We pressed north all of the next day, pushing the horses as much as we reasonably could. When night fell, we purchased a hot meal from a farmer’s family and slept in his barn. On our third day of riding, the slopes of Mount Oeta came into view as the afternoon sun began to lose the worst of its heat. Neopatras sat on its slopes, with an acropolis overlooking the town.
Gil had been riding ahead of me with his wife, but he slowed his horse and guided it next to mine. “Will you tell me what you see?”
He would have already asked Eudocia, but her experience with sieges was mostly from the inside rather than from the outside. “I can’t spot many details yet. There’s a round tower as part of the acropolis. Built by the Franks or the Catalans, I’d guess. Crenellations to shelter archers or crossbowmen. Solid-looking wall around the acropolis and around the town.”
Gil grunted. “Walls always complicate sieges.”
It wouldn’t be our first siege, but prior experience with war didn’t ease the worry that gnawed at me and grew stronger as we drew closer to our target. I knew how ugly war could be. How it could take a friend in an instant, how disease could spread and devastate, how a wound could strike and haunt a person for years to come. Gil and I had been more naive back when we’d helped the company take Durazzo from the Albanians, and we’d had fewer weaknesses when we’d helped steal Thebes from the Catalans. “I hope I don’t come to regret this.”
“Trying to take a city again? Or looking for Signorina Bertaldo?”
“Both. If I can’t trust her, we have no place together, and if we have no place together, then maybe I can’t trust my heart.” I studied the town, wondering if she was waiting within its walls. “We might not have a place together anyway. She’s betrothed to Querini.”
“Querini sounds like a rotten choice. He’s a master manipulator, he’s sneaky, and he cares only for Venice and his purse. You should offer her another option.”
“I did. She didn’t say no, but she didn’t say yes either.”
“Well, that’s something. I’m sure she’ll figure it out when she sees you again.”
I shook my head, not wanting to get my hopes up. “We should have seen signs of Micer’s army by now.”
Gil looked around. “Do you suppose the Catalans drove them off?”
Eudocia was just ahead of us. She turned her horse off the road and into a field. When she dismounted, the rest of us followed her to see what she’d found.
“The grass is matted down, like an army was camped here.” She bent to run a hand over the trodden-down weeds.
We walked, leading our horses and looking closely at the ground. The nearer we came to the city, the more evidence of battle we saw. Any dead had been removed and buried, but spent crossbow bolts and broken ends of halberds littered the ground, and the large contingent of guards at the city gate suggested that whoever currently held the city took security very seriously.
The guards were mercenaries, by my guess. They wore no uniform colors, and their armor was mismatched. But had their service been paid for by Catalan or Florentine coin? When a man in a leather cuirass called to us in Italian rather than Catalan, he gave us the answer.
“What’s your business?” He kept his feet in a firm stance and rested his hand on the hilt of his sword. Several of his comrades held armed crossbows. They didn’t lift them to aim at us, but they watched our every move.
“We heard Micer Aner’s army was besieging the city,” I said.
The man’s head lifted. “We took the city three days ago.” Then a frown worked its way across his face. “But the Catalans have holed up in the acropolis. They seem determined to keep it.”
“The way they held on to the Castell de Cetines of Athens for three years?” Gil asked.
The guard’s frown grew deeper. “Not if we can take it sooner.”
“We’re old friends of Micer Aner. We’d like to see him.” Gil walked a little closer.
Another guard joined the first, standing shoulder to shoulder with him and blocking our path. “Someone tried to kill Captain Aner yesterday. He’s not accepting visits from strangers.”
“Is he all right?” Eudocia asked.
The guard nodded.
Gil pursed his lips. “Perhaps he would be willing to see his niece accompanied by her Basque and Moorish friends.”
One of the guards stared at Eudocia. “You’re the captain’s niece?”
“He’ll claim me.”
The guard waved forward one of the other men, a thin soldier who looked younger than the others. “You heard what they said?”
The messenger nodded.
“Ask if the captain wants to see them, or if he wants us to drive them off.”
“Yes, sir.” The young soldier ran back into the city.
“Shall we follow?” Gil asked the guards.
The man’s mouth drew into a stern line. “We aren’t allowing strangers like you in or out of the city at present. Not after the attack.”
“Did you catch the assassin?” I asked. The timing threw suspicion on Querini—he would have arrived in time to throw together something like an assassination attempt. But an angry Catalan or slighted Greek could just as easily have been behind the attempt, especially with the city changing hands so recently.
“He was killed before we learned anything about him.”
Cecilia would have known what questions to ask about the body. I did my best to use the same line of inquiry. “Were his clothes Western or Greek?”
The guard shrugged. “I didn’t see him.” His tone told me the conversation was over.
The four of us sat on the side of the road and ate the last of the cheese and bread we’d bought from the farmer that morning. The mercenaries working for Micer Aner and Nerio Acioli watched us. We barely had time to finish before the young soldier came running to the gate. “The captain will see them at once.”
The guard who had halted us seemed surprised. Perhaps Micer wasn’t in the habit of letting people into the city quite so quickly. He nodded. “Fine. Take them to him.”
We led our horses through the gate. Signs of war greeted us everywhere. The gate remained in good order, but the homes just beyond it had been burned to rubble.
“How did you take the city?” I asked our guide.
“It took us months, but we finally caught a break when we shot fire over the walls and set this area ablaze. Half the Catalan garrison was putting out the flames while the other half fought off the decoy attack. That left only a handful to slow the main assault. A few men inside opened the nearest gate, and we overwhelmed them.”
The streets were cleaner than I would have expected for the fall to have been so recent. “Did they put up much of a fight when you stormed the city?”
The guide shook his head. “The Catalans withdrew into the acropolis fairly quickly. Good thing. They could have turned every home into a stronghold had they wished. Most of them prefer to fight on horseback though. Hard to do that in a city.”
“Harder in an acropolis,” Gil said.
The guide shrugged. “They aren’t so brave as to want to risk their lives when the odds are against them.”
“What’s your name?” I asked.
“Stefano Rosso.”
“Have you worked with Captain Aner long, Stefano?”
“Since Athens fell to Nerio.”
That was two years ago. “Is he a good captain?” I’d worked with him before, a little, but he hadn’t been in charge.
“The best.” Stefano smiled. “Have you known him long?”
“Since Thebes.”
Stefano’s eyes widened. “He never says much about how Thebes was turned. I’d like to hear the story sometime.”
Gil caught my gaze. We hadn’t thought the information about our pasts had come from Micer. He knew the details of how the city fell and knew about most of Eudocia’s scars. But he wasn’t the type to sell out his former allies, and Stefano’s words seemed to confirm it.
“How many people have come into the city since it fell?” I asked Stefano. “Any that might have been from Venice?”
“The gates were like sieves the first few days. We checked for weapons to make sure the Catalans weren’t returning, but peasants and merchants came in and out at will. The assassin came in with a disguise. Others might have too.”
“I’d guess any Venetian sirens are up at the acropolis,” Gil said.
I nodded. “Who’s in charge there?” I pointed to the huge tower looming over the thick walls on the hill.
“The Catalans used to give the town a captain and the fortress a castellan, but when we arrived, Andrés Zavall was in charge of both. He leads the defense of the acropolis.”
I asked Stefano about Zavall and about the assassin, but he knew little. He led us through a guarded gate, into the courtyard of a large villa. A mosaic of the sea appeared in the center of the paving stones. No doubt the villa had belonged to one of the recently displaced Catalans. They’d probably taken it from the Franks, who had taken it from a Greek family. Micer was Greek, though employed by a Florentine. Perhaps it was fitting that the villa was once again in Greek hands.
Valencia was a little like that. Christian. Then Muslim. Then Christian again. And with each change of hands, pain. But it didn’t have to be that way.
Stefano led us past more guards into the villa’s large hall.
“Aha!” Micer had been sitting at a table, but he grinned and stood. He still looked like a warrior, but the thinning hair he’d had eleven years ago had all disappeared now, and wrinkles bordered his eyes. “I didn’t think there was any way young Rosso spoke truth when he said my niece and her friends were standing outside the city gate, but here you are.” He walked over to Eudocia and grasped her by the shoulders. They’d once pretended to be uncle and niece to infiltrate a banquet hosted by one of the leading Catalan families of the Duchy, and he had never dropped the title. “My prayers have been answered.”
Eudocia smiled back at him. “It’s good to see you, Micer.”
“Did you get bored with the bathhouse and decide to let me hire you again? I will, gladly. You and your Basque and . . .” He paused. “Two Moors. I’ll hire both. The acropolis isn’t as formidable as the one in Athens, but it will take a long time to crack unless we do something unconventional.” Micer motioned for us to sit, and we complied.
“The bathhouse has been good for us.” Eudocia took Gil’s hand. “But some of our old enemies found us and gave us some trouble. I doubt we’ll be safe while the Catalans have a stronghold here in the Duchy.”
“So you’ll help me drive them out?” Micer asked.
All four of us nodded.
Determination flashed in Micer’s eyes. “Stefano, bring me that map of the acropolis.”