Chapter 44: A Surfeit of Commanders

Vito had his boots on the table, [Artiglio del Leone] laid flat across his knees, watching the dull bands in the steel take the light from the shutters and give it back without enthusiasm.

The warehouse he had taken for the company headquarters stood two streets back from the docks, near enough to smell the fish and far enough from Candia’s garrison that nobody had yet found reason to ask why his soldiers kept hours that would have embarrassed an owl.

The blade was still the strangest thing he owned, which was saying some after all he had collected since waking up in this century. Wootz steel, forged somewhere beyond Aleppo by men who protected the secret as jealously as the Republic protected its glassworks, delivered to his room by a hand nobody had seen carrying it.

Vito had wondered more than once what else was waiting behind that curtain the voice never quite pulled aside.

He put the sword away and drew the chart toward him instead. It was a wide sheet, drawn by some monk with equal parts memory and faith. The coastline wandered whenever the ink had grown thin, and the interior contained more empty parchment than anything a reasonable man would mistake for a hill.

It was a mighty large island for only his retinue to occupy.

🦁 [RETINUE OVERVIEW — COMPAGNIA DEL LEONE NERO]

Zaccaria — Captain of the Retinue

Effective Strength : 180

Company Composition : 100 Armored Footmen | 50 Crossbowmen | 30 Picchieri

FIRST PLATOON

Lieutenant : Pellegrino

Strength : 60

Armored Footmen : 40 | Crossbowmen : 15 | Picchieri : 5

Status : Fit for duty

SECOND PLATOON

Lieutenant : Orso

Strength : 60

Armored Footmen : 35 | Crossbowmen : 15 | Picchieri : 10

Status : Fit for duty

THIRD PLATOON

Lieutenant : Domenego

Strength : 60

Armored Footmen : 25 | Crossbowmen : 20 | Picchieri : 15

Status : Fit for duty

Vito’s mind went through the company composition, then came back from it, but before it could elaborate into a more developed thought it was interrupted by the door thunderously pushed open.

Zaccaria came in first, looking like he had wagered any sleep against a handful of regrets and discovered the regrets had cheated with the dice.

Pellegrino followed, one hand on his saint’s medal, muttering some prayer that felt more like a complaint.

Orso came last, yawning broadly enough to make the doorway seem smaller. He nudged Pellegrino from the back, as if to vent his grumpiness with the man.

He dropped into a chair, which answered with a groan. "...and I’m telling you, San Marco has heard enough about your sleep to last him until Judgment Day. What do you expect him to do, come down here and tuck you in?"

Pellegrino made a small prayer.

"God preserve me, now a tavern-born ape speaks for the saints."

Zaccaria sat into the chair opposite Vito and rubbed both eyes. "Barozzi, have you no compassion in you? You drag me out at night to capture priests, then haul me back before noon to listen to a council, and now I find sleep is a luxury I no longer deserve."

Vito had scarcely any time for a wit reply, as the door was immediately pushed open again.

Through it, the last lieutenant arrived, one broad hand cutting through the air as if some argument had begun down the street and he had brought the rest of it along. He was wide across the shoulders, the result of years of swinging things heavier than good sense permitted.

"...and I told him, friend, God so loved the world that He gave His only son, and here you are haggling with me over a rope of onions as if the Almighty has nothing better to concern Himself with. And the man wept."

Orso’s yawn stopped halfway to its grave.

"Then, you made the bastard cry over a sack of onions?"

"No. I made him weep for his immortal soul."

The man was Domenego, one of the company veterans with some reputation for talking almost as much as he fought. He sat into a chair beside Orso and picked up the thread of whatever he imagined from the council.

Vito drew the parchment from beneath the curling edge of the chart. He spread it lazily over the table, with his boots still on top.

A dozen names was written down the page in Ansaldo’s hand, archons and lesser clergy scattered all over the island, men who had found silver more convincing than whatever oath they had once sworn to their previous masters.

These names were sitting in exactly the places a sensible enemy would want them, by being close enough to a garrison to know when its men had been drawn away or close enough to a harvest to know when hunger might be persuasion to join the enemy’s side.

Domenego went silent long enough to read the first three names. Then he stopped being chill altogether.

He spat the word as though it had insulted his mother.

"Priests."

He said it again, louder.

"PRIESTS, Barozzi."

He shot out of his chair so quickly that it skidded backward across the floor. "I can forgive a soldier changing sides, that’s just the trade, isn’t it? Silver changes hands, a man changes coats, and nobody will go home pretending it was ever anything nobler than that. Miserable business, certainly, but at least the bastard knows what he’s doing."

He broke off and dragged both hands down his face. "A priest is supposed to know better. He stands up in front of his flock and tells them that God sees everything, then turns around and sells those very believers to Genoa. Their homes, their sons, their bloody lives, and he’ll do it before supper if the price is right."

Zaccaria waited for him to finish, as dry as the parchment lying between them.

"And here I thought you only became dramatic over wine and dice."

"I contain many humors, amico. Today they have all come to visit together."

Some of the fury left Domenego as quickly as it had arrived. His expression changed, and what replaced it looked harder to say. "Barozzi, just say the word and I’ll find them. I’ll put them on their knees and we’ll have a righteous discussion about sin, the sort of discussion a priest ought to appreciate, then I’ll break a finger for every family they betrayed, and when they run out of fingers I’ll find something else. By the time I’m done, we’ll have learned rather more about repentance than any priest ever managed to teach from the pulpit."

Vito felt forced to clap in admiration. If one bastard ever claimed his lieutenants weren’t resolute, or had the resolve for justice, they were welcome to argue their point against this mad beast of a man.

Very through, I love it."

Domenego’s grin came back.

"Is that a command, Barozzi, or an invitation?"

"With me, amico, it is usually both."

Vito took his boots off the table and bent over the chart. He gestured over the ragged coastline where it curled away from the city toward the countryside none of them had properly walked.

"Now, to why I dragged you all out of bed to discuss."