Chapter 72: Freed, and Still Unheard

The door shattered all at once, its iron hinges screaming loud enough to bury whatever noise remained in the street behind them.

The party poured into a saloon built for wine and late talk.

Black-and-white tile covered the floor from wall to wall while gilt icons watched from either side of a woven, and curved stairs rose toward a gallery landing that could only lead to the floor above.

Four house guards stood near the foot of the stairs, swords half drawn and apparently unable to decide whether tonight called for courage or survival.

Some noble madame had her daughter by the wrist and dragged a boy no older than fifteen backward by his collar, while servants scattered for doorways that offered little help, dropping trays and half-lit lamps as they fled.

Then one servant girl saw them and screamed at once, and soon it became a chorus.

"Sweet Madonna."

Vito muttered, his eyes catching on the gilt icons.

"These people keep finer saints than the Basilica does."

He took in the rest of the room in a single glance.

A wife too frightened to run properly, guards too frightened to choose a side, and a house built to receive guests now confronted with a problem nobody had thought to train for.

"Toffolo!"

His voice cut through the uproar. "Three men on the guards, and keep the family breathing when it’s done. The servants haven’t drawn steel, so nobody draws it on them either. The rest of you, with me."

Toffolo had no use for a speech. He turned toward the stairs, three footmen breaking off after him, and left the room to settle the matter in its own fashion.

Vito headed for the passage behind the saloon.

He heard everything break loose behind him and didn’t turn to watch it end. He had already trusted the boy with worse than this tonight.

His two men followed him, past a table knocked onto its side. There, some servant girl pressed herself against a doorframe with hands clamped over her mouth.

The rooms beyond were mundane, be the pantry stacked with jars, a kitchen passage warm with banked coals, and the smell of bread that had gone cold hours before anyone remembered to eat it.

A house guard stepped into the passage ahead of them, drawn by the noise and plainly expecting nothing worse than another frightened servant.

He certainly wasn’t expecting three armed strangers coming toward him.

The nearer of Vito’s footmen knocked his blade aside. The guard tried to recover, but the second footmen stepped past his companion and drove his sword straight through the man’s chest.

The blade punched out between his shoulder blades and blood struck the plaster beside a copper pot before the body folded onto the floor.

Vito stepped over him, searching the end of the passage for whatever led downward.

In his head the estate had stopped being a building and become one door. He knew exactly where that door was waiting.

The stairs dropped them into a cellar that had casks shoved aside to make room for an iron gate far heavier than any basement had ever needed.

Beyond it, where the lamplight reached, five men sat bound against the wall.

The house’s master stood beside the cell with his son at his side.

The father kept working his hands against each other, though the cellar wasn’t cold enough to excuse it. The son strained toward the stairs, wanting nothing so much as to climb it and meet the noise himself.

<anno data-annotation-id="506daa70-9366-01db-5e56-b8e2907b191d" data-title=""Θεέ μου," ">"Θεέ μου," ¹</anno>

The father cried, the words tumbling over each other.

<anno data-annotation-id="55dc848b-44ec-6af7-dd38-86d7cd714348" data-title=""Το ήξερα. Το ήξερα ότι θα πλήρωνα γι’ αυτό."">"Το ήξερα. Το ήξερα ότι θα πλήρωνα γι’ αυτό."¹</anno>

<anno data-annotation-id="ecbde762-805e-ad73-370c-124cf42d7688" data-title=""Άσε με να πολεμήσω!" ">"Άσε με να πολεμήσω!" ¹</anno>

His son shot back, sharper.

<anno data-annotation-id="a5245ecd-760e-cf5f-496b-4ddfeef8e459" data-title=""Δεν θα κρυφτώ σαν σκυλί στο κελάρι!"">"Δεν θα κρυφτώ σαν σκυλί στο κελάρι!"¹</anno>

Three household guards stood between the invaders and their masters.

One of them actually had an atmosphere of experience, the calmness that came when one participated in far too many wars.

His eyes spotted the invaders.

Then his gaze found the archon’s face a heartbeat later. Whatever hope the noble had left of talking his way out of the night disappeared with it.

His plea became an order.

<anno data-annotation-id="83157a5d-c8f1-25ab-3134-f609f19b3281" data-title=""Σκοτώστε τους! Μη τους αφήσετε να πλησιάσουν!"">"Σκοτώστε τους! Μη τους αφήσετε να πλησιάσουν!"¹</anno>

The two guards rushed the footmen, and neither lived long enough to regret it.

One swung wildly. The footmen facing him caught the blade on his sword and turned his wrist, letting the strike slide off instead of meeting it head-on, enough for the guard to stumble forward with his arms opened by the deflection.

The footmen stepped inside his reach and drove his sword beneath the ribs. The blade came out behind him and the guard sagged against it, coughing blood across the footmen’s hand before being shoved aside.

The other guard came at the second footmen with a quick cut toward the arm. The blade bit through cloth and opened the forearm.

That made the footmen stagger, then step back in before the guard could press the advantage. His sword rose under the man’s chin and tore upward.

Blood sprayed across the cask behind him and the guard dropped into the packed earth, choking and clutching at his ruined throat.

The captain came for Vito, and the first exchange proved what kind of man he was.

He came forward behind a high guard, waiting for Vito to commit.

Vito cut toward his shoulder.

The captain caught the blade on his crossguard and turned it aside. He stepped in as Vito’s sword was still being carried past, his own point driving straight for Vito’s chest.

Vito twisted.

The point scraped across his mail instead of finding flesh, and the force of it still drove him backward. There was barely room for that one step.

Steel rang against the low stone ceiling, loud enough to sting his ears.

Vito brought his sword back into guard.

The captain moved.

A cut came down toward Vito’s head. He caught it high, steel shrieking against steel, then shoved the captain’s blade aside and cut back toward his ribs.

The captain turned his hips and let the blade scrape across his mail.

He answered with a thrust.

Vito knocked it down with the forte of his sword, but the captain recovered quickly and cut again before he could regain his footing.

The blade caught Vito’s forearm.

Mail stopped the worst of it, but not all. Blood welled beneath the torn sleeve and dripped toward his wrist, mixing with sweat until his grip began to slip.

They traded blows in the narrow space between the casks and the locked cell, each man forced to keep his sword close because there was no room for a wide swing.

The captain saw openings none of the previous retainers had managed to find.

Vito stopped trying to beat him at distance.

He stepped in.

The captain’s next cut came for his shoulder. Vito raised his left arm and took it across the mail, then drove his sword forward with both hands.

The captain tried to turn away.

Too late.

Vito’s blade slipped beneath his guard and punched into the gap below the ribs.

The captain’s breath left him in a wet grunt.

He tried to wrench himself free, but Vito’s blade was buried deep. The captain’s own momentum carried him forward, forcing the sword farther in.

Blood ran down Vito’s hand, and he tore the blade free.

The captain staggered backward, one hand clamped over the wound uselessly. His knees buckled and the body fell into the narrow space between them.

For dozen heartbeats, the cellar had only Vito’s ragged breathing and the noise of blood dripping into the stone beneath their feet.

The son attacked the instant Vito’s eyes dropped to the captain’s body, driving a knife low toward his ribs.

The blade skidded off the riveted mail and the impact spun the boy halfway around, his balance gone before he could recover it.

Vito caught him by the shoulder before he fell and grinned at him, blood still wet along his own forearm.

"Cazzo, that took nerve, ragazzo. Wrong night for it, but real nerve all the same."

One clean punch across the jaw put him down cold before he could try to prove it twice.

The archon had started to shouted, by then, mostly out of panic.

Greek poured out faster than Vito could have followed after a full night’s sleep, and after everything the last hour had cost him, he had no patience left to try.

He crossed the last few feet and knocked the man unconscious with the same flat ease he might have used to close a door behind him.

Vito went to the locked door and spoke through it slowly and plainly.

"Venezia. We’ve come to take you home. Cugino, sì? Skordilis?"

<anno data-annotation-id="3f7dee5d-5db3-62aa-3ad7-d8ef3a6e2b4b" data-title=""Ποιοι είστε; Τι θέλετε από εμάς?"">"Ποιοι είστε; Τι θέλετε από εμάς?"¹</anno> one of the older men finally asked.

The words meant nothing to Vito beyond the exhausted tone beneath them.

Five faces on the other side of the cell watched him with the worn caution they had probably carried since the coup first shoved them into this cellar.

Not one of them replied anything he could call an answer.

"Italian."

Vito tried, spacing the word out as though the extra room might make it more useful.

"Does anyone in there speak Italian?"

Not a yes.

Not anything at all.

Vito stood in a cellar with the very men he had fought his way through a mansion to reach.

Somehow, he had run out of one useful word they could understand.

<annotations style="display: none;">“My God.”“I knew it. I knew I would pay for this.”“Let me fight!”“I will not hide like a dog in the cellar!”“Kill them! Don’t let them get close!”“Who are you? What do you want from us?”</annotations>