Gesturing out of the window, Skiouros motioned his intention swiftly and silently. Lykaion's eyes widened as he shook his head. Time was, however, running out, and Skiouros simply replied with a nod climbing up, crouching on the window sill. In half a heartbeat, he turned back to the room and, a crazed smile on his face, leaned back over the drop. In a fluid move, with the grace of an acrobat, the thief let go of the window frame and grasped for the jutting balcony of the room above.
His fingers finding easy purchase, he moved on without a pause, launching his feet from the sill and using the momentum of his swing, directed by the pressure of his hands, to sweep his legs up and hook a foot around the balcony's rail.
There was an ominous creak from the ancient, feeble structure, but it held and, in a heartbeat, Skiouros was gone from sight, one floor up.
Lykaion, his heart pounding with terror, stepped forward to the window and made the mistake of looking down.
As he clung to the window sill, he heard the shuffling of feet outside the door of the room. The intruder had reached their residence and was still maintaining his own silence, though he could not know how alert and prepared his prey was.
The decision was a tough one. While his rational mind told him that even if he fell from the window, a one-storey drop would be likely to at most break his leg, his fears told him that the window was a one-way trip to screaming agony. Yet whoever this person was who was about to reach for the door, he felt confident enough in his abilities to come alone, and clearly had death in mind, from the sound of the blade being unsheathed. Lykaion was an able soldier, but a far cry from a master swordsman. And what if the man also had a gun? If he was Janissary it was more than possible.
His mind was made up as he saw Skiouros appear in the window once more, his lower half anchored on the upstairs balcony, his torso hanging upside down in empty space as his hands beckoned for Lykaion. Damn it! Clearly the thief had done this before.
There was the faintest sound that the renegade soldier felt sure was the noise of a gloved hand on the door handle.
Bracing himself and mouthing 'Allahu Akbar' in silent prayer, the older brother lifted his foot to the window sill and, without a pause - he knew for certain that any pause would see him falter and abandon the decision - used the bent knee to launch himself out into the open air.
A thousand images raced through his mind in a split second: Hadrianople and the family farm; mother reaching out as her boys were taken from her; father telling him the old Greek tales of heroes; Skiouros pounding away from the Devsirme column into the unknown streets; a Mamluk killer standing with his own commander.
He was barely aware of the hands of his brother as they caught his wrists, mid-flight, and the pair swung for a second.
"Climb!" hissed Skiouros, but Lykaion needed no such encouragement. He was already reaching up and grasping his brother's shoulder in a desperate attempt to clamber up from the empty space.
As Lykaion climbed, Skiouros peered at the window. It would have been easier to drop to the alley, of course. It would only have been an eight foot fall once they were out and hanging. But there were problems with that. There was always the possibility that the intruder was not alone, and any sort of flight into the alley may well run them straight into even deeper trouble. Moreover, he knew from sad experience that if he dropped to the alley and ran, any intruder who got to the window would see him before he reached a corner.
Better then to appear entirely absent. He had practised swinging up onto the balcony a dozen times and knew he could easily manage it as a flight route before being spotted. He'd never tried it with a passenger, though, and certainly not one who hated heights. But it was still the best way. Skiouros was a thief, not a killer, and a thief learned quickly to run and to evade, if he wanted to be a thief for very long. Never stick around for trouble if there's a way out. Why could Lykaion not learn that simple lesson? They could have been lounging on a merchant galley far across the Propontis by now, out of the reach of the city's authorities.
In the same moment, he felt relief from pressure as his brother reached the safety of the balcony and let go of him, heard Lykaion's almost explosive release of tension above, and saw the figure move into the room.
It was just the blink of an eye.
The intruder was cloaked, lithe and short. Little could be made out in the shadows but for the clear murderous intent, a short, straight blade of the Caucasus type glinting in his grip. The briefest flash of filigree-fine thread in the other hand told Skiouros all he needed to know, and he hauled himself up to the balcony and out of sight half a heartbeat before the figure turned to regard the open window.
Motioning Lykaion to absolute silence, Skiouros crouched to the wood, trying not to cause any groans, and put an eye to a crack between planks through which he could just make out the open square of darkness in the wall below.
He felt a chill run through him as the intruder's knife suddenly appeared through the window with a swift, neat slashing motion that would have wounded any flesh outside within a foot of the frame. Then, assured of the fact that no one waited by the sill for him, the man's head appeared, hooded in his dark cloak, through the window. The hood moved this way and that, scanning the street and then the walls of the building.
Finally, the head turned, the hood falling away with gravity's pull, and the face looked up at the balcony above. Skiouros shut his eye on the improbable chance that the intruder might see the whites through the crack.
But he'd not been so quick to squeeze shut the lid that he'd not got a quick look at the man who had clearly come here to kill them. That he was an assassin had been clear as Skiouros had hung from the balcony and seen the steel-wire garrotte in the man's hand. More details had fallen into place as the man's face turned towards him and the hood fell away, revealing the walnut skin, darkened eyes and sharp nose of an Arabian or Egyptian Mamluk.
The brothers remained absolutely motionless, barely daring to breathe, and Skiouros could hear the faint rustle of the clothing and cloak as the assassin made another pass of the alley and walls before retreating in through the window.
As the thief's eye snapped open once more, still at the crack, he briefly saw the cloak billowing as it disappeared inside.
The man was alone. The brothers could have used the alley, after all, but the decision he'd made had still been the sensible one. Leaning across to Lykaion, he cupped his hand to his brother's ear. The lightest of whispers would be lost in the cold wind blowing along the alley, after all.
"Mamluk assassin" he hissed.
Lykaion nodded with no sign of surprise, and then cupped his own hand and leaned in to Skiouros. "He won't stop until I'm dead."
Skiouros felt his spirits sink as he realised his brother was right. He'd blindly assumed that the man would now depart and look elsewhere, but that was short-sighted at best. "He'll come after me now, too."
Lykaion frowned, so Skiouros leaned in again. "If he's come here, he knows about me, and must assume I know what you do. We're both marked now."
"Then we've got to kill him now."
Skiouros leaned back, shaking his head with wide eyes and mouthed the word 'assassin'. Lykaion leaned forward and spoke almost silently.
"Maybe only he knows about you. Better to get rid of him now before he starts rounding up friends."
"You can't fight an assassin!"
"I don't intend to" hissed Lykaion and, leaning back, mimed knifing the man in the back, a hand over his mouth. Skiouros leaned in again, his face bleak.
"How?"
The former Janissary paused. He hadn't thought that far ahead yet. He could go into this balcony's room and down the stairs to get to the intruder, but the owner was probably in there. There would be a noisy fuss and the game would be up very quickly. As for over the balcony… well Lykaion didn't even want to think about that. He'd only managed to get up here through the split second decision that he couldn't stay and fight and the fact that it had been so fast he had not
had the time to panic properly.
"Exactly" Skiouros whispered, seeing the look on his brother's face.
There was a moment's pause, and then they both heard the room's door being closed again. The assassin was leaving.
Skiouros closed his eyes and heaved a sigh of relief but when he opened them, they widened in astonishment.
Lykaion was holding out a knife, hilt first, a look of challenge in his eyes.
'What?' the thief mouthed at him, and the older brother's eyes slipped to the balcony's edge and the drop to the street. Though already wide, Skiouros' eyes bulged as he grasped what his brother was suggesting.
"No. I can't."
"You have to. This will be the only opportunity we'll ever have to take him by surprise, and neither of us will be able to kill him in a straight fight."
"No."
"If you don't he'll only find us again, and next time we might not see him coming. You fancy a knife in the neck in the dark?"
Skiouros shuddered; not at the thought of a knife blow, but his imagination was furnishing him with a fairly good idea of how it felt to have that loop of steel wire drop around his neck and pulled tight. Try as he could to fight it, Lykaion was right. If they could end it now, they had to do just that.
And it would have to be him.
Reaching out with a grim expression, Skiouros wrapped his fingers around the knife's hilt and took it from his brother, examining the gleaming blade with distaste. It was reasons like this that he'd run away from the Janissary intake in the first place.
Momentarily he considered a quick prayer for luck, but reasoned that God probably frowned on people about to commit murder and, instead, gripped Lykaion's shoulder briefly and then moved to the rail and climbed lightly over. Jamming the knife between his teeth, he lowered himself until he was hanging from the balcony by his fingertips and then let go.
There was just the faintest 'slap' as the thief's feet hit the alley, sending up a dried cloud of desiccated shit and other muck. Rising from the bent-kneed landing, Skiouros looked up to give his brother the 'all fine' signal, but Lykaion was nowhere to be seen. Of course, the drop would encourage the older brother to stay away from the rail.
Without allowing himself time to start panicking, Skiouros scurried over to the back door of the building. There was always the chance that the assassin would leave by the front entrance onto the main street and he would not have to do what they'd decided, but he knew in his heart that the kind of man who carried a garrotte, and whose mere skin tone would mark him as an enemy of the Ottoman people, would have used narrow alleys to get here and would use the back door for access.
With a deep breath, he peered into the doorway, noting with a thrill of fear the sound of a man carefully descending the creaky staircase. Seconds were all that he had. Gripping the knife as though it had a life of its own and were struggling to escape his grasp, Skiouros stepped to the side of the door and flattened himself against the wall. Briefly, he looked up at the balcony just above and a few yards along the wall, but there was still no sign of Lykaion.
A heartbeat later he heard the last stair creak.
Thump - his heart pounded in the silence.
No sound from the corridor.
Thump.
The faint sound of footsteps padding along the corridor.
Thump.
Louder steps.
Thump.
The swirl of a cloak's edge in the doorway. Skiouros flattened himself back against the wall so hard he wondered if he might splinter the wood. If only it could swallow him whole. Holding his breath, he tensed, the fingers of his free hand flexing momentarily while the knuckles of his right whitened on the knife's grip. He braced his left foot ready to lunge.
The assassin stepped from the building, but at an oblique angle, off towards the far side of the doorway. Even as Skiouros was lunging forward, one hand raised to hook round a head that was now out of reach, a blade to penetrate a back that wasn't there, he realised he'd underestimated the killer.
The assassin, clearly prepared for such an attack, had neatly sidestepped the possibility and his own blade, still unsheathed, swept through the space Skiouros had expected him to occupy and sliced a neat line along the thief's upper arm; not deep, but enough to make him cry out and withdraw sharply.
Darting back to his original position, Skiouros raised his knife defensively, as though it would do him an ounce of good.
The hood fell away once more to reveal the Mamluk's clean-shaven head, his gleaming white eyes and teeth showing up sharply in contrast to his skin in the shadowy alley. The blade in the man's hand no longer glinted, as it blurred and whirled in the expert grip of a highly-trained and talented killer.
The knife was suddenly in the man's other hand, so fast that Skiouros couldn't have predicted it and, as the thief watched the killer's blade-hand carefully, the second blow came from the wrong place.
The knife point struck his eye-socket and by some miracle slid on the bone and scraped along his cheek, taking a nick out of his ear instead of sinking through the eye and deep into the brain as the man had clearly intended. With a cry of agony, Skiouros leapt back, flailing helplessly with his own knife. Through the fiery pain he tried to concentrate, though suddenly his left eye was blinded with a rush of blood and he had to blink it several times and then keep it squeezed shut.
The Mamluk laughed and said something in Arabic - a language incomprehensible to the Greek thief. He had a reasonable grip of Turkish, and some words transferred between the two, but not enough to help.
The assassin changed footing and the blade moved between hands again twice in quick succession.
Then he lunged.
Skiouros tried to counter with his pitiful defensive blade, only to find that the blow had been a feint faster than he'd believed possible. One blink of his clear eye and the man's left hand had been driving for his face with the gleaming blade - the next, that hand was empty as it came forward. Skiouros had only a fraction of a second to register the blade, now in the other hand, streaking towards his breast. He was going to die with that carefully chosen blow.
God in Heaven…
The Mamluk, his feinting free hand, and the deadly knife, suddenly vanished from sight as one hundred and sixty pounds of fugitive Janissary landed on him from a two-storey drop.
Skiouros stared as his brother's feet smashed the assassin aside, sending him sideways with a gasp to land in a heap in the ordure of the alley, his knife skittering away and disappearing into the shadows.
Lykaion, his face white as death with fear, rose slowly from his landing, his knee buckling slightly.
"Never… again!" he declared, shaking. Skiouros grinned.
In the alleyway, winded and wounded, the Mamluk killer rolled over, groaning, trying to get to his knee. Skiouros' darting eyes gave Lykaion the nudge he needed and, gritting his teeth, he drew his sword and took three steps across the alleyway to the fallen assassin. His curved blade had killed three Mamluks in battle over the past two years and he had no qualms about adding a fourth to his list.
The assassin was on one knee now and reaching into the folds of his cloak with a little difficulty, given how the garment had twisted as he fell. Not allowing him time to produce some horrible weapon, Lykaion stepped one more pace and drove his sword down at the Mamluk.
As the point hit the man just above the collarbone and began to drive inwards, the assassin screamed "Murderer!" in Turkish.
The sword slid home into the man's chest, slicing through a lung before exiting near his spine below a shoulder blade, the curved point turning up towards the wall opposite.
"Murderer!" the man repeated, this time in Greek, but as a breathless rasp and with no real power.
Somewhere out on the main street there was a cry of alarm. Lykaion withdrew his blade, watching with dispassion as it came free from the man's neck with a sucking sound and a spray of blood that spattered his braes.
Skiouros was suddenly by his side, one
hand going up to wipe away the blood at his eye and ear. The initial pain was dying away now, leaving a dull throb, but the blood still flowed free. "Come on!"
Another voice called out on the street. The agonised cry of the Mamluk had attracted attention; probably just late-night drunks returning to their homes, but even that was too much of a danger to hang around for.
"We have to go!" Skiouros added as Lykaion stared down at the Mamluk.
"Half a minute" the Janissary replied in an emotionless voice. As Skiouros watched, itching to move, his elder brother took a step back and bent his knee, bringing his curved blade out to one side. The Mamluk, still struggling to breathe, bloody froth bubbling from his lips, looked up with an unrepentant expression - one that stayed on his face even as it bounced along the street and came to rest in the gutter.
Lykaion watched the headless body fall to the alley floor and then grasped the dead man's cloak, using it to wipe the crimson mess from his blade.
"We should search him" Lykaion said quietly.
Skiouros, however, was listening to the sounds out in the street and noted the addition of several new voices to the noise now, including one in Turkish.
"We have to go now!"
Lykaion glared at the corpse and finally straightened and nodded, turning as he sheathed his sword.
"Where, though?"
"Follow me" Skiouros said, turning and jogging along the street in the opposite direction to the growing sound of approaching people. Lykaion gave a wistful look at the corpse he'd not had time to search and then ran off after his brother.
At the end of the street they turned and made their way along a tiny passage, not much more than shoulder wide, between houses, before bursting out into another alley. Skiouros paused.
"Put that away" he gestured at the sword. Lykaion blinked and then nodded, realising just how much attention he could attract running with a drawn sword if he was seen. Sheathing it, he unfastened the buckle from his belt and gripped it, holding it tight to his side so that it was less visible and did not swing as he ran.
Thief's Tale Page 16
