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.