Pip Vaughan-Hughes - The Vault of bones

There was a mighty splash, and the man vanished full-length beneath the water. My own momentum carried me forward and my own heels struck mud. I landed hard on my bum and slipped down the little bank. As the man surfaced, spluttering, I levered myself up with my spear. I felt a moment of calm, a fragment of victory, for my enemy was down and unarmed, and perhaps this thing was over. But his arm came up with the spear and as he floundered, trying to find his feet, the long, wicked spearhead caught the sun. I swallowed blood, waded into the river and stabbed him full in the chest with all my might. I jerked it out and stabbed again, and again, until the man was meat and rags in the water.

I found myself sitting on the bank, head in my hands, which were filling with blood and snot like a chalice. There was a pounding in my ears, and I felt transparent, as if the sun were shining right through me. My legs were in the water, and dark ropes of blood were twisting like leeches about my calves. I retched: nothing came up, but I felt less incorporeal. Raising my head at last, I saw the river, and standing in the middle of the stream, my mare, pale and grave. She dipped her head and delicately sipped the water that ran in crystal ropes around her knees. The man with the snake tattoo was nowhere to be seen.

Whether there had been other men in the trees waiting to finish me off, I will never know, for at that moment I heard the blast of a horn, and then another sounded in answer, not far off. Then, with an eruption of baying, the whole pack of alaunt hounds burst into the clearing behind me.

Feeling as if carved from ice, I wandered out into the river and took the mare's reins. We walked slowly back to the clearing. Rollo was still dead, the broken arrows making him look like a great seagull carcass, some strange flotsam thrown up on a beach. The man I had stabbed lay face up, eyes staring and filmed with dust. His tunic – the same Saracen rags as his comrade – was torn open and an alaunt hound was hungrily lapping the blood that pooled there. Sickened, I kicked it aside, but noticing something, I knelt down beside the corpse.

The dog’s tongue, as it drank the man's blood, had dragged across the tattooed snake that writhed across his chest. Except it was not a tattoo, for it had smeared. I bent down and, despite my revulsion, took a corner of tunic and rubbed. The snake came away, leaving a faint, dark stain. Lampblack, or something like it. Thinking hard, I dipped my finger in more blood and rubbed it across the man's stubbled cheek. It left a lighter trail across the dark skin. What had they called them, these snake-men? Athingani. This man was no more Athingani than was I, on that I would wager the Crown of Thorns itself. There was a clatter of hooves and, on some impulse that was not entirely clear to me, I quickly rearranged the tunic to hide the man's chest. Staggering to my feet, I found Aimery and the rest of the hunt standing in a crescent around me, pale and gawping.

This is a charnel house. Dear Jesus, is that Rollo?' Aimery rasped finally. Aye’ I said.

Who…' another man began. I held up my hand to shut him up.

'I don't know,' I said. 'No. Those, you know. Those Egyptians. With the snakes.'

Aigupti? You mean the Athingani attacked you? But they do not…' It was the man with the crossbow.

'Shut your mouth, Eudes,' snapped Aimery. 'They are savages and thieves. They despise us and now they have spilled good French blood.' He jumped down and knelt beside Rollo. 'Good Christ! Rollo, dear Rollo!'

'He did not suffer,' I said. 'Believe me when I say that he died laughing.'

Aimery gave me a cold look. 'But he killed this one?' He prodded the dead Athingani.

'Nay, it was I. Whether this man shot Rollo I cannot say. He had a companion.' 'There were two? Where is he?' 'Dead, in the river.'

'The Englishman killed two men?' one of the hunters said, admiringly. Aimery stared at me, his eyes even colder than before.

'But you could not save Rollo,' he said, bitterly. Why did they not shoot you?'

‘I was down. There was a great boar…' Suddenly I felt weak, and sank to my knees. 'The boar did for the dogs and Rollo's horse. The boar, mark you, Monsieur Aimery, the boar had sense enough to fuck off. Men hunting boars, boars hunting men, men hunting other men…' Then everything went silver and black, and when I opened my eyes again I was lying on a pallet of folded cloaks under an olive tree. The man with the crossbow was holding a flask to my lips, and gratefully I slurped at the wine.

'Good man’ he said. We thought you were done for. But it's just your nose, eh? Took a knock to the head, did you not?'

'One or two’ I said, and tried to sit up. He restrained me gently but firmly with a hand on my chest.

'Stay there a while’ he said. 'The other chaps are putting Rollo on a horse. Poor bloody Rollo. Aimery and he were like brothers.' 'Aimery does not like me’ I said.

'Aimery can be a bastard, but we just found your other dead man, and he will give you some respect now, you can be sure. Why did you not tell us you were such a warrior?'

'Because I am not’ I said. But the man's face wore the sort of stupid grin that men wear when some act of bestiality or foolishness has impressed them. I could already see the day's carnage spun into some hero's golden tale. Sure enough, they handed my knife back to me as if it were Excalibur and I some vainglorious fool from the pages of Chretien de Troyes; when later we rode back towards the city, Rollo's flopping corpse tied over a saddle, the company seemed more interested in the fight than in their dead friend. I was used to fighting men by now, but on the Cormaran we tended to rate survival above heroics. These men, though, were knights or sons of knights and they seemed to value life somewhat cheaply. Doubtless Rollo would be missed, but he was not mourned, not yet at least.

Save by Aimery, who alone amongst the merry huntsmen rode silent, pale and slit-eyed. He had been closest to Rollo, I understood that much. The tall man was as sombre as the others, and led our procession, head bowed. But I had not been stunned enough to miss the surprise with which he had greeted my survival. He had hidden it well, but the tall man had expected to find Rollo alive and me dead. I had received a thorough apprenticeship in the ways of deception and falsehood, and if I had not been able to read a lie like the one that had played over his face I should not have deserved my berth aboard the Cormaran. I was feeling sick in my flesh and in my heart, my nose throbbed horribly, and stars were still drifting across my vision, so I did not ponder these matters in any thorough way. But I reasoned that, if there was some plot against my life, it was known only to a few, or else I would have been slain by the company as soon as we had left Constantinople. It was easy to suspect the tall man, but now I began to wonder whether Rollo too had been a party to it. Why had we been paired together? And if Rollo were so dear to Aimery – for if there were a plot, surely they were all in on it – would he have been sent into danger so heedlessly? But then again, why had Rollo not killed me himself, and blamed the boar, or the Athingani, or whomever he pleased? Nothing was clear, save that three men were dead, and that I could very easily have been bumping along like Rollo, lashed to a horse's back, my head lolling against its flanks like a turnip. I ignored the excited chatter of the others as we rode through the lengthening shadows, the air starting to grow chill, towards the crumbling walls of the city, for my ears could hear nothing save the toe, toe, toe of Rollo's skull as it knocked against an empty stirrup.

O

ur sad party rode through the gates of the Bucoleon Palace a little before sunset. One of the guards who met us, gaping at the corpse we brought with us, was sent ahead, and so we were greeted, in the inner yard, by a party of men-at-arms and two noblemen. I found I was so stiff that I could not dismount on my own, and so I was helped down like an old man. A surgeon arrived, a Moorish gentleman, who gave me a draught of bitter herbs in strong wine and led me to a stone bench, the better to examine my wounds. I was grateful to him, for the group of hunters was telling their tale, and voices were being raised in excitement, disbelief, and now anger. I thought the nobles were glaring in my direction, but the surgeon was dabbing my lacerations with something that stung like Satan's pitchfork, and I could not tell if it was just my fancy. Aimery was shaking his head, and then he pointed at me. That I had not imagined. One of the nobles planted his fists on his hips and regarded Aimery belligerently, head cocked to one side. The huntsmen shuffled their feet, but Aimery uttered something I did not hear and pushed, with rude unconcern, past the angry nobleman. With that, the party dissolved. Rollo's corpse was led away, and that was the end of that. The hunters drifted off. The surgeon fussed about me with his diabolical unguents, and in the midst of his torture I looked up to find the other nobleman looking down at me, a concerned smile pinned to his florid face.