Erik and Kari had crept within twenty yards. From here Erik could see facial expressions and, if he'd been able to speak Serbian, could have eavesdropped. Erik studied the guards, their positions and their camp. Then they leopard-crawled back to the pines.
Giuliano had a surprise for them there. A shepherd boy who had come upon the group had been hastily seized and persuaded they weren't going to kill him. In fact he could profit by telling them about the Hungarian magazine.
"He says there is a place at the back where the stones prevented them from digging the logs in. There are some small gaps. He has crawled in and stolen some things."
Erik sighed. "Now Kari will have to moan about how this crawling is ruining his breeches again. We'd better go and have a look-see."
Kari snorted and examined his knees, rubbing the material. "I wouldn't say no to a decent set of buckskins. These weren't meant for this work. This is almost too easy, Erik. We go in this hole, cut a few throats, and set fire to it."
Erik shook his head. "When that lot blows . . . well, I want to be at least a half-mile away and traveling. We might go in that way but we're going to have to get out fast. That means by the gate and onto a horse as quickly as possible."
* * *
King Emeric had been modeling things again. He pointed now to the model of the Citadel of Corfu; to the channel between it and the mainland. "How is the progress with the moles going, Count Dragorvich?"
The stocky count, Emeric's chief siegemaster, rubbed his chin reflectively. "If we worked on one at a time I could have one done in three weeks. But the two-pronged approach means progress is slower. Maybe five weeks? The channel is quite deep and we're under heavy bombardment. The mine is not going to work for now, Your Majesty. Water comes in as fast as we can take it out with a bucket-chain, and the diggers are not even at sea level yet. The ground is still saturated from the winter rains. Summer's only begun."
"I'll get the guns to focus on the south and north towers," said Emeric. "That's where their guns are firing onto the moles from. We'll leave off pounding the gate and the rest of the walls for a while."
An officer came hastily out of the dark and into the king's pavilion. Once there, he stood rigidly before the king. Emeric acknowledged the Magyar cavalry commander with a curt nod. "Ah. Colonel. How go things with sacking of the Venetian estates? Any resistance?"
The colonel sneered. "These Venetians are soft, Sire. There have been a few minor bits of fighting, but we've barely lost men. A couple of Croats who were where they weren't supposed to be. A checkpoint guard. But other than that, nothing much."
"You've taken appropriate retribution for these incidents, I trust?"
"Sire, the problem is: On whom? The peasants have hidden out in the hills. We've caught some, of course, but most of them just aren't there, and the men haven't left those they've caught in one piece. As for the Venetians . . . most of them have been killed anyway. So, Sire, the problem is there is no one to extract retribution from. There are few walled towns we haven't bothered with, but anything we can get to has been dealt with hard already."
Emeric pursed his lips, looking thoughtful. "I think it is time to stop using the sword on peasants, Colonel. It's time for the knout, instead. We need someone to work the land here. Pass the instruction to your men. Hunt the maquis. Round them up, put them to work. There is no need to be gentle, however. And any resistance still gets the sword. Or make an example of one of them on a sharpened stake."
"Yes, Sire."
* * *
In the darkness Erik sucked in his breath and squeezed his body forward through the gap. A ten-year-old shepherd might fit through it easily enough. A hundred-and-ninety-pound Icelander was a different matter altogether. He pushed forward.
Someone grabbed him by the hair.
"Got you, you thieving bastard," said the grabber. "Hey, boys, I've got him!"
Erik was in an awkward situation. One arm was still trapped in the gap between the two logs. His tomahawk and knife were on the wrong side of the barrier. Clawing upwards with one hand he managed to grab his assailant by the shirt front and hauled.
"Let go!"
Something smashed against Erik's ear. Suddenly the hand grasping his hair went slack. The man Erik was holding by the shirtfront flopped toward him. Pulling himself forward and rolling over, Erik saw Kari jump off the palisade, land in front of him and retrieve his knife from the man's back . . . And a guard came running up.
The guard saw Kari, his fallen companion, but not Erik. Erik snagged the newcomer's ankle as he rushed at Kari with a spear thrust that would have spitted the young Vinlander like a pigeon. The result of Erik's intervention was that he pole-vaulted on the spear to land in a crumpled heap at Kari's feet. The Vinlander leaned over and hit the guard with calculated force on the back of the head.
Erik had by this stage struggled free. "Wait!" he whispered to the others just through the hole. Grabbing a victim each, Kari and he hastily dragged them into the deep shadows.
No more guards came. So, after waiting perhaps a hundred heartbeats, Erik called the rest through.
Thalia came first. "You were supposed to stay with the horses!"
"There is work to be done," she said with a grim intensity, hands on her hips, but still holding a knife. "On Corfu, women work. I am here to do it. I've cut a pig's throat, and I don't see the difference between this filth and a pig, except that pigs are better."
Erik saw no point in a stand-up argument. Besides, as he'd learned on the Vinland frontier, a determined woman can be a lot more deadly than a reluctant male warrior.
"What happened?" whispered the plump Giuliano, after they'd popped him out of the hole like a cork from a bottle of petillant wine.
"That young shepherd wasn't as undetected as he thought," Erik whispered grimly. "The guards had set a trap for him. Fortunately they were expecting a small young thief and not for Kari to pop over the top of the palisade. Anyway, move out. They still outnumber us."
Shortly, they no longer did. It was brutal, murderous work. But, as Erik reflected, their enemies' choices were stark. Die quickly at the hands of the Corfiote guerillas, die when this magazine blew, or die slowly at Emeric's hands for failing him. The Corfiote guerillas couldn't keep prisoners, and the alternative to killing the enemy was to fail in their objective.
Erik didn't plan to fail. After this, Emeric's forces would be wary, and successes would be much more hard-won. They had to start big, because if they'd started with raids on outposts, they'd never have gotten to a big target like this.
But he didn't like killing sleeping guards either. It was too much like butchery.
The trickiest phase was the last one. The magazine was not a place anyone would want to strike a lucifer in, and they had no access to wicks. Before Erik set the long powder-trail, they took sixteen small casks of powder, one per horse, and loaded them up.
Then all but Erik left quietly. There was the barrack encampment not two hundred yards off, with sleeping Croats, and the rest of the guard detachment. One galloping horse could not be avoided, but at least there didn't have to be seventeen of them. The gate was arranged with a spike holding the bar up, and a stout cord that could be tossed over the top of the gate. Erik could pull it when he was outside and drop the bar. Even if someone heard the horse gallop past and came to investigate the palisade, they would have to climb it to get in. Hopefully, by that time the powder trail would have burned to the open cask.