The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,111

began to settle back another domovoi leapt for him and the impact was enough to knock the paladin from his saddle. He landed with a crash that was followed by an echoing boom like the cry of some monster. “What was that?” Giulietta demanded.

Tycho already knew. It was the sound Bjornvin’s lakes made at the end of winter when the ice cracked. It seemed the wild archers recognised it, too. A handful began heading for Marco and the barrel bridge behind him.

“Protect the duke,” Captain Weimer shouted.

“P-protect Lady G-Giulietta.” Marco’s counter-order was firm. He loosened the handle of his sword and turned his mount towards the wild archers, and then he looked back at his men. “Ready?”

“Where are you going?”

Marco looked at Lady Giulietta. “To k-kill Alonzo, obviously.”

“Your highness,” Tycho said. “Wait.”

“For w-what?”

For the prickling in the back of my neck to turn into something solid, for what is happening to finish . . . A dozen paladins faced two hundred domovoi who’d found their purpose and moved as one as they crowded the paladins’ horses, sacrificing themselves beneath thrashing hooves to slow the beasts. The paladins still fought furiously but they were driven back towards the island by weight of numbers.

“Why d-don’t the p-paladins attack again?”

“They’re trying, highness. Look.”

Domovoi hung from their arms, rendering their weapons useless. Those stabbed with daggers grabbed their attackers’ wrists, blades still inside them to stop the paladins from stabbing others. In humans it would have been heroic, in domovoi it was terrifying. Throwing itself under a horse’s hooves, a domovoi was crushed as the animal fell, throwing its rider on to ice that cracked loudly. Horse and armoured rider fell through and Tycho realised in horror that the heat from the flames had rotted the ice at the island’s edge. Ice cracked again and another paladin followed, taking the domovoi that swarmed over him. His mount flailed desperately, trying to clamber free until webbed fingers and the weight of its own armour dragged it under.

“W-we should h-help them.”

Tycho grabbed Marco to stop him spurring his horse. A dozen courtiers dropped their hands to their swords, and Marco scowled.

“D-don’t be f-fools. H-he’ll kill the lot of you.”

Tycho let Marco’s arm go.

“C-can’t you h-help them?”

“Not without abandoning you, and my place is here.”

“At m-my cousin’s side?”

“At your side. At Leo’s side. Yes, at hers, too.”

Prince Frederick looked offended on Lady Giulietta’s behalf. At the island’s edge another paladin toppled and then another. They struggled furiously, no longer battling, simply struggling to fight free.

One of Alonzo’s captains kept staring over and Tycho wondered if he intended to attack Marco. But then he recognised Towler, who waited until Prince Frederick noticed him, and then Towler turned, snapped out an order and together his company charged the domovoi. Before they did, Towler raised his sword in ironic salute.

“F-friend?” Marco asked.

“One of my father’s men.”

“Your f-father has spies in m-my uncle’s c-camp?”

“Of course. Just as you and your uncle have spies in his.”

Inspired by Captain Towler’s charge spearmen from Alonzo’s and Marco’s troops turned on the remaining domovoi. But it was too late to save the paladins, who continued to fall through the ice, taking domovoi with them.

Marco said, “I c-can’t believe I’m seeing this. The d-death of a l-legend . . .”

“They won’t die,” Tycho said. He wasn’t sure how he knew and had no intention of getting into a discussion about death, knights sleeping under hills and those who entered this world through rings of fire. But the paladins had died to a man at Roncesvalles. Yet here they were again.

A bit like him really.

44

Marco turned from the battle before the last of paladins died, or whatever happened after they fell through the ice. He decided not to gather his spearmen together or order a coordinated withdrawal. The last thing he did before riding for his camp on the lake’s edge was order the destruction of the barrel bridge. This trapped his troops with Alonzo’s own inside the moat.

He had a right to that decision.

“S-so,” Marco said later. “Why d-did I do t-that?”

He was talking to Lady Giulietta, who’d been looking back at the burning cathedral as they rode through the ruined village and headed up the valley side on the road that led to the pass over the mountains.

She shrugged.

“G-Giulietta?”

“Because you’re a c-c-coward?”

One of Marco’s courtiers gasped and Marco grinned. “Fair g-guess,” he said. “But w-wrong. T-try again.”

Head down to watch her mare pick a way across a rocky fall that littered the road with scree,