Vito immediately stood up with the sword clutched by his hand. The stone grated beneath his boots while the mail dragged at his shoulders as though it had already decided he’d be better off flat on his back.
The two men coming at him were close enough now to stop being shadows in the smoke and become sincere men with sincere intentions, none of them friendly. Their mail was battered, the sort that earned its dents instead of borrowing them, and conical helmets caught the weak daylight filtering through the haze.
The fellow on the left had already lowered his spear, the blade drifting toward Vito’s chest with slow, easy certainty. The other had a small round shield high, sword already drawn, light on his feet and looking every bit like he expected this to be over in another heartbeat.
Some small, thoroughly unhelpful part of Vito’s mind that used to read about this sort of thing for fun noticed the odd helmet was exactly right, the shield really was that small, and this was truly what it looked like.
Then survival reached over, boxed that thought on the ear, and told it to shut up.
His feet were already backing him toward the narrow mouth of the stairwell before he’d agreed to any such plan. It was the one place in the tower where only one man could reach him at a time.
Apparently his body made the decision already and neglected to invite the brain.
For the briefest half-second, the two men hadn’t quite closed the distance, and Vito looked past them.
Thin gray daylight seeped through smoke that hung over everything, where soldiers moved all along the wall in every direction. There was more shouts, fighting and whatever madness he’d landed in, stretching farther than he could make out.
Then the half-second ran out.
The spear came first, low and quick, driving for the region beneath his ribs.
Vito’s arm moved instantly and his blade slapped the shaft aside with the flat, turning it away almost casually. In the back of his head he found time to marvel that he hadn’t the faintest idea how he’d managed that.
The spearman recovered fast and lunged again.
This time the tip kissed Vito’s forearm, cutting a hot, narrow line where the mail left just enough room to regret it. He felt the pain before he had any chance to think about it, and thinking had become an expensive luxury regardless.
The man thrust a third time, confident now, as if Vito was little more than one last chore before breakfast.
That confidence cost him.
He leaned too far into the attack.
Vito slipped to the outside of the thrust. The spear scraped past his mail as he turned with it, and his sword came around in that very motion.
The blade bit deep beneath the man’s arm, where the mail let way, and tore through flesh before driving into his ribs with enough force to spin him sideways, spraying blood across the wall.
Vito ripped the blade free.
The spearman crumpled in a wet heap, his spear clattering from numb fingers as blood poured through the ruined mail.
"Right. We’re doing this."
The words slipped out to nobody in particular as Vito dragged in a breath, his eyes already searching beyond for whatever wanted to kill him next.
The remaining soldier spared exactly no time grieving. If anything, he hurried, shield first, sword cutting down in a hard diagonal slash Vito barely saw before it landed.
The steel crashed into his shoulder with a screech of metal on mail. The rings burst apart under the blow, but they stole enough of the slash to keep it from biting deep. Even then, the force still hit like a battering ram, hurling Vito into the stone wall hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs.
The world flashed white, as if some bell had exploded inside his skull, drowning out the battle for one miserable moment. His knees threatened mutiny, and only the wall kept him upright.
"... fuck me."
He swallowed hard, blinked the white from his vision, and waited for the tower to stop spinning before trusting his legs with the ambitious task of standing.
The shield-bearer drew his sword back for another cut.
Vito hit him first.
He threw himself forward before the blade could fall again, crashing shoulder-first into the man’s chest. The shield smashed into the side of his head and they staggered together, boots scraping across the stone as each fought to stay upright.
Neither sword found room to swing as steel scraped uselessly between them, slamming into the wall, shoving off it, and lurching back again.
Vito seized a fistful of the man’s mail and drove him backward, only to find one mailed fist hammered into his ribs.
One more fist glanced off his face and Vito answered with an elbow that cracked against the man’s jaw before rough fingers closed around his throat.
Neither found enough spare air for conversation.
He clawed at the man’s wrist, boots skidding over loose grit as they wrestled for balance, each trying to throw the other to the stones.
Locked together, they stumbled toward the edge of the tower.
The shield-bearer dug in his heels, trying to turn them, but Vito twisted beneath him, drove a hip into the man’s waist, and heaved with everything he had left.
The world seemed to stop for the space of a heartbeat.
Then the man was hurled into the empty air beyond the stone.
His scream tore through the smoke as he pinwheeled into open air. He struck the water far below with a crack that vanished beneath the roar of the battle.
Vito stayed where he was with his hands still half-raised, as though the shove hadn’t yet decided it was over.
The fight ended, but the adrenaline felt no reason to follow its example. It raced around inside him with nowhere left to go until he found himself standing in victory with shaking hands and breath coming in ragged pulls that might have been laughter, or might have been not nearly so cheerful.
"Okay."
He spoke to the empty tower, the smoke, and anything else that still cared to listen.
"That happened."
He hadn’t the slightest notion what came next.
Hold the tower? Find somebody else who was still alive? Stay alive himself for another minute and generously call that a strategy?
Every choice felt sensible and impossible, and there wasn’t a soul nearby offering advice.
Only after his hands had stopped trembling did Vito finally look beyond his little patch of stone, and the true size of the thing he’d stumbled into struck him like another blow, slower this time but no softer.
The ships stretched along the wall as far as he could see, lashed together in pairs exactly the way he’d been so pleased to explain less than an hour and eight hundred years ago. From them, bridges reached from mast to tower, and soldiers fought the very desperate fight he’d barely survived at every one of them.
More smoke swallowed the far end of the wall until it became little more than a gray guess.
Below him, the bridge that had brought him, or the previous him into this nightmare burned from end to end.
And somewhere beyond the smoke, beyond the ships, beyond the countless men who blurred together at this distance, there might well have been an old blind man shouting to row him closer.
Vito stood very still with that thought.
It sat heavy in his chest, wonder and the uncomfortable suspicion that history had become far too interested in him.
He let out a breath that turned into a laugh. "In my defense, when I said I’d love to see this in person, I wasn’t asking for the premium experience."
The tower replied with a shudder.
More timber slammed into stone behind him hard enough to rattle his teeth, and dust drifted down while it cracked loudly enough to deserve attention.
For one second he couldn’t tell whether this was merely another piece of the previous disaster or the beginning of a fresh one.
Then soldiers poured across the new bridge.
And relief hit him so hard his knees faltered, because these weren’t wearing the enemy’s mail.
Venetian colors.
Venetian voices.
A whole wave of them flooded onto the tower as though they owned it, and as far as Vito was concerned they were welcome to the place.
Leading them came a broad-shouldered man whose mail made no effort to hide what sort of body was inside it. He crossed the wreckage with the cheerful stride of a fellow having the finest day he’d enjoyed in months.
The man took one look at Vito standing alone beside two dead men. His grin spread wide enough to show every tooth.
"Madonna santa! We were halfway through mourning you already!"