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?"
"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.