"Just make sure it isn't true, Bianca." The menace in Morando's voice was barely under the surface. "If I start thinking that you're playing me . . ."
"Don't be silly! Why would I do that?" She didn't try for offended innocence—Morando wouldn't believe that for an instant—but simple cold calculation. "This partnership is proving profitable for both of us. Besides, sooner or later—we're doing our best to make sure it happens, after all—the Hungarians are going to pour into this place. When that happens, I have every intention of being on the best possible terms with you."
She glanced at the flagstone. Morando, following her eyes, smiled. "It will make a nice hideout, won't it, until the Hungarians have sated their bloodlust?"
His eyes moved back to her, lingering for an instant on her body. "Simple lust, too, for such as you. Mind you, Bianca, I
will
expect to be entertained while we're waiting in the cellar."
She laughed huskily. "And have I ever given you grounds for complaint on that score?" Her hand reached out and began stroking his arm. "Now that you bring it up, in fact . . ."
Regretfully, he shook his head. "Can't, sorry. Not tonight. The Tomaselli slut is coming over later and she's supposed to bring a friend of hers with her." He rolled his eyes. "I need to save my energy. And other stuff."
Bianca laughed again. "What are you complaining about? Two women, naked, squirming all over you—most men would think they'd died and gone to Heaven."
Morando's face was sour. "Most men have never copulated with Sophia Tomaselli in a rut, with paint and ointments smeared all over her body and with her groaning what she thinks are words of passion. I'm coming to detest the woman." The face grew more sour still. "God only knows what her friend is like."
Discreetly, Bianca said nothing. She knew what the friend was like, as it happened, having been the one who steered her to Sophia in the first place. Like Sophia, Ursula Monteleone had all the vices and the unpleasant personality of a
Case Vecchie
woman moldering in a provincial backwater; unlike Sophia, who was at least physically rather attractive, Ursula was almost obese and had bad breath.
"Some other time, then," she murmured seductively. That was a waste of time, with Morando. But Bianca liked to stay in practice.
At midnight, Bianca communicated with Countess Bartholdy. Unbeknownst to her, not five minutes later, Fianelli used almost exactly the same magical methods to communicate with Emeric.
Both mistress and master were pleased at the reports.
Others were not.
Eneko Lopez glared out the window of the lodgings he shared with his fellow priests. There was nothing to see, in the middle of the night, except the occasional flashes of cannon fire.
Hearing footsteps enter the room, he glanced over his shoulder. It was Diego and Pierre, not to his surprise. Of the four of them, Francis was the least sensitive to evil auras.
"Yes, Diego and Pierre, I felt it also. It woke me up. Twice—and with a different flavor to each. They're using the same rituals but following slightly different procedures. We've got
two
Satanists, or packs of them, working in this place."
"Yes. But why two, I wonder? One of them will be Emeric's agent, for a certainty. Who is the other working for? It wouldn't be Chernobog. For his own reasons, the demon avoids satanic rituals as carefully as we do."
Lopez shrugged. "Hard to say. The Dark One penetrates everywhere, in this wicked world." He slapped the windowsill with exasperation. "This cursed island!"
"It does not really smell like an evil place to me, Eneko. And I am—you may recall—a rather accomplished witch-smeller."
Eneko sighed. "Yes, I know. But whether it's evil or not, there's something on Corfu that impedes all of our own magic." He clenched his fist, slowly, as a man might crush a lemon. "Were that not true, we could deal with these Satanists easily. I could sense that they are skilled enough—one, especially—but not powerful."
Diego cleared his throat. "Two things, then. The first is that we should let Francesca know what we know."
Eneko's lips quirked a bit. He could guess what the second thing was. "I agree to the first, not that I think she'll have any more success than we're having. I will not agree to the second. Not yet, at any rate."
He could hear Pierre's sigh. "So stubborn! Eneko, this island—whatever lurks on it, rather—is
not
evil. Not friendly to us either, no. But not evil. So why
not
try to form an alliance with . . ."
"With what?" Eneko demanded. "A formless, faceless something? About which we know nothing, really, except that it seems able to absorb all our magic like a sponge absorbs spilled water?"
Pierre cleared his throat again. For the first time since he and Diego had entered the chamber they all used as a common room, Eneko turned to face both of them squarely. The Basque priest's eyes were perhaps a little wider.
"Ah. You're right, actually. We
do
know something about it. It impedes earth magic, in particular."
"In particular? Perhaps—exclusively." Pierre stepped forward to join Eneko at the window. Looking out into the darkness, he frowned thoughtfully. "I admit, it's hard to prove, one way or the other. None of us can fly and—"
Cannon fire illuminated the night. "—going out on a boat is probably not a practical idea, these days."
The next evening, the prevailing northwest wind—the
maestro
, it was called—was blowing hard enough to make the poles of Emeric's great pavilion tent creak, despite their heavy burden. The assembled officers carefully did not look at the two corpses swinging from them. One of those corpses was that of a purported rebel. But the other was that of a former officer in Emeric's army, the man who'd been in charge of the magazine that had been sabotaged—and there were still vacancies on the other four poles.
"His name is Hakkonsen. Erik Hakkonsen," said Emeric coolly. His men had been running around like chickens with their heads cut off since the destruction of the magazine, trying to find out who had blown it up. It gave him great satisfaction to show them that he could do what they could not.
"He's an Icelander, a Knight of the Holy Trinity. He's Prince Manfred of Brittany's personal bodyguard, so you can assume he's an excellent swordsman. He stands about six foot two, he is lean and athletic, broad-shouldered. He had fine, blond, straight hair, but it is now probably dyed black. He's wearing a short, dark Mungo cotte, a gray homespun shirt, and tawny woolen breeches. One of my agents actually sold him the clothes. He is possibly in the company of a blond woman. I want either of them. The woman will do for bait. Him, I want his head."
A guard came running in. "Sire! Sire! The camp at Patara is on fire. I can see it burning."
Emeric and his officers rushed out. In the darkness, the arc of leaping wind-driven flames stood out clearly. Some of the flames were easily thirty feet high. In their ruddy light, even from here Emeric could see the tents and the tiny stick figures of soldiers, fighting the fire.
"Get down there!" shouted the king. "That's the new shipment. That is the horses' hay!"
Cavalry commanders, particularly, left at a sprint.
The remount guards had their attention on the blaze across the inlet. Stalking them was ludicrously easy, thought Erik, even in the bright moonlight. Would have been, at least, except for the horses. Horses are a lot more wary than men. Still, if the herd guards had noticed, then they put those whickers and ear flattening down to the fire-smoke.
Erik's five arquebusiers, their fire all directed on the guard tower, cut loose a moment too early.
The rest had to rush the last few yards, but surprise was still on their side. Erik didn't waste time on finesse. He ran one of the sentries through as the man was attempting to bring his pike to bear. A second blow felled another man. He half-turned to see how the rest were getting on.
In horror, he saw it was not going so well. One of the men was down. Thalia, thrusting wildly at another sentry, was nearly skewered. The guard had knocked her legs out from under her, even if he'd missed his pike stroke. Erik knew he'd never get there in time.
Panting, Giuliano did—but there were three sentries, all with pikes, facing a single pudgy swordsman.
And Erik was treated to a virtuoso display of bladesmanship.
Erik had been worried about Giuliano. Kari told him that he'd hesitated to cut throats in the magazine-guard barracks raid. Now, however, Giuliano had suddenly become transformed from a plump youth into a whiplash-fast razor. The three, prepared, ready and with a far greater reach, proved no match at all.
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?"