The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,44

up to warm his bed.

Whatever Towler said convinced the man who went out on to the ice to meet them. He nodded, Towler spoke to his company, and they followed him through the parting crowd of archers towards the cathedral door. The wild archers kept their bows bent and their arrows notched. Tycho doubted he expected any different.

Move, Tycho told himself. In the few minutes he’d been watching Towler’s arrival his body had chilled and his thoughts slowed. The cold took his strength, though far more subtly than water. Anyone would think you were afraid.

The ice spread in front of him, reflecting the moon so that the clouds were lit on both sides and glowed with a sullen fire. Above him were the now familiar constellations of this world. In front, the moonlit sharpness of the Red Cathedral with silhouetted onion domes. Beside that a separate bell tower and a squat hall beneath. As he watched, the hall doors opened and men and carts flooded out and spread around the rocky edge of the island, the night suddenly full of jangling harness and cartwheels squeaking.

Dropping to a crouch, Tycho hugged the ice as four oxen lumbered in his direction, stopping a dozen paces from the island shore. Men in stinking furs tumbled from the back of the wagons, grabbed pickaxes and spread out. In a line, standing a couple of paces apart, they took their orders from a gang boss and raised their pickaxes together, crashing the points into the ice. All around the island, other men did the same. Alonzo was making himself a moat.

Against me? Tycho rejected the idea as arrogance.

Yet what other reason was there? Captain Towler had probably been happy to boast of having met Tycho on his way here. This, it seemed, was Alonzo’s response. A hundred men smashing ice until dark water appeared. Within five minutes, fifteen foot of open water stood between the island and the rest of the lake. Job done, the men climbed into their carts and trundled on.

Maybe taunting Alonzo hadn’t been so clever . . .

How many cart teams were there? Was there an ice bridge somewhere? And could he find it and cross it unseen before Alonzo’s men turned it too to dark water and left him stranded on this side of the ice? He could overtake the carts and hope to find unbroken ice beyond them, or cross here. Neither option impressed him.

Not giving himself time to think, Tycho shrugged himself from his jacket and slipped into the dark moat, feeling bitter cold knock breath from his body. He swam hard, his lungs too tight to breathe, and reached the edge, dragging himself over it and grabbed a breath. He was almost clear of the water when something grabbed his ankle and he felt himself slide backwards, unable to get a grip on the smooth ice.

What the fuck was that?

He kicked hard, connecting with flesh. The grip on his ankle tightened and yanked harder. A moment later, Tycho splashed into the water, slid under and turned to discover what he faced. His attacker was frog-eyed and broad-cheeked, its wide mouth filled with needle-like teeth. Gills frilled both sides of its neck like wounds.

Tycho kicked for its hand and the thing grinned, letting go of Tycho’s ankle and boosting his foot upwards with webbed fingers. When Tycho’s head smashed into the ice above the world went black, sickness sweeping through him. As the creature hung mockingly out of reach, a subtle change came over its face, and its grin became scarily human. Tycho drew his knife.

The blow to his head left a hangover of giddiness. Smoke-like darkness ate the edges of his vision as the air burnt up in his chest, narrowing the aquarium dark of the world under the ice to a tight circle of light in front of him. He desperately wanted to draw a breath and knew he shouldn’t.

Come closer, he thought. Fight me.

Tycho goaded the creature with his knife, jabbing as his strength drained and the chill reached his bones. The face in front of him was familiar now, its cheekbones high and nose strong, wolf-grey braids framing a face as white as alabaster. One monster was gone and another had taken its place. Tycho was looking at himself.

Darting forward, the creature grabbed Tycho’s knife hand and twisted savagely. It had all of Tycho’s speed and strength, which was more than he had. Think, Tycho urged himself. But all he could think was, this