This Rough Magic

them.

Morning came. Benito found himself sent to be part of a bucket-chain, passing earth out of one of the mines. His one worry now was that he was just that much stronger, better fed and less exhausted than his Corfiote companions. He hoped the bored, brutal guards wouldn't notice.

During that long, hot session one of the slaves died. The guards took him out of the chain by the simple expedient of chopping his foot off. 'At least he was dead,' whispered the man next to him. 'Zikos was alive when they did it.' And the mines were considered a lucky option.

That afternoon, Benito quietly swapped chains. 'They've been in all day. They're bound to go out tonight to work on the causeway.'

They did. The wrong one. He had to wait until the next night.

Benito no longer had to fake looking exhausted, hauling rocks and broken masonry to make walls for the troops to advance behind. They had hide shields to work behind, but these were poor protection against even arquebus fire. The guards stayed well back behind some sandbags. It was simplicity itself to slip his manacle and lie down when cannon fire made the guards pull their heads down. Then it was merely a quick wriggle and squirm through a gap and a scraping slide into the water. All too easy.

The water wasn't. It wasn't that cold, but it was still something of a shock. Benito began to ease his way, swimming very quietly next to the edge of the mole, so that his head, if anyone saw it, might be thought part of the stone fallen from it. The siege engineers had been using broken masonry from the town and there were any number of odd-shaped bits in the water.

Then, flipping onto his back, he began swimming away from the mole down the channel toward the sea. Oh, to be one of the merpeople! That thought put another into his mind: the creature that the merpeople said had been haunting the Adriatic. Benito decided maybe it would be a good idea to swim with his knife in hand. After all, it was dark and still here in the water.

When Benito's legs touched something moving in the water, he very nearly screamed. He would have if he hadn't swallowed water in his fright. Trying not to cough, he touched it again. It was a rope. A moving rope. Moving slowly toward the Citadel shore. Benito realized it sloped gently down. Someone was hauling something across— something quite heavy.

It almost certainly meant no good.

Benito swam in toward the Citadel, angling away from the rope. The rope was actually dragging something around to the south side. The shingle strip was very narrow here, and the original rock made up part of the corner tower. Benito eased out of the water, with that feeling in the middle of his back that he was in some arquebusier's sights.

The Citadel's builders had chopped and polished at the rock here so that the lower section was smooth. It did overhang slightly, though, and this brought Benito to where the load was being hauled. It wasn't a cave so much as another small overhang, also part of the original rock. Two men were straining to slowly pull something out of the shallows. It was plainly heavy. There was no way past, and besides, Benito had a feeling it might be more important than the mere news that Venice was on her way.

He waited, knife in hand, and watched. The moon was down and there was little light to see it all by. Just enough to see that the men were taking strain pulling the heavy weight up the beach.

The wind was cold and biting on his wet skin and wet breeches. Starting to shiver, Benito knew it was now or never. Two to one . . . and they might have swords or guns.

The first man was so intent on pulling he died without even knowing Benito was there. The second turned and managed to grab Benito's hand and draw his own blade. Benito had to seize his arm with his left. In the dark beneath the wall they wrestled desperately in absolute silence. The fellow was as strong as an ox. He was good eight inches taller and seventy pounds heavier than Benito. By sheer weight he was pushing Benito over.

What was it that Erik had said? 'Use their strength. Get them off balance.' Benito tried to foot-sweep the man. It was a dismal failure. Instead, Benito was thrown to the shingle and cobbles, and lost the knife. The Hungarian came diving in for the kill. Benito rolled and hit the fellow just behind the ear with a cobblestone-sized rock.

He hit him twice more. And then put some of the rope to good use, as well as the man's trousers as a gag.

Then he felt around and found the Shetland knife. Now to see what they'd been doing.

It was barrels! There were already five in the back of the overhang and they'd plainly been surreptitiously drilling into the limestone. Benito was no engineer. Would the explosion have damaged the wall? He had no idea. But the barrels were a great deal easier to roll than to drag. He rolled them out toward where the latest one lay. All but one. That he pried at with the Hungarian's knife. He wasn't breaking his own! He liked that knife.

The barrel was full of powder. Black gunpowder, by the smell of it. Benito wished he had some way of striking a light—once he was a bit further away. He then had the bright idea of searching his captive and found a flint and steel. Now all he needed was a gunpowder trail and he'd have fireworks to celebrate his return home. Taking double handfuls of the stuff he crept along the wall strewing it. He made a line out to the barrels and put a pile of it against them. The only trouble was, of course, that he couldn't see what he'd done.

Still, he decided he'd used enough. Then it was lug the semiconscious prisoner—well, drag the prisoner— close to the postern. Benito looked longingly at it. It would be so nice and so easy just to go and knock on it now. But they'd probably shoot him first.

In the shadow of wall just short of the postern, Benito struck sparks into the powder trail he'd laid. It burned. It burned damned fast. Benito threw caution to the wind, dropped the striker and ran, jinking, farther away from the Hungarian lines, running eastward along the beach parallel to the wall. Running, there was a good chance the sentries on the wall would see him. If they saw him, they'd shoot at him first and ask questions later. On the other hand if he continued his slow progress, he'd either be blown up by his own sabotage, or spotted and shot in the aftermath of the excitement the explosion would cause. The shingle stopped, if he recalled right, and the cliff took over just beyond that.

There was a yell and a shot from above. Benito tried very hard to be small, and dove into the water. Water wasn't a wall or a sandbag but it deflected bullets. He was going to stay underwater as long as possible, and swim as far and as deep as possible, and not spend more time on the surface than he had to.

He came up in time to hear an explosion, but not the huge one he'd been expecting.