The Blood of Alexandria a-3

by Richard Blake

  I filled my lungs and managed a passable imitation of an English battle cry. I lunged forward and got someone in the guts with my sword. That cleared a larger space around me. Any moment now, and the full mob would turn back to face me. I rammed the sword into its scabbard and jumped up at the torch bracket. The armour adding about twenty pounds to my weight, I nearly jumped short. But nearly jumping short isn’t the same as nearly catching hold. I did catch hold. I dragged myself up to perch on the top of the bracket.

  ‘Come on, Martin,’ I shouted, grabbing at him and pulling him fully up. I felt the bracket shudder under our combined weight. It was coming away from the wall. Below us, men were poking up with sticks. The bracket was an elaborate thing. Its bottom bar was about six feet above the ground. Its top was another few feet up, and we were safe from being pulled down – though only so long as no one else tried jumping up, or went at us with sticks, or so long as the whole thing didn’t just collapse under us.

  Holding on to Martin to steady myself, I stood upright and reached across to catch hold of one of the rods. I clamped my left hand on to it and pulled. It seemed firmly set into the bricks. The lowest rod of all was another four feet down. I got my left foot on to it. I took hold of Martin by the collar of his mail shirt, and swung his presently gigantic weight clean off the torch bracket and nearly bashed his face in on another of the rods.

  ‘Take hold and climb,’ I gasped. I felt like that boy must have on the rack. More than a moment longer of this, and I’d drop Martin, or fall with him on to the mob below. But the strain relaxed as he took hold by himself. One hand over the other, I climbed upwards. Behind me, calling out prayers and imprecations in Celtic, Martin followed. It wasn’t far to the lower part of the roof. But it felt easily as if it were hundreds of feet rather than the few dozen that it was. At last, though, with a soft ripping of silk, I twisted right and heaved myself on to the rain-pitted lead. As soon as I’d rolled myself stable on the sloping roof, I scrabbled forward and pulled Martin up the last few rods until he could lie there beside me.

  ‘Shut up!’ I snapped, cutting off the babble of thanks and apologies that had begun and might otherwise last all day. ‘We need to find a way down from here.’ I knew I should have been straight up on my feet and running across the roof to find some escape. Instead, I sat up and rested on the hot lead. I rubbed at my sore arm and shoulder.

  I had a good view of things from up here. For the first time that morning, I could form a reasonably synoptic view of what was happening about me. I couldn’t see now under the portico. But I could hear the banging of fists and cudgels on the bronze doors of the church. So long as no one brought up a battering ram – not an easy matter through these densely packed thousands – or started heaping up kindling in front of the door, Nicetas and everyone else was safe enough. But the wide space of the concourse really was packed. It was like looking down on aroused ants outside their nest. I could see that the guards had given up all effort to keep the two mobs apart. Where I guessed the border had been, they now merged insensibly into one mob, or fought viciously. It was as the local inclination took them. The guards themselves had gathered again into a hollow square, and were slowly pushing and cutting their way towards the church. How they’d get here – or how, once here, they’d manage to do any good – wasn’t a question I could answer. What I did know was that there was no point looking for any way back down to ground level that would take us into this bubbling sea of hate.

  ‘Oh, Sweet Jesus!’ Martin screamed. I looked sharply down to the edge of the roof. We’d been followed up from the portico. I drew my sword and poked at the head that had now reached the level of the roof. As, with a bubbling shriek, it vanished, I leaned forward and looked over the edge. Sure enough, there were men climbing up those rods. I managed to cut the fingers off the one who was now closest to us, and he fell back on to the others.

  That was the end of this attack. There was no point asking what had prompted anyone to try following an armed man upward to a place of stability. It was enough that the effort had been made once. If there were other ways up, they too might soon be found and used. I reached down and pulled hard on the last of the metal poles. My left arm was beginning to seize up, and the pole seemed too hard set into the brickwork for me to have pulled it loose even with my full strength. I sat back. I gave up on the vague plan I’d been considering, of staying out of sight up here until the trouble was over. We were in a place of at best relative safety. Besides, there wasn’t an inch of shade to be seen, and thirst can be a terrible thing in that sun.

  ‘Take this,’ I said to Martin, pushing my sword into his hand. It trembled there, then dropped with a dull thud on to the lead. ‘Take it up,’ I repeated, now angry. ‘If anyone tries coming up again, cut at his fingers, or just poke him hard.

  ‘Do you understand?’

  He nodded.

  I pulled myself unsteadily to my feet and looked up at the wide central vault of the roof.

  ‘Do you think Priscus is dead?’ he asked.

  I looked at the surging, screaming crowds below and laughed grimly. ‘If he’s managed to survive in that lot,’ I said, ‘we can count this day as an utter disaster. Now, keep a lookout for anyone stupid enough to try climbing after us. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.’

  There shouldn’t be any way down at the back of the church, I told myself. After all, this was where it had been made part of the Wall of Separation, and would have been made secure long ago. But over on the other side, towards the back – there we might find some way down. And it might even take us down to a place where the mob was at least thin on the ground.

  However it might have gone for Priscus, our luck seemed to be holding. Over where I was hoping to find something, I did find a rope ladder. Still connected to a set of hooks projecting from the roof, it was coiled up and left beside an uncompleted repair to the lead. It might have been there for months, and most colour had been bleached out of the ropes. I pulled part of it loose and tested the ropes. Hope was dashed as they came apart in my hands. The sun had bleached out their colour and their strength. But I pulled feverishly at the coil to get it undone. Some part of the ladder might still be sound – if not part of the ladder, perhaps some part of one of the ropes. There might be something else to get us down, I thought.

  I got no further. With a yell of terror, Martin was running towards me. There was no point asking how he’d abandoned a position from which a crippled child couldn’t have been dislodged. No point, either, in asking about the sword. I ran over to the edge of the roof and looked down. It must have been a forty-foot drop. Jumping would simply have saved anyone the trouble of throwing us down.

  But no, there was a bronze downpipe to carry water from the roof. Like others in the more unsafe parts of Alexandria, it would have stopped eight or even ten feet above the ground. But it was a way off the roof.

  ‘This way,’ I shouted as I dragged Martin over and pointed at the downpipe.

  He shook his head and shouted something back that I somehow couldn’t understand.

  ‘I don’t care,’ I shouted again. ‘Get down – just go!’ Shaking and twitching with the accumulated strain of at least that morning, I waited while Martin finished his dithering fit and climbed slowly over the parapet.

  I snatched up what looked like a long broom handle and ran at the one man who’d come in sight over the vaulting. He opened his mouth to shout something, but I had him over before he could get anything out. Some twenty yards behind him, other men were climbing on to the roof. As yet, they had their backs to me, and I managed to jump back before anyone could see me. I skipped down to the edge of the roof and heaved myself over on to the downpipe. It creaked and shuddered. With a snapping of the aged spikes that held it against the wall, it moved a foot backwards.

  For a moment, I swung helplessly, my feet treading on air alone. Then, with a fraying of skin, my hands were dragged by my enhanced weight diagonally down the pipe until I felt my knees crash against t
he wall. I got myself against the still firm next stretch and slithered down.

  ‘Let go,’ I snarled as my feet knocked against Martin’s head. He’d reached the bottom of the downpipe, and had both hands clamped hard about the thing. How he managed to hold his weight up was another mystery. There was no doubt he was in my way.

  ‘Jump, for God’s sake,’ I roared down at him. ‘Jump!’ I looked up. About twenty feet above me, a single face, framed against the perfect blue of the sky above, grinned down at me. Another joined it. The downpipe was too damaged at the top for anyone to follow us. But there was plenty of loose junk up there to throw down on us. First came part of the rope ladder. It missed. Another part followed. That gave me a glancing but unimportant blow to the head. It was only a question of waiting there for more substantial objects to come our way.

  I kicked savagely at Martin’s hands. They might have been iron clamps. I’d have to get down to his level and somehow make him let go. I swung out and prepared to hold him in an embrace as I got level. I may have got my knees level with his chest. Just then, a very long stretch of the rope ladder hooked itself about my neck, and we fell with a tremendous, bruising thud the last three or four yards on to the pavement.

  At least no one could follow us down, I remember thinking. I rolled over and prodded at Martin, whose face had gone a pale shade of green. I looked round. From above, this part of the church surroundings hadn’t been empty. As I’ve said, the whole concourse was packed. But there’s a difference between active troublemakers and those who come along to a riot to watch or for a bit of looting. The first were still making a tremendous racket over on our right. But that was now a good hundred yards away. Here, it was spectators and looters.

  A few scrawny creatures hurried up to us as we rolled about on the dusty pavements. One of them spoke to me in a language that wasn’t Greek and that didn’t sound Egyptian. But I had my knife out, and he went back sharpish about his own business. I stood up and prepared to drag Martin to his feet. I fell straight down, white flashes of agony blanking out all thought of what to do next.

  Chapter 44

  ‘Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!’ I gasped, clutching at my ankle. I’d twisted the sodding thing as I fell, and somehow hadn’t noticed until trying to stand on it. For all I knew, I’d broken it. I rocked back and forth, cradling it as I tried to force the pain to the back of my mind. The last thing I needed was to show weakness. Looters and even spectators can be dangerous to the injured. We needed to get away. That meant getting as quickly as possible out of this vast semicircular junction with its lack of cover, and into the streets and side streets beyond.

  ‘Let me help you,’ Martin said. He’d got up, apparently uninjured, and was pulling at me. ‘We can’t stay here,’ he added. As he spoke, the rest of the rope ladder landed beside us. It was followed by a selection of objects taken from the roof. I looked up. There were more faces looking down. To be sure, the top of the downpipe was bent too far back from the wall, and was too loose, to let anyone follow us down. Sooner or later, though, they’d start throwing down heavier stuff and to better effect.

  Carrying himself in armour, and supporting something like half my own weight, wasn’t something I’d expected Martin could do at all without a heart attack. In the event, he got the pair of us across the concourse with surprising speed and without more than the occasional glance from the moderately dense crowds that moved back and forth. A hundred yards over on the right, there was what – with the wild shouting and clash of weapons – sounded a regular battle. Back here, it might have been a market day. We dodged round a thicker than usual cluster of what may have been Greeks or Egyptians – it was hard to tell, and made no present difference to us – and got ourselves into one of those wide streets leading back to the centre.

  I hadn’t discussed with Martin where we were going. At first, it had been enough to get away from the church, and then as far away as we could from the main action of the rioting. I’d picked up a wooden spar, and this was letting me move forward at a reasonable speed. The pain in my ankle was getting steadily worse, and my breath was beginning to come in ragged gasps. But I was moving. We were heading in the general direction of the Palace. There might be some effort there to keep order. We might be able to get in through the main gates. If not, it wasn’t far to the Harbour or to the wooded central parks. We needed to get out of sight and stay out of sight.

  On a casual glance, if choked with rubbish and piles of booty, the street seemed pretty well empty. In fact, it was so long and so densely packed with shops and other businesses that it had absorbed a mob and a half like water into a sponge. The shopkeepers had based their defences on the assumption that the police would be round before things turned really nasty. But there were no police any more, and these competing groups of Greeks and Egyptians amounted to a plundering army. They’d managed to pull all the wooden screens off those shops that had windows. Some of the buildings were already on fire. All along, we could hear breaking glass and the screams of those who’d made their homes behind or above their shops. The looters were mostly interested in laying hands on whatever might be valuable and could be carried away. But any living creature they stumbled over in their search was fair game for them. Then, it was a matter of maiming and dismemberment, of roasting and of rape. The lucky ones died soon. The bodies and parts of bodies that littered the carriage tracks and the paved area under the central colonnade were a grim sight.

  ‘Keep going,’ I’d said several times to Martin. ‘We can’t afford more trouble.’ He’d nodded. He only slowed down when it was a matter of helping me over the more chaotic piles of smoking rubble and pieces of smashed furniture.

  Over on my left, a woman screamed. It was close, and it stood out from the background cries of pain and terror. I tried hard to follow my own advice. But the scream came again and was closer. I heard a broken sob and looked left. I should have looked away at once and pressed on along the street. Instead – for just a moment – I stopped. A woman had broken free from whatever place of horror had been her home. Naked, her body a mass of cuts and burns, the place between her legs visibly a swollen mush, she staggered towards me. I didn’t think at first she’d seen me or anyone or anything else. It was the fixed stare about her eyes. She screamed not at me, it seemed, but to take her own attention from what she’d seen or experienced. I was wrong.

  She caught me as I tried to hurry past. She took hold of my arm and almost had me over. She pushed the bag at me she’d been carrying. It was a large thing, and heavy. There was something in it that moved feebly. She pushed it firmly and even desperately into my hands. I tried to think of words. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Perhaps there was nothing I could say that would have made sense to her, let alone have brought the comfort I felt I was expected to give. I looked round for some piece of cloth or other covering among the rubbish.

  ‘Oho, running off, eh?’ a voice called from behind her. He was a big man, with a face too scarred to carry much of a beard. For what it mattered, he was probably a Greek. There were five or six other men still further behind. They swayed drunkenly on the threshold of the smashed-up building the woman had just left. They laughed noiselessly, pointing at the woman as she fell down and then avoided me as I tried to help her to her feet. The big man had straightened up on seeing me. Now, he had a sword in his hand. He waved it at me and laughed loudly.

  ‘Get behind me,’ I said to the woman. I put the bag carefully down beside me and reached for my knife.

  ‘Take him!’ she screamed at me. ‘Take him!’

  I felt the bag pushed back into my hand. I tried to grab her again, but she lurched out of reach, and I was in no position to dance after her. With a wild, chilling wail, she was rushing back at the big man. She picked her way over the heaps of rubbish, and ran unsteadily across the clear stretches of pavement. She opened her arms as she got close. But for that nightmarish cry, it was as if she were rushing to meet her lover.

  He cut her down with an incomp
etent slashing stroke at her neck. Still screaming, she fell to the ground. She tried to clutch hold of his legs as he advanced. He finished her with another blow to the neck that did more to smash the vertebrae than separate them. Waving his sword again, he ran at me. He turned once to call his friends into the battle. For the moment, they chose to watch things from where they were. I had my knife out. I held it at waist level and tried to look able-bodied.

  ‘Not so fast, my fine little lord!’ he rasped. He jumped off a heap of stones dug out of the road and smiled and went at me.

  If you can imagine it, I held fast to my walking staff while going into some kind of fighting position. In the normal course of things, this scarred, shambling item of trash wouldn’t have dared give someone like me a second look. Now, it was as if he’d smelled blood. I barked at Martin to keep moving on.

  As he came at me, he discovered to his cost that there was more to fighting with a sword than waving it like a cudgel. Watching more of his incompetent slashing, I gave up on the knife and went at him with my staff. He did succeed in dodging back. But I got him now with a lunge hard forward into his crotch. He fell screeching backwards on to the cobblestones.

  That would have been the end of him, if I hadn’t fallen as well. I’d put my full weight on to the bad ankle, and I went straight down with the agony. I breathed deep in and out, and fought to regain control. It was only a few moments before I had my eyes open again and was pulling at my knife. But it was already over for him. Martin had finished the creature for me. He’d done it from behind with a cobblestone the size and shape of a loaf. Looking at the splashed red and grey all over his face, Martin had no need of a second blow.