The Outcast Blade Read Online Free PDF

moment, Tycho realised what. Although she was too subtle to make it an order. Turning to the Captain of the Dogana, he offered apologies for his insult.
    Roderigo grunted.
    “And now,” Alexa said lightly, “to other matters. Who was the last armiger executed?”
    “Sir Tomas Felezzo, my lady. An hour ago.”
    “His house now belongs to Sir Tycho as reward for his part in the battle. Its contents, however, belong to the city. Have the building emptied. I take it no family exists to contest this order?”
    “All executed, my lady.”
    “Republicans?”
    “Every one of them. The worst kind.”
    That would be clever ones. Or those with influence.

4
Tyrol
    The wolf pack streamed through the high alpine meadow, leaving mountain grass waving behind it. The wolves moved so lightly that the tiny blue flowers flattened beneath their paws sprang up unbroken. Seen from above through the eyes of a hawk they formed an arrow, a dozen racing beasts spread in a vee from their leader who ran ahead as if challenging the outriders to catch him.
    And there was – indeed – a hawk.
    High and cold in the Tyrol sky it wheeled and gyred above them as it considered what it saw, before rising through the winds to navigate a high pass from this valley to the one beyond. The hawk was tired and hung on the very edge of exhaustion, but its task was done and food and petting waited as reward for its return.
    “Master Casper…”
    “Seen it, majesty.”
    The falconer, who was Emperor Sigismund’s magician and came from the far north of his empire, and had the cheekbones and sallow skin to prove it, threw up his hand to let the exhausted hawk sink its talons into his gauntlet. Then he bent his head close to the hawk’s own until they touched.
    Hunger and tiredness. And an arrow’s head of lupine smoke streaming across waving grass far below
.
    “They are found, majesty. The next valley across.”
    Sigismund, who styled himself Holy Roman Emperor for all his enemies called him emperor of the Germans, stared towards the point where valley floors joined. He knew these mountains well, having hunted the area as a child. “Follow me,” he ordered.
    The wolf pack had begun its day chasing down a stag and killing it with brutal efficiency, then kept running for the sheer joy of it. Humans knew to avoid their valley. It had belonged to the ancestors of the wolves long before all humans now living had been born.
    They ran into a sharp wind that streamed their own scent behind them and brought them warnings of dangers on the wind ahead. Because of this, they knew horses were close long before Sigismund’s lead huntsman sighted their pack.
    When he did, the man raised his horn and blew a note that echoed off the valley walls and deafened those around him. Still in their vee formation, the wolves kept coming, and when a foreigner riding with Sigismund grabbed his crossbow, Sigismund himself shook his head.
    “Wait,” he ordered.
    The emperor was old, still broad-shouldered but with grey in his beard and his eyes were weaker than when young. He wanted to see the pack in formation for himself, marvel at what it must be to be one of those creatures.
    Looking up, the lead wolf grinned.
    “Hold,” Sigismund ordered. “Everyone will hold.”
    Gripping the reins of his stallion, Sigismund forced the terrified horse to stay steady as the wolves split at the last second and streamed like smoke around the riders. A man was thrown, another’s ride bolted, but most managed to obey the emperor’s order to remain where they were. Tumbling with the speed oftheir stop, the wolves scrambled upright and turned to charge the riders.
    “Enough,” Sigismund shouted. He was laughing.
    The lead wolf, who was neither the biggest nor the most fearsome, bowed its head in acknowledgement. Its body began to change, the fur along its spine splitting to reveal flesh and human skin as its pelt somehow turned inside out.
    The young man who stood naked before the emperor