“It was nothing, Hauer. Just water.”
“Or maybe the witch,” offered the master of the llaut, who suddenly discovered himself under the intense scrutiny of sixteen pairs of eyes belonging to heavily armed and already somewhat anxious men.
“I beg your pardon,” said North sweetly, “but maybe it was the what?”
“The witch,” repeated the master of the llaut. “ Na Joanna. The one that inhabits these caves.”
One half of the group-including two of the three Wild Geese-stared about balefully.
In contrast, Donald Ohde was grinning and shaking his head. “There just had to be something.” He almost giggled. “There just had to be something we didn’t learn about or consider. But an attack by a witch? Now, that will be a story worth telling.”
“Yes,” North agreed, “it will be a story worth telling-to scare naughty children. Now let me make a few guesses.” He aimed his chin at the xueta. “First, the legends of this witch probably have to do with moaning on stormy nights, do they not?”
“Often, yes.”
“You mean the kind of moaning that occurs when wind is forced through a narrow ravine, like at the head of this valley?”
The xueta shrugged. “Yes.”
“And let me further conjecture that the witch’s nocturnal harrowings are proven by sudden health afflictions visited upon wandering children and occasional disappearances of goats, followed by the eventual discovery of their skeletal remains.”
“Yes.”
“The former of which is simply parental terror-tactics, while the latter would be consistent with the action of wild dogs, wild pigs, poachers, or all three. And last, I’m going to go out on a limb here and make the wild surmise that the witch was responsible for the deaths of untold workers at the mines and the quarries, correct?”
The xueta smiled at last. “Yes, some stories claim that.”
“And of course one couldn’t possibly explain these purported deaths as being the consequences of mining accidents, malnutrition and disease, surreptitious murder by guards or rival workers, or missing persons who simply, in fact, escaped?”
“All true,” said the xueta.
North finally smiled back. “And of course you, personally, don’t believe in the legend of this witch at all, do you?”
“Not a word of the drivel,” their guide affirmed with a nod. “But it is always worth a smile watching grown men shiver like little boys for a minute or two.”
“Thanks for the entertainment, yeh barstard,” growled Seamus Jeffrey, the youngest of the Wild Geese.
“What? Resentment? I have done you a favor.”
Donald Ohde cocked his head. “How so?”
“Did I not divert you for a moment? Did I not take your mind off of the attack to come? And does it not now seem, in comparison, that the perils of men and steel seem small in comparison to the terrors your mind was building?”
Several in the group blinked; the veterans among them-the same who had taken no heed of the legend of the witch-tried to conceal amused grins.
“Yes, well,” huffed North in an attempt not to smile himself. “Story time is over.” He moved next to the stairs, produced his nine-millimeter automatic, and snapped the safety off. “Our next game is deadly serious.”
Asher’s smaller assistant looked over at the bored Mallorcan guard who had brought him down to the main ground floor storeroom to fetch a gallon of water and ethanol each. The guard was taking the opportunity to pilfer a few sausages hanging close to the door.
Asher’s assistant opened the tap of the first tun. As the liquid started spattering noisily to the bottom of his waiting, empty jug, the assistant palmed a crude key wrench out of his sleeve. Judging from the angle of the guard’s shadow, he was still facing out the open door into the courtyard; a sigh of contentment followed by earnest munching indicated that his attention was not on his xueta charge. After all, what mischief could the Jew possibly do with a guard standing within ten feet of him? The assistant grinned faintly while, using his body as cover, he inserted the key wrench in a well-concealed hole and gave it a sharp turn. Then he shut off the spigot, which squeaked. Then he half opened it, closed it again: another squeak.
The guard looked up. “What are you doing? Stomping on mice?”
“No; this spigot leaks. I have to ram it closed, hard. Here, one more time-” and his final effort produced a third squeak.
“You done yet?” asked the guard. He did not sound impatient, but wistful; his eyes strayed to another sausage hanging by the wall.
“One more,” answered the assistant as he tapped the second tun. He repeated the process: when the guard wasn’t looking, he inserted the key wrench in a similarly situated hole-just beneath, and concealed by the rim of, the tap. When he was done, the assistant scraped the key wrench across the handle of the spigot twice. Then he re-palmed it and once again tightened the spigot three times.
“What? Another squeaky spigot?”
The assistant shrugged. “Shoddy workmanship, I suppose.”
“Just what a Jew would be willing to pay for,” sneered the guard. He belched and pointed out the door. “Get going. If that little bitch dies, it’s not going to be because you were late getting back.”
Asher’s assistant bowed slightly and walked out, a gallon jug hanging in each hand. He made his way up to the second level, and was about to start on his way to the roof when a rich bass voice called after the two of them.
“Guard, a moment.”
The assistant’s escort looked around dully, then snapped straight to attention; the hidalgo captain-Vincente Jose-Maria de Castro y Papas-was approaching from the governor’s office. “I just heard about the prisoner,” he explained. “I am going up. I will escort the doctor’s assistant to the sickroom.”
The guard spoke with his eyes fixed above the hidalgo’s brow line. “Sir, I must continue to escort the prisoner. Senor Dakis’ orders, sir.”
“Ah. I see. Well then, I shall accompany you there.”
“As the captain wishes.”
Asher’s assistant started up the stairs to the roof, wondering why this captain was concerned enough to accompany them, but he knew one thing very clearly: from all accounts, he was smart enough to be trouble.
Lots of trouble.
Inside the secret compartment at the core of the tun of purified water, Owen Roe O’Neill counted to fifty after hearing the three squeaks that signaled that the barrel’s false interior was now unlocked and could be opened.
It was hard making sure that he did not count too quickly, but fortunately, the only light inside the hidden compartment was also the assurance that he did not succumb to the desire to rush his exit: the pale green phosphorescent dot of the up-time watch Miro had lent him continued in its orbit around the unseen center of the timepiece’s face. The watch had not only been necessary to ensure that he waited long enough to emerge from the immense barrel, but was also a means of determining if the whole operation had gone awry. Had there been no three squeaks of the spigot within the next ninety minutes, Owen would have emerged anyway-but to withdraw as surreptitiously as possible: if the signal to come out was that late, it meant the operation was, as the up-timers put it, “busted.”
Owen watched the second sweep hit the ten o’clock position and grabbed the handles on either side of the egress hatch from the secret compartment. He pushed them outward and heard the click that meant the spring lock had been pushed back far enough to allow the hatch to begin turning. He rotated it through ninety degrees and both heard and felt the flanges on the hatch clear the restraining tabs. Sliding himself forward, he got his arms doubled up behind the hatch, braced his feet against the back of the compartment, and pushed.
The head of the tun hinged outward at the first hoop, the water in the false reservoir there flooding out on the floor with a rush. Owen wriggled out, past the lead inserts that had given the barrel proper weight and rolled to his feet, dagger at the ready.