Faithful Heart (The Von Wolfenberg Dynasty Book 3)

by Anna Markland

  Jakov grinned. “Which wasn’t your job.”

  She laughed. “No. There are caves you can only reach by sea. Rospo rowed me and my father to see one of them in a rowboat. When you dip your hand in the water, your skin turns bright blue.”

  “I’ve heard of the phenomenon.” He held up his hand, evidently trying to conjure an image of it turning blue. “It must be alarming.”

  “Disconcerting, yes, but when you take your hand out of the water, it’s the normal color.”

  He put his noticeably darker hand next to Zara’s on the wooden railing. “Does it have the same effect on all skin colors?”

  She shrugged. “I suppose. Rospo’s has a green tinge you’ve probably noticed, but he wouldn’t dip his hand. Afraid, I think.”

  “I doubt he fears anything. Superstitious, mayhap?”

  “Well, the caves are eerie. I wouldn’t like to be in one alone.” She shivered. “Especially with the frequent earthquakes these islands experience. As soon as my father described the destruction they can cause I wanted to leave and never come back. If you were in a cave when a tremor happened the whole cliff might fall in on you. Venezia isn’t perfect but at least the earth doesn’t move.”

  He winked. “But one day your fair city might drown beneath the waters of her canals.”

  It was a common taunt levelled at Venetians by rival states jealous of La Serenissima’s power and wealth. Zara ignored it with the haughty indifference instilled in those who were proud to call the Serene Republic their home.

  NO REAL PLAN

  For Kon, closing his eyes and escaping into a dream world when they weren’t rowing was preferable to watching the slaves in the hull slowly rot in the unforgiving sun.

  Zara filled his dreams now. He sifted his fingers through her hair, pecked a kiss on her nose, admired the tilt of her proud chin, brushed his thumbs over rigid nipples and cupped her tempting bottom. He gazed into emerald eyes and sucked on her toes. He slowly peeled off her clothes then stood back to drink in her nakedness. Her smile bade him welcome aboard. He nestled his rute at her opening and…

  “Get ready to row. We’re coming into land,” Menas muttered under his breath, jolting Kon from his reverie.

  The sweat on his body turned to ice. Was it possible they’d already reached Egypt? “Alexandria?”

  Menas shook his head. “One of the islands. Maybe Zante. Vessels pull in there to buy pots of tar and take on supplies.”

  Kon scanned the crowded hull in disbelief. “Where are they going to put pots of tar?”

  “Nizar will make room one way or the other. Tar is more valuable than slaves. Men will be expected to load the stuff, and I doubt the Fatimids will do manual labor.”

  It took a moment for the deeper meaning of Menas’s words to penetrate the throbbing ache in Kon’s head. “We’ll be taken off the ship.”

  “And maybe unchained from each other.”

  “But what good is escaping on an island in the middle of the sea?”

  Menas winked. “Who mentioned escape? It will simply be a chance to get away from your stink, my friend.”

  Kon chuckled at the jest. “Right. Never thought I’d look forward to hauling tar.”

  “Careful you don’t get any on your skin or they’ll not tell us apart!”

  Once again Menas had lifted Kon’s spirits with his sense of humor, but more importantly he’d sparked a flicker of hope. “We must keep our eyes open.”

  “Take care. Nizar will watch us like a hawk watches the field-mouse who thinks he is scurrying around undetected.”

  It was true the chances of escape were slim, but Kon’s heart beat faster when the sail came down.

  The ship changed direction.

  They took up the oar and pulled until the Feloz’s flat bottom touched sand.

  “Zante,” Menas confirmed as the anchor played out.

  Kon looked up at the forbidding cliffs towering over the ship. “Who knew tar came from places like this?”

  “Given the size of the Polani fleet, I’ll warrant Zara is aware of it,” Menas whispered.

  The mention of her name renewed Kon’s hopes. Perhaps an opportunity to be free would come here on Zante.

  “Keep the faith, Konrad,” Menas reminded him as Nizar lumbered towards them.

  ~~~

  Zara gaped in disbelief at the empty horizon. “Where are they?” she wailed in exasperation.

  “My guess is they’ve pulled into Zante,” Lupomari replied softly.

  She inhaled deeply, grateful for her faithful captain’s calming presence. “Of course. I should have foreseen that. It’s a regular port of call for many of our ships, why not the Caliph’s?”

  Lupomari agreed. “We’ll come about.”

  A worry nagged. “Be careful they don’t see us approach. They’ve probably been nervous about a ship following them anyway.”

  He took out his pilot-book. “If they’ve stopped for tar, they’ll be in the bay to the south-west, near Keriou. I’ll set a course for the inside passage and bring us in near Laganas. We can anchor out of sight behind a large rock in the bay.”

  The crew responded efficiently to the new orders to turn the Pravda. She noticed Jakov’s men seemed comfortable with their tasks.

  “Your Croats are proving to be good sailors,” she told him. “They’ve taken well to a life on the sea.”

  He smiled proudly. “At least they have a life now, and are grateful for it. They will do everything they can to aid in this venture.”

  She fixed her gaze on the wooded slopes as they passed the distant shore on the larbord side. “I can’t see the Feloz,” she told Jakov, “therefore I assume they can’t see us.”

  “What’s the plan?” he asked.

  She chewed on her bottom lip. “We pray God will show us the way to free Kon.”

  “In other words there is no plan.”

  “No,” she admitted reluctantly. “But we must remain hopeful.”

  TERREMOTO

  Relief and an unexpected sense of loss warred within Kon when Nizar removed the chain linking the iron collar around his neck to Menas. His hopes rose when their manacles were loosed from the oar and the last link joining them was unfastened. His spirits faltered when the slave-master ordered leg irons be clamped on their ankles.

  Kon had longed to stand upright and walk again, yet when he was prodded out of the rowing bench at the point of a scimitar he couldn’t make his legs work. He tottered like a child taking his first shaky steps. He made slow progress along with the twenty oarsmen who shuffled down the gangplank. Directly in front of him, Menas swayed alarmingly. Kon put a hand to his elbow, feeling the caress of Nizar’s whip on his shoulder as a reward.

  “My thanks,” his friend muttered without turning around.

  Once on the beach Kon had an urge to fall to his knees in grateful thanks at being on terra firma again. He looked back at the sea, filled with a longing to cleanse his body, but Nizar kept them moving. They crossed the beach and followed a well-traveled sandy path shaded by pine trees that led eventually through an olive grove.

  Pungent fumes assailed Kon’s nostrils well before they emerged from the grove and arrived at a large wooden lean-to crammed with pots of different shapes and sizes, all stacked together haphazardly. Blackened rims confirmed their contents.

  The handful of swarthy men who came out to greet Nizar and his henchmen spoke in Greek, but it was evident the Fatimids didn’t understand. Loud haggling over price ensued.

  In a previous life, he would have enjoyed the relatively short walk from the beach, but in his weakened state he was already close to exhaustion and had a raging thirst. The prospect of carrying one of the pots back to the ship filled him with apprehension.

  Nizar’s smug smile indicated when a satisfactory bargain had been struck. Two skeletal men appeared from the shadows within the shed. They wore filthy loincloths and were smeared with so much tar it was impossible to ascertain the true color of their skin and hair. Kon assu
med they too were slaves from the way they were shoved around by the Greeks.

  He might be destined for a life of forced military service but the prospect seemed preferable to the hell these wretches must endure every day of their lives.

  The rowers were prodded back into a line. The Greek slaves brought out a pot the size of a toddling child and loaded it onto the back of the first rower, securing it in place by means of a strap around his forehead that was attached to the pot’s handles. The man’s legs nearly buckled, but a Fatimid pushed him on his way back to the ship. He staggered down the path and out of sight, the Arab on his heels.

  When Kon’s turn came, the slaves carried out a smaller pot, but Nizar shook his head, pointing to the largest vessel. They retrieved the pot he indicated and Kon had to go down on one knee, gritting his teeth as they struggled to lift it onto his back. When the strap was placed around his forehead he leaned forward, fearing his neck might break. He swallowed his revulsion when tar spilled onto his skin, determined not to give Nizar the satisfaction of seeing fear or weakness. His prayer for the strength to stand was answered when he managed to get to his feet, though pain arrowed through every muscle. He braced his legs, gripped the strap and set off towards the ship, escorted by one of the Fatimids. If he tripped on the leg shackles and fell he had no doubt he was a dead man.

  He eventually staggered up the gangplank and was relieved of the heavy pot by two of the other rowers. His aching back suddenly felt chilled without the warmth of the pottery pressed against it. Panting hard, he turned to see Menas shuffling up the gangplank with a burden not much smaller than his own.

  “Seems we’re the favored ones,” the Nubian muttered as Kon helped remove the load from his tar-spattered back.

  The new cargo was being stowed under the stern-castle, which meant less space for the slaves, but no murmur of discontent rose from the ones remaining.

  Any hope all the tar had been delivered to the ship was dashed when Nizar appeared and gave the order the rowers be herded back to the shed.

  ~~~

  Zara paced back and forth on the forecastle of the Pravda.

  “You’re making us dizzy,” Jakov complained, though she sensed in his own way he was trying to reassure her.

  “We should be doing something,” she replied, “not simply sitting here hidden behind a rock.”

  “One option is to sail to the southern tip of Zante and try to see what’s going on,” Lupomari suggested. “If we knew the size of the Feloz’s crew we might contemplate boarding her.”

  Zara shook her head. “We’d loose a lot of good men, and the Fatimids might kill the slaves rather than surrender them.”

  She’d always been proud of her ability to make difficult decisions, but now her head was stuffed with the wool of a thousand sheep. She sensed Kon’s presence nearby, yet was helpless to do anything to help free him. Dread trickled in her veins.

  She looked heavenward. “Dio, come to our aid,” she whispered.

  She gradually became aware that seabirds soaring on the breeze had ceased their constant, raucous calls. Only the creak of the Pravda’s rocking timbers broke the eerie silence. Lupomari and Jakov exchanged frowning glances. Doom hung in the suddenly still air.

  Gooseflesh marched across her nape when Rospo bellowed from the stern-castle. “Weigh anchor.”

  Lupomari echoed the order without hesitation and Zara had no objection. They’d both learned over the years to trust Rospo’s instincts.

  The oarsmen scrambled to their thwarts.

  “Row,” Rospo yelled. “Row hard.”

  As the Pravda slowly pulled away from the rock into deeper water, a deafening roar stopped Zara’s heart.

  She covered her ears and looked back to Zante in the distance. Her mouth fell open. It was as if the cliffs had risen up to shake off the forests covering them.

  “Terremoto,” she breathed, recalling her father’s description of the destruction earthquakes had wrought in the Greek islands in the past. Kon was caught up in the terror somewhere amid the uprooted trees, the crumbling rocks, but her immediate concern had to be for the Pravda. Rospo’s intuition had given them a chance to outrun a tidal wave if one came.

  She cupped her hands to her mouth. “Hoist the sail,” she shouted. “Head for the open sea.”

  ~~~

  When the shaking began, the Fatimids ran out of the olive grove and back towards the ship, screeching in Arabic.

  Kon’s heart stopped. Was the world coming to an end?

  “Earthquake,” Menas shouted above the roar. “Follow me.”

  Kon reeled like a drunkard, barely avoiding a large crack in the earth that opened up beneath his shackled feet. The Nubian stretched his arms around the trunk of an olive tree. “Join hands,” he urged. “We can’t hold on separately because of the chains, but together…”

  Kon pressed his body to the tree and grasped his comrade’s hands. The bark bit into his face, the links of the chain dug into his chest. They clung together for endless minutes, tightening their grip when the roots snapped loose from the trembling ground and the tree tilted alarmingly. Dust rose up from the tormented earth, turning daylight into a choking fog.

  Suddenly there was an eerie silence.

  After minutes that seemed like an eternity, coughing began in the distance…then cries of pain…muffled shouts of distress.

  Discovering he was still hanging from the nearly uprooted tree, Kon blinked the grit out of his eyes, and peered around the trunk. His friend was covered in a layer of dust. “Your skin has turned white,” he jested.

  “Now that would be a miracle,” Menas replied with a tight smile, “but the worst may not be over.”

  THE SEA'S FURY

  “We should see to the slaves on the ship,” Kon said, looking around cautiously as he braced his legs and let go of his comrade’s hands. “If there’s a chance to free them…”

  Menas hesitated. “A tidal surge may yet come,” he warned.

  Kon had no notion of what his friend meant. The tide had come in quickly to swamp the army’s tents during the occupation of Termoli years ago, but there’d been little damage. “Nevertheless, we’re alive, thanks to your quick thinking.”

  Without waiting for a reply he hurried along the path, cursing the shackles as he climbed over uprooted trees and strode over deep fissures.

  He heard Menas behind him as he came to the beach, astonished at the sight he beheld. Fatimids lay here and there crushed beneath boulders that had fallen from the cliffs. He stared at the bloodied bodies, reliving the heart-stopping terror of the rocks sliding from the surrounding peaks in the Pale Mountains. A lifetime ago.

  Menas’s hand on his shoulder jolted him from his shock. “Look at the ship.”

  The flat-bottomed Feloz lay on her side, mired in sand, her mast gone, her hull riddled with gaping holes.

  He looked back at what had been a sheer cliff when they’d pulled in a scant hour before. “The whole thing came down,” he rasped in disbelief. “Just shattered.”

  Menas pulled his arm. “More importantly, the tide has gone out too quickly. It’s an ill omen.”

  Kon looked out to sea. As far as the eye could see there was nothing but sand. Then, on the distant horizon he saw a speck. “There’s a ship out there.”

  A memory of a dream surfaced. Zara the figurehead. “It’s the Ragusa.”

  “It doesn’t matter, we must get away from the beach,” Menas insisted, clearly agitated.

  “There may be survivors,” Kon replied, looking for a way to climb aboard.

  Menas heaved an exasperated sigh then knelt beside the ruined ship, fingers meshed. Kon accepted the offer and clung to the wood as his friend strained to lift him. He crawled up like a crab, falling over the side onto the decking.

  Most of the tar pots lay smashed to pieces, their contents oozing slowly to cover the entire hull. It had taken the last of his strength and willpower to carry the pot aboard, but satisfaction rippled through him.


  But his pleasure fled when he saw the bodies of the slaves. Every one had perished beneath the hail of rocks. Fury filled him when a pitiful moan drew his gaze to Nizar. The monster lay pinned under the fallen mast, arms flailing in the black goo, the stolen scimitar waving uselessly in one hand, the whip in the other.

  He tasted the acrid desire for vengeance. Not only for himself but for Menas, and for the wretches Nizar had slowly tortured to death. He waded carefully into the tar and yanked the scimitar from the Arab’s grip. Holding it tightly in both hands, he raised the curved blade above his head.

  “Rahma,” Nizar begged.

  The desperation in the man’s eyes clearly showed his plea was for mercy, but his perverse cruelty had purged every last drop of it from Kon’s heart.

  He clenched his jaw and made ready to lop off the slave-master’s head.

  A shout from Menas drew his attention. His comrade had managed to make it up the side and now clung to the top of the wale. “Justice is not yours to dispense, Konrad. God has been merciful to us, but we must get to higher ground.”

  Kon flexed his biceps and gritted his teeth, but the certainty Menas was right calmed the raging beast within. Nizar already wore the mask of death. Justice had been served.

  He straightened his shoulders, threw down the weapon and looked out to sea, hoping to catch another glimpse of the ship he believed Zara had brought to his rescue. He narrowed his eyes, not quite believing the enormous wall of water rushing towards the beach.

  ~~~

  The swell lifted the Pravda. For long moments no one on board breathed as the ship floated in mid air. Then she settled and the swell moved on. Towards Zante.

  “You saved us, Rospo,” she shouted. “Now follow the wave.”