Guiliano administered his last coup de grace, and gently offered Thalia a hand up, as if he was at some court function.
Meanwhile, the guard tower had fallen. Erik's men were hastily opening the sheep pens that Emeric's forces had been using for their spare horses.
"Come on!" yelled Kari, already mounted, cracking a stockman's whip he'd found somewhere. "Let's move out. Let the Hungarians chase their own horses through the maquis instead of chasing us."
* * *
It had been one thing to talk, and to hate. But Giuliano had stuck to farming olives, wine and no livestock at all because he hated the thought of killing so much as a mouse. The magazine raid had been a moment of truth for him. When the fellow opened his eyes, so terrified . . .
It was perhaps fortunate that Kari had been there. Giuliano found himself replaying the blood and the horror, on top of the blood and the horror of finding his gentle doe-eyed Eleni raped and murdered. He hadn't slept much since then, without a lot of wine. Before this evening he'd been seriously considering taking a pistol and ending it all. In fact it had only been their unthinking assumption that he would go along on this expedition that had had him here at all.
He didn't know how to tell them he didn't want any more of this . . . this killing.
And then she'd fallen. He'd been close enough to hear her scream. He'd heard what she'd been through from Hakkonsen. Obviously, it was still raw in her, too. Her voice was remarkably like Eleni's.
Something inside him had snapped. He hadn't even thought about what he was doing. Years of papa's training reasserted themselves.
When he helped her to her feet she staggered. He caught her and she leaned on him briefly. He could feel her trembling and her heartbeat against him, racing, then she pushed away. "I'm sorry, master," she said, peasant-to-landowner relationships reasserting themselves. "I was just so scared."
"So was I," he said quietly.
"We'd better ride."
Most of the others had already mounted. Other guards would be coming; there was indeed no time to be feeling sorry for himself. She must have seen the helpless look on his face. "Follow me. I used to live near here."
* * *
Giuliano, riding just behind her, wondered how a peasant girl learned to master a horse like that. There were few cavalrymen in the same league.
Up in the dark maquis near a stubby, wind-twisted Aleppo pine, she stopped and dismounted.
"What is it?"
"I just wanted to collect something. This is where Georgio and I were hiding." Her voice cracked slightly.
Giuliano decided he'd better dismount too. There was a narrow crack at the foot of the pine, that she'd slipped into. Giuliano tied his horse and, with some difficulty, squeezed in after her.
She lit a rush dip, and Giuliano could see that her eyes were brimming with tears. But she walked resolutely past the bed made up so neatly on the cave floor, past the ashes of the tiny fire. Past the two cook pots, and the oil crock. She took down a bundle of spidery net that hung from a crossbar that someone had rigged. Giuliano saw she was holding her lip between her teeth and determinedly not looking left or right. Her chin quivered slightly. She came back to the crack that was the door, turned briefly, looked at the bed, and let out a single, strangled sob. Then she put the rush dip out, and without waiting or even seeming to see Giuliano, scrambled out.
He was left alone in the darkness. He swallowed and pushed into the crack and out into the night.
She was struggling to mount with the bundle. "Can I hold that for you?" he asked, quietly.
The peasant girl seemed to see him again for the first time. "Please, master. Hold it here in the middle."
It was a fibrous bundle and surprisingly heavy. "What is it?" he asked, as he handed it up to her.
"My bird-net," she replied as he mounted.
He'd seen the peasant women casting their nets into the air to catch wild birds before. A fowling-piece of any sort was simply beyond the means of the peasantry, but with nimble fingers and a few weights they could catch feathered bounty. "What for? We have money for food."
She shrugged. "I can't fight men. I could cut their throats like animals when they were asleep. But I nearly died tonight, because I don't know how to fight. But I think a man in a net will not fight well. Then I can deal with him."
He took a deep breath. "I'll teach you. I should have taught Eleni."
"Who?"
"My wife. My beautiful, gentle wife. They killed her." It seemed very necessary to tell all of it. "They raped her first. They killed my son. My baby boy. I was away at my uncle Ambrosino's estate. Eleni doesn't," he swallowed, "didn't like him. So she and little Flavio stayed home. One of the family retainers brought me word. We rode as quickly as we could but . . ."
"Georgio and I never had a child." She paused. "You Libri d'Oro joke about the peasants always trying to save money with the priest being able to do the wedding and the christening at the same time."
Giuliano felt himself redden. He'd made the comment himself. Pregnant brides were almost the norm among the peasantry on his Ropa valley estate. "Yes. But I'm not one of the Libri d'Oro. My uncle is in the Golden Book, though."
They rode in silence, heading for the rendezvous. "But you are a landowner?"
"Yes. But my father did not approve of the Golden Book."
"And you lived on the estate and not in town. Very strange." She sounded slightly more at ease. "But you Libri d'Oro don't understand. A bride must be pregnant to prove that she can be fertile. Georgio loved me enough to marry me even though I . . . didn't fall pregnant. I had very little dowry, because my father died at sea. He married me anyway. I wanted a child. I wanted one so badly for my man. But now I am glad I didn't ever have one. This is no world for a child."
There seemed to be no reply to that. Peasant marriages, indeed even most noble marriages, had at least an element of commerce about them. It had been one of the things that had made him acceptable to Eleni's family. Thalia's must have been a rare marriage.
He decided, firmly, that by the next time this young woman went out seeking repayment for what their enemy had done, she'd be very capable of getting it. Hakkonsen had said he wanted two quick, immediate successes to draw recruits—and then they'd go to ground for a few weeks, and train properly. The Hungarians would be expecting them after this. The cavalry would recapture many of the horses—those that didn't come home by themselves, anyway—but they would be hunting horses for a while. Besides, more horse-tracks would muddle tracking operations. There would be time to train her. Maybe time enough, and recruits enough, that he would be valuable again, as a trainer, even if he couldn't slit throats.
Chapter 57
Emeric tinkled a little crystal bell. An officer appeared hastily. "I want to talk to the blond-haired one. Aldanto. Have him sent to me."
The officer of the royal guard bowed and left at a brisk run.
He was back very quickly. Alone. "Sire, he has gone out. The guards saw him walk out just after dawn. He went northwards."
"Hmm. Alone? Or with one of these Byzantine rats he is supposed to be with?"
The young officer hesitated. "Sire, he had no man with him. No woman, either. But the guards tell me he was accompanied by a yellow dog. The guard said it looked more like an overgrown jackal than a dog. An ugly yellow-toothed mangy thing. His horse tried to kill it, and Aldanto stopped him."
A yellow dog . . . The puppet-man would not have a pet. His master wouldn't allow it.
"Have the guards told about this creature. If it is seen again, have them shoot it."
After the officer left, Emeric's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He was slowly—reluctantly—coming to the conclusion that before too long he would need to go back to Hungary and talk to his great-great-aunt, the Countess Bartoldy. His plans for Corfu were not working out as well as they should have, due to the incompetence of too many of his officers. And, what was worse, due to the delay it was becoming clear that magic would be playing
more of a role in the campaign than he'd foreseen. Or wanted, even though he was a skilled sorcerer in his own right.
The problem with sorcery was that it was, ultimately, something that had no greater respect for monarchs than anyone else. That made it a risky business for someone with the name of "Emeric, King of Hungary." He hated to be beholden to his great-great-aunt any more than he needed to be, but it was just a fact that this sort of thing was Elizabeth Bartholdy's field of expertise, far more than his.
* * *
Traveling with the shaman, Aldanto was obliged to walk. No horse would tolerate the shaman within sight, and even the scent of him seemed to make them uneasy.
Being forced to walk was hard on Aldanto. It meant that muscles that had been torn by torture and forced to heal, laced with scarring, were forced into more work than they really should have had to do. He had not walked much in years before Jagiellon captured him, either. In Venice, he had traveled almost exclusively by the canals, and he had relied on someone else's muscles to propel him. His legs screamed with agony that he was not permitted to show.
Nobody was listening to his internal suffering. The puppeteer did not really understand life's prerequisites. Nor did he care. He worked his tools ruthlessly and sometimes they broke. So, driven by his master, Caesare walked on. The yellow dog walked on beside him. The shaman knew enough not to wish to go back to the place the horseflies had driven him from, and it would be Caesare who faced whatever guarded it this time.
They walked beneath the tall lianolia olives starred with tiny white flowers, past bee-busy masses of yellow broom by the dusty roadsides. Caesare trod on delicate orchid blossoms, thrust through myrtle bushes.
"The place stinks," said the shaman-dog, sneezing.
"We should be there by now, surely?"
"I would have thought so. It didn't take me that long to get back to the camp, master." The shaman looked at his paws. "We have been heading northwest for much time."
Caesare turned and looked up at the sun. He did not shield his eyes the way a normal man would. The sun was plainly heading toward rest, in the heavy hazy golden afternoon. "If this place is to the northwest, then why is the sun now on my back?"
The shaman blinked. "But . . . we have walked as straight as it is possible! I will look through the eyes of my hawks." He bent his will, using true names, names of power.
His eyes did indeed see through theirs. The ground hurtled toward him at terrific speed. The yellow dog lost its footing and sprawled—and the hawk struck the hare cleanly.
Aldanto, having stopped for the first time in many hours, fell over like a pole-axed steer.
The yellow dog staggered to its feet, calling desperately for the master to take him away. Away from the magic.
* * *
Barely five hundred yards away, Erik and Svanhild were lost in the magic. Their fingers entwined, they walked in the dell where anemones bloomed. The cicada song rose to its summer crescendo, and then as they walked closer to the holm-oaks, was stilled. An enormous orange-yellow butterfly suddenly skittered into hasty flight from the flowers in front of them.
Instinctively, Erik tensed. A tortoise stuck its head around the flower clump, regarding these invaders to its realm with a suspicious, unblinking yellow eye. Then, having correctly labeled them as moonstruck, it put its beaky face down and mumbled up a wild strawberry.
Erik found laughter and happiness, pure, easy and as sweet as the warm breeze, bubbling up within him. He picked up Svanhild in his arms and spun her round, her long golden hair flying. Round and around laughing like children together, until they fell together dizzy and still laughing, into the flowers, frightening the tortoise off his late afternoon snack. The tortoise lumbered away.
Erik held her gently now. Touched her cheek. "I love you, Svan. Will you marry me?"
For an answer, she pulled him closer.
* * *
The shaman shook himself. Spat. He behaved, for all Count Mindaug could see, just like a dog who had too closely encountered a skunk and was now trying at all costs to rid himself of even the memory, by any means.
"It too strong, master. Too strong and too . . . spread out. It has killed the slave." The shaman trickled his fingers across his drum, bringing a whisper of sound from it. It was almost as if the tattooed drum-skin sighed.
Jagiellon shook his head. "The slave just lost consciousness. I have been forgetful about feeding it."
"But master, that place." The shaman shuddered. "It eats me. I hate it. It has a dangerous magic there."
Jagiellon paused. And Mindaug hardly dared breathe. If the Grand Duke started really thinking about the shaman's experience, instead of being consumed by his lust for possessing Corfu's power . . .
But the dangerous moment passed. The Grand Duke shrugged heavily and said: "Yes, it is stronger than I had anticipated. Still, it seems purely defensive. And a crude sort of magic, too. Big sweeps of clumsy enchantment. Not blade-strokes of true power. We will find its cores, find them and break them to our use."
He turned to the count. "Well, Mindaug. The magic of the West is your study. What do you know of the magic of this place?"
Mindaug bowed. "Relatively little, Grand Duke. There is a mention in Angenous Pothericus of 'the rough magic of sea-girt Corcyra.' He says the place is a poor place for spell-craft. But I will search further."
"Do that."
* * *
Erik had drilled them all since early morning. He'd worked on simple, basic things: fitness, strength, how to fall. Thalia rubbed her arm reflexively. She'd always thought falling was something you could do without any lessons. But Erik believed "fall" was just the first part of "get up, fast, and unhurt." The Icelander was . . . odd.
Like all peasant women, Thalia had worked since she could walk. She'd been privately disappointed when Erik had said he was "going to get them fit first" before he taught them to fight. Getting fit was what the young master from the Ropa valley estate needed. The recruits called him Loukoúmia—slightly more warily, though, now that some of them had seen him use a sword.
He needed this fitness; she only needed to know which end of a sword cut, how to hold it, how to use it.
Well, Giuliano had struggled in this "fitness" regime; he was red-faced and panting. But so, to her surprise, was she. Peasants work, but they don't do so at the run. They don't waste strength. They conserve it so that they can work all day. Thalia found out that according to the Icelander's standards, she and Giuliano were equally unfit.
When he finally let them rest, Thalia sought out a patch of shade, and flopped down in it, too tired to think.
To her surprise the plump young man came over to where she lay in the shade of the myrtle bushes. He had two daggers in his hand. "I promised to teach you blade-craft," he said.
He was still red-faced and sweating. His fine linen shirt was so wet it stuck to him. And here he was wanting to teach her how to use a knife. A knife, not a sword. A knife was a tool you cut up food with. She didn't need to be taught how to use that! She shook her head. "You need to rest and I need to rest. You can show me later."
He took her arm and pulled her up. "Now. While you are tired. What you learn to do now you will do best, with least wasted effort. Trust me. My father used to do it this way, and he was the best swordmaster in Venice."
She felt the knife edge. It was razor keen. "But . . . these are sharp. Dangerous."
"Right. And those who are going to try to kill you are not going to use blunt knives. Now. Try to stab me. Not like that! Hold it like this. Now. Try again."
He was a very good and patient teacher. And, she had to acknowledge, a knife did not just have to be a tool you cut up food with. This Loukoúmia was plump, but he wasn't just sweet.
* * *
Erik walked across to the stream where he'd arranged to meet Svanhild. It ran through a glade quite unlike the rocky harshness where he was training the recruits of his guerrilla unit. This small oasis of fertility was green and soft and co
ol under the relentless sun and limitless blue skies of the Ionian islands. Svan was, as usual when she was waiting for him, plaiting things. Her long fingers moved steadily, gracefully, almost magically.
Often as not, when they were in camp, or almost anywhere else, she plaited practical things—bowstrings, the kind of twine that Thalia would knot into bird-nets, even rope. Here, she always plaited flowers.
At the moment she was making a chaplet of daisies. Not the mere simple twist that had satisfied lovers for time immemorial, but a complex thing. When she saw him she dropped it and ran to him. His arms were full of the softness and roundness of her. He led her back to where she'd been sitting, and picked up the daisy confection. "Come, darling Svan. Finish it for me."
"I'd rather hold your hand."
He smiled. For some reason, whenever he was here, all the urgency to get things done ran out of him. Well, for an hour or two—why not? "That's a persuasive argument. But I don't want to see something less than perfect on your golden hair."
She dimpled at him, finished it off with a few deft twists and presented it to him. "There."
He set it gently on her head and leaned in close to kiss her cheek. She pulled him closer, and changed what had been planned as a chaste kiss into something far more volcanic.
"I . . . ah, think we'd better stop. One of the recruits might come up this way."
She giggled. "I'm sure they're all too tired to move. Isn't that what you intended?"
Erik blushed. "Tactics," he mumbled.
From the shadows of a Judas tree, a satyr watched approvingly. This was what this place was intended for, after all.
PART VIII
July, 1539 a.d.
Chapter 58
Benito entered the city gates of Ferrara unobtrusively. Fourteen days of riding had improved his skill at staying in the saddle, if not his liking for horses.
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