Fires of the Faithful (39 page)

Lucia’s hand tightened gently over mine. “Amedeo is a foolish old man. Gèsu never said anything one way or the other.”

We lay in silence for a moment, and Lucia brushed my cheek gently. “I am not as you are, Eliana. But I don’t believe that God thinks any less of you.”

I was comforted, though I felt an odd wrench at her
words,
I am not as you are
. But at least this didn’t fall into the strange category of things that the Redentori forbid. As Lucia’s hand fell away from my cheek, though, I remembered that Amedeo hadn’t said that the Redentori
had
this prejudice in common with the followers of the Lady; he had said that they
would have
this in common.
Amedeo is a crazy old man
, I told myself, my hand tightening on Lucia’s.
I’ve heard him say nothing that makes sense
.

We stared up at the stars for a long time. Then—“Look!” Lucia gasped, and I turned my head to see the shooting star.

“Do Redentori wish on shooting stars?” I asked.

“I’ve never heard anyone say we can’t,” she said. “There was an old woman in one of the villages I visited before the war—she said that a shooting star was the Archangel Michel coming to earth from heaven.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. So he can lead a battle on God’s side. Michel is
Aral Din
, the Angel of Justice. The patron of those who fight and die for God.”

“Like Beneto,” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “Or like you.”

I didn’t sleep that night.

•  •  •

As the sky lightened to gray, I got up quietly to go to the latrines, covering Lucia carefully so as not to wake her. I wished before long that I could have brought my cloak; I could see the puffs of my breath as steam in the air. I didn’t think I was likely to sleep, but by the time I was finished at the latrine, I had decided that I was going to go back and lie down next to Lucia again, just to get warm.

“Eliana.”

I turned to see Mario, his cloak pulled around his face.

“You’re in danger,” he hissed. “Come on. We need to get you somewhere hidden.”

“Isabella’s,” I said.

“No. They’ll look there. Come on.” He had brought an extra cloak, and flung it around my shoulders; I pulled the hood over my face. The cloak was so long it trailed on the ground, and he hustled me along toward the keep. I pulled the wool around me, shivering. I still wanted to be sleeping next to Lucia.

“Teleso has ordered your arrest,” he said.

“Lucia—”

“Is
not
in danger,” he said. “It’s you he wants.”

Mario led me through the back door into the stables. The two young men on guard duty there were Tomas and Plautio; they saluted me gravely as Mario led me in.

“Do you have a plan, then?” Mario asked. “Or will we need to smuggle you out?”

“I’m not leaving,” I said.

“You have a plan, then?”

“Yes.” I closed my eyes for a minute, tipping my head back to rest it against the wall of the stable. “I was almost ready to lead the breakout. I wanted a few more days—people tend to get drunk during Dono alla Magia, if there’s any wine at all to be had. But I could do it now. I just need a crowd.”

“There’s a crowd—”

“Not in the piazza. That’s Teleso’s territory and he knows it. North hill. I need a crowd on the north hill at dawn.” I opened my eyes again and looked Mario in the face. “Tell Michel. He’ll get people there.”

“What then?”

“Then I start the uprising,” I said, and tried to smile.

Tomas and Plautio hid me in the stables as Michel and Mario were sent out to gather the Ravenessi to the north
hill. All I could do at that point was to stay out of sight, so I huddled in a corner behind barrels of grain. The grain used for horse feed, I noticed, was better than what was fed to the Ravenessi. I wished I had Lucia with me, to keep me from worrying. Over and over, in my head, I rehearsed the words I was going to say. At one point, one of the horses snorted and stamped its foot, and I started with such force that I almost knocked over the barrels I was hidden behind. My heart pounded like a drum, and my head throbbed with each knock. My hands were shaking.

It’s just one of the horses
, I thought, pressing my cold hands against my forehead and trying to rub away the pain.
Nothing worth getting scared over
. I realized a moment later that I had thought—for an instant—that the noise was someone like Niccolo coming into the stable.
You’re going to be
leaving
the stable in a little while
, I thought.
Facing Teleso and Niccolo and all the other soldiers who won’t surrender. It’s a bit late to be getting scared now
.

I tried to focus again on what I would say, but the ache in my head and the sickness in my stomach were getting worse.
I’m sick
, I thought.
Lady’s tits, I’m getting a fever
. I pressed my palm against my forehead, but of course to my icy hands, anything would feel hot.
I can’t get sick now. I’d let down Lucia, Mario, Michel … and Giovanni would gloat
. That thought made me angry, and for a moment, I no longer felt afraid.
And Teleso would be so pleased that I’d failed
. I thought of Teleso laughing, his cold eyes brightening, his arm curling around Giula’s waist—

“Eliana.” Mario had come back so quietly that I hadn’t heard him. “Everything’s ready.”

I stood up. “Let’s go,” I said.

A handful of the soldiers closed in around me to conceal
me as I left the stable; when we reached the edge of the crowd at the north hill, I slipped out. The crowd parted to make way for me as I strode toward the north hill. Some lowered their eyes as I passed; others held out their fists in salute. I climbed to the top of the hill, painfully aware of what an easy target I made; the crowd fell silent as I turned to them.

“I have no music for you today,” I said. “The dancing that was needed has been done.”

Deep in the crowd, I could see Lucia and Giovanni. Lucia’s eyes burned with her own light, but Giovanni’s face was lit too—and I realized with shock that his eyes burned with faith in
me
. Suddenly, I was no longer afraid. I could face down Teleso. Nothing was going to stop me.

“We have the strength we need,” I said. “We have the will that we need.”

Mario moved along the edge of the crowd, speaking urgently to each soldier.

“The Circle killed my family,” I said. “They burned my farm and herded me here like a dog. Why? Because they are afraid of us. They are afraid of thousands of hungry, angry people, standing outside their gates in Cuore and shouting, ‘Why? Why did you fight this war? The Vesuviano army could have done nothing worse to us than you have done!’

“They have left us to starve. They
want
us to die—they want our skeletons to lie bleached in the sun like those of our families that they have killed. They want us to die quietly. They have treated us like dogs that they can shut away or kill at will. But we are not dogs any longer. We are
wolves
.”

The crowd cried out. “Yes!” I heard someone shout.

“We are the wolves,” I said. “We have learned to hunt as a pack. We have learned to bring down the shepherd
that would pick us off one by one with his crossbow. The sheep
Teleso
is now our easy prey. And we can
turn
on those who would leave us to starve!”

There was another cry from the crowd.

“Not all the soldiers are our enemies,” I said, and gestured so that people turned to face the soldiers that now ringed the edge of the crowd. “We are not the only ones who have been abandoned to die. They are prisoners as much as we are. Join us!” I shouted to the soldiers. “Cast aside Teleso and join us against our enemy. Against your enemy! Once we are dead Teleso will have no use for you, either. You are men, not monsters! You are not Teleso’s sheep—you are wolves, like us!”

Mario stepped forward, very deliberately. He held up a red sash, like the Lupi wore, for all to see, then tied it around his waist. Around him, other soldiers brought out red sashes and tied them on.

A cheer broke forth from the crowd.

“To the
keep
,” I shouted. “We will tear down the walls with our anger! We will break into the storehouse of food! We will water the hills of Ravenna with the
blood of our enemies
.”

I raised my fist, and the battle cry of the Ravenessi army echoed across the valley like a pack of a thousand wolves hunting under the full moon.

A
s I stood on the hillside, I heard a zip near my ear and heard Giovanni shout, “Look out!” Realizing that I was being fired on, I scrambled down the slope and into the mass of Ravenessi, and we started to run.

I could see very little from the middle of the crowd; once we were moving, I realized that I had no way of communicating with my army, no way to direct our actions.
To the keep
ran through the crowd like spilled water; I pushed my way toward the front of the refugee army, trying desperately to lead it.

There were so many of us! I could see soldiers scattering like leaves in wind. Many of the soldiers had followed Mario’s lead and joined us, their insignias ripped from their sleeves, and others threw their crossbows to the ground, getting as far out of our way as they could. I saw Isabella hit a soldier on the head with a short club, then rip the crossbow from his arms and turn it against his fellows.

I heard screams of pain around me as we reached the
keep and realized that we had been met with a torrent of crossbow bolts. I scanned the side of the keep, noticing the tiny narrow windows that provided just enough space for the bowmen to pick us off. Some of my men were trying to batter down the door. Where was Mario’s friend Bassio? I scanned the keep and with a sickening lurch of my stomach realized that his body swung from a rope out of one of the upper-story windows of the keep. “Oh no,” I whispered.

Another curtain of bolts fell on us and people scattered. Someone jerked on my arm—Giovanni. “Cover!” he shouted. “You idiot! We need to get under cover—don’t you realize they’re aiming for you?”

I let Giovanni drag me toward one of the residual walls at the edge of the piazza. “What now?” he asked.

“The soldier swinging by his neck was going to let us in,” I said.

Giovanni looked over the wall and quickly ducked back down. “Do you have a backup plan?” he asked.

“Got any suggestions?”

“Well, now is just a
grand
time to ask, Generale. You sure let us
think
you had everything under control.”

“Well, if you don’t, then—”

“We could leave,” he said. “Retreat now. The soldiers are in the keep; they’ll have to come out to follow us. We could get a head start—”

“We need the grain,” I said. “We
need
it. Or this is all for nothing—we’ll just starve even faster. Unless
you
had some ideas about how to feed our army.”

“You never asked,” he said.

“Well, do you?”

“No. Maybe if you’d asked earlier I’d have thought of something.”

Most of our army had found some cover by now, and we stared across the piazza. “Stalemate,” Giovanni said.

“Generale!”

I looked behind me as Mario ran up. “I can get us inside,” he said breathlessly.

“Bassio is dead,” I said.

Mario’s jaw tightened. “I know,” he said. “But I have another way. Through the south door. Get some people together to give us cover; the soldiers in the keep will fire as soon as we’re out in the open.”

I looked around, at a loss. The Lupi weren’t going to want to leave cover. Maybe if I left it first … I leapt up onto the wall I’d been hiding behind. “Follow me!” I shouted, and a new cheer went up from our army.

“What the hell,” Giovanni sputtered, but fortunately the crowd surged around me again and we ran through the rain of bolts.

The south door Mario had referred to was near the back of the keep, the smallest and grimiest entrance. We pushed and the door opened easily.

“How?” I asked as Mario passed me.

“Arianna,” he said. “She said she’d leave it open for us if she could.”

“I owe you,” I said.

“No,” he said. “You owe
her
.”

Our army surged into the keep. This was better; Teleso’s men would lose some of the advantages of their crossbows, firing along the twisting hallways of the keep. But it would be harder for us to use our numbers against them. “Spread out,” I said as my army surged in. “Open all the doors, set guards over anything of value. Find Teleso. Kill the ones who don’t surrender.
Tonight, Ravenna will be ours
.”

The wolves were on the hunt; the keep had become a trap. We could smell our prey, fleeing helplessly into the farthest corners. I found myself with Mario, Giovanni, Michel, and about a dozen more Lupi. Giovanni had a sword and a crossbow that he’d taken from a surrendering soldier; I realized, looking at him, that all I had to defend myself with was my knife.

“Upstairs,” Mario said, so we followed him up the narrow spiral. As we emerged into the corridor, there was a snap of a bolt hitting the wall, and we saw a soldier retreating into a room, trying frantically to reload his crossbow. It was Tullo, one of the boys who’d come to my concerts. As we advanced on him, he dropped the bow and drew his sword. “Traitors,” he said in a shaky voice. “We should have hanged you with Jesca and Beneto.”

“Wrong way to say you surrender,” Michel said, and the Lupi surged forward. Tullo got in one good swing, wounding someone across the arm, and then they ripped the sword out of his hands like the shepherd’s “bow” and threw it aside.

“Bastardo,” Michel said, and threw Tullo against the wall.
“Bastardo.”
I heard a coughing choke and saw a gush of red; one of the Lupi had stabbed Tullo in the chest. They backed off as Tullo fell onto his face, his hands grasping at the rug under him.

“I surrender,” Tullo choked, and died.

“Come on,” I said, willing my voice not to tremble. “We are wolves. This is war. Come on.”