Around the bend came a knot of riders, packed shoulder to shoulder and moving with the steady purpose of one great beast instead of a crowd of men. The hooves struck the stone in a hard, even rhythm, and the whole wedge seemed to lean into the street as if it meant to break it open.
At the center, screened on every side, rode a man dressed for every eye to find him. Gilded scales caught what little daylight managed to fight through the smoke, and a cloak so richly purple it turned almost black in the shadows hung from one shoulder.
Nobody needed an introduction.
Hesitation moved through the Venetians, quick and silent, from one man to the next like bad news passed without speech. One sword lowered, one soldier choking on his curse halfway through it and crossing himself instead, staring at that purple cloth as though it might strike him dead from fifty paces away.
Whatever these fellows believed about God and Emperors, some old habit still lived in them, even after a day spent with their hands blackened by other men’s blood.
Vito had never learned it. If there was some instinct that made soldiers bow to expensive cloth and golden armor, life had neglected to teach it to him, and this was a poor hour to begin.
"Spears!"
His voice came out like thunder. "I admire their confidence, but let’s cure them from it boys! Spears up!"
Zaccaria understood it immediately, whether from good instincts or twenty years of surviving enemies louder than church bells.
"You heard him! Spears, now, or I’ll spear the lot of you myself and spare the horses the effort!"
Orso ripped a fallen Greek spear from the dirt so hard the corpse came with it before slipping free. Pellegrino snatched up another, crossed himself with his free hand, and stepped into formation without another word.
The men scrambled after whatever it had left behind, a dozen spear shafts still scattered where their owners had dropped them that morning.
One young soldier stared down the street. His grip tightened around the spear as the horses drew nearer, and for a brief moment he seemed to hope to discover some hidden feature on the weapon to solve the problem coming toward him.
"Come on boys!"
Vito moved down the formation, shoving men into place himself. "There’s nothing to it, you’ve done harder things than this! Looking at a mirror, for one!"
The young soldier swallowed. "And if that doesn’t stop them?"
"Then you improvise!"
Vito flashed him a grin that didn’t belong anywhere near a battlefield. "I’ve built a career on it, ask anyone around. They’ll tell you I’m terrible at plans and somehow still alive."
He moved on before the soldier could argue, calling back over his shoulder.
"Chin up! Today you’re a hero, tomorrow you’re a hero with a good story! Either way, you win!"
On the wall, more Venetian soldiers crowded along the parapet.
Vito cupped his hands and shouted to them until his lungs started to hurt. "You lot with crossbows, earn your supper! They may be built like giants, but they bleed like the rest of us, so let’s find out!"
The formation came together in a hurry and without much beauty, spears braced at every crooked direction the company could manage.
Above them, bowstrings snapped.
Bolts poured into the charge until the front ranks disappeared beneath a storm of iron and feathers, yet most of it achieved little besides a distinct proof the Emperor had spent an irresponsible amount of money on armor. The shafts skipped from gilded scales, shattered against shields, or vanished into barding thick enough to make the horses look personally offended by the attempt.
Fortune still demanded its share. One horse screamed as a bolt punched through its eye, stumbled, and disappeared beneath the wedge, its rider crushed somewhere underneath a dozen iron-shod hooves.
If anything, these men looked annoyed now.
Whether pride or plain stubbornness drove them, they came straight on, into the waiting spears.
The charge struck the ranks like the sea hitting a seawall some lazy mason had not quite finished.
The front ranks vanished beneath iron and horseflesh, men flew and disappeared under pounding hooves before they could even scream, and spears drove so deep into horses that some soldiers were ripped clean off their feet before the shafts burst apart in showers of splinters.
The blood washed across the stones while wounded horses crashed into the ranks behind them, piling bodies atop bodies until the charge finally began to choke on its own dead.
Somehow, against all respectable opinion, the Venetians were still standing.
The impact caught Vito in the middle of it all and answered the question of where a man ought to stand against heavy cavalry.
Apparently not there.
One large, expensive horse introduced itself to his chest, and the world became a blur of iron, cries, and entirely too much ground. He lost all respectable acquaintance with up, down, and personal dignity before coming to a stop against some corpse that groaned louder than he did.
He lay there for a heartbeat.
Arms, legs, head, everything still there. Painful, certainly, but no fresh holes where holes ought not be. Adrenaline had to be the only reason he didn’t immediately blacked out.
"I’ll take it."
He hauled himself upright into the middle of complete chaos.
The charge had spent itself. The horses screamed where they had buried themselves among shattered spears and tangled bodies, Norsemen hacking in every direction while soldiers fought so close there was scarcely room to swing a sword without introducing it to someone entirely unintended.
Then he saw the purple cloak.
The Emperor sat a little behind the worst of the crush, his horse shifting restlessly beneath him as he searched the confusion with quick, uncertain glances. The wedge had driven itself too deep to withdraw, too deep to charge again, and the Emperor looked like he didn’t know where to go.
Vito felt hot elation stir awake inside his chest. It was eager and hungry, like an appetite eight hundred years overdue that had finally slipped its leash.
It drove him forward before the cautious part of his mind had time to object.
Alexios Doukas.
Murtzuphlus, history would remember him.
Not kindly.
Vito was delighted.
Sincere, ridiculous delight.
Here stood a man whose death he’d read about in three different books, and not one of those respectable volumes had bothered to mention these streets, this charge, or the sword now pointed his way.
He snatched up one of the spears on the ground and sprinted the last stretch to drive it into the horse’s chest, then he let the animal finish the rest of the work for him.
It screamed, folded at the front legs, and pitched forward with enough force to throw its rider clean over its neck. Both horse and Emperor struck the stones together in a tumble of gilding, dust, and blood.
For one brief breath, neither moved.
Behind him there were shouts, short, sharp and edged with panic. More hooves scrambled inside the confusion, but none came any nearer.
The Emperor recovered before Vito reached him.
Alexios rolled clear of the dying horse, came to his feet with his sword already free, and tossed aside the gilded scabbard as though it had offended him personally. Vito drew his own blade.
"How dare, to attack an Emperor of the Romans."
The words came out calm, the speech of an educated man despite the blood at his mouth and the dust clinging to his crown. "There is no corner of Christendom where your name will not be spoken after this day. Every prayer offered for your soul will be for your repentance."
"Then I’ll save them the trouble and repent tomorrow."
Vito moved with his sword raised, breathing around ribs that had already endured far more than enough.
"Today I find myself terribly busy."
Alexios reply came in steel.
Low and fast, with nothing to waste, very much like a man who had spent more time fighting than posing. Their blades met twice inside a single breath, and the second blow drove Vito back a full step, leaving his whole arm ringing to the shoulder.
"Kneel now."
Alexios said as they moved around one another, "And you may yet become a wealthy man before night instead of a dead one."
"A little late for negotiations, don’t you think?"
Vito shifted his weight to meet him, or at least he tried.
His ribs didn’t let him, and his shoulder faltered at the stride. Everything he’d survived demanded its share, and for the smallest fraction of a heartbeat, his sword arrived a moment too late.
Alexios did not waste the chance.
He closed the distance in a blur of gilded steel and cut low. Vito turned as fast as battered muscles permitted, but not fast enough.
The blade carved deep across his thigh.
His knee buckled, and the breath fled him all at once.
"Porca puttana!"
Alexios came on without another word.
The cut drove Vito’s sword wide, the next scraped across his mail, and the third forced him back another limping step. Every blow landed with confidence while Vito answered a heartbeat late, his wounded leg refusing to keep up with the rest of him.
"I liked you better on the horse."
Alexios ignored him.
The Emperor stepped in again, his blade flashing toward Vito’s throat. Vito caught it high, but the force of the strike drove them together until their shoulders crashed and the swords jammed between them. For a moment they wrestled more than fenced, each trying to shove the other off balance while their blades ground uselessly together.
Alexios won that too.
He heaved Vito away with enough force to send him stumbling across the blood-slick stones, then followed before he could recover, his sword already coming down to finish what he’d started.
Vito barely got his own blade up.
Steel rang against steel, the blow driving through his arms and into his ribs until he thought the Emperor meant to hammer him straight into the street. Vito gave ground instead of resisting, retreating one limping step at a time and making Alexios follow across stones slick with blood and churned mud.
The Emperor took the invitation.
He pressed harder with every step, eager to finish it while Vito looked ready to fall, and his back foot landed where too many men had already bled.
It slid, just enough.
The pressure vanished for the smallest instant as Alexios fought to catch his balance. Vito had been waiting for exactly that and slipped aside, let the Emperor’s strength carry the blade harmlessly past him, and answered with one hard cut of his own.
The blade bit deep into Alexios’ neck and tore through in one savage stroke, spraying blood across the stones before the Emperor had time to understand he’d already lost.
Alexios made a wet, surprised sound.
Then he folded where he stood, one hand clamped uselessly over the ruin of his throat while the rest of him followed a moment later.
Vito remembered making that very useless gesture once himself, over another wound in another century.
Then even that ended.
Only the crash of a body against stone remained, and Vito stood above it while blood cooled across his knuckles.
Every history book he’d ever read about this day had just become wrong, and there wasn’t a soul alive who knew how to put the pages back in order.
Vito dropped heavily onto one knee beside the body of an Emperor that should not be dead.