Mark Teppo - The Mongoliad - Book Two

Nothing.

Fieschi glared at the body. Even in death, the man confounded him. Could he have secured it somewhere in the tunnels? No, that would be even more risky than hiding it in the room; he would have to keep it where he could find it quickly, and such a place would have to be nearby, familiar. Somercotes’s chamber was the only place where he could be afforded some privacy, where he could be assured he would not be disturbed while he hid the ring or retrieved it.

Did he even have it? Fieschi had to admit the possibility that Somercotes had been lying to him. His breath caught in his throat as he recalled the conversation he had overheard between Somercotes and the messengers. They had brought the ring back to the mad priest. He had heard them talking about it; he could distinctly remember the tone of Somercotes’s voice as he had examined it. An Archbishop’s ring…

“You fool.” He savagely kicked Somercotes’s body. “You lied to me.” It wasn’t a cardinal’s ring at all; it was the ring of an Archbishop.

Fieschi’s mind raced, sorting back through the letters and documents that he had read to the Pope in His Holiness’s final days. He had been so caught up in the speculation of who this stranger was and the effect his presence was going to have on the election of the new Pope that he hadn’t given enough thought to why the man was here or who he was.

There had been reports from Hungary, following the battle at Mohi. Reports of who had been lost at that battle. An Archbishop…

Fieschi needed time to think. He needed to figure out what to do next. Time to pray, even, if that would help. He looked at the room-the dead body, the torn clothes, the scattered straw from the ripped mattress-and realized, as if seeing it all for the first time, that he couldn’t simply walk away from the room as if nothing had happened. Bits of straw clung to his robes. His right hand was red and raw. No one could connect his appearance with what had happened here. Had anyone seem him with Somercotes?

The mad priest.

He could deal with him later. Right now, he had to get out of Somercotes’s room. He had to get rid of the robe he was wearing-the same plain vestment he had worn when he snuck into the city. It smelled too much like sweat and piss and shit. Like violent death.

His gaze was drawn to the small metal lantern that provided the illumination for the room, the flickering flame like a single, blinking eye. More of a wink, in fact, as if it knew some deadly secret it would impart to him if he would only pick it up.

Stepping around Somercotes’s body, he scooped up the lantern and went to the door. Placing the lantern on the floor, he lifted and removed the door’s timber bar, then carefully opened the door a few inches to check the hallway. Satisfied it was empty, he bent over and delicately plucked the small stub of candle from the lantern’s metal shell. The candle’s flame danced eagerly.

Fieschi tossed the candle into the scattered straw. The candle bounced once, then lay on its side. The flame grew brighter as it spread into the straw.

With a grim smile, he left the room, pulling the door shut behind him. No one would know of his handiwork, not until it was too late.

Omnis arbor, quae non facit fructum bonum, excidetur , he thought as he walked, and thrown to the fire…

Ferenc twisted and angled his body as he fell. He saw, out of the corner of his eye, Ocyrhoe’s open mouth and wide eyes as he flashed by her, but there was no time to tell her his plan. There was no time to do anything but pull his arms and legs in before he collided with the guard. He felt the guard’s head against his arm and side, and then the two of them were falling, a mass of flailing arms and legs.

They hit the ground, Ferenc on top, and the impact drove the air out of his lungs. He rolled off, then stood, wincing as he tried to put weight on his left leg. He had twisted his ankle. It wasn’t a bad sprain-he could walk, albeit it with a bit of a limp, and if he was careful, it would stop hurting in a day or so.

The guard groaned, eyelids fluttering, and his arms and legs jerked in uncoordinated spasms. He was stunned but not senseless. In a few moments, he would regain his wits.

Ocyrhoe landed lightly nearby and started jabbering at Ferenc. Ferenc shook his head and tried to grip her arm, but she yanked it from his grasp, poked his chest with an angry finger, and then pointed to the wall. Ferenc shook his head again and touched his left leg, taking a limping step. “I can’t climb,” he said. “Not quickly.” He grabbed at her arm again, with both hands this time, and held her fast while he signed. “We have to go. Unless you want to kill this guard.”

She snapped her mouth shut and glared at him. Her eyes darted back and forth like the tiny swallows Ferenc had once watched hunt and swoop across the flower meadows in the spring, and then she nodded. “ Sequere ,” she said, disengaging her arm from his grip. She took his hand and pressed her fingers against the top of his wrist. “We’ll find another spot to climb,” she signed.

He began to walk as fast as his rapidly swelling ankle allowed. He reversed their hands-now holding her-and began to sign. “Hard to climb now. Harder to jump. Can climb this side, but how to get down?”

She shrugged and shook her head, clearly not understanding his question.

Just before they turned a corner, he glanced over his shoulder. The guard was still on his back, feebly waving his arms and kicking his legs. He looked like a bug. In a moment, they would be out of his sight.

“Wall keeps people out,” Ferenc signed. “Have you ever been outside?”

She blushed and looked away, and he could feel her arm tense as she thought about pulling away. He had embarrassed her and was surprised at his reaction to her pain. He squeezed her arm, trying to tell her he did not mean to cause distress with the question. But he knew the answer.

Ocyrhoe had never been outside of Rome. She didn’t know what the other side of the wall looked like, much less the world beyond-but judging by her reaction, she understood why he had asked.

It didn’t matter how easy it was to climb the inside of the walls of Rome; the inside might be left to decay, but the outward-facing rampart must be kept reasonably strong and smooth, or it would not be any sort of barrier against enemies.

He had injured himself falling not much more than three times the height of a man. Jumping from three stories? Neither of them would survive.

“Need different route,” Ferenc signed. He thought of the dark places they had recently visited, the tunnels under the old temples of the city. His fingers curled and tapped her forearm. “Underground. Can you find a way?”

Andreas sat on his pallet with a grunt of pain. The stone walls were a mercy during the rain and the wind, but in the murderous heat of summer, they made little difference, especially when it was a gray heat-a steaming, sunless heat. There was no breeze without or within, and little for him to do other than sweat.

In all the stories singers told of heroics and of battle, they rarely, if ever, spoke of the waiting or the coming down afterward. Unless it served the story, they didn’t speak of the wounds either. He tried to straighten his aching back and felt muscles move beneath skin so tight from exertion that he wanted only to fall into a deep slumber and never move again.

The bruises he had received on the First Field overlaid their own dull throbbing upon previous layers of older pains. Battle rush and focus on opponents permitted a man to ignore these irritations, but after battle, they came rushing back with an angry vengeance.