The Long Sword (62 page)

It was fully three hours after vespers, the very dark of the night, when William de Midleton opened the sally port for us. ‘God speed,’ he said.

I confess I almost expected a crossbow bolt to take John the Turk, the first man out the sally port. But he slipped out of the gate, low on his horse’s neck, bow strung but in the case at his side. He rode with George and Maurice and, after a minute of rapid heartbeats, I sent the archers after them. Rob Stone winked as he kneed his rouncey through the gate.

I went with Nerio, and then Miles and the legate’s deacon, Michael, supporting him on his horse, and then Fiore with Davide at the rear.

By my estimation, the ambush had to come right away. If d’Herblay and the Hungarian really planned to kill the legate – or me – they would know we were in the Cairo Gate. By waiting, I hoped to bore
him into assuming we’d spend the night. He’d post men on the gates, and they’d tell their master when we moved.

By the time we reached the great avenue in the middle of Alexandria, lined with palaces – I had all but forgotten the Hungarian. Instead, my senses, tired to the point of failure, and then overwhelmed with noise and light, were bruised. Buildings were afire everywhere. By the ruddy light, we were treated to a carpet of corpses on every major thoroughfare. The sheer numbers of the dead staggered us all, even men who had seen fighting in France.

And further scenes from the inferno played out around us. A dozen soldiers chased a woman who ran screaming, half naked. She might have been beautiful if her lower jaw had not been cut away. Against the background of burning building, her agony was an insane vision of man’s wretched state in a world of sin.

A horse wandered, walking, trotting, screaming in agony, and it’s guts uncoiled behind it, leaving a hideous ribbon to glisten in the dark.

Laughing looters sat on cooling corpses and diced for the stolen goods. A dozen brigands lay in an alcoholic haze, apparently unconcerned that they lay among their victims.

And everywhere, little furtive packs crept, and struck. Many of the victims must have joined the sack – it was always thus in France – so that the numbers of the murderers and rapists were always increased. I saw men in local dress killing and burning. The poor of Alexandria joined the scum of Europe.

Through this, we rode.

We were, by my estimation, almost half way along the avenue when John rode back out of the chaos. He shouted – and I’m ashamed to say his shout woke me. I had fallen asleep in Hell. He shouted again.

I slammed my arm into Nerio’s backplate. He was also asleep. I turned, but Miles was doing his duty, and the legate’s eyes were open; glazed, but open.

John reined in at my side. ‘Rider – two.’ He pointed beyond the nearest palazzo, a squat and inelegant building with two minarets that rose like horns on a toad. ‘I think they watch. I kill one.’ He grinned. ‘Now they no watch.’

Nerio backed his horse. ‘How long have they been with us?’ he asked.

That was too much for John, who shrugged. ‘Two men,’ he said. ‘Now one.’

I rode ahead to the archers, whose horses were just visible in the next firelight.

‘We’re being followed,’ I shouted. ‘Stay—’

Ewan ducked and the stone hit me, not in the head, but in the back. I assume it was thrown with a sling, and it was a big stone. It left a dent.

Luckily for me, the Bohemian had left me room in the upper back to flex my shoulders. That became the space for the armour to absorb the blow.

It still knocked me straight down, off my horse and into the street.

I rolled. I’ll stop this litany, but only the hardest training will get you to roll off your horse when you are taken in an ambush and near dead from fatigue.

I don’t remember any of this. What I do remember is coming to my feet in the fire-shot darkness with the Emperor’s sword in my hand. Ewan was off his horse and running. Ned Cooper was at my back with an arrow to his bow. He was unashamedly using me as cover.

It was as well he did. A bolt tested the quality of my breastplate. It penetrated, but only about half an inch.

That, too, was luck, because my visor was up.

Ned loosed. I felt the heavy shaft whisper away through the air and I heard hoofbeats.

Nerio was three horse lengths away, sword out. He was riding at something – his gaze was fixed. Behind him came Miles and the legate – right into the heart of the ambush.

Sometimes, in war, you must take the dice as they roll.

‘Ride through!’ I croaked. My throat was all but closed. ‘Go!’

Miles heard me. He touched the legate’s horse with the point of his sword, and the animal bolted.

There were shafts in the darkness, arrow shafts, shafts of firelight. It might have been distracting …

Ned Cooper moved with me, loosing shaft after shaft. He grunted when he loosed.

Things hit me. A shaft, spent and pin-wheeling through the darkness, another stone off a sling I could hear spinning in the dark, a thrown spear. The last of the three was ill-thrown, and yet it slammed
across my knees and wounded Cooper behind me. In daylight, spears aren’t so dangerous. In the dark …

Christ, I was scared. Fear is fatigue. Fatigue is fear. Thirst, hunger, bone-ache …

There was nothing to fight.

But when Ned went down, I got an arm under his, and dragged him. The legate was past us, and I couldn’t even see his horse. Gawain was across the avenue, head up.

A good warhorse is a gift from God. I had no other plan; I was the target for every archer in the ambush. I decided, as if from very far away, that if I could make it to Gawain, I’d ride away.

I made it halfway across the avenue and Gawain met me halfway, bless him. I didn’t really think about the consequence – I got Ned up into the saddle.

He wasn’t unconscious. He screamed as his right knee got knocked around, but the spear came free and fell to the road.

‘Jesus
fucking
Christ the Saviour of
fucking
mankind,’ he shouted into the night.

‘Ride for it,’ I said.

I slapped Gawain.

About then, I realised that I hadn’t taken a blow or an arrow in what seemed like a long time. I had no idea why, but I had been in enough desperate fights to know that something had changed, and Ned and I were no longer the centre of the enemy’s attention.

My visor was still up. I let go of Gawain’s stirrup – I had had some notion of holding the stirrup and bouncing along like a man with ten-league boots, but I was too tired. And I had some notion of occupying the enemy while the legate escaped.

Unless, of course, he was dead, which was one awful explanation of why the enemy fire had shifted away from me.

But that made no sense, even to my fatigue-addled head. Men in a fight will go after one opponent until he’s down and only then go for another. That’s the law of the forest.

Kill the thing you can see.

What in the hell of Alexandria was going on
?

The night was still a literal inferno. Fire and darkness … smoke, that makes darkness even more deceptive. And can choke you. Only
in full night can you stumble into smoke you never saw and cough your lungs out.

A man was coughing, just to my left.

I picked up the spear that had come out of Cooper’s thigh. It was a surprisingly good spear – you know when you pick one up, line a sword. It was light and responsive in my hands, the haft slim and well balanced, the head light. I used it to feel my way. The cloud of smoke was drifting, I assume, because for me it was like a choking fog covering the moon. I could see a little at first, and then nothing.

I wanted cover. The smoke was killing me, but it
was
cover. I couldn’t breathe, and my eyes were watering. My armour weighed like lead.

Yet, I was unwounded.

I moved one step at a time.

A man screamed – and his scream was answered by a feral chorus from behind me, too far away to be part of this small thread in the tapestry of violence.

I made it to the foot of one of the minarets. I knew the stonework in a glance, and there was a ruddy glow from inside that lit the smoke.

There was a man. He came at me, or merely crossed my path, and my spear went into his throat with the unerring accuracy born of practice.

I have no idea who he was, or whether he was part of the ambush. But he was armed and had mail on. I dropped him off my spear point.

Another step and the feeling in front of my face was replaced with a comparative cool. I essayed a breath, and then put my back to the low wall and heaved. I had inhaled too much smoke.

Another scream. And a shout. And coughing. All this so close that I whirled, head up, fatigue forgotten-

Three spear-lengths away, a man broke cover from a decorative shrub on the grounds of a tall facade to the west. He took two steps, grunted, and fell. In the smoke-shot dark, I had no idea why he fell, but he wore armour.

I alternated curses and prayers.

But the man who broke cover was not one of mine, and the mere fact of his being in cover said he was one of the ambushers. He thrashed to death like a crushed bug, his armour reflecting the inferno around him.

I ran towards him. Or rather, I stumbled. I tripped at least once, went down in an armoured sprawl, rose and plunged on, across another belt of smoke and heat. I couldn’t see the ground, which was broken and full of stones. Someone’s decorative border. I hurt my hands.

The man who had broken cover was a routier in a stained surcoat and looted harness, and he had a Mamluk arrow through his throat. His surcoat was blue and white.

I made it to the relative cover of the tall facade – marble in front and brick behind. By then, my head was running very fast. I had to hope it was one of John’s arrows. If there were Mamluks loose in the city, the crusade was doomed and so were we. Although there was irony in that.

But odd as it sounds, the dead man with a Mamluk arrow told me what was going on. John and Maurice and George were behind the ambush, wreaking havoc. Otherwise, I’d have been dead in the road, and Gawain would have been filled full of arrows. If they had broken the eastern hinge of the ambush, then I was now moving with them, or behind them.

I offer you my thoughts, because fighting at night in a burning city carpeted in dead men is more difficult than it sounds.

I moved across the tall building’s facade. It was not afire, nor was the next building to the west, which had rose bushes in a hedge around its entrance.

I guessed that the rose hedge was the basis of our ambushers’ position.

And God performed a miracle for us. Fiore stumbled out of the darkness to my right. Never were the Order’s surcoats more valuable.

‘Close your visor,’ he said. There’s friendship for you.

‘Hedge,’ I said.

He nodded. I slammed my visor down, and we went at the hedge.

It may seem impossible to you that our adversaries didn’t see us coming, but they did not. Nor do most men know that, in a full harness, a man is immune to thorns.

I knew, and so did Fiore.

We burst through the rose hedge like the vengeance of the angels. There were three or four of the Hungarian’s men there, and the man himself. I had him immediately. He was in maille, with a black brigandine over it and I saw his face when he turned. I was just pulling my spear out of the crossbowman I’d encountered first.

I thought he’d run. Instead, he stepped back and drew.

To my right, Fiore was fighting three men, one of whom had on a great deal of armour. Another brigand slammed out of the dark and thrust at me with a spear. I slammed the spear clear of me and struck a clumsy blow, made worse by my butt-spike catching in the roses..

The Hungarian struck at me. His edge caught the rim of one of my gauntlets. His timing was perfect but his point control a little awry in the dark.

As a result, the spearman and I went close, and the Hungarian danced away.

In that beat of my heart, I knew he was a good swordsman, and that he was going to kill me. But I had my point under my other adversary’s right arm. I released my top hand – my left – punched him in the head with my mailed fist, reached past his shoulder and caught the point of my spear as his head snapped back, which changed everything. I threw him. In fact, I ripped him off his feet and tossed him at the Hungarian. He went down hard and the Hungarian went down with him.

Fiore put his pommel into one man and pivoted on his hips, parrying his second opponent as if he’d practiced fighting three men all his life. Having made his cover, he brought his sword back up; not a very strong blow, but he made his second opponent stumble even while the first collapsed.

All that while I caught one breath.

I put a steel-footed kick into the downed spearmen and the Hungarian regained his feet while I pulled out my spear point in to finish my foe.

That’s what you do when you are outnumbered. Make sure the men who are down stay down.

The Hungarian had a steel cap on over his maille hood and there was enough light, reflecting off smoke, making everything a ruddy haze except our blades that flickered like red-hot iron, that I could see his face clearly, his high cheekbones, his heavy, long moustaches, and his smile.

‘Ah, Sir William,’ he said.

He cut at me. He made three simple blows – mandritto, reverso, mandritto, just as Fiore drilled us, and I covered all three. I had my spear point low, the butt high in my right hand – one of Fiore’s guards. In this guard, and with my good steel arms, I could ward myself all night, as long as I had the strength to keep the spear steady. With my advantage in distance, the Hungarian was limited to fast attacks and withdrawals.

I thrust low, at his hands.

He leaped back and I stumbled after him – armour is heavy, and I had forgotten the spearman on the ground.

The Hungarian thrust with one hand: I made my cover high and late, and his point slapped my visor.

Dead, except for my armour.

I cut; a simple, heavy fendente with the spearhead to buy time. He was faster than anyone I had ever faced – faster than Fiore, faster than Nerio. As fast as the Bohemian I had fought in Krakow.