Chapter 39: Blood on the Cathedral Steps

The staff came down in a two-handed swing, and Vito caught it high on the sheathed sword. The wood struck the steel with enough force to numb his hands for a moment.

He knocked it aside and drove the sheathed sword into the bishop’s shoulder, hard enough to send the man stumbling back a full step against the cathedral’s worn doors. A grunt escaped him before he could stop it.

But the staff had not finished with Vito. The far end, still carrying the momentum, came around low and caught the horse across the near foreleg. It was only a glancing blow, but it was hard enough.

The horse put its weight down and the leg folded beneath it.

The horse’s shoulder dropped, then it came down sideways. Vito kicked both feet from the stirrups in the same instant and threw himself away before the animal could crush him.

He struck the old stone, rolled hard across one shoulder and his ribs, and came up dusty, breathless, and on his feet.

Behind him, the horse scrambled upright with a hard, uneven limp. Finding that it would be difficult to still bear weight, it shied toward the square and put as much distance between itself and the fight as a sensible horse could manage.

Vito had the sheathed sword on guard and faced the bishop.

The bishop brushed one hand on the shoulder that was struck, then returned to his stance with the staff.

Neither man spoke.

The cross above the cathedral door caught the first red light of sunrise beyond. Across the square, the skirmish was still going on, but now it sounded far away, all shouting and the crack of wood against mail.

Vito had no attention left for it.

The bishop attacked first. He swept the staff low for Vito’s knees, then turned the sweep halfway through into a thrust at his chest. One hand slid along the shaft, shortening his grip and changing the reach in a heartbeat.

It was a neat little trick, and the bishop performed it as though he had been doing it since childhood.

Vito caught the staff late and high, more a desperate block than a proper parry. The blow drove him back a stumbling step.

This was no farmer attacking in panic. Whatever else the man had learned beneath those robes, his hands knew what they were doing.

A churchman on an exposed island see could learn plenty from raiders, soldiers, and travelers passing through, and this one plainly had, far more than the sort of martial arts taught in a cute little monastery.

"Brava. The bloody master of Shaolin himself."

Vito gasped, grinning despite the pain spreading through his forearm. He knew perfectly well the man understood not a word of it and never would, but that had never stopped Vito from talking.

After that they fell into a hard, grinding exchange.

The staff had the longer reach, and every time Vito tried to close the distance he had to step into danger first and take part of the blow meant to keep him away. The sheathed sword, held in both hands like a club, had never been made for this sort of fight.

His arms were ringing to the elbows by the end of every exchange, which was the sword’s way of reminding him of the fact.

A low sweep nearly took his legs out from under him. Vito jumped too late, landed badly on the worn stone, but somehow kept his stance.

On the next exchange the far end of the staff cracked against his forearm and numbed the whole limb from wrist to elbow. For a short moment it was little more than a useless piece of flesh that hanged from him.

The bishop’s face broke into something very close to a grin, and a sharp bark came with the blow.

<anno data-annotation-id="8108dad5-5ac0-f572-4d27-38a5ff75320f" data-title=""Ναι! Έλα, Λατίνε!"">"Ναι! Έλα, Λατίνε!"¹</anno>

Vito’s reply came swiftly.

He drove in beneath the staff’s reach and slammed the flat of the scabbard across his ribs. The blow folded the man nearly in half and knocked the breath clean out of him.

Neither man had gained much ground.

For now they stood breathing hard, walking apart before coming together again, each man taking the other’s stance.

The next thrust went straight for Vito’s eye. It missed by less than the width of a coin, but the staff caught him high across the cheekbone regardless.

White-hot pain spread through the bone, and his vision went blank for half a heartbeat before it returned into place.

Vito yielded ground. Three hard steps took him across the cathedral’s stone while the staff kept finding him, its reach beating him back every time he tried to close.

Each attempt cost him another bruise in a fresh place. A sheathed sword could bully a man, but it could not earnestly answer a weapon built to keep that man at arm’s length. Not for much longer.

His hand found the hilt.

He drew in one quick motion, and the blade came free with a bright singing note.

The sharp cry alone changed the fight. The bishop had not even struck again yet, but both men knew the old rules were gone.

The bishop’s next attack was as before, a full thrust straight at Vito’s chest.

This time steel met wood with a very different impact, a clean ring, the sharp noise of a blade doing the work it had been made to do.

Vito caught the staff near the middle, turned it aside, and stepped in. The bishop twisted away before the sword could find him, bringing the butt of the staff around toward Vito’s ribs.

Vito caught that too, barely, and shoved the shaft away with the flat of his blade.

The bishop came forward behind it.

A short thrust. Vito knocked it aside.

Another, lower. Vito stepped back and let the point pass his coat by an inch.

The bishop recovered quickly and swept the staff across his chest.

Vito ducked beneath it and brought the sword up. The bishop pulled the staff back just in time, and steel scraped along the wood with a harsh hiss.

For a moment they stood almost chest to chest.

Then the bishop thrusted again.

Vito let the attack come, turned it aside with one clean parry, and brought the sword back in the same motion.

The blade caught the bishop’s forearm and slashed a deep cut. The bishop stared at the blood drippling down his arm.

Realization reached him half a second too late.

His fingers faltered and the staff fell and clattered against the stone.

Vito closed the last distance instantly and drove his shoulder into the bishop’s chest, taking him down onto the cathedral steps with one arm pinned hard against the stone.

Vito kept the blade loose at his side.

There was no second stroke. The first had been enough.

<anno data-annotation-id="44093845-a450-4828-3edf-fff9c2f521f3" data-title=""Ω, όχι! Όχι, όχι, όχι!"">"Ω, όχι! Όχι, όχι, όχι!"¹</anno>

The bishop’s voice cracked with it. Fury was there, but so was grief.

Vito stayed over him, breathing hard.

"There," he said. "Was that really worth all this trouble, Padre?"

He got off him and left the bishop pinned beneath the boot of some soldier sent to relieve him.

The bishop still cursed as Vito finally looked across the square.

It was over.

What remained of the crowd lay scattered over the open ground, groaning and weeping, with a few knocked senseless. Most of the rest had disappeared into the houses around the square as soon as the fight turned against them.

Vito’s men stood among the wreckage, some battered and breathing hard, with torn sleeves, split lips, and one man limping badly enough to need a proper look at that leg.

More importantly, they were all alive.

"Cazzo, look at your own face."

One soldier grinned at another through his own swollen, purple eye. "Shut it, it’s still many times prettier than your ugly ass mug."

"Have your ma’ told you that? I’m afraid I have terrible news, amico."

The second man spat blood onto the stones. "What an insufferable cunt you are."

Then some door slammed beside the cathedral.

The noise cut through what remained of the square’s racket, and Vito’s head turned toward it instantly.

A rider was already slipping through a low side door no one had noticed until now. He was mounted, turning away from the square, his cloak snapping behind him as he drove the horse toward the old ruins beyond the township.

The broken walls of the ancient palace swallowed him within a few strides. Nobody with sincere business here left by that door, at that speed, and in that direction.

Vito watched him just long enough to know that, then turned away.

"Orso!"

His voice thundered across the square as he headed for the horses. "The Bishop’s yours, along with whatever other bastards you find still hiding inside that cathedral. Keep them all detained and unharmed until I say otherwise!"

Orso grinned with cheerful satisfaction.

"I don’t need minding, Barozzi."

Vito grinned back as he caught the reins of the nearest horse. His own mount was still limping and would be no use for what came next. "Toffolo, Momolo, go keep him tame! I want that bishop breathing, and every other man of God’s accounted for when I get back! Don’t let Orso feed any of them to his sense of humor!"

"On it, Ser Barozzi!"

Toffolo laughed despite the long, miserable night behind him.

Vito swung into the borrowed saddle and slid his blade back into its scabbard in one motion.

Before the horse had properly steadied beneath him, he put his heels to its flanks.

He rode hard out of the square, past the last scattered fighting, past the houses and their shuttered residents watching from behind the dark, and toward the ruins that had swallowed the fleeing rider ahead of him.

<annotations style="display: none;">"Yes! Come on, Latin!""Oh, no! No, no, no!"</annotations>