Eric Flint - This Rough Magic

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."

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.