Ash: A Secret History by Mary Gentle Page A

Anselm, Angelotti, and Godfrey present; Florian de Lacey missing, and the company’s other main sub-captains missing.
    “They’re off muttering in corners. I’d leave them to it until you’ve got something you can tell them.” Robert wrung out his woollen hood. “Tell us how badly we’re screwed.”
    “We’re not screwed, this is one hell of an opportunity!”
    Ash was interrupted by Geraint ab Morgan ducking into the tent. “Yo, boss.”
    Geraint, new this season, currently overall Sergeant of Archers, was a broad-shouldered man with cropped hair the colour of fallen leaves, that stood straight up on his skull. The whites of his eyes were perpetually bloodshot. As he came in, Ash noted that the points which joined the back of his hose to the back of his doublet were undone, and his shirt had ridden up out of the gap, disclosing a ragged pair of braies and the cleft of his buttocks.
    Aware she had come back unheralded, Ash kept tactfully quiet, except for a glare that had Geraint avoiding her eye and staring up into the conical roof of the tent, where weapons and kit were hung up on the wooden struts out of the wet.
    “Day report,” Ash said crisply.
    Geraint scratched at his buttocks under white and blue wool hose. “The lads have been inside for two days, out of the rain, cleaning kit. Jacobo Rossano tried to poach two of our Flemish lances and they told him to sod off – he’s not impressed. And Henri de Tréville is with the provosts, arrested for being drunk and trying to set the cook on fire.”
    “You don’t mean the cook’s wagon, do you?” Ash asked wistfully, “you mean the cook.”
    “There was some comment about the besieged eating better in Neuss,” Florian de Lacey said, as the surgeon entered, muddy to his booted knees. “And words to the effect that rat was a delicacy compared to Wat Rodway’s stewed beef…”
    Angelotti showed white teeth. “‘God sends us meat, and the Devil sends us English cooks.’”
    “Enough with the Milanese proverbs, already!” Ash swatted at his head; he dodged. “Good. No one’s successfully poaching our lances. Yet. Camp news?”
    Robert Anselm volunteered briskly, “Sigismund of the Tyrol’s pulling out, he says Frederick isn’t going to fight Burgundy at all. Sigismund’s been pissed off with Duke Charles since he lost Héricourt in ’74. His men have been brawling with Gottfried of Innsbruck’s archers. Oratio Farinetti and Henri Jacques have quarrelled, the surgeons took up two dead from their men fighting.”
    “I don’t suppose we’ve actually fought the enemy?” Ash somewhat theatrically whacked her palm against her forehead. “No, no; silly me – we don’t need an enemy. No feudal army does. Christ preserve me from factious nobility!”
    A lance of sunlight slanted in through the open tent-flap. Everything Ash could see through the gap was dripping, and jewel-bright. She watched the red brigandines and blue and yellow livery jackets of men coming out to coax fires back into life, and tap the beer barrels that stood taller than a man, and fall to playing with greasy cards on the upturned tops of drums. Rising voices echoed.
    “ Right. Robert, Geraint, get the lads out, tell the lance-leaders to split ’em into red and blue scarves, and give them a game of football outside the wagon-fort.”
    “ Football? Bloody English game!” Florian glared at her. “You realise I’ll have more injuries to deal with than from the skirmish?”
    Ash nodded. “Come to think of it… Rickard! Rickard! Where is that boy?”
    Her squire hurtled into the tent. He was fourteen, with glossy black hair and thick winged eyebrows; already conscious of how good-looking he was, and with a growing disinclination to keep it in his codpiece.
    “You’ll have to run up to the provosts and warn them the noise down here isn’t a skirmish, it’s a game.”
    “Yes, my lady!”
    Robert Anselm scratched at his shaven head. “They won’t wait much longer,