Chapter 68: First Blood on the Battlements

The iron caught with a scrape sharp enough to stop every breath on the rope.

Vito wrapped the rope twice around his forearm, braced one boot against the stone, and started to climb before his courage could find an objection.

The old mortar crumbled under him more than once, and twice his boot found empty air.

On either side, other ropes brought their climbers up the wall, the whole affair making no more noise than tight hemp and men trying very hard to breathe silently.

Far along the better-lit battlement, two shadows moved in the glow of a brazier, spears beside them. Every now and then both glanced towards the harbor, and never once bothered to look at the stone beneath their own feet.

Rethymno hadn’t gone blind. It had merely decided, after weeks of harbor gossip and one day of ships making a great deal of noise, that whatever threatened it tonight was somewhere else.

Halfway up, with his shoulders already complaining about the climb, the letters appeared at the edge of his sight, patient and unwelcome as ever.

🦁 [BATTLE OVERVIEW — SIEGE OF RETHYMNO]

COMPAGNIA DEL LEONE NERO

Vitale’s Detachment : 32 Armored Footmen

Zaccaria’s Detachment : 32 Armored Footmen

Orso’s Detachment : 32 Armored Footmen

Pellegrino’s Detachment : 32 Armored Footmen

Domenego’s Detachment : 32 Armored Footmen

RETHYMNO’S GARRISON (ESTIMATED)

Household Retainers and Hired Swords : 50-100 Armored Footmen

City Levy : Low Hundreds of Militia

⚔ [QUEST ISSUED]

The Siege of Rethymno

Rethymno’s senior nobles have chosen prison over selling out their city, and that presents itself as an opportunity. Find where they are being imprisoned and release them, then use their influence to liberate the city from the traitors hands.

Take over the city, in the name of the Republic.

Reward : 200 Fate

Reward : ???

I’ve dressed your guesswork up for once. Try not to embarrass either of us by being wrong.

The rope called him back to business before he could enjoy the insult, and he gave it his attention.

Vito came over the parapet breathing hard, his boots scraping the stone loudly enough to make him wince for half a heartbeat.

There wasn’t a soul nearby to react.

Toffolo was already crouched at the top with three others, blades drawn, their backs to the drop and their eyes on the lane inside the battlement.

The boy caught his eye and nodded toward the empty stretch beyond.

That was answer enough, and neither man wasted breath improving it.

Rethymno’s battlements went on patched and uneven in both directions, just as they had looked from outside.

Toward the harbor, lanterns spilled light over the rooftops. The garrison had been drawn toward the one threat it could not afford to ignore.

Where Vito stood, and along the way toward the noble district, there was nothing. Black roofs, starlight, and houses full of people who had no idea what the night was about to do to them.

In that darkness sat Skordilis’s cousin, behind a door and with whatever was left of the nobles who refused to sell him out.

He permitted the thought one more breath, then turned toward the wall his thirty some men still had to occupy.

Farther ahead, where the wall widened into a watch post, a brazier threw enough light to show him the shadows around it.

Four men stood near the fire with relaxed confidence, clearly they’d be paid whether anybody attacked tonight or not.

Good boots, mail worn by soldiers accustomed to it, blades close at hand.

Behind them, in twos and threes through the parapet, a larger knot sat in patched jerkins with borrowed spears.

Farmers and fishermen, judging by their hands. Civilians who would much rather have been asleep and saw no reason to pretend otherwise.

Vito knew the difference before one blade left its sheath.

Hired soldiers kept themselves apart from conscripts the way a wolf keeps apart from sheep penned in the same yard.

He closed his fist, and his detachment stepped out of the shadows together.

Vito dealt the nearest of the four for himself.

One hand clamped over the man’s mouth before he could turn, and Vito drove the blade beneath his ribs. The point punched through mail and flesh with a wet resistance, and the man’s breath broke against Vito’s palm in a strangled grunt.

The man’s body locked around the steel for a heartbeat, then gave up entirely. Blood welled hot between Vito’s fingers and dripped down the man’s side as his knees buckled.

Old habit caught the corpse under one arm as it fell, more reflex than kindness, and Vito pulled his blade free as he lowered him. The steel came free with a slick jerk, leaving a dark smear across the man’s mail.

To his left, two of his men hit the next retainer, trapping the arms while one slashed his throat with a short, hard cut. The blade tore across the throat, and blood sprayed over the man’s collar and the stones beneath him before his hands could even find the wound.

The third and fourth suffered much the same fate farther along, caught before either could shout and put down quickly and permanently. One crumpled with a blade buried under his jaw, while the other made it halfway through a gasp before steel cut his belly and sent him sprawling against the parapet.

The militia had no defense worth mention.

Spears were kicked from loose hands. Some poor farmer went down under a mailed fist to the jaw, his teeth clicking together hard enough to send one loose, and he crashed against the stones with blood dripping from his mouth.

Then one fisherman had a knee driven into his gut and hit the stones gasping, with not a drop of blood on him.

There was one shadow that rushed up with hands raised, and for half a heartbeat, in the darkness, it looked like a weapon.

It was an unlit lantern.

Nothing but a frightened man grabbing the nearest thing his hands could find. Vito’s blade was already on its way before his eyes understood the mistake.

He changed the strike a hand’s width from the man’s throat, close enough for the bastard to feel the wind of it.

The man dropped to his knees and sobbed, which needed no translation.

That was close enough.

Vito hauled the man upright by the clothes, and some small, mean corner of his mind was already turning the moment into a tale for wine and firelight, provided a night ever became peaceful enough to waste on such things.

The whole business was finished in less time than the climb had taken.

Blood lay black in the bad light through the battlements, still shining wetly where it hadn’t yet begun to dry, while eight bound and gagged men sat tied wrist to ankle against the parapet.

One soldier watched them. Everyone else had already moved on.

Twelve men.

That was all they had put on a post that ought to have mattered as much as any other piece of wall in the city.

If Vito’s guess from the beach was even close, there should have been three or four times twelve here, hired swords packed shoulder to shoulder behind a night watch.

But three galleys and one noisy day outside the harbor had dragged those men elsewhere.

That was exactly what the plan had needed, and for once the plan had gotten what it asked for.

Vito let himself one breath to enjoy the good fortune, then turned toward the open battlement ahead.

It waited empty and quiet, and there was still an entire city between him and the end of the night’s work.

Before taking his men farther, Vito looked over the situation once more.

Far to his left, near where Zaccaria’s detachment ought to have been coming up, a shadow stood motionless against the stars.

It might have meant a clean kill. It might just as easily have meant a man trying to get his breath back.

Farther on, beyond a stretch of shadow too thick to make sense of, a brief scuffle ended almost as soon as it began.

No cry followed it.

So there was no useful answer there, either.

Nothing he could see told him a thing about Orso, Pellegrino, or Domenego, all of them spread through walls hidden from this one.

Vito considered the silence meant things were going well.

It wasn’t certainty, but it was a better companion than three separate disasters at once. Neither option was going to help the men standing beside him.

The stairs down was a narrow cut half buried in the wall, cramped enough to force one cautious soldier through at a time.

Vito went first, one hand sliding the cold stone.

Toffolo followed close behind, and the detachment came after in single file, boots softened against the steps.

Their blades went back into their sheaths and the ropes and grapples stayed on the battlement for whatever the retreat might demand later.

Below them, Rethymno waited in darkness, its streets just as unlit as promised.

Vito led his men into the city.