The Traitor's Daughter (46 page)

A brief flight of arrows winged from a quartet of second-story recessed windows. A couple of them missed. One of them pierced a Taerleezi throat whose owner fell, still clutching the blue banner. Another struck glancingly off Aureste’s cuirass; had the arrow hit squarely, it might well have penetrated the steel.

Aureste turned without visible haste and went back the way he had come, followed by his surviving guard. Once clear of the courtyard, he ordered the two cannon advanced to the gap in the wall and trained full on the doorway through which his attackers had vanished.

“Break them,” he commanded, and as dawn rose the bombardment commenced.

* * *

The destruction of Ironheart’s front portal was easily accomplished. A duo of cannon blasts reduced the door to splinters and scrap metal, but gaining entry was another matter. From the smoking ruin of the doorway issued swarms of arrows, shot by invisible archers. Likewise invisible were the marksmen shooting from the narrow windows slitting the first and second stories. Attempted incursion provoked deadly flights reinforced by flung canisters of powder trailing short lighted fuses.

Equipped with the best helmets, body armor, and advanced weaponry, the expensive Taerleezis suffered few casualties. Aureste’s own household guards, almost as well protected, fared similarly. The self-accoutered tavern hirelings, however, were suffering, and Aureste was obliged to order them back out of range. Tactical revisions were indicated.

Double cannon fire blasting through the demolished doorway into the bowels of the stronghouse doubtless wrought internal havoc. This accomplished, Aureste moved artillery and some men to the rear of the building, where a brief thunder of big guns destroyed the kitchen door, effectively dividing the defenders’ force. Arrows winged from the rear windows, while the attackers’ return crossbow fire bounced harmlessly off the stone walls. Aureste accordingly repositioned his cannon, ordering the gunners to sight on specific windows. Massive projectiles commenced battering Ironheart’s second story, front and rear.

The day wore on. The cannonade continued, and the walls of Ironheart, stout though they were, began to display the effects of the judiciously directed pounding. Half a dozen windows had been enlarged from slits to jagged rents. No less than five defenders, attempting to fire from those formerly protected positions, had been picked off by Taerleezi marksmen. In the midafternoon, a well-aimed cannonball smashed through the second-story masonry dividing a pair of expanded windows to tear a great hole in the wall above the front door, whose defense waxed problematic.

Disinclined to sacrifice his own men without need, Aureste made no attempt to hasten matters. Another three hours of crashing assault wrought gaping damage upon Ironheart’s front façade while claiming the lives of assorted defenders. Arrow flights from within thinned, but the raising of the white-and-black banner, signaling the attacker’s demand for surrender, went unacknowledged. He had expected that communication to draw a counteroffer, bartering his daughter’s life and safety for advantageous terms, but there was nothing. Perhaps they feared to provoke him with an ultimatum, or perhaps they had nothing to bargain with; they had already killed her.
Or his own cannon fire had killed her
.

He would roast the Widow Yvenza alive.

The bombardment continued, and now the plumes of black smoke billowing from the ruined windows hinted of interior fires blazing out of control. The white banner of surrender never appeared, but the force of the defensive volleys was undeniably diminishing. When the shadows were starting to stretch and Ironheart’s façade was cracked, pocked, and riddled with holes, Aureste judged it time to throw his strength simultaneously against front and rear doorways. At the front, the resistance held firm. At the back, defense was weaker and a band of the skilled Taerleezis succeeded in beating their way into the kitchen, where the opposition of the homespun household guards and servants was swiftly crushed. The Taerleezis ranged efficiently and unstoppably through the ground-floor rooms and galleries, killing as they went. When they reached the front door, they engaged its defenders, who—caught between attacking forces—died to a man. Whooping guardsmen poured in through the front door, and after that it was only a matter of searching through the stronghouse to eliminate all remaining pockets of resistance. Before the winter daylight began to fail, the Taerleezi troops’ standard flew from the tallest turret.

Ironheart had fallen.

* * *

When the stronghouse had been properly searched and its surviving defenders thoroughly subdued, Aureste entered. His immediate demand for news of his daughter drew no satisfactory response from the Taerleezi squadron leader. No female remotely answering the missing maidenlady’s description had been discovered within the confines of the stronghouse; no living girl, no corpse, nothing. And it flashed through Aureste’s mind in the course of a horrible fraction of a second that it had all been a gigantic error. He had misinterpreted, he had placed his reliance upon huge assumptions, he had willfully deceived himself, and all this costly, destructive effort had been in vain. Jianna was not here and never had been.

Not possible. Unacceptable. They were hiding her somewhere and he would compel them to relinquish her. He would use any and all necessary means.

He wanted a room in which to conduct an interrogation, and they led him to a chamber of moderate size, almost undamaged, apparently used as a dining hall. A long table still bore the drying remnants of a surprisingly lavish meal. Ordering the remains removed and the lamps lit, he seated himself and was immediately approached by one of his own household guards, the same youngster who had carried his written message into Ironheart hours earlier.

“Magnifico, a word,” the youngster requested, guarded demeanor and suppressed tone conveying confidential intent.

Aureste inclined his head.

“Sir, we’ve sorted through the dead, and there’s one of them you should know about. Middle-aged fellow, looking like he was hit by flying rubble during the bombardment, carrying papers identifying him as an Orezzian East Reach Traveler. That’s somebody. Didn’t know if you’d want these Taerleezi cocks getting wind of it. Orders, sir?”

“Remove all identification and burn it. Discreetly,” Aureste commanded. “You’ve done well—Drocco, isn’t it?”

“Aye, sir.”

“Expect a reward, Drocco.”

“Thank you, sir.” The enterprising youngster saluted and withdrew.

No sooner had he left than another of the Belandor personal guards presented himself, bearing some sort of a bundle.

“Magnifico, we’ve found something, if you please,” the fellow announced. “Found it in a little sleeping chamber up top.”

“Show me,” Aureste ordered, barely containing his impatience.

The guard shook out his bundle, which unfolded into a woman’s cloak of garnet wool trimmed with bands of black fox. The garment was soiled and tattered, its once rich fur matted, but perfectly recognizable. It was the traveling cloak that Jianna had worn the morning she departed Vitrisi. She had been wearing it the last time he had seen her.

Hope and fear ignited inside him. He concealed both. Frozen-faced, he emptied the room of all save a handful of the most professional of Taerleezis, then ordered the surviving members of the outlaw Belandor clan brought before him. Their number, he knew full well, would not include the proscribed Magnifico Onarto. He could only hope that Onarto’s widow still lived, for she, beyond doubt, had stolen his daughter and attempted his life, and she merited his closest attention.

Slow minutes passed before his prisoners appeared, only three in number. One of them, a towering and powerfully built young man, square and broad of expressionless face, pale-eyed, and seemingly unhurt. A second, another young man resembling the first in feature and coloring, but evidently wounded, his right hand and arm bound in bandages. A couple of guards bore him in on a makeshift stretcher, which they deposited upon the floor. And the third, the object of real interest, the Widow Yvenza; hair streaked with grey and face bitterly lined, but otherwise much as he remembered her from a quarter century past. Still tall, upright, strong, and vital. Still square and grim of jaw, still hard and compelling of eye.

She was inspecting him with equal attention, taking in every detail. The set of her lips altered almost imperceptibly, the minute change conveying eloquent contempt. He had forgotten that mute disdain of hers, forgotten how it had always roused his anger together with the uneasy sense that she saw him too clearly and understood him too well. He had all but forgotten, too, how greatly he disliked the woman, as he had never disliked her husband, the harmless, simple Onarto.

“Cousin Aureste.” Yvenza shook her head as if bemused. “You’ve grown so very old.”

Disregarding the taunt, Aureste inquired levelly, “These are your sons?” His gesture encompassed her two fellow prisoners.

“You ought to know them, cousin. You lived with my boys Onartino and Trecchio at Belandor House years ago, when my late husband in his charity took you in and sheltered you after the war. They are your own kin, closer to you than perhaps you realize.”

The woman’s voice and manner somehow contrived to hint at secret and highly satisfying knowledge. Ridiculous, of course. Vanquished and wholly powerless, she still imagined herself capable of besting him upon some mental level. He had no interest in continuing a battle that he had already won.

“Cooperate fully and I will spare the lives of your sons,” he informed her. “Resist, and I will slaughter them both before your eyes.”

“Surely not, cousin. You were never one to dirty your own hands in the presence of witnesses.”

Her insolence under the circumstances was remarkable. Perhaps it sprang from despair, but she scarcely appeared defeated, much less hopeless, and still she maintained her air of secret knowledge. A pose, an attitude, that he would not deign to acknowledge.

“I’ll not duel with you, madam,” he told her. “The contest is over and I have won it. Restore my daughter and I’ll allow you to live. But act quickly, my patience is limited.”

“The duel.” Yvenza nodded. “But can you truly count yourself a victor, cousin, so long as the prize eludes your grasp? This missing daughter of yours—this wayward wonder—shall we speak of her? How long has she been lost to you? Have you received no word from her, no intelligence of her whereabouts, no ransom demand? If not, how cruel the uncertainty! Tell me, do you not dream of her at night? Do you not imagine her helpless in the hands of strangers, imprisoned, tortured, dishonored and degraded, crying aloud for the father who never comes to her rescue?”

Aureste felt his blood surge. Suppressing all outward sign of rage and terror, he replied mellifluously, “I have come now. You paint ugly pictures of the imagination, madam. How much uglier to see them enacted in reality, before your eyes, upon the bodies of your sons?”

“You speak recklessly, cousin, without consideration of consequences. Perhaps advancing age has begun to erode your intellect. There is no telling, is there, what sort of situation your daughter presently endures—assuming that she still lives. Your Taerleezi hirelings have searched this house from top to bottom and they’ve discovered nothing. You know now that she is not here—if in fact she ever was.”

“Her cloak has been found. She was here, and may still be, locked away in some secret closet or cabinet. I will tear the house apart stone by stone, or perhaps I’ll simply tear the flesh piecemeal first from your sons’ bones, and then from your own.”

“And still you will find nothing, for I’ll satisfy your paternal curiosity so far as to assure you that your girl isn’t here in this house, and that you may believe. Where then could she be? The possibilities are almost limitless. Might she, for example, find herself imprisoned in some hut or cave deep in the woods, guarded by those under orders to strangle her at a certain hour should they fail to receive word from me or mine? Distressing, yes, but at least a hut or cave offers shelter. What if she has none? What if she has been stripped and chained to some tree or rock, left naked to the winter winds and the appetites of beasts, both four-legged and two-legged?

“On the other hand, what if she is sheltered more closely than she could possibly desire? Have you ever heard the tale of the abduction of Count Moverna’s oldest son? No? It is an education. It seems that the kidnappers—masters that they were of cruelty and cunning—placed the stolen child in a sizable box, which they buried six feet deep in a wooded wasteland, with only a narrow tube ascending from the box to the surface allowing passage of air. The ransom was paid promptly, the location of the box was disclosed, and the count’s son was recovered, still alive, but so damaged by his ordeal that he was never robust thereafter, but grew up sickly, melancholy, and timorous.

“The child’s suffering lasted only a matter of hours. What might the result have been had it continued longer? Who can begin to imagine the agony of a youthful prisoner, trapped, buried alive, lying there alone in the cold and the darkness of her grave? Can words convey her sense of horror as the endless hours expire, as the small store of food and water left with her is exhausted, as the air grows foul and nauseous with the stench of her wastes, as her voice grows hoarse with the screaming that goes unheard? Assuming that the air tube isn’t blocked with mud or leaves, she might live thus for many days—each one a torturous eternity. These are such matters as you may wish to consider, cousin, before you go crowing to the world of your great victory.”

He wanted very much to kill her. He wanted to plunge his sword into her vitals and watch her blood flow. At the same time he was conscious of the most abject desire to plead with her, to offer anything and everything in exchange for Jianna’s safe return. Aureste indulged neither impulse. When he answered, his rich voice was particularly musical. “It would seem that you imagine yourself capable of bargaining with me, of naming demands or even setting terms. You delude yourself. For your own sake, abandon this folly.”