The Outcast Blade (39 page)

“We walk together.”

He went first, Rosalyn behind him, with Giulietta and Leo beyond them so any archers would have to shoot Tycho and Rosalyn first. The mud shelf was sticky underfoot, and Tycho breathed easier when he reached the shore knowing how badly the mud would have slowed him down.

As Dr Crow’s boat backed away to head south to the Jewish graveyard they reached the narrow walkway leading to the huts. Stepping on to it, he felt it sway and heard it creak ominously.

“Tycho…”

He looked back.

Giulietta was staring in horror at the walkway.

No sides and half the boards missing, one of the uprights holding it up snapped in half, another cracked… He tried to see the walkway through her eyes and imagine himself without his sense of balance and holding a baby.

“Rosalyn, stay with Giulietta.”

“Yes, master.” Rosalyn’s voice said what she thought of that.

Drawing his dagger, Tycho ran the walkway and spun into the first of the huts, the knife in front of him. It was empty, floorboards rotten and single room cleared of anything valuable. Lapping waves showed where planks had been taken to repair huts elsewhere. The next three huts were the same. Tycho was examining the last when he heard a scream, sudden and high.

Choked off instantly.

He went out through the corner of a hut, wood splintering behind him, in the corner of another, through the original hut and on to the walkway. He moved without thought for the water beneath him, walkway forgotten as he closed the gap to where Rosalyn swayed, his eyes already searching beyond her for Giulietta or Leo.

Tycho caught Rosalyn as she crumpled.

“Where is she?” His voice was brutal, his question pitiless. He saw her flinch at its cruelty before he noticed the cuts in her face, the blood dripping from tears in her dress. A thousand tiny slashes disfigured her legs and arms.

“What happened?”

“He shouted at me.”

Tycho made her repeat that. His gaze sharp as he turned a slow circle in the drifting fog, hunting for traces of Giulietta’s scent on the wind. All he could feel was an absence of where she should be. “Were she or Leo hurt?”

“No,” said Rosalyn. “He didn’t shout at them.”

Her face was already healing. The slashes on her arms stopped bleeding as he watched, sealing themselves and beginning to scab over. Rosalyn had his ability to mend. Whatever his blood passed to her this quality passed with it. Her mouth untwisted as a cut stopped pulling it out of shape.

“Describe him,” Tycho ordered.

“Tall,” Rosalyn said. “Thin, dark-red robes. He had eyes like yours.”

“Like mine?”

“Hard,” she said. “Angry.”

That wasn’t how Tycho thought of himself.

He recognised her attacker all the same, Rosalyn’s description matching that of Duchess Alexa… Andronikos, the Byzantine emperor’s mage. The man their boat was meant to be drawing to the southern edge of this set of islands. He must have sensed them coming. Waited until Tycho was out of the way.

Stupid…

Actually, Rosalyn was right.

Tycho did feel angry. Bitterly, furiously, unnaturally angry. He wondered if Andronikos had poisoned the fog around him. If this flaring anger was a weakness rather the strength he first thought.

“Tell me
exactly
what happened…”

As Rosalyn did he walked her towards a gate in a distant wall and the looming shadow of a squat monastery. An orchard stood beyond it, rows of heavily pruned trees clustered with apples. Some clusters had rotted enough to fill the fog with cider sweetness. The smell masked the scent he needed to discover.

Rosalyn’s story was brief.

She, Giulietta and Leo had been alone.

And then they weren’t. She didn’t see or hear the thin man appear, didn’t even know he was there until he called Giulietta’s name from behind them.

“What happened then?”

“She went to him.”

“Just like that?
She went to him
.”

“When he said
turn
, she turned. When he said
walk
, she walked.” Rosalyn shrugged. “She took Leo with her.”

“And you?”

“I attacked.” Rosalyn’s eyes were bleak. “Much good it did me.”

They found a ribbon from Giulietta’s dress on the lowest branch of an apple tree, saw her footprints in mud that edged an irrigation ditch. She seemed to have walked in the muddiest bits she could find and Tycho hoped that was intentional. He tracked her muddy trail into the orchard and halfway through before returning his thoughts to what Rosalyn had said.

“He shouted at you?”

“It was like being hit by a hundred knives. Well, what I imagine that would be like. Only he threw a single word.”

“What word?”

She turned away from him.

Tycho’s demand she tell the truth only produced silence; followed by the lie that she thought it might have been foreign. He knew that was a lie.

She knew he knew.

That the man threw words made him think of the gold script on the black bullet Alexa gave him. Tycho was about to demand a proper answer when Rosalyn froze and he saw what she’d seen.

“Between those trees.”

“Seen it.” Not Andronikos, which would have been too simple. The mage was probably halfway to the boat by now.

Instead, a shadow loomed ahead of them.

Another appeared beside it, then another and another. Within seconds a dozen shifting shapes stood in their way. Gangly bodies, twisted claws and vicious fangs. The fog added a sheen to the hunting pack’s silver-grey fur. As Tycho watched the figures stood taller, their transformations complete.

“My God,” Rosalyn said.

She’d seen
krieghund
the night they slaughtered the Blade as they tried to capture Lady Giulietta. Tycho had heard of that night from Rosalyn, from Lord Atilo, from Giulietta herself… Their versions differed in all but the utter viciousness of the
krieghund
. The only Wolf Brother he’d fought was Leopold, and he’d won that fight with difficulty. Now he faced an entire pack.

There were days Giulietta felt too old for her seventeen years and others she felt far too young to deal with what was happening to her.

Tonight, typically, she felt both.

Young, and afraid of the man dragging her towards the gates to a graveyard. And so tired of the cruelty of the last few years she’d willingly let life go if she didn’t have Leo. But she did, wrapped tight in her arms.

And Tycho was out there somewhere.

Obviously, it was
inappropriate
to love an ex-slave.

A word that had been whipped into her. Hating him obviously made far more sense anyway. He’d betrayed Leopold and he would betray her. If he couldn’t even save Leopold how did she expect him to save her?

Of course, he swore he couldn’t save Leopold, but he lied.
Except
, Giulietta told herself,
he hadn’t. He’d admitted he could have done if only he’d known how
. She’d recognised enough self-disgust in his voice to know it was true. As well she might, because if anyone recognised self-disgust it was her. Lady Giulietta the Useless. Her life was a mess and she deserved what
was happening to her. That was it: she deserved this and always had. Looking up, Giulietta realised the sneering contempt on her captor’s face matched her own thoughts exactly. Their presence in her head was his doing.

“I
don’t deserve
it,” she said.

Andronikos shrugged, and she hated him more than ever.

“Nearly there.”

“Where?” Giulietta asked, immediately regretting it.

She shouldn’t be talking to him. She should keep her silence and plot to escape. But she couldn’t find the willpower, so she put one foot in front of another, until the fog-swirled entrance to the cemetery was behind her and grave markers stood like a squat, half-born army around her.

They used a small wooden bridge over a muddy creek that someone would wall on both sides one day, creating new
fondamente
, sinking larch poles into the silt to built houses on top. Giulietta suspected she would not be around to see it.

“As promised,” said Andronikos. “I’ve brought you a present.”

The thin man flung her forward. Stumbling, Giulietta took two steps to try to regain her balance and tumbled to her knees. Only just keeping hold of Leo.

“Try not to break this one.”

In front of her she saw a pair of legs; muscled and shapely, calves wrapped in sandal straps of purple leather. Reaching down, strong fingers gripped her hair and tipped her head backwards, forcing her to look up at their owner.

Prince Nikolaos looked like a god from one of the Greek stories. Flowing blond curls and broad shoulders. A black breastplate with a Medusa head picked out in gold. A strangely squat sword hung at his side. His cloak was short and purple. The bracelets pressing into her face were ornate and heavy.

“You told me she was ugly.” The man spoke Latin, inflected with the Byzantine Empire’s accent. “You shouldn’t lie.”

Perhaps he thought she wouldn’t understand.

Andronikos replied in the same language. “And you should listen more carefully, your highness. I said, most reports said she was ugly. Thin, small-breasted, narrow-hipped, bad-tempered…”

“But that’s how I like my women.”

“Then I’m sure you’ll do famously. Now if you’ll excuse me I should make sure Alexa’s pet and our furry friends are busy killing each other to order.”

He slipped between the graves, vanishing more quickly than the fog should allow, leaving Giulietta knelt at the young prince’s feet.

“Since you’re down there…”

She looked up, not understanding.

“Oh, you little innocent. And with a baby, too.” Nikolaos helped her to her feet, his hands cupping a breast before he let her go. As Giulietta stepped back, mouth opening in outrage, he grinned.

“I’m going to enjoy this. Prince Nikolaos, duke of Venice; and his beautiful, fiery wife.”

Giulietta felt sick.

“Still,” he said, “time for fun and games later. We’d better behave as Andronikos said. He can get cross and that’s not pretty. Of course, I am a prince and he’s only an adviser. Still, best be good.” Something about Nikolaos reminded her of a darker and dangerous version of cousin Marco. As if reflections could somehow escape from the dark side of a mirror.

“How old are you?”

Prince Nikolaos raised his eyebrows. It looked like something he’d been practising.

“I’m seventeen,” Giulietta added.

“You’re trying to make friends with me?”

“I’m trying to find out how old you are.” She wanted to discover all she could about this man. His flaws, his weaknesses,
anything of use against him. Prince Nikolaos was looking disappointed.

“I don’t want you to be friends with me. It’s no fun if you’re friends with me.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Giulietta snapped. “That’s not likely to happen.”

He grinned happily.

“Nineteen,” he admitted after a while.

Giulietta ignored him. That made him grin even more.

After a while, the prince produced an ivory-handled dagger and began cleaning his nails, humming happily to himself. Nails clean, he produced a tortoiseshell comb from somewhere and carefully combed out his blond hair until it fell evenly around his shoulders. Giulietta imagined he was trying to anger her.

He was certainly succeeding.

The Millioni had been in power for five generations, marrying only other princely families, and they’d produced Marco. Byzantines nobles had been marrying, slaughtering and torturing one other’s families for a thousand years. It was a wonder Nikolaos wasn’t worse.

“What are you muttering?”

“That I’m probably a Republican.”

He laughed like a delighted child. “This is going to be fun. So what shall we do while we wait for Andronikos… Any thoughts? If not, I have some ideas.”

Hiding her shiver, Giulietta began thinking, hard.

Moonlight and fog made the
krieghund
look enormous, giving them ghostly silhouettes that loomed huge in the final run of apple trees that blocked the orchard’s exit. Raising his head, one of them howled eerily.

His fur was the grey of Tycho’s hair, his arms tortuously long and his fingers ended in vicious claws. He stank like a polecat, sour and urinous. His glare was on Tycho when he jerked his
head, and a smaller
krieghund
at the end of the line dropped to a crouch, used his knuckles to start his run.

As he did, Rosalyn moved.

They hit obliquely, spinning past each other.

The
krieghund
halted, furious to find blood dripping from nail wounds in its chest. She whistled and snapped her fingers as if calling a pet. Their second clash was full-on. Body hit body in a thud that echoed through the trees.

For a split second the two gripped like lovers then spun away.

Blood dribbling down Rosalyn’s chin matched a gash in the
krieghund
’s neck, which bled black on to its neck fur. Rosalyn was also injured. Her turn to face her attacker a fraction slower than before. Although both fighters were still moving at inhuman speeds.

Polecat stink behind you
.

Tycho dropped to his knees and caught an attacking
krieghund
in the gut with his shoulder, somersaulting it to the dirt. His heel found its neck, cartilage ruptured and the change began. Within seconds a young man lay choking to death in front of him. Whipping the
WolfeSelle
from his back Tycho struck.

The blade sang.

When Tycho turned it was to see Rosalyn with a dead boy at her feet. In the trees the rest of the pack raced forward, all ideas of single combat forgotten. So Tycho ripped free his dagger and threw. A single step closed a gap between him and his target and he slapped the dagger’s handle, slicking it through the
krieghund
’s heart. Spinning, he opened the throat of another.

“That was mine,” Rosalyn shouted furiously.

Tycho hefted the
WolfeSelle
. “Plenty more.”

“So why take mine?”

Ducking a
krieghund
blow, she jumped for the beast, opening her legs to straddle its neck and locking them tight before momentum spun her round. The noise of vertebrae breaking was shockingly loud.