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

look uncomfortable. Christopher said nothing. Finally: “I'm mad. Remember?”

Yvonnet groped for a suitable counter. “No one would believe you.”

“Do you really depend on that, dear cousin?”

“I—”

“Your immortal soul, dear cousin?”

“I—”

“Rome might not be overly enthused at being supported by someone who is a—”

“Stop it.”

“Let's see. What shall we call it?”

“Stop, please.”

“Something delicate?”

“Not so loud . . . please . . .”

“Delicate and flowery?” Christopher leaned across the table. “Or something gross and putrescent, like the smell you get when you've been sticking your—”

“Stop it!”

Christopher stopped.

Yvonnet was pale, shaking, breathing heavily. He collapsed back in his chair, fanning himself. “It's bloody hot in here.”

“Yes,” said Christopher. “It's unseasonably warm.”

“You're an evil man, Christopher.”

Christopher folded his arms. Evil? Compared to what? Given the inanities he was seeing from Ruprecht and Yvonnet, Natil's heterodoxy, whatever it was, was looking more and more attractive. Lady, he thought, would you entertain devotion from a madman who's lost his faith?

Yvonnet, thoroughly broken, was still fanning himself. “But it's too late. Most of the companies have already dispersed. I don't know where they've gone.”

The battle had been against time, and time had won. Christopher thought of what could happen, of what was now almost inevitable. His temper snapped. “And you didn't even think to find out, did you? You didn't care at all, did you?” He grabbed Yvonnet by the front of his tunic, hauled him, large as he was, half out of his chair, shook him until his eyes glazed. “You were just worried about your soul. That's what's important, isn't it? No one and nothing else, just your filthy . . . little . . . goddam . . . soul!”

He flung the big man back into the chair, turned, and stalked towards the door. Yvonnet struggled with his wits. “What . . . what are you going to do?” he said.

Christopher flung the bar out of its holders and threw the door open. “The Lady help me,” he said, “I'm going to try to clean up your mess. And when I do, I'm going to make sure that you never forget what it means to be a delAurvre.”

Yvonnet goggled. “But I'm not a delAurvre.”

Christopher was already stomping down the stairs. “That's all right,” he shouted over his shoulder. “I am.”

Chapter Twenty

Christopher reached out with a booted foot and prodded a charred beam—all that was recognizably left of the north gate of Ypris. “They were thorough,” he said. “I'll grant them that.”

The morning air was still. Crows called harshly from somewhere nearby. Natil stood mutely, her harp in her hands. On her face was a mixture of tragedy and sorrow. “It is the work of men.”

It was an odd choice of words, but Christopher agreed with her. Beyond the beam lay a motionless sea of blackened ruins, crumbling walls, rubble-choked streets; and the clinging odor of charred and smoldering wood hung in the warm air . . . along with the sweet stench of death and decay. The free companies did not appear to have been overly concerned with such things as Christian burial.

Christopher was reminded of Nicopolis: the same futility, the same wanton destruction. But the plateaux to the south of the Danube had been strewn with the bodies of men who—whether their reasons had been foolish or altruistic—had come to fight willingly. Here it was different.

Angry, Christopher kicked the beam. It turned over once and then lay still. “They didn't have to level it,” he said.

Natil's voice was hollow. “The companies doubtless acted under orders.”

“From Yvonnet.” If the baron of Hypprux had not counted for nearly a third of the alliance, Christopher would have simply killed him at the inn. “Cesena had Robert of Geneva, and now Ypris has Yvonnet a'Verne.”

There was not much to examine in the city. There was not much of the city left. A few shacks that had managed to survive the flames, one or two plazas that were not completely filled with tumbled plaster and stone . . . that was all. The festering bodies that lay everywhere—picked at by crows and ravens—soon, though individually horrific, blended en masse into a numbing sense of general devastation.

Christopher gave up on the town and turned to the trampled fields that surrounded it. Here lay the marks of the free company encampments, and together with Natil and Ruprecht's soldiers, he examined tracks, fire pits, dropping-covered patches that had obviously been used for stabling horses, a few scattered pegs and discarded ropes left from tents and pavilions.

At least one rope appeared to be made of silk. Yvonnet had hired the best.

The tracks, however, were mostly too muddled and trampled to give any indication whether they had been made coming or going. One sizable group, though, had clearly headed to the south.

“Belroi?” said Christopher.

“It is likely, messire,” said the captain of the guards. “Belroi is a wealthy city.”

“Too wealthy,” said Christopher. “If I recall aright, it has quite a wall about it, and good men to defend it.”

“That is true, messire.”

“We should probably notify them in any case. Though I don't doubt that they've already noticed this little affair.”

“I can send some of my men, messire.”

“Yes. Do that.” Christopher watched Natil as she touched, sadly, a felled willow tree. Well away from both the fighting and the encampment, it had apparently been hewn down simply because it was living and because it was there.

The harper's calm face was troubled. It is the work of men.

“I'll send word to Baron Paul delMari when I get back to Aurverelle,” said Christopher.

“As you wish, messire.”

In a few minutes, two of the men galloped off to the south. Christopher hoped that they would reach Belroi without incident, but with the countryside now harboring the scattered free companies, hope was about all he could do.

He sent the remaining guards back to Maris with a message to Ruprecht to prepare for sudden action, and he and Natil struck off to the southwest, cutting across the trampled flax fields. Aurverelle was comparatively close, and Christopher wanted to reach it