“I have my honor, O Father of Lice! I have my honor, and I am a warrior!”
His evil old eyes twinkled. “Praise be to Allah that I am but a thief and a philosopher! I choose the boat!”
He paused, his eyes suddenly grave as he looked at me over his scrawny shoulder. “Do not forget this, Mighty One. He is a wise man who can choose the moment. It is not necessary to die to prove you are brave.
“Think well of the enemy, and of your brothers in arms, but when your moment comes, remember your horse! Remember Ayesha, that slim-legged beauty with her flower of a nose! When it is futile to blood thy sword more, mount and ride!”
Lolyngton walked to join me. His smile held grave amusement. “I am afraid, my friend, that in this play my part will not carry over to the last act. What a role for a mountebank!”
“And a soldier.”
“Think you so? I have been called many things, but … a soldier? It has a sound to it, Kerbouchard.”
They were coming now, trotting their horses, sitting high in their saddles, a black line of death riding. Then they charged!
They reached the caltrops; a horse reared and screamed in pain, another swung away, and our archers unleashed a flight of arrows. Horses reared and plunged; men fell, and arrows dropped among us, too.
We waited; our time was not yet. “What are you glad for, Kerbouchard?” Lolyngton asked. “You have lived … what have you loved?”
“What is it that has made me happy? A deck beneath my feet, a horse between my knees, a sword in my hand, or a girl in my arms! These I have loved, and the horizon yonder, beyond which there is the unknown.
“What else have I loved? The mist of morning, the rose of evening, a wet breeze upon my cheek, and my father’s hand upon my shoulder.
“And as for women? I have loved, in their own time, Aziza, Sharasa, Valaba, and Suzanne. For the moment I loved them, and for the moment, no doubt, they loved me, and who can say how long such moments can last? I drink the wine and put aside the glass, but the taste lingers, Lolyngton, the taste lingers!
“Who can forget a horse ridden, a boat sailed, a far coast seen in the morning’s first light, a battle fought, or a woman loved? He who can forget any one of them is no man at all.
“Come, Lolyngton, they near the outer wall. Let us see what the future holds.”
We walked together to the outer wall, and shoulder to shoulder we waited. We could see their faces now, waiting in line again, just out of bowshot, and they were going to charge, weaving through the sharpened sticks, weaving in their fine arabesques among the teeth of death. Oh, it was a fine sight! The sunlight on their sharpened blades!
“What are you proud of?”
“There is so little, Lolyngton, so very little. There has not been time, that remorseless word. What have I done? Nothing! Oh, I have dreamed great dreams; I have moved across the land; I have learned so very little, but yes, I am proud that I hold a blade well; I am proud that I have read, and yes, that I am the son of Kerbouchard!”
They came then, a pageant of martial beauty in the stillness of morning; they came mincing their horses through the dagger-sticks, weaving and changing as though to some strange drill or unheard music, and we let them come.
One hundred archers crouched below the barricade; one hundred men with slings crouched among them, and back by the secondary defenses one hundred horsemen waited in reserve. Along the wall were pikemen and swordsmen and some with battle-axes. There was no fear, I think, but only waiting, and then the explosion of the charge, the horses suddenly gathering speed, the men hurling themselves at our wall!
“Now!” shouted the Hansgraf, and his raised arm came down, and the archers arose as one man and shot their arrows into the teeming mass. They shot at riders, for no man willingly would kill a horse.
“Now!” Again the command, and the slingers arose and hurled their stones, and then there were no more commands for each knew what to do. Around us were downed men and charging horses, arrows and stones flying, a crash and clash of weapons upon the wall. A horse screamed, and a man went flying and was impaled like a bug on a pin, arms and legs flailing against the death that came too soon.
A dark rider leaped his horse at the wall and came down beside me, and I swung at his face with my blade and felt the edge bite through his nose-bridge, and the man fell toward me, dagger in hand. Stepping back, I ran him through. An arrow tore through my clothes, and then all incident was lost, and there were only the terrible screams of battle, cries of agony, shouts, the clash of blade on blade, the whiplike sound of arrows.
They came and they came again, and there was no surcease. We fought and fought. My blade crossed steel with a dozen blades. Arrows whipped close; one stabbed my side, but ripping it loose, I fought on, all unaware.
They charged, retreated, then charged again. Some got into our circle, and died there. Many fell by the wall. We drove them back and pursued them with arrows, we hurled stones and threw Greek fire among them, but still they came. They fought like snarling dogs and died with teeth bared and blades still moving in the awful reflexes of muscles commanded by a mind now gone.
A man lunged at me with a sword who had cheered me a few days ago, and I thrust at his throat, and he yelled, recognizing me, “Yol bolsun!”
“This is your road!” I shouted, and ran a yard of steel through his chest, and his eyes flared, close to mine. He tried to stab me with a shortened sword, but I pushed him off. Knocked to my knees by a horse that leaped the barrier, I glimpsed an acrobat take a flying leap and land astride the rider’s shoulders and go careening off across the field, the rider atop the horse, the acrobat atop the rider, cutting and slashing.
Johannes died beside me, and I killed the man who slew him. Guido fell, choking on his own blood. Lucca, grim and terrible, fell back and fought beside me, and together we drove a dozen riders back from the barricades.
And then the attack broke, and it was over … for the time.
41
Some sat down where we stood, and some went for water, others to have wounds bandaged. I myself treated the worst of these. We had a dozen killed, twice that many wounded, and some horses were dead.
When there was breathing space I leaned on the barricade and rested my head on my arms. We had killed them well, but they died hard, and we knew what had happened was a mere skirmish that hurt them little, although they had lost four times our losses.
Suzanne brought a wineskin. The Petchenegs had come so quickly the women could not get away in the boat. “You are bleeding,” she said as I drank.
Remembrance came to me, and I put my hand to my side, but the blood had already dried. There was a place where my hauberk was slit so I could ride, and when it was hiked up an arrow had hit me, but not hard. A glancing blow, no doubt. Later my side might stiffen, but there was no time to do more now, for they would be coming once more.
“It is bad, isn’t it, Mathurin?” She had taken to calling me that, a name my mother had used for me.
“It is very bad,” I agreed.
Several men were throwing caltrops out on the grass, but nobody was talking except in commonplaces, for there was nothing to talk about. The acrobat, a dwarf, who had been carried away on the shoulders of an enemy, had returned. He had a nasty cut on his foot, which I treated, but he had killed his man.
The sun was high; a light breeze ruffled the water; a fish splashed, and a Calandra lark sang in the meadow where death lay, oblivious of the corpses.
“Mathurin … look.” Suzanne pointed upward, and my eye followed her finger to a great circling column that must have reached thousands of feet into the air, a column of pelicans flying, their white wings catching the sunlight. It was a lovely, peaceful sight.
“It is better than war,” I said.
We stood together, holding hands, and I felt the sweat drying on my body and wondered if I would outlive the day. It was very good to live, to feel her hand in mine. A steppe eagle circled nervously overhead. Perhaps its nest was out there in the thicket.