The Outcast Blade (41 page)

“You said…”

Yeah. Let the
krieghund
go first
.

“I’ve changed my mind.” As a hard-faced
menavlatoi
steadied his spear, confident in his superiority, Tycho gripped the spear below its blade, ground the shaft even harder into the dirt and vaulted halfway over the shield wall, releasing the spear to drop behind its owner. He broke the Byzantine soldier’s neck before he could defend himself.

Two soldiers away Rosalyn copied him.

An upward jab of Tycho’s dagger caught the soldier between them just behind his chinstrap, the blade skewering the man’s soft palate to enter his brain. Whipping the blade free, Tycho let him drop, and the
krieghund
swept through the suddenly broken wall, killing as they hit.

Had they kept going they could have taken the bridge.

But the
krieghund
fought singly, ferociously, without any obvious plan until a snarl from Frederick made them fall back to regroup for another attack. The Byzantines used the time to remake their shield wall.

It was only then that Tycho realised how terrified Rosalyn must have been the night she watched Leopold’s war pack break
the Blade. Giulietta even more so. All those circling beasts. All those
assassini
dying to keep her alive.

“This time we wait,” Tycho said.

Rosalyn nodded.

As a Byzantine soldier jabbed his spear at a
krieghund
the beast caught it, yanked hard and tumbled a
menavlatoi
from the line. Screaming meat became silence. Another
krieghund
took a spear through the shoulder, broke the spear’s shaft and ripped out his enemy’s throat with vicious claws. It was cruel and would quickly have become final if a robed figure hadn’t abandoned the fir trees on the far side of the bridge and ordered the
menavlatoi
to stand aside.

His voice could be heard by all.

Although it was quieter than the snarls of the
krieghund
and a dying spearman’s screams, it carried perfectly. Two people walked behind the man. A smirking blond youth Tycho imagined was Nikolaos, and Lady Giulietta, her wrist firmly in Nikolaos’s grip. The princeling glanced at the baby in her arms. Whatever he said made Giulietta pale.

Andronikos stared at the ground.

A second later, he raised his gaze to the sky.

“Down,” Tycho said.

When Rosalyn didn’t move he kicked her feet from under her, rolled himself on top of her, and, holding her tight, rolled for a newly dug ditch on the far side of a gravel path. Something to be grateful for.

“What…?”

“Andronikos.”

The ditch hid them from the words tumbling from Andronikos’s mouth. Although Tycho saw their impact when a charging
krieghund
stumbled a dozen paces backwards, caught his heel on a root and fell. Fur flowed to reveal skin, bones twisted, the wolf mask receded, revealing the face of a boy of Tycho’s age. His flesh was ripped, his eyes ruined, as if slashed by splintered glass.

“Stay down,” Tycho told him.

Sliding his dagger from its sheath, Tycho crawled to where the boy gasped and begged for help in a language Tycho didn’t understand. His dagger took the boy through his ribs, stilling his heart. Breath was leaving his body as Tycho closed his eyes. The boy looked as if he’d been tortured.

“Say a prayer,” Tycho ordered Rosalyn.

She stared at him, not understanding.

“I don’t know any. You say a prayer while I load this.”

She said the one even whores and street children knew. The one they had reason more than anyone else to hope true. A prayer that didn’t even belong to her people. And while Tycho listened to Rosalyn say the paternoster and wondered if she believed it, he tapped out the bullet he’d loaded earlier, letting the silk-wrapped charge remain.

Then he wrapped the scarlet bullet in a scrap of leather and tapped it into place. Filling the pan, he closed the lid and lowered the flint. He would get one shot. The bullet would harm Andronikos wherever it hit, but an injured Andronikos might prove more dangerous than an uninjured one.

Alexa had been clear about that.

“Wait,” said Tycho, when Rosalyn tried to look over the edge.

The mage spoke again and animal shrieks filled the night air. If they were animal, it was because his words reduced the already re-human
krieghund
to that state. Climbing to his knees, Tycho saw that all of Frederick’s war pack were now human. Some were dead, others dying. Frederick and a companion, badly wounded from the look of it, hugged the dirt behind a rotting stump.

The prince’s ribs were lacerated and his face ripped along one cheek. His body looked as if scourged by thorns. He half raised the
WolfeSelle
for a second, offering it to Tycho, and then lowered it again. He lacked the strength to do more.

Tycho lifted his gun in reply.

On the bridge itself stood Lady Giulietta with Leo in her arms.
Prince Nikolaos stood beside her staring in Tycho’s direction. He shouted something to his tutor. Andronikos nodded. At his snapped command the remaining
menavlatoi –
less than a quarter of his original force – headed for where Tycho crouched.

Three in all. Without Andronikos there would be none. One look at the men’s faces told Tycho they knew this. That if they feared attacking him, they feared Andronikos more. Rising, Tycho put his dagger into the throat of the nearest. “Two left… I need you to protect Giulietta.”

Rosalyn glared at him.

“I know you hate her.”

She didn’t bother to deny it. “What do you want me to do?”

“Die if necessary.”

“For her?” Rosalyn’s mouth twisted.

“Do it for me then.”

“I’m not sure people like us can die.” Rosalyn tried to smile but her eyes were bleak and he knew that, whether or not she believed the words of the paternoster were true, she doubted they applied to people like her, if she was
people
, which she also doubted. The pain in her eyes was almost physical.

“See that man over there?”

She glanced at Prince Nikolaos.

“He sent the archer who murdered Eleanor.”

“You swear it?”

“On my soul.” That was a form of words used by people who believed them. Until he’d come to Venice Tycho hadn’t even heard of souls. He doubted anyone from Bjornvin had them.

For Eleanor…

Rosalyn would kill him for Eleanor. The scar under her breast was a simple stab wound. All that blow did was take her life. The prince’s archer destroyed what made her heart beat; gave her ice for a heart where Eleanor should be.

“
Rosalyn…
”

Tycho obviously knew her other thought.

War was unpredictable, brutal. People died in battle all the time. If Lady Giulietta was killed in the next few seconds would Rosalyn really be to blame?

She watched Tycho pull back the cobra-headed hammer on his wheel lock and steel himself to face the thin man who stood so confidently in front of the bridge.

“On my count of three,” Tycho said.

Always three. Something Atilo had taught him.

When Tycho began to back away, using the ditch for cover, Rosalyn understood what was intended. He would distract Andronikos to let her slip past him to the Byzantine prince waiting beyond.

She nodded and he began his count.

“Two…”

“Three.”

Andronikos glanced between Tycho and her as they stood, noticed Tycho’s strange weapon and hesitated. All the time she needed to reach a
menavlatoi
, kill him in passing, avoid Andronikos and head for the princeling. Nikolaos let go Giulietta’s arm to scrabble for his sword.

“Run,” Rosalyn howled at her. Only a fool wouldn’t run.

But Lady Giulietta simply stood here, staring towards Tycho and for a second Rosalyn felt tempted to kill her anyway. And then she stopped caring about Giulietta, banished Andronikos from her mind and hit Prince Nikolaos full-on, knocking him backwards on to the bridge.

The princeling swore, bared his teeth and looked down.

Suddenly he was grinning as if seeing the funniest thing in his life. Following his gaze Rosalyn saw what amused him and recognised the coldness in her gut. His sword pierced her, protruding at the back. Black blood oozed from the wound.

“What a silly little bitch.”

She recognised in his tone the contempt of all those who never bothered to understand how hard it was for people like her to live on the streets. How staying even half human as a street girl was a victory in itself. Still grinning, he began to twist his blade. And agony lit the sky scarlet around her.

“No,” she said. “You don’t.”

His eyes widened as she gripped his wrist, returning the sword to its original position.

“You shouldn’t have killed Eleanor.”

“Not me. Now, if you’d said Theodora… You wouldn’t believe how cross her father was about that.”

“Enough.”

Keeping her grip on his wrist, Rosalyn reached for his black and gold breastplate to drag him close, feeling his blade push
through her. Then she walked him backwards so she no longer stood over water.

“Look away,” she ordered Giulietta.

Sinking her teeth into his neck, Rosalyn gulped mouthfuls of vile memories, because she needed his strength to heal and fight, until their squalor appalled her so horridly she eased herself off the blade and let his body drop.

“Now we’re all even,” Rosalyn told him. “You’re dead. And Tycho’s woman has been repaid for taking me to Alta Mofacon.”

“Thank you,” Giulietta said unsteadily.

“I don’t want your thanks.”

“You didn’t have to save me.”

“No.” Rosalyn’s voice caught. “I could have killed you instead.”

The last of the spearmen must be dead. The proof was that Tycho held all of Andronikos’s attention; and that gave Rosalyn time to back Giulietta against a fir tree and reach out to grip her face with unforgiving fingers.

“Your child would have died within a month.”

“
What?
”

Rosalyn made herself let go.

“He intended to kill it. You wouldn’t have been that lucky. He planned to keep you locked away while you produced a brat for him. If you were lucky he might have killed you after that.”

Giulietta vomited.

At which of that night’s particular horrors Rosalyn didn’t much care.

Tycho stood armed with a spear in his left hand, and Alexa’s handgun primed and loaded hanging on its lanyard from his shoulder. The mage had backed himself to the middle of the bridge. At first Tycho had thought it retreat. Now he realised Andronikos wanted to put himself above water.

“So. Alexa’s pet.”

The mage must know Giulietta vomiting meant something had happened behind him. The stolen spear in Tycho’s hand prevented him from turning to discover what. So long as Tycho held it ready to hurl he had the man’s attention.

Andronikos needed to gather focus.

But the moment he stilled to draw strength from the water lapping beneath him, Tycho would throw. Each knew this and tried to outwait the other.
I should be closer
, Tycho realised. The handgun was untested and he didn’t trust himself to hit Andronikos’s heart from this distance.

“Venice chooses Sigismund, then?”

Tycho looked at him.

“At least I assume it does. Since you’re protecting that.” Andronikos jerked his chin contemptuously towards where
Frederick and his one remaining follower hid behind a rotten tree stump. “Strange. Given his brother destroyed the Blade.”

“I have orders to kill him.”

“And you dare disobey?” Andronikos asked.

“I usually disobey Alexa’s orders.”

“Believe me, you wouldn’t dare disobey mine.”

“I wouldn’t take yours in the first place.”

The mage’s eyes narrowed and Tycho knew the conversation was at an end. He imagined it had served only to let Andronikos see if he could be swayed.

Tycho threw the spear so hard an ordinary man would have said it vanished. And with it thrown he began to follow, only for Andronikos to brush the spear aside. Tycho’s boots cut scars in dead pine needles as he skidded to a halt. And discovered he’d given Andronikos the time he needed.

Lowering his gaze from the sky, the mage stared at the creek for a split second and raised his eyes. Smiling when he saw Tycho realise what was about to happen. The word Andronikos shouted was
SLAVE
.

Everything it contained hit Tycho.

The night he almost died in a snowdrift. The whippings and worse. Days chained by Bjornvin’s main gate, naked and wearing a spiked collar.

Glass-sharp memories blasted Tycho’s body and the shock of their pain locked his muscles tight, freezing the scream that tried to force its way from his mouth. Blood oozed from a hundred cuts and for a second he staggered under the weight of all the things about that time he’d tried to forget.

Blood slowed and his cuts began to heal.

You can stand this
, he told himself. But Andronikos had already drawn power. He was simply waiting until he had his victim’s attention. There was no smile this time. The alchemist’s face was inscrutable. His silhouette in the almost-cleared fog as thin and black as the firs behind him. He’d thrown whole sentences at
the
krieghund
. Howled Germanic phrases that left them blinded and staggering.

He barely raised his voice for the next word.

“
Bjornvin
.”

And the nightmare in the mist filled Tycho’s head.

He whimpered as fresh wounds opened across his chest and flesh showed glistening and moist through the silk doublet that was meant to hide his sins, its cloth as ripped by the memory as his body. He tried and failed to raise the pistol.

So much guilt at what he’d done.

Once Bjornvin fell there were no Vikings in Vineland, only Skaelingar with their oil and ochre bodies and their bows and stone knives. Thorns now grew where the settlement stood. He had delivered the last Viking town to its enemy. As the wave of guilt receded so his wounds knitted, skin closing over veins and sinews.