The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,43

obvious . . .

“Well,” he said. “Did you?”

“Hear what? All I’ve heard is the wind.”

That was what Tycho had heard, too, his trouble being it spoke to him. “Stay or go,” it said, “you will be dead before morning.”

Rocky slopes plummeted away on both sides, treacherous with ice, the drop brutal and deadly; unless he really was unable to be killed, in which case he’d lie broken at the bottom until someone found him and tried to prove him wrong.

You’re happy, Tycho thought.

The self-mockery cheered him, even as a sudden gust of ice-cold wind almost swept him over the edge, and he had to drop beneath it and hold tight until the gust faded and he could stand again. Between the fort and where he needed to be was no more than a few hours for him, but the route he chose, the quickest one, was along the granite spine of a mountain, into the face of driving snow that stripped humanity from him, until he had no space for doubts, self-pity or self-mockery, and his thoughts became mechanical and remorseless. He was going to get Giulietta’s child.

You’re going to get Giulietta’s child.

In his head the infant didn’t even have a name. It wasn’t that he was Leo, that this was Leopold’s child, that letting Alonzo claim him would clear his way to the throne of Venice. No, he was simply going to get Giulietta’s child.

The spine Tycho ran was the ridge between two high valleys in a row of mountains that climbed higher and higher, until finally the ridge began to descend and the wind became less threatening. On his left, the slope dropped to firs so far below they looked like child’s toys. A town in the valley bottom was a smudge of dirt on a white background. On his right a frozen lake lay trapped in a valley so steep at one end that only a mountain goat, and possibly Tycho, could climb it, and he’d rather leave it to the goat. The other end had a village on a silt plain that centuries of rain had pushed out into the lake. The closer he got the more miserable the village became; desolate as a beggar’s dog, huts crusted like fleas around its wooden church, shutters like scabs on a village hall, mud tracks dirty as ditches. Even from half a mile away, Tycho could sense misery clinging to it like the stink to a midden.

Rising from the lake was the midden itself.

Jagged rocks broke through marbled ice to make a small island occupied by three buildings that filled all the available space. The largest by far was the Red Cathedral, the others were a bell tower and a fortified hall. Originally red, all their walls had faded to ochre, and the sharp roof of the cathedral boasted a cascade of onion domes that looked as if they should have crescents on the top. Ragged patches of gold leaf clung like onion skin, but Tycho could see wood through the peeling primer beneath. Once it had been the high church of the local heresy. Now it was the Red Crucifers’ castle, and Prince Alonzo’s headquarters in his coming war with Alexa.

And on the ice between the island and the shore, Towler’s Company, heads down and shoulders hunched as they pushed themselves on. Undoubtedly, they knew they were watched from the cathedral. Tycho doubted they realised he was watching from up here. As they stumbled forward, the great doors of the cathedral opened . . . At least, a small side door in the great doors did, and a dozen wild-haired archers tumbled through the door into the snow beyond.

Mongols? Tycho wondered. Magyars?

They wore their hair in plaits and stood with the bow-legged gait of those born in the saddle and raised on mare’s milk. Something about their watchfulness reminded him of the Skaelingar, the wild warriors who had destroyed his home village. So, a rotting village and foreign mercenaries.

Tycho found comfort in this. If Alonzo felt strong he’d settle in the capital and live in luxury. He might claim to miss the life of a simple soldier, and claim it endlessly until fools believed him; but Tycho had seen the prince’s lavish feasts close up, drunk the wine Alonzo iced with snow brought down from the Altus. He doubted a rotting wooden cathedral would keep the man content for long. No matter how many barrels of Montenegrin brandy filled that storehouse and local maidens had been rounded