Assassin's Tale

by Turney, S. J. A.

  Skiouros skirted round the edge of the clamouring mourners and drove his blade into the shouting man’s chest. He was too late, of course. If there was a Frenchman in the castle who did not know there were interlopers now, then he was a deaf one. The Turk fell away from the window and Skiouros yanked his blade back, allowing the shaking man to collapse to the rich rug and pour out his life onto it. In half a heartbeat he was over with Helwyg and Parmenio, who had already dealt with the human shield. Only the man with the candelabrum remained. Even as Skiouros approached the scene, Orsini feinted with his sword and, as the Turk was distracted, Parmenio drove his parrying dagger into the man’s back between the shoulder blades. The Turk went stiff, his fingers releasing the candelabrum, which fell to the floor.

  ‘Run!’ suggested the sailor helpfully, and Orsini turned and flung open the door. Immediately outside, a French soldier who was reaching for the door handle went wide eyed and tried to bring his sword to bear. Without pause, Orsini slammed his own hilt into the man’s face, which issued cracking noises as he fell away spraying blood and teeth. Orsini halted only long enough to look left and right along the corridor. Strangely they were alone.

  ‘Come on.’

  Easily, speedily, Orsini charged to the right, the way they had come. The other three followed at his heel, Helwyg taking up his usual place at the rear, his eyes occasionally flitting over his shoulder as they ran. As he reached the junction to the next corridor, Orsini looked this way and that again, his face falling as he peered to the right.

  ‘Damn it.’

  He turned the corner and ran left and as Skiouros and Parmenio reached the junction behind him, they looked to the right only to see a dozen French soldiers running at them, the man behind them dressed in a night-robe of deep blue with a white swan upon it, his sword out at the side as he bellowed orders in French.

  They would never make it. They might reach the room through which they had entered, but they would never have time to deal with the shutters and the rope before they were overrun.

  Hearts heavy, they turned and ran anyway - what else could they do? The long corridor that led towards the rope room was empty ahead, at least as far as the room’s door where it turned. Clearly the soldiers on this floor were concentrated at the end where the Duc d’Orleans resided, as one might expect. If only the soldiers weren’t so close behind, the four friends might stand a chance. In an attempt to gauge their relative speeds and their lead, Skiouros glanced over his shoulder as he ran, and his heart fluttered at the sight that opened up behind them.

  Helwyg had not followed them from the junction and was instead standing proud and enormous in the corridor, swinging his huge blade in ponderous arcs, daring the first Frenchman to approach him.

  No… not another one! Skiouros wanted to shout out, to tell Helwyg to run. But nothing would help the big Silesian now. He was a dead man already. It was just a matter of how long he could hold them off - how many minutes he could buy his friends. Skiouros had a flash of memory back to that look the mercenary had exchanged with Orsini back in Albano. Debt paid…

  With a heartfelt wish that his big Germanic friend die well, Skiouros turned his gaze to the front once more. As they reached the door to the room, the sounds of ringing steel on steel and cries of pain were echoing along the corridor. At the corner where the door stood, as the friends rammed their blades back into their sheaths, they glanced left only to see more Frenchmen coming.

  Orsini wrenched the room’s door open and the three men fell inside. Parmenio ran over to the window and threw the shutters open as Orsini removed the key from outside, slamming the door shut and locking it, and then helped Skiouros drag a heavy armoire over and lean it against the door.

  With a nod to one another, the two ran to the window, where the shutters were now wide and Parmenio had thrown the rope out, watching it uncoil as it fell.

  Thuds and thumps began to sound beyond the door and the armoire moved a couple of inches. Orsini reached up and wrenched the scarf from his neck. Quickly, he wrapped it around the rope near where it was tied to the mullion and then gripped it tight.

  ‘See you soon.’

  With a deep breath, the nobleman stepped up onto the table and threw himself from the window, sliding down the rope, using the scarf to prevent burn as he descended at lightning speed. With a last look at the door, which was thumping and shaking, Parmenio pulled on the gloves that had been tied at his belt and threw himself out, zipping down the rope at a frightening pace. Skiouros was alone in the room for a moment. He glanced back at the bulging, shaking door, listening to the racket on the other side and the various shouts in French, leading him again to wish he spoke the language.

  Somewhere beyond that door lay the cleaved body of Helwyg, the latest victim of Skiouros’ vengeance. Three left, now: just him, Orsini and Parmenio. Adrift and friendless in a city heaving with French soldiers, every one of whom would shortly be looking for them. Their chances of escape were slim, to say the least.

  Clambering up onto the table, Skiouros looked down to where his friends waited at the bottom. Shouting could be heard around the other side of the castle now, and a bell was tolling a warning somewhere nearby. Unwrapping some of the blood-soaked scarf from his wounded finger, Skiouros held it in both hands and wrapped it around the rope. With a silent, instant prayer for deliverance for them all, he threw himself out of the window and slid down the rope at speed, the building going past in a blur. The descent was so fast that he barely had time to clamp his hands painfully together and bend his knees for the impact before he touched the paving. From the way Parmenio was rubbing his own knee, it seemed he had also underestimated his speed and had landed hard.

  ‘Where now?’ Skiouros asked breathlessly.

  ‘The port,’ Orsini replied, the words forming a frost cloud before his face.

  ‘And our horses? Our gear? I’ve got Sigma stabled in the inn!’

  ‘If you live through the night perhaps you can come back,’ the nobleman spat acidly, ‘but this area is going to be swarming with the Duc D’Orleans’ men shortly and our inn is no longer safe.’

  ‘Nor are the streets, with all the French patrols.’

  ‘But they’re not looking specifically for us. Now come on.’

  As if they needed any further incentive to move, the door to the Castel Capuano suddenly burst open and golden light spilled out into the dark again. Soldiers began to issue from it, fanning out, scanning the empty square and the streets leading off for their prey. In half a heartbeat they were shouting and pointing at the three friends. Skiouros turned and Orsini was already running, heading for a dark alleyway, slipping and skidding on the frosty stones.

  More bells took up the warning and as the three friends disappeared into the relative obscurity of the dark passage, they could hear French voices raised in anger and alarm. They had lost the only fluent French speaker with Helwyg, though Orsini clearly had a smattering of the tongue, and really it didn’t take any level of fluency to guess what the voices were saying.

  Skiouros blinked in the unaccustomed shadow and almost fell over something that he suspected was the body of a stray dog, his feet spattering in ordure as he raced to catch Orsini and Parmenio, who was putting on a faster turn of speed than was his norm. The nobleman reached a fork, where a crumbling building barred their direct path south, and turned to his right. Skiouros frowned. He could hear French voices from that direction.

  ‘The other way!’ he shouted, pointing to his left.

  ‘Goes uphill to the city wall,’ Orsini yelled back without stopping. Feeling the strains of panic tugging at the edge of his senses, Skiouros followed his friends. ‘Last time I checked,’ Orsini shouted back at him, ‘the sea was downhill from everywhere!’

  Yes, thought Skiouros irritably as he ran, but so, apparently, are the French!

  A horrible flashback assailed Skiouros as he pictured the three of them, along with Nicolo, racing down the narrow spaces between market stalls back in Palos
a year and a half ago, fleeing Turkish pirates in an effort to reach the docks. His mind furnished him with a picture of the Pinta sailing for the western horizon with its sister ships, and he dearly hoped history was not about to repeat itself!

  Continuing down the gentle gradient towards the sea, Skiouros saw Orsini burst out into a wider street from their narrow alley. Opposite, a squat and brooding - if impressively wide - church blocked their path. Two French soldiers were squatting outside the church’s front door playing dice, and both looked up at the running footsteps. One of them shouted something challenging as they rose and retrieved their pikes from the door. Skiouros could do nothing about them, however, for suddenly a figure appeared out of a side alley and barged into him.

  The Greek fell painfully to the cobbles and the muck, his assailant on top of him, and gasped as the man’s knife plunged from nowhere. He felt the numbing punch of the impact and it took him critical moments to realise that he had not been wounded. The knife point had struck his leather belt and dug into it, bruising him badly, but preventing the blade from slicing deep into flesh and organs.

  He tried to rise, but his assailant - no French soldier, probably just a mugger - held him down as he withdrew his knife for a second blow. Skiouros stared, wild eyed, and in a moment of clarity, bucked and then bent his head, clamping his teeth on the mugger’s restraining hand. Let’s see how someone else likes it!

  The thug screamed and the pressure was lifted. Skiouros kept his teeth clenched and stripped flesh from the finger as the hand pulled back. He spat out the skin and blood as the mugger lurched to his feet, and then rose to face him. In a deft move, given that it was on the wrong hip for this, he drew his macana with his good hand and spun it twice before swatting the man around the cheek with it and then, as the thug leaned back from the blow, jabbed the end with impressive force into the man’s gut. The thug folded up and fell to the ground, his knife clattering off along the cobbles.

  Skiouros was about to lean down and finish him when he heard French shouts and remembered that time was the most pressing matter right now. As he emerged from the alley, he saw Orsini drive his blade through a Frenchman and rip it back out, clearing their way as Parmenio clutched his shoulder with his sword still in hand, blood seeping down his arm and darkening his sleeve.

  ‘Where were you?’ the sailor grimaced.

  ‘I got a little held up. Where now?’

  ‘Downhill,’ Orsini reminded him and turned right, running from the church.

  ‘What do we do when we get to the port?’ Skiouros panted as they pounded down the frosty flagged street, skittering here and there and having to watch their balance on the slippery stone.

  ‘We get onto the first ship we find that’s not bearing the French flag, we pray that they’re no lovers of the Valois regime, we pool every ducat we have and ask them how far away from Napoli it will get us.’

  ‘Not much of a plan.’

  ‘Do you have a better one?’ Orsini snapped archly as they ran.

  Skiouros thought better than to reply and they followed the slope of the hill, curving gradually to their left until they came to the rear end of another church, this time a tall and decorative one, with a tower that stood high above the city’s towering residential blocks. As they ran past it, he became aware of French voices shouting from the streets to their left. If he had his geography of the city right, that way lay the walls. Had word reached there and men been mobilised? Or was it just another random patrol out ravaging the innocent populace?

  As they turned again, always following the slope, Orsini pulled up short, and the other two almost stumbled into him. A patrol of French soldiers was making their way up the street. So far they were marching in tight formation and hadn’t made a move for the three running men.

  ‘They don’t seem to be looking for us,’ Skiouros whispered.

  ‘That won’t matter when they see us - three Italians, armed, covered in blood and out in the streets at night. What do you think they’ll do?’

  Sure enough, as the patrol spotted the three men, they shouted a challenge and broke into a jog, weapons levelled. Skiouros glanced wild-eyed at his companions. There were perhaps a dozen of the enemy - far too many for the three of them to take on, especially with Parmenio wounded. And they blocked the slope downhill towards the port, too. Orsini skidded to a halt, slipping a little and going down to a knee to prevent his momentum carrying him rolling down the street and into the path of the patrol. Parmenio almost went over him.

  ‘Back,’ Orsini shouted in Italian as he staggered to his feet again. ‘Round the church and lose them in the alleys on the other side. Then downhill again.’

  The three men turned and began to scramble back up the slope towards the church with the tall tower, struggling with the sudden change of gradient and the slippery sheen of rime on the stony ground. It would not be too hard to lose a patrol in the narrower alleys, but there was always the dreadful possibility that they might meet another patrol coming the other way.

  A loud ‘crack’ rang out in the night air. A gun shot?

  With a sinking feeling, Skiouros looked down. History continuing to repeat itself. After all, the bullet had apparently missed him in Palos through pure chance. Perhaps God had not saved him after all, but merely granted him a period of grace to save Cem. The divine did have a curious sense of humour at times, after all. His eyes played down across his chest and belly as he ran, expecting to see the tell-tale blossom of dark liquid on his doublet as his lifeblood flooded out to soak the material.

  Nothing.

  His sinking heart hit rock bottom and he skidded to a halt as he turned, dread pinching his every nerve ending.

  Orsini was staring at him with a look of utter surprise as the nobleman staggered, his leg misshapen by the wound that had carved out so much flesh and come so close to shattering the bone. Skiouros’ horrified eyes rose above Orsini to the Frenchmen who were advancing at pace, apart from the one arquebusier, who was still on his knee with his firearm levelled from the shot.

  Reaching out, Skiouros grasped Orsini to prevent him falling as his ruined leg buckled.

  ‘Can you hop?’

  Orsini shook his head. ‘Only into the grave, my friend,’ he winced.

  Panic filling him, Skiouros glanced across to Parmenio and thrust his macana at the captain. Parmenio took it and the Greek turned, reaching for Orsini’s waist to pick him up bodily.

  ‘Don’t be stupid, Skiouros. Run, or you’ll both die with me.’

  Pushing away Skiouros’ grasping hands, Orsini spun his sword once in his grip and drew his parrying dagger, staggering again as the blood gushed from his leg, sapping his strength with every beat of his heart.

  ‘No. No more deaths.’ Skiouros’ face was hard, pale and furious.

  ‘I’m dead already. Go. To the port. To a ship. Go home.’

  ‘You’re not dead. A good doctor can save you.’

  The Frenchmen were closing and Parmenio turned, levelling his sword and Skiouros’ club ready to fend them off if he had to, but the macana drooped with the pain of his wounded arm.

  ‘Skiouros,’ Orsini leaned forward, almost falling as his leg trembled again. ‘Helwyg was not the only one who took an apple. Three bites was probably enough to kill me three times over. I am already dead. Let me go to the sword and not sweating out my life in bed.’

  Skiouros stared, remembering the half-eaten apple on the table, next to which he had placed the untouched one.

  No!

  But Parmenio was grabbing him and turning him. His mind whirled. Not Orsini. Not another! Vengeance was lost now; done, futile. Stop taking my friends!

  He hardly struggled as Parmenio began to push him back up the hill. The captain was shouting something at Orsini, but what it was escaped Skiouros entirely. All he could hear was his own thundering pulse and the sounds of bodies hitting the floor as fate, or God, or blind chance took his friends one after the other.

  But he was running. Somehow,
regardless of his unwillingness to move, Parmenio had triggered some primal instinct and he was fleeing once more. Despite the peril of the slippery flagstones and cobbles, he looked over his shoulder in time to see Orsini drive his sword into a Frenchman, recover, parry a blade with his dagger and remove the hand of a second. But then a soldier kicked him in the knee of his bad leg, and Orsini cried out and collapsed. Skiouros saw the three French blades raised for a downhill stroke and turned to face uphill once more, salty tears freezing into the corners of his eyes.

  He ran, trying not to hear the scream that was cut short so fast.

  Orsini’s sacrifice had bought them precious seconds, but he knew they were not going to make it as soon as he looked up again. Another French patrol had rounded the corner at the top of the street, next to the church, and had spotted them, launching into action.

  No! Not Parmenio as well.

  Grunting through bared teeth, he began to recover his wits and ripped the macana from Parmenio’s grip. ‘Your turn. Say hello to Genoa for me.’ As he stood still, hefting his macana and drawing his sword, Parmenio shook his head. Skiouros was about to push his friend away when over the running feet and the shouting French voices, he heard something he would never have expected in a thousand lifetimes:

  A Turkish voice!

  He was so surprised that he only realised too late that he’d not actually heard what it said. For a moment he wondered whether Lykaion’s shade had chosen the most inopportune time imaginable to plague him. But Parmenio had clearly heard it too, for the sailor’s head was spinning this way and that, trying to identify the source.