Shouts echoed through the streets. Above, shutters banged open and nightcapped heads crowded the windows. Cries of curiosity and fear rained down. Fiametta glanced over her shoulder. People were following them, first in ones and twos, then a stream, then a river. Doors flew wide, and more men issued. Knives and daggers appeared, and a few swords, and other weapons even more extemporaneous: axes and hammers, clubs, hoes, a mattock, a rusty sickle. One fat woman joined the throng armed with a large cast-iron frying pan. More torches sprang up, held high. Fiametta had no idea what the people at the back imagined they were following: half-parade, half-assault, exhilarated, ugly, determined, and confused.
And not at all the silent, secret midnight skulk through the streets of Montefoglia that Fiametta had pictured and planned Uri could hardly march unseen anyway, fervid red in the dark like that. If the Inquisition ever brought her to trial for this night's work, there would be a thousand witnesses.
Lightning cracked the sky. The first few fat, cold drops of rain fell, slapping Fiametta's upturned face. They boiled off Uri instantly, and he trailed tendrils of gaunt steam. His feet hissed on the cobbles as they grew wet and shining. Too cold, Fiametta thought to the rain. Stop, go back, not yet! She stumbled, and Thur's grip tightened and held her on her feet.
They came to the base of the hill, and began climbing the road to the castle. No hope, no hope at all of sneaking in and taking Ferrante by surprise. Losimon soldiers were already running along the walls lighting torches. She could hear the rusty shriek of the portcullis being lowered. As she watched, the big heavy oak doors swung shut with a boom that matched the thunder echoing across the black lake.
"No," she cried, agonized. "Now what do we do? Ferrante can just wait in there until, until ..."
Uri smiled over his shoulder. "Let us see." He paused a few yards from the castle gate. From above, a steel crossbow quarrel whacked into his shoulder, and stuck there. He shrugged, and brushed it away like a biting fly, and studied the gate. "Fiametta, warm me," he said.
"Piro" said Fiametta, ordering the spell in her whirling mind with the greatest difficulty. But its familiarity steadied her. "Piro. Piro."
Uri held up his sword-hand. "Tis enough, for now." He walked to the oak doors and leaned into them. The wood charred and burst into flame. He twisted his arms through the hole thus made and began elbowing and lacking the wood apart as if it were rotten punk. Burning chunks flew wide. Fiametta and Thur chicked and crouched in the ditch.
Uri stalked into the dark passageway between the two gate towers. A few paces further on the entrance to the courtyard was blocked by the grid of the portcullis. From the murder-hole above, a terrified Losimon soldier upended a pot of burning oil on Uri's head.
Uri threw back his face and laughed, a great bronze trumpeting. He turned under the stream of flame as under a refreshing shower, as a man might sport naked in a waterfall. In who-knew-what frenzy of mind the Losimons upended a second and third pot of oil after the first, before it dawned on some officer that it was doing them no good. Flames flared up, dancing and twisting, from Uri's glistening body as he swaggered, salamanderlike, to the portcullis.
He stuck his sword arm through one square of the cast-iron grid, wrapped it around a bar, and heaved backwards. The iron tore apart with a crack. Then another, another, another, till he could walk through upright, shoulders square. Fiametta picked up her skirts and dashed after him through the dying flames on the passageway floor, Thur on her heels. Thur paused to widen the gap in the portcullis with a few well-placed blows of the sledgehammer, for the convenience of those who came after. And there were men coming after, daring the few crossbow bolts from above that Ferrante s wit-scattered men managed to loose. They ran right and left, in groups of three and six, spreading into the castle to hunt down Montefoglia's tormentors. The mob behind them clogged the gate, then broke through.
Fiametta crouched on the cobbles, panting and watching. Uri strode into the courtyard, lighting it like a human torch. A gust of rain made him steam like a fumarole. "UBERTO FERRANTE!" he roared. The stones bounced back shuddering echoes. "Uberto Ferrante! Come out!"
Half a dozen Losimon swordsmen exited the castle door and spilled down the marble steps. Their offensive onslaught slowed and froze to defensive postures as they saw what called them. They glanced at each other in horror.
Lord Ferrante stepped outside, and swept his gaze over the court. He wore his gleaming chain mail, silver-gilt in the springing firelight, and his black leggings and boots. He wore neither hat nor helm, and a Few raindrops glittered in his dark cap of hair like diamonds. He stood very still for a moment, then drew his sword with a slow, deliberate scrape that seemed to go on forever, and made Fiametta's teeth ache. He turned his head and shouted over his shoulder, "Niccolo!" He then raised his chin and stared briefly at the north gate tower, and lifted his blade in salute to someone Fiametta could not see, as if to say, I dedicate this death to you. Then, alert, sword ready, he stalked slowly down the stairs.
His guards, with backwards nervous glances, spread out in a screen before him. For a little time, till Uri raised his hands and started toward them. To a man, they broke and ran. Ferrante watched them go without surprise, a little ironic smile playing about his lips. But he did go so far as to open his mouth and bellow, "Niccolo!" again, louder. Niccolo! To me, now!"
Did Ferrante sense himself to be outmatched? Fiametta thought so. And yet still he stood there on the last rain-silvered marble step, and did not retreat.
"He's evil," whispered Thur. "But ..."
Fiametta felt it too. "Brave. Or fey." No wonder men followed this man. Fiametta had sometimes wondered why angels were reported to spend so many tears on sinners. They do not weep for the evil. They weep for the good that is wasted in it.
"So," said Ferrante, and moistened his lips. "Sandrino's incompetent guard captain rises from the waves like Venus. I thought we'd killed you."
"So," said Uri, with an attempt at matching irony. "My incompetent murderer. Care to try again?" He lifted his red sword in invitation. Ferrante, Fiametta thought, did irony better. He had the style for it. But Uri's rage burned visibly, in rising waves of heat, and what his words lacked in bite they made up in power.
Ferrante cocked his head, half-smiling, and stepped off the stairway. "I think ... you are in my secretary's department. But I shall do my best to entertain you till he arrives." And over his shoulder, his brows lowering and his lips rippling in irritation, "Niccolo!"
"What so occupies mm, that he does not come running?" whispered Thur.
"I think I know," Fiametta whispered back, heartsick. But she could not yet race off through the castle searching for Papa; she Had to stay with Uri, and keep him heated. Ferrante lunged.
The first flurry was brief. Ferrante's blade flicked past Uri's guard, but then clanged uselessly off the bronze skin. Ferrante skipped backwards, his stunned fingers flexing on his sword hilt, and the last irony left his face, to be replaced by an expressionless concentration. He closed again to try for a stab at Uri's yellow eyes, then recoiled, teeth clenched, hissing with pain, as Uri's attempt to brain him with the head of the Medusa brushed past his cheek and raised a swathe of instant white blisters.
"He cannot win, he's got to run. Why doesn't he run?" Fiametta whispered fiercely. She wanted Ferrante to run. Be a coward, yes, and utterly contemptible. But instead he closed on Uri again, clanging thrust and parry, parry—