The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,108

the skull beneath your skin. The warnings were rarer now, rarer than when he first found himself in this world, but that one had been too brutal for him to miss.

As Marco and Lady Giulietta rode for the barrel bridge, Tycho jumped on to an overturned cart and stared around him. Renegade Crucifers were still trampling Venetian light infantry, bloody circles showing where knights twisted round, hacking down on heads, or the shields of those who raised them in time.

Each spearman wore mail under a padded jacket. Simple leg armour protected each man’s leading leg, and a light shield with a spiked boss had two loops on the other side; one hooked inside the elbow, the other was the handle. Each spear had an armoured shaft and a fierce spike at the business end, with a crossbar that was axe one side and armour-piercing spike the other. It was a fine weapon for hooking into joints in plate armour or jabbing through mail. And the spearmen retreated when threatened and stepped forward again when the knights turned away.

The battle had become something living that consumed everything it touched. If a crowd could become a mob, then an army mid-battle was a crowd turned to something far more dangerous. It looked as if it would kill until it could kill no more and die of hunger only with the last of the dead.

Tycho tried to swallow the numbers in a single glance but the situation changed faster than ink dropped into swirling water. And all the time that pulsing mass dripped down the bell tower walls. Tycho knew the Venetian forces didn’t realise it. He wondered if Alonzo’s troops did.

“Frederick.” His shout was so loud Alonzo himself turned.

“Traitor . . .” The ex-Regent pointed his sword, somewhere between a warning and a threat that he would see Tycho dead. Ignoring him, Tycho watched a krieghund break away from gutting a wild archer and lollop towards him. The beast ripped arrows from its flesh as it ran. When Frederick leapt up to stand beside Tycho he was halfway human. “What do you want?”

“See those?” Tycho demanded.

“See what?” Blood dripped into Frederick’s eyes from a cut on his forehead and his near-naked body was shaking with exhaustion and cold. Krieghund he was powerful, human he was weak again. He squinted in the direction Tycho pointed. It was obvious he was too tired to concentrate.

“Don’t go away.”

Time slowed and Tycho found himself stepping over corpses and sliding between individual fights as he negotiated the crawling hell of the battle on the ice. A Venetian stabbed at an enemy foot soldier and withdrew his spear, blood drops like pearls stringing the air. He stabbed at the soldier beyond and his first victim, already fallen, slashed the Venetian’s ankles below his shield.

The spearman lowered his shield in shock and died when a wild archer’s arrow split his mail, blossoming blood as the arrow passed through his lungs and cut his heart in two. Tycho caught the man’s falling spear and threw it, skewering the archer and knocking him from his wild pony.

A hundred paces ahead, a Venetian dodged his attacker and stepped straight into Tycho’s path. Breath whooshed from his body, he looked briefly shocked to have hit something he didn’t know was there. He died when his attacker swung an axe at his back, gaffing him like a fish. Tycho killed the attacker and as many of the slow-moving enemy as stood between him and the black rocks ahead. He ripped his way up the bell tower, hit the nearest creature full-on and let both of them fall. Dragging the thing back to the ice, where the others seemed reluctant to follow, he bit hard into its leathery neck, spitting blood so vile it burned his mouth.

“Well,” Frederick said. “That was impressive.”

His voice was sour enough to make Tycho wonder if he meant it. Tossing the thing at Frederick’s feet, he said, “See it now?”

“Domovoi,” Frederick said. “House demons.”

“You recognise them?”

“My father keeps some,” Frederick said. He raised his head and howled. Instantly, his followers broke from their individual battles and headed towards him. They fought their way through the melee, killing those who objected, but sparing any who stepped aside or turned and ran. Within a moment they stood around the tumbled cart, and behind their own line, while the battle went on without them.

They looked at the battered domovoi in silence and Tycho realised they knew what it was and had probably seen