parallel to the one the major took and emerged on the next avenue to find it almost completely deserted. Nowhere to hide. “Not what I wanted.”
She trotted down to the next street, the one the major should have been about to come out of, but she found it empty except for the echoing shouts of angry men. Halfway down the lane she saw a front door kicked in.
“What the hell are they doing?” She stayed on the wider avenue and headed south, peering down the narrow gaps between the houses and shops at the small gardens behind them.
A flash of brown leather.
A rifle shot.
“Hell, kid, keep your head down!” the major roared.
Shifrah squinted down the narrow alleyways and suddenly a flock of blue uniforms flooded through a small garden right in front of her and a half dozen male shouts echoed back out to her, “Shoot, shoot! He’s right there! Get him! No, the other one!”
She dashed down the avenue parallel to the men, separated from the chase by a row of houses that seemed to have no paths between them wide enough to admit a horse. Looking ahead, she spotted the next side street and raced around the corner. The men were still running through the back gardens, crashing through fences and tearing down laundry lines, shouting and shooting. Bullets ricocheted off brick and stone, and shattered glass windows. Every few seconds, a woman would shriek inside one of the houses.
Shifrah nudged her horse back and forth, trying to guess which house the two Mazigh officers would come barreling through.
To her right, the front window of a small house exploded in a rain of broken glass and wooden splinters. The major landed on his shoulder, rolled slowly, and stood up, clearly favoring his right leg. The kid tumbled out of the window after him, collapsing to the street and looking like a sweaty corpse, his face pale and bloodshot eyes set in dark eye sockets.
Zidane hauled the kid to his feet just as his eyes met hers. “What the hell are you doing here? Are you with them are not?”
“I might be with you, but now is not the best time to chat, major.” Shifrah jerked her head at the sound of the pursuing soldiers crashing through the house. She pointed down the street. “The south gate is that way, assuming you’re still heading for warmer places to run and play.”
Zidane hesitated a moment too long. Two faces appeared in the broken window just as the front door of the house swung open. The major dropped his friend and lunged at the two men in the window, grabbed their jackets, and hauled them out into the street where he dropped them on their heads and stripped them of their rifles. He tossed one gun to the kid as he spun around and cracked the butt of his own rifle into the head of the man rushing out the front door.
Shifrah spotted another rifle poking through the broken window and she screamed in her highest screeching voice, “My baby! Someone save my baby!”
The rifle jerked back inside, replaced a moment later with two more confused faces.
Zidane grabbed the sick kid and they both took off down the road, rifles in hand. Shifrah wheeled her horse around just as the Espani captain charged out the door, hollering, “Arrest that woman!”
“Oh, hell.” Shifrah kicked her horse and sped away in the opposite direction of the two Mazighs. “You’re on your own now, big man. But I’ll be seeing you soon enough.”
Chapter 16. Lorenzo
The night in Ariza passed without incident, though they did keep everyone together in one farmhouse and rotated guards in the dining room throughout the night. As long as everyone was within sight of someone else, Lorenzo wasn’t worried. Even Salvator Fabris was only one man, and they wouldn’t pass by any forts before reaching Zaragoza, so the Italian was unlikely to find help before then. More importantly, Atoq stayed close that night and it was easy to feel safe and secure with eight hundred pounds of saber-toothed cat sitting just outside the door.
All day he had worried about the boys’ morale after leaving Enrique behind, but they appeared to rally quickly, especially when Qhora and the Mazigh pilot told them about their little adventure with the water-woman.
At least I was right about this trip being an experience the boys won’t soon forget.
The following day, the weather turned and they made poor time against the heavy sleet and freezing winds. Still, they pressed on for the full day and reached Zaragoza shortly after sunset. Deep within the city, the familiar arches and towers of the Cathedral of San Salvador rose above the surrounding buildings like an ancient, crumbling mountain. Many claimed that once this massive cathedral, often called La Seo, had been adorned by the most elegant of carved buttresses topped with stone gargoyles and marble angels and bronze saints, and each facade had been covered in triquetras of every size and style from Vlachian to Numidian. But now, after centuries of exposure to the screaming north wind and driving snow and shattering ice, there was precious little beauty left outside the cathedral. And what limited money and manpower there once had been to protect and maintain the building had sailed away to the New World and never returned.
Lorenzo led his wife and the others along the road that followed the River Elbro to give them what he had hoped to be a grand introduction to the La Seo, but the evening sky was dark and dreary, and a light needling of frozen mist stung their eyes whenever they lifted their heads to look about. They reached the grand entrance to the church, were brusquely directed to the side entrance for travelers with animals, and then began the long ritual of climbing down, unpacking, explaining what exactly Wayra was and how she was to be cared for, and all the other arrangements for their stay.
Atoq had been a concern when they reached the edge of the city, but Qhora simply climbed down and stroked his head and whispered in his ear, and the giant cat had padded off into a snowy field beside the road. When Lorenzo asked her about it, she simply said, “Don’t worry about him. He knows how to deal with a city.”
When they finally reached the cathedral’s guest quarters on the upper level, Lorenzo called a quick gathering in the hall outside his room. It felt strange to speak to his wife, his students, and his guests all at once with his natural inclinations to be familiar or formal warring as he looked from one face to the next. “Well, here we are. Home away from home. Alonso, Gaspar, and Hector, there is an empty store room in the cellar that we’ve been given permission to practice in. Feel free to explore, as we have the run of the cathedral, more or less. Don’t disturb the priests, of course, and if they ask you for help doing anything, anything at all, you will do it. Yes?”
The boys nodded solemnly.
“As for you three,” he said to the pilot and her two passengers, “I’m afraid you’ll have to stay inside the building, and probably keep away from the public spaces where the townspeople might see you. I don’t think we’ll have to worry about soldiers storming La Seo, but if the mayor demands it, then the bishop will definitely hand you over rather than risk a fight in a house of God over a handful of spies or criminals or whatever it is they think you are. The priests here are good men, but they have their own priorities and their own problems.”
“Don Lorenzo, might I just say,” Dante said, his voice almost civil for the first time that Lorenzo could recall. “Thank you for bringing us here to this sanctuary. I’m sure you have delivered us from being suddenly discovered by any soldiers from Valencia who might have been pursuing us. However, I’m sure you’ll agree that we’re now well out of danger. From what you told us, I think the man you fought in Algora was more interested in you and your private affairs than any of us. Assuming that’s true, wouldn’t it be reasonable for me, and perhaps the young lady from Eran, to head east to Barcelona and sail back to Italia as soon as possible?”
“Maybe,” Lorenzo said. “But I think it’s best if we all stay indoors for a day or two and get a sense of the ground under our feet first. I’ll speak to the bishop tomorrow and see what he has to say about the military here in town. If everything is quiet here, then maybe you and your friend can leave.”
Dante pressed his lips tight for a moment and sniffed. “All right. A day or two.”
They said their good-nights and retreated to their rooms. Lorenzo sat on the hard pallet he was to share with Qhora for the next few weeks. It was easily one of the three worst beds he had ever felt, and one of those others had been a prison cell floor covered with straw to soak up his urine.
Qhora closed the door and slipped off her heavy coat. She was still wearing his re-tailored army coat, the belt cinched tight to accentuate her tiny waist. He remembered wearing that coat while slaughtering Incan warriors on
