Race of Scorpions (12 page)

‘I thought I’d be safe in Sinigallia,’ Nicholas said.

‘You’d be safer there than down south,’ Tobie said. ‘Why go south? Your ship’s in Ancona.’

Nicholas laid down his meat. Then he picked up his cup. ‘Which ship?’ he said.

‘The round ship. The
Doria
. Crackbene got rid of the alum to a freight vessel at Porto Pisana, then got a job sailing here with some wheat. He’s been refitting. You could go to Ancona after Malatesta is finished with. Or before,’ Tobie said. There was a pause. He said, ‘I am arranging your life again like an elderly nursemaid.’

‘I oughtn’t to have said that,’ Nicholas said. ‘But it was so true. Whereas, left to myself, I found out what I like best. The sensation of fighting.’

‘The sensation of killing?’ said Tobie.

Nicholas thought. ‘The sensation of living through danger. Does that agree with your findings?’

‘I’m not making notes on you,’ Tobie said. ‘I’m leaving that to the gravediggers. I have to go. We march in four hours, and I expect to be busy.’

‘I assumed you would be,’ said Nicholas.

Chapter 6

C
ONTRARY TO HIS
wholly cynical expectations, Tobie saw nothing of Nicholas during the next day and a half of hard travelling. It was true that Tobie himself was much occupied: the army had been in the field for half a season, and he had some walking wounded and sick on his hands. Nicholas also had the best of excuses: his skills were those of a pioneer and a gunner, and it was among such men that he spent all his time. Occasionally the Count of Urbino would move back and take part in the intense arguments that broke out from time to time in that area of his army where the engineers were to be found. Afterwards he would ride, a frown between his uneven brows, staring at some scrawl of a diagram on a piece of paper smelling of horse.

It made Tobie suspicious. All the time he had known him, Nicholas had needed a friend. Now he had shed even Loppe. He had shed, too, the boyish camaraderie of the dyeyard, the tavern, or even the galley. Changing files; infiltrating among all the sections of Urbino’s army, Nicholas kept the companionable style of his company days. But it was different: as if he had had no occasion to use it for a very long time; and as if, now, he employed it for different reasons. And not only employed it, but experimented with it.

The prohibition ended on Wednesday at dawn, when the army came within reach of Sinigallia, and crossing the lukewarm Nevola, sat down in sight of Malatesta’s well-entrenched camp. Then Nicholas went and found Tobie, who was tramping back from his duties with his leather apron over his shirt. In a mask of pink dust, his small mouth was clean, as were the pads of his nostrils where he’d wiped them, and a slat on either cheek where his cap-lappets had been. He said, ‘So. You’ve got a corn on your arse?’

‘I walked some of the way,’ Nicholas said. ‘The rumour is that Malatesta outnumbers us by five to two, and that the town of Sinigallia has surrendered to him.’

‘Then why isn’t he occupying it?’ Tobie said.

‘Because he’s getting ready to charge us, I expect,’ Nicholas said. ‘He’s fresh and we aren’t. We stand to arms, and rest by rotation.’

‘Give me a girl and I’ll try it,’ said Tobie. ‘You’re really going to fight? Pull your sword out and charge, intoning
Urbino
?’

‘I’m working out what to shout,’ Nicholas said. ‘
Don’t hit me, we’ve got a terrible doctor?
If Malatesta attacks, you’ll have your sword out, none quicker. I don’t think he’ll attack. If he’s really busy with fire-raising, slaughter, rape, adultery, incest, parricide, sacrilege, treason and heresy, he simply won’t have the energy.’

‘He was excommunicated last year,’ Tobie said. ‘Retaliated by filling a church font with ink. He’s been fighting Urbino, man and boy, for twenty-three years.’

Nicholas flung down his gloves. ‘I’ve joined an episode in the Corinthian wars. I thought this was a free-standing battle.’

‘They might kill each other this time,’ Tobie said, ‘but I shouldn’t count on it. It’s all about property. And the Pope, of course, really doesn’t want Malatesta marching down to join Piccinino. I wonder what Astorre’s doing now. He’ll wish he hadn’t sent Thomas to Bruges. What happened to Thomas?’

‘I wish I knew,’ Nicholas said, quite as if he meant it.

They waited all day, in what shade they could find, but the enemy made no move that could be discerned. Tobie said, ‘They’re crazy. They should have charged as soon as we arrived.’

‘They’ll attack by night,’ said the Count’s secretary. ‘We are prepared. They will regret it.’

‘Five to two?’ Tobie said.

Darkness fell, and no one slept. Just after midnight, the scouts came back with news. Malatesta’s army had gone.

Urbino’s bellow could be heard all round the camp.
‘What!
’

It was true. The tents were empty. Malatesta had withdrawn his troops in the first darkness and was on his way north to the safety of the town of Fano. He had sixteen miles of country to cover. ‘Then let’s catch him!’ roared the Count; and set his buglers to rousing the camp.

The first squadrons of cavalry were mounted and left at a speed that Nicholas thoroughly admired. He set himself to catch and keep up with them. Among the firelit uproar and glitter, he caught sight of Tobie, mounting a stocky horse with a helmet on his floss-circled head and a cuirass bulging in front of him. Then the whole army set off behind Urbino’s vanguard, the foot scrambling to sort itself out as they went. They had had a day spent on watch, after a forced march at a speed better suited for winter than August. But the faces were eager. Urbino was leading, and Malatesta of Rimini was the traditional, the dishonourable, the joyfully despicable foe.

For Nicholas, it was curiously like and unlike November, when he had whooped through the snow with the Bentivoglio men after
the carts which had once contained sugar. Again, he was pursuing an enemy unsuspected – or initially unlooked-for, at least. That was clear, even at night, by the circumspect pace Malatesta was setting. Believing Urbino’s army exhausted, he had denied himself light and speed in his resolve not to arouse them. So, instead of a double line of bright flares, there was only moonlight to help spy out where, far ahead, he might be, over the churned fields of cabbage and wheat and beyond the ranks of bruised vines and the black mushroom shapes of the olive trees. But the moon, it soon proved, was enough. The pursuers climbed a low ridge, and looked into the darkness before them. There, in the distance, the undulating columns of Rimini twinkled like pins in a music-box. Like a dumb music-box, exercising in silence.

Urbino, too, used no flares to begin with. The bright moonlight showed him the way, and the rumble of hooves from his little company was too far off to be heard by his quarry. Soon, as his whole army moved up to follow, there could be no concealment. This, his spearhead, rode meanwhile on earth and on plants, and the scents of crushed fruit and greenery hung where they passed. The man next to Nicholas said, ‘The Cesano’s over there somewhere. It’s only a stream, but Malatesta has got to get all his men over it. It’ll slow him down.’

‘What will the Count do?’ Nicholas said.

‘Catch them in midstream, if there’s time for it. Ah. There’s the order. Light the torches.’

They were still lighting them when the next order came: Blow the trumpets.

‘Panic them,’ said the man next to Nicholas. ‘It’ll be muddy, that stream. No joke for Malatesta, trying to force an army to cross and scramble up banks in the darkness.’

He spoke in jerks, riding flat out as they all were. Now, among the sloping trees and the juniper bushes they could see the dark line of the little river, and the beachhead of jostling helmets on the far bank, and the main body of enemy troops plunging over to join them. Nicholas said, ‘They’ll be over before we can get there. And now they can see just how few we are.’

‘That’s the idea, isn’t it?’ said his companion. ‘Malatesta thinks we’re a skirmishing party. Who’d expect the Count’s army to be roused and marching already? So, with any luck, Malatesta doesn’t ride off. He instructs his rearguard to form up and deal with us. Deal with us very thoroughly, so that no one rides back with the story. What he doesn’t know is that Urbino’s whole army is coming.’

‘You think they’re coming,’ said Nicholas.

‘Well, they’d better come,’ said the man. ‘I haven’t heard an order to stop. It’s my belief that the next sound you hear from that trumpet will be the order to charge.’

The trumpet sounded the charge while there were still quite a few of the enemy on the near side of the Cesano. Urbino’s cavalry, yelling, rode straight at them with their swords raised, and cut them down as they leaped into the water. Malatesta’s men were mostly on foot. They struck back with swords and with knives, and used their shields to parry and push. Horses slipped; others fell, slashed from below.

There came to Nicholas again the half-promise, the hint of fulfilment that had reached him in Trebizond, and again in November: the realisation that accuracy and precision could be deployed in this field as in any other. Since, if he did not kill, he would be killed, he chose his targets deftly, and dispatched them. The blows he took in return fell as weights, or vibrations: it did not even occur to him that they might matter. No man, in any case, could know whether he was drenched in water, or blood. The shouts, the clanging, the screams, the swishing of water in turmoil produced in him a sense of isolation. The most immediate sounds were his own: his breathing; the scream, with blue sparks, from his sword-edge. The spray struck his arms and sides like a harp. Then he realised there were louder sounds still, emerging from the darkness behind. The rest of the army had come.

Malatesta hadn’t seen them. Half drawn up on the opposite bank was Malatesta’s rearguard, clearly told off to deal with the nuisance. Behind the rearguard was Malatesta’s main army, about to move off to Fano, with Malatesta himself at its head.

The moon brightened, emerging from veils, and showed to Nicholas the beaked and hideous profile of Urbino his leader before him, his sword aloft, his one eye bent on his trumpeters. The charge sounded. And with trumpets braying and every man roaring for joy, the Pope’s army lunged forward through the little stream of Cesano and hurtled straight into the small, tidy squadron which had been instructed to wait and get rid of them.

The shock of the impact flung Malatesta’s rearguard backwards and into the body of its own troops. Urbino’s cavalry followed up. Behind the cavalry came Urbino’s foot, surging out of the stream like a storm wave. The Rimini rearguard staggered, fought wildly, and broke. Urbino’s force, grinding through them, came upon and engaged the central body, disordered itself by the collision. The fighting became dense, at the closest quarters, with Nicholas in the thick of it.

With the moon to go by, there was some chance of telling friend from enemy while the order of battle still held. Then the lines fractured, and it was less easy. Every man in a helm is anonymous. Only the shields, the crests, the arm bands and blazons told who they were. Nicholas fought carefully, marking and striking; using his seat in the saddle to get himself out of trouble. Well taught by
Astorre, as Astorre would be the first to agree. And by the Duke of Milan’s tutors. And by the best horses in the world, from an Imperial stable. His right arm had just begun to grow heavy when he saw that the crowd round him was thinner, and that most were men of his own side. One of his engineer friends rode alongside, his sword dripping black and stuck with wads of cut hair.

‘Malatesta’s van has taken to flight. Orders to follow and harass, but stay within trumpet call. They’ll scatter. We can’t go too far.’

Nicholas slowed his horse. ‘So where’s Malatesta?’

‘Also taken to flight, so they say. To Mondolfo, maybe, or Fano. He’s got his eldest son with him.’

‘The Corinthian wars,’ Nicholas said. ‘After all that strategy, no conclusion.’

‘What do you mean, no conclusion?’ said the engineer. ‘Urbino won.’

In the event, the chase was short, because Malatesta’s cavalry, once they put their minds to it, disappeared very fast and the foot soldiers went to earth, bounding like antelopes. The signal for Urbino’s recall made itself heard when Nicholas, with the rest, was only a mile or two beyond the Cesano, and they obeyed it, if reluctantly. The towns in these parts were held by Malatesta. And towards the sea, a vague bloom told of the nearness of dawn.

The sky to the east was illumined by the time they cleared the field of their dead and their wounded, and journeyed heavily back to the camp. There, for the lucky, the camp servants waited, with food warmed and wine poured, and the pallets rolled back. The Count, unshaven, stood by his pavilion to greet and commend his victorious soldiers. They passed, and the camp began to settle to sleep. Nicholas crossed to the hospital tent.

Tobie was there, with a different pattern of dirt on his face. He straightened, looking at Nicholas across the stained ground. Nicholas said, ‘Can I help?’

Tobie said, ‘No. Don’t drink all the wine.’

The wine was in Tobie’s tent. Nicholas put his pallet there and sat for a long time, drinking in moderation as the canvas above him dried and turned taut and pink and, finally, hot and white. Tobie stopped, came in, and sat, rather suddenly, on the ground. His reddish hair looked like a shawl of wet crochet-work, and he had a ditch dug from each bloodshot eye. He said, ‘If you’ve drunk it all, I’ll open you with my gutting knife.’

Nicholas handed over a bottle. ‘Many?’ he said.

‘For a non-battle? Nothing worth speaking of. So, you enjoyed it?’

‘At the time,’ Nicholas said. ‘Were you hurt?’

Tobie removed his clenched lips from the orifice. ‘Notches,’ he said. ‘The same as you, by the look of you. Did you clean them?’

‘That’s where the rest of the wine went,’ said Nicholas. ‘If you’re so damned puritanical, why do you stay in this business?’

Tobie carefully straightened out both short legs, and opened his shoulders against his big box. ‘So long as men like you fight, men like me have to pick up the pieces. The Count’s going back to Urbino, now he’s stopped Malatesta interfering. So there isn’t a job for you meantime. What are you going to do?’