This Rough Magic

by Mercedes Lackey

  The peasant woman, with the children peering around her skirts, was less useful about the nearest town. "Catanzaro. It is great city! It has more than this many streets!" She held up a hand of work-calloused fingers. "But it is far. Perhaps thirty miles away, up a ravine. We go there with the dried fish every autumn for the festival of Saint Gamina. Or there is Reggio di Calabria, in the straits of Messina, but that is a huge place and so far I have never been there. My man once went there to sell fish, but he was cheated and never went back."

  A town that had a reputation for cheating rural fisherman sounded good to Benito. He might at least be able to find a ship and also be able to sell a jewel in such a place—neither of which, he knew, he'd be able to do in a small rural hamlet.

  "How far is this place?"

  "Oh! It must be seventy miles, Your Honor."

  A vast distance, almost unthinkable. Once, confined to Venice, it would have seemed so to Benito himself.

  After his meal Benito set off, walking. It was slower than riding, but it seemed to be the only real option. By midafternoon he was very aware of just how soft his feet had become. He cut himself a sturdy stick, which didn't seem to help a great deal.

  Leaving the fishing hamlet he'd struck a trail. It seemed unpopulated, and determined to take him away from the coastline. Eventually another track joined it, but it was equally lacking in traffic. He was beginning to wonder where he could sleep that night, when he caught sight of the hind end of a donkey, disappearing around the next bend.

  Circumstances, thought Benito wryly as he hurried to catch up with the donkey, change your perspective. He'd never ever have thought he'd be glad to see the tail end of a donkey. The donkey was part of a string of seven, laden with gurgling, oil-sheen-gleaming ticklike skin-bottles. It was being led by a fellow who looked more than a little like a donkey himself. The oilman produced a thing that was somewhere between a knife and a sword, and well-supplied with rust.

  "What do you want?" he demanded suspiciously. Benito repeated his story. It didn't seem to convince the oilman at all. "You stay behind me. I'm not having you tell bandits I'm coming."

  "Saints! Look, any self-respecting bandit would kill you in about ten seconds. All I want is some information. And I'm not moving at less than donkey speed just to oblige you."

  "Stay back or I'll make you into sliced salami!" The oil seller waved his knife about at Benito's nose.

  "Look, I can pay." Benito pulled out what he'd thought was a copper. "I'm happy to pay . . ."

  The oilman's eyes lit up. "Give it to me." He waved the knife at Benito.

  Benito looked at his hand and realized he had silver, and not copper there. "I'll give you a copper penny for your help. I need this."

  The oilman lunged. Benito used the stout stick he'd cut to hit the man's elbow. Hard. The clumsy knife went flying. Benito grabbed him. A nasty short scuffle ensued, ending with the oilman pinioned under Benito and shrieking: "Help! Bandits! Murder!"

  Benito swatted the oilman's ear, reflecting as he did so that Erik had taught him very well even in such a short timespan. "Shut up. You tried to rob me, you idiot. Now get up and stop yowling. I dropped my silver penny because of you. If you don't find it for me I'll kick your ass through your teeth. Now get up."

  "I can't. You're sitting on me."

  Benito stood up. The oilman, on his knees, looked for the silver. Fortunately it was easy to find; nervously, the oilman handed it over.

  "Pick up that cheese-cutter of yours." The oilman gaped at Benito but picked up his knife.

  "Now—I need know where I can sleep tonight. And does this track lead back to the coast? I want to get to Reggio di Calabria."

  The oilman bowed. "Your Honor, no one goes down to the coast. Well, only a few very poor fishermen. The Barbary Coast pirates raid it, and it is full of malaria. But this track joins another track which leads to Cantonia, maybe a mile away. There is road from there you can follow on to Reggio di Calabria."

  "Right. Well, I think we go on together. Otherwise you'll come to this Cantonia place claiming I've robbed you."

  The oilman did his best not to look as oily as his wares. "Your Honor, I would never do that! I'm an honest man."

  "The sight of my only piece of silver seemed to change that," said Benito grimly.

  They walked on at donkey pace. At length they came to the walled town. The oilman held out his hand. "Give me the copper you owe me for guiding you."

  "Where are the two coppers you promised me for helping you with the donkeys?" demanded Benito very loudly, for the benefit of at least a dozen local residents. "Give it to me or I will swear out a charge against you with the podesta."

  "I never promised you—"

  "Yes, you did! Cheat! Thief!"

  The oilman gaped. "But you—?"

  Benito turned to the interested locals. "This man promised me money! I have worked and now he wants to cheat me!"

  One of the women sniggered. "The podesta is in Montaforte. And if you can get money out of that old skinflint without a knife against his throat, you will have managed something no one else can do." She eyed Benito speculatively. "Though there is no knowing what a handsome man could do."

  "Especially with you, Bella," said one of the onlookers. She snorted and flounced her hips for Benito's benefit.

  Benito threw up his hands. "I'm a peaceful man. And I was coming this way anyway. Is there a taverna where I could buy a glass of wine to get the smell of donkeys out of my nostrils?"

  "I can show you the taverna," said Bella archly.

  Benito shook his head ruefully, looking at her swaying walk. Certain kinds of trouble you can get rid of. Others follow you around. He'd be leaving very, very early the next morning.

  * * *

  Predawn found him heading, very quietly, off down the trail for Reggio di Calabria. Evening found him there. As cities went it was a small one. After the back-country Benito found it busy, bustling, and comfortingly familiar.

  * * *

  "And so we came to Corfu." Maria took a sip of some of the finest wine she'd ever tasted. The white-haired Contessa Renate De Belmondo, wife of the Podesta of Corfu, smiled. She was one of those people who smiled to their eyes, and the fine creases in her skin bore testimony to the fact that she smiled often.

  On the lace cloth between them, on a silver salver, lay some delicate almond biscotti. Maria marveled at them. Marveled at where she was. Marveled at the fact that she had just finished telling a Case Vecchie lady—a Case Vecchie Longi lady, born, bred and raised—more about her life than she'd ever told anyone.

  There was something motherly about this woman. Maria's mother hadn't been "motherly." She'd been a working woman who'd done her best to look after her daughter, but she hadn't had any time to spare for cuddling and comforting. Their lives had been hard, Maria's as well as her mother's. Maria suspected that her mother had made the decision to ensure that her daughter learned early that life was hard, and would always be.

  Francesca had helped and advised Maria, but she wouldn't choose the word "motherly" to describe her either. Maria smiled to herself. Francesca ferreted out information; she manipulated, charmed, sometimes lied through her teeth, but she showed no signs of being "motherly." But the contessa . . . got you to volunteer it. If Francesca could get her, as well as Stella, to provide information . . .

  There would be very little in the entire confined world that was Corfu, great and small, that she couldn't find out. But somehow Maria knew that Renate De Belmondo was the perfect listener because she wouldn't ever tell anyone what she'd heard. Most people used conversation to talk about themselves. Renate De Belmondo volunteered little; she just listened.

  The conversation shifted to babies. And here the contessa did offer something about herself. "My children were all born here on Corfu. I tried earlier in Venice, oh, I tried and I tried, but it was only here that I finally got pregnant." She smiled mysteriously. "It's a very fertile place, Corfu."

  Chapter 50
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br />   From the shelter of the pines high up on the slope, Erik's small force watched and waited. Erik now had seventeen men. Some Venetian settlers, some locals with grudges, and Kari and his two brothers. They were about a mile and half south of the Citadel, above the oil-store that Emeric's men had taken over as their storage depot. The huge forty-eight-pound bombards took a lot of powder and it had to be stored somewhere a safe distance from the battlefront. There were some forty Serb pikemen doing guard-shifts and ten Croat light cavalry riding patrols.

  The worst of Emeric's forces, Erik suspected. Probably a punishment duty for the Croats, as most of their comrades were still looting among properties that had not yet been picked over. The cavalry patrols consisted of going to a nearby village and sifting through the ruins for anything that even looked like loot, or sleeping. The guards at the gunpowder magazine looked unseasoned, and already looked bored. They were certainly lackadaisical about the patrols around their new palisade.

  Erik and Kari had crept within twenty yards. From here Erik could see facial expressions and, if he'd been able to speak Serbian, could have eavesdropped. Erik studied the guards, their positions and their camp. Then they leopard-crawled back to the pines.

  Giuliano had a surprise for them there. A shepherd boy who had come upon the group had been hastily seized and persuaded they weren't going to kill him. In fact he could profit by telling them about the Hungarian magazine.

  "He says there is a place at the back where the stones prevented them from digging the logs in. There are some small gaps. He has crawled in and stolen some things."

  Erik sighed. "Now Kari will have to moan about how this crawling is ruining his breeches again. We'd better go and have a look-see."

  Kari snorted and examined his knees, rubbing the material. "I wouldn't say no to a decent set of buckskins. These weren't meant for this work. This is almost too easy, Erik. We go in this hole, cut a few throats, and set fire to it."

  Erik shook his head. "When that lot blows . . . well, I want to be at least a half-mile away and traveling. We might go in that way but we're going to have to get out fast. That means by the gate and onto a horse as quickly as possible."

  * * *

  King Emeric had been modeling things again. He pointed now to the model of the Citadel of Corfu; to the channel between it and the mainland. "How is the progress with the moles going, Count Dragorvich?"

  The stocky count, Emeric's chief siegemaster, rubbed his chin reflectively. "If we worked on one at a time I could have one done in three weeks. But the two-pronged approach means progress is slower. Maybe five weeks? The channel is quite deep and we're under heavy bombardment. The mine is not going to work for now, Your Majesty. Water comes in as fast as we can take it out with a bucket-chain, and the diggers are not even at sea level yet. The ground is still saturated from the winter rains. Summer's only begun."

  "I'll get the guns to focus on the south and north towers," said Emeric. "That's where their guns are firing onto the moles from. We'll leave off pounding the gate and the rest of the walls for a while."

  An officer came hastily out of the dark and into the king's pavilion. Once there, he stood rigidly before the king. Emeric acknowledged the Magyar cavalry commander with a curt nod. "Ah. Colonel. How go things with sacking of the Venetian estates? Any resistance?"

  The colonel sneered. "These Venetians are soft, Sire. There have been a few minor bits of fighting, but we've barely lost men. A couple of Croats who were where they weren't supposed to be. A checkpoint guard. But other than that, nothing much."

  "You've taken appropriate retribution for these incidents, I trust?"

  "Sire, the problem is: On whom? The peasants have hidden out in the hills. We've caught some, of course, but most of them just aren't there, and the men haven't left those they've caught in one piece. As for the Venetians . . . most of them have been killed anyway. So, Sire, the problem is there is no one to extract retribution from. There are few walled towns we haven't bothered with, but anything we can get to has been dealt with hard already."

  Emeric pursed his lips, looking thoughtful. "I think it is time to stop using the sword on peasants, Colonel. It's time for the knout, instead. We need someone to work the land here. Pass the instruction to your men. Hunt the maquis. Round them up, put them to work. There is no need to be gentle, however. And any resistance still gets the sword. Or make an example of one of them on a sharpened stake."

  "Yes, Sire."

  * * *

  In the darkness Erik sucked in his breath and squeezed his body forward through the gap. A ten-year-old shepherd might fit through it easily enough. A hundred-and-ninety-pound Icelander was a different matter altogether. He pushed forward.

  Someone grabbed him by the hair.

  "Got you, you thieving bastard," said the grabber. "Hey, boys, I've got him!"

  Erik was in an awkward situation. One arm was still trapped in the gap between the two logs. His tomahawk and knife were on the wrong side of the barrier. Clawing upwards with one hand he managed to grab his assailant by the shirt front and hauled.

  "Let go!"

  Something smashed against Erik's ear. Suddenly the hand grasping his hair went slack. The man Erik was holding by the shirtfront flopped toward him. Pulling himself forward and rolling over, Erik saw Kari jump off the palisade, land in front of him and retrieve his knife from the man's back . . . And a guard came running up.

  The guard saw Kari, his fallen companion, but not Erik. Erik snagged the newcomer's ankle as he rushed at Kari with a spear thrust that would have spitted the young Vinlander like a pigeon. The result of Erik's intervention was that he pole-vaulted on the spear to land in a crumpled heap at Kari's feet. The Vinlander leaned over and hit the guard with calculated force on the back of the head.

  Erik had by this stage struggled free. "Wait!" he whispered to the others just through the hole. Grabbing a victim each, Kari and he hastily dragged them into the deep shadows.

  No more guards came. So, after waiting perhaps a hundred heartbeats, Erik called the rest through.

  Thalia came first. "You were supposed to stay with the horses!"

  "There is work to be done," she said with a grim intensity, hands on her hips, but still holding a knife. "On Corfu, women work. I am here to do it. I've cut a pig's throat, and I don't see the difference between this filth and a pig, except that pigs are better."

  Erik saw no point in a stand-up argument. Besides, as he'd learned on the Vinland frontier, a determined woman can be a lot more deadly than a reluctant male warrior.

  "What happened?" whispered the plump Giuliano, after they'd popped him out of the hole like a cork from a bottle of petillant wine.

  "That young shepherd wasn't as undetected as he thought," Erik whispered grimly. "The guards had set a trap for him. Fortunately they were expecting a small young thief and not for Kari to pop over the top of the palisade. Anyway, move out. They still outnumber us."

  Shortly, they no longer did. It was brutal, murderous work. But, as Erik reflected, their enemies' choices were stark. Die quickly at the hands of the Corfiote guerillas, die when this magazine blew, or die slowly at Emeric's hands for failing him. The Corfiote guerillas couldn't keep prisoners, and the alternative to killing the enemy was to fail in their objective.

  Erik didn't plan to fail. After this, Emeric's forces would be wary, and successes would be much more hard-won. They had to start big, because if they'd started with raids on outposts, they'd never have gotten to a big target like this.

  But he didn't like killing sleeping guards either. It was too much like butchery.

  The trickiest phase was the last one. The magazine was not a place anyone would want to strike a lucifer in, and they had no access to wicks. Before Erik set the long powder-trail, they took sixteen small casks of powder, one per horse, and loaded them up.

  Then all but Erik left quietly. There was the barrack encampment not two hundred yards off, with sleeping Croats, and the rest of the guard detachm
ent. One galloping horse could not be avoided, but at least there didn't have to be seventeen of them. The gate was arranged with a spike holding the bar up, and a stout cord that could be tossed over the top of the gate. Erik could pull it when he was outside and drop the bar. Even if someone heard the horse gallop past and came to investigate the palisade, they would have to climb it to get in. Hopefully, by that time the powder trail would have burned to the open cask.

  Erik laid the trail of black gunpowder carefully, wishing he had a better sense of how fast the stuff burned. He was experienced enough with firearms, but this kind of work really needed a bombardier who knew exactly what he was doing.

  He laid it right to the gate. Lit it. It fizzed briefly and went out. He took a deep breath, forcing himself to be calm, then went back and laid a second, more generous trail. Lit it again . . .

  It burned, burned fast—fizzing and racing toward the dark buildings. After an instant's horrified pause, a voice within him shrieked: Go—go—go!

  The Icelander stepped out, closed the gate, his fingers shaking a little as he tugged the bar into place and pulled his horse's halter loose. Erik flung himself into the saddle and urged the horse to a gallop. He might break the horse's knees doing such a reckless thing—he might break his own neck—but this was still a lesser risk than staying around.

  He heard a shout and a shot in the darkness. He just kept his head down and applied the spurs.

  And then he didn't have to anymore. He just had to stay on the horse.

  He certainly couldn't have heard any commands to stop.

  * * *

  Manfred and Von Gherens were up on the battlements of the inner curtain wall, looking out at the muzzle-flashes and campfires on the Kérkira side of the Citadel. So, for the first time since his injury, was Falkenberg.

  "Two moles." Falkenberg shook his head disapprovingly. "This is Emeric interfering with his commanders again. He has the notion that he is a military genius."

  "Thank God for a small mercy," said Von Gherens. "We could have someone who didn't sit on his brains out there, and then we'd be between the hammer and the anvil."