They yelled in delight and eagerness, seeing the villa with its open front door. It was plainly a wealthy nobleman's residence. The looting of Venetian villas had so far been a very profitable business indeed. Much wealth flowed into the Venetian Republic up the Adriatic, and not a little of it stayed here in this colony. Corfu was fertile, and had a good climate, and all the trade passed through it.
The doorway was fortunately too low or they might have ridden into the house itself. Instead they scrambled from their mounts in their haste for loot, yelling like banshees. The first eight were in through the door when Svanhild heard Bjarni yelclass="underline" "Fire!"
There were six arquebusiers at the upper windows, all veterans of Vinland campaigns. All of them could shoot, and shoot well. Kari and his three brothers leapt over the wall and pulled down the only Magyar knight who hadn't dismounted or been shot. They attacked the last of the knights who was on foot outside, before hurtling into the fray inside the house.
From the knoll Svanhild could hear the boom of a wheel-lock pistol and clash of metal, mixed with screams.
She saw, briefly, someone emerge at a run from the front doorway and leap for a horse. It was a well-trained animal, and the rider was a great horseman. Almost flat on the horse's neck the rider clung, and spurred it to a gallop.
Svanhild took careful aim.
The horse ran on. But the rider lay dead, sprawled on the track, a feathered shaft between his shoulder blades.
Bjarni came striding out of the house. "Get the horse!" he bellowed.
Svanhild loosed. But neither aim nor heart was in it. She loved horses and this one was a beauty.
"God rot it, Hildi!" said Bjarni furiously. "Now they'll have a riderless horse coming back to tell them that someone is killing these useless nithings. Come back to the house. Hrolf has a cut that needs tending. And we need to gather food and gear. We can't stay here."
He brightened perceptibly, when she came up to him. "At least we have got some nice horseflesh out of it. And Gjuki hit one of them on the head—we can find out just what is going on here." Bjarni cracked his knuckles explosively. "He is going to be telling us. Or I'll pull his ears off and force-feed them to him."
It wouldn't be ears he'd be pulling off, if he left the work to Kari. The skraelings had some gruesome means of getting information out of captives.
"Where are we going to go, Bjarni?" asked Svanhild, hastily scrambling down to him.
The huge blond Vinlander shrugged his shoulders. "Let's see what the prisoner tells us. We can base our decision on that. But I suspect we'll have to hide out in the mountains to the north."
* * *
Unfortunately, the domicile from which Fianelli ran his operations had been built right against the fortifications. The walls of Fianelli's kitchen rattled every time the Citadel's cannons fired. So, at least, it seemed to Bianca.
"You get used to it," grunted Fianelli. He raised the bottle, offering her some more, but she declined with a little wave of her hand. Bianca Casarini didn't have a good head for wine, so she never drank more than a glass at a time. Half a glass, when she was in the presence of men such as Fianelli and his goons.
Fianelli set down the bottle, after refilling his own glass. "Been through it before," he said. "Twice."
Bianca frowned. Fianelli was only in his mid-forties. "Corfu hasn't been attacked in—"
"Not here. Someplace else."
He provided no details, and Bianca decided not to ask. She wasn't afraid of Fianelli, but she was cautious around him. A man like that . . . it didn't pay to press questions. Bianca didn't know what had happened to the woman he'd once been keeping as a bedmate. But she did know that the woman had disappeared a few weeks after she got bold enough to start nagging at Fianelli.
"Nagging," at least, as Fianelli would consider it. The criminal chief's definition had a pretty low entry bar.
So, best not to ask any questions not directly relevant to the work at hand. Bianca leaned forward in her chair a bit.
"I think I've got the man you want. And the way to trap him."
Fianelli cocked an eyebrow. "Can't be just some common soldier you're playing with."
Bianca suppressed a spike of anger. I don't copulate with common soldiers, you—!
But she suppressed the reaction. First, because while she didn't sleep with common soldiers—not lately, at least—she was in no position to be finicky about her bed partners. Second, because the moment was too delicate for anger to be muddling her. Third, because a part of her was enjoying the vengeful twist in the game. Querini really was an oaf.
"He's a cavalry captain. Querini's his name. Alfredo Querini."
One of the three men who were also lounging around the huge table grunted. Bianca thought his name was Zanari. "I know him. A bit, not well."
"What's the hook?" asked Fianelli.
"He likes to gamble. And he's not good at it, even in the best of times. Give it a few months—" Bianca let the rest of the sentence trail off. She'd been in a siege once herself, but saw no reason to let Fianelli know.
"Sieges get boring, true enough," mused Fianelli. "And since before too long everybody's on rations, there's always a lot of loose money around. Idle hands and idle money, so there always starts to be a lot of gambling."
He squinted a little, looking at Bianca. The expression was not exactly suspicious, but . . . close. "I don't run the kind of gambling establishments that a cavalry captain would frequent."
"No, but you can make contact with someone who does. Count Dentico and his sons."
Fianelli's suspicions rose closer to the surface. "Why not you? You're closer to those Libri d'Oro circles than I am."
This was the tricky moment. Fianelli was right, of course. In the year she'd been on Corfu, Casarini had made it a point to cultivate good relations with a number of the Greek aristocrats on the island. The "Libri d'Oro," they were called, after the "golden book" in which the Venetian masters of Corfu had recorded the names of those Corfiote families who were given preferential treatment.
The truth was that Bianca could easily introduce Querini to the Denticos. She knew all of them, after all. But Bianca was determined to keep herself at least one step removed from the treasonous links she was creating. Fianelli, like almost all criminals she'd ever known, tended to look at the world solely through his own eyes. He thought of what he would do, giving little more than cursory attention to what the authorities would do other than the obvious. Understandable enough, given the generally crude and sloppy methods of police work followed in most Italian or Greek cities.
Sloppy and crude when it came to simple criminal activity, that is. When it came to treason, those same authorities—given the history of Italy and the Greek territories—were far more energetic and astute. Bianca was pretty sure that Fianelli's activities in the past had steered clear of politics, though, so he wouldn't really understand the difference.
But she did. Sooner or later, there was a good chance the Venetian rulers of Corfu would detect treachery at work. They were almost bound to, even with a captain-general as incompetent as Nico Tomaselli. First, because anyone with any experience knew that treason was the single most acute danger to a fortress under siege, so they'd be looking for it. Second, because in this instance Bianca would also be undermining the traitors as well as the authorities. Her mistress Elizabeth Bartholdy wanted Corfu to fall to Emeric, true; but not quickly.