The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,104

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.”

41

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