The Venetian (28 page)

“Will they believe you?”

“Perhaps, perhaps not. It is not what they believe however that is important. It is what they can prove. We have covered our tracks well enough I think.”

Paolo wanted to say that proof had very little to do with it, but held his tongue. And then it was time for him to go. They said their goodbyes, each man putting on a confident face he did not feel. His mother, Ciro, his father, Bercu, Chaya, Esther, Adnah. Too many goodbyes.

***

AH, BUT THIS
was wonderful! The
Provveditori
were even more incompetent than he imagined. Qilij watched with amusement as the deception unfolded in the harbor, the three officials and their soldiers returning to their positions to await Avesari who, Qilij suspected, would never come. They were obviously hoping this was simply a case of their seizing the wrong man, but Qilij recognized it for what it was. It seemed that he wasn’t the only one who had been watching the
Provveditori
. This was a stroke of good fortune indeed. Avesari was gone, that much was clear. What was less certain however was where he was going. Qilij did not know the extent of his support. Did he have the resources to hide in the wilderness or did he have to make for a port, and a ship off the island?

He had pored over maps of Crete before coming, its geography, towns, and ports. If he were fleeing the island he would head east. If not, the options were far more numerous. It was logical that even if he were to stay on the island, he might still head east because eventually he would need to leave. Better to be closer to an escape route when the time came than farther away. One thing Qilij did know was that he could no longer shadow the
Provveditori
. They knew even less than he did. Gabriele would be pleased. There was still a chance of getting to Avesari first, of making him disappear and sending the
Provveditori
home empty-handed.
If
Qilij guessed correctly. It was time to go.

***

“WE NEED MORE
men.”

Turri looked at Utino with distaste. They were back on Turri’s terrace in the Ducal Palace, wine, cheese, and bread on a low table untouched. “Why? Why do we need more men? We were not overpowered or outmanned. We were careless. Would the outcome at the harbor have been any different if we had had ten, twenty, a hundred more men?”

“Pietro…”

“No, it would not,” said Turri, answering his own question.

He is too proud
thought Doro. They had met with the Duke earlier. He had heard what had happened. Everyone, it seemed, had heard what had happened despite the fact that the harbor was nearly deserted at the time. Turri acted as though it were a minor setback, something he had almost expected. The smiles were forced, the levity strained. Doro could see that the Duke did not like Turri, the failure almost pleasing to Donato. He was sure that Turri had recognized it as well. All the more reason to not request any additional assistance. His reputation had been tainted. He had something to prove.

“More men would be a hindrance,” he continued. “What we need now, even more than before, is speed and surprise.” Turri reached down and tore a piece of bread from the loaf, brandishing it like a weapon as he spoke, his voice rising in agitation. “We are six to his one!”

More accurately three to his one
thought Doro. It was so like Turri to include them as part of the fighting detachment, however the
Provveditori
would not be leaping into the fray.

“There is no excuse,” Turri said sulkily.

Utino risked speaking again. “We have no idea where he went.”

Rather than upsetting him, the comment seemed to cheer Turri. “Of course we do,” he said, smiling. “He’s gone to Rethymno.”

***

HE HAD TRIED
to stay off the road and travel under the cover of darkness as Adnah had suggested. It had not been a good combination. In Venice, the natural world was a thing to admire, the sky and water on display for their beauty, framed by the magnificent city. Every step one took had been built. Here, in the dark, it was a hostile thing.

After two nights in the countryside, Paolo was battered and bruised, blood from a dozen cuts crawling down his arms and legs. Tree roots grasped at his ankles, thorny bushes clutched at bare flesh. It was impossible to navigate without being familiar with the terrain, difficult even in daylight. Periodically he would hear something scrabbling on the hillside and freeze, holding his breath and his knife at the ready. Later, through the milky veil of dawn, he could see the source of the sounds, the darting shapes of the
kri kri
, Crete’s revered mountain goats, bounding from one precarious outcropping to another without so much as a pause to consider the way. He would have to take some chances on the road. Otherwise he would never make it. In the dark he could easily walk off a ledge and break a leg, or trip over a gnarled tree and crack open his skull like a melon.

The sun was warm, the spring now arrived for good. Paolo sat on a dense carpet of pine needles, his back against a wide tree in the shade of a grove of tall pines. He nibbled on his bread and cheese, conserving as much as he could. He wasn’t sure when he would be able to replenish his food supply. He could hear the low murmur of a stream nearby, a reminder that his water jug was nearly empty. He would fill it before moving on. He wasn’t far from the road now, and had to move further into the trees. He would travel by day he decided, when he could, when the trees and brush were thick enough to conceal him. Otherwise he would stick to the edge of the road at night, observing as much as he could with his other senses. He was not overly confident in this plan, but he shrugged off his doubts. What else could he do? He had very few options at the moment.

He saw them before he heard them, two men moving quickly, snatches of arms and legs appearing and disappearing behind the trunks of trees like ghosts in a children’s story. He cursed, quickly surveying his surroundings, looking for an escape route, something he should have done before sitting down to eat. He was tired and getting careless. And it may have just cost him his life.

He was on a sloping ridge overlooking the road. He stuffed the food back into his bag and scuttled down the hill, hugging a tree to stop his momentum. He peered down at the road. Empty. He hesitated. No, they were there, he knew. There were too many places to hide, and these men knew these woods. He would have to go up, a course less comforting, but at least it offered him a slim chance of escape. He wasn’t sure if they had seen him or not. If they hadn’t, there was still a chance he could find a place to hide. If they had, it was already over—he just didn’t know it yet.

He scrambled back up the hillside as quietly as he could manage, slipping on the pine needles, clutching at the loose soil with his fingers. He glanced up, saw no one, heard nothing save his own breath, thunderous in his ears. Coarse rock littered the hillside. They looked like stony fingers thrust through the surface, piercing the earth as though frozen in mid eruption. Perhaps there was a small crevice he could conceal himself in until dark, if he could manage to get there without being spotted.

He had to calm down. He had come too far to be taken now, and by bandits no less. He stopped, shut his eyes, and steadied his breathing. He glanced back up the hill and saw the geography more clearly now. He laid flat on the carpet of needles. The grove of pines thinned out some ninety feet up the hillside where the land became more barren, large boulders littering the terrain. That was too far, too open. He had to remain in the trees. The smaller, protruding rocks were his only hope. One such formation was up and to his right, a little less than sixty feet away he estimated. There were thick trees for about half the distance, then a clearing of bright light where the canopy thinned, then more trees and the rocks. He began to crawl, dragging his bag along the ground to keep its contents from making noise. Each movement sounded like an explosion. The salt from his sweat stung his eyes.

He had gone no more than fifteen feet when he heard the shouts. There were more than two of them now, many more, emerging from the trees, men where there had been nothing before. And they had seen him. He scrambled to his feet, slipped on the needles, got up, and ran back toward the road. His choice to move up the hillside had been a poor one. He had been crawling into the lion’s mouth. He glanced back over his shoulder as he ran. What struck him in those final seconds wasn’t fear or even despair. It was admiration. The bandits were leaping from boulder to boulder, crevice to ledge like the
kri kri
. He found himself wondering how men could do such a thing.

He turned back in time to realize that he had been facing the wrong direction for a breath too long. A tree root caught his ankle and he was suddenly off his feet, in the air. The lip of the ridge that led down the hill sailed by, the tree trunks a brown smear against the blue of the sky, and the millions of crushed stones of the road rushed up to meet him.

***

WHY DOES ALLAH
test me so?
Qilij could not believe it. What did he have to do to kill this man? When he had headed east and spied the traitor after only a day and a half, he had thought his luck changed. The pursuit, effortless as it was, was still exhilarating, freeing him from his cell of monotonous lingering. Avesari was no woodsman and Qilij had shadowed him, like a hawk might a rodent, waiting for the perfect moment to strike. His death, although unseen by the world, would be a thing of beauty nevertheless. He had waited so long, wanted to savor this moment now that it had finally arrived. But the fool had marched right into a group of filthy bandits. Qilij would have to rethink his plans.
He may already be dead
he reminded himself. It had been a terrific fall, Avesari lying motionless on the road, a pile of bones. They had taken him back up the hillside like a felled boar for supper. Qilij hadn’t followed, but they would be easy enough to track.

The question now was, what should he do? If Avesari wasn’t already dead from the fall, he most likely soon would be. The bandits will have searched his bag, realized he had nothing of value. They would see that he was a Venetian and would doubtless be unable to check their anger. Perhaps they would slit his throat while he was still unconscious. Perhaps, if they were anything like Qilij, they would wait until he awoke, eyes wide, and slit his throat then so he would know his fate. Either way he was probably dead and not, Qilij in his frustration had to admit, by his hand. But there was always a chance. He would not give up his prize just yet. If they did not mean to kill him, Qilij had to protect his prey, at least for a while. It was likely that those preening peacocks, the
Provveditori
, would be arriving shortly—if they had any sense. If that were the case, they would surely be intercepted by the bandits and would learn of Avesari’s whereabouts should he miraculously manage to remain alive.

Too many if’s
he thought. He would track the bandits to their camp and assess the situation. Avesari would either be dead or about to be killed. Perhaps they would torture him first. He wanted the traitor for himself, but Qilij had to be realistic. The bandits were likely decent fighters. No match for him of course, but even the greatest of warriors could not hope to defeat a swarm of rabid men. He swept angrily at the loose soil, spraying dirt. He had to stop this infernal speculation. It did him no good. He would wait to see for himself.

***

TURRI WAS IMPATIENT.
They were two days outside Candia and had been moving too slowly, too carefully, the others blathering on about bandits like old women. The vermin in the mountains, he had tried to explain, would not dare attack Venetian officials and soldiers. They were like rats, small and weak, using the darkness to frighten travelers. Any show of strength would keep them in their holes. He was also not as confident as he pretended to be. Avesari heading east was the most likely scenario it was true, but anything was possible. The man seemed to have a knack for the unpredictable. If they were going the wrong way, Turri would prefer to do it quickly and discover their mistake sooner.

The late afternoon sun was still warm, but the evening chill was not far off. There was no village close enough to reach by nightfall. As they were here on official business, the villagers would have been obliged to feed them, care for their horses, and put them up for the night. Instead they would have to camp. Another reason they should have been moving more quickly. They had entered a wide cleft in the hills, the road meandering through a small valley, the hills sloping away at a sharp angle. The sun-bleached rock of the road curved into and out of the basin like a coarse white snake. The floor of the valley was dotted with wildflowers. Turri halted the party.

“We’ll camp here,” he said, pointing to a clearing just off the road, “where the road leaves the valley. Anyone following our same path will be spotted once they enter the basin.”

The men dismounted from their horses and Nicolo immediately took charge of setting the camp, first sending Maffeo off to gather wood for a fire. It was decided that Bernardo would take the first watch.

“Are we building a fire for warmth or for meat?” Utino asked no one in particular, brushing the dust from his traveling cloak, his expression hopeful. They had changed back into their official garments, Turri reasoning that no bandit would dare incur the wrath of official Venice. Utino thought it made them more of a target.

Nicolo answered first, tired of Turri playing soldier. “We should eat only what we have brought. While the bandits present no real danger, there is no reason to alert them to our presence by bounding after something as silly as a rabbit, succulent though it may be.” Utino was disappointed by the news. Another night of bread and cheese. Turri said nothing, and simply nodded as though the logic was sound. Nicolo breathed a small sigh of relief.

***

MAFFEO SCANNED THE
hillside. This wasn’t going to be as easy as he had thought. He had welcomed the diversion when Nicolo sent him on his errand, wanting to stretch his legs after the long hours on the road. But now he saw that finding wood for the fire would not be just a matter of collecting sticks from the ground. The soil was rocky and loose. Solitary trees, stunted in most cases and all leaning in the same direction, were scattered across the hillside. Low bushes and tall grasses that swayed in the soft breeze offered a green and brown mosaic extending to the top of the hill, meeting the blue and white sky. It looked like a place where the wind could be fierce, the vegetation huddling close to the ground for protection.