“What is a musketeer?”
“The Duke claimed he had some,” Jack said, which did not answer Nyazi’s question. But there was no time to explain the distinction between dragoons and musketeers now.
A horn had begun to blow from the back of the stables, giving the signal that the gold wagons were ready to depart. Nyazi began to holler orders to his clansmen, who were distributed around the smoke in some way that was clear only to him, and they began falling back toward the wagons. This was their attempt at an orderly retreat under fire, which as Jack knew was no easy thing to manage even with regular troops under good conditions. In fact it was almost as chaotic as the advance of the Janissaries, who had overrun at least part of Nyazi’s defensive line and were now stumbling forward, gasping and gagging, tripping over rakes and slamming into pillars, charging toward the sound of the trumpet call-not so much because the enemy and the gold were there, as because one could not blow a bugle without drawing breath, and so it proved that air was to be had ahead.
Jack got as far as a place where the smoke was diluted by a current of fresh air, then was nearly spitted by a bayonet-thrust coming in from his left rear, aimed at his kidney. Jack spun almost entirely around to the right, so the tip of the blade snagged in the muscle of his back but was deflected, cutting and tearing the flesh but not piercing his organs. At the same time he was delivering a backhanded cut to the head of the bayonet’s owner. So the fight was over before Jack knew it had started. But it led immediately to a real sword-fight with a Frenchman-an officer who had a small-sword, and knew how to use it. Jack, fighting with a heavier and slower weapon, knew he would have to end this on the first or second exchange of blows, or else his opponent could simply stand off at a distance and poke holes through him until he bled to death.
Jack’s first attack was abortive, though, and his second was nicely parried by the Frenchman-who backed into a pitchfork that was lying on the floor, and tripped over its handle, sprawling back onto his arse. Jack snatched up the pitchfork and flung it like a trident at his opponent just as he was scrambling to his feet. It did no damage, but in knocking it aside, the Frenchman left himself open for a moment and Jack leapt forward swinging. His opponent tried to block the blow with the middle of his small-sword, but this weapon-designed for twitchy finger-fighting and balletic lunges-was feeble shelter against Jack’s blade of watered steel. The Janissary-blade knocked the rapier clean out of the French officer’s hand and went on to cut his body nearly in half.
There was a clamor of voices and blades and whinnying horses off to his right. Jack desperately wanted to get over there, because he suspected he was alone and surrounded.
Then one of the powder-kegs exploded. At least that was the easiest way to explain the crushing sound, the horizontal storm of barrel-staves, pebbles, nails, horseshoes, and body parts that came and went through the smoke, and the sudden moaning and popping of timbers as sections of floor collapsed. Jack’s ears stopped working. But his skull ended up pressed against the stone floor, which conducted, directly into his brain, the sound of horseshoes flailing, iron-rimmed cartwheels grinding and screeching, and-sad to say-at least one cart-load of gold bars overturning as panicked horses took it round a corner too fast. Each bar radiated a blinding noise as it struck the pavement.
Lying flat on his back gave him the useful insight that there was a layer of clear air riding just above the floor. He pulled his soaked tunic off, tied it over his mouth and nose, and began crawling on his naked belly. The place was a maze of haystacks and corpses, but light was shining in through a huge stone arch-way. He dragged himself through it, and out into the open-and into battle.
Monsieur Arlanc got his attention by pelting him in the head with a small rock, and beckoned him to safety behind an overturned cart. Jack lay amid scattered gold bars for a while, just breathing. Meanwhile Monsieur Arlanc was crawling to and fro on his belly, gathering the bullion together and stacking it up to make a rampart. The occasional musket-ball whacked into it, but most of the fire was passing over their heads.
Rolling over onto his belly and peering out through a gun-slit that the Huguenot had prudently left between gold bars, Jack could see the large floppy hats characteristic of French musketeers. They had formed up in several parallel ranks, completely blocking the street that ran down to the canal where the Cabal’s means of escape was waiting. These ranks took turns kneeling, loading, standing, aiming, and firing, keeping up a steady barrage of musket-balls that made it impossible for the men of the Cabal to advance, or even to stand up. This human road-block was only about forty yards away, and was completely exposed. But it worked because the Cabal’s forces did not have enough muskets, powder, and balls left to return fire. And it would continue working for as long as those musketeers were supplied with ammunition.
Meanwhile the stable continued to burn, and occasionally explode, behind them. The situation could not possibly be as dire as it seemed or they would all be dead. Between volleys of musketeer-fire Jack heard the whinny of horses and the rattling bray of camels. He looked to the left and saw a stable-yard, surrounded by a low stone wall, where several of Nyazi’s men had gotten their camels to kneel and their horses to lie down on their sides. So they had a sort of reserve, anyway, that could be used to pull the carts down to the boat-but not as long as those carts were forty yards in front of a company of musketeers.
“We have to outflank those bastards,” Jack said. Which was obvious-so others must have thought of it already-which would explain the fact that only a few members of the Cabal were in evidence here. The left flank, once he looked beyond that embattled stable-yard, looked like a cul-de-sac; movement that way was blocked by a high stone wall that looked as if it might have been part of Cairo’s fortifications in some past ?on, and was now a jumbled stone-quarry.
So Jack crawled to the right, working his way along the line of gold-ramparts and immobilized carts, and spied a side-street leading off into the maze of the Khan el-Khalili. At the entrance of this street, a Janissary was pinned to a wooden door by an eight-foot-long spear, which Jack looked on as proving that Yevgeny had passed by there recently. A hookah jetted arcs of brown water from several musket wounds. Once he had entered the street, and gotten out of view of the musketeers, Jack got to his feet and threw his weight against a green wooden door. But it was solider than it looked, and well-barred from the inside. The same presumably went for every door and window that fronted on this street; there was no way to go but forward.
He rounded a tight curve and came to a wee square, the sort of thing that in Paris might have, planted in its center, a life-size statue of Leroy leading his regiments across the Rhine, or something. In place of which stood Yevgeny, feet planted wide, arms up in the air, manipulating a half-pike that he had evidently ripped from the hands of a foe. Yevgeny was holding it near its balance-point and whirling it round and round so fast that he, and the pike, taken together, seemed and sounded like a monstrous hummingbird. Three Janissaries stood round about him at a respectful distance; two, who’d ventured within the fatal radius, lay spreadeagled in the dust bleeding freely from giant lacerations of the head.
One dropped to his knees and tried to come in under Yevgeny’s pike, but the Russian, who was turning slowly round and round even as he spun the weapon, canted the plane of its movement in such a way that its sharpened end swept the fellow’s cap off, and might have scalped him had he been an inch closer. He collapsed to his belly and crept back away-which was not possible to do quickly.