The Exiled Blade: Act Three of the Assassini (33 page)

The priest lit the arrows and the men released their bowstrings.

This time the army watched in silence the arc the arrows made as they flamed into the clear blue sky and then fell towards the cathedral’s wooden walls. A few more stuck this time and the sergeant grinned. The villagers fitted new arrows without being ordered, moving like dead men or puppets, not looking at each other or at their priest, simply replenishing their bows and waiting.

“I don’t like it,” Frederick whispered.

Although the air hung heavy there were no thunderclouds in the sky and no sign of a storm on the horizon. Giulietta nodded her agreement. It was too quiet and she felt exposed out here, as if the mountains were watching. “What’s that?” she demanded. The crack sounded as loud as the absent thunder, and she looked at the ice below her horse’s hooves to check it was still firm. Others were looking around for the source of the noise.

“Light those arrows,” Marco ordered.

The bearded priest shambled forward, the flaming torch in his hand, and was readying to light the first arrow when the sergeant yelled a warning. The priest spun faster than seemed possible for such a big man, looking every which way but up, and that was how he found himself standing headless, before toppling sideways to stain the ice a vivid red. A ragged shadow dropped his head and it landed with a thud, rolling along the ice like a ball.

Turning, Giulietta spewed noisily.

“What the f-fuck was t-that?”

“Not sure,” Frederick said. “But there’s another.” He pointed to an onion dome on the cathedral. “See it?”

“M-my eyes aren’t that g-good.”

“Can y-you s-see it?” Marco asked Giulietta.

“Looks like a bird with the head of a lizard,” she said.

“Like big b-bats?”

“Not really. More like gargoyles.”

“Does it matter?” Frederick asked, as Marco summoned an officer and told him to make the archers fire another volley.

“Of course it d-does. If I don’t know what they l-look like h-how can I work out w-what they are? If I don’t k-know what they are h-how can I d-defeat them? Pity Tycho’s n-not here. He’s g-good at things like t-this.”

“He’s good at most things,” Frederick said bitterly.

Giulietta leant across and touched his wrist. With a scowl, he shook her off and withdrew. Since this involved making his mount walk backwards she was almost as impressed as she was irritated.

“You n-need to choose,” Marco said.

“
Marco . . .
”

“I’m s-serious. Which do you l-love?”

She thought about it. “Both, if I’m honest.”

“I was a-afraid of that.” He nodded to an officer, who said something to the sergeant, who shouted an order. The villagers notched new arrows and the sergeant took a fresh torch.

“W-wait . . .” Marco ordered. It seemed he wanted a line of Venetian bowmen behind the villagers. They, too, should have naphtha-tipped arrows – but their job was to kill whatever it was before it could kill the sergeant.

Weirdly brilliant
, thought Giulietta, seeing her cousin wide-eyed and excited by his own plan.
But not really in the same world as the rest of us.
She watched as Venetian archers hurried over the barrel bridge and drew up in a line. The officer went after them and took a lighted torch for himself.

“When y-you’re r-ready.”

As the first line raised their bows, a swirl of light-swallowing darkness detached itself from the cathedral roof and the sergeant and officer ran down the double line of bowmen lighting arrows.

“F-first line, f-fire.” Arrows rose and fell towards the cathedral, but everyone except the second line of archers was watching Marco, who was squirming with excitement. “S-second line, f-fire.” His bowmen had their arrows in the air before Marco finished the order.

The beast swirled away at the last second.

A fire arrow passed through its wing, tearing a ragged hole in black leather. Another struck its chest and the creature screamed.

“B-bring it d-down.”

Archers scrambled to obey Marco’s order almost before he spoke it.

Two more arrows found the creature as it turned away and flapped its wings frantically, trying to climb high enough to make it home. The beast had almost reached the island before it faltered, twisted in the air and fell.

“Mine,” Frederick shouted. Spurring his mount across the barrel bridge, he raced for where the creature struggled to get airborne and five
krieghund
followed, their swords already drawn.

“Such c-children.”

Giulietta didn’t doubt that half the
krieghund
were older than him.

“Oh h-hell,” Marco swore suddenly. Half a dozen black shapes appeared on the cathedral roof and swooped towards Frederick and his followers.

“Watch,” Giulietta said.

Suddenly crouching on his saddle, Frederick leapt for the flapping blackness overhead and began his change in mid-air. It was so brutal Giulietta looked away as his scream echoed from the mountains, and she found herself overcome with nausea all over again.

“Oh G-God,” Marco said.

Frederick hit the creature full-on, his twisted hands clawing its head as he found his grip and twisted hard enough to break its neck. He dropped back into his saddle, grabbed the reins of his terrified mount, holding it steady with brute force while he drew the
WolfeSelle
from a scabbard on the saddle. Then he vaulted from his horse, strode to where creature he’d originally been after flapped and struggled on the ice and beheaded it.

“He’s trying to impress you.”

Lady Giulietta didn’t bother to say he was succeeding.

Unslinging the ash and buffalo-horn bow bequeathed her by Alexa, Giulietta put her knees to her horse to spur it forward, dipped for an arrow from the quiver by her knee and turned for the bridge.

“G-Giulietta, you c-can’t . . .”

For a moment, she thought Marco had grabbed her bridle and opened her mouth to shout in protest, but he snatched the Lion of St Mark from its carrier and thrust the flagpole at her. She showed him her bow.

“Fire y-your d-damn arrow . . .”

Fingers releasing, she let her arrow fly, slammed her bow back into its open-topped case and grabbed the battle flag.
The Lion.
Her throat was tight and tears filled her eyes. She wanted to sneer at herself for the sudden sentimentality but felt only awe as she lifted the flag higher.

“That’s it,” Marco shouted.

Archers were cheering around her.

Marco’s knights had gone from standing to a trot and from a trot to a light canter as she and Marco led them across the barrel bridge. Officers were shouting orders but she had no idea what they were and cared even less. She, Lady Giulietta di Millioni, was carrying the great flag into battle beside the duke himself. It was an act from which legends were made. Up ahead, the
krieghund
sprang at the shadow things as archers began aiming for the walls, with archers behind them aiming for any creatures that appeared above. Young boys dashed between the archers, lighting fire arrows from their flaming brands.

A couple of Frederick’s followers lay dead, half-naked boys dressed in bloodied rags where they’d reverted to human form. Giulietta looked frantically for their master. He was a hundred paces away, gripping the
WolfeSelle
in hands that looked too twisted to hold it, his mouth open in a high and ferocious howl, his sex erect and his fur shimmering in a sudden cold wind as he cut the last of the flapping black creatures from the sky.

What was it with the erect sex? They all did it on changing. She wondered if it was the nature of the change or their lust for battle. Catching her glance, Marco grinned. “Not quite as s-safe as you t-thought?”

She scowled at him. “Find your own monster.”

“Every time I d-do you take him f-first.” She had a feeling he meant that. Dragging his reins, her cousin swerved to shout some order at an officer half a dozen paces away. The man peeled off and she saw him drop back.

“We n-need m-more archers.”

Enemy forces were appearing along the roofline of the cathedral, the first of Alonzo’s followers she’d seen. They began dousing the arrows stuck into the walls below them. At first she thought they used water then realised it was sand. Behind her came the rattle of carts and the clank of bridles. She heard a cart reach the barrel bridge and stop. The driver, with the thick accent of a Nicoletto, told the archers to walk the rest. Giulietta thought him wise.

Bowmen pushed through a gap in the cavalry and began to range in a line until someone shouted at them to make it two lines, one behind the other. Boys ran along their length lighting the naphtha rags on the arrows. From this close it was hard to miss and a wave of arrows rose to fall on wooden walls. Some stuck fast and were smothered by buckets of sand dropped from overhead.

Enemy crossbowmen on the bell tower raised their weapons and bolts hurtled towards the Venetian army, falling a dozen paces short. Swinging round, one of the Venetians dropped his trews and farted at the enemy while his friends cheered.

“Back into line,” their sergeant shouted.

A sudden crack of thunder killed the laughter and those who’d just arrived looked around, puzzled by the lack of storm clouds. Marco and Giulietta were staring at shadows popping into existence on the Red Cathedral’s roof, fifty where there had been five before. They crawled and tumbled and found their feet and tried their wings.

“Warn the c-captains,” Marco told a messenger.

The man galloped away, halting at each troop to tell them what was happening, until he was so far round the island that Giulietta lost sight of him as he disappeared behind the cathedral. Within a few minutes he was back, his circle completed. Still the shadows gathered.

“M-magic,” Marco said.

Giulietta thought he sounded worried. “Frederick’s magic.”

“He’s
k-krieghund
.” Marco made it sound something else. Maybe it was, but Lady Giulietta didn’t see why.

“Tycho then.”

“Who k-knows what he is, p-poor b-boy.” The duke chewed his lip as he watched the slopes of the roof become buried under restless shadows. The creatures looked strange and ancient. As if they came straight from hell or belonged to the world in a rawer age. “My m-mother would k-know.”

“How to defeat them?”

“W-what they are,” Marco sighed. “D-defeating them is s-simple.” Giulietta stared at him. “We s-shoot them full of f-flaming arrows and your wolfie f-friends rip off their h-heads. We just need them to d-die faster than we d-do – and h-hope we have some p-people left to k-kill Uncle Alonzo at the end.”

Giulietta laughed, she couldn’t help it.

Knights looked across and sat a little straighter, archers muttered something appreciative and probably obscene. Unquestionably obscene, since they glanced from her to Frederick, who stood near naked and still in his
krieghund
form, quite as tumescent as when he first changed. She’d expected battles to be fierce and disorientating. Full of ferocious fighting, screams, cowardice and feats of bravery. When she said this to Marco, he smiled at her sadly. “My l-love,” he said, “the b-battle h-hasn’t even begun.”

All around the cathedral, a hundred paces from the edge of the island, archers stood on the ice in two ranks, with their bows drawn and point-heavy fire arrows waiting for a flame. The flame boys were nervous, the fate of the priest having spread.

In front of the cathedral Marco raised his sword.

As it swept down, flame bearers ran the first and second ranks, crouching low as leathery shapes rose from the cathedral roof. A boy near Giulietta died. There were other deaths, dozens of others, but his was the one she saw. He went down as a shadow fell on him and bowled him backwards.

“Kill,” a sergeant shouted.

Around her archers released arrows into the screaming mass, pin-cushioning the boy as well as the winged creature. Vomit rose in Lady Giulietta’s throat. There was nothing glorious about this. No heroism in turning a boy into a screaming pillar of fire, even if it did kill his attacker. The screams ended almost as soon as they began. “V-vocal chords.” Marco stood beside her.

“What?”

He tapped his throat. “They b-burn.”

The facts her cousin produced scared her. “Don’t you care?” she demanded, nodding at the boy. The flag felt like a dead weight in her hand and she handed it to its original bearer, who’d become her desperate shadow.

“I c-can’t afford to c-care. All that m-matters is we’re w-winning.”

“We are?

The first rows were loosing fire arrows at the wooden walls of the cathedral, while those behind them aimed at the monsters overhead. When a black wing came near Marco, a
krieghund
leapt, hitting it in mid-air before it could strike. The fight was brutal, fierce and bloody, but the
krieghund
won. But for every creature tumbling to earth, stuck with still-flaming arrows, knights, archers or
krieghund
died.

“Watch out,” Marco shouted.

Giulietta threw up her arm and a
thing
clanged off her vambrace, wheeling clumsily in mid-air to launch another attack. She vaguely realised she’d shat herself. She grabbed her bow, hands shaking, and a
krieghund
roared past, leaping for the beast. Its claws swept up and ripped the
thing
open, tumbling guts to the ground. The black winged thing was dead before it hit the ice. That didn’t stop the
krieghund
stamping on its neck and kicking it hard.

“He really d-does love you, d-doesn’t he.”

Frederick? Gods, was that really . . .

“You k-know how unusual it is for a
k-krieghund
to think and f-fight at the same time? Mostly they’re m-mindless.” Marco paused. “Well, that’s what my m-mother said. M-maybe it’s a lie.”

“Over there,” said Giulietta. One of the winged creatures flailed at the flames licking its side and fought to reach its home. It landed with a crash on the roof and she realised Marco was smiling. “You intended that all along?”

“I hoped. Injured animals r-return to their lairs. You k-know what Lord Atilo once t-told me?
To f-find out where your enemy l-lives, s-stab him and f-follow him home . . .
Aim for the b-beasts,” Marco bellowed.