Authors: Lois McMaster Bujold
The Losimons ran to the courtyard and hesitated, doubtless stunned by the incomprehensible scene before their eyes: the burning gallery, the shrieking women, for Ruberta and the nameless lady were running after Tich with more water, kobolds flying every which way, the spasming chained guard howling through his gag and bucking wildly. Fiametta, her face sideways on the ground, giggled. Thur stood gently swinging his hammer. One man with a worker's tool against four swordsmen. Fiametta stopped giggling and rolled over to gaze glassily into the casting pit. What had happened down there?
Let me out
, something called. Fiametta didn't think she heard it with her ears.
Let me out!
"Thur," she wheezed. "Jump down and knock off the hoops. The iron retaining hoops."
He glanced back and forth, at her, at the mold, at the advancing Losimons with their swords cautiously feeling in front of them as if for invisible enemies. He slid into the pit and began clanging at the clasps of the reinforcing iron bands. Fiametta's heart raced. Suppose it was too soon. Suppose the mold shattered, and white-hot molten bronze spewed out, drowning him. One band sprang apart, then another, another. The point of a sword touched Fiametta's throat, pressing her to the ground. She looked up into a dark, bearded face devoid of humor, devoid of intellect, almost devoid of humanity.
"Put down that mallet and come out of there or I'll run her through," the Losimon lieutenant snarled. Thur, abandoning his hammer, lifted himself out and rolled away on the opposite side of the pit. He crouched froglike on his hands and knees and grinned, eyes glaring, catching his breath.
In the pit, the clay began to crack apart with a sound like shattering crockery. It scaled away, fragmenting and powdering. Deep within the cracks, something glowed red as blood.
Something shrugged off its clay tunic like a dog shaking off snow. A severed head appeared first, at the top, clutched and brandished in a strong hand. Bronze snakes, cherry-red, writhed upon its mythic skull. Shoulders hunched, pulled back. A muscular arm holding a curved sword broke free. Then a winged helmet, and, with the jerk of his chin, a man's face. But not the serene face of the bland Greek, no.
It's Uri
thought Fiametta.
Complete with his pock marks.
She was insanely glad to see those pock marks.
The molten gaze rose and found the gap-toothed lieutenant.
Remember me?
the burning eyes silently cried.
For I remember you.
The bronze lips smiled a terrible promise.
The Losimon officer broke at last, and ran screaming.
Chapter Eighteen
Fiametta pushed herself up to her hands and knees, then sat up on her heels. The gibbering gap-toothed Losimon was caught and held by two of his men, who had not seen what was happening in the casting pit. The third soldier finished breaking the prisoner's chain with blows from his sword against the stone pillar; the freed man repaid his comrade's pains by knocking him down in his rush for the exit. Thunder rolled close overhead in the midnight sky, shaking the house.
Uri's hands, burdened each with the curved sword and the fiery head of the Medusa, came up over the edge of the pit. Red bronze muscles rippled as he heaved himself out, a glorious nude hero. Even in the glare from the burning gallery he glowed with his own dark red light, except for his eyes which were yellow-white. It must be the magic holding him together at that temperature, Fiametta thought woozily. His outlines were crisper, more perfect even than her Papa's fine wax copy of his body had been. Thur jumped lightly down into the vacated pit to retrieve his sledgehammer, which evidently gave him quite as much comfort as it gave his enemy onlookers unease.
The hot bronze Uri gazed down upon the cold fleshly Uri, then raised his eyes to Thur. The two brothers exchanged a look, and even in the blank molten-yellow radiance of the metal Fiametta read regret, and sorrow, and something like love, mixed with the determination and rage.
Thur, his blue eyes flashing with the water standing in them, raised his sledgehammer in solemn salute. "Lead us, Captain Ochs. In the names of God, Bruinwald, and Duke Sandrino."
"Follow me, boy," Uri responded with a slow smile, "and I'll give you a show to tell my nieces and nephews. Mind you do." His bronze voice reverberated like a blast from an organ-pipe, deep, loud, with undertones to raise the dead, yet still somehow Uri. His yellow eyes found Fiametta, scrambling to her feet. "I haven't much time. Let us be about it."
"Lead. We follow," said Fiametta breathlessly. Her house was burning down. So what. She turned her back on it.
Uri bent his gaze upon the four Losimons who, supporting each other, had somewhat regained their nerve. They took a stand in a cluster, backs prudently to the exit hall. Uri's fingers flexed on his sword hilt as he strode toward them. The churned earth blackened, steamed, and smoked in his deep footprints.
The black-mouthed lieutenant took his sword and his bravado and made a rush at the approaching apparition. His sword clanged off Uri's nude side, jolting his arm. Uri raised the head of the Medusa and brought it down upon his murderer's skull, smashing him to the ground. The Losimon convulsed once, his legs kicking, then lay without moving. The survivors retreated, crouching and covering each other in an almost orderly fashion, till they reached the shattered oak door to the street. The semblance of discipline burst as they sprinted away. Fiametta almost grabbed up the dead fellow's dropped sword, just in case. Uri's ruddy weapon was impressive, but she was uncertain how bronze, and heat-softened bronze at that, was going to stand up to weapons of tempered steel. Then she realized Uri could not exchange his sword. It was melded, one with his hand.
Thur hugged Fiametta around the shoulders as they followed Uri into the street. Fiametta stopped, taken aback by the sight of the crowd that was assembled there. A couple of dozen people milled about, men, boys, even a few women, in every sort of dress and half-dress and nightshirts. Fiametta recognized the faces of several neighbors.
Lorenzetti, the notary who lived next door, rushed up to her. The Losimons had looted his house, too. His head was still bandaged from some ill-advised resistance. "Fiametta! What is happening? What have you done?"
"My house is on fire," she said numbly. With frightened cries, the crowd fell back from around Uri, though not very far back. They goggled and shouted amazed queries. "We have made a bronze hero, a soldier to fight the Losimons for us and free Montefoglia. We're on our way to kill Ferrante now. Please stand back."
The three remaining Losimons had stopped and formed ranks again, in the dark street on the far side of the crowd. They hovered on the balls of their feet, watching and waiting. A man among Fiametta's neighbors, Bembo the wax chandler, held a torch aloft; more torches arrived, from where Fiametta did not know, and the fire was shared, doubled and doubled again.
Lorenzetti squinted, gaped, and stammered, "Isn't that Uri Ochs, Sandrino's Swiss fellow? I played dice with him. He died owing me half a ducat.... Hey!”
Uri gave him a cheery salute with his sword hand in exchange for the recognition.
Lorenzetti backed a step, wild-eyed, and opened his hands in a bow. "Well, you have
my
blessing. Hey! Make way, there!" He gestured the crowd apart. The Losimons were suddenly framed by two ranks of their victims. An odd, abrupt silence occurred, half by chance. A cobblestone flew out, launched by an angry young man. It bounced off a Losimon's breastplate with a clank. The Losimon staggered. Uri began striding up the street between the people. Fiametta and Thur, holding hands like two children in the dark, followed close on his heels. A roar went up from the Montefoglians that reminded Fiametta of the furnace in full flux. The Losimons turned and ran this time in earnest, no stopping or looking back.
Shouts echoed through the streets. Above, shutters banged open and nightcapped heads crowded the windows. Cries of curiosity and fear rained down. Fiametta glanced over her shoulder. People were following them, first in ones and twos, then a stream, then a river. Doors flew wide, and more men issued. Knives and daggers appeared, and a few swords, and other weapons even more extemporaneous: axes and hammers, clubs, hoes, a mattock, a rusty sickle. One fat woman joined the throng armed with a large cast-iron frying pan. More torches sprang up, held high. Fiametta had no idea what the people at the back imagined they were following: half-parade, half-assault, exhilarated, ugly, determined, and confused.
And not at all the silent, secret midnight skulk through the streets of Montefoglia that Fiametta had pictured and planned. Uri could hardly march unseen anyway, fervid red in the dark like that. If the Inquisition ever brought her to trial for this night's work, there would be a thousand witnesses.
Lightning cracked the sky. The first few fat, cold drops of rain fell, slapping Fiametta's upturned face. They boiled off Uri instantly, and he trailed tendrils of gauzy steam. His feet hissed on the cobbles as they grew wet and shining.
Too cold,
Fiametta thought to the rain.
Stop, go back, not yet!
She stumbled, and Thur's grip tightened and held her on her feet.
They came to the base of the hill and began climbing the road to the castle. No hope, no hope at all of sneaking in and taking Ferrante by surprise. Losimon soldiers were already running along the walls lighting torches. She could hear the rusty shriek of the portcullis being lowered. As she watched, the big heavy oak doors swung shut with a boom that matched the thunder echoing across the black lake.
"No," she cried, agonized. "Now what do we do? Ferrante can just wait in there until, until..."
Uri smiled over his shoulder. "Let us see." He paused a few yards from the castle gate. From above, a steel crossbow quarrel whacked into his shoulder and stuck there. He shrugged, brushed it away like a biting fly, and studied the gate.
"Fiametta, warm me," he said.
"Piro,"
said Fiametta, ordering the spell in her whirling mind with the greatest difficulty. But its familiarity steadied her.
"Piro. Piro."
Uri held up his sword-hand. "'Tis enough, for now." He walked to the oak doors and leaned into them. The wood charred and burst into flame. He twisted his arms through the hole thus made and began elbowing and kicking the wood apart as if it were rotten punk. Burning chunks flew wide. Fiametta and Thur ducked and crouched in the ditch.
Uri stalked into the dark passageway between the two gate towers. A few paces further on, the entrance to the courtyard was blocked by the grid of the portcullis. From the murder-hole above, a terrified Losimon soldier upended a pot of burning oil on Uri's head.
Uri threw back his face and laughed, a great bronze trumpeting. He turned under the stream of flame as under a refreshing shower, as a man might sport naked in a waterfall. In who-knew-what frenzy of mind the Losimons upended a second and third pot of oil after the first, before it dawned on some officer that it was doing them no good. Flames flared up, dancing and twisting, from Uri's glistening body as he swaggered, salamander-like, to the portcullis.
He stuck his sword arm through one square of the cast-iron grid, wrapped it around a bar, and heaved backward. The iron tore apart with a crack. Then another, another, another, till he could walk through upright, shoulders square. Fiametta picked up her skirts and dashed after him through the dying flames on the passageway floor, Thur on her heels. Thur paused to widen the gap in the portcullis with a few well-placed blows of the sledgehammer, for the convenience of those who came after. And there were men coming after, daring the few crossbow bolts from above that Ferrante's wit-scattered men managed to loose. They ran right and left, in groups of three and six, spreading into the castle to hunt down Montefoglia's tormentors. The mob behind them clogged the gate, then broke through.
Fiametta crouched on the cobbles, panting and watching. Uri strode into the courtyard, lighting it like a human torch. A gust of rain made him steam like a fumarole.
"UBERTO FERRANTE!"
he roared. The stones bounced back shuddering echoes. "Uberto Ferrante! Come out!"
Half a dozen Losimon swordsmen exited the castle door and spilled down the marble steps. Their offensive onslaught slowed and froze to defensive postures as they saw what called them. They glanced at each other in horror.
Lord Ferrante stepped outside and swept his gaze over the court. He wore his gleaming chain mail, silver-gilt in the springing firelight, and his black leggings and boots. He wore neither hat nor helm, and a few raindrops glittered like diamonds in his dark cap of hair. He stood very still for a moment, then drew his sword with a slow, deliberate scrape that seemed to go on forever, and made Fiametta's teeth ache. He turned his head and shouted over his shoulder, "Niccolo!" He then raised his chin and stared briefly at the north gate tower, and lifted his blade in salute to someone Fiametta could not see, as if to say,
I dedicate this death to you.
Then, alert, sword ready, he stalked slowly down the stairs.