The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories Part 23

One voice rose high above the others. Not as high as Charles', but close enough for kin, though the man it came from had a body more fitted to it: a slender dark young firebrand who was, everyone agreed, the very image of the old king. "Leave? Leave, my lord? My lord, how can we leave? We've won nothing yet. We've lost men, days, provisions. And for what? To slink back to Gaul with our tails between our legs? By Julian and holy Merovech, I will not!"

The reply came with the graceful inevitability of a Christian antiphon. "You will not? And who are you, young puppy? Are you wisdom itself, that you should command our lord, the king?"

Our lord the king pulled at his luxtiriant moustaches and scowled. He loved his sister Gisela dearly, but she had a penchant for contentious males. Her son, who was her image as well as her father the old king's, took after his father when it came to temper. Her husband that was now, barely older than the son who faced him with such exuberant hostility, looked enough like the boy to prompt strangers to ask if they were brothers; but Roland's forthright insolence clashed head-on with Ganelon's vicious urbanity. There was a certain Byzantine slither in the man, but his temper was all Frank, and his detestation of his stepson as overt as ever a savage could wish. He was a Meroving, was Ganelon; they hated best where the blood-tie was closest. What Gisela saw in him, Roland would never comprehend; but Charles could see it well enough. Clever wits, a comely face, and swift mastery of aught he set his hand to. He was not, all things considered, an ill match for the daughter of a king. But Charles could wish, on occasion, that Gisela had not come to her senses after the brief madness of her youth, and abandoned the Christians' nunnery for a pair of bold black eyes.

Her son and her husband stood face to face across the laden table: two small, dark, furious men, bristling and spitting like warring cats. "Puppy, you call me?" cried Roland. "Snake's get, you, crawling and hissing in corners, tempting my lord to counsels of cowardice."

"Counsels of wisdom," said Ganelon, all sweet reason. "Counsels of prudence. Words you barely know, still less understand."

"Cowardice!" Roland cried, louder. Charles was reminded forcibly of his own determination never to shout. Yes; it was almost as high as a woman's, or like a boy's just broken. In Roland, it seemed only a little ridiculous. "A word you can never understand, simply be. Where were you when I led the charge on Saragossa? Did you even draw your sword? Or were you too preoccupied with piddling in your breeches?"

Men round about leaped before either of the kinsmen could move, and wrestled them down. Roland was laughing as he did when he fought, high and light and wild. Ganelon was silent. Until there was a pause in the laughter Then he said calmly, "Better a coward than an empty braggart."

"That," said Charles, "will be enough."

He was heard. He met the eyes of the yellow-haired giant who sat with some effort on Roland. The big man settled his weight more firmly, and mustered a smile that was half a grimace. Charles s.h.i.+fted his stare to Ganelon. His counsellor had freed himself, and stood shaking his clothing into place, smiling a faint, mirthless smile. After a judicious pause he bowed to the king and said, "My lord knows the path of wisdom. I regret that he must hear the counsel of fools."

Charles had not known how taut his back was, until he eased it, leaning forward over the table, running his eyes over all their faces. "I give ear to every man who speaks. But in the end, the choice is mine. I have chosen. Tomorrow we return to Gaul." He stood straight. "Sirs. My lords. You know your duties. You have my leave to see to them."

Once Roland was out of Ganelon's sight, he regained most of his sanity. Never all of it, where his stepfather was concerned, but enough to do as his king had bidden. Even before he was Ganelon's enemy, he was the king's man, Count of the Breton Marches, with duties both many and various. Oliver, having seen him safely engaged in them, withdrew for a little himself, to look to his own duties and, if truth be told, to look for the girl who sold sweets and other delights to the soldiers. She was nowhere in sight; he paused by his tent, nursing a new bruise. It never ceased to amaze him how so little a man as Roland could be so deadly a fighter. The best in Frankland, Oliver was certain. One of the three or four best, Roland himself would say. Roland was no victim of modesty. He called it a Christian vice. A good pagan knew himself; and hence, his virtues as well as his vices.

Oliver, whose mother had been Christian but whose father had never allowed her to raise her son in that faith, had no such simplicity of conviction. He was not a good pagan. He could not be a Christian; Christians tried to keep a man from enjoying women. Maybe he would make a pa.s.sable Muslim. War was holy, in Islam. And a man who did not enjoy the pleasures of the flesh, was no man at all.

"Sir? Oliver?"

He had heard the man's approach. He turned now, and raised a brow. His servant bowed, which was for anyone who might be watching, and met his eyes steadily, which was for the two of them. "Sir," said Walthar, "there's something you ought to see."

His glance forbade questions; his tone forestalled objection. Oliver set his lips tight together, and followed where Walthar led.

Walthar led him by a twisting way, more round the camp than through it, keeping to the backs of tents, pausing when it seemed that anyone might stop to put names to two men moving swiftly in shadows. Oliver crouched as low as he could, for what good it did: he was still an extraordinarily large shadow.

He had kept count of where they went, and whose portions of the encampment they pa.s.sed. From one end to the other, from Roland's to - yes, this was Ganelon's circle of tents, and Ganelon's in the middle. Turbulent as the camp was, stung into action by the king's command, here was almost quiet. There were guards at the tent's flap, but no one in the dusk behind, where Walthar led Oliver with hunter's stealth and beckoned him to kneel and listen.

At first he heard nothing. He was on the verge of rising and dragging his meddlesome servant away to chastis.e.m.e.nt, when a voice spoke. It was not Ganelon's. It spoke Greek, of which Oliver knew a little. Enough to piece together what it said. "No. No, my friend. I do not see the wisdom in it."

The man who replied, surely, was Ganelon. Ganelon, who pretended to no more Greek than the king had, which was just enough to understand an amba.s.sador's speech, never sufficient for speech of his own, Ganelon, speaking Greek with ease and, as far as Oliver's untutored ears could tell, hardly a trace of Frankish accent. "Then, my friend" - irony there, but without overt malice - "you do not know the king, Yes, he withdraws from Saragossa. Yes, he seems by that to favour our cause. But the king is never a simple man. Nor should you take him for such, because his complexity is never Byzantine complexity."

The Greek was silken, which meant that he was angry. "I have yet to make the mistake of underestimating your king. Yet still I see no utility in what you propose. Saragossa has done nothing to advance the cause of its caliph, by casting out the ally who won it from the rebels. His departure is prudence, and anger. Best to foster that, yes. But to embellish it - that is not necessary, and if it fails, it is folly; it may lose us all that we have gained. There are times when even a Byzantine can see the value in simplicity."

"Simple, yes. As that nephew of his is simple. There is a man who will never rest until he has a war to fight. He sees this withdrawal not as strategy but as cowardice. Let him work on the king, let him bring in his toadies and their warmongering, and the king well may change his mind. More: he may turn from our cause altogether, and embrace Islam. You may not see it, but I am all too well aware of it. He is attracted to the faith of Muhammad. It speaks to the heart of him. The sacredness of war. The allurements of the flesh both in this life and in the next. The dreams of empire. And what have we to offer in return?"

"The reality of empire," said the Greek.

Ganelon snorted indelicately. "Oh, come! We're both conspirators here. You know as well as I, that our sacred empress will never consent to bed with a heathen Frank. However pa.s.sionately he may profess his conversion to the true faith."

"No," said the Greek, too gently. "I do not know it. Irene is empress. She understands practicalities. She knows what the empire needs. If her lord had lived a year or two longer ..." He sighed "It wins no battles. The Basileus is dead, and the Basilissa requires a strong consort. Your king has that strength, and the lands to accompany it."

"But will he suffer Byzantium to call them its own? He has no reason to love the empire; he resists its faith, as his fathers resisted it before him. To him Our Lord is a felon who died on a tree, less n.o.ble and less worthy to be wors.h.i.+pped than the Saxons' Wotan, our Church has no power where he can perceive it, only a gaggle of half-mad priests on the edges of the world, and an impotent n.o.body in Rome who calls himself the successor of Peter, and quarrels incessantly with the Patriarch in Constantinople. Simpler and more expedient for him to subscribe to the creed of the Divine Julian, which allows him to rule his own lands in his own fas.h.i.+on, and leaves him free to live as he pleases."

"Divine," said the Greek in distaste. "Apostate, and d.a.m.ned, not least for the world he left us. Our empire divided, the West fallen to barbarian hordes, the light of Christ extinguished there wherever it has kindled; and now the terror out of east and south and west, the armies of Islam circling for the kill. Charles must choose between us, or be overwhelmed. He is the key to Europe. Without him, we can perhaps hold our ground in the East, but the West is lost to us. With him, we gain the greater part of our old empire, and stand to gain the rest."

Ganelon spoke swiftly, with pa.s.sion enough to rock Oliver where he crouched. "And if he turns to Islam, not only is Europe lost; Byzantium itself may fall. Charles the pagan fancies himself an enlightened man, a man of reason, dreaming of Rome restored. Charles the Muslim would see naught but sheer, red war."

"Therefore," asked the Greek, "you would force a choice?"

Ganelon had calmed himself, but his voice was tight, and grimly quiet. "You are wise, and you are skilled in the ways of war and diplomacy. But I know my king. We are not wise to leave matters to fate, or to G.o.d if you will. It is not enough to trust that our memory of Rome will speak more clearly to his heart than the raw new faith of Islam. He is, after all, a follower of Julian the Apostate. As is his hotspur of a nephew - who has been heard to swear that he will never bow his head to any G.o.d who makes a virtue of virginity." Ganelon paused as if to gather the rags of his temper, and the threads of his argument. "Count Roland is a danger to us and to our purpose. While he lives, the king will not turn Christian. Of that, I am certain. He were best disposed of, and quickly. How better than by such a means, which should serve also to turn the king to our cause?"

"And if it fails? What then, my friend?"

"It will not fail. You have my oath on it."

That was all they said that mattered to Oliver. He lingered for a dangerous while, until it was clear that they were done with their conspiring. There was a stir near the front of the tent: guards changing; a mutter of Greek. Oliver beat a rapid retreat.

It was an age before he could catch Roland alone. The count, having recovered his temper, had thrown himself into his duties. Oliver's return he greeted with a flurry of commands, all of them urgent and most of them onerous. Oliver set his teeth and obeyed them. But he kept his eye on Roland, as much as he might in the uproar.

A little before dawn, when the camp had quieted at last, to rest for an hour or two and restore its strength for the march, Oliver followed the count into his tent. It was not the first time he had done that; Roland looked at him without surprise. "I think you should sleep tonight," he said with careful gentleness.

Oliver blushed. That was not what he had been thinking of at all. He said so, bluntly.

Roland's brows went up. Perhaps he believed it. Perhaps he did not. After a moment he shrugged, one-sided, and went about stripping for sleep.

"Roland," said Oliver.

Something in his tone brought Roland about. He had his drawers in his hand. Oliver could count all the scars on the fine brown skin, the bruises of his struggle tonight and his hunt this morning, and one on his neck that men in the camp called the sweetseller's brand.

"Roland," Oliver said again. "There's something you should know."

And Oliver told him, all of it, word for word as he remembered it. Roland listened in silence that deepened the longer it lasted.

"I may have misunderstood everything," Oliver said at the end. "You know how bad my Greek is."

"Yes," said Roland, soft and still. "I know." His eyes were wide; in rushlight they seemed blurred, as if with sleep.

He shook himself suddenly, blinked, was Roland again. But not, quite, Roland. Roland was a wild man, everyone knew it. Such news as this should have driven him raving mad.

But Oliver was not everyone, and he had known Roland since they shared the nurse's breast. He laid a hand on the slender shoulder, "Brother. Don't think it."

"Why?" asked Roland. "What am I thinking?"

"You know what will happen if you kill your father. Even a stepfather. You can't do it. The king needs you too badly."

"Kill? Did I say kill?"

"Roland - "

"Oliver." Roland closed his hand over Oliver's. "Brother, I won't kill him. Even I am hardly that vast a fool."

"Then what will you do?"

"Nothing." Roland said it with appalling lightness. "Except thank you for the knowledge. And - yes, brother nurse, keep watch against treachery."

"You're too calm," said Oliver.

He was. He was not trembling, that Oliver could see or feel or sense. He looked as if he had learned nothing more terrible than that his third-best charger had - a girth-gall. "I'm . . . almost. . . Yes, I'm glad," he said. "I've always known what a snake that man is. Now he lays the proof in my hands. Let him strike at me. Then the king can deal with him."

"And if you die of the stroke?"

"I won't die. I gave you my oath, don't you remember? I'll never die before you. We'll go together, or not at all. And," said Roland, "it's not you he wants, or will touch."

Oliver was by no means comforted. But Roland had heard all he wanted to hear. He flung his arms about his milkbrother and hugged him till his ribs creaked, and thrust him away. "Go to bed, brother nurse. Here, if you will, but I tell you truly, I intend to do no more than sleep."

"Here, then," said Oliver, not even trying to match his lightness. And he kept his word. Two cloaks and a blanket were ample for them both; and Roland humoured a friend. He let Oliver take the outside.

2.

Oliver did not know whether to be glad or to be more wary than ever. Days, they had marched. They had broken down the walls of Pamplona, almost for sport, to soothe the Arabs' fears, and left them there with the pick of the spoil. The amba.s.sador from Baghdad lingered, and would linger, it was clear, until the king saw fit to dismiss him or his own caliph called him back. Likewise the envoys from Byzantium. The king was a battleground, and well he knew it; he seemed to find it amusing, when he troubled to think of it at all.

No one had moved to strike Roland. No dagger out of the dark. No poison in his cup. Not even a whisper in the king's ear, to shake Charles's confidence in his nephew's loyalty. All that Oliver had heard might have been a dream. Or the Greek had prevailed, and Ganelon had turned his mind elsewhere, to other and easier prey.

Roland acted no differently towards him. For Oliver it was harder. Oliver was a very bad liar. He kept out of the traitor's path, not gladly, but with every ounce of prudence in him. Ganelon murdered by Oliver was hardly less shocking a prospect than Ganelon murdered by Roland, and equally likely to ruin the Breton count. Which dilemma, too, the subtle snake might well have wished upon them.

Therefore they did nothing, not even to tell the king; for after all they had no proof. The days went on in marching and in encampments, and once the diversion of Pamplona. Beyond the broken walls, where the Pyrenees rose like walls shattered by G.o.ds, the army moved a little lighter. There were the ramparts; beyond them lay the fields and forests of Gaul.

It was the custom, and Roland's own preference, that the Bretons with their heavy cavalry kept either the van or the rear. Through most of Spain, Roland himself had ridden first of all except the scouts; but as the hills rose into mountains, the king called him to the centre. Oliver followed, unquestioned; the count's milkbrother and swordbrother, as inseparable as his shadow. Already the way grew steep; they had left their horses ahead with their armour bearers, and taken to surefooted mules. Not a few along the line chaffed them for that; Roland laughed and chaffed back, but Oliver set his teeth and endured.

The king, who was above all a practical man, had mounted his lordly bulk on a brother of their own beasts. No one, Oliver noticed, even looked askance at him. As always when he was at war, he wore nothing to mark him out from any common soldier, except the circlet of gold on his helmet. He greeted them both with his usual gladness.

Neither was quick to match him. He was attended, as always. The Byzantines were there, and the men from Baghdad. And Ganelon, close at his side, riding a horse with an Arab look about the head. The man was all limpid innocence, the loyal counsellor attending his king.

Charles beckoned Roland in. Ganelon drew back with every appearance of good will, no dagger flas.h.i.+ng in his hand, no hatred in his glance. Roland would not meet it at all. There was a pause while the mules settled precedence; then the king said, "Roland, sister-son, now that the land is changing, I've a mind to change the army to fit it. The way ahead should be clear enough for lesser forces. It's the rear I'm wary of; the brigands' portion. And the baggage can't move any faster than it's moving. I need you and your Bretons there. Will you take it?"

Oliver's hackles quivered and rose. It was a perfectly reasonable order, presented in the king's usual fas.h.i.+on: as a request, to be accepted or refused. The Bretons with their armour and their great lumbering horses would deter anything that a brigand might think of. And a brigand would think of, and covet, the baggage and the booty.

It was not the prospect of robbery that chilled Oliver's nape. It was Ganelon's expression. Calm; innocent. Barely listening, as if the hawk on the wing mattered more than the count in the rearguard.

It was too well done. He should be sneering, making it clear whose counsel it was that Roland breathe the army's dust and shepherd its baggage.

As if he had realized the oversight, he lowered his eyes from the sky and smiled at his stepson. Oliver did not need to be a seer to foretell what Roland would do. Roland bristled; his mule jibbed and lashed out. Ganelon's mare eluded it with contemptuous ease. "You," said Roland. "What are you plotting? Why this change, now, when we're so close to Gaul?"

"My lord king," Ganelon said with sweet precision, "has been apprised by his scouts that the way ahead of us is steep, the pa.s.sage narrow. He has need of both valour and vigilance, and in the rear most of all, where robbers most often strike. Who better to mount guard there, than the knights of Brittany?"

Smooth words, irreproachable even in tone. Oliver would happily have throttled the man who uttered them. Roland raised his head, his black eyes narrow, searching his stepfather's face. It gave him nothing back. "You want me there," he said. "What if I refuse?"

"Then another will be sent," said the king before Ganelon could speak. He sensed something, Oliver could tell, but he was too preoccupied or too accustomed to his kinsmen's enmity to take notice. "I have reason to think that there may be one last stroke before we ride out of Spain: revenge for Pamplona, or a final blow from the rebels of Cordoba. Will you guard my back?"

Roland sat erect in the saddle, neatly and inextricably trapped. Ganelon himself could have done no better. Roland's voice rang out over the song of wind, echoing in the pa.s.ses. "Always, my king."

Charles smiled and, leaning out of the saddle, pulled him into an embrace. "Watch well, sister-son. Half the treasure on my wagon is yours to share with your men."

Roland laughed. "All the more reason to guard it! Come, Oliver. We've a king to serve."

"This is it," said Oliver as they worked their way back up through the army. "This is what he was waiting for."

Roland's eyes were bright, his nostrils flared to catch the scent of danger. But he said, "You can't know that. Probably he wants to poison the beer I'll drink with supper, and needs me out of the way to do it. I'll drink wine tonight, or water. Will that content you?"

Oliver shook his head. He could see their banner now, their men waiting beside the steep stony track, held there by the king's messenger. They seemed glad enough of the chance to pause, rest, inspect girths and hoofs and harness buckles. The army toiled up past them. No chaffing now: it took too much breath simply to move.

Slowly, by excruciating inches, the rear came in sight. The men who had been guarding it were pleased to move up, away from the lumbering wagons, the oxen groaning and labouring, the drivers cursing in an endless half-chant. Roland's Bretons fell in behind. They had all, uncommanded, s.h.i.+fted to remounts.

"You scent trouble, too, then?"

Oliver started, stared. Not all of the former rearguard had gone ahead. The Count of the Palace was there, watching over his charge, which was all here but the king himself; and Ekkehard, the king's seneschal, riding on the wain with the royal plate. And, on a horse that had been bred in Roland's own pastures, Turpin the high priest of Mithras in Rheims. As befit the priest of a warrior creed, he rode armed and armoured and his acolytes were also his armour-bearers. He grinned at Oliver, old warhound that he was, and breathed deep of the thin air. "There'll be an ambush ahead. Do you remember this way, when we came out of Gaul? It narrows and steepens, and where it's narrowest and steepest, the gorge they call Roncesvalles - they'll strike there, if they strike at all."

"'They'?" asked Oliver.

"Basques, most likely: savages of these mountains. Pamplona is theirs, you know; it's not Saracen, though sometimes it suits them to dance to Cordoba's tune. I expect they'll want to claim back what we took from them."

He seemed remarkably undismayed at the prospect. Oliver eyed his greying beard and his eager face, and castigated himself for a fool. If there was a battle, it would be one that they could easily win. If it aimed chiefly at Roland, then his men would make themselves a wall about him. There was nothing to fret over but a few words spoken in a tongue he barely knew, and which he might well have misunderstood.

The steeper the way grew, the closer the walls drew in, the slower the baggage train travelled. The clamour of the army, echoing in the gorges, began little by little to fade. They had drawn ahead. Too far, Oliver began to suspect. There were only their small company, and the drivers, and such of the women and servants as had not gone ahead with their masters; and the wains lurching and struggling up the mountainside. Behind, there was nothing to see but stone and scree and steep descent. Ahead, Oliver remembered dimly, was a bit of almost level, then another bitter ascent, little more than a roofless corridor, to the summit of the pa.s.s. Already it was growing dim below, though the sky was bright still. If night found them on the mountain. . .

Roland had sent scouts ahead and, while the cliffs were still scalable, to the side. None of them had come back.

A signal went down the line. Dismount and lead your horses. Oliver obeyed it, but struggled forward, to draw level with Roland. For a long while he could do nothing but breathe. Roland climbed in silence, not even cursing when his horse stumbled.

"You might," said Oliver between hard breaths, "sound your horn. Just for prudence. So that the king knows how far back we are."

Roland's hand found the horn where it hung at his side: a beauty of a thing, an olifant bound with gold and hung on a gold-worked baldric; the only adornment he would wear, whose sword and armour were as plain as a trooper's. But he did not move to raise the horn.

"Roland," said Oliver, "brother, sound the horn. If we're caught here we're too few, the pa.s.s is too steep; we'll barely hold till the king can come back."