The Exiled Blade (The Assassini)

42





They were losing from the first minute. Marco’s infantry might have been enthusiastic, but they were mostly half trained and exhausted from marching from the port where they landed up the valleys and into the mountains. He had archers, but those still alive were exhausted from loosing their fire arrows. He had trained knights, members of his palace guard and enough Nicoletti and Castellani spearmen to give Venice an entirely new generation of widows. He had Frederick’s krieghund. He even had the poor bastard villagers whose houses he’d chopped up for firewood.

Alonzo had less. But Alonzo had better.

The Crucifers, renegade or not, had trained in war since childhood, giving up their names and families to follow the sword. He had the other half of the wild tribe of archers Tycho had faced at the fort. He had his reputation as a warlord.

She should have known it was all going too easily. Lady Giulietta had trouble keeping track of how the battle developed, but she knew exactly how it began. Her uncle came charging through the huge double doors, clattered his mount down black rocks on to the marbled ice and beheaded the first krieghund to charge him. The krieghund leapt for Alonzo, who swung viciously, removing its head before stabbing the next krieghund in the chest and riding over it.

The cloak slid from Frederick’s shoulders as flesh ripped, and he dropped to a crouch, racing forward before she could object.

“L-let him g-go,” Marco said.

“Your cousin’s right, my lady . . .”

Turning, she found Tycho at her side. His eyes were huge in the twilight and he kept his face twisted from the last of the sun. He’d called her my lady ever since he returned Leo. Why, she wondered, did he find her name so hard to say?

“Where’s your son?”

“Back at the camp.”

“That’s where you should be.”

“Because I’m a woman?” She glared down at him.

“Because if he’s captured all this becomes worthless . . .” Tycho gestured at Marco’s cavalry riding to meet Alonzo’s charge. They clashed so fiercely the noise was deafening. Swords slashed and spike axes split plate, and, as Marco’s knights broke free to regroup, Alonzo’s wild archers rode in from the side, squat bows releasing armour-piercing arrows that dropped half Marco’s men. A second volley disabled more and Alonzo’s knights turned to charge the Venetian spearmen.

One man lost his nerve. He dropped his spear and Alonzo himself swerved into the gap, riding right over him. Two renegade Crucifers followed, killing spearmen either side and widening the gap. The rest of Alonzo’s knights flowed through. The Venetians fought fiercely, hooking their spears into the armour of Alonzo’s knights. A dozen Red Crucifers were gaffed from their wounded horses and died with daggers in their eye slits, daggers between breastplate and hip armour, daggers into the groin. But the wall was broken and one renegade Crucifer after another headed for where they could see fighting.

The wild archers turned their shaggy ponies and charged at Marco’s bowmen, releasing arrow after arrow until the air was thick as rain with shafts. Having ridden straight through, they turned to keep shooting even as they rode away.

“We should help,” Giulietta said.

Marco shook his head. “W-we’d should s-stay h-here. We c-can’t afford to l-lose our advantage.”

She looked around her. What advantage?

“We g-guard the b-barrel bridge. How else c-can Alonzo l-leave?”

Having ridden through the middle of Marco’s spearmen, Alonzo’s cavalry were fanning out behind to turn and attack the infantry from the rear. The moat cut in the ice off the island’s edge limited everyone’s space. The distance from moat to edge was a hundred and fifty paces, two hundred at most.

“How does anyone know what’s going on?”

“They don’t,” Tycho told her sharply. He bowed to her cousin. “My orders, your highness?”

“Tycho. W-what are t-those?”

“Your highness, my eyes . . .”

Giulietta squinted into the last of the sunlight to see a writhing blackness on the bell tower walls. The bulk of the cathedral was in flames, but the bell tower was freestanding and stood slightly apart. The wall nearest the cathedral would ignite in time but for the moment it just smouldered. “Creatures,” she said. “No wings this time.” As she watched, the blackness thickened.

“The c-cathedral p-protects itself . . .”

When she turned back, Tycho was staring at her. His gaze flicked to Marco and something grim entered his eyes. “You must retreat, highness.”

“Tycho,” Giulietta said.

“They’re domovoi . . . House demons.”

“We killed the winged ones.” She couldn’t believe he wanted Marco to run away. God knows, she wanted to run away. But she was a young woman. No one but her thought she should be here anyway. Well, Frederick did . . .

“T-this is b-bad?”

“Very bad, highness.”

Wheeling his horse, Marco grabbed Giulietta’s reins and dragged her after him. After a moment’s shock, Captain Weimer and Marco’s knights followed.

I saw your death . . . Always, he worked out too late what he should have said. I saw death in your face and in the skull beneath your skin. The warnings were rarer now, rarer than when he first found himself in this world, but that one had been too brutal for him to miss.

As Marco and Lady Giulietta rode for the barrel bridge, Tycho jumped on to an overturned cart and stared around him. Renegade Crucifers were still trampling Venetian light infantry, bloody circles showing where knights twisted round, hacking down on heads, or the shields of those who raised them in time.

Each spearman wore mail under a padded jacket. Simple leg armour protected each man’s leading leg, and a light shield with a spiked boss had two loops on the other side; one hooked inside the elbow, the other was the handle. Each spear had an armoured shaft and a fierce spike at the business end, with a crossbar that was axe one side and armour-piercing spike the other. It was a fine weapon for hooking into joints in plate armour or jabbing through mail. And the spearmen retreated when threatened and stepped forward again when the knights turned away.

The battle had become something living that consumed everything it touched. If a crowd could become a mob, then an army mid-battle was a crowd turned to something far more dangerous. It looked as if it would kill until it could kill no more and die of hunger only with the last of the dead.

Tycho tried to swallow the numbers in a single glance but the situation changed faster than ink dropped into swirling water. And all the time that pulsing mass dripped down the bell tower walls. Tycho knew the Venetian forces didn’t realise it. He wondered if Alonzo’s troops did.

“Frederick.” His shout was so loud Alonzo himself turned.

“Traitor . . .” The ex-Regent pointed his sword, somewhere between a warning and a threat that he would see Tycho dead. Ignoring him, Tycho watched a krieghund break away from gutting a wild archer and lollop towards him. The beast ripped arrows from its flesh as it ran. When Frederick leapt up to stand beside Tycho he was halfway human. “What do you want?”

“See those?” Tycho demanded.

“See what?” Blood dripped into Frederick’s eyes from a cut on his forehead and his near-naked body was shaking with exhaustion and cold. Krieghund he was powerful, human he was weak again. He squinted in the direction Tycho pointed. It was obvious he was too tired to concentrate.

“Don’t go away.”

Time slowed and Tycho found himself stepping over corpses and sliding between individual fights as he negotiated the crawling hell of the battle on the ice. A Venetian stabbed at an enemy foot soldier and withdrew his spear, blood drops like pearls stringing the air. He stabbed at the soldier beyond and his first victim, already fallen, slashed the Venetian’s ankles below his shield.

The spearman lowered his shield in shock and died when a wild archer’s arrow split his mail, blossoming blood as the arrow passed through his lungs and cut his heart in two. Tycho caught the man’s falling spear and threw it, skewering the archer and knocking him from his wild pony.

A hundred paces ahead, a Venetian dodged his attacker and stepped straight into Tycho’s path. Breath whooshed from his body, he looked briefly shocked to have hit something he didn’t know was there. He died when his attacker swung an axe at his back, gaffing him like a fish. Tycho killed the attacker and as many of the slow-moving enemy as stood between him and the black rocks ahead. He ripped his way up the bell tower, hit the nearest creature full-on and let both of them fall. Dragging the thing back to the ice, where the others seemed reluctant to follow, he bit hard into its leathery neck, spitting blood so vile it burned his mouth.

“Well,” Frederick said. “That was impressive.”

His voice was sour enough to make Tycho wonder if he meant it. Tossing the thing at Frederick’s feet, he said, “See it now?”

“Domovoi,” Frederick said. “House demons.”

“You recognise them?”

“My father keeps some,” Frederick said. He raised his head and howled. Instantly, his followers broke from their individual battles and headed towards him. They fought their way through the melee, killing those who objected, but sparing any who stepped aside or turned and ran. Within a moment they stood around the tumbled cart, and behind their own line, while the battle went on without them.

They looked at the battered domovoi in silence and Tycho realised they knew what it was and had probably seen one before. At Frederick’s nod they looked towards the bell tower and their faces paled. “The duke needs to be told,” Frederick said. “What we do next is his decision.”

“There are too many to fight,” a krieghund said. He flushed. “I mean, there are too many to fight and win. I’m happy to fight them.” The beast’s face was neither human nor wolf, but something raw and in-between. The blood on his jaws was not from the enemy, it leached from unhealed skin.

“Still his decision,” Frederick said.

Tycho said, “Help him make the right one.” Both Frederick and the krieghund who’d spoken turned to him. “If those attack, the infantry are already dead.”

“That’s brutal,” said Frederick.

Tycho replied, “War is brutal.”

Although he scowled, Frederick didn’t disagree. Staring towards the smouldering bell tower, he said. “They’re still appearing.”

“Do you think Alonzo has a mage?”

“I doubt it,” Frederick said. “They’re being summoned by the bell tower, perhaps by the island itself.”

“And we’ve set fire to their home.”

Frederick nodded grimly. “Let’s destroy the bridge and fall back.”

“Your highness . . .” It was the krieghund who’d spoken earlier. “We may be too late.” Marco, his staff officers and his knights were advancing along the lake, their battle flag held high and personal pennants waving.

“Idiot,” Frederick said.

It was the first rude word Tycho had heard him say about a man most of Europe thought unfit to rule himself never mind an empire as big as Serenissima. The Venetian knights slowed for the barrel bridge, clattered across it in two and broke into a canter that became a gallop within a dozen paces. Marco had decided to charge his uncle. It was magnificent, and stupid. A rolling front of horseflesh and steel, lances lowered and swords loosened, crashed into the side of Alonzo’s cavalry, which was regrouping. The noise knocked snow from the sides of the valley and set avalanches sliding.

Alonzo’s cavalry were tired and Marco’s fresh.

But his were hardened soldiers and Marco’s formed from the sons of nobles and cittadini, with a smattering of tried officers to stiffen their spine. They clashed and the Venetians rode straight through. Shouting, they turned and, buoyed by their own excitement, attacked again. Swords swung and hacked, shields came up and knights were knocked from their saddles and trampled by their own animals. The animal that was the battle became more deadly and more vicious.

Maybe the smoke finally drove the domovoi down to ground level and on to the black rocks of the island, perhaps it was the stink of blood or the noise of the cavalry clashing. They skittered on the water’s edge, touching the ice as if its solidness was unexpected. A wild archer turned, saw them and loosed an arrow that caught one in the throat. The horseman next to him raised his own bow and did the same. The domovoi clicked their high inhuman protest. Finding the ice solid, they flowed on to it and began to spread out. A moment later the killing began.