The Exiled Blade (The Assassini) - By Jon Courtenay Grimwood Page 0,79
Bows being strung and arrows slotted to their strings. Maybe they expected him to open the door.
In case any dawdled, Tycho hammered one final time before retreating to yank the porcupine’s lever. Three strings released with a twang, the giant bow straightened and thirty-six steel-tipped arrows, matched exactly to the steel holes in the door that would have let them fire out, hissed inwards.
Screaming began.
So much blood . . . The thought followed him up the fortress wall and along the top. The single sentry listening to the screaming below never heard his death coming. Tycho broke his neck with a single twist and fed briefly.
A tiny life made of rapes and murder. Tents, ragged ponies, hours in the saddle. Years in the wrong country, speaking someone else’s language and vowing devotion to lords to whom he owed no loyalty. Tycho tossed him over the edge, hearing his body thud to cold dirt below.
He was at the bottom of the guard steps before any realised. The distance between battlements and hall closed in a second. He stood on the edge of turning, his reflexes razor and his nerves tight. The nearest archer opened his mouth to raise the alarm and died. Tycho killed fast, but the wild-haired man beyond had time to yell before Tycho broke his neck. Around him, men drew swords or slotted arrows on to their strings. “Kill him,” Roderigo shouted.
Now there was a refrain Tycho had heard before. He grinned, and was still grinning when an arrow hit his shoulder and ripped straight through. Looking up showed Tycho archers on a balcony above. As if they’d been waiting for his attention, the rest released their arrows. Half missed, the other half spiked him like a saint in one of Marco’s paintings. The archers lowered their bows, waiting for Tycho to drop as the room wavered around him and blackness edged his sight.
To their disbelief Tycho refused to fall.
Instead he flowed up the wall, spiny with arrows, rolled himself with difficulty over the balcony’s edge and dropped as half a dozen archers fired. Rising fast, he ripped two arrows from his chest and returned them to their owners. The world slowing as he spun, jabbing and slashing with steel-tipped arrows until blood sprayed, the air grew drunk on red mist and he no longer had arrows in his body.
“Kill him,” Roderigo screamed.
“You kill me,” Tycho shouted. “Unless you’re too scared?”
He vaulted from the balcony and landed in a crouch, drawing the sword that hung from his shoulder as he stood. “Did he tell you I was human?” Tycho stared at the fur-jacketed archers who surrounded him. “Is that what he told you? Is that what you think you’ve been hunting?” He drew the sword across his forearm, holding it out so they could see black blood well and begin to slow, the cut crusting and the flesh around it begin to heal. They muttered among themselves.
Roderigo’s expression said he knew he was losing them.
“He’s afraid,” Tycho said. “That’s why he needs you to fight me instead.”
The words drew growls from the tribesmen worthy of a dog pack disputing ownership of a bone. Several of them lowered their swords or bows. Then, somehow, they reached a silent agreement and they stepped back, leaving Roderigo standing in the middle of a circle. He could fight or lose them for ever.
That knowledge showed in Roderigo’s eyes.
With it returned the courage that had seen Roderigo through many battles, or so Tycho had been told. The man would win, or die here. Tycho intended to make sure he died. “You killed the monks at San Lazar.”
Roderigo opened his mouth to deny it and swallowed, unwilling to risk facing God with a lie on his lips.
“You set the barrels of powder. Your sergeant lit the fuse.”
“He died well?” Roderigo’s expression softened at the mention of Temujin.
“Cursing his father for abandoning his mother and promising to screw his first love into the dirt of the afterlife. She died of plague before he could grow tired of her. Of course he died well.”
An archer with high cheekbones and grey beard muttered something. As one, those in the crowd of men around Tycho and Roderigo holding bows sheathed them and drew their swords to join the others in forming a circle. Retreat too far or too fast and a sword point would pierce you. Roderigo grinned. “His highness has offered fifty thousand ducats for your head. I’m going to enjoy collecting.”