The Fallen Blade: Act One of the Assassini

by Jon Courtenay Grimwood

  “We’re here already,” Tycho said.

  Giulietta slapped him so hard it shocked all three of them into silence, and make Atilo glance back from where he stood on the prow. “That’s heresy,” she hissed. “Cathars have burnt for saying that.”

  “You think hell is worse than this?”

  She opened her mouth to say yes, then shut it again. Grief filled her eyes, for the man who abducted, married and then abandoned her, all for the best of reasons. But abandoned her all the same.

  “He knows,” Desdaio said.

  Giulietta looked at her.

  “About hell. Tycho’s been there.”

  The Mamluk admiral’s own ship turned slowly. There were other galleys closer to the San Marco, but a message must have gone out to hold off. The sultan’s admiral wanted the honour of destroying Atilo for himself. Atilo was a Moorish traitor and turncoat, after all. If it took time to turn the admiral’s galley so be it. This was a waiting game. And the Mamluks had time on their side.

  “You love her, don’t you?” Atilo said.

  The second time in twenty-four hours Tycho had been asked that question. Glancing to where Lady Giulietta stood, her back turned and the baby at her breast, he answered, “From the moment I saw her.”

  “At Ca’ Friedland?”

  “Long before that. In the basilica.”

  Atilo looked at him. “You love Desdaio also?”

  “I like her. She makes me… feel easy. But there it ends.”

  “I cannot do it.”

  Such was the anguish in Atilo’s voice, Tycho’s guts tightened. “Nor can I,” he said. “Giulietta is my responsibility, however much you hate that fact. And she has asked me to take her life already. Desdaio is your responsibility. And she has not.”

  “Desdaio mustn’t fall into Mamluk hands.”

  “They might ransom her,” said Tycho. “If she says she’s Lord Bribanzo’s daughter. He’d pay extra to get her back untouched.”

  “And I would be dead.” Atilo’s voice was dry. “In time, I would be forgotten, and other suitors would appear. Ones Bribanzo likes better. But, still… I would give anything. Surrender this ship if I thought it would guarantee her safety.”

  “My lord…”

  “I meant it, Tycho. Have you never loved like that?”

  The question jolted Tycho’s memory. And the coldness inside his mind, and the flames eating the hulks on the ocean around him, and his residual fear of the sinking sun’s crimson ball were not enough to banish it. He could taste Atilo’s anguish, Lady Giulietta’s unnatural calmness, Desdaio’s despair. Try as he might, he could not keep their pain from mocking his refusal to act.

  “How long do we have?”

  “How long?”

  “Before that reaches us.” The Mamluk galley had finished turning. Both banks of oarsmen now working together, no longer fighting the deep keel’s drag, and the strong currents that swept this part of the Middle Sea.

  “A few minutes at most.”

  On the Mamluk galley’s prow, boys were filling braziers and oil jars so archers could dip their rag-wrapped arrows when the time came.

  “I’m going to tell Giulietta that I love her.”

  Atilo’s shoulders stiffened at Tycho’s words. “She’s a Millioni princess.”

  “And I’m a knight, albeit a poor and new one. I need the courage that saying this will give me.”

  “To do what?”

  “Become something else,” Tycho said sadly.

  Giulietta looked at him, her eyes wide. At her side, Desdaio stood frozen in shock, the hurt in her eyes as extreme as the shock in those of the Millioni princess.

  “You loved Leopold,” Tycho said. “This I know.”

  The young woman nodded slightly, her gaze rising to his face. “Why tell me you love me now?”

  “Because,” Tycho said, knowing that was no answer to anything.

  And he turned away from Giulietta’s scowl and the barely hidden hurt in Desdaio’s eyes. Walking to the prow, he ignored the oncoming ship and spoke the words he’d told A’rial he’d never say.

  “Help me.”

  For a few seconds nothing happened.

  Then the air rippled, and static flowed around him, touching his body with intimate fingers, only to vanish. He heard mocking laughter in his head, then a bulkhead door opened behind him and he heard Atilo swear.

  “I thought using a door might be more discreet.”

  Grinning, A’rial climbed a short ladder to stand beside him. Her shoulders, seen through rips in her dress, were as scrawny as ever. Her hair was filthy. Her toes black with dirt. But her green eyes, when they examined him, looked as old as the ocean, and more dangerous than anything found in its depths.

  “Ask,” she demanded.

  “Save us from that.” Tycho nodded to the admiral’s ship and the ring of Mamluk vessels around them, beyond arrow’s distance. As if Atilo’s crew had any arrows left or the strength to fire them.

  “You think it’s that simple?”

  “Isn’t it? You said I’d call. You were right.”

  “You’re saying it took a reputation in ruins, a victory for the Mamluks, soldiers preparing to die, a dead friend, and your loved ones preparing to be raped or killed, and not knowing which to hope for, before you’d accept help?” Her voice was mocking. “Tell me exactly what you want.”

  “Giulietta saved.”

  “Who knows what that means? Giulietta safely back in Venice? Ensconced as the chief wife to the sultan, bearing his heir and commanding his seraglio? Cleanly dead, and removed from the coming horror? What do you want?”

  “I’ve told you.”

  “No,” she hissed, voice hard. “You haven’t. So I’m going to ask one final time. What do you want?”

  “The Mamluk fleet destroyed,” Tycho answered without thought. “The Mamluk ship destroyed and our ship safe. With all in her,” he added, suspecting the stregoi would trick him if he worded his wish badly.

  “What will you pay?”

  “Anything,” Tycho said.

  A’rial grinned. “Right answer.”

  62

  As the Mamluk kettledrum grew louder, and their galley slaves worked the oars to its rhythm, A’rial grabbed Tycho’s hand, holding it in a vice-like grip. Her nails were black, her knees scraped and bare. Around her neck hung a yellowing bird’s skull, with large eyeholes and a dagger-sharp beak.

  “You pay the price freely? This you must state.”

  “I’m still waiting for you to tell me what it is,” he said, flinching as the red-haired child turned on him, her eyes sharp as broken glass.

  “You know my price,” she hissed. “Pay it, or not.”

  Tycho looked at her.

  “State you pay it, or let me return home. You cannot summon me, and then quibble.” There was a fury to her words far more dangerous than shouting. He wondered, not for the first time, how old A’rial really was.

  Whether she was human.

  But who was he to ask those questions? And she was right. He knew her price. Although he imagined it was Alexa who really wanted it, and A’rial was simply her instrument.

  “Take my life instead,” he begged.

  A’rial shook her head dismissively.

  “My soul then.”

  Pushing her face close to his, she mocked, “What makes you think you have one? Or ever had one? Swear it by the goddess or Giulietta dies…”

  He should have remembered there would be a full moon.

  Pale as his skin, huge and poised just above the horizon. The sun might be sunk in its glory, firing a final sliver of horizon with sullen flames, but the moon had a whole night ahead of her, and a red-haired acolyte on the deck of a losing ship, taking promises in both her mistresses’ names.

  “I will make Alexa an army,” Tycho said. “I will embrace who I am.”

  Stepping on to the prow of Atilo’s ship, A’rial stood tall, brought her clenched fists to her forehead in a strange salute, then
flung them back, with her fingers still clenched, her arms angled back and down like the wings of a bird.

  Winds whistled around her.

  Lightning cracked from an unbroken sky.

  The storm began instantly. Clouds gathering on the dark horizon, banking and racing at impossible speeds towards the Mamluk armada like heavenly cavalry. Mamluk archers blinked to find spray in their faces. The crescent pennant above their admiral’s galley flapped so hard it sounded like cannon fire. Beneath Tycho’s feet, he felt the San Marco lurch as wind filled her sails and she listed dangerously.

  “Lower the sails,” he shouted.

  Atilo stared at him.

  “My lord, drop the sails. Hack down the masts if you must. But get the canvas down and get Giulietta and Desdaio below… Please.” Maybe the final word helped. Because Atilo snapped out orders to cut the sails free, and hurried the women towards a hatch. Only returning to his post when they were below.

  “What have you done?”

  Thunder rolled across the sky, lightning lanced seawards. A Mamluk ship in the ring around them lost its mainmast as jagged fire split the wood, and sails tumbled before anyone had time to lower them.

  “My lord, go below.”

  “Tycho…”

  “I must do this.”

  “What have you done?”

  “Paid the price demanded to save those I love.”

  Tears rolled down Tycho’s face, harried by the wind. He could taste their sourness in his throat, and feel emptiness under his ribs where someone had cut open his chest and was replacing his heart with ice.

  “Go,” he ordered.

  Atilo looked shocked.

  “Or stay,” Tycho growled. “And die. Those are your choices.”

  “Those are my…?”

  “You think we will distinguish between friend and enemy when the killing grows fierce?” He indicated A’rial in the prow; fierce winds gusting away the arrows aimed at her, her arms stretched back, her face raised to the sky.

  She was mouthing incantations. Her fingers dancing as she pulled clouds across the sky and split ships in two with strikes of lightning. A lift of her chin produced a cliff-sized wave that crushed three ships, and faded just as quickly. In a flurry of waves and thunder she’d set about reducing the Mamluk fleet to a single vessel. There had never been a storm like it. And right in the middle, red hair streaming, stood the little stregoi, her face running with rain that filled her mouth and dashed from her chin like a million tears. She was laughing.

  When he looked back, Atilo had gone.

  Tycho wanted to be there, on the Mamluk galley, facing his enemy, ripping out the bastard’s guts. To think it was to be there. Stumbling, he glanced down, seeing the waves behind him. Fear filled his throat as he fought to balance on the rail.

  How he got there didn’t matter.

  “Over there…” A Mamluk archer shouted warning.

  And Tycho stopped his arrow in mid-air, wrapped his fingers around it before the arrow could fall, and stabbed hard and fast into the neck of a man-at-arms who was advancing, short sword in hand. Twisting, Tycho felt barbs turn before he ripped the arrow free, tossed the dying man aside and hurled the arrow at the chest of the archer who’d fired it.

  The arrow flew so fast it disappeared.

  And then the archer was staring in shock at the shaft jutting from his mail coat. Tycho killed him, almost as an afterthought. The crack of the archer’s neck lost under the howl of the wind, the crash of the waves and the roar of blood in Tycho’s head.

  He could feel hunger inside him. It stared through his eyes. Filled his mind. Its vision sharpening as the western horizon darkened, the final traces of daylight drowning below the waves. The Mamluk ship with its galley slaves, slave master and admiral became a frieze of red. Frozen, as time hiccuped and the sea slowed to a sullen roil, and the beast tested the bars of its cage.

  “Do it,” said a voice in his head.

  A’rial, Tycho decided. Unless he was talking to himself.

  So many people to kill. So many throats to tear out, so much blood. He could drown himself in the red he’d spill on this one ship. They were firing arrows at him. The wind took most of them. The few that came close he swatted away, not even bothering to return them.

  “I said do it.” Definitely A’rial. She sounded crosser this time.

  Should he? Could he, and remain who he was? He knew the answer to that. The few times he’d embraced the moon’s rays he’d felt a sliver of ice enter his heart. Enough of those slivers and his heart would freeze. He couldn’t unlearn the lessons that changing taught him. And after he became himself again, the memories of what he’d been remained. But how could he save Giulietta without changing? He would have to accept his destiny.

  Become the last of the Fallen. The last of his line.

  Or perhaps the first…

  Raising his face to the full moon, Tycho let its rays wash over him and felt his dog teeth descend. Sinews tightened, bones twisted, muscles tore, his throat filling with his own blood. Touching fingers to his face, he found his ears had shrunk away and left knotted holes in their place. His nose was flatter, his nostrils wide like a hunting animal. However bad the krieghund looked, he looked far worse.

  Inside Tycho’s chest his heart froze, locking him into panic. Its beat was gone, his lungs were static, his breath disappearing. Only fear kept him upright. He was alive and dead in the same second.

  “Sweet gods…”

  Changing hurt more than he could imagine. A remorseless shriek of pain washing away his last dregs of being human.

  This monstrous creature was what he’d become eventually. Tycho knew that for a fact. In the end, no matter how many times he reverted, this was how he would end. Monstrous and ugly. The world he’d been born into long dead. A new world in its place he could hardly bear.

  His price for finally letting the beast free was that he’d spare the slaves. Because sparing them would prove to himself something human remained somewhere. And then Tycho stopped pretending he didn’t want what came next and—as A’rial let her storm subside—became himself.

  The Mamluk galley had double rows of benches on both sides. The top row open to the sky, with a raised walkway used by the whip master. Tycho swallowed this information in a single second.

  “Die, demon.”

  You had to give the Mamluk sergeant credit for courage. He must have known he was about to perish. Lobbing his head over the side, Tycho kicked his body into the slave well, and faced the soldier beyond. Spiked helmet, chain mail, a wickedly curved scimitar. Tycho noted and dismissed his armour and weaponry.

  The man’s first blow almost landed. His second one did, slicing Tycho’s lower arm to the bone and sticking fast. Grabbing the man, Tycho squeezed; throat armour buckling as Tycho crushed his voice box.

  Shock, then pain. Tycho knew the sequence.

  Ripping free the scimitar, he hurled it at the next man and watched him stagger back, the weapon protruding from his chest. The cut on Tycho’s arm was a memory. So he gave it to a man with a spear instead. The spear man gasping as Tycho touched a hand to his face. Staggering back, he clutched his healthy arm, screaming loudly. Tycho threw him over the side. The kettle drummer died as simply.

  Tycho kept moving.

  It was a whip that stopped him eventually.

  An iron-tipped lash spun out of nowhere and slashed his face, blood dripping into his mouth. Sword deep, he could feel his teeth where his cheek should be. Turning swiftly, to protect himself from a second blow, he held his cheek’s upper and lower edges together and jagged flesh begin to mend.

  The third blow he was ready for.

  Catching the weighted end, he wrapped the thong around his fist and yanked, dragging the whip master to his knees on the walkway in front of him. The Mamluk never stood a chance. As Tycho moved for the kill, a slave grabbed the whip master’s ankle from below. Another hand snaked upwards, chains clanking.

  The slaves held the man
in place while Tycho popped his eyes with taloned thumbs and tossed him sideways into the slave pit.

  He tossed the whip after.

  Behind Tycho were archers he didn’t remember killing. Mamluk sailors, their heads twisted so far they stared in the wrong direction. A ship’s mate dead on the walkway, his throat torn out, eyes missing, his guts in a pile between his knees. Tycho’s thumbs dripped blood, his doublet was sticky. At no point did it occur to him to use a dagger. At no point had there been a need.

  The red edges of the world faded with that realisation.

  And inside Tycho’s chest his heart started beating, and his lungs shuddered and drew breath. Bones twisted and muscles contracted. As stars lost their brightness in the sky, the full moon changed from scarlet to a rose-pink, and the waves began to ebb and flow at close to their normal speed.

  Tycho checked behind him.

  Atilo’s ship stood there. A’rial still on the prow. But her arms were no longer flung back and her face no longer turned to the sky. She was staring between ships, and Tycho saw her smile as their gazes locked.

  Around them lay wreckage. Broken masts and spars, vast canvas jellyfish made from sails that held pockets of air. A rudder floated with a man at arms slumped across it, an arrow in his neck. Bodies bobbed like stunned fish, rising and falling with the swell. Most were ordinary sailors, Mamluk, Cypriot or Venetian. Those rich enough to own mail were on the seabed already.

  Apart from Tycho, only one free man remained alive on the ship.

  And maybe he was the only one really. Because Tycho doubted he was human, and was certainly not free. A slave to his hunger if nothing else.

  The Mamluk admiral was young, tall, thin and brave.

  He had to be brave to stand in the door of his tiny cabin. Elegant riveted mail glinted silvery gold in the moonshine, the brand he clutched highlighted the gold-filled etching of his helmet. He wore a rich helm with a jutting nose-piece, steel cheek protectors and a gilded spike at the top. A silver crescent arched up over his eyes. It was the armour of a Mamluk prince.

  “Demon,” the man said.