Maze of Moonlight by Gael Baudino (read with me TXT) 📕

independent Free Towns and thereby providing an excuse for political conquest was one thing, out-and-out siege and destruction was entirely another.

“My lord?”

Christopher blinked. His grandfather again. And Vanessa. “I'm sorry, Jerome. What were you saying?”

Jerome frowned in a manner that made him look every inch a monastery librarian confronted with a pack of unruly novices. He had obviously guessed what was on Christopher's mind.

But Vanessa was gone from Aurverelle, and Jerome more than likely assumed that she would soon depart from Christopher's thoughts, also. And so he went back to his facts and his projections . . . without comment.

There were many free companies, all independent, all deriving their income from their own form of pillage and extortion. In size and composition they ranged all the way from bands of ten or twenty destitute soldiers who sacked isolated steadings and an occasional unprotected village to virtual armies of knights, men-at-arms, and archers who wore fine armor, sold their booty through long-established agents, lent their service to emperor and king, and could make even the pope tremble and offer them large sums of money if they would only go away.

And they all moved and milled and scattered like flies on a dung heap. A troop might winter in a given area, might even spend an entire year in a captured castle, but spring would find it on the move again. Christopher could see a certain wisdom in hunting down the company that had attacked the wool shipment, but even had he still possessed a taste for battle, the brigands in question were probably pillaging somewhere else by now, the Aurverelle pack train just one conquest out of many. A regrettable one, too, for wool wains were a notoriously clumsy prize to dispose of. It would, doubtless, not happen again.

He said as much. Jerome was nodding. Pytor agreed, too, but he spread his hands. “But if master does not show them that he can protect his property . . .”

“I know,” said Christopher. “They'll think they can help themselves.” And they would indeed help themselves. The century had been born in war, had sustained itself by war, was ending in war. War was profitable, war was easy. Christopher could hardly blame out-of-work soldiers for falling back on the skills that they knew best. “But that's where we'll have them. Once they enter Adria, then they'll be on our lands. We can track them, pick our place to fight, and win.”

“But if they enter Adria, my lord,” said Jerome, “it will not be in twos and threes, but in hordes. Aurverelle alone cannot protect the entire land.”

In hordes. Yes, the good brother was right. And though Baron Roger had been unwilling to use overt force against the Free Towns, companies of robbers who had no homes, marital relations, or political appearances to keep up, would have no qualms about leveling a town or two.

Christopher was suddenly very worried. Baron Roger had wanted the Free Towns because they were wealthy. The companies, doubtless, would feel exactly the same way. And Vanessa . . .

Had he been his grandfather, Vanessa would have still been in Aurverelle. She might well have been chained to a bed in some upper room, but she would have nonetheless been in Aurverelle. But the old steel and thoughtlessness, it seemed, had gone out of the family with Roger, and his descendants had lost their resolution. Christopher's father had done nothing except add to the castle library until the plague had claimed him and his wife shortly after the birth of his heir; and now Yvonnet dallied with sweets and silks and sodomized handsome little boys like Martin Osmore while Christopher spent his days obsessing on attractive peasant girls and trying to free himself from his defeat.

A shadow flickered at the window, and a grotesque face peered in. The monkey. Pytor cursed aloud. Christopher laughed. The monkey disappeared.

“Let him go,” said the baron. “He's not bothering us. And if we can let the free companies make off with an entire shipment of wool, we can stand to lose a few pieces of fruit.”

“It's not the fruit, master,” said Pytor. “It's the fact that he throws it.”

Christopher shrugged. “He's a lot like me, I suppose.” Pytor and Jerome stared. “But as for the free companies . . .”

His voice trailed off. He cared little for anything outside of Aurverelle, and for a time he had not been sure just how much he cared about Aurverelle. But now that Vanessa was involved . . .

He studied the map, examining Adria in earnest. Mountains, rivers, forest. Pale lines delineated the boundaries of political and economic influence, and light washes of color demarcated regions loyal to the rival popes.

A disjointed assortment of baronies, large and small, that were always at a quiet but constant political simmer, Adria was much like France. And France, thanks to the free companies, now lay as gutted as an unbraced mallard. The same thing could happen to Adria, and, true, Aurverelle could not protect everyone.

The silver pendant—moon and rayed star—slipped out of his tunic and swung free, glittering, above the Free Towns.

Chapter Twelve

The harper's name was Natil. She was deliberately vague about where she had come from, but Christopher was used to that: harpers were a rather scruffy lot, and perhaps this Natil had some legal fracas in her past—thievery, prostitution, or the like—that made her unwilling to be specific about h er origins.

In truth, though, this seemed unlikely, for Natil stood without a trace of a slouch or self-deprecation when presented to the baron in the great hall of his castle. Nor died her demeanor seem prompted by an unjustified or overweening pride: no, she was perfectly comfortable with herself, perfectly at ease. Her dark hair unbound and shot with streaks of silver, her eyes blue, her face tranquil, she appeared ready to confront everything from a mad baron to a forest fire with equal equanimity.

This disturbed Christopher. Even when his madness had not vested him with an