Farther than you want to go, I’ll wager. Oltremare, once known as the Holy Land, if you believe that.”
“I can cook.”
The sailor disappeared. A moment later, the end of a thick corded rope hit the dock with a thump. As she reached for it, it suddenly pulled back up.
“What’s the purpose of your pilgrimage? Business or pleasure? There’s a war there, you know.”
“War’s everywhere.”
“That’s true,” he said thoughtfully, waiting for more.
“I don’t want to go there especially. I want to leave here.”
“Then perhaps you’re not a pilgrim but a fugitive.”
“I’m neither.”
“Perhaps you are and don’t know it. You are running from something. What is it?” He pulled up the rope fully.
She couldn’t go back. “Liars,” she said.
“A common complaint, but I cannot help you. There are liars in Oltremare, some of the best. Plenty on board too. Alas, Signorina, you picked the wrong boat.”
Nevertheless, he dropped the rope. “But perhaps you’re running from a particular liar?”
“What does it matter?” Sofia reached for the rope, only to have it pulled away again.
“Well, I need to know what kind of shipmate is on the end of my line.”
“If I don’t like liars, I’m honest.”
“Ack! Whatever else you might be, you are a weak logician. Even liars hate to be lied to. But my question is whether you are escaping a dishonest world, in which case you are a philosopher like myself and are welcome.”
The rope lowered, then was quickly yanked up again.
“Or you’re running away from someone who fooled you, or helped you fool yourself, in which case you’re a coward.”
“I’m not a coward!” Sofia’s voice sounded small next to the sea’s grand and indifferent silence.
The rope finally dropped to the boardwalk, and the sailor said, “As it happens, I’m both. The sea’s got enough salt already. You’re welcome aboard, but hurry—tide’s changing.”
Levi found her sitting by a dying fire, keeping warm, wrapped in the Scaligeri banner. If there was no country far enough to escape the past, at least the Hawk’s Company was a place she could lose herself. This time there was no one else to blame for deception. Of course war entailed murder, rapine, and massacre. What else could it be?
“The Company’s part in Gubbio,” she started. “Did you know?”
He sat down by the fire. “That wasn’t the Hawk’s Company I joined. After I heard, I thought about leaving, but—” He sat down with a sigh. “What will you do?”
“He should retire,” Sofia muttered, “go home to his wife.”
“He couldn’t disband the Company if he wanted to. All these men are far from home—what would they do? Take up farming? Even if they wanted to, they’d be killed before they picked up a pitchfork.”
“By who?”
“By Etruria! Do you think we are welcome guests? Feuds turn to wars when towns can hire help. We’re fuel on a burning fire. We’re pests, and individually we’d be exterminated like pests.”
Levi mimed squashing bugs—splat, splurge, splug—then grinned. “Together, that’s something different. Forgive me; I know Rasenneisi don’t go in much for unity.”
Sofia punched Levi in the arm. “Illuminate me.”
“Ow! Together, we get paid to make and not to make war. Together, kings pay us money and respect—that’s the real reason we fight our unwinnable war.”
“You told the Doc it was Etruria’s war. You said Concord had to be stopped for everyone’s sake.”
“I did?” He laughed. “Madonna, I’ll say anything when I’m selling.”
“You’re a bunch of chicken hearts.”
“Don’t judge us so harshly. Most of us weren’t lucky enough to be born with names like yours, and the few who were are bastards or second sons left out of their fathers’ estates.”
“Which were you, a second son or a bastard?” Sofia snapped. Condottieri were only one link in the chain shackling Etruria. War paid for itself, peace brought mass unemployment, so war’s purpose became self-perpetration. “Sorry,” she mumbled.
“Well, it is more glamorous than plowing. Not many homeless thieves get to play at being knights.”
She poked the fire. Was this nobility? An overflowing pot pouring disenfranchised rejects into other lands, spreading disorder and war. In Rasenna, there was a river of blood. In Concord, a different type of aristocracy, a brood of monsters. Everywhere, the noble gave birth to the bestial. The title she’d been so jealous of, the system she’d been a part of—it forged the chains.
“Stay,” Levi said.
“What choice have I? I’ve got nowhere to go.”