He took a deep breath. "I'll teach you. I should have taught Eleni."
"Who?"
"My wife. My beautiful, gentle wife. They killed her." It seemed very necessary to tell all of it. "They raped her first. They killed my son. My baby boy. I was away at my uncle Ambrosino's estate. Eleni doesn't," he swallowed, "didn't like him. So she and little Flavio stayed home. One of the family retainers brought me word. We rode as quickly as we could but . . ."
"Georgio and I never had a child." She paused. "You Libri d'Oro joke about the peasants always trying to save money with the priest being able to do the wedding and the christening at the same time."
Giuliano felt himself redden. He'd made the comment himself. Pregnant brides were almost the norm among the peasantry on his Ropa valley estate. "Yes. But I'm not one of the Libri d'Oro. My uncle is in the Golden Book, though."
They rode in silence, heading for the rendezvous. "But you are a landowner?"
"Yes. But my father did not approve of the Golden Book."
"And you lived on the estate and not in town. Very strange." She sounded slightly more at ease. "But you Libri d'Oro don't understand. A bride must be pregnant to prove that she can be fertile. Georgio loved me enough to marry me even though I . . . didn't fall pregnant. I had very little dowry, because my father died at sea. He married me anyway. I wanted a child. I wanted one so badly for my man. But now I am glad I didn't ever have one. This is no world for a child."
There seemed to be no reply to that. Peasant marriages, indeed even most noble marriages, had at least an element of commerce about them. It had been one of the things that had made him acceptable to Eleni's family. Thalia's must have been a rare marriage.
He decided, firmly, that by the next time this young woman went out seeking repayment for what their enemy had done, she'd be very capable of getting it. Hakkonsen had said he wanted two quick, immediate successes to draw recruits—and then they'd go to ground for a few weeks, and train properly. The Hungarians would be expecting them after this. The cavalry would recapture many of the horses—those that didn't come home by themselves, anyway—but they would be hunting horses for a while. Besides, more horse-tracks would muddle tracking operations. There would be time to train her. Maybe time enough, and recruits enough, that he would be valuable again, as a trainer, even if he couldn't slit throats.
Chapter 57
Emeric tinkled a little crystal bell. An officer appeared hastily. "I want to talk to the blond-haired one. Aldanto. Have him sent to me."
The officer of the royal guard bowed and left at a brisk run.
He was back very quickly. Alone. "Sire, he has gone out. The guards saw him walk out just after dawn. He went northwards."
"Hmm. Alone? Or with one of these Byzantine rats he is supposed to be with?"
The young officer hesitated. "Sire, he had no man with him. No woman, either. But the guards tell me he was accompanied by a yellow dog. The guard said it looked more like an overgrown jackal than a dog. An ugly yellow-toothed mangy thing. His horse tried to kill it, and Aldanto stopped him."
A yellow dog . . . The puppet-man would not have a pet. His master wouldn't allow it.
"Have the guards told about this creature. If it is seen again, have them shoot it."
After the officer left, Emeric's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. He was slowly—reluctantly—coming to the conclusion that before too long he would need to go back to Hungary and talk to his great-great-aunt, the Countess Bartoldy. His plans for Corfu were not working out as well as they should have, due to the incompetence of too many of his officers. And, what was worse, due to the delay it was becoming clear that magic would be playing more of a role in the campaign than he'd foreseen. Or wanted, even though he was a skilled sorcerer in his own right.
The problem with sorcery was that it was, ultimately, something that had no greater respect for monarchs than anyone else. That made it a risky business for someone with the name of "Emeric, King of Hungary." He hated to be beholden to his great-great-aunt any more than he needed to be, but it was just a fact that this sort of thing was Elizabeth Bartholdy's field of expertise, far more than his.
* * *
Traveling with the shaman, Aldanto was obliged to walk. No horse would tolerate the shaman within sight, and even the scent of him seemed to make them uneasy.
Being forced to walk was hard on Aldanto. It meant that muscles that had been torn by torture and forced to heal, laced with scarring, were forced into more work than they really should have had to do. He had not walked much in years before Jagiellon captured him, either. In Venice, he had traveled almost exclusively by the canals, and he had relied on someone else's muscles to propel him. His legs screamed with agony that he was not permitted to show.
Nobody was listening to his internal suffering. The puppeteer did not really understand life's prerequisites. Nor did he care. He worked his tools ruthlessly and sometimes they broke. So, driven by his master, Caesare walked on. The yellow dog walked on beside him. The shaman knew enough not to wish to go back to the place the horseflies had driven him from, and it would be Caesare who faced whatever guarded it this time.
They walked beneath the tall lianolia olives starred with tiny white flowers, past bee-busy masses of yellow broom by the dusty roadsides. Caesare trod on delicate orchid blossoms, thrust through myrtle bushes.
"The place stinks," said the shaman-dog, sneezing.
"We should be there by now, surely?"
"I would have thought so. It didn't take me that long to get back to the camp, master." The shaman looked at his paws. "We have been heading northwest for much time."
Caesare turned and looked up at the sun. He did not shield his eyes the way a normal man would. The sun was plainly heading toward rest, in the heavy hazy golden afternoon. "If this place is to the northwest, then why is the sun now on my back?"
The shaman blinked. "But . . . we have walked as straight as it is possible! I will look through the eyes of my hawks." He bent his will, using true names, names of power.
His eyes did indeed see through theirs. The ground hurtled toward him at terrific speed. The yellow dog lost its footing and sprawled—and the hawk struck the hare cleanly.
Aldanto, having stopped for the first time in many hours, fell over like a pole-axed steer.
The yellow dog staggered to its feet, calling desperately for the master to take him away. Away from the magic.
* * *
Barely five hundred yards away, Erik and Svanhild were lost in the magic. Their fingers entwined, they walked in the dell where anemones bloomed. The cicada song rose to its summer crescendo, and then as they walked closer to the holm-oaks, was stilled. An enormous orange-yellow butterfly suddenly skittered into hasty flight from the flowers in front of them.
Instinctively, Erik tensed. A tortoise stuck its head around the flower clump, regarding these invaders to its realm with a suspicious, unblinking yellow eye. Then, having correctly labeled them as moonstruck, it put its beaky face down and mumbled up a wild strawberry.
Erik found laughter and happiness, pure, easy and as sweet as the warm breeze, bubbling up within him. He picked up Svanhild in his arms and spun her round, her long golden hair flying. Round and around laughing like children together, until they fell together dizzy and still laughing, into the flowers, frightening the tortoise off his late afternoon snack. The tortoise lumbered away.