by Tim Willocks
He lifted his hands from his thighs as the boy, for in truth a boy he still was, plunged his head into Tannhauser’s chest and held tight. Tann-hauser squeezed his shoulders, which for a moment felt pitifully frail in his big freckled hands. Should he take him along after all? Reason’s answer was unequivocal: Orlandu was safer by far with Abbas bin Murad. Orlandu was reluctant to let go, and truth to tell he wasn’t alone, but Tannhauser pushed him back and turned to his horse. He mounted. He gave the forlorn boy a salute. And then he rode away.
On the fringe of the commanders’ encampment he passed a squad of musketeers without being challenged. He dropped down the western slope of Corradino onto the wide, flat apron of the Marsa and trotted south through the bazaar, where he bought half a sack of coffee to store in his wallets. He popped a handful of beans in his mouth and chewed and the bitter tang braced him. He crossed the eerie quiet of the soldiers’ encampment. Almost every fighting man had been mustered for the assault and of the lowly levies who’d been left behind to renovate the latrines, none extended more than a sullen glance.
Beyond the camp proper, originally at a sanitary distance but now spreading back to meet it like leakage from a huge and pungent bog, was the Turkish field hospital. It was a primitive aggregation of tatty canvas awnings, under which lay a multitude of flux-stricken wretches. The poisoned wells had fulfilled their atrocious expectations. The burning sun and noxious miasmas from the numberless puddles of filth had done the rest. Alongside the plagued lay uncounted wounded, who swiftly succumbed to the pest. The listless, demoralized orderlies, who shuffled about the squalor with the bleak resignation of farmers in a blighted field, were outnumbered by hundreds to one. The delirious murmurs of the afflicted, their groans and prayers, their cries for water, for mercy, for deliverance, set up a chorale of desperation that harrowed Tannhauser to the gut. He covered his mouth and nostrils with the hem of his caftan and whispered a blessing on Abbas for denying him such a fate. He skirted the sea of horror with all due speed.
The outer perimeter of the sprawling camp was picketed by a dozen or so mounted lookouts patrolling in pairs. He headed toward the nearest and nodded imperiously without slowing down, counting once again, and with the desired result, on the ostentatious splendor of his trappings to forestall delay. Once in open country and beyond their sight, he swung sharply west, set his mount to a brisk pace, and put the din of the continuing battle behind him.
De Lugny’s outriders captured him on the open ground, at the foot of the rocky ascent to the city of Mdina. They formed a circle of menace about him on their slaver-toothed chargers—Lusitanos and Andalucians crossed with Swedish warmbloods for size. The knights’ visors were down, their blood was up, and without their standing orders to take all prisoners in for torture they’d have been glad to hack his head off on the spot. They swapped ribald comments on his caftan, which, it seemed, they found womanly. Despite this none of them laughed, an indignity Tannhauser would have welcomed to lighten the mood. After all, the severed head of a Turk would bring them at worst a mild rebuke, and cooped up in Mdina— far from the unhinged slaughter they craved—the pickings were slim.
He was relieved then when the Chevalier De Lugny arrived with the Religion’s entire complement of two hundred cavalry. Over their armor they wore red surcoats with a large white cross. The garment had looked much better on Amparo. De Lugny at once recognized him as “the spy” who had guided the raid on Gallows Point.
“I asked for your services a month ago, Captain,” he said. “I was told you were dead.”
“False rumors abound in such times,” Tannhauser replied.
“May we know how you have spent this interlude?”
“Recovering from my wounds.”
“Among the Moslem devils?”
“In the tent of one of their generals.”
Sometimes the boldest answer is the best, and so it proved. De Lugny’s face was for a moment a portrait in perplexity. The knight to his left—one of the outriders who’d caught him—raised his visor: he had a youthful but poisonous countenance and that air of inbred superiority that no failures in this world would ever undermine.
“Then you have much to report to our Grand Master,” said De Lugny.
“That’s why I go to Mdina. I need a Maltese to take me to the Borgo.”
The popinjay spoke up, and confirmed Tannhauser’s impressions. “Perhaps you had much to report to the Grande Turke too.”
Tannhauser looked at him. He briefly considered ignoring this slur, but the jibes about his caftan might have rankled deeper than he’d thought. He said, “I spent thirteen days at Saint Elmo. The final thirteen days.”
Glances were exchanged and some crossed themselves in honor of that legendary stand.
Tannhauser continued: “When the janissaries came down the hill we often thought of you lot, polishing your armor and swilling wine in the safety of Mdina.”
Several swords cleared their sheaths, including the popinjay’s. Oaths were sworn. Warhorses stomped their plate-size hooves in sympathy with their riders.
Tannhauser canted his rifle against his hip. Their bloated sense of honor suddenly offended him. Perhaps he was still unbalanced in mind from the ague or from yesterday’s opium. Perhaps he had just had enough of belligerent folly. He’d lately borne a great deal with the phlegmatic good humor that he prized, but the popinjay struck a spark too close to the powder keg. An uncommon if once familiar rage flooded Tannhauser’s brain.
“Strip that armor,” said Tannhauser, to the popinjay, “and I’ll take any three of you. On foot, any five.”
He kicked his mount forward a step. The popinjay turned white about the lips. Had he lifted his sword, Tannhauser would have shot him in the face. Beyond that, despite his boast, he made no predictions. De Lugny, who knew men better than did his young comrade, raised his hand. “Enough!” commanded De Lugny. “Before things are said that can never be unsaid.”
Tannhauser’s gaze didn’t waver. The popinjay’s eyelids fluttered and he looked away. Tannhauser turned to De Lugny with a bland smile. “Then I can count on one of your Maltese.”
“I daresay you can,” said De Lugny, relieved. He inclined his head toward the grumble of guns beyond the hills. “How goes the battle? We heard the commotion and decided we’d had our fill of polishing and swilling.”
“The Borgo will hold,” said Tannhauser. “I doubt Saint Michel will last out the hour.”
“They held out before.”
“The pennants of the janissaries already fly from the walls.”
“Could we take them from the flank?”
Tannhauser suppressed a pitying glance. “Mustafa has twenty thousand reserves on the heights.”
De Lugny’s brow furrowed. “How well defended is their camp?”
“Their camp?” It was a foolish question, which Tannhauser would not normally have let slip. His stomach told him that the day—which had already overtaxed his enfeebled health—was about to take a turn for the worse.
“The Turkish camp,” said De Lugny. “The hospital, if you could call it that. Their supply train and supports. The cooks, the drovers, the blackamoors. That market of theirs.”
By the time De Lugny had completed his list of the damned, Tannhauser knew that they would go and see for themselves no matter what he said. He told the truth.
“Even Gallows Point was better protected. They’ve a score or so mounted pickets, thinly spread. A company of Thracian levies digging latrines. And as you say, cooks, drovers, unarmed slaves, the sick. No earthworks or palisades. Every line battalion is up on the heights.”
De Lugny did not strike him as the most cunning of fellows, but all Frenchmen of his acquaintance enjoyed an inborn duplicity that served them well, at least at moments like this. De Lugny leaned forward in the saddle.
“You’ll ride into the camp ahead of us,” he said. “At the gallop. Feign injury. Raise the alarum. Tell them that the Christian relief force from Sicily has arrived and a
re advancing on their rear and that Mustafa must be informed with all speed. He’ll have no choice but to call off the assault on Saint Michel.”
“If he believes the false report.”
“Oh, he’ll believe it,” said De Lugny.
He smiled and Tannhauser saw what was in his mind. He felt sick.
“And after that?” he said.
“After that, just stay out of our way.”
Tannhauser doubted that this latter would be as easy at it sounded. He said, “With your permission, I’ll take one of those red surcoats.”
De Lugny grinned, like one knave affirming another, and with a jerk of his head told the popinjay to give up his garment. With ill grace, the youth pulled the sleeveless war coat over his head and threw it at Tannhauser. Tannhauser bundled it into a roll, shoved it into his saddle wallet. Then he paused as if struck by a thought.
“If you’re looking for booty,” he said, “the tents of the commanders and their general staff are separate from the rest, up on the hills. But they’re much more stiffly protected—by a company of musketeers—and they stand a good mile closer to any relief that Mustafa will send.”
This was an overstatement of the truth, but he wanted to dissuade them from putting Orlandu, and for that matter the Ethiop, to the edge of their swords.
“We know Mustafa’s gaudy settlement,” said De Lugny, “and their day will come, but this morning we’re not out for booty. We’re out for blood.”
Tannhauser retraced his route to the Turkish perimeter. The sounds of the battle grew louder again. At a quarter-mile distance he glimpsed the first pair of pickets and glanced over his shoulder. De Lugny’s cavalry were not to be seen. He roused his depleted brawn and coaxed the mare into a gallop. As he approached the pickets he sagged across the mare’s neck and raised his arm in desperation. By the time he reached them, feigning injury was easy enough, as he felt more than ready to fall from the saddle before them. A picket took his horse by the bridle.
“The Hounds of Hell are here,” said Tannhauser. “Christian dogs, from Sicily. Thousands of them.”
He waved his arm vaguely behind him and saw the expression on the pickets’ faces as they turned to look. He felt a tremor in the ground and the mare whickered nervously beneath him. Then he heard the thunder of iron-shod hooves at the charge. Still hunched forward, he turned to look himself and felt animalistic terror claw his gut.
He’d never seen a charge by heavy cavalry from the victim’s perspective. This was how a stag felt when it spotted the hunter’s dogs. De Lugny’s riders fronted a rising cloud of ocher dust and were fanned out in a broad red line which grew broader and broader until it seemed that, if one watched for long enough, it would span the horizon whole. They were picking up speed, and they showed no sign of turning back. Tannhauser looked at the pickets. They were agape with terror. He picked the more panic-stricken of the two.
“Ride to the front and warn our Pasha,” said Tannhauser, “or the army will be lost. Ride for your life.”
Grateful for this unexpected reprieve, the man hauled his horse about and lashed it into movement. His gladness would be short-lived, for when the deception was discovered Mustafa would flog him to death, but his would be but one of many such sorry tales to be told today.
To the other man, for the sake of dismissing him, Tannhauser said, “Rally the levies to protect the stores.”
As the second sentry fled on his futile mission, Tannhauser realized that he had yet to complete the most important element of De Lugny’s order: to stay out of their way. He glanced rearward and saw that there was no chance of outflanking the line before it engulfed him. The chestnut needed little encouragement to sink her rear to the ground and hit a flatout run. She carried him back into the camp a bare fifty feet ahead of the clanking Behemoths at her heels.
The cavalry’s approach spread a wave of fear that traveled even faster than the mare. Tannhauser glanced at the field of wounded to his left and saw the figures of the orderlies fleeing from their charges. Bakers fled their ovens and cooks their fires and launderers their cauldrons and tubs, running for the shores of Grand Harbor and the boats, and knowing in their roiling bowels that most would never get there. The levies at the latrine pits, leaderless and bewildered, struggled to solve the riddle to which there was only one solution, which was to die without meaning and in vain. Some clutched their shovels like powerless talismans and clustered to make a vain stand against the onrush. Some took off with the cooks. Some dived headlong into the humming trenches of excrement, where they wallowed in the hope of remaining hidden.
Tannhauser glanced back and saw the pickets take a valiant fling at De Lugny’s cataphracts. They vanished like seeds of thistle before a high wind. As the killers roared into the tents of the tattered hospital, the thunder of their hooves and the distant racket of the siege were both drowned out by a vast and heaven-flung wail of amorphous anguish. The charge slowed, and the massacre began, and Tannhauser swerved east toward the bazaar.
He wasn’t sure why he did so. Perhaps it was simple fellowship; perhaps it was panic. He pulled the mare up short amid the chaos already crowned in the bazaar. He marked a couple of faces from his dealings and urged them to abandon their wares and take to the heights. This small duty done, he headed back out of the bazaar and stripped and stowed his turban as he rode. He missed its protection, but a bare head would draw fewer blows, or so at least he hoped. He unpacked the red surcoat and pulled it over his head. At once he felt the cross to be as protective as an inch of steel. He murmured to himself in rehearsal, “For Christ and the Baptist,” then he rode back into the blood purge that presently lathered the face of the heat-twisted plain.
The labor that faces two hundred who have set themselves the task of butchering thousands with cold steel is very great, even if the latter be defenseless, but De Lugny’s corps set to it like wolves in a chicken run. Their steeds proved enthusiastic colleagues, their hooves of sharpened iron pounding the sick and recumbent into tangled and lifeless heaps of pulverized offal. The wounded clambered from the ground like wraiths resurrected, only to be lanced or hacked and trampled in the swill from which they’d risen. Some knights dismounted and waded the sea of unfortunates afoot, braining them with ax or mace, and competing with the horses to stomp the prostrate, and shouting prayers in Latin as if to sanctify their gore-crazed ardor.
The knights next harvested the cringing bevies of Thracians as they scattered about the field. A blow in the chest from the shoulder of a riled warhorse was enough to stave in the breastbone and ribs. The vicious rear hooves snapped out and landed with a sound like breaking clayware. The knights leaned from their saddles and slaughtered the migrant levies in mewling droves. The bakers, farriers, and drovers—the blackamoors, the butchers, the cooks—fled like chivied deer and gibbered in alien tongues as they heard the sound of the riders bearing down. They were herded into docile, bleating flocks and put to the sword, and they fouled themselves as the lances pierced their bowels, and they begged on their knees for quarter as they were hewed and gutted and dismembered and left to die.
Explosions bloomed yellow and orange, and black pillars climbed the azure, as provender stores and magazines and tents and wagons and grain bins were sacked and fired. Whole herds of horses and mules bawled and milled and slithered about the corrals, their rolling eyes whited and protuberant with fear, as clanking creatures sliced their hamstrings and bellies, and waded through the steaming spillage like children hunting cockles on a blood-foamed shore. The Christian vanguard finally reached the bazaar, and Tannhauser heard the hollering of the greedy and unwise, and there, too, much murder followed, and billows of flame soon sullied the noontide sky.
As he traveled the scourged plain, like an Argonaut granted free passage through the empire of Dis, Tannhauser kept his eyes peeled for berserks and the coatless popinjay; but the cross on his breast went unquestioned and he once more reached the perimeter without dispute. The Mdina road lay open and the mare seeme
d to understand, for she was eager to take it despite that she was blown with effort and fright. Tannhauser calmed her for the journey, then snatched one last look at the holocaust to their rear. If ever there was a moment to doubt a benevolent God, it was this one; yet with that paradox to which the human heart is prone, Tannhauser hoped sincerely that He existed.
Acrid clouds scudded the lowlands and the despoliation groaned with the throes of men and beasts alike. The haze-warped limbs of the knights still rose and fell like marionettes commanded by the crazed. Intermingled vapors seeped forth, of burning grain and silk and flesh, and excrement and powder and overbaked bread, as if Despair had distilled its own perfume and sprinkled it from on high. On the hills he saw the puffs of Turkish muskets, which, for all the effect they wrought, might as well have been fired in salute of this massacre so incomparably achieved. From the city beyond the hills, and the other fest of carnage thither celebrant, he heard the frenetic hallooing of the Turkish horns as they marshaled an urgent retreat.
De Lugny’s ruse had worked. Saint Michel would endure another day.
The cavalry heard the horns too. They regrouped and began their withdrawal across the scorched earth, extinguishing what cowering pockets of life they found on their way. The destruction of all the Turkish livestock must have been beyond them, for they drove before them a throng of frighted horseflesh. And as on Gallows Point, De Lugny had lost not a single man or war mount.
Tannhauser rubbed at the miasma stinging his eyes. His back ached and he was famished. He flexed his shoulders. Though it wasn’t yet long past noon his energy was bankrupt and he’d far to go before the sun rose on the morrow. He pulled the mare about and threaded his way up the rock-strewn trail to Mdina.
The food Tannhauser ate when he got there was plentiful but poor, or maybe his appetite was soured. Marshal Copier quizzed him about Turkish losses and morale. The Maltese scout to the Borgo was provided, or rather, Tannhauser was invited to accompany the scout already assigned: the latest message from Viceroy Garcia de Toledo, in Messina, required dispatching. They would leave after dark, on foot. Tannhauser discarded his clothes, for they stank so high of smoke as to betray him to a sentry in the night. Then he retired to a palliasse to sleep and he dreamed of the enormities in which he’d played his part.