“I do,” Gar said slowly. “I’ve seen them for sale in a market far from here, very far—but they gave them a different name.”
“Orzans or oranges, what matter?” Bernardino shrugged. “The stone does not care.”
“They cannot be dug for,” Gianni explained, “because the pick that beaks the rock away is as likely to fracture the jewel as its surroundings. No, the gatherers can only walk around the cave every day, waiting for a new segment of wall to break away—and it may disclose an orzan, or it may not.”
“What of limestone quarries?”
“There are a few orzans found there,” Bernardino admitted, “though they are far more likely to be broken than whole. Still, even a scrap of orzan fetches a price worth picking it up.”
“And this outlander offered the prince a high price for orzans?” Gar asked.
“A high price indeed, which is strange, because they’re not all that rare.”
Gianni nodded. “Semiprecious at best.”
“But the price the strange somber trader offered for one alone would feed me and house me for a year! Though not a family.”
“A high price, surely,” Gar said with strange sarcasm.
“Oh, His Highness offered the man a variety of jewels—he laid them out on black velvet, a riot of color that made me faint to think of their value,” Bernardino assured them, “but the stranger wanted only orzans.”
“I’m sure he did,” Gar said softly.
“It has taken long enough for us to catch you,” Vincenzio said. Gianni looked up and discovered the rest of his new companions gathering around them on the road—but Gar turned instantly on the merchant and demanded, “The jewels the Stilettos took from you—were there orzans among them?”
“Two or three, yes,” Rubio said, startled. “Indeed, they took them first, and their sergeant was about to spurn me away with the rest, and I was about to thank my lucky stars, when he thought again and took the rest of my jewels—the swine!”
“No doubt,” Gar said to himself. “Those, I’m sure, were his pay.”
Rubio frowned. “What do you mean?”
Gar started to answer, but broke off and whirled to stare ahead.
Giuseppi suddenly looked up, then gave a shout, pointing. They all followed his gaze and saw a cloud of dust boiling out from a curve in the road ahead.
“Soldiers!” Rubio cried. “Hide, one and all!” He turned away to the underbrush as horsemen emerged from the dust cloud. That was all the former prisoners needed; they bolted off the road, with Gianni right behind them …
Until he heard the huge, hoarse roar, and turned to see Gar charging down at the horsemen, arms flailing like the sails of a windmill, bellowing in incoherent rage as he attacked a whole party of cavalry, on foot and bare-handed. Gianni’s stomach sank as he realized the giant had lost his wits again.
CHAPTER 10
Gar flailed about him with a total lack of skill, but with devastating strength. His fists knocked two Stilettos off their horses; then he caught the leg of another horse and heaved, throwing the animal over and the man on top with it. But as he straightened, a horseman behind him struck down with a club.
Gianni jumped in the way with a feeling of despair, leaping high and catching the club, knowing his own stupidity but also knowing that he couldn’t leave Gar to fight alone. He was amazed when the Stiletto tumbled out of his saddle, his club falling free, but not so amazed that he didn’t remember to strike the man with his own club as he hit the ground. He didn’t get up, but a friend of his was swinging down with another club, and Gianni blocked with his cudgel in both hands, then swung it two-handed at the man’s skull—but the soldier blocked, and a blow from behind made the world swirl around Gianni; he felt the cudgel slipping from his fingers, felt himself stumbling back against something warm and hairy, felt huge hands fasten onto his wrists with exclamations of disgust from above. When the world stopped tilting, he saw Gar on his knees with his hands bound behind him, felt rough hands tying his own wrists, and saw his whole company of refugees gathered together in a circle wide-eyed, moaning, and surrounded by horsemen.
“What are we to do with this lot now?” one Stiletto asked with disgust. “The captain said we weren’t to waste time gathering men to sell to the galleys until we had searched every traveler and the campaign was over!”
“Yes,” said a young man with more elaborate armor and an air of authority, “but he wasn’t thinking of people who were so stupid as to fight back. Those, I think, we can ship off to the galleys—or at least pen them in Prince Raginaldi’s castle until His Highness delivers judgment. Come along, you lot! Sergeant, drive them!”
And off they went to the castle, hustled so fast that they had to run. The Stilettos didn’t slacken the pace until a few men had begun to stumble and fall. Then they slowed down, but the captives still had to trot. It was just as well they had no breath to spare, Gianni reflected—he didn’t want to hear how they would be cursing Gar and him, for getting them back into the prison from which they had so lately been freed.
As they came to Castello Raginaldi, Gar looked up. Gianni was too miserable with forced marching and prodding spear butts to care much where he was going, but he followed Gar’s gaze. The big man was staring up at the towers of the castle—and there was something strange about the tallest one. Squinting, Gianni could barely make out a skeletal contraption, a spidery triple cross mounted on a slender pole. He frowned, trying to remember which saint had a triple cross as his symbol, but could think of none. Why would the prince have such a thing atop his castle?
Perhaps it was some sort of new weapon. Yes, that made sense. Gianni determined to watch closely, to see how it was used. Then a spear butt struck his shoulder blade, and he lurched into faster motion again.
Across the drawbridge they went and, mercifully, the horsemen had to slow because of its narrowness—mercifully, because all the captives were stumbling with weariness. The Stilettos held the slow pace as they came out into a huge courtyard, where soldiers practiced fighting with blunted swords, and cast spears and shot arrows at targets. Iron clanged on iron from the smithy, far away against the castle wall, and the keep towered above everything, throwing its ominous shadow over them all.
They rode deeper into that shadow, but only to the wall of the keep itself, where a huge cage stood, iron bars driven into the hard-packed earth of the courtyard, then bent six feet high to slant upward to the stones of the wall. The roof was thatched over those bars, but the sides were open to wind, rain, and the baking sun. The door stood open, and the Stilettos herded them through it with snarls and curses. The recycled prisoners stumbled in and fell to the ground with groans of relief—at least they didn’t have to run from the drubbing of spear butts any more. The door clanged shut behind them, and the sergeant fastened a huge lock through its hasp with a sound like the crack of doom.
Gianni sank down in a patch of sunlight with the rest, looking about him. The place was messy, but not squalid—apparently someone had shoveled it out and heaped fresh straw against the castle wall—but it had clearly housed many, many men before them. Since it wasn’t big enough to hold more than a score, Gianni deduced that it must be the holding pen for prospective slaves. It seemed odd to him that there was no separate cage for women, until he remembered that there wasn’t much of a market for female slaves except for the young and pretty, who were generally kept safely at home. In fact, there probably would not have been much demand for male slaves either, if it hadn’t been for the galleys—peasants were cheaper, since their parents made them free of charge, and were always at a lord’s bidding.