Christian Cameron - The Long Sword

Nerio appeared at my shoulder and Miles began to pass me.

I was hit again.

And then I ran into the wall of heat. Even inside my visor, I could not breathe that air. It was appalling. I thought my eyes would burn and I was in armour. I tripped over a fallen beam and stumbled; my shoulder hit a wall and I bounced, shoulder burning. I caught myself left-handed and the stone burned the heavy deerskin off the palm of my hand.

Sweet Christ, it was hell! The tunnel behind the burned door had caught fire — something had been stored there, perhaps. But the stone was hot, and part of the passage was still burning. It occurred to me that this was the stupidest thing I had ever done.

I got past the fire. The heat had finally got through my heavy fighting shoes to my feet and then I was in the sun. There were men there, but only twenty or thirty. Not a hundred or a thousand.

I’m not sure I actually thought anything, then.

I had the Emperor’s longsword in my hand, and I used it.

I suppose this is the moment to tell you of my epic duel with the Captain of the tower, my longsword against his spear — and oh, my friends, I’d love to tell you such a tale. But I remember little of it, and mostly they were unarmoured, desperate men. Let no man ever tell me they were cowards. Those men, Alexandrines and not Mamluks at all, hurled themselves at me the way we had thrown ourselves at de Charny.

Why were there not more of them? Where were the armoured men? The engineers? The burning oil?

I knew none of these things, and neither did the terrified men facing me.

I know that I spared no one. I know that I used every weapon and every limb. My sword stabbed and cut, and I used my arms and legs, my elbows, my knees, the pointed steel tips of my sabatons.

I would say that I was alone against them for an hour, save that Fiore has sworn to me that he was never more than three steps behind me in the tunnel.

That’s how it is, sometimes.

But then I knew when Fiore was next to me, because the pressure eased suddenly. Ever play with a child, and she sits on your chest? And then she rolls off … It was like that. And then there was even less pressure as Miles thrust forward, and then Nerio, and then Juan, and we were pushing forward, step after step.

Juan died there. He’d taken a wound the day before, and worse, been knocked unconscious, and he was slow and pale, as I’ve said. He got a spear under his aventail and down he went. Fiore stood over him, and his sword flew and he killed men the way a housewife kills flies.

And then the king was with us, the banner of Jerusalem charred in his fist, and de Mezzieres and de Coulanges and a dozen other of the king’s knights, and we burst out of the gate house and into a courtyard. I realised we were between the walls and had it all to do again, but … the far gate was open and there were no more than forty Saracens between us and the city and not a Mamluk in sight.

There was no time to mourn Juan. I knew he was dead — I’d seen the spear and the sheer amount of blood.

The Saracens charged us, trying to put the djinn back in the bottle as they might say themselves. And there was a flurry of archery from the inner towers and we were like rats in a trap, surrounded by towers full of enemy archers.

But the far gate was open and Alexandria, the richest, biggest city in the world, beckoned.

I suppose I killed my share, but I only remember the late afternoon sun slanting down on the street beyond the gate. That site filled my visor.

Something was happening beyond my helmet. It took me time, perhaps three exhausted, desperate blows with my longsword, before I realised that the enemy archery had stopped. Had I looked up, I would have seen the cross of St George, the banner of England, flying from the outer towers of the Customs Gate.

The boy and the thin Italian had got a line over the wall, and the Venetians and the English had taken the towers even as we cleared the yard and occupied the attention of the defenders. John said that they cleared the first tower by running in an open door and all the garrison were shooting down at us, their backs to the door, and John and Ewen stood in the doorway and killed them with arrows.

About that time, the last men in the yard threw down their scimitars and their spears. And died. We gave no quarter. Chaucer, you have been in a storm. There is no quarter. Sir Walter Leslie killed the kneeling men.

The archers were more merciful, and took a tower full of soldiers alive. It is from those terrified prisoners that John learned why we had succeeded. The captain of the Customs Gate was not a soldier, but a customs official, as Coulanges had said. He had refused to allow the Mamluks to augment his garrison.

He paid with his life. Thus perish all corrupt officials.

In less time than it takes to say Matins, we had the gate itself open. Then Fra Peter led our horses in, and the banner of Jerusalem joined the banner of England on the gate.

The Venetians poured in right behind the Cypriotes, and then the ‘crusaders’ came up, the mercenaries and routiers. They wouldn’t obey the king, they wouldn’t fight for him — but now they came like jackals when we had done all the fighting.

I was kneeling by Juan, with my friends, and Fra Peter.

What can I say? Juan was dead. I had lost people over the years, starting, I suppose, with my parents. I am a hard man. But I had been with Juan almost three years. He was my first friend in the Order. He was my brother in redemption, if you will. At an inn outside Avignon, we had wrestled naked to amuse our girls, and that evening we’d drunk wine with our heads pillowed in their laps and talked about God and women and wine and swords. I’d held his head when he wept after his girl died of the plague in Italy and he’d covered my back when d’Albret tried to kill me.

He was dead. He seemed too small for his harness, and his smooth olive skin seemed impossibly alive. His body held the usual amount of blood, and it was on our feet, mixed with that of all the other poor bastards who’d died in the yard.

The king was already mounted. He leaned down; Fiore was weeping.

‘Let women weep. It is for men to avenge,’ he said.

Perhaps those words seem bold to you. To me, they rang empty. Revenge? I wanted Juan.

And he was dead.

We mounted and followed the king. It was not my finest hour. I was supposed to be a leader, and I couldn’t get much past Juan’s death. I don’t let people get too close — except a handful who take me by surprise. I like men, and women more, though I don’t want them under my skin. But Juan was under my skin, and his loss — Christ, gentles, I’m sure I didn’t pay him enough attention which he was alive, and that burns me now as it burned me in the streets of Alexandria. Fiore was the better swordsman, Nerio was far wittier, Miles was more holy.

Juan was merely the one I liked best, but he had to die for me to know it. He was like my left hand — I don’t think about my left hand much, but by God, cut it off and I’d mourn it.

We rode across Alexandria. We were the news of our arrival, herald and hammer both.

Coulanges knew his way about. After a time, I was able to navigate by Pompey’s pillars to the west and Alexander’s obelisk to the east, but I would never have made my way through that web of streets. Coulanges, for all he was a fool — and that he was — was a good guide.

We had two or three fights, sharp fights, with terrified men. We passed down a street, an avenue as broad as an English town and long enough that the whole stretch of the thing seemed supernatural.

By Saint George and Saint Maurice, Alexandria was staggeringly big. It was growing dark by the time we were all the way across.