This Rough Magic

Benito looked at the dead woman. Death had eased the lines of hatred, fear and misery from her face. 'Stay there, Alberto. She was crazy and now she's dead.'

'She said she prayed to the Devil to destroy Maria. That she promised human sacrifice . . .'

'And look what it got the poor silly bitch. Don't worry, Alberto. The best priest I know examined this place and said it was all a fake. A complete fraud. She was crazy and she believed in it, but it's nothing for us to worry about. Your leg and the Hungarians out there are a lot more serious.' Benito tugged at his knife, struggling to free it from the bone.

'But you did come here. Here of all places.'

Cleaning the knife on the piece of black velvet that Morando had used for his pseudo altar cloth, Benito shrugged. 'Maria says this is Corfu. Magic here happens. And so do coincidences.'

He took up the lamp and the knife and started toward Alberto. And then stopped, his eyes caught by something to the side. 'Well, I'll be . . . No wonder she could hide out here! Morando must have been prepared to do just that. There's more water and food stashed in here than there is in the whole Citadel. This was a false wall.'

Benito walked over to Alberto and started gently cutting the fabric away from the bloody mess. A bit of bone protruded from the jagged wound. Benito sucked breath between his teeth. 'I wish I was my brother. I really wish he was here. I think you've got a open fracture of the fibula. I'll have to see what the hell I can find for a splint. And let's see if that woman left any of Morando's wine. I could use a cup myself, actually. Even kakotrigi would do.'

Alberto managed a weak laugh. 'Kakotrigi is like this place. You get used to it. Get to like it.'

* * *

The hagfish had swum as close to the edge of the shingle as it dared. If anyone had looked down from the walls now, they would have seen the sinuous shape of it in the clear azure water. Fortunately, the fury of the attack—as seen through the eyes of the shaman's hawks—was on the front wall. The Hungarian forces had gained a foothold inside the broken wall, and men were starting to pour through the gap and up onto the walls. The shaman was able to change into the other form and lope ashore. Shaking the water clear of its fur, it ran to where the wall was pounded into steep rubble. Here, with no defenders, it gained entrance. With the fleeing townspeople, it ran through the inner curtain-wall gates.

It began searching. Tasting the air. Relishing the fear, hating the crowd.

* * *

On the slope behind Corfu town, Giuliano Lozza marshaled his men. He was de facto commander of the Corfiote irregular army, because he had the most soldiers by far. The Venetian captain had had the sense to recognize an unstoppable local force and go along with it. And across the island, so had everyone else. The story of the naked Magyar having to walk back to camp in the buff spread from village to peasant to fishermen. Greeks loved to laugh, and their sense of humor could be a bit rough.

This man Lozza was no foreigner, they'd decided. This was someone who spoke their language and knew more about olives than any Libri d'Oro they'd ever met. He'd even married one of their own, a peasant woman.

Once they'd called him Loukoumia—fat little sweetmeat. No one did that any more. Not since he'd given a very pointed but nonlethal lesson in swordsmanship to one idiot who had dared put a hand on his wife.

'We beat neither our women nor our olive trees on Corfu,' he'd said firmly and finally. It was a local peasant saying, too. That was the final and vital detail. Women asked their menfolk why they hadn't joined.

Giuliano had nearly three thousand men, men with everything from old boar-spears to new and recently acquired Hungarian arquebuses. And torches.

Waiting. Like the great banks of heavy cloud that hung seemingly just off shore. The rain never came. The Corfiotes were going to.

When the Hungarian units had begun pulling back three days ago, Giuliano had known this was to be the big assault. He'd begun sending out word, and the Corfiotes had come.

Giuliano was a master swordsman. He knew he was outnumbered and that the enemy had the edge in professionalism and equipment. But he also knew that it was not the strength of the swordsman that wins the day. It was the timing of the stroke. With the Hungarians sweeping into the outer Citadel, now was the time for the stroke. Loot, or the desire for it, made the Hungarian encampment virtually empty. The artillerymen were sitting around, disgruntled at not being able to join in the spree. The cannon would have to be moved now. All they got out of this was hard work.

And Giuliano Lozza.

 

Chapter 97

'The circle is unbroken. Out of life comes death, and out of death, life.'

Maria looked at the point in the rock, engraved with a circle—the symbol of the mother—and surrounded by spirals so old that time was weathering them away. From the middle of that circle the water of the sacred spring had flowed—apparently unceasingly, for millennia. Now, as she watched, a tiny drop slowly formed and dripped down to the clay basin that stood in for the cracked holy pool.

Maria put Alessia down beside the cracked pool. The baby girl was too listless to go anywhere. Too listless to even cry. Maria turned with sad eyes to Renate. 'You'll see her safe to Katerina, Holy Mother?'

Tears streaked the older woman's face. She nodded. 'This can fix things, Maria. If you are willing.'

Maria shrugged. 'It is too late for me. Benito's dead. It'll be too late for Alessia soon. So what do I have to do?'

'Drink the water of the holy pool. Take up the almond. Offer yourself as a willing bride. I will do the rest.'