Worlds That Weren't

A shadow fell on Guillaume’s shoulder. The corporal, of course: he has to catch me the one minute I’m not doing anything.

“If we’re really lucky, there could be any number of Visigoth galleys out there, not just the two that bushwhacked us…” Lance Corporal Honore Marches came to stand beside Guillaume, gazing satirically out to sea. “Not like we’re up the Turkish end of the Med now, with their navy riding shotgun on us.”

“We could do with the Turkish shipwrights.” At Marches’ look, Guillaume added, “Carpenters say they were right, sir. Patching up the galley is going to need skilled work. They can’t do it. We’re stuck here.”

“Oh, Boss is going to love that! How’s the unloading coming along, Arnisout?”

“Good, sir.” Guillaume turned around, away from the coast. It was obvious to a military eye: the monastery here had taken over an ancient Punic fort. One from the days when it had been a forested land, and any number of armies could march up and down this coast road. Now the fort was covered with monastic outbuildings as a log is covered with moss, but the central keep would be still defensible in a pinch.

“I’ve got the lances storing the cargo down in the deep cellars, sir.”

A large enough cargo of food that it could feed an army-or at least a Turkish division coming up from Tar bulus, somewhere to the east now, which is what it’s intended for. And water. On this coast, water. The days when you could bring an army up the coast road from Alexandria to Carthage without resupplying by sea are gone with the Classical age.

“Yeah, that should do it.” Marches turned, signaling with a nod, and led the way down the flight of stone steps from the parapet to the ground. Over his shoulder, he remarked, “Fucking lot of work, but the Boss is right: we can’t leave it on board. Not with no galley cover. Okay, Arnisout, get your team and come along with me; Boss is going to have a little talk with the abbot here.”

Guillaume nodded obedience and bellowed across to Bressac and the others who shared the ten-man tent that made them a team. Bressac waved a casual hand in acknowledgment.

Marches snapped, “Now, Arnisout! Or do you want to tell the Boss why we kept him waiting!”

“No, sir! Bressac!”

There was some advantage in having one’s officer be part of the captain’s command group, Guillaume thought as he yelled at his men, pulling them out of the chain of sweating mercenaries swearing with all apparent honesty that physical labor was for serfs and varlets, not honest soldiers.

One is never short of news to sell, or rumors to barter. On the other hand-we get to be there when Spessart proves why he’s a mercenary captain.

Guillaume had arrived sweating in the big central hall the monks used as their refectory, and not just because of the heat. A barked order got his men into escort positions around the captain-a round dozen European mercenaries in jacks and hose, most with billhooks resting back across their shoulders in a gleam of silver gray, much-sharpened metal.

“Nothing until the Boss says so,” Marches warned.

The familiar tingle of tension and the piercing feeling in the pit of his belly began to build into excitement. Guillaume halted as Spessart did. A great gaggle of entirely unarmed men flooded into the hall from the door at the far end, wearing the green robes of the heretic Christianity practiced here. All uncertain, from their expressions, whether these Franks considered them proper clerks and so a bad idea to kill.

The hall smelled of cooking. Guillaume’s gut growled as he stood at Marches’ shoulder. The older man kept his gaze on the hefty oak doors by which they had entered, in case someone should try to interrupt the captain during his deliberations. A wind blew in from the arid land outside, smelling of goats and male sweat and the sea.

Guillaume was conscious of the stiff weight of the jack buckled around his chest and the heat of plate leg harness, articulations sliding with oiled precision-and of how safe one feels, ribs and groin and knees protected. A delusional safety, often enough; but the feeling obstinately remains.

“I understand there’s trouble with the burials,” Spessart rasped. His eyes swept over the African priests as a group, not bothering, evidently, to concern himself with who exactly might be their Father-in-Christ. “What’s the problem? Bury the bodies! We’re not working for your masters, but common Christian charity demands it. Even if you are the wrong sort of Christians.”

Ah, that’s our tactful captain. Guillaume bit his lip to keep his smile from showing.

A tall man with a black-and-white badger beard stepped forward, waving his arms. “She isn’t a man! She is an abomination! We will not have her soil the rocks of the graveyard here!”

“Ah. It’s about Rosso. Now look, Father Abbot-”

A shorter, plumper man, perhaps five and thirty years old, stepped past the bearded man to the front of the group. He interrupted.