Demon Knight

Lisa felt guilty for not feeling more guilty. Every step her horse took carried her farther away from Mother, who must be half-insane with worry, yet she kept catching herself actually enjoying this wild adventure, this unreal Arthurian romance into which she had fallen. Lack of sleep had stuffed her head with bed socks, and the beautiful Tuscan landscape enclosed her like a painting — fields, vineyards, olive groves, red-tiled roofs, geese, goats — all glistening in the sharp morning light. She must believe that it was real. She had seen a demon and witnessed Master Campbell bloodying his sword in her defense.

He was most attentive and excellent company. He had bought clothes for her from the innkeeper's daughter and sent one of his men back into Siena to organize a hunt for the countess. Every now and again he would peer back along their tracks to where his other man, Carlo, was trailing a mile or so behind, keeping a lookout for pursuit. Even Mother had never gone to quite such lengths, but Lisa was much more inclined to trust the mercenary's appraisal of danger than hers.

That did not mean that she trusted him without reservations. He was not being completely frank with her. He had motives he was not revealing. There were questions he would not answer—

'Why did you tell me to keep my kerchief?'

He blinked guilelessly. 'When we locate your mother, we can send it along as proof that we're genuine.'

'Then why didn't you give it to Rinaldo to take back with him?'

'I didn't think of it until he'd gone. Oh, look! Newborn lambs! Spring!'

Those were not the first lambs they had passed. Master Campbell was lying. Later she tried again. 'What did you mean about Longdirk using me politically?'

'Taking advantage of you. Demanding ransom, for instance.'

That was not what he had meant originally! And the questions he asked were not all innocent, either. He kept trying to find out things about Mother, who was none of his business. As Lisa was riding sidesaddle and he was on the left, she could watch him more easily than he could watch her. She could tell when he was just making conversation and when he was probing. She could also admire his profile, which was acceptably handsome for a knight-errant.

He was good company — witty, intelligent, well read, and very well traveled. Between them they could speak more than a dozen languages, although all they had in common were English and the usual smattering of Latin and Tartar that all well-educated people professed. Nor had they identified a single city they had both visited, for he had traveled mostly in the Fiend's domains, while Mother had always stayed inside territories loyal to the Khan. They shared a love of books. Many of the homes in which she had stayed had possessed books, even if the owners never opened them. Too often, books had been her only companions for months at a time, yet she had never met another genuine book lover. Now the two of them juggled titles and quotations back and forth with mutual glee, arguing what Plato had said in the Republic or whether it was worth learning Tuscan just to read Dante.

He admitted to leaving Scotland when he was fifteen, and later he mentioned this had been in 1519, so he must be about twenty-one now. Most men married younger than that, but she could not ask, and he did not volunteer the information. Despite her best efforts to match his vagueness on personal matters, he was revealing much less than she was. He would talk endlessly about his friend Longdirk:

'Aristocrats despise him because he's not of noble birth, and the crabby old veterans are worse. Some of them still seem to think his success was all just luck, but he calculates everything. He moved us from client to client — Verona, Ravenna, Naples, then Milan, so all the captains-general and collaterali got to know him, and when Nevil sent Schweitzer across the border last fall and they needed a comandante in capo in a hurry, they elected him because he was the only one they all trusted. He was a neutral, of course. Venetians don't trust Milanese, Milanese don't trust Venetians, and the Florentine captain-general was an idiot.'

Lisa soon developed a strong dislike of this vagabond mercenary lord into whose power she was about to be delivered. 'Yes, but—'

'The men worship him. He remembers their names, and their horses' names, looks after their comfort, shares out the loot fairly, never spares himself. They're Longdirk's men and proud of it. They swagger and strut like pigeons, and no one queries their right to do so. He's never lost once — siege, skirmish, or set-piece battle.'

'But what sort of a person is he? Does he brag and swagger, too? Does he enjoy the killing?'

'Toby?' Hamish grinned. 'Brag? He's the only man in Italy who still calls it the Don Ramon Company. He hides behind the don and tugs his forelock and runs circles around them all. He certainly doesn't enjoy killing. The only thing he hates more than war is the Fiend, who makes it necessary. He really tries not to shed blood. Take San Leo, for example. It was supposed to be impregnable. Ha! Two days after the condotta was signed, he went up a ladder in the middle of a rainy night with one companion and opened the gates for the Company. By the time the garrison woke up in the morning, the town was ours! That condotta only lasted a week.'

'Who was the companion?'

'There's Carlo coming now. We can go on—'

'Who was the one companion?'

'It doesn't look like anyone's following you, I mean us. Why are you looking at me like that?'

'At San Leo? Who was the one companion?'

'Me,' he admitted grumpily.

'Aha!'

He scowled. 'I don't usually do such crazy things. I had to go with him because I'd seen a map of the town, that was all.'

Master Campbell was being modest, which was a very odd trait in a man, but might be quite appealing once one got used to it. 'Of course,' she said. 'And no one else ever had? I suppose during the Battle of Trent you sat in your tent the whole time reading a book?'

He shot her a worried look. 'Lisa… don't!'

'Don't what?'

'Don't start getting ideas about… Oh, demons!' He stared straight ahead along the track and said nothing more.

'I was inquiring, Chancellor, what part you played in the Battle of Trent?'

He spoke to the fields. 'A very small, very insignificant part. But I did ride in the Great Charge, when Toby led the cavalry against the guns and the demons were loosed. I saw little of it. I was much too busy trying to stay on my horse, and there was fire and smoke and thunder everywhere. Magazines blowing up… bodies flying through the air like starlings.'

'Monsters?'

'Yes, there were monsters. My horse didn't much like running with dragons. But we had more monsters than they did. Then the Swiss pikemen came in on the right… That was awful. Nevil's troops were hexed, so they couldn't surrender.'

'So Constable Longdirk does shed blood when he has to! Is it true that he's possessed by a demon?'

'Oh, look! Lambs! Isn't it amazing how early spring comes in Italy? Back in Scotland—'

'Did he really set the forest on fire at Trent?'

Hamish turned to look at her then. His face was grim. 'Yes. He had our hexers do it, and that left us open to Schweitzer's demons, so we took heavy losses for a while, but nothing compared to what the fire did to the Fiend's troops later.'

'You mean he'll roast an enemy army without a thought but won't dream of using a maiden in distress for political purposes?'

After a brief hesitation, Master Campbell said, 'Yes.'

CHAPTER TWELVE

Given that Italy was a morass of conspiracy and intrigue, it went without saying that there were spies