The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

41





All around the cathedral, a hundred paces from the edge of the island, archers stood on the ice in two ranks, with their bows drawn and point-heavy fire arrows waiting for a flame. The flame boys were nervous, the fate of the priest having spread.

In front of the cathedral Marco raised his sword.

As it swept down, flame bearers ran the first and second ranks, crouching low as leathery shapes rose from the cathedral roof. A boy near Giulietta died. There were other deaths, dozens of others, but his was the one she saw. He went down as a shadow fell on him and bowled him backwards.

“Kill,” a sergeant shouted.

Around her archers released arrows into the screaming mass, pin-cushioning the boy as well as the winged creature. Vomit rose in Lady Giulietta’s throat. There was nothing glorious about this. No heroism in turning a boy into a screaming pillar of fire, even if it did kill his attacker. The screams ended almost as soon as they began. “V-vocal chords.” Marco stood beside her.

“What?”

He tapped his throat. “They b-burn.”

The facts her cousin produced scared her. “Don’t you care?” she demanded, nodding at the boy. The flag felt like a dead weight in her hand and she handed it to its original bearer, who’d become her desperate shadow.

“I c-can’t afford to c-care. All that m-matters is we’re w-winning.”

“We are?

The first rows were loosing fire arrows at the wooden walls of the cathedral, while those behind them aimed at the monsters overhead. When a black wing came near Marco, a krieghund leapt, hitting it in mid-air before it could strike. The fight was brutal, fierce and bloody, but the krieghund won. But for every creature tumbling to earth, stuck with still-flaming arrows, knights, archers or krieghund died.

“Watch out,” Marco shouted.

Giulietta threw up her arm and a thing clanged off her vambrace, wheeling clumsily in mid-air to launch another attack. She vaguely realised she’d shat herself. She grabbed her bow, hands shaking, and a krieghund roared past, leaping for the beast. Its claws swept up and ripped the thing open, tumbling guts to the ground. The black winged thing was dead before it hit the ice. That didn’t stop the krieghund stamping on its neck and kicking it hard.

“He really d-does love you, d-doesn’t he.”

Frederick? Gods, was that really . . .

“You k-know how unusual it is for a k-krieghund to think and f-fight at the same time? Mostly they’re m-mindless.” Marco paused. “Well, that’s what my m-mother said. M-maybe it’s a lie.”

“Over there,” said Giulietta. One of the winged creatures flailed at the flames licking its side and fought to reach its home. It landed with a crash on the roof and she realised Marco was smiling. “You intended that all along?”

“I hoped. Injured animals r-return to their lairs. You k-know what Lord Atilo once t-told me? To f-find out where your enemy l-lives, s-stab him and f-follow him home . . . Aim for the b-beasts,” Marco bellowed.

Enough creatures returned for their funeral pyres to lick the sides of the onion domes. And though Alonzo’s men had been doing their best to douse the arrows that flamed against the cathedral walls they could do little about the steep roof; too many fire arrows now jutted from the walls for them all to be smothered.

It was a slow and bloody business. Marco was getting his wish, however. Fire ate at the Red Cathedral and arrows flamed from too many places for the building to survive. The wood was old and still dry from last summer, the falls of snow having spared the walls the drenching rains would have brought. Black wings returned in flames to a roof that was already ablaze. New creatures that popped into existence found themselves burning before they could find their wings.

Around her, knights settled back to watch, while sergeants arranged their men in tighter rows and counted the dead, of which there were dozens. Hundreds, Giulietta corrected herself. Maybe a thousand. What she could see would be repeated all round the island. The archers stood in ragged groups, checking their bows and finding their breath. Boys ran the barrel bridge fetching arrows. The biggest of the carts had been deemed too heavy to cross. Up among the onion domes of the cathedral the screaming was savage, not even animal in any sense she understood. Marco’s zoo back home held every animal in the world, and had even included a unicorn when she was young, but she’d seen nothing like these. “What are they?”

“N-no idea. B-but I want one to examine a-afterwards.”

Lady Giulietta decided to be happy Marco thought there would be an afterwards . . . She looked at the darkening sky and wondered if the battle would last all night. Mostly she wondered why her uncle skulked in his cathedral rather than coming out to fight. The fact worried her. He was a famous strategist; if he decided to stay inside skulking then he had his reasons. Maybe Marco was wrong about there being an afterwards. Giulietta bit her lip.

“C-come on,” Marco said, “t-tell me.”

“It doesn”t matter . . .”

“F-Frederick’s over there s-seeing to his m-men.”

“It’s not that.” She knew where Frederick was. He’d resumed his human form and was delivering comfort and the coup de grâce to those of his followers too wounded to save. He slid the blade between their ribs himself; you couldn’t say that for many princes.

“Tycho, then. You’re w-worried about Tycho.”

Her cousin was wrong, she hadn’t thought about him from the moment the first fire arrow was loosed until now. Maybe that itself was worrying? She should have been wondering where he was, except she knew: under an awning back at the camp and an hour from waking, to judge from the sky. It shocked her how readily she’d come to accept his world was the reverse of hers.

His day, her night. Her night, his day.

Above her, the darkening sky was empty. No clouds, no birds, no raggedy winged creatures trying to kill her. There were broken bodies on the ice. Castellani and Nicoletti were working together to collect the corpses of their friends. The companies of archers were now being reformed into smaller companies made of strangers from companies that had been destroyed.

Lady Giulietta could smell her own shit, feel it under her. Her bowels had voided completely and her guts were hollow. This was war. Dead bodies in ugly piles, and imploring men with their intestines on the ice before them. A soldier crouched, head in hands, quietly shaking. She wanted to cry.

“N-not now,” Marco said.

The great doors of the cathedral were shifting. Vast and old and carved when this was a sacred site and long before it was corrupted and turned and finally claimed by the Red Crucifers, the doors swung back to reveal darkness.

Only a nave behind, Giulietta reminded herself.

For a second there was total silence and only the threat of the open doors, with every member of Marco’s army on this side of the island frozen, and those on the ice inside the moat on the far side stilled by the rest’s silence.

“H-here they c-come,” Marco shouted.

Frederick appeared beside Giulietta’s bridle with a dozen of his krieghund behind him. All were stripped to the waist, barefoot and clutching weapons. They obviously had orders to protect her. Alonzo’s banner came first. He had a duke’s coronet above his arms. A ducal crown topped the pole from which his banner flew. A white flag below it indicated he wanted to parlay.

“What do we do?” Giulietta asked.

“We t-talk,” Marco said. “We h-have no choice.” The rules of treaty were strict and Venice would be damned in the mouths of ten thousand strangers if they were ignored. “You’ll r-ride with m-me?”

“Me?” Giulietta asked.

“Of course,” said Marco. Frederick stepped closer and it was obvious he wanted to be included. “And the emperor’s favoured s-son.”

“His only son,” Frederick said.

“The only one h-he acknowledges, c-certainly.”

An emperor’s bastard was still impressive, Giulietta thought. As Frederick’s bloodstained hands reached for her bridle, and her mount tried to shy but couldn’t match the strength in Frederick’s arms, she saw him watching her. His eyes golden and fiercely intelligent within a not-quite human face.

“Let’s get this over with,” she said.

“Alexa’s idiot, Alexa’s echo and Sigismund’s attack dog . . .”

“Y-you called us h-here t-to insult us?”

Alonzo grinned. His beard was oiled and his cloak edged at the bottom with a band of imperial purple to which he had no right. The coat of arms on his shield matched Marco’s own. Any herald would have known both men claimed the throne. “Why are you here then?

“H-here p-parlaying? Or do you m-mean h-here?” Marco swept an arc with his hand that embraced the lake and the mountains, and by extension everything and everyone in it . . . “In this g-garden of d-delights, this p-paradise?”

Alonzo sighed.

“I’m h-here to k-kill you, obviously,” Marco said.

Alonzo’s bark of laughter was fierce.

“I’m p-parlaying b-because those are the r-rules. Y-you can g-get away w-with anything if you’re s-seen to obey the r-rules . . . Trying to m-murder your n-nephew, f-f*cking your b-brother’s wife, b-betraying your family . . .”

His uncle’s face tightened.

Marco’s stammer was worse than Giulietta remembered it being in weeks and she wondered if he was pretending or if the broad-shouldered man in front of him really did make him that nervous.

“This is my offer,” Alonzo said. “Withdraw, abdicate and accept exile and I’ll let you live. Let her live, too,” he said, pointing at Giulietta. “Even your pet dog if you want to include him in the deal. But you return my son.”

“Y-your c-castle is b-burning . . .”

Alonzo looked at the smouldering walls above him. The cathedral was huge, the bell tower impressive and the hall squat and toad-like, but all were wooden and dangerously dry for all it was winter. “I was bored with it anyway . . .”

“It c-can be your f-funeral pyre.”

“And you’ll never get Leo,” Giulietta said furiously. “You can tell that to the Dolphini milch cow you married.”

Alonzo glared. “She hung herself. I have your white-skinned freak to thank for that.” Giulietta felt his hatred follow her back to their lines. Although, when she turned, her uncle was gone. The great door of the cathedral still stood open and there was movement in the darkness behind.

“N-now,” said Marco. “Now the real battle b-begins.”