Danik and his men had met with little opposition — and less delay. The decision once taken, it had proved an easy matter to pass across the island and achieve the walls of the stronghold unseen, when the greater part of those who might have contested the passage were even at that moment assembling and converging upon the cove they had so lately left. The steep gully upon the fort's landward side in which so many search parties had milled on the previous night was deserted, although the once-lush vegetation was sadly crushed and torn aside, and there could be no doubt at all as to where the secret gate now stood.

The one question Danik had not been able to determine was as to whether the entrance could be opened from the outside, or whether it was intended only for egress and must needs be forced. In the event, by his telling, it was almost childishly simple. The concealments which had been meant to hide the catch from unwelcome eyes had been moved aside and not replaced, and the door grated stiffly open with no more ado than any balky lock. He made no doubt that the upper end of the passage was guarded; but the black and lofty chamber that now opened out before them had not entered at any time into his reckoning. This was no sallyport, but something else entirely.

Osman, at his side, had quietly unslung the lantern he'd been carrying. The light caught and flared, and shadowed walls receded. For a moment, in the half-light, the carvings seemed to move.

"Holy Mother of God!" The exclamation was jerked out of Danik unthinkingly but with an almost uncanny accuracy. On the far side of the vault, the robed statue gazed down on them from her niche with the calm of two hundred years of wisdom. The Child in her arms seemed to be smiling directly into the interloper's eyes.

"A catacomb." Osman sounded shaken, as well he might. Beneath the carved walls, haphazard rows of tombs lay before them, featureless in the dark.

"No." Danik shook his head, instinctively keeping his own voice to the same hushed whisper. "A crypt."

The very air seemed heavy with the presence of the forgotten dead. The signs of the passage of Edmond's men were everywhere and out of place — scuffed marks in the dust, fresh chips on the stone, chalked indecency upon the frieze in low-relief that ran the length of one wall, from the smoothed panel at his left-hand side to the half-seen stairway in the deep shadow beyond. Some of the coffins had been left open, the dry remnants within mute evidence of the hasty search that had disturbed their rest.

The dead did not walk. But if the proud founders of this fort could rise to bear witness against the rag-tag successors who stood now masters in their place, then surely their silent jaws would cry out to Heaven. The air was chill, as if with the breath of the grave.

At his back, the men were muttering. Danik took a grip on himself and led the way forward, the lantern at his shoulder held high in Osman's grasp as the shadows flickered and swung. Somewhere above them, surmounting that great weight of rock, their shipmates waited, held wounded and prisoner at their enemy's mercy. He had no intention of turning tail and leaving them there....

Something moved.

For a moment, he thought it was only a trick of the light. Then, from behind an open coffin, something was rising, voiceless and unshapen— The light rocked wildly as Osman caught his breath, sending plunging shadows across the room that broke up everything into chaos. As if by lightning-flashes, Danik saw the dusty shape emerge, arms outstretched and groping towards him.

His hand had gone, unthinking, to the little gold cross on its chain at his throat, holding it out in front of him like a barrier. The moulded edges bit into his flesh. And then a slash of light rocked past her face, and he saw.

"Sweet Jesu.... Madame — L'Aiglonne — oh, ma mie —"

Heart pounding, against his. Warm, living flesh, in the dust that cloaked both of us now. I tried to whisper his name in answer to the words pouring over me, but my dry throat could do no more than shape the sound.

His cheek was against mine and the warmth of his arms about me, in a heart-felt prison that would never let us go. I could hear the others moving around us, voices distant to my ears as the mute evidence of my imprisonment came to light; but nothing mattered. Nothing mattered, save the sudden thunder that leapt from his blood to mine, and the aching closeness of his hold, that took back my weakness and gave me strength.

"Some water —" The words seemed to come from far away. It was a moment before I knew them to be his, and not my own. I was floating, and the world was growing dark....

When next I came fully to myself, I was seated upon a stone, with the taste of warm water in my mouth, and Danilo von Schelstein looking down on me in concern. Our eyes met. I could not hide the smile in mine; there was nothing in his face that was not proper, but the laughter that awoke at the back of his gaze in answer set my pulses to a sudden, joyful leap. I had seen his eyes dancing just so in battle. I had never thought to see them dance for me.

It was only for an instant. In the next moment, he had turned to signal to one of his men, who came forward to hold the canteen again to my lips. The water was warm, and stale, and tasted of metal; but it could not have been sweeter to my throat had it come fresh from the spring at Mireille.

I tried to work the withered cords of my voice, smiling round at the circle of faces, the Ruritanians of his crew whom I had hardly met, and yet who had come all the way to this unknown isle for my sake. But my thanks came forth as nothing but a croak, and were speedily disclaimed with answering smiles; for as I afterwards learned, they had come to this underground way almost by chance, with no thought of my presence there.

Some, like Osman, were deft and dark — some shared the Count's fair colouring and his height — and others spanned the whole gamut of Europe in between, from the broad-cheeked Slav to the Northman with eyes like summer sky. Their mountains had been the crossroads of the continent since the days of Carthage and Rome, and for the most part they could make shift as well in my own French as in the dialect of their birth.

Above all, they held a fierce loyalty to one of their own — and some two or three of their number, as I now heard, were held prisoner here after a fight that had all but cost them their ship. (Of Jehan's presence — and of his part in the recapture — I was not, mercifully, to learn until later, when all was done and the danger far enough distant to forgive.)

Life was flooding back into my limbs. I essayed to rise, with a dozen hands ready to assist, and found myself cramped but whole. The Avalanche's crew were going up into the fort, to make a long nose, as we say, at M. Edmond — and I had every intent of aiding them to do it. I had a score or two I would have given something to be able to settle with Edmond myself. I had kept pace with their leader though long days of outlawry and privation on this same island, while we awaited their coming. I did not think they would refuse me now.

I watched him in the lantern-light that touched his fair hair with gold; watched every play of muscle as he moved, every shade of expression as he spoke. One eyebrow soared upward, briefly, at something Osman had said, and I could not forebear to smile. I had known Count Danik these few short weeks, that seemed an age — and yet, somehow, I had never seen. Never seen him as I saw him now, as if he were someone else, the secret knowledge of his blood still rushing through me....

"Danilo von Schelstein," I said softly, discovering the name; and flushed. I had not known I was speaking aloud. Those near me gave no sign that they had heard, and Danilo himself did not break off in giving his orders; but a faint answering bronze had mounted in his cheek.

No word was spoken. But when the little company moved out once more to the dark mouth of the stairs that awaited, I was among them as of right. Without any conscious intention on my part — nor, as I believe, on his — I found myself in the vanguard, close at their leader's side. It seemed the warmth of his presence streamed out over us all, like the light from the lantern.... My breath quivered on a laugh at my own fancies; but his shoulder brushed mine, and I was content.

Indeed, for all of us the ascent of the staircase itself perforce commanded much of our attention. Now that I saw it for the first time in the lantern-light, I shuddered to think of the breakneck speed with which I had fled down these same battered steps, my ignorance itself giving me courage. It was not the wear of long use, of hollowed treads and rounded edges, for that hidden chapel below could have seen little traffic, save when the vomito negro or some such other pestilence took its yearly teind from the flesh of those who would be masters here. No, it was the wear of long neglect, where dry-cut stone had fractured, and the living cliff had stirred in its slumber.

The workmen had wrought well; but no work of human hands will stand untended for a hundred years in these our climes. Indeed, halfway up, a seaman close at my heels stumbled with a curse and a clatter of falling stone as a sliver flaked off from beneath his very foot, and barely caught onto my proffered hand in time. I had acted unthinking, reaching for his outflung arm as his oath reached my ear, but it was as well that I did. Packed so eagerly as we were in that narrow space, a headlong fall would doubtless have sent half of those below toppling like ninepins, to their great hurt and (though we did not know it) to the forewarning of those above.

For an instant, as his full weight came upon my grasp, it seemed we might both go tumbling; but in the next moment I had braced myself, and Tancredi — for such, incongruous on that rough-hewn face, I learned later was his name — had his footing once more, and all passed off with little more than a shame-faced shrug for the curseword his friends supposed to have offended my hearing. As to that latter, I fear, they were most rapidly disabused — for, glancing back to reassure them, I all but missed my own balance, and the expression which passed my lips was more suited to the dockside where I had learned it than to a lady's boudoir. In the ripple of laughter that followed, I could feel the very nape of my neck turn scarlet, as it had not before... but it was from that moment that I felt myself truly accepted, no longer interloper or even employer, but one of them, a comrade in their midst.

The ruse that gained us access to the fort was my idea, and the risk was mine and mine alone; but not a man among them essayed to gainsay it. In truth, it was a part that only I could play, and without my presence it might have gone hard with them to force an entry — but I had not expected Danilo to assent without question when first I broached the scheme, still less to draw his own treasured blade and press it into my grasp in lieu of the cutlass for which I had asked. At his nod, a sailor on my far side furnished me with a pistol.

I protested, staring down at the sword. "I cannot —"

We were standing in the shadows, close by the head of the stair, where the passage ended in the blank stones I knew to conceal a door. One man alone could have guarded that opening against a horde pouring upward from the stair as the door swung inward, and by Osman's reckoning there were the sounds of three at least standing guard over the passageway's entry in the room beyond. Unsuspecting, no doubt — made unwary by tedium — but no invaders could open the wall and hope to take them by surprise. Only the lure of something of value could do that. The lure of a helpless, weak prisoner, trapped in the passageway all this time and begging for escape....

The lantern-light flickered on the sword in my hand, running like fire across the damascened braiding of the metal and awakening answering flame from the heart of the blade. It was as light as a fencing foil, the hilt still carrying the warmth of his grasp. It was a sword fit for kings, worthy of Arthur of Camelot himself —

"I cannot. Your sword —"

He could have ordered me to stay back; trusted in my voice alone to decoy the guards into his grasp. Instead he had entrusted me with the weapon he treasured, the one possession that had never left him for a moment when we lacked even food and clothing. Not one man in a hundred I had ever known would have done such a thing — not even Emile.

In the darkness, his mouth brushed mine softly for the first time; then again, briefly, in a promise. "Go then, ma mie —" I could not see his eyes, but I could hear their lilt dancing in his smile — "lead on. We await your signal...."

His words were the merest breath, for we stood on the very threshold of the room beyond, and all depended upon surprise. I did not trust my own voice; but I set my cheek against his in silence, and felt his lips for a moment against my hair before he stepped back a pace, melting back into the shadows with the rest. A soft word from Osman, and the light from the lantern dimmed and then went out.

I drew a deep breath, summoning to my mind the ghost of that terror and desperation which had gripped me a few short hours — and yet how long! — before. If I had judged the temper of Edmond's men aright, they would be too eager by far, vying one with another to take the credit for my recapture, to send word to Edmond before opening the passage — let alone to have any suspicion of our plans.

Nor did they, indeed. We had them entirely by surprise; and Danilo informs me, with the utmost gravity, that the piratical spectacle I presented alone, flourishing naked steel with grave-dust in my hair and skirts tattered and scandalous about my knees, was more than enough to terrify any poor soldier into submission without any aid from the armed intruders who followed. I fear, alas, that it is not only ungallant but untrue. For if our captives had been in such awe of my person, then the last of their number, a grizzled veteran of some forty summers or more, would not have seized upon a momentary lapse of my attention to make a bolt for the door that was to cost us dear, and Danilo most of all.... Some three or four of us sprang after him; too late.

"He'll warn the rest!" Broad Tancredi had hewn at the fugitive's heels with a blow that would have felled an ox; but his blade sparked uselessly across the stones as its target jinked with a turn of speed that would not have shamed a hare, and in the next moment he had been out of reach and beyond recall.

One man had levelled the barrel of his pistol, but Osman had struck it down, with a swift aside in a dialect I could not follow. "We'll have the whole hornet's nest about our ears soon enough, Madame —" as his eye caught mine — "no need to give them warning before we must."

"I would that we could raze this fortress to the ground!" I had sought to reawaken memories of captivity and fear; they were only too vivid in me now. In this small room I had been brought to bay, barricaded and desperate. Within these same ancient walls of stone, Edmond had held me in his power; had laid greedy claim not merely to my possessions and my person, but to the precious life of my son....

Danilo had ben questioning the two younger guards, a pair of strapping bravos who had not been quick enough of wit to join in their companion's dash; but at my hot words he glanced up with a laugh. "Not until I have my men free, I trust! And even at that I fear we are sadly ill-equipped for such a task.... I had made sure to find the prisoners in the dungeons — and now I learn the place has none, and we must climb to the uppermost rooms —"

"With one of these as guide?"

Osman had frowned, looking askance at the new-made prisoners, and for a moment, in sore straits as we were, I could almost have laughed at the twists of fate. I broke in, laying one hand on his arm. "Nay, monsieur — for I have the strangest feeling that I know the way...."

When Edmond had me haled up from his sanctum to weary imprisonment above, neither he nor I had any thought that I should soon retrace those steps with my captor held at pistol-point before me, still less that I should one day of my own will mount up into the upper fastnesses of his domain with a cut-throat crew of foreigners at my call. But mount we did, with an urgency that almost robbed me of breath — Danilo knew, far better then than I, how precious each second might prove when once the alarm had been raised. We heard nothing of Edmond's force along the passageways as we went, and I ventured to hope that we might yet escape unassailed, and even to remonstrate a little at the hurried handling of the wounded men.

They were a pitiful few. We found them not in that room beneath the battlements which had been my own prison, but in a wider chamber adjoining, that had been fitted out with a few straw pallets as a gesture to the sick, and I saw Count Danik's brow darken as he counted those missing from among that meagre number. One he greeted by name — Reinhardt, a dark-haired youth scarce old enough to know the razor's kiss — and I saw his mouth tighten as he slid his arm around the boy, aiding him to his feet. The youngster could hardly stand.

Others were in like case, and I could not help but protest as they were lifted from their sorry beds and hastened to the door. But Osman caught at my arm, shaking his head. "Madame — L'Aiglonne, listen...."

For a moment I did not comprehend him. Then, as those around us fell silent, I too heard it; the sound of voices raised below, angry and indistinct. Our respite had come to an end. The fortress was raised against us.