The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,75

giant crossbow, which was still strung with its three dozen arrows in place. “Hold on,” he said and, pushing open the fort’s rear door, wondered if he had time to move the porcupine. Until trying to shift the crossbow told him the real question: had he the strength?

Sinews popped as he tried to get the porcupine moving and he was close to accepting defeat when one wheel shifted and he found his grip and the porcupine began moving through the fort’s rear doors, until Tycho used its own momentum to swing it round to face the way it came. Stepping back, he looked at the parapet above the yard and realised the crossbow was far enough inside the arch’s tunnel to be hidden from anyone above. The tunnel was so deep a dozen soldiers could have stood on the iron grating of its murder holes and poured a river of boiling oil on to those below.

“Had I a dozen men,” he told Leo. “And fire to heat the oil, or indeed any oil. What I do have though . . .” he carried the child into the armoury, “is mage powder. And that we need for the front.” The powder was inside a small barrel hidden inside a bigger barrel, sealed with a circular slug of pitch. Silvery specks glittered on its surface. These burnt to the touch the way silver did, except these hurt everyone.

“You stay here,” Tycho said.

He put the infant with its back to the crenellation and was grateful the wind was in the right direction for what he wanted to do. It howled from behind him as he looked down on a tangle of archers standing in front of the gate arguing. One barged it, another hissed at him. Lord Roderigo stood several paces away, looking increasingly impatient. None of them glanced up.

Why would they?

A fierce gust gave Tycho what he needed and carried the powder over the edge, into quieter air that dropped it gently on to those below. A man looked up as the first drifting grains rained down, and took a face full of stinging powder. It crusted his hair and coated his jacket like scurf.

“Up there,” another shouted. An arrow hissed past Tycho and then the man who released it was clawing at his own face as falling powder filled his eyes. A second archer was doing the same.

BURN, Tycho thought.

It was over in a moment. Mage fire burnt to the bone and beyond. It burnt to the soul. Screaming men staggered back, frantically brushing at their jerkins, which simply glued burning phosphor to their hands. Once started, mage fire could not be put out with water. A man tried to dig beneath the snow for earth to quench the flames but the ground was frozen too hard to help him.

A few of those who took the powder were still alive enough to scream when Tycho grabbed Leo and abandoned the battlements, spun his way down twisting stairs and exited into the guardroom where the porcupine once stood. Shutting the double doors with a slam that rattled the fort as if it was trying to awake, he jammed a rock under the middle to stop Roderigo’s men from forcing their way through.

Whatever was in the cave frightened the wild archers beyond the walls. If they made their way into the fort – and they would – it would take them the coming day to search the building properly. By nightfall they should have found their courage to enter the yard. He hoped their fear of the cave would stop them coming further. The crude steps up to the slit in the rocks were treacherous with ice. The top step littered with offerings, from fox skulls and bloody rags to the bones of a raven. Tycho hesitated on the edge of entering, and then stepped inside to be met by a gust of rank air. “My lord of light,” it hissed. “Welcome home.”

Tycho wrapped his arms round Leo.

The air chuckled.

32

“Tell me it’s not true . . .”

Lady Giulietta’s voice was shrill enough to make a guard turn. The man caught Prince Frederick’s eye and flushed. His stare when he looked straight ahead would have drilled walls. It was unwise to interfere in the quarrel of princes, especially when one was female and close to tears.

“My lady . . .”

“Either go. Or tell me it’s not true.”

Standing, Frederick bowed clumsily. “I’d better take my leave.”

“Don’t come back,” Giulietta shouted. “Never ever. You’re banished from