Paul Hoffman - The Left Hand of God

Within the White Tent there was conflicting news from Silbury Hill, where the collapse at the front could be clearly seen by the observers. But even here it was only the boys and IdrisPukke who appreciated fully the calamity unfolding in front of them. The observers, unsure and uncertain, could not countenance advising the Materazzi to withdraw. It was itself unthinkable, and they could so easily be wrong. And so they wrote alarming messages but hedged by doubts and ifs and buts. Narcisse was receiving signals from the front demanding reinforcements to finish the day, contradicted by the bleaker observers’ reports from Silbury Hill, though hedged by caution and unwillingness to face the evidence that the battle was already lost. Against his better judgment Narcisse had staked most of his forces on a single throw against an enemy that was sick and weak and underarmed, fighting the greatest army in the world, which hadn’t lost a battle for more than twenty years. Defeat did not make sense. And so, for all his alarm about the messages from Silbury Hill, the field general quickly gave the order for the second and third ranks to move to the attack.

Up on the hill, when the boys and IdrisPukke watched the second and third lines move toward the battlefront, a cry went up from all of them of disbelief, astonishment and rage.

“What’s happening?” said Arbell Swan-Neck to Cale. Her lover raised his hand and groaned.

“Can’t you see? The battle is already lost. Those men are going to their deaths, and who’s going to protect Memphis once their bodies are rotting on the field down there?”

“You can’t be right. Tell me it’s not so. It can’t be that bad.”

“Look for yourself,” he said, gesturing toward the battle line. Already thousands of Redeemer archers were swarming around the sides and even to the back of the Materazzi, hacking them down with pole and mallet, causing collapses as each one that fell took another three or four with him to the ground. “We have to leave,” Cale said softly. “Roland,” he called out to her groom. “Get her horse-and now! My God!” he cried in dreadful anguish, “I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it for myself.”

He nodded to Vague Henri and Kleist, who started to move back toward the tents. But as they moved, a limping figure out of breath headed toward them. “Wait!” he called. It was Koolhaus, flushed and agitated.

“Mademoiselle, it’s your brother, Simon. He gave me the slip while we were at the rear looking at the cavalry. I thought we’d just lost each other in the crowd, but when I got back to his tent the armor your father gave him for his birthday was gone. He was with that shit-bag Lord Parson an hour ago, and he was joking about Simon coming with him in the first attack.” He stopped for a second, quietly. “I think he’s down there in the battle.”

“How could you have been so careless?” Arbell screamed at Koolhaus. But instantly she turned to Cale. “Please find him. Bring him back.”

Cale was too stunned to say anything, but Kleist was not.

“If you want both of them dead, that’s as good a way to go about it as I can think of.” Kleist gestured her to look at the battle. “There are going to be thirty thousand men down there in a couple of minutes, all squeezed into a potato field. The Redeemers have won already. All we’re going to be seeing for the next two hours is men being killed. And you want to send him into that? It’ll be like looking for a piece of hay in a haystack. And one on fire at that.”

But it was as if she heard nothing, just looked into Cale’s eyes, desperate and pleading.

“Please, help him.”

“Kleist is right,” said Vague Henri. “Whatever happens to Simon, there’s nothing we can do about it.” Again she did not seem to hear, still looking into Cale’s eyes. Then slowly, hopelessly, she dropped her gaze.

“I understand,” she said.

It was that, of course, that pierced him as if she had stabbed him through the heart. To him it was the sound of lost faith and it was unendurable. He felt he’d become a kind of god in her eyes, and it was simply impossible to give up her adoration. All through this the wide-eyed Riba had kept her mouth shut, hoping that she could rely on the others to stop Cale. But she knew that when it came to Arbell, he had lost all sense. Much as she held her strange savior in a kind of dread, and brusque and usually indifferent to her as he was whenever she passed by him in her daily tasks, she had seen for months that when it came to Arbell there was a kind of madness in him.

“Don’t do this, Thomas,” she said, stern as a mother. Arbell looked at her as much shocked as furious at her servant contradicting her in such a way. But with so many against her in this, she could not tell Riba to be quiet or, indeed, say anything. But it made no difference. It was as if Cale hadn’t even heard.

Cale looked over his shoulder at the disintegrating battle below him, his heart sinking. He looked at Vague Henri and Kleist. “Cover me as best you can but don’t leave it too late to get out yourselves.”

“I wasn’t going to,” said Kleist.

Cale laughed. “Remember, if one of you hits me, I’ll know who it was.”

“Not if it’s me you won’t.”

“Head back to Memphis with her guards. I’ll follow when I can.” They ran to the tent to fetch their kit. Cale took IdrisPukke to one side. “If things go badly, head for Treetops.”

“You don’t want to go down there, boy,” said IdrisPukke.

“I know.”

Vague Henri and Kleist returned firm-handed and began to set up. IdrisPukke told one of Arbell’s equerries to take off his official vestments, a shirt covered in blue and gold dragons on which was embroidered the Materazzi family motto: “Sooner Dead Than Changed.” IdrisPukke handed the shirt to Cale. “Go down as you are and everyone will be taking a hack at you. At least the Materazzi won’t go for you if you’re wearing this.”

“And if you’re captured,” said Arbell, “they might realize that you’ll be worth a great ransom.”

At this Kleist started to cackle as if it were the funniest joke he’d ever heard.

“Leave her alone,” said Cale.

“You want to be worrying about yourself, mate. She’ll be fine, I should think.”

With that Cale started for the edge and disappeared over it, sliding down the steep hillside at almost running pace. In thirty seconds he was on the battlefield. Ahead of him the second rank was already moving into the brutal shambles of the first attack, another eight thousand men crammed into a space too small for half that number. Already the Redeemers were spilling around the sides, penning the new arrivals in-the reinforcements merely giving them more immobile soldiers they could take their time to hack and trip.

The packed ranks of soldiers had split here and there as they pushed and shoved, and huge piles of bodies, some as high as ten feet, caused the scrum to flow around them like the sea around rocks. Cale took up a fast trot, and within two minutes he was moving around the Materazzi rear of the fight. In contrast now to the overview from the hill, he had no sense at all of what was going on. Some of the soldiers at the rear were hanging back, uncertain; others were pressing forward. Only because of the view from the hill did he know that, at the front and moving down the sides, a massacre was going on. Here there wasn’t even much noise, just groups of soldiers moving to go forward, changing direction as each one saw a gap or, following another collapse at the front, surged forward, thinking they had made another break in the Redeemers’ ranks. And so thousands of men a little impatient, hoping that they would not miss out, went slowly to their dreadful deaths.