Ken Hood - Demon Knight

He winced. "My lady, you don't want either. Most mercenaries would take your money and betray you. Most gentlemen would… be even worse. Don Ramon, for example — never mind. Please just accept me as a friend. I will gladly set my men to work on locating your mother, and I will be honored to escort you to Florence and give you shelter there until they do. I will accept no payment or reward except a few of those wonderful smiles of yours, because they are beyond price."

The rush of relief made her knees weak, but it also told her that she had made the right decision. Poor Mother would be frantic. And when she did find out what had happened to her wayward daughter — if she ever did — she would be utterly appalled. Riding off with a common mercenary to another city, another country? But what else was she to do?

"By all means let us be friends! You must call me Mistress Lisa, and I will call you Sir Hamish, for I think you really are a gentleman, a true gentleman. I have always found a man's manners to be a more reliable guide to his true quality than his lands or the number of portraits above his banquet table." She had also learned, over the years of a very lonely childhood, that solid men of humble status — grooms and servants — were often much more pleasant company and much more respectful to a young lady than certain gentlemen. Mother would regard that belief as rankest heresy, but Mother had never been backed into a corner by a snotty many-handed adolescent who thought he had the hereditary right to do anything to anyone. "I am very grateful and will smile like a stuffed cockatrice all the way to Florence if it pleases you."

"Oh, Lisa, I'm sorry, really sorry. I shouldn't have mocked you. You know the danger you're in, and you're behaving very bravely. Pay me if you want. I am in need of money. I shouldn't put on airs and pretend I'm not. I have a hole in my boot and can't afford to get it mended."

"I insulted you."

"No, no. I was presumptuous. But whether I'm your paid bodyguard or just a friend in need, I give you my word that no harm will befall you. I promise Longdirk won't use you."

" Use me?"

"Politically, I mean."

"I don't understand. How could he use me politically?"

"Oh, nothing," Hamish muttered. "Forget I said that. I read too many books, that's all."

Toby followed pudgy podestà Origo past unobtrusive guards to an unassuming door and into a warren of dimly lit smaller rooms where another sort of party was under way. In spite of his ability to look over heads, he had trouble making out who was present in the gloom, but they were all men, all standing, all discoursing in whispers.

"You know the noble Guilo, of course?" Origo vanished into the crowd with the air of someone who has just scraped something unpleasant off his boot.

Toby did know Guilo, a weedy, slightly pop-eyed young man, a very minor member of the clan. They bowed, flattering each other as " comandante " and " magnifico ," respectively. "Your Magnificence" was a servile way of addressing a man who lacked any official title, but it was understood in Florence that the Magnificent was one man in particular. He would be around here somewhere. And Toby had long since given up trying to convince the Florentines that his title of comandante in capo had been a field appointment, good only for the day of battle.

Obviously Cousin Guilo had been designated sheepdog, to make sure the mercenary spoke with all the right people and none of the wrong. When they arrived at a group, the whispers would stop abruptly. Fulsome greetings would lead into the standard questions: Would the Fiend invade Italy? How soon? Could he be stopped? How much was it going to cost? Toby gave standard answers: yes, this spring, yes, plenty. Then he would be led away, and the muttering would start up again at his back.

They came at last to a brighter room, where a single glance identified enough of the top politicos of the city to show that this was the center of the web. A massive, florid-faced burgher in the center was pontificating in a wine-slurred roar. He was the current chairman of the dieci della guerra , the council for war, messer Jacopo Benozzo, and the kindest word the don ever used about him was "buffoon." According to the unsupported word of Master Hamish Campbell, his nose was much in demand in winter for roasting chestnuts. Marradi himself stood at the edge of the group — silent, unobtrusive, observing.

The moment of truth was approaching.

Until that day, Toby had left the negotiating to the don, who was much better at it. Unlike Toby, he could tell lies with a straight face, because he believed whatever he wanted to believe. Truth was anything he needed it to be. He despised money in any form, considered fighting for money shameful, and thus genuinely hated to agree to anything, especially with merchants like Benozzo or even Marradi, who were lower than the dirt under his horse. He drove them crazy. Why not? — he was crazy himself, oblivious to reality. Yet he was creepily perceptive at divining what Toby wanted to do and ordering him to do it. When they had first met, he had been leading an army that existed only in his muddled mind — noble knights, infantry, bands, guns, everything. Toby had made his dream come true, putting him at the head of the finest mercenary company in all Italy.

But that morning Pietro Marradi had summoned messer Longdirk to Florence, taken him into a very small private office, and shut the door. Alone, the two of them had negotiated the condotta that had been under discussion for months. Now all that remained was to ram it through the proper channels.

Introductions, bows, the usual stately minuet of banalities… War slid gently into the discussion. So did Antonio Origo. In fourteen years the Khanate had done nothing to oppose Nevil's rebellion, but the presence of the podestà in the inner circle suggested that this might be about to change.

"Yes, the Fiend can be beaten," Toby said for the hundredth time that night. "But only if Italy will unite. The cities must agree upon a comandante and give him the forces he will need. Time is running out. If Florence does not soon replace the late and sadly missed Captain-General Vespucci and start building a sizable army of its own, then it will not only be pitifully vulnerable, it will have no seat at the allies' table."

There! How did that feel? Marradi had told him to pull no punches, and punching was one thing Toby Longdirk did very well indeed.

"Indeed?" Pietro murmured. The listeners shuffled themselves quickly to include him in the group. "This news disturbs me." It could hardly surprise him, for nothing in Florence was concluded until he had approved every detail. "What is delaying the negotiations, messer Benozzo?"

The fat man wrinkled his grotesque nose in disgust. "The Spaniard. The man is a maniac!"

"He has very high ideals," Toby murmured sadly.

"And very few wits. However, we have made some progress."

Marradi waited for more. The buffoon began to bluster.

"We are making progress! We have agreed on the limits of the captain-general's authority over our provisionati , the proportion of his men's wages to be withheld as tax, the amounts of those wages to be issued in cloth and in grain, the form of muster rolls that will be presented and the frequency of our inspections, regulation of prices for victuals and the markets…" And so on, all meaningless details that were more or less standard in any condotta . He subsided like a punctured wineskin and at last fell silent.

"So much?" marveled the Magnificent. "Then there can be little left to decide. Cannot the rest be cleared up tomorrow so that we may seal the condotta and swear in our new captain-general? Say by noon?"