His Splendor General Neguder, military aide to the Illustrious Prince Sartaq, Swift Sword of the Khan, High Warrior of the Golden Horde, and so on. Later a trumpet brayed outside. Still later, it brayed again. And in due course the great man did waddle in with a train of attendants almost as splendidly arrayed as himself. The visitors, having been properly instructed, pressed their faces to the floor and squinted out of the corners of their eyes.
He was elderly, tall for a Tartar, and wide for a man of any race. Even flowing silks could not disguise the bulge of that belly. He took the throne with obvious relief, leaned back, and probably closed his eyes — it was impossible to be certain, because his eyes were tiny slits in the blubber of his face. His followers took the chairs arrayed to right and left of him. The visitors were left where they were, noses on an evil-smelling carpet reeking of generations of boots.
The herald said something inaudible, probably in Tartar.
The general then delivered a speech. Officially he delivered a speech. In practice one of his aged flunkies read it for him, remaining seated while doing so. Its meaning, if it ever had any, was gutted by the man's gruesome accent and skinned by Toby's inadequate command of Italian, but the shreds of meat remaining seemed to consist mainly of a review of great victories won by the Golden Horde in ancient times and the lessons to be learned from them. The tactics mentioned were rarely suitable for Italian terrain. There was no mention of firearms. There was no hint that the Khanate was prepared to support resistance in Italy with a strike at Nevil from the east, across Hungary.
The speech lasted about two hours. Toby wondered if a first snore would be a capital offense, or if he might be allowed a second. Not that the meeting was not educational. Nay, it was most exceeding instructive! Ever since Nevil's rampage began, the Khan's loyal subjects in Europe had been appealing to him for assistance. The lack of response had been a mystery much discussed, but it was a mystery no longer, not to Toby. These men were imposters. The once-invincible Golden Horde, whose ancestors had conquered all the world from Spain to Cathay, was a legend now. It had no more substance than a bubble on a stream.
In their time the Khans had ruled well, imposing peace on a very quarrelsome continent — more or less peace, and at a price, for the suzerains had been tax collectors before they were anything else. They had always managed to pocket a lionish share of whatever they gathered, but much of the gold had flowed east to Sarois.
With that insight came another. If the Khanate was only a mirage, then why was Toby Longdirk crouched on a rug being bored to distraction? Answer: Because power worked on men's minds, and the Khan's almost illusory power was still enough to make the Florentines serve his son's will. If Toby stood up now and tried to walk out, Florence would bring him to heel. He would be beheaded at best. So even the last reflections of glory could dazzle. These mummified incompetents were still in charge, and their orders would be obeyed until it was too late. All Toby's carefully nurtured plans would crumble to dust, and Nevil would take Italy without working up a sweat.
Hearing a faint moan to his left, he unobtrusively turned his head. The old Chevalier was beside him, his face twisted in agony.
'Trouble, signore?' Toby murmured.
'Cramps!' came the whispered response.
'Be grateful that they keep you awake.'
The old scoundrel just scowled, a man without humor.
At last, thank good spirits, the speech ended. Now, perhaps, the mercenaries would be presented to the acclaimed General Neguder and could ask a few penetrating questions about his strategy and intentions. Alas, not so. A herald shook the noble warrior awake. He rose and shuffled out, followed by all his entourage. The audience was over.
The visitors scrambled to their feet and jigged up and down to restore circulation. Don Ramon — to Toby's delight — was deep purple with fury.
'What of Prince Sartaq, senor? Is he any more, um, impressive?'
The don gnashed some teeth. 'His Highness is a worthy scion of his exalted forebears.'
Splendid! They were going to need all of those they could get.
CHAPTER EIGHT
The Khan's son was an entertaining novelty at first, but his stallion interests quickly alarmed all mothers and husbands of young Florentine women. A week of Sartaq was enough to start them whispering that it must be time for the illustrious prince to go on and visit Milan. He must see Venice. Why not Padua? Verona was especially lovely in the spring. Anywhere. The city of flowers fidgeted, but the Magnificent tightened his grip and the complaints remained no more than complaints.
Rumors — never in short supply in Italy — were excessively, superfluently abundant and contradictory. Everyone anyone had ever heard of was going to be appointed suzerain, but the prince had decided to lead the armies of Italy in person, that he was going to flee the peninsula long before there was any chance of the Fiend arriving and catching him there. Also, Nevil's armies were massing to cross Mount Cenis Pass, Brenner Pass, and Simplon Pass, and to enter Italy by the coast road through Savoy. Choose the truth you preferred.
Toby Longdirk, the supposed defender of the city, was no wiser than anyone else. His petitions were ignored, his plans frustrated. He was shut out of the inner councils, if there were any, and the don now seemed less certain of what was being planned, if anything was. If Lucrezia was his source, she might not be as well informed as he had thought. Although he normally bragged openly of his conquests, he was almost discreet in his talk of the
Toby had a formidable lady of his own to handle. One rather typical afternoon was made worse by a stormy interview with Countess Maud, alias Blanche, Queen Mother of England.
By noon the air was stifling. He could find little compensation in the knowledge that the trellis vines would provide better shade later in the spring. Later in the spring he might be far away or even dead. He would be ready to break off and take a siesta if he could only convince himself that he had done any good at all so far.
He had wasted more than an hour repeating a familiar argument with Alberto Calvalcante, master of gunnery in the Company. Calvalcante had conceded that transporting guns in carts was an untidy and inefficient business. Yes, the noble constable's idea of building a permanent but transportable mount so that a cannon or bombard could be hauled to the battlefield and be ready to fire in minutes instead of hours or days, was an appealing notion. But, he insisted mulishly, such a carriage would fly apart at the first shot unless it was built of enormous balks of timber, so it would require as many oxen to haul it as all the carts it replaced. The recoil would drive it back into its own lines. The wheels would fall off. On muddy roads — and most roads were muddy most of the time — it would sink right out of sight. Toby had managed to answer all the objections except one, which was that a gun had to be aimed. That was achieved now by building a trough for it to lie in pointing at the target, which was almost invariably a city under siege. This fancy carriage of his, the gunner said, would require a mechanism to change the elevation of the barrel, and Maestro Calvalcante would never believe that such a contraption could be built strong enough not to fly apart after a couple of shots.
Toby was baffled but not convinced. In the last twenty years or so, armorers had perfected ways of casting bronze cannons far stronger than the old ones built from iron strips, and yet the military had found no better way of moving them around. Doubtless Nevil would bring many guns with him and use them to batter down city walls. Florence was a big target and stayed where it was. The attackers would not be so obliging.
After Calvalcante came Marshal Diaz, to present half a dozen minor condottieri who had signed up to enjoy the Florentine gold and serve under the celebrated
Even Diaz, that stolid, imperturbable Catalan, was becoming frayed and harassed these days. The Company had expanded past the seven thousand mark, with no end in sight. There were too few large bands left to enlist as associates, and the small ones had to be included under the don's banner; it was the lesser of the two administrative evils. In theory, Toby could now field more than seventeen hundred helmets for Florence, half of
