The fallen blade at-1

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  "What is your real name?" Janus asked.

  "I don't know, majesty."

  "You are a Venetian foundling?" Several of the court raised their eyebrows at this question. King Janus was notorious for how little he cared about the rules governing nobility. All the same…

  "Far from Venice. My true name was scratched on a stone thrown into Bjornvin's deepest lake to keep it hidden."

  "Bjornvin?" King Janus asked.

  "My home."

  "You've heard of it?"

  Prior Ignacio shook his head. "Never, majesty."

  "And where is this home?" the king asked. "How did you reach Serenissima? By ship? Overland from the north? In a caravan across Turcoman deserts?"

  "Through fire."

  The Prior blanched. He glanced at Janus, who looked round the tower room, considering. A handful of knights, a German prince, Atilo il Mauros. Women on the balcony above and Desdaio standing below. And, finally, the ex-slave kneeling at his feet. The story was containable if necessary.

  King Janus tightened his grip on his sword.

  "Through fire?" he said lightly.

  Tycho nodded. "Bjornvin burnt. I was there, then not. I fell through flames and remember nothing after that…"

  "Nothing at all?"

  "My waking memory is of being bound. Walled up in a Mamluk ship's hull and starving in the darkness until Captain Roderigo cut me free and his sergeant and men set the ship on fire."

  "Is this true?" King Janus demanded.

  Atilo's mouth opened, but no words emerged.

  "Well?" the king demanded.

  "Majesty, I know nothing of this."

  "Why didn't this captain tell anyone? Surely, he would have told…"

  "He couldn't," Tycho lied. "I bewitched him to silence."

  One of the Crucifers crossed himself. Now, Roderigo owes me, Tycho thought. Although he doubted if he would ever collect on the debt. On King Janus's face surprise was replaced by a realisation that the Mamluks had justice on their side.

  "This is not good," Janus said.

  "That ship?" asked the Prior.

  It seemed the sultan had every right to accuse Venice of burning one of his ships, but knowing it changed nothing. An acceptance he'd been wronged wouldn't turn back the Mamluk fleet.

  "You were a prince in Bjornvin?"

  "I was a slave."

  King Janus laughed. "You're meant to say you're royal. At least claim nobility. It's compulsory."

  "I was a slave," Tycho repeated. "My mother was an exile."

  "What were her people?"

  "The Fallen."

  "Majesty." Prince Leopold stepped forward. Standing close to the king and the Prior, he spoke so softly that only those two men and Tycho would hear him, and Tycho shouldn't have been able to do so. "This is not something to be talked about openly. I vouch for his blood line. I owe him a life."

  "As I owe you a life," King Janus said. "If you hadn't abducted Giulietta we would be married and I would be poisoned if her story is true."

  "I believe it," Prince Leopold said.

  "Yes," King Janus said. "So do I."

  Having knighted Tycho, the king dragged him to his feet, ordered a chamberlain to find the startled youth a doublet more fitting to his new status. Janus was about to withdraw when Prince Leopold made a request of his own. Tycho stood to one side, Desdaio to the other. In the middle was Prince Leopold, and, next to him, his bride. Lady Giulietta and Tycho had yet to look at each other.

  Atilo's shock at seeing Lady Giulietta was nothing to his shock when he realised why she was there. The marriage of a Millioni to a German prince went against everything Venice stood for. He knew what Prince Leopold was. In a short, brutal but whispered exchange Giulietta told Atilo she did too.

  And she knew Leopold had tried to abduct her that summer. But this was different. He'd saved her.

  It took a direct order from King Janus for Atilo to stay in the room. And a second order to make him accept Desdaio as Lady Giulietta's maid of honour. That she chose a fellow Venetian as her maid surprised no one. That Prince Leopold zum Bas Friedland chose a newly made knight offended everybody inclined to be offended and shocked the rest.

  "I do…"

  Lady Giulietta's happiness filled the Lady chapel. Her wry smile when she looked at the stone mother was almost as sweet as her glance to the infant at her breast. Baby and bosom were shrouded by a Maltese shawl. Feeding him proved the only way to keep Leo quiet long enough to let the couple exchange vows.

  "I do too," said Prince Leopold.

  Then had to stand, red-faced, while Prior Ignacio insisted on asking the question which had just been answered precipitously.

  The Prior's voice rolling out across the room. He was a man used to public speaking and his was a voice used to command. At the start, the congregation had been ordered to think of nothing but the wedding couple.

  The Mamluk fleet did not exist.

  No peasants herded sheep and goats for slaughter. No foot soldiers strengthened walls and prepared faggots of wood for burning or melting pitch to be poured from the battlements. No smiths forged new swords, no shipwrights made Cyprus's galleys seaworthy. No Crucifer knights sharpened their battle-axes.

  None of these things existed.

  Tycho wondered how many of the congregation realised they'd just been told exactly what was coming. What the Crucifers were doing to fight it. All under the pretence of being told not to pay it attention at all.

  "Now can I say it…?"

  Prior Ignacio allowed himself a smile at Prince Leopold's fervour, and the fact this was the second time he'd made his vow in less than a minute. He spoke the words, then said, "There's something else."

  Prior Ignacio frowned. Wondering what came next.

  "I acknowledge this child as mine." He indicated the baby. "I want him made legitimate."

  "Leopold…"

  "Let me speak."

  Giulietta shut her mouth. Not something that came naturally, and stared at the man beside her, tears in her eyes.

  "This is my heir."

  Prince Leopold drew back Maltese lace. As Giulietta hastily covered her breast her new husband lifted the baby from her, stared significantly at Tycho, and opened the baby's gown, exposing a scratch to its chest.

  "My heir in all things."

  "This is unusual," Atilo protested.

  "These are unusual times." The king's voice was mild, his smile warm. But there was a rebuke in his voice.

  "Yes, majesty."

  Taking the baby, Prior Ignacio held it up. Maybe there was a ceremony legitimising bastards. Although Tycho suspected he was making it up as he went along. "You claim this boy as your lawful heir?"

  "I do," Leopold said firmly.

  "You are this boy's mother? As Prince Leopold zum Bas Friedland is his father?"

  Lady Giulietta bit her lip.

  "My child. We need your answer."

  "The boy is mine. I went to my husband's bed a virgin. Nobody had bedded me before." Her eyes slid to Tycho. "No man has shared my bed since."

  "Tell me if this is true," Janus said.

  Taking the child from Leopold, the Prior stared into the distance. The old man's face, initially blank, became increasingly puzzled.

  "Well?" the king demanded.

  "I sense Millioni blood in his veins."

  King Janus waited impatiently for what came next. Before realising that nothing did. The Prior could sense Millioni blood. That was it. The king looked at Leopold with new interest.

  "I swear I tell the truth," Giulietta said hastily.

  In a handful of Latin, which was enough for the surrounding knights, Prior Ignacio named the boy Leopold's heir, confirmed the marriage of his parents, named him Leo di Millioni de zum Bas Friedland, and offered a prayer for his future.

  58

  "You knew?" Atilo demanded.

  An hour before dawn. To the others it was still dark. For Tycho it had long since become light. He'd watched the horiz
on change colour. Mountains edge through shades of black. Windmills standing stark on the plain. This was a country of squat stone towers with wide sails, on slopes so barren there was as much dirt as scrub. He could have liked it here.

  It obviously hurt Atilo to approach his last apprentice.

  The old man's voice was as stiff as his shoulders, his question as cropped as his hair. He knew half the court watched them from a distance.

  "I knew," Tycho said.

  "She was there in Ca' Friedland?"

  "In his bed, suckling his child." The last was a lie; she'd been in her own chamber until the battle above disturbed her. But there was no need for the old man to know that.

  "Why didn't you tell me?"

  "And get my throat cut? A Millioni princess in bed with the bastard of her family's enemy? You sent me to kill the prince. Chances were, you'd kill me for failing. But returning to say that? I might as well stand naked in the sun…"

  "You think that idea didn't cross my mind?"

  "Maybe, but you'd be doing it to me. Telling you about Lady Giulietta and Leopold was doing it to myself."

  "Leopold…? He's really a friend?"

  In as much as anyone could be. Tycho didn't bother to explain that bit of it. Besides, in any sensible world, Leopold and he would be enemies. Giulietta loved her husband. Tycho loved Giulietta. What better reason to hate a man than the very thought of his wife made your guts knot with longing?

  "Where does that leave us?" Atilo said.

  "There is no us. I could kill you but Janus wouldn't approve. So I'm going to let the Mamluks do it instead. That way you die a hero…"

  Turning his back, Tycho threaded his way between Crucifer knights and Cypriot courtiers. Finally reaching an alcove where Prince Leopold stood with his arm round his new wife.

  "Look after Leopold," she said.

  "My lady…"

  "I mean it. Protect him if you can."

  "Two things," Tycho said, smiling. "One, does Leopold look like a man who lets others look after him? And two…" He indicated the coming dawn. "The battle will be over before I join it."

  "Your eyes get no better?"

  "They get worse," Tycho said.

  "You're changing," Prince Leopold said. "Now, if you'd excuse us…"

  Lady Giulietta pulled a face, but she let herself be steered towards the door, courtiers moving aside and bowing as she passed. As she disappeared under an arch, Leopold slapped her buttocks and laughed at her protest.

  "The best of his family."

  Turning, Tycho found King Janus at his side.

  "I wouldn't know, majesty."

  "Take it from me. You fight beside him?"

  "With luck."

  "If the battle lasts until dark?"

  "You know about that?"

  Janus shrugged. "Too delicate to face daylight. That's what Isak boasted on his posters. Delicate isn't the word I'd choose." His grey eyes searched Tycho's face. "Magically unable to face daylight, maybe. How did you and Leopold meet?"

  "In battle, majesty."

  "You've fought together before?"

  "I was sent to kill him. Giulietta asked for his life. I gave it."

  Glancing round, King Janus checked who might have heard the answer. His courtiers had dropped back. The Prior of the White was watching, his expression unreadable behind his beard.

  "Walk with me."

  The battlements were overcrowded, The air still cold, but ready to warm with the approaching day. A sergeant, in rusting breastplate, turned to curse their pushing past and stopped, suddenly apologetic. He was old, one-eyed and crooked where his leg had once been badly broken.

  Janus clapped him on the shoulder and kept walking towards a corner turret. A huge catapult had been dragged into position, and its plaited ropes were being tied to huge steel rings on the turret floor.

  "The plaiting takes the shock?"

  King Janus nodded his appreciation of Tycho's guess.

  "You beat Prince Leopold. A famous duellist. Then gave him his life because a woman asked you. And were, it seems, banished for so doing."

  Maybe the king was talking to Tycho. Maybe to himself. When Janus nodded, then nodded again, Tycho knew his second guess was correct and he'd been right to remain silent. "Tomorrow," said the king, "decides everything."

  "Everything, majesty?"

  "Until the next time. Of course, if tomorrow goes badly there will be no next time. No Cyprus. No Crucifer stronghold. No me, probably. No Giulietta or Desdaio except as slaves."

  "Leopold will take Giulietta. I imagine Atilo intends to do the same…"

  "Into battle?" King Janus looked aghast.

  "Would you leave your woman to be defiled? If you knew defeat made that certain? Leopold won't. I doubt Atilo will either."

  "My wife was poisoned."

  "Majesty?"

  "She died a year ago. No, two years now."

  The king's gaze unfocused. Such bleakness flooded his face it was like looking at a Greek mask, right down to the hollow space behind the eyes and the drag of his mouth. A single tear said this mask belonged to a man.

  "It feels like yesterday."

  They stood in the near-dawn. On hastily fortified battlements. With a Mamluk fleet somewhere over the dark horizon. The men at arms had fallen back, unsure if the king's grief involved Tycho or just the situation in general. Few of those in the castle expected to be alive next month.

  The peasants would change sides.

  Why not? No one asked them if they wanted to be ruled over. And the cost to them was much the same whoever did. Taxes and tithes, daughters taken, sons drafted into militias. A ruler who was strong but harsh was better than one who was kind but weak. Strong rulers gave stability.

  "Can you really make a difference tomorrow?"

  "I have a question of my own."

  King Janus sucked his teeth. "Maybe the Prior is right. I should have executed you and be done with it."

  "Answering my question might be simpler."

  "So like Atilo," the king said. "Perhaps that's the problem. The Moor trained you too well. So now he has no reason to exist."

  "He tried to kill me earlier."

  "If he wanted to kill you, then you'd be dead." Janus caught Tycho's expression. "And so would he, perhaps. So maybe he didn't think his own life was a price worth paying to take yours. What's your question?"

  "Why were you troubled when I mentioned fire?"

  "Ah, yes," said King Janus, "the reason Prior Ignacio thinks I should execute you. Part of me fears he is right."

  It was, Janus told him, how Charlemagne, the greatest of the Frankish emperors, sent reinforcements from the Rhine to Roncevaux. Though his loup garou arrived too late to save Count Roland. And Prior Ignacio had told King Janus the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse would arrive through just such a circle. Tycho could see how the Prior might be worried.

  "This is instant?" Tycho asked.

  "I'm not sure I understand your question."

  "You step into a fire in one place and arrive instantly in the other?"

  The king scratched his stubble and sighed. "We're talking heresy," he said. "Dangerous heresy at that. But, yes, I imagine it's quick. Why?"

  "I was wondering if it might take longer in some cases."

  "How much longer?"

  "A hundred years," Tycho said, and then shrugged at the king's expression. "It was just an idea."

  59

  "Prince Leopold says now would be a good time, Sir Tycho."

  Knuckles tapped at a box lid, then a soldier apologised roughly for his rudeness, cursed himself for cowardice and rapped harder.

  "If you're done sleeping, Prince Leopold says…" Atilo led the fleet, but Prince Leopold represented the king. From the bitterness in the soldier's voice, Tycho took it the battle went badly. How badly he discovered when he reached deck and found himself surrounded by a broken fleet under a darkening sky.

  Sailors were lashing Leopold's ship, the Lionheart, to Atilo's
own.

  Grinding into her sides, a Mamluk galley had buckled the Lionheart's planks and widened her seams enough to flood the bilges. Archers who should be fighting were bailing. Just not fast enough to keep her afloat unless tied to another.

  The sullen sun sinking into the far horizon was mirrored and mimicked by two dozen fires dotting the wine-dark sea around them. Mamluk ships burnt, but so did Cypriot and Venetian ones. The screams of shackled slaves could be heard across the water.

  "Enjoy your sleep?"

  There was strain in Leopold's voice.

  His jest was forced, almost insulting. His expression grim, and his face grimed with soot and his beard with blood. More blood oozed from an arrow's gash on his arm, which had been tied above the elbow. The dark eyes that had melted Giulietta's heart looked desperate. "Where is she?" Tycho demanded.

  "You love her, don't you?"

  "Yes," he said simply.

  "She's below. I should probably kill you, but…" Prince Leopold indicated the smoke and flames, the sinking ships being slowly swallowed by the sea's flat surface. "There doesn't seem much point. But I still want an honest answer."

  "To what?"

  "My question. You knew Giulietta before that night, didn't you? On the roof at Ca' Friedland, you recognised her from somewhere else…"

  Tycho nodded.

  "Is the child yours?"

  "What?"

  Answer enough. Simply asking obviously left a taste in Leopold's mouth because he turned his attention back to the burning wrecks around them. "Suggest something," he said. "Suggest it quick. We can't afford losses like this."

  The numbers were brutal. The Mamluks needed Atilo's ship, the San Marco, sunk or captured. The Great Lion flying from her mast was prize enough to make a pauper rich, a soldier an officer, an officer a noble of rank.

  The Mamluk's pennant held the same value.

  Sultans feared their sons, generals feared their staff. Their admiral's second in command would be good at provisioning but useless in battle. His third in command would be a fighter, hated by his immediate boss, viewed with suspicion by his admiral. Hindered from treason by the fact he was the admiral's nephew, second cousin or bastard son.

  Although bastards were risky.