Christopher Buehlman - Between Two Fires

God, the stink.

The wine had covered it, sealed it.

But no more.

She felt ill.

Hurry.

She pulled, afraid that his arm would come off, but, though it did not, he was too heavy for her to lift alone.

She tried again, feeling more strength in her, and nearly got him out. He lifted his head and blinked what was left of his eyes at her. Then his eyes became whole. His features shifted and tightened.

He saw her for the first time.

Terror filled his eyes; not terror of her, but of what he had seen before.

She pulled again, with all her might, and this time he helped her. He clambered out in a great rush of wine, kneeing his way to the barrel next to her.

He covered his nakedness and shuddered, his mouth open, drool coming from it, but it was a living mouth now.

His teeth were purple.

When he spoke, he panted between words.

“I. Was. In Hell.”

“You still are.”

“Are. You. An angel?”

“No. But there’s one here. And more are coming.”

“Good,” he said, crying, looking like a pale, adult toddler. “That’s good.”

“Maybe we won’t think so. The war is coming with them.”

T he Lord made answer.

Jacquot squinted his eyes, waiting for the smoke from the pope’s twin braziers to drift in another direction. His post as papal guard would not allow him to rest his loaded crossbow, nor could he wipe his tearing eyes. Neither could he fetch the untouched quail that mocked him from the plate of the new bugger cardinal just in front of him, despite its tempting crust of herbs and his desperately rumbling stomach.

Fuck off, smoke.

The smoke persisted.

He fought the urge to turn his head away, fearing to draw attention to himself. His duty was to remain still. Thus far, his duty was proving indistinguishable from that of a pillar.

He had not worn the crossed-key insignia of the guard for very long; it was less than two weeks since he rode into Avignon with the troop of Breton archers that had pulled him from his Norman tree, all of them slavering for Jerusalem gold and the absolution that going on crusade would bring. Yet his ability to quarrel a crabapple off a stump at thirty yards had so impressed the quartermaster that the captain of the guard had sent for him.

Now this.

Cunting, cunting smoke.

He had just wondered for the fortieth time how much longer this goddamned feast could last when he heard a gasp go up from the crowd. Several pointing fingers jabbed toward the rear of the courtyard, and the cardinals turned to look as well. Now the other guards looked, so Jacquot did as well.

What he saw bewildered him.

A second pope had entered the courtyard; Jacquot’s watery eyes were unsure, but this pope seemed a perfect twin to the one who sat before him, save for his white robes and miter. A troop of soldiers in cross-key tabards, the captain of the guard among them, marched at this white pope’s side. His right hand held a crosier and a peasant girl held his left.

The seated pope, wearing ruby-littered robes of burnt orange and a miter with three crowns of gold, looked right at his geminus but remained seated. The guards around the nearer pope, like him, were all new recruits culled from those who had drifted south, and none of them had the first idea what to make of this.

The men near the pope in white had their gazes fixed. They had been prepared for what they would see. Most of those were veterans of the palace, kept farther away from His Holiness these last months, but now standing together near the pretender.

Sweet Christ there’s going to be a fight and fuck this fucking smoke.

He stepped back out of the smoke’s path and wiped his eyes in case he had to shoot.

“False pope!” the pope in white shouted, his voice echoing off the walls in the Courtyard of Honor. “You know you are a devil! Show your true form or depart!”

Now the near pope stood, his eyes wide, pointing at the other.

“A devil in white cries devil at your Father! Lord protect us!” he shouted, but his fear seemed false.

“Tell them what lord you mean,” said the little girl. Her voice seemed familiar to Jacquot. He wanted to wipe his eyes again to get a better look at her, but now the knight who had lately accompanied the pope and all but taken over the duties of the captain of the guard, a harsh seigneur with a leonine face and black teeth, growled, “Crossbows ready.”

Jacquot raised his weapon.

The bugger cardinal, his upper lip dewed with sweat, turned on his bench and looked first at Jacquot and then at his crossbow, where his trigger hand partly obscured the ivory inlay picturing the Last Supper.

“No worries, Your Eminence,” he said, knowing that a wink from his drooping eye was unlikely to inspire confidence but giving the young cardinal one anyway. He had found that steadying others steadied himself.

Peering from beneath his lowered hood, Thomas saw that the true pope had entered the courtyard of honor. All eyes had turned that way. The knight in friar’s robes did not breathe like a bull before his charge, but silently readied his sword, curling his body around it to hide it from the poor of Avignon jostling around him.

He must slide it from its sheath and leap the first table in one motion.

He must be upon the higher table before they saw him.

He must kill the false pope before they could react.

He must surprise them.

At least two at the upper table were devils.

Now, he thought.

The sword leapt from its sheath and he leapt upon the first table, kicking a plate of dark bread aside.

The lion-faced knight turned, faster than Thomas had hoped, his axe already out. Recognition flashed in his little black eyes; he did not alert the others—he wanted to handle this himself.

YOU FUCKING THIEF YOU WANT DEATH AND HERE IT COMES

The devil-knight leapt upon the cardinal’s table, just where Thomas had planned to jump. It squatted and slashed with its axe, but Thomas ducked and turned so it bit through his habit and glanced off his backplate, continuing his turn so the point of his sword wheeled around and into the lion-knight’s face. It continued through the back of the head. The stabbed knight screamed, but it was also a roar.

Thomas yanked out his sword.

The impossible gash in the thing’s head smoked.

It staggered back from the table, shaking furiously, like a wet dog.

It was growing larger, popping its armor.

Screams from the courtyard behind him.

Cardinals struggled to stand up, but some were too paralyzed with fear to move and weighed the shared benches down.

“Shoot him!” the new cardinal screamed, pointing at Thomas.

Now a crossbowman stepped forward.

Cheeked his weapon and triggered it with a flat but potent whack audible even through the chaos of crowd and devils.

The bolt shot true.

It struck Thomas in the chest, and he staggered back, stunned.

His cowl fell away.

Another bolt flew from farther down the table; this one clipped his neck, but got no cords.

The first one, though.

He looked down at the goose-feather fletching where the quarrel stood from the dimple in the comte’s armor, the dimple Thomas’s final axe-blow had made in their fight by the stream. It would have clanked off otherwise, for such was the art of the Milanese at curving and hammering their armor.