“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-fucking 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.”
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.
43
“Tycho, you c-can’t . . .”
“Watch me.” Tycho dragged Marco’s horse out of the melee. “Has Giulietta gone back to the camp?”
“She’s over t-there.”
Tycho saw a slight figure in white armour draw her bow and put an arrow into a wild archer on a pony who was aiming at someone else. It hit his leg but was enough to make him miss. A Nicoletto stabbed him, which saved Tycho from having to do it. “Don’t move,” he told Marco.
Flowing across the ice, Tycho grabbed Giulietta’s bridle and ducked as she swung her bow as if it were a sword. “Me,” he said, wondering if that made it any better. Her face was strained and she looked close to tears.
“I soiled myself,” she said.
“Half the field have soiled themselves. There are more important things to worry about, like keeping Leo alive . . .” Yes, he thought that would concentrate her mind. She followed him to where Marco sat scowling. Before they could reach him, Captain Weimer rode up and saluted. They arrived just in time to hear the captain say, “Your highness, we face a worse enemy.”
Having killed their first attackers, the domovoi had armed themselves with swords taken from the dead and were hacking their way through shields, crushing helmets with maces, stabbing with whichever end of a spear was at hand. Every man to die gave them another weapon and they killed indiscriminately, making no distinction between Alonzo’s and Marco’s forces.
“W-what are t-they?” Marco demanded.
“Demons,” Tycho said.
“Then we s-stay and f-fight.”
“Your highness . .
.” Captain Weimer hesitated.
“We’re C-Christians,” Marco said. “W-we’re m-meant to f-fight demons.”
“I’m not sure it’s meant to be this literal,” muttered Frederick, sliding himself alongside Giulietta’s horse so that he held the other side of her bridle. A high scream filled the air and was chopped off. “Highness, with respect, we should retreat. We don’t have the weapons.”
“I have this,” said Giulietta. In her hand was a hunting horn. “It’s Roland’s,” she told Tycho. “It summons the paladins through a circle of flame.”
“Where did you get it?”
“From me,” Frederick said.
Tycho ignored him. “Where will you get your circle of fire?”
“There.” Frederick pointed at the castle. Turning to Giulietta, he said, “My lady, sound the horn.”
“That thing is yours?”
“You’d rather die than accept my help?”
I can’t die, Tycho almost replied. She could, though, and Leo . . .
“It belongs to my son,” Giulietta said. “It belongs to Leo because he’s going to be head of the krieghund.”
Marco froze . . . So did the nobles around him.
“Y-you shouldn’t s-say things l-like that.”
“It’s the truth,” she said fiercely. “Leopold was krieghund and so is my son. Leo will lead the Wolf Brothers.” She nodded to the sword slung across Frederick’s back. “That’s the WolfeSelle, it belongs to him, too. Isn’t that right? Doesn’t it belong to Leo?”
Frederick nodded.
Away to the edge of the circle of ice around the cathedral a man threw himself on to the makeshift moat, the crackle ice almost holding as he ran for the safety of the frozen lake on the other side, only to plunge through at the last second. His cry of shock at the coldness of the water turning to screams as webbed hands rose to reach for him and began to tear.
Giulietta vomited.
The Exiled Blade: Act Three of the Assassini Page 27
