I piled barrels in the embrasures to better shield us from incoming bolts. Gil and Aban did the same. The result wasn’t as safe as the arrow slits in the other guardroom, but it would help. Eudocia put out the torch so we’d be harder to see.
I positioned my crossbow along the top of a barrel. “I can hit anyone who comes toward us from the south side of the wall.” Unless they came in a large group or held their shields just right. They’d have to cross a stretch where they’d be exposed, but I could only reload so fast.
“We can rain down enough fire to hamper anyone trying to force the stairwells, at least for a while.” Eudocia picked up a spare crossbow and handed it to Gil. “Load that for me.”
Gil pulled back the string in one smooth tug. “They’ll overwhelm us if we don’t get reinforcements.” Gil was normally an optimist, but we all knew he spoke truth.
“I’ll go.” Of the four of us, I was the best with the sword, and we couldn’t afford to send more than one person to open and lift the outer gate and portcullis.
“There might be guards from the wall who can get to you without passing through us. And the diagram had other passages besides the main ones,” Eudocia reminded me. “Be careful.”
“Should I come with you?” Aban asked.
I shook my head. “No, you’ll have your hands full here.” They had to hold the guardroom because as soon as Micer’s army made it through the outer gate’s defenses, they would need to lift the inner portcullis.
I dashed along the walkway leading to the other guardroom. A crossbow bolt clicked into the wall just in front of me. Several shadows moved along the wall on the opposite side of the acropolis. I shot one with my crossbow and one of the men shot back. The bolt caught in my cloak, tugging the fabric but not piercing my skin. At the moment, speed was more useful than my sword or my empty crossbow, so I sprinted into the guardroom.
I pulled to a stop within the walls. My heart rate had spiked with the run, but now it seemed to stutter as my eyes focused on the woman waiting in the room.
Cecilia slid a lockbar into the brackets of a door and turned toward me. Despite the hour, she was dressed in a gown of crimson. Her hair was loose and uncovered and reflected the gold of the torchlight.
“You’re an angel,” I told her.
“Am I? I feel more like a traitor. There’s another passage there.” She pointed. “Most of the garrison knows about it.”
I had a hundred questions for her, but questions could wait. I ran through the corridor and heard footsteps coming toward me from the opposite direction. I tugged the heavy door from the wall and slammed it in Signor Bertaldo’s face. Behind him marched a dozen or more soldiers, but they wouldn’t have time to chop through the door before I got the portcullis up. Cecilia handed me the beam, and I slid it into place, where it would keep the door barred.
We ran back to the guardroom. “Just one more,” she said. “Unless you want to bar the one that leads to the walkway.”
I hoped it wouldn’t come to that—the walkway was visible to enemies along the wall, but it was also my connection to my friends. Cecilia ran toward another corridor but pulled back with a cry of surprise.
Signor Querini rushed from the passageway into the guardroom. He looked between the two of us and drew his sword, holding it in his right hand.
He held his left hand out to Cecilia. “Signorina Bertaldo, you are every bit as clever as your father was. What a brilliant snare you constructed. All the enemy’s most valuable assets divided and trapped in separate parts of the gatehouse.”
A look of horror crossed Cecilia’s face as she stepped away from him. “I wasn’t setting a trap.”
I wanted to believe her, but doubt gnawed at me. Regardless of whether she was working for me or Querini, I had a task to complete. Gil, Eudocia, and Aban couldn’t hold out for long, not with the garrison alerted and trying to seize the gatehouse. Nor would the doors blocking Cecilia’s uncle and his men hold indefinitely. I pulled the string of my crossbow back and inserted a bolt.
In a flash, Signor Querini grabbed Cecilia and yanked her in front of him. Perhaps he realized that while I might shoot him, I would never harm her. He held his sword to her neck. “Put your weapons down, or I’ll kill her.”
I took a step back, hoping to ease the tension. “You won’t kill her. Her talent is far too valuable, and so is her dowry.”
He glanced at Cecilia and kept the blade against her skin. “Her eye is impressive, isn’t it? I was at a loss when her father died. How would I ever gather such detailed, perfect information ever again? But then Signor Bertaldo the younger made mention of his niece and spoke of how unconventional his brother had been in teaching his lovely daughter all his skills. I could have my best agent back—all it took was a betrothal Signor Bertaldo was all too eager to agree to. But a spy who can’t be trusted is worth nothing.” He glanced at Cecilia before turning his attention back to me. “Better to destroy such talent than let it fall into the wrong hands.”
I’d only seen Querini that single day at the bathhouse. I didn’t know him well enough to tell whether he was bluffing. But Eudocia had marked him as ruthless. Cecilia knew him even better, and everything about her posture and her expression told me she was terrified. She believed he could kill her.
“Your time is running out, Messer the Moor. And her time.” His knuckles turned white on the hilt of his sword, and a mad look of defiance crossed his face.
I set my crossbow down, then pulled out my sword and let it fall to the ground.
Querini eased the pressure on Cecilia but held her fast when she tried to wiggle away from him. “Now the rest of your weapons.”
I slipped a knife from my boot and tossed it next to my sword.
“Is that all?”
I nodded.
“Does he carry anything else, my dear Signorina Bertaldo? You’ve spent more time with him than I have.”
“I don’t know.” Her voice trembled.
“With all the stories you’ve told of him, it seemed you knew him quite well. You can pick out every passage in a castle; surely you noted all the strengths and weaknesses of the hero who saved you from the Turks.” The bitterness of jealousy laced his words.
“I don’t know,” she repeated. “The Turks took all his weapons when we were captured.”
He seemed ready to pressure her further.
I held my hands out where he could see every movement I made. “I dropped my weapons. All of them. Let her go.”
Querini motioned me to the other side of the room, away from my weapons.
I obeyed, stepping around the chains that operated the portcullis and past the table with the guard’s abandoned meal. Querini kept an arm around Cecilia’s shoulders, but he lowered his blade. The moment he did, she stomped on his foot and jerked away.
Querini chuckled as she escaped. “My dear signorina, I would never really spill your blood. You’re far too valuable to me as an asset and as a bride. But perhaps it’s just as well that you don’t know that yet. Your fear was most convincing.”
I went for my sword, but Querini had only three paces to cross and I had eight. He blocked my weapons and slashed toward me. I ducked to evade. With scarcely a pause, he cut toward me again with a blow that held the power of years of training behind it. His blade sliced into my arm where it met my shoulder. Had I not been wearing armor, it would have dismembered me.
Cecilia screamed. I fell back to avoid another blow from Querini’s blade. The wound throbbed, and it would slow me down, but it hadn’t passed much deeper than my leather armor, mail, and skin. Maybe it had nicked a bit of muscle too. I grabbed a wooden plank kept handy to bar the door to the walkway and used that to block the next three cuts from Querini. I even pushed him back some, and each step I forced him to take gave me breathing room.
I didn’t have time to duel with Querini. My brothers and sister would run out of bolts, and I’d lose them to the enemy. I had to get the portcullis up and the gate open.
I swung the plank at Querini and connected with his shoulder. He growled and struck back. With his third blow, the plank splintered.
He pressed his advantage at once. He cut, and I ducked. He hewed, and I evaded. Our footwork was like a dance as we circled around the chains. He stayed between me and my weapons and fought with skill. With a few more swings, he drove me against the wall, and then I had no room to maneuver.
An amphora flew through the air and hit Querini’s back. It bounced off him and crashed into the floor, spilling wine into a puddle.
Next a cup hit his back, and then a bowl—still with the remnants of stew inside it—flew toward his head. He ducked, and it missed.
It was just enough of a distraction for me to get away from him. Cecilia slid my sword toward me, and I gripped the hilt in both hands.
Querini glared. “Signorina Bertaldo, when you are my wife, you will pay for that. You may be clever when it comes to stone and wood, but dishes do not weapons make.”
The anger etched into his face made me uncertain if he would attack me or Cecilia first. I didn’t give him the chance to decide. Now that I had my sword, I could meet him as an equal. My wound bled, but my arm still moved. I ran and cut toward him with my blade. He met my sword with his and held it, but he grimaced with the effort. I pushed him back, and he twisted around the puddle of wine to keep out of reach of my blade.
I caught him and slashed toward him. He parried, then took aim at me in turn. I blocked and held. Then he twisted around and slammed into my injured arm. The shock of pain took my breath away, and I stumbled back.
He hewed toward me again, and I caught his blade with my own. He disengaged, then swung. I blocked, then evaded the next stroke.
“You and your friends will all die today,” Querini taunted. “Then the woman you love will become my wife, subject to my every whim, and she’ll curse the day she met you.”
Rage burst through me. My injured arm was growing weaker, but I was fighting not just for myself. I couldn’t fail, because Gil, Eudocia, and Aban depended on me to save them from death. And Cecilia depended on me to save her from misery.
I cut at Querini with sharp, hard strikes. He parried the first and second, but then I caught him under his arm, and my blade went to the bone.
“Ahh!” He cried and fell back.
Despite his injury, he managed to block my next cut. Then he threw his sword at me like a spear. I flinched to the side to avoid it.
He turned and ran into the passage he’d come through. I chased after him but had to slow in the darkness. His shadow slipped through a narrow doorway, and as I reached it, the door slammed in my face.
I gave the door a powerful kick. It didn’t budge. Revenge and prudence called for me to break it down and finish him off. But my friends had only so many crossbow bolts. Now that I wasn’t running, I could hear the thump and screech of a battering ram trying to breach the stairwell that would allow an overwhelming force access to the guardroom where they fought. Their enemies could break down the door to them more quickly than I could break down the door to Querini.
“Rasheed?” Cecilia walked cautiously into the passage and wrapped her arms around me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes.” I kissed the top of her head and shifted my sword to one hand so I could give her a brief embrace. There wasn’t time for more. “Come, I have to finish this.”
I led her back into the guard room. I paused long enough to pick up my knife and tuck it into my belt. Then we raced up the stairs to the room with the portcullis’s winch. I sheathed my sword without cleaning it. “Will you help me?”
She nodded and added her strength to mine as I pushed on the wheel that would raise the portcullis. Starting the motion was difficult, and we both strained, but once the counterweights were in motion, turning it became easier. The heavy chains groaned and rattled as the counterweight went down and the portcullis came up. My arm ached, but I kept going. Defeating the Catalans would mean peace for me and my friends, and victory seemed only a few breaths away.
“Most of Micer’s men are supposed to be waiting outside of crossbow range,” I said. “They were expecting us to raise the portcullis at dawn, but we’re early. The signal is a torch waving from the tower. Can you do that?”
“Yes.” Cecilia grabbed a torch from a sconce in the wall.
“Keep your head down. The Catalans might aim for you. Only the top of the torch need show through one of the embrasures.”
Cecilia disappeared. I locked the winch and ran down the stairs to the guardroom below. I yanked open the trap door and climbed down the ladder. Pain tugged at my arm as I moved along each rung, but the sounds of a desperate struggle between the defenders and my friends in the inner guardroom kept me moving. I winced as I raised the main gate’s heavy lockbar over the metal prongs and let it fall to the ground, then I kicked at the hefty wooden bar to nudge it back and pulled open part of the gate.
Footsteps sounded from the shadows of the smaller courtyard. I turned, expecting to see one of my friends or Cecilia. Instead, Querini appeared. He hefted a crossbow to his hip. I dove away from the gate, but I wasn’t quick enough. A bolt slammed into my side, and I landed hard on the paved floor of the acropolis entrance.
The pain made it hard to breathe. Blood streamed from my wound, and a weakness poured over me that was so intense I could barely lift my sword.
Querini stepped closer and stomped on the end of my blade. He armed the crossbow and slid another bolt into place. “You almost stole another city. Almost. But I’ll take care of the gate and the portcullis as soon as I take care of you. And then the Catalans will overwhelm your friends, and the troops outside will be unable to help them.”
I needed time. As long as Cecilia had shown the torch, Micer’s men were coming, and they had neither portcullis nor locked gate to stop them. “Why did you side with the Catalans?”
“We worked out an arrangement while I was held hostage. Freedom, money, and influence in exchange for my assistance.”
“They can hire mercenaries for less than a man like you would demand.” Each word took effort, but I wanted to know.
Querini kept the crossbow pointed at me. “But I know more than other men, so my services are priceless. I have information they want, and they have information I want. They also have the influence to call off the Turks who are hunting my best asset. It will take me some time to convince her, but I’m sure Signorina Bertaldo will come to see her alignment with you as a mistake. I just have to show her that your goals threatened Venice.”
Querini might protect Cecilia from the Turks, but she deserved more than a life as a spy. She deserved to be loved for all her attributes, not just the ones that were useful to a man like Querini. I eased my hand off my wound and slowly slid it toward my belt.
“I’d explain more”—Querini adjusted his aim—“but I’ve a gate to lock and a portcullis to close, though the latter I might drop just as Micer Aner walks under it. Trap him and part of his army in the gatehouse courtyard where they’ll be slaughtered.”
My fingers brushed the handle of my knife. I plucked it from my belt and threw it at Querini as I rolled toward my sword. He released the crossbow bolt as my knife hit his stomach, but the bolt plowed into the ground rather than into me.
Querini stumbled, and the crossbow fell from his grip. His foot now balanced on only part of my sword. I gathered all my strength and ripped the blade free. The effort sent waves of pain from the bolt in my side and the cut in my arm. I yelled and stabbed my sword up into the Venetian spymaster. The sword stuck, and as he fell to the ground, he pulled it from my grasp. I was unarmed now—both blades were buried in Querini’s flesh. But he was no longer a threat.
He lay near my feet, wheezing and coughing and moaning. I didn’t even have the strength to lift my head to look at him.
My breath came in painful pants. That last effort had cost me, in pain and ability. The edges of my vision turned gray and spotty. I closed my eyes and tried to think of anything other than the agony in my side. I could no longer hear the thuds of the battering ram, but I wasn’t sure if that was because it had stopped and the enemy was overwhelming my friends or because my hearing was following my eyesight.
“Rasheed!” Cecilia’s voice. Shrill and full of worry.
I opened my eyes for just a moment to see her fair hair and gray eyes. She was close, kneeling over me. I needed to say something, but all that came out when I opened my mouth was a groan of pain. She put pressure on my side, probably with a cloth, but I couldn’t see it.
“Rasheed, keep breathing, please. Stay here with me. There’s so much I haven’t told you.”
I wanted to obey, but the darkness took me.