We huddled in a dusty grove of cramped olive trees while we waited for the moon to set. The growing black of the night was useful because we didn’t want the watchmen on the acropolis walls to see us. The Catalans had a consistent watch set. Even in the dark, they might see us if we weren’t careful when it came time to cross the final stretch of ground leading to the walls.
Aban leaned over to me and whispered, “I don’t know what I expected when I went looking for my long-lost brother, but it wasn’t this.”
I glanced at the acropolis. “This isn’t normal.”
He shook his head. “Not the part about sneaking into an acropolis to defeat its garrison. The part about feeling brotherhood with a group of Christians. The part about trusting women.” He gestured to Eudocia. “Her, and the one waiting inside the acropolis for us.” A smile pulled at his lips. “The part about discovering a brother who is different from what I expected and being glad for it.”
I clasped his shoulder, hoping both of us would survive the night and that the feeling of comradery would continue and grow even when life became quiet again.
The moon slowly disappeared beyond the horizon, and word passed up to us from one of Micer’s sergeants. “It’s time.”
I checked my weapons, and Eudocia checked hers. Micer had given us all the armor and equipment we’d asked for, but mail rarely stopped crossbow bolts, and the Catalans were legendary with the crossbow. We’d be outnumbered. If things went badly, we were unlikely to make it out of the acropolis alive.
“Are you ready?” I asked Eudocia.
She nodded, and the two of us left the grove and ran to the shelter of a large rock, then crawled forward to a group of bushes big enough to hide a handful of people from the eyes of the acropolis watchmen. We studied the watchmen through several of their rotations. They were hard to pick out at first—shifting shadows behind the wall’s crenellations—but gradually, the shapes came into better focus, and a pattern formed.
“She was right, on the papers she left.” Eudocia didn’t sound surprised—we wouldn’t be trying this if we didn’t believe the information Cecilia had given us. “On the count of five, that one will turn the corner. No one will be watching the approach until the other one comes round. Just enough time to make it to the wall. Godspeed.”
“You too.”
“Now!”
I kept my footsteps light and moved as quickly as I could without crunching dry brush or kicking up loose rocks. I slowed next to the wall and counted on the shadows to keep me hidden if the watchmen decided to look down instead of out. According to Cecilia’s notes, the sally port was in this section of the defenses but was faced with the same stone as the wall—difficult to see, especially in the dark. I ran my fingers along the mortared stones and felt for anything like a regular edge. I found it only because the weeds grew to a consistent height all along the wall—until I came to a patch where they’d been flattened.
I ran my finger along an edge where the seams of the stones all seemed to align. I pulled my sword free, whispered a prayer that no one waited on the other side, and pushed. It moved a handspan, then two. I didn’t open it any farther. My task was simply to confirm it was unlocked.
I glanced at the top of the walls. I couldn’t see the watchmen, but I knew they were there. I took the flint from my pocket and held it as close to the wall as I could so it was unlikely to be noticed by anyone other than Eudocia and the few members of our group who would have joined her by now. A spark flew, and I waited.
Before long, Gil joined me.
I kept my voice a whisper. “It’s dark, and the first person your wife sends to help me is a blind man?”
“Only partially blind. Aban still needs more work with the sword, and the others are strangers. Who would you rather she send?”
I gripped his arm. “You’ll do, but I think we should wait for a few more. We don’t know what’s on the other side of the door. We only know it’s unlocked.”
Aban joined us next, then Eudocia, then Stefano. More would come, but with five of us huddled outside the sally port, it was time to see what lay beyond it. Cecilia’s map had shown a narrow alley between the armory and the garrison’s barracks.
“Weapons ready,” I whispered. I gripped my sword and let my crossbow hang from my belt. Aban and Eudocia kept crossbows handy, and Gil and Stefano silently drew their swords.
The postern pushed inward with a muted squeal. I held my breath, waiting for a shout or an alarm—or for Cecilia’s voice—but silence greeted us. I went inside and saw only blackness. Two steps forward and a breeze met my skin. A few more steps and the roof disappeared into starlight.
Gil put a hand on the wooden wall to the side of us. I assumed it was the barracks. Whoever designed the acropolis had been wise—sneaking in between the barracks and the armory was intimidating.
We waited until more men filtered in. Two more soldiers and then Micer’s sergeant joined us. Micer himself was with the bulk of his army, preparing for an assault if we could open the gates for him.
“We should start before one of the watchmen sees us—here or outside—and ruins our surprise,” I said.
Without surprise, we hadn’t a chance of taking over the gatehouse. I stepped farther along the alley. Gil, Eudocia, and Aban followed. Cecilia had written that only two guards were stationed in the gatehouse, other than the watchmen who passed through. The four of us would incapacitate them and raise the portcullis for the rest of Micer’s army. The others who came through the sally port would keep reinforcements from charging the gatehouse and overwhelming us.
We pulled our hoods over our heads and walked in pairs. Torches set at regular intervals cast a soft glow on the courtyard. Trying to hide might cause suspicion, so we acted as if we belonged in the acropolis—watchmen finishing a shift or soldiers stepping from the barracks for a little fresh air.
Silence gripped the courtyard, for the most part. An owl hooted in the distance, and a horse snorted when we passed the stables. We’d planned for a paved courtyard and had wrapped our boots in cloth to keep them from echoing on the stones that formed the acropolis ground.
The gatehouse loomed before us. Cecilia’s diagram had shown both an inner and an outer gate, with a small courtyard between them. The inner gate came into focus, familiar because I’d seen its likeness on paper. The gate was shut, and no doubt, the portcullis was down behind it. We’d expected as much, given the hour and the hostile army in the town below. A quick scan of the walls revealed the shadows of watchmen, but their task was to look out, not in. Gil slid the gate’s lockbar off one of the brackets, and Eudocia slipped between the gate and the portcullis. She handed me a rope. While she tied one end to the bars of the portcullis, I tied the other end to the beam of wood meant to keep the gate closed. She slipped out, and Gil shut the gate most of the way—enough to replace the lockbar so the gate would appear secure to anyone who passed by. It ought to stay in place until someone—us, if everything went according to plan—raised the portcullis. Then the bar would lift too, and a simple cut of the rope would send the lockbar crashing to the ground so Micer’s army could push through the gate into the heart of the acropolis.
With that part of our plan complete, we slipped through the door just to the side of the gate and disappeared into the gatehouse complex. Darkness surrounded us. Maybe this wasn’t the entrance the watchmen used. There were other staircases up to the top of the walls, some of them nearer the barracks, so they had other options.
I stepped forward, and my foot hit something. I bent and plucked up the torch that had been left on the ground. My nose told me it was soaked in fuel. “Can you light this, Gil?” I would manage with my flint, eventually, but he’d be quicker. He was used to lighting fires when he couldn’t see.
A spark flew from his flint to the torch, and in a heartbeat, a flame spread across the head.
“Nice of Signorina Bertaldo to leave this for us,” he said.
Had Cecilia left the torch? The wall held no sconces, so those who traveled these stairs must normally bring their own light. Her coming back to the acropolis was making more and more sense, but I still wished she would have told me her plans instead of leaving me to feel abandoned and betrayed. After being disowned by my parents, the threat of new rejection always seemed credible.
Eudocia bolted the door behind us with a thick wooden lockbar. “This is solid. Ought to take an ax or a battering ram to get through.”
“There’s one on the other side too, according to the diagrams,” I said.
Gil gripped my shoulder. “She’s clever, that Venetian siren of yours. Now we just have to take out the guards and bolt the other entrance.”
Spiral stairwells of stone bordered both sides of the gate and portcullis, leading up to the inner gatehouse and a guardroom that could fire into either the main courtyard or the smaller one between the two sets of gates. At least one of the guards would be waiting when we reached the top of the steps. Gil handed the torch to Eudocia and motioned her to the back of the group so the light would be less visible to anyone standing guard. I led, with my crossbow armed and ready to loose its bolt.
I slowed for the last few stairs, making sure every footstep I took was silent. I peered around the corner into the guardroom. An armored man waited, his back to us as he stood before the crenelated half wall that overlooked the main acropolis courtyard. A wine cup on the table and a tipsy hum made me hand my crossbow to Aban. I strode silently across the room. The man heard me at the last moment but didn’t have time to turn completely before I struck him on the back of the head with the hilt of my sword. He slumped to the ground.
I took my crossbow back from my brother. Another guard would be around somewhere. “Aban, will you tie him up?” I whispered.
“We’ll go lock the other door,” Gil said as he and Eudocia rushed across the room to head down the other set of stairs.
Aban finished tying the guard’s hands and glanced around the guardroom. The winch system that controlled the inner portcullis and the wheel to raise and lower it took up most of the space. A table for the guards stood on one edge of the room, with supplies on the far side. Even with everything the room held, there was space for a dozen men to wage war on anyone who threatened their end of the gatehouse.
“Once those doors are barred, the only other way into this room is through the other side of the gatehouse, right?” he asked.
“And from the walls, but Micer’s men are supposed to cut off those routes.” I peered across the smaller courtyard, designed so the garrison could hold a group there, between the gates. If the group proved hostile, the defenders could rain down arrows and crossbow bolts and slaughter whoever was trapped inside.
I checked the supplies. Scores of crossbow bolts waited for us. If things went according to plan, we wouldn’t need them. But if anyone tried to attack, the room was designed to fire at the enemy from either side, and it had a good line of sight to parts of the wallwalk.
When Gil and Eudocia returned, we headed across the raised walkway leading to a room much like the one we’d left, with a few holes in the floor and ceiling for the chains that controlled the portcullis, and arrow slits for shooting at anyone attacking the acropolis. The room had space for a score of men to maneuver their weapons and fire through the narrow openings, but the table was set with only one meal, and it was abandoned.
A staircase spiraled up, leading to a smaller room with a wheel, and from there, a narrow staircase led to the top of the gatehouse tower. No guards waited in those areas either. When we returned to the guardroom, Aban tugged on a trap door to reveal a ladder leading to the small courtyard below, currently blocked off on either end by the lowered portcullises.
“There were supposed to be two guards.” I kept my voice to a whisper. Everything else Cecilia had told us was true, so a feeling that we were missing something gnawed at me. She’d told us when the guards rotated duty, and we’d purposely come in the middle of the watch, when the previous group would have had sufficient time to retire to bed and long before the next watch would rise to relieve those currently working. The other guard was supposed to be here, but he wasn’t.
“We could raise the portcullis now.” Gil glanced at the chains. “But that would alert all the watchmen, and Micer’s soldiers might not have their positions set up yet.”
A distant shout pierced the night air. I ran back along the walkway to the other side of the gatehouse structure because that was where the sound had come from. The others followed. Before we were halfway across, a second shout sounded, then a third.
I rushed to the half wall of the guardroom that showed the acropolis’s main courtyard. Watchmen waved torches in some type of signal, and soldiers poured from the barracks. A bell clanged loudly enough to wake everyone within the curtain walls.
“Did she betray us?” Aban asked.
“No.” Eudocia dragged a barrel of crossbow bolts closer to her position. “The men coming from the barracks aren’t armored. If they’d been planning an ambush, they would be dressed. They were sleeping. Someone must have seen one of Micer’s men. Or the missing guard saw us and slipped away to sound the alarm.”
“Can you tell if Micer’s men set up their barriers?” I could see groups of soldiers fighting on the northern wallwalk, but along the south side, I couldn’t tell if any of our allies were ready to fight our enemies.
“I don’t think so.” Eudocia’s voice shook just a little.
The Catalans knew we were here, and they would soon be charging the gatehouse.