The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,42
stag died from an arrow to the heart. The largest of the hinds took to her heels with two arrows in her neck and dropped within a quarter of a mile. The others escaped but Tycho doubted they’d live long without the stag to protect them. Amelia gutted one and he gutted the other, Towler’s men lining up to drink warm blood from a rusting bucket. And when they found their strength, Tycho sent them from room to room to collect whatever wood they could and began to smoke the meat. He imagined it would taste of the burnt chairs and broken beds they brought him and doubted they’d much care.
“Send my regards to Prince Alonzo.”
Looking up at Tycho’s words, Amelia busied herself with ripping slivers of meat from a bone boiling in a pot. Tycho scowled. Amelia didn’t understand why she and Tycho didn’t simply go with them. That was because he’d yet to give her his reasons.
“And you still have things to do here?” Captain Towler looked doubtfully round the kitchen of the fort. For a few hours the room had been friendly with hot food and the fug of bodies and the echo of laughter. Here was where most would sleep, filled with grilled venison and warmed by the fire. Tomorrow they would leave and take what remained of the food with them. That was what had Captain Towler thanking Tycho in the first place.
“I have a vigil . . .”
The captain nodded. Vigils were for nobles, like sacred vows and courtly love. He knew the argument was over. He and his men would be going on alone. If Tycho wanted to kneel in the darkness and pray to some saint . . .
Tycho smiled at the man’s careful expression, and knew the captain considered himself to have better things to do. “Three days, you reckon?”
Towler nodded.
“Well, I wish you joy of it.”
“We’ll see you later, my lord. I’m sure of it.”
Not if things work out as they should. Tycho clasped hands with the man, feeling calloused skin from a lifetime’s wielding a sword. He clapped the captain on the back and wished him a safe journey, which he meant, and promised to meet again in a week or so, which he didn’t. Buoyed up by food and the memory of warmth, they would find their way to the Red Cathedral in a few days. If they arrived in daylight, then Tycho would rely on the novelty of their arrival to distract Alonzo’s guards that night. And if they arrived at night, so much the better. He would use the distraction of their arrival to find his own way inside.
“Why do I come here?”
Amelia’s question had been abrupt, her voice brittle. She’d found him crouched by the rocky slit, as she’d found him the night before, and the night before that, considering its painted lips and the nub of a stone face at the top of the cleft. They both knew what the slit looked like although neither said. Amelia was watchful and her dagger unsheathed. “You’ve been here for hours.”
“Ten minutes at most.” Tycho glanced up and realised he lied. The moon’s silver sliver had shifted on the horizon. “You should have stayed inside.”
Amelia glared at him.
“And why the drawn knife?”
“Because I’m afraid.” She didn’t even look abashed. “Tycho. What’s so special about this cave?”
“Nothing. It’s simply a cave.” Small, narrow, damp and sour. The grit of its entrance as smooth as if raked, but with ochre drawings of twisted bison and fat-breasted women inside to say people had used it in darker times.
How could he possibly know that?
Amelia lifted the flaming torch she held. “You look . . .”
He imagined she was about to say pale, only that was ridiculous because to her he must always look pale. Anyway, anyone would be chilled by the wind that threatened the flames of her torch, especially if wearing his clothes. Amelia was wrapped in a rancid fur found in the fort, her face reduced to a strip of coal-dark skin and her strange violet eyes.
“Don’t leave tonight,” she said. “Go tomorrow.”
Tycho thought about it. For a second he considered saving his strength, but Captain Towler’s men would be arriving or might already have arrived at the Red Cathedral, and a warning on the wind was no real warning at all. “You didn’t hear anything?”