The Long Sword

by Christian Cameron

  We got the legate back to the Cairo Gate on a horse. The church to which the legate had gone to save its congregation was only six turnings from the gate, and yet those six streets seemed full of menace. And getting there seemed to take half the night.

  I reported to Sabraham. He was wounded, and he shook his head. ‘I wish you’d got him,’ he said. He was watching the rooftops. ‘I want the legate out of here.’

  As it proved, the legate wanted to be quit of the city, too. He was slow to recover, but when his eyes were open, he demanded – begged – to be taken to the king. He had decided that he could convince the king to stop the ‘crusaders’ from raping the city.

  Our men had a small fire in the courtyard, and torches. Tired men were at least taking the corpses out of the towers, and a dozen captured slaves were washing the blood off the tower steps.

  ‘I thought that I was done,’ I said, a little bitterly.

  The legate blessed me. ‘You sleep, my son. I will ride back to the ships.’

  Sabraham shook his head. ‘I’ll take him,’ he said. To me, he said, ‘D’Herblay is out there. Waiting for us to move him.’

  When you imagine yourself as a knight, what you imagine – if you are like I was as a boy – is that moment when the Knights of St John charged the infidel. A windswept beach. Three hundred brave men in brilliant scarlet and steel. That seems to you what knighthood will be.

  But this, my friends, is where I think we find chivalry – when our throats are so parched we cannot swallow, when the smoke from a thousand fires cuts our lungs, when our armour seems to hurt us more than an enemy can, when our jupons are heavy with our sweat and our blood, and our hands won’t close properly on our swords. When all we want is sleep. Or death.

  That is when we find what makes us knights, I think.

  I looked around in the firelight at my friends. None of us had even dismounted. Sabraham had blood flowing over his cuisses – he’d taken a wound in his armpit. A real wound.

  ‘You stay,’ I said. I didn’t want to. I wanted to sleep. But: ‘We’ll take him to the ships.’

  Miles leaned out across his horse’s neck, hands crossed in fatigue. ‘We should go out the gate and ride around,’ he said for the second time that night.

  But de Midleton wouldn’t hear of it. ‘There’s Sudanese Ghulams out there, and Mamluks,’ he said. He pointed to where a dozen of the Order’s brother-sergeants were improvising a barricade. ‘I expect an attack at dawn. I’m not sending the legate out into that.’ He took me aside. ‘Let me put some food and water into him. And your poor horses, gentles. But I agree he shouldn’t stay here. If this tower falls …’

  I could just about think. ‘We won’t have Coulanges,’ I said. ‘I’m worried about losing my way.’

  Sabraham was being helped from his horse by a trio of serving brothers. He could scarcely stand. ‘Take George and Maurice,’ he said. ‘They know how to get around.’

  He beckoned me to him. When the brothers put him down, he went all the way to the ground. And lay there.

  I had to crouch by him.

  ‘I’ve lost a lot of blood,’ he muttered in a tiny voice. ‘Move fast. He can’t stay here. One attack – tower is lost. Get him to the ships. Please, Will!’

  ‘I’ll do it,’ I said. In fact, I was ready to fall asleep with my head on his chest.

  One of the serving brothers pushed me aside. They were cutting Abraham’s clothes off even as he spoke. A man came up with an iron rod glowing red.

  I smelled the burning flesh. For good or ill, Sabraham could offer no more advice – he was out.

  I stumbled back to my horse. Poor Gawain had taken ten wounds the day before and now had been ridden all day. Oats and water kept him alive – but they didn’t make him well.

  I looked over my people.

  ‘Friends,’ I said. ‘I need every one of you. There are men in the streets who mean to kill the legate. I have promised to get him to the ships.’

  Ned Cooper turned his face to one side. ‘Kill the legate?’ he asked. ‘He’s like a fuckin’ saint, beggin’ yer pardon.’

  Ewan the Scot put a finger alongside his nose. ‘I know,’ he said.

  ‘What do you know?’ Nerio asked.

  Ewan shrugged. ‘Men come round, offering us silver for some fancy shooting.’ He laughed. ‘Guess they didn’t think you was up to it, Ned!’

  ‘There’s a Savoyard. D’Herblay. Anyone met him?’ I asked.

  No one had. Except, of course, my friends.

  We all ate. I decided, having set a few ambushes myself, that it would not hurt us to make the Hungarian wait and we all slept for an hour. We had no real way of knowing the time: no cocks crowed, there were no bells, but the Order’s men knew the hours well. Men fed and watered our horses and I had to be wakened roughly, even though I had slept in my harness.

  We all had. And I ached, and so did the rest of them. But we drank hot wine with spices, which the Order’s people had going in the yard, and we chewed cloves – by Saint George, spices were all but free in Alexandria. I looked at the Emperor’s sword by firelight, and there was no dent in the blade, no kink, where the crossbow bolt had struck it. Instead, there was a scratch about as long as my little finger, as if an inexpert engraver had started to make a line. I got a stone from Davide and touched up the edge.

  It was obvious to a soldier that the legate had a head wound – the kind that makes men fey and strange for days. The brothers had kept him awake, on principle, but he was having trouble speaking. I placed him with Miles. Lord Grey could not ride – a deep thrust to his right thigh.

  I gathered my friends, and indeed, my whole little command. ‘Here’s my plan,’ I said. ‘I’m happy to hear it bettered. We cut across the city and go out through the same Customs Gate where we entered. It is the only way I know – and besides, we don’t know if the other gates have fallen, or are still in enemy hands.’

  Maurice blew out his cheeks, but said nothing.

  ‘Outside the walls, we gallop. We’ll be west of the city, and I can’t see any enemy making for there in the dark, with a tide of refugees around them. We make our way past the crusader fleet and take the legate to the Order.’

  Stapleton narrowed his eyes. ‘He asked to be taken to the king.’

  I nodded. ‘So he did,’ I agreed. ‘Any other questions?’

  Maurice frowned. ‘We will move quickly? What about prickers? Outriders?’

  I shrugged. ‘I was hoping the archers would agree to lead the way.’

  Ewan laughed. ‘Is there any money in this?’ he asked. ‘I see you’re all soldiers of God, an’ all. But everyone else is looting, and we’re here working an’ getting killed.’ He looked around and spat. ‘Not yet, mind. But this here’s a mad trick, ridin’ across a city gettin’ sacked.’

  Ned Cooper looked at me like a shy maiden – a particularly old and ill-favoured shy maiden. ‘True knights is generous’ he said. ‘The Black Prince used to offer us a douceur when we was missin’ out on the loot.’

  Miles all but spat. I’m glad he didn’t. ‘The legate is every man’s friend, and has held this expedition together,’ he insisted. ‘He trusts the English more than any!’

  ‘More fool he,’ Ewan said. ‘Fuckin’ English. Present company, eh, Ned?’

  I glanced at Nerio. Nerio laughed. He had lines on his face like an old man, and the firelight made him look older and more dissipated than his father. But his laugh was his old laugh. You might have thought there was a wench in the offing.

  He nodded. ‘Twenty ducats a man when we reach the ships,’ he said.

  Ewan raised his eyebrows and frowned at the same time. ‘Eh bien,’ he said.

  Rob Stone, hitherto silent, said, ‘Amen.’

  Ewan spat on his hands. ‘Let’s ride,’ he said.

  John the Turk looked at Nerio. ‘Me, t
oo?’ he asked.

  Nerio laughed. He turned to me. ‘Jesus had it all wrong, brother,’ he said. ‘He should have offered to pay men to behave well.’

  Fiore laughed. ‘I could use twenty ducats, too,’ he said, which was as close to making a joke as I ever heard the Friulian come.

  About ten more minutes passed while the legate was prepared. We tied him to a borrowed warhorse. I rubbed Gawain down, gave him a little water, and he seemed spirited. He was a far better horse than I had thought, back at Mestre.

  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 pi
ck 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.