Christian Cameron: The Long Sword

They didn’t like that.

No one does.

D’Herblay laughed, but it was hollow. His face was a terrible thing of rage and pain, fatigue and fear. He had lines that made him look like a damned soul, and his face was near black with smoke. He came forward without troubling with his visor or his hose. God only knows where his leg harness was.

Conversationally, he said, ‘You know, Camus will kill me if I kill you. He wants you so badly.’ D’Herblay laughed. His laugh was — terrible. Even — sad. ‘But he’s not here and I am. If you run away, we won’t kill you.’ He shrugged. ‘Or we will.’

‘Last chance, my lord,’ I said. ‘I’m tired of killing. Aren’t you?’

He stopped, just out of range. Then he spat. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘All my life, I have been afraid. All my life, I have wanted …’ He frowned. ‘Do you know what I’ve found here? Nothing matters. It’s all just shit. You … my whore of a wife … the king … Camus …’ He croaked his laugh. ‘Here, it just doesn’t matter. I can be … anything.’

I didn’t think that I was talking to the Count d’Herblay. There was no vanity, none of the puffed up crap. No sarcasm. His voice was stark — and horrible.

‘I don’t even want to kill your damned legate any more,’ he said. ‘But it is all blood and smoke. Isn’t it?’

He was shifting his weight.

I tried one more time. ‘Disperse!’ I shouted. Or perhaps I merely coughed it. ‘Turn back, or be the enemies of God.’

‘I am the fucking enemy of God,’ D’Herblay said. ‘So save your sanctimonious shit.’

One of his blue and white men at arms laughed at that — and then they all came forward at us.

There is an enormous difference between killing helpless townspeople and fighting a knight. I hope d’Herblay learned that when I broke both his hands with one blow. The steel of his hourglass gauntlets protected him from the edge, and he didn’t lose the hands.

He just lost their use.

His spear clattered to the cobbles. He didn’t growl — he screamed, and I put my axe head behind his heel and pulled, dropping him with a clatter.

I put the spike atop my weapon to his unvisored face. I stepped on his broken left hand. He screamed.

‘I am not killing you,’ I said. ‘I do not want to kill another man. Not today. Go. All of you.’

Something in me was broken. Or had never been right. I wanted to kill him. In fact, I wanted to kill them all. I wanted to kill all the bad men, on and on.

But I had listened to enough of Father Pierre to begin to doubt if killing them was the way.

D’Herblay lay in the road and screamed. I ignored him. In Gascon French, I said, ‘Are any of you knights? Are you not ashamed? Is this your war for the gentle Jesus? Is this all we are? Go hold a tower. Go and fight the enemy. The armed enemy. Or we are nothing but reivers and bandits?’

I suppose I thought that they would turn away, ashamed.

Instead, they simply attacked.

Fiore laughed. ‘Well done,’ he said, as his pole arm flicked out.

We were five against twenty, and from the moment the blue and white in front of me came forward, I remember little. But I remember passing my iron between a man’s legs and lifting him, and his screams. I remember slamming my poleaxe two-handed, a full blow like a man splitting wood, into another.

I confess I put another down after he had turned to run.

They still talk of that fight, in the Hospital. They could all see us from the walls of the gate castle.

Of course, they lie, and say that the five of us fought a hundred Mamluks. When in fact, we fought twenty men-at-arms who wore the same cross as we wore ourselves.

And then it was done. The survivors ran like rats, leaving their loot on the road.

And then — I’m not ashamed to say — John the Turk and Maurice and George shot them down. As they ran.

And I confess, too, that killing d’Herblay would have given me more pleasure than any of the poor devils of infidels I killed in Alexandria. But I did not.

I walked back to him, and someone had killed him. On the ground, his hands broken, as helpless as a babe.

And Nerio said, ‘You are too good to be a mortal man, William Gold.’ He raised an eyebrow. And flicked his sword at me like a salute.

The next morning, we fed the Greeks — and their Jewish and Moslem friends — what food we had. About an hour after sunrise, we were probed by Bedouins. They came in close but we were silent as the grave and we didn’t allow them into the courtyard through the gate: Ewan and John and Ned Cooper saw them off, leaving a dozen corpses.

Then John followed Fra William and twenty turcopoles out the gate on his little Arab. They were gone an hour, and then John took the English archers and they were gone another hour.

The next troops to come at us were Sudanese. They were not well-disciplined, and I suspected they were being used to count our swords, so to speak. But they were fanatics, or possibly full to their eyeballs with opium. There were several hundred of them.

They died in front of the towers, and then they died in the gate tunnel, and then they died in our fortified trap in the courtyard, and they never stopped stabbing and chanting and screaming their name for God.

After their attack, we watched from the tower as three or four thousand soldiers, the Sultan’s professionals, made camp on the other side of the suburbs.

I won’t say we were smug. But we had a good garrison and a fine position. The courtyard trap was better than a gate, because we could sortie whenever we pleased and the Venetians and the English — and John — gave us a power of archery I’ve seldom had in a siege. We were going to run out of shafts in a few days, but we had the largest city in the world at our backs. I was no more worried than an exhausted soldier in a siege usually is and Fra William de Midleton was positively exuberant. He’d led the counter-attack on the Sudanese, axe in hand, and now seemed … bigger.

That was evening of the third day.

By then, Fra William had organised watches. I no longer had a command — my group of volunteers was spread to the winds. We had casualties; Juan, of course, and others; and we were missing men. Volunteers of the Order were as likely to loot as others. And Nerio had taken men with him when he took Fra Peter back to the galleys. More had escorted the legate that hellish night.

Fiore and Nerio and I served with the Scottish knights. They were good men, and they followed Baron Rosilyn. He was no older than I, and very proud, but a fine fighter. I’d like to say we got along, but in fact, we never spoke beyond ‘That wall’, and ‘Here they come’.

On the morning of the fourth day, Nerio took a patrol all the way to the ships, and returned in the evening with twenty Knights of the Order and all the rest of the available turcopoles and volunteers. They marched in just in time, for we had the first probing attack from Mamluks at dusk. We repulsed it easily.

Nerio had canteens of wine, and he shared them with us, so we were sitting on our haunches like beggars in armour, drinking Venetian wine from canteens. Nerio shook his head.

‘Turenne, that man of steel, says this gate cannot be held. He is demanding that the city be abandoned.’

I shrugged, having heard the same. There were brigands and crusaders trying to join us by then. Fra William sent them to hold other gates. A few even did. We admitted none of them to our towers.

Nerio shook his head. ‘No, I mean it. Most of the crusaders wish us to sail away. There was a rumour today that these gates had fallen.’ He looked at me. ‘The legate is in a bad way, my friend.’

I nodded.