and her guts were hollow. This was war. Dead bodies in ugly piles, and imploring men with their intestines on the ice before them. A soldier crouched, head in hands, quietly shaking. She wanted to cry.
“N-not now,” Marco said.
The great doors of the cathedral were shifting. Vast and old and carved when this was a sacred site and long before it was corrupted and turned and finally claimed by the Red Crucifers, the doors swung back to reveal darkness.
Only a nave behind, Giulietta reminded herself.
For a second there was total silence and only the threat of the open doors, with every member of Marco’s army on this side of the island frozen, and those on the ice inside the moat on the far side stilled by the rest’s silence.
“H-here they c-come,” Marco shouted.
Frederick appeared beside Giulietta’s bridle with a dozen of his krieghund behind him. All were stripped to the waist, barefoot and clutching weapons. They obviously had orders to protect her. Alonzo’s banner came first. He had a duke’s coronet above his arms. A ducal crown topped the pole from which his banner flew. A white flag below it indicated he wanted to parlay.
“What do we do?” Giulietta asked.
“We t-talk,” Marco said. “We h-have no choice.” The rules of treaty were strict and Venice would be damned in the mouths of ten thousand strangers if they were ignored. “You’ll r-ride with m-me?”
“Me?” Giulietta asked.
“Of course,” said Marco. Frederick stepped closer and it was obvious he wanted to be included. “And the emperor’s favoured s-son.”
“His only son,” Frederick said.
“The only one h-he acknowledges, c-certainly.”
An emperor’s bastard was still impressive, Giulietta thought. As Frederick’s bloodstained hands reached for her bridle, and her mount tried to shy but couldn’t match the strength in Frederick’s arms, she saw him watching her. His eyes golden and fiercely intelligent within a not-quite human face.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said.
“Alexa’s idiot, Alexa’s echo and Sigismund’s attack dog . . .”
“Y-you called us h-here t-to insult us?”
Alonzo grinned. His beard was oiled and his cloak edged at the bottom with a band of imperial purple to which he had no right. The coat of arms on his shield matched Marco’s own. Any herald would have known both men claimed the throne. “Why are you here then?
“H-here p-parlaying? Or do you m-mean h-here?” Marco swept an arc with his hand that embraced the lake and the mountains, and by extension everything and everyone in it . . . “In this g-garden of d-delights, this p-paradise?”
Alonzo sighed.
“I’m h-here to k-kill you, obviously,” Marco said.
Alonzo’s bark of laughter was fierce.
“I’m p-parlaying b-because those are the r-rules. Y-you can g-get away w-with anything if you’re s-seen to obey the r-rules . . . Trying to m-murder your n-nephew, f-fucking your b-brother’s wife, b-betraying your family . . .”
His uncle’s face tightened.
Marco’s stammer was worse than Giulietta remembered it being in weeks and she wondered if he was pretending or if the broad-shouldered man in front of him really did make him that nervous.
“This is my offer,” Alonzo said. “Withdraw, abdicate and accept exile and I’ll let you live. Let her live, too,” he said, pointing at Giulietta. “Even your pet dog if you want to include him in the deal. But you return my son.”
“Y-your c-castle is b-burning . . .”
Alonzo looked at the smouldering walls above him. The cathedral was huge, the bell tower impressive and the hall squat and toad-like, but all were wooden and dangerously dry for all it was winter. “I was bored with it anyway . . .”
“It c-can be your f-funeral pyre.”
“And you’ll never get Leo,” Giulietta said furiously. “You can tell that to the Dolphini milch cow you married.”
Alonzo glared. “She hung herself. I have your white-skinned freak to thank for that.” Giulietta felt his hatred follow her back to their lines. Although, when she turned, her uncle was gone. The great door of the cathedral still stood open and there was movement in the darkness behind.
“N-now,” said Marco. “Now the real battle b-begins.”
42
They were losing from the first minute. Marco’s infantry might have been enthusiastic, but they were mostly half trained and exhausted from marching from the port where they landed up the valleys and into the mountains. He had archers, but those still alive were exhausted from loosing their fire arrows. He had trained knights, members of his palace guard and enough Nicoletti and Castellani spearmen to give Venice an entirely new generation of widows. He had Frederick’s krieghund. He even